Episode 56 | How To Get Out Of The Hamster Wheel And Connect With People With Paul Davis | Part 2

 

Even with the clearest goals and objectives, one can still fall off their progress and be stuck in an ineffective status just because of a poor mindset. To get out of that endless hamster wheel, you must have a strong commitment to what you want and start building trust with everyone. Michelle Weinstein is joined once again by personal advisor Paul Davis, this time focusing on the analogy of learning how to drive to bring home the lesson of regaining consistency, competency, and efficiency. He also explains the three pillars of building trust, underlining the importance of each one in connecting with others and actually making an impact.

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How To Get Out Of The Hamster Wheel And Connect With People: With Paul Davis | Part 2

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I cover topics from networking pricing, finding your ideal clients, increasing cashflow, and getting off hamster wheels, which is what we’re talking about now, setting boundaries and so much more, so you can stop giving away your time for free, start getting paid your worth, and being appreciated by your clients. You will also learn tips and strategies and personal interviews that I do with successful accounting professionals in the field. This show will show you exactly how to create the firm of your dreams full of abundance.

Before we welcome our special guest, if you have ever felt like you’re giving away way too much information for free or prospects, and you feel like you don’t have any control over who you work with or how much you can charge, then you’re probably like many accountants who feel like they’ve never had the business or freedom they’ve always dreamed of. I have a solution for you. You can join my Abundant Accountant Masterclass to learn and feel confident positioning yourself as an expert, learn how to get consistently high-quality referrals, and also start getting paid what you’re worth, no matter how much your fees are or what you think your clients could maybe afford. This masterclass is for you. If you want to stop giving away your valuable time and knowledge, also known as your inventory away for free and identify a consistent income stream so you can have the business you’ve always wanted. If you want to register for the Abundant Accountant Masterclass, head on over to TheAbundantAccountant.com and register. It’s complimentary. I look forward to seeing you in the masterclass.

In this episode, our special guest is Paul Davis. He is an insightful personal advisor to business owners, CEOs, and celebrities, internationally, helping them get off the hamster wheel and get their mojo back. He’s an entrepreneur, award-winning business coach, speaker, and he’s the host of The Executive Code. He was trained as an accountant. He is an accountant as well from Ireland and has an awesome accent. Let’s welcome Paul to the show.  

Michelle, how are you doing? I am delighted to be here again.

Thank you for being here again for our part two episode. For all of you that maybe haven’t read part one, you’ll definitely want to download and subscribe while you’re at Paul’s part one episode that we did. For those who might not have read to part one yet, Paul, can you share with everyone what it is that you do, a little bit about yourself?

I suppose there’s a little fascinating to me, but there are two main sides. On the one side, I worked with a lot of accountants and other people in professional services. Primarily, what I do is I help them get more clients, increase their fees, and manage their time more effectively. On the other side of my business, which is people that feel that they’re on the hamster wheel and lacking a sense of purpose or meaning in their life. What I do is I identify what that purpose is for them, what’s unique to them, and get them off that hamster wheel and back into life again.

I love it, identify your purpose because I know a lot of readers might feel like they’re on a hamster wheel. That’s something I hear quite often from a lot of accountants. In part two, we are going to talk a lot about the competence journey. If you haven’t read part one, it’s okay. You don’t have to have that one in order to read this one. We’re also going to talk about trust with clients and what that means in order to increase your revenues and your fees. Maybe grab your yellow note pad and grab a pen because that’ll be supportive for you. Thank you again, Paul, for being here with us. I think we could even probably do part three because I love talking to you. I do love the accent, but everything you say, reiterate things we’ve talked about here are things that I share and you have many unique analogies and perspectives. Thank you for contributing and being a part of the show.  

Any way I can help at all.

A lot of accountants fall off the wagon or drop off when it comes to the competence journey like we were talking about before we even started the show. Can you share a little bit about the definition of the competence journey and then we’ll get into where some of you might be like, “That’s me. That’s where I fell off the wagon.”

Leaders tend to develop the highest level of commitment and competence. Click To Tweet

Let me recall quickly what the three pillars of competence are. Competence and skills, knowledge, and experience. They’re the three pillars. Anything that you’re going to do, primarily, anything that you’re going to do new and what you’ll be looking to try and develop is each one of those pillars, your skills, knowledge, and experience. What tends to happen for a lot of people is they start that journey and have a high level of enthusiasm or what I refer to as commitments in wanting to complete a particular task. At some point, there is a point in that particular journey, I call it the competence journey that they fall off the wagon. Let me bring it back to the easiest way of doing this. I’m glad you asked the readers to take out their yellow pad and start writing because there’s going to be a lot of notes on this one.

