What holds us back?

Sharon FranciscoAuthor: Sharon Francisco | Teach it Forward

Whether you want to lose 10kg, start eating healthier, or grow your business; we’ve all set goals over the years and sometimes had that little niggly feeling when we’ve committed that we might not be able to pull this off…right?

I get frustrated whenever I want to achieve a goal and that goal alludes me year after year and its tricky to identify why sometimes.

Generally, if I ponder on it long enough, I feel it comes down to just two things in most cases – FEAR and the courage to take the first step.

Fear can be crippling if you let it take over and well courage, I think we’d all like more of that.

Take for instance getting the courage to create videos and post them on LinkedIn, or your website or any other social platform.

To gather the courage and overcome the fear of doing this myself I set a goal to record a one-minute video each day first thing every morning and I did this for months.  And I finally I was ready to start posting and haven’t looked back since; it’s just not as big a deal for me anymore.

How does this happen, something that makes your heart pound, and taking you right out of your comfort zone and now none of those feelings come up?

Setting daily habits & taking small steps builds confidence over time; James Clear the Author of Atomic Habits wrote in his book

“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement”

He went on to say if you can get just 1% better each day, you’ll end up with results that are nearly 37 times better after one year.

Fear can steal dreams of many business owners, including Accountants.

The ironic thing is that Accountants are experts when it comes to how they see the numbers in a business and are the most qualified to offer advice based on what they see...but they often don’t because it feels too much like ‘selling’ and:

  • They may have had a bad past experience
  • They could fear rejection
  • They are just too busy
  • And the big one, they aren’t sure of the steps to offer and then actually deliver the work.

Your clients need your help more than ever now; don’t let what’s holding you back hold your clients back too. 

Make a plan to discuss offering advisory work (or more of it) in your firm today, don’t let the following stop you…

  • Too busy – work out a way to take the load off through outsourcing, training other Accountants to do some of your work, get systemised, delegate more work to our admin team, hire an admin assistant offshore.
  • They won’t buy it – people buy when they see value.
  • I can’t sell – Converting is a skill anyone can learn, start to educate yourself by reading books, watch youtube videos, sit in on a meeting with another Accountant converts advisory work

Other Accounting firms are offering and converting advisory work with success every day, and you can too?

Until next time, be wonderful and talk soon.

 

Sharon Francisco developed the Convert with Confidence Program.

Convert with Confidence – Is a program developed specifically for Accountants to help them convert Advisory work with confidence without feeling like a pushy salesperson.

Connect with Sharon on LinkedIn

 

Banner photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

 

Content and references are the author’s own work and may not reflect the views of A Country Practice Accountants Group.