Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Paul Davis. Paul, welcome.
Tom, how are you doing? Good to be here.
Glad to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure, and well I suppose maybe just to give you a bit of a small bit of background many, many years ago I originally qualified as a management accountant for my sins. I wasn’t good enough for the entrepreneurs face at that time. So I went off and studied management accounting but my career has been going into companies and growing and scaling those companies. I’ve been in every single industry sector between high-tech manufacturing, low-tech manufacturing, construction, service industries in a platter of different things. And then my last position that I held was CEO of a nationwide retail chain where I took the business from 43 stores to 60 retail stores nationwide.
And then I made a decision, well I might as well go on my own, which I did in 2001. And the premise of the focus of my business consultancies from that side of things was to how could I help business owners to grow and scale their business. So using the same tactics is what I’ve done in the large-scale business, but more on a smaller business side of things, We knew that, you know, we’re 20 years in business now at this stage. But I suppose for a lot of the work that would have been doing would have been going into companies that would have been having financial difficulties, would have had to develop new markets, new products, restructuring, all that kind of sort of things. But part of what I would have been doing with companies will be getting in tune with, what is it that the business owner ultimately wants to be doing, So what’s, what’s, what’s the driving force? Because a lot of companies, a lot of business owners fall into businesses in some respects, just as much as I fell into the management accounting is not something that, you know, I don’t do any management accounts anymore. I don’t do any accounts for that matter anymore.
I don’t even do my own accounts and, but it is something that I’ve observed where business owners will, will follow a particular path either because it’s down to, you know, what their families suggest that they should do or what their schools say they should do with all those kind of things. But ultimately it can lead to a lot of people feeling unfulfilled and they hit a crossroads whereby they’ve grown successful business. Um, it’s doing really well. They have all the trappings in terms of the houses, the cars, the partners, the family, all that kind of sort of things, but they actually wake up, not so much just one particular day, but they actually wake up over a period of time, say, look, I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel, I’m on a treadmill amount of crossroads, what on earth should be doing, because they’re not getting the level of fulfilment that they should be doing from, from the actual business itself, So probably for the past 10 or so years, what I specifically do now is I put people on the right track and so I identify for them, what is actually going to give them fulfilment, what is their innate role that they play in life and what’s there for one better word, wants, their mission was or why.
And I know there’s a lot of talk about, you know, find out why and all the things I don’t I don’t agree with a lot of things that’s been said in the medium from that perspective, completely, very, very different take on that particular one, and but ultimately it’s about what is it that’s going to give people fulfilment meaning and purpose in their life and then what I do is I structured their business around that particular mission and that’s when they literally take apart from the fulfilment of the joy that they get and the, I suppose the, the excitement of the drive and a motivation about their business, it brings their business up too much higher level from the level of success perspective, so that’s in effect what to do, interesting introduction, I’ve got like three follow up questions, I want to get them all out immediately, so I don’t forget one of them but I’m sure I will anyway. But you mentioned that you’re not doing your own accounts. Do you still have a business that is in accounting?
No. My business when I set up in 2001 wasn’t going into companies. I literally originally started doing management accounts for companies and but what I found was that when I was doing the management accounts when I was presented reports to the board of directors or the business owners and I ended up advising them from a strategy perspective. And I was looking at all different aspects of the business. I was looking at operations, marketing, finance, you know, even raising finance and raising capital within the company, looking at mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, all the kinds of things. And so I ended up advising from a strategic perspective and the management accounts piece became smaller and smaller to the work that I was actually doing in the companies. So what I ended up doing was handed over some of the companies that I was working with purely just from management accounts, handing the management accounts element over to somebody else and I sold that part of the business for one another word and I purely then focused on advising the business owners from a strategic perspective. So yeah, it’s so the business right now at the moment and we don’t do anything from an accounting function, we would oversee it.