If you’ve got a pad in of front of you, I would encourage you to write these notes as well because the reason being is I am going to ask you to draw a big, huge square. I want you to break down that square. If you can imagine it a bit like a window. You’ve got the upper left quadrant, the lower left quadrant, the upper right quadrant, and the lower right quadrant. In fact, you’ve got a square, but it’s broken down into four squares within the square. On one side, accountants will get this because we love graph and we love data. If you can imagine that those four squares are going to be part of the graph on the left-hand side, as what we refer to as the Y-axis, I want you to put down commitments. On the lower axis, which is typically the Y-axis that we refer to, we put down competence.

I want you to bring it back. I use this analogy for a lot of my clients that I work with because everybody will connect with us. This applies to every single thing that an individual will start new, meaning there’s a new piece of legislation that they need to find out about, a new project that they need to complete, or a new piece of software that they need to get their head around. Anything that they’re going to do new, they’re going to end up repeating in their life. All of them go through this journey that is part of human nature. If we don’t know the journey, some of us will fall out of rush, but if we realize what the journey is, then we push past the barrier and move forward on. Let me use an analogy. Do you remember when you were first learning how to drive a car, Michelle?

Yes. I was driving my grandfather’s minivan. That’s how I learned.  

It was probably in your teenager years.

I was 14 or 15.  

That’s mostly around the time that most people start learning how to drive and normally as a teenager as well, we are hugely enthusiastic about what it is that we want to do, meaning that we want to learn how to drive that car because that car means absolute freedom to us.

Autonomy and freedom, I don’t have to get driven anywhere. Paul don’t get me wrong, I do love a chauffeur. If Uber was just something that made sense all the time and they showed up quickly, then that’s my way to go.  

There’s a phrase I heard, Michelle, and you’ll love this one, “The older we get, it’s better to always be on the back of the car, but the front of the plane.”

In the back of the car not driving and being driven, but in the front of the plane so you can get off quickly first class.

 

On the left-hand side, when you remember back to that age and you want to learn how to drive that year, commitment was at its highest. Your desire to learn how to drive that car was at its peak. We were what I refer to as the enthusiast. In that upper left quadrant, if you put in the word enthusiast, that’s what you are because you have high-end commitments, but you have no idea how to drive that car. You have an idea. You have to assume some aspect of it, “There’s something to do to turn the wheel. There’s something to do with the clutch and the accelerator,” but you don’t know what you don’t know. That’s what I refer to as enthusiast. There is a huge bank commitment, but we have no idea what we’re going to do.

As we get a few lessons, whether it be with your parents, your grandparents, or somebody more professional, we get to know what it is that we don’t know. We get to realize, “There’s a lot more to drive in this car than we ever even imagined.” Back in my day, we have distinctly called the hill start. You got to stop in the middle of the hill and get this car from a standstill to rise up to the top of the hill. There are all these things about three-point turns. There’s always a point where you’re stopped at the traffic lights and you don’t want any of your friends around, but the lights go green and you try and go, but then the car stalls.

Also, the car goes down the hill backward.  

What happens is you realize what it is that you don’t know and you don’t feel as expert as you once felt when you started off. That commitment level drops way down. You’re now in what I call the phase of being the doubter. This is where the critical line starts to appear. There are moments in that journey where you’re doing those driving lessons, but you start to doubt yourself. You start to realize, “I don’t know as much as I should know. I’m never going to get to drive this car. I’ll never get to crack this expertise of what it takes to drive a car. For some people, they do give up and that’s the critical line. Life happens at exactly the same point. We see something new. We’re hugely enthusiastic and we get to a particular point in the journey when we realize, “I don’t know I had finished this or how to push past this.” Our commitment wanes way low, even though our competence is increasing. We’re still not there. An easy example is when you start to learn a new musical instrument or a new piece of software, you get to a point where you say to yourself, “I’m not going to be able for this.” Some people follow college because the jobs don’t feel that they can finish the rest of the course. It shows up in every single aspect of life. What I call the lower left quadrant is the doubter because that’s when that shows up.

If you know what the competence journey is and all we need to do is push past that critical line and keep learning, developing those skills, that knowledge and experience. Keep going and developing our competence from that point of view. We move into the other quadrants, which is the bottom right-hand quadrant. In that quadrant, our competence is at a much higher level. In some respects, it’s probably for some people at the highest level that we’re going to get to, but here’s what happens as well. We get to a point where you’re good at learning how to drive the car. You’re now at the point of being able to drive the car, but you’re still thinking about all the aspects that have to be done. You’re checking your mirrors, gear changes and all that set of things.

Those become a point in our life where you are learning how to drive that car. Those become the point where you can drive that now. For example, if you left your home and you got to your office, or you’re going to the supermarket or whatever it might be, whatever journey you were taken, you never have thought about what it is that you were doing in driving a car. We get to the point of being on autopilot. We can drive the car without even thinking about driving a car. If you think of all the things that you naturally do that you’re on autopilot, all the accountants that are reading this, all the work that they do, the vast majority will do it on autopilot.

That’s where you get to the point of it’s comfortable, your competence level is at a decent enough high level. Your commitment is at an okay level, meaning it’s halfway between the highest and the lowest level. What I refer to in the bottom right-hand quadrant, what happens is now you’re the passivist. You’re just going through life. You’re on autopilot. You’re accepting what is. The difference in being a leader, which is the upper right-hand quadrant, the leaders are the ones that develop and look at their level of commitment. They look at the level of competence. They strive for much more. They strive for better and for greater. For people in business, for the ones who want to be the leader, they’re the ones making a difference, both within their business and with the clients they are working with.

Let’s get back to the driving analogy, if you take it back to that, there are experts driving lessons that you can take. There are advanced driving lessons that you can take, therefore you can drive in snow or ice, you can learn how to drive out of awkward difficult situations, which is like what the CIA or the FBI will learn. To drive the person that they’re responsible for out of a difficult situation quickly. There are much more advanced driving lessons, but the vast majority of people don’t do them. That’s the difference between a leader and being a passivist.

I’m a leader. I’m doing all these extra classes.

This is where I bounce over to the other side of my business, where people feel like they’re on the hamster wheel and feel like, “What’s the point?” That’s because their commitment has gone to such a low level. They’re being passivist in life. They’re being on that hamster wheel. Life is happening to them as opposed to them instructing which way they want to bring your life. There’s a whole way of how we go to look at that commitment level and see what’s going on and break it down. There are three pillars that I have in relation to commitments that I should divide out.

Even though competence is increasing, commitment tends to wane way low. Click To Tweet

Paul, I’ve got a question. I’m going to put my accountant hat on because I have a bunch of leaders in my eight-week Sales Mastery Training that is breaking through that barrier. They’re not what you’re calling it passivist. It’s a new word for me, but for those that might be like, “I can’t get off this hamster wheel, I’ve been doing the same thing,” and I was on the phone with a woman, “I procrastinated so long,” and she almost wanted to procrastinate again. I reminded her of what she said in her email. I’m like, “What is the switch in the brain? How does someone say, ‘The passivist is not me anymore. I’ve got to break through the barrier?’”

In 2020, there’s this low-grade depression that everyone has, you don’t even realize how did they get off the hamster wheel? For an accountant to go to extra driving classes to become the expert tax person or tax resolution and sign up for those extra classes which I call is getting specialized knowledge, how do they make that jump? How does the mind go, “I’m done with being a passivist. I’ve been on autopilot too long?” For me, it just happens. I always do one extra growth class every year. In 2020, I did Influence Ecology. In 2019, I did Mastery and Transformational Leadership. After that, I started volunteering for the Suicide Hotline. I’m always doing what you’re talking about, but I make it a commitment that every year it’s just one class, so I don’t get on the hamster wheel because once I’m on it, I’d be stuck. How would someone get off of it?  

There’s a lot to answer in that simple question.

Let’s keep it simple. Paul, do you want to do part three? I could stay here and talk to Paul forever. Your analogies are good. I also have the next question for you because I have a Tesla and it has an autopilot. It drives me from my house to LA. I can email on texts while I’m driving safely. The car is safer in autopilot than it is in human mode. Go figure.

Let me answer it for you. Honestly, it will be such a long answer, but my straight reaction is that there is no reason, meaning they had no reason to get off the hamster wheel. They’re on the hamster wheel, but they don’t have a reason to push themselves forward.