We will look at it and I will see things that other accountants won’t see in a set of accounts and this particular reports that I will get business owners to get from their accounting function which are very, very the information in it is a lot more and it’s not more value add than two compared to what a lot of accounts produce. Let’s go that way. Well I do plan to ask you a couple of questions on that but I did have a follow up regarding the retail stores that you that you grew, have you since everything that’s happened, Have you checked up on them to see how they’re doing? Like have you thought I wonder how they’re doing during this time during well, let’s put this like when it went. So over in Ireland year we had what was called the Celtic Tiger. So the Celtic Tiger was the 2008-2012 recession. That’s for that way. So we had huge growth in Ireland and a lot of that road came from the property side of things. So I left in 2001 but during the property boom for one of the word in Ireland and the company decided to change tactic and went down and played a lot of property games And unfortunately it happened for them was then in 22010-2012 they went into examiner ship and they are no longer business as a result, oh dear.
Not the right that make you sad or is it just like the cause-and-effect thing that you well it’s funny before I left And in 2001, one of the strategies that was trying to implement and LTD say it came across a lot of resistance, but one of the strategies I want to do is bring the business online at 2001. It was a tough play to do because a lot of finance needs to be raised and it was a tough environment. But my vision for the business was to bring it online and if the Britons was brought online it would probably, I’m not saying it would be, but I’m saying, well we have a high probability of being still in business right now at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, that’s quite, quite visionary in 2001. Right, so must have seen something that a lot of people didn’t see, but you also mentioned something about the reason why and how you disagree with a lot of what is said on that, so I’d like to get your thoughts on what it is that you disagree with and then also what your approach to it is.
Yeah, so a lot of people and I’m sure you’ve seen this as well Thomas whereby you’ll see it on LinkedIn, you’ll see on Facebook, you’ll see it on podcast from the point of view of people saying, and it came from Simon’s neck in terms of started y and as soon as that Ted Talk came out and as soon as the and the book came out, people for one better word jumped on it and said, ok, you’ve got to start with you why? And it never sat comfortably with me. And but I just observed, I stood back and I just observed what was actually happening on what was going on. And after a while I put up an article on my LinkedIn profile and I said, don’t start with why. And the reason being is because the message that Simon was actually sending out was actually interpreted incorrectly. People could say, well, he communicated incorrectly or had been communicated right and all that kind of things, but it was picked up by the vast majority of population in a completely wrong way. And so let me explain that a lot of the conferences that I would attend and be keynote speaker on, I was hearing other speakers getting on stage saying, you’ve got to start with why you got to find your why and when you find your why that’s when you can bring your business to the next level.
And then they observed and just said, that’s interesting and but not fully agree and basically what they’re also the message was that people buy or why. And I said, do they really, So I did my own research. And so therefore I would get on stage. And I asked the audience and I asked them questions along the lines of so think of the last five or 10 purchases that you made and answer me this, Why did you buy them? And was it because you knew the company’s why or did you buy them for your own? It was going to improve your life in some particular way. And every single one of them, 99.9% public confidence would say I bought them because it was making me feel good about myself or it’s a quality product. So it’s buying the product, I was buying it for other reasons, but nobody knew in the audience as regards why, why the company was in business in the first place, they didn’t know the company’s why. So that literally demolished that thinking from that perspective. So people, in my experience, and again, it’s only my experience, but people don’t buy why you’re in business, they buy the product or to buy the service, because it’s going to give them the results that they are looking for.
That’s the bottom line, okay, now is why important. Yes, it absolutely is. Because what Simon was trying to communicate as I understood it was that if you’re trying to manage and run a business, you have to know your why, because your why is absolutely important for you getting out of bed in the morning to do what it is that you’re doing. So, is it a driving force is absolutely a driving force without a shadow of a doubt. But also on top of that, it was putting a lot of pressure on business owners to feel that because they were coming across a lot of other business consultants, definitely not me, anyway, but coming across a lot of other business consultants and business coaches and business mentors saying, you’ve got to find you why you got to find out why, and business owners were saying I’m in business because I want to make money because you have to pay the bills. That’s why I’m in business. They don’t have the fundamental underlying why. So, it was putting stress on them to say that, okay, maybe I’m missing a piece, and maybe that’s why my business isn’t successful, which is absolutely not the case. So when people, let me put this way, when people consciously, and I mean that when they’re using a conscious mind to think about why is it that they’re doing something, they will never get the answer, because it doesn’t come from our conscious mind, your fundamental, your inspiration comes from your unconscious, it’s your unconscious that’s wanting to fulfil a part of what it’s seeking to fulfil, which is part of your mission, part of your purpose.