There’s no purpose.

That’s where it feeds into purpose. Let me drill down a little bit more for you. There are internal drivers. What I call internal priorities to an individual. Every single individual has a set of internal priorities, internal drivers. Think of them as being your internal dynamo. If you don’t understand and don’t know what a dynamo is, it is a common term. A dynamo is that’s your engine inside. That is what drives your internal engine. Everybody has a unique set of internal drivers. Most people don’t know what they are. You’re naturally doing things that are in line with your internal drivers. What happens for most people when they get into business or they start a career, they typically follow either what their parents tell them to do, what they should do, or what they have to do.

They fall into their career or they fall into their business in some shape or form. They look around when they’re in college and say, “What should I do? What will I do in my life?” They’d pick the first course. They become the accountant or lawyer, whatever profession they decide to do, but it’s not necessarily in line with what their internal drivers are. What happens then later on in life is they initially get that point from a commitment perspective. Their desire for what it is that they’re doing collapses their passion. Their love for what it is that they do is gone and therefore, they don’t have the motivation and drive to strive forward. That’s what happens to people.

A lot of people come to me from the perspective of, “I don’t have any meaning in my life. I have no fulfillment to work what I’m doing. What am I doing for it? There’s no purpose to it. What on earth am I doing? All I’m doing is on this hamster wheel and just paying bills.” That’s typically the conversation that some of my clients will come to me for and I’ll end up identifying what their drivers and their purpose are. I will tell them exactly what their mission is, what they should be dealing with in their life.

Are you a psychic? How do you know?

 

You’ve tapped into something. I was born in Ireland. I was born to the seventh son of a seventh child of a seventh child tree generation, so it’s the seventh. Let me explain that because in America, that’s not hugely known, but in Ireland, there’s a huge amount of folklore.

I think all the accountants might be calling you so you can tell them their meaning and purpose so they can have fulfillment. We have the accountant psychic here. Let’s hear about this.  

I tend not to use the word psychic, but I use the word intuitive. That’s exactly what I do. When I work with clients, I’ll get their purpose, vision, mission, the reason why they do what they have to do, the impact they were supposed to make, and get that in knowings and imagery. That’s how I’m able to guide my clients to massive levels of success. That’s one aspect of me. That’s how I know so much about the purpose of what drives an individual. The short answer to your question of which is for people to feel later on the hamster wheel, that’s exactly the reason being. They don’t have a reason or purpose. They’re doing the work because that’s what they learned how to do whereas, Michelle, you are doing things that are obviously in line if I work with you to identify your internal drivers and internal priorities. You’re probably intuitively or naturally doing work that’s in line with those. That’s why you’re so driven. That’s the difference between somebody that’s being passivist to being somebody that’s a leader.

What’s the 777?

In Irish mythology, the seventh son was reported to have healing capabilities. There are different tests that you would do as the seventh son of a seventh. As a child, I used to do a lot of healing. A lot of people would come to the house and I’d be healing them from cancer, rheumatism, migraines to the different ailments. They would go away completely healed. As a teenager, I moved away from our luck because it’s not cool. It’s not something you do as a teenager, but inherent to it in myself as I was meeting people and I’d be hugely empathic. We’d know not what they would say, but I’d know deeply at a soul level what they were feeling. I know if somebody was absolutely unhappy at a soul level.

We never told anybody what it could do, but how it transpired in business was that I’d go into a business. I would walk into the business and I know what would need to be done with the business. I use the term, I’d pivot that business, meaning I’d turn the direction to the purpose and the business slightly. All of a sudden, the business was completely aligned with the individuals and the business owners within the business. Their businesses just flourished easily without them doing a lot of work. I told them for one, a better word, I’ve done covertly. When you go to a business consultant, it’s not something that you would expect to hear from business consultants.

Everyone is probably thinking, “I want to go and talk to the psychic, the palm reader, the card reader, the intuitive,” but that’s super cool that you do this for accountants.

I’ve had to do that over the years because I wasn’t able to tell people that’s what I do intuitively. I’ve had to find methodologies and hence, the reason why I’ve researched for years was trying to find to develop methodologies. That is what I call The Executive Code of how can I find the evidence in people’s lives so that they don’t feel that I’m making it up because you can go to an intuitive and he can tell you, “X, Y, and Zed,” but if you don’t believe it’s within there, there’s no benefit there. What I’ve developed over the years is I can find the evidence for people so therefore I match the evidence that they find to what it is that I already have in our vision. They know this and this. The stories I could tell you are phenomenal, but it’s essentially a skill.

I’m booking an appointment for myself and my boyfriend. You all should book an appointment too. Paul, how do they book an appointment with you though, if they want to do an Executive Code analysis?  

My website at is DavisBusinessConsultants.com. It talks about the different services I have. I’m in the process of building a brand-new website, which is under my own name and there’s a series I’m going to be putting on, which I call The Flight Plan because I love flying. I know I’ve initially flown in every single type of aircraft, but not every single type. I’ve flown from helicopters to small jets, hot air balloons. Hence, the reason why I’m called The Flight Plan.

The more promises that aren't being delivered upon, the more trust levels go down. Click To Tweet

Are you a pilot?  

I don’t do commercial pilots, but I have learned how to fly planes and I have flown helicopters as well. Yeah.

Do you have your pilot’s license?

I don’t have a license. I want to experience different types of fly. I’ve done a glider, I’ve jumped out of a plane twice. There’s a whole lot of different things that I’ve done from it that are flight-related but I have no desire to learn how to fly a plane and become a pilot.

My brother is a pilot, that’s why I was asking.  

In my office, you’d see a whole load of items that are all fly-related.

He’s been a pilot. My uncle was a pilot, unfortunately, he passed away in an accident. It is weather-related. He just disappeared. My brother is learning to fly formation. That’s DavisBusinessConsultants.com or with the new website, what will it be?

That’s going to be PaulWilliamDavis.com and the podcast is The Executive Code. Anybody can find me through any one of those angles.

Subscribe to that, download it, and listen to it on repeat. We’ve gone so far off on all these different ways. Let’s reel this back in because we’ve talked about this a lot. I’m sure a lot of the readers are like, “I am doing my purpose. I’m an accountant. I got my CPA. What is Paul going to tell me that I can do within my business?” There’s a lot of correlation here about the types of clients you’re working with and having that reason and purpose on who you’re serving in order to shift from that passivist autopilot do a bunch of 1040 tax returns to stepping up being a leader, maybe investing in a specialized knowledge area. I’m working with a group now that does tax resolution work and they want to do more of that. A lot of people are in trouble with the IRS in America. If you can get someone out of trouble and their wages aren’t garnished or anything like that, then you become more of that leader quadrant. Is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you want to share about your quadrant and the driving? All your analogies are great.  

One of the things that we did say at the beginning that we would cover is trust with your clients. Please make a note of this because every single individual falls down to this one that I come across, even accountants or any level of professional services. The three pillars to trust are credibility, rapport and reliability. Credibility, typically most people can tick that box off from the point of view of they become qualified as an accountant. Therefore, when a client comes in the door, they know they’ve got a certificate brought to the desk saying they’re an accountant. They get the credibility from that side of things, but how you can build more credibility is the likes of social proof, meaning testimonials or client referrals, all that set of things. What else can you do to build credibility? That is your knowledge and experience. It feeds into your competence side of things. They’re all connected.

 

The next one, most people again, are some way on a high level of this particular pillar, which is rapport. Rapport is your ability to make that connection with another human being. Some people are good at it, but some people are not good at it. You’ve got to be honest with yourself and say, “If on a scale of 1 to 10, how well do I build a strong connection with people and as quickly as possible, as immediately as possible with a new client that comes in the door? There are a lot of different things that can be done in order to build rapport. The last pillar, that’s where they all fall down on. That’s reliability. Let me do a different type of analogy, Michelle, but let me ask you, is there anything that you’ve lent to somebody and they didn’t return it? Was there a book or a tool or any item at all? Even an item of clothing that you lent to somebody, somebody borrowed it off you, but they still haven’t returned it.

I’m not the best one to ask. I don’t lend out a whole bunch of stuff and if I do, I keep close tabs on my items, then I get it back. I don’t let things go away. They always come back. I’m like, “In Australia, they had the boomerangs. I’m like a boomerang. You throw it out and it comes right back.