So, when I’m bringing my clients through a question process to underline and find out what is the unconscious mind is trying to make manifest when it comes to the why if you don’t have an emotional response to your why? Well then, it’s not your why? If it doesn’t move you internally, if you don’t have that for one better word, that heartstring moments internally, when you think about your why? It’s not sure why full stuff and that’s your indicator to say, is your wife powerful enough because if it doesn’t pull on your heartstrings, it’s not powerful enough, interesting, good distinction as well. Thank you. You mentioned that there are a lot of people, you’ve come across people who feel like they’re on the hamster wheel each day or they wake up and then then they’re unfulfilled. I’ve spoken to a lot of people and it seems like when they were able to communicate that it’s because they also went through it themselves.
Did you find that you went through it and then you were able to help people with that as a result. Yeah. Wonder my underlying things. I didn’t go through what I’ve gone through. I wouldn’t classify that have gone through a hamster wheel effect all of my life. I would have been on a quest to find out what is actually what am I here for And that started a very, very young age. So you actually start at the age of 10. So trip my life, I would have hit a lot of choice points a lot of crossroads. And if you want to go deeper, go deep, depends on your audience. I already have the, you know, what did you conclude as follow up? So yeah, feel free to go into it because we’ve got the time. Look, I, you know, I would have planned attempt at contemplate hours checking out multiple times throughout my whole life. And the underlying question in my mind was, what on earth am I here for?
What’s my purpose? What am I supposed to do? What on, you know, what’s going to bring me some sort of joy and so on. So even though I’ve been hugely successful over the years in the sense of, so I’ve had everything that all my clients come to me for in terms of, yeah, I’ve had the houses, I’ve got, I’ve got the cars, I’ve got explains that we’ve got all the last stuff and I’ve had all the stuff that stuff would be hugely successful over my whole career, thank God. But an inner part of me was saying, no, this, this doesn’t, it’s not that it’s not enough, it’s just not there, there has to be something more So I would be in meetings which, you know, we could be taking over a company and they’re in the process of one part of the brain is highly engaged in the process of taking over the company and negotiating the deal while on the other part, one amount of coffee break or what would be the apartment banks. It’s not that there’s, what is the point in all of this. so, and it wasn’t until there’s things that I see for other people And other companies tend to be the one to be hugely successful with my clients.
So I have 100% success rate in turning everything a company around that have worked with. And part of that is because of, you know, you mentioned there were a generation to okay that there may have been very visionary, but I’d get a lot of insights in relation to the businesses and the company started work with. So I I’d see a path for them where they should follow and what is particular to the business owners. So I see for other people. But a question for me, after the vast majority missions will be, I wish somebody would come along to me and be able to tell me what it is that I do, what is it, what’s my vision, what’s my long term, what should, what’s the right track I should be on just as much as I can do for everybody else. and then one day I actually realised actually doing what nobody’s gonna be able to tell me that anyone is for in the first thing. But my path is actually the part of what I’m actually doing right now at the moment, which is actually guiding and telling people what their purpose is, what their mission is. What is it that they should be doing relations through life in their business and what I’ve done over the last number of years is researched and Not have so many years.