Most people, when I do workshops and I asked that question, every single hand would go up. The next question I’ll ask is, can you remember the name of the individual, the exact item, and the timeframe of when you lent that item to that individual? Every single one of them will say, “Yes,” because what happens in the human brain is if you think of it from a switch perspective, as soon as you give something to somebody and with an expected return, that switch goes on. When it comes to reliability, as soon as you make a promise or somebody made a promise to you, that switch will go on in the brain. If you haven’t delivered on a promise, that switch is still on. It does apply when it comes to accountants, and dealing with clients is that you are inherently as well as overtly giving promises to your clients.

Therefore, if you’re not keeping track of all those individual promises that you’re giving to your clients, and you’re not closing those switches for them, what’s in the client’s mind is all those open switches. The biggest pivot that people always need to build is reliability. They have to build a system, both on one side to show and demonstrate that they are reliable. Second of all, they also deliver on their promises. It’s one of the most critical pieces when it comes to accountants because I see many accountants fail on it. All of a sudden, what happens, whether they can realize that the clients move away because what’s happened is from a scale if you’re thinking from this point of view, the trust level starts to deplete. The more promises that aren’t being delivered upon, that trust levels go down. What happens before any company even knows it, the client has moved on to another accountant.

What systems have you seen be put in place? I like that. It’s like every promise you make, it’s an open switch, but how do you come full circle and close the switch?  

Every single meeting or conversation that you have with a client, you’ve got to keep a written track of each one of those promises that you’re given. It can be as simple as, “There’s a piece of document, a worksheet, or a template that I can get to you, but I’ll send that over to you after the meeting.” What typically happens is somebody doesn’t write that down. The accountant doesn’t write it down on a piece of paper and they go from that meeting to another meeting. They go back to the office to do something where they’ll get distracted, then all of a sudden, they’ve forgotten, but the client has never forgotten. One of the first pieces is that you have to keep a written record of all those promises that you’re making to your clients. Those promises can be verbal or written.

They can be a sense of a meeting, for example, at 9:00 next Monday morning in some such place. You turn up and you’re late. That’s reliability. You’ve proven that you’re late. Reliability kicks into every single area of your life, even down from the point of view of how we build this. If you’re promising to turn up for a meeting at 9:00, you turn up at 9:00, if not, five minutes beforehand. If you’re promising to get something, you make sure you deliver on that promise. The way of how you can demonstrate it to potential clients is that you build a reliability system. Think of it from the perspective of, if you produce a newsletter, the newsletter has to go out on that day every single month, no matter what. If you do podcasts, like I do, my podcast lands every single Tuesday at 7:00 AM.

Mine is on the 1st and the 15th of every month, payroll dates. I am a real good person in the reliability department.

What you’re doing is demonstrating to your audience that you are reliable because it shows up on their phone or whatever it is that they use to listening to a podcast. Taking it from a human brain perspective, we may not consciously think about it. It’s all on an unconscious level. The unconscious mind to the client’s perspective is saying, “This person delivers every single Tuesday or every whatever day it is.” Would it be the newsletter, podcast, or whatever they send out or what they do, you build reliability systems to prove that you’re a reliable individual and that’s what clients want to work with.

This is important, especially for accountants. I’m trying to think, depending on the CRM you use or your project management tool that you use in your firm. I have no idea, but you should be able to start a virtual notepad where, “I made a promise so I’m going to send her this by 5:00. Instead, I’ll send it by 4:00,” and every little bit will slowly add to the trust department.  

The one that lets everybody down the most is reliability, especially in a busy environment. Click To Tweet

For me, either during a meeting while I take note when I’m having a client meeting or at the end of that particular meeting, I put it in as a calendar event.

I do the same. I put it in my notepad. I have five promises that I have to close the switch on. That’s funny. I did it last time. I am in the autopilot category on that.  

This is typical of an accountant. Believe me, I trained as an accountant, so therefore I can say these things. It’s not about slagging accountants in any shape or form. One thing that where accountants fall down on common is that you typically get back from clients, they would say the tax return or the piece of information or report, they would have it by 10:00 Thursday morning. It’s now the following Tuesday.

It’s a promise. You turned on a light switch. You’ve got to close that light switch and do it before the buzzer goes off or your timer expires.  

That one pillar, the reliability. Credibility, most of us can take that one off that rapport, but there’s still more we can do from the credibility side, which is more active, more we can do from a rapport side of things. The one that lets everybody down is reliability, especially in a busy environment.

For fun, what else can you do on the rapport side? I talk a lot about rapport in my eight-week Sales Mastery Training.  

I spent a huge amount of money every single year on learning. It’s one of my highest priorities. You probably came across this before, Michelle. There’s a term called NLP, which is Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

I want to get certified in that. That’s my project in 2021.  

I became one of those NLP business practitioners. What NLP teaches you is the language systems and the body language systems. Not only the visual, the auditory, but also your body language. It tells you all those systems to use. When you want to know and understand the systems, then you can build rapport enough a lot quicker. That’s as simple as the handshake, eye contact, how you demonstrate your body. Do you come across as being terribly shy? Do you come across as being confident? The client does not want to deal with anybody that’s not confident.

What would you suggest for people who do most of their business on the phone? A lot of people aren’t meeting anyone in person. For those not on video, what do you recommend?  

The same thing applies. If you don’t come across as confident on the phone, then your clients are going to pick that up. In sales terminology, if you ever do any sales training, one of the things that a sales trainer will always teach it as part of NLP as well is that before you even get on the phone call, smile. I noticed it seems strange. When I heard it, I say, “There’s no way I’m doing that,” but that’s what happens with the physiology of the other body itself before you get on that call. When you start smiling, meaning you force your face to smile, even though you may not feel like smiling. The physiology in doing that alone changes the chemical makeup of the body itself and the mind, and your clients pick that up from an energetic perspective. They pick it up because they sense it in the energy coming across on the phone. It’s a simple thing that people can do.

 

It is simple. I don’t even know where those came from or where I read it or what class I learned it from, but smile with a pencil in your mouth and practice.  

I haven’t heard that one. That’s a good one.

Try it and send me an email. Let me know how that goes, but you can practice the smile with the pen in your mouth. Paul, thank you for all of your knowledge and wisdom. For everyone, make sure to download the podcast The Executive Code and start listening. Paul’s 777, he’s got an intuitive empathic side. I will be booking my appointments and my boyfriend’s appointments. It’s an honor to have you here and giving all the accountants a new way to figure out how to break through the barrier, get past the passivist corner, to get up into the leader corner, and focus on purpose and passion, making your life less stressful. That’s what it sounds like to me, less overwhelming, less stressful and effortless life. Paul, is there anything else you would like to share?

I think we’ve covered quite a lot. I’ve enjoyed our conversation, to be honest. Any opportunity that I get to help people, it’s what I do. I’ll be more than happy to share the information.

Thank you for being here with us. It was an honor to have you.

—

Thank you for joining Paul and I on part two of our little series. I’m going to ask him for a part three because most of the episodes are 20 to 30 minutes. His are going anywhere from 40 to 45 minutes. He is a wealth of knowledge and I had no idea he was intuitive, an empath, and had what I call in America, psychic capabilities. If you are an accountant struggling on that hamster wheel, figuring out your purpose and passion and maybe what clients would serve you best based on your internal drivers, check him out. Go to The Executive Code podcast. It’s on my morning listening routine. He does an episode every single week. He has consistent reliability. Think about maybe an area. I think a lot of, how can you build a reliability system?

I never thought of that because I use my calendar, my notepads, religiously, but for those of us that are busy, inundated with a lot of paperwork and tax returns. It’s a tax deadline for corporations in America. I know a lot of you know this day. You have many tax returns to pump out by the time midnight hits and you think, “I needed to send Suzie an email. I told her I would call them back.” Every time that we make a promise, that light switches on. How can you close the gap and close the circle by turning that light switch off? What system could you implement in order to start closing your light switches to improve the reliability, which ultimately improves stress, which then the higher the trust, the more you can charge in the future?

Think about a system that you could implement if there’s anything that you can take away from this episode. I know a lot of accounting professional clients come to me because they are sick and tired of giving away their knowledge and expertise for free. If that sounds like you, I invite you to join my complimentary masterclass created for accountants who want to build a practice with premium clients who eagerly pay you for what you’re worth and appreciate the service that you delivered. You can sign up now at TheAbundantAccountant.com. Thank you all so much for joining us here on another amazing episode.

Important Links:

• OnTheClock.com
• The Executive Code
• DavisBusinessConsultants.com
• PaulWilliamDavis.com

About Paul Davis

Paul Davis is an insightful Personal Advisor to Business Owners, CEOs and Celebrities internationally helping them get off the hamster wheel and get their mojo back.

He’s an entrepreneur, an award-winning business growth consultant, speaker, author of several international best-selling books, and creator of The Executive Code

 

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