I know 53. So you can take at least 30 years of that research and developing and learning from all the difference people around the world to come up with a methodology to put people on the right track. And that’s where you know, it’s from an unconscious perspective and therefore when it happened, the unconscious side of things and you implemented from the methodology perspective and that’s when you absolutely put individuals on the right track. So a long way around answering your question, Thomas, is that do I know what it’s like being on the other side? Perhaps not from a treadmill or a hamster wheel perspective. But definitely from that sense of questioning in terms of yet there has to be something more. A lot of the C. E. O. S. I’d get CEOs very senior executives coming to me and business owners come with me the same. Pretty much they’re opening sentences will be if I if I don’t get answered now they put a lot of pressure on me.
Yeah they do in the sense of their question is if I if I can’t get the answers from you that’s it. I’m not here. I’m checking out. I’ve already made my plan. I’m not going to be here I can’t do this any longer. So that’s how the conversation typically will unravel. Then that’s on the, on the, on the spectrum. What other people will come to me from the perspective of Yeah, look at their business doing really, really well. They’re not getting the joy or fulfilment from it. What on earth should I be doing with my life? And so they’re having that much more deeper inner thought process. And then I’m literally I bring them through process and I covered over half a day and by the end of that they have, they literally know exactly what they need to be doing, which is from my perspective, it’s phenomenal. It’s absolutely phenomenal. And so that’s where I get my joy from. So would you say your purpose is to help others in summary my purpose? If I was to give you my why are my mission and my mission is saving lives? It’s literally and metaphorically, So it’s probably about 20% of the clients that come to me are planning or attempting suicide or checking out.
So I’m literally saving their lives. The other 70% are where I say literally, it’s metaphorically, it’s a case of their living a life, but it’s not really life. They’re going through life, but they’re not living it. They have all the trappings for one big word trapping is not the right word, but they have all the spoils or the joys of, you know, the cars, the houses, all that kind of, some things that, the fancy hallways and fancy restaurants, they have all that kind of set of things, but they don’t, they’re not living life and that’s very, very different. Absolutely very, very different. So where I metaphorically saving their lives, I’m, they now get onto a life where honestly Jesus the direction that they get when they’re actually starting to live the life they’re supposed to live is just phenomenal because it’s a completely different individual that you come across there. They’re fully lit up. Their energy is just huge and you can, you can see it in their eyes, you can see it in their energy. The difference that it makes it. Um, because they’re massively enjoying what they’re doing.
Yeah, I can, I can understand the metaphorical part in terms of um, you know, it seems meaningless or they don’t get enough joy out of, you know, typical business activity or something. When you say the literal side of it, do you have like a charity side of your business the way you’re doing that type of activity? Yeah. Well, I don’t, from that side of things, short answer. Am I involved in worthy causes? I am absolutely, I’ve been to Kenya and Cambodia. I love Cambodia and I’d love to go back again. So there’s a number of different projects that would have supported both Kenya and Cambodia and a lot of other places in the, and all that kind of things over the years. So I did that side of me, that’s one sense. But do I have a charity or worthy cause in relation to mental health or that kind of things? I don’t, I do what, you know, I’ve, I’ve a mission or the name of the numbers of people that I want to reach and I’m on that trajectory right now at the moment.
So that’s how I’m going. I’m approaching in a different way to a lot of other people. Perhaps that will speak about mental health. I, me personally, I detest the term mental health, I prefer to call it mental fitness. Um, so it’s, I don’t for what it was like when I have a CEO coming in front of me and I explained to him why he’s feeling the way he’s feeling and it’s like a breath of fresh air to him because he’s been to so many other people when the counsellors, therapists, or he’s done his own research and all the kinds of things he will not have told anybody else whatsoever. Which will be just the same case for me over, over years. Um, he would be hugely secretive because the risk for them is too high if they were to tell anybody, including their partner, their spouse or any other family member from their perspective, that risk is too high and therefore they won’t.
So, but they will do their own research covertly and they will go to talk to some cancers and some therapists, that kind of things. But they don’t give them the answers that they’re seeking. And so when I actually give them, you know, some of the answers and some of the definitions and what’s causing the way that they’re feeling, that makes total sense of them because they can fast track there for one bad words. Their transformation from feeling not so good about themselves are not so good about their lives to actually feeling hugely joyous about their life. And that’s them is exactly what they’re looking for. Well, congratulations on that work. Extremely meaningful, I would imagine. Yeah. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s pretty cool. So the not so deep and meaningful stuff that I wanted to talk to you about to take a turn in the direction because I have spoken to a lot of business growth people, but I haven’t had someone on where they have like accounting expertise in a way.
So although I’m sure the business growth stuff that you cover is beneficial. I’d like to get your thoughts on where your expertise from an accounting perspective meets the business growth stuff because I feel like you have almost like a unique perspective on that. Have you got any thoughts regarding that? And it’s quite a general question, is there anything in specific you want to know or I can fire you a couple of different things of what comes to mind straight away the letter. A lot of accountants will do historical data, whereas management accountants, which is the one I’m qualified in, it’s all about forecasting is all about future based. So, and what were more involved in looking at is, okay, so where are we actually going to get a better margin from whereas most other accountants? And again, this isn’t I can dish accountants because I’m an account myself and, you know, I’ve talked to audiences of thousands of accountants and the audience. So I, you know, I say it as it is, that’s the way. And but the vast majority accountant’s report on stuff that’s historical and they report the P and L and balance sheet.
And that’s as much as they do to that side of things because that’s how they’re trained. Imagine accounts are trained very, very differently. So we are all about the future. What’s the margins? How can you squeeze marginal particular side of things when you add on a commercially minded individual onto that way of looking at accounts? Now, you’ve got a very, very different animal altogether because now you’re looking. Okay, so what new products, what new markets can we get into one particular report, which I will always suggest a business owner to implement. I’m going to cover to two particular reports. One particular report that are pulling is what’s referred to as the funds flow statement And most companies are most even accountants, 90% of the council I come across. Uh, is that an accurate figure? Now I haven’t statistically proven that is 90%. A very good high percentage of accountants have not got a clue about even how to formulate a fun as well statement. They think of funds flow in terms of cash flow statements are two completely different animals altogether.
So the funds flow statement, you can generate profits in your business and therefore that keeps the captain happy. But unless you produce the funds flow statements, you run the risk of not known where you’re actually gonna run out of cash and cash is king as we all know. So that’s one particular report. The other report that it looked typically in companies when it comes to business growth. So does that funds flow statement impact on the group business growth perspective. Yes, it does. Because if you run out of cash, well then you are going to run into difficulties and there’s so many other companies that have that, that has happened to them produce profits, but they’ve run out of cash. Okay. And funds for stable, we’ll highlight that the report, which I implement is what I just, I just call it a major report, but the Matrix support is looking at all the different services or product lines that you do run across them to all the different customers that you have, our clients that you have. And then you’ll be able to identify if you do a cross reference to what customers are buying, what products or services from your business.
And if you, if you do that across the whole matrix, did you see where all the gaps are? And the whole point is you want to see the margins across each one of those products and across each one of those customers. So where can you increase the margins across the board? But where can you also fill the gaps? So there will be two specific reports that and when I got into a company, that’s one of the first things I love for. If a business owner watching this was interested in the first one, the funds flow statement, what would you say? What would you advise them to do? And hey google it. What’s the fun stuff they, it was like the funds fell statement starts with what’s just for you to understand financial statement starts with what’s the profit that you make. Then it takes into your working capital side of things. So your stock movement, your treasures movement and your debtors movement, our assets movements. And then it takes into one of the repayment that you’re making? Two leases and finances and violence and all of those things.
What new capital. What you find is do you bring into the company? Um, and therefore did you increase your cash reserves or digit decrease your cash reserves in that particular period. So that’s what a fund slow statement is. If you were to google it funds flow versus cash flow statement, you’ll be able to see the difference. So that’s probably the, honestly, it’s probably the first protocol I would encourage somebody is either watching this or listening this to have a look at. And then I would, when you get a template of a fun filled statement down after internet, go to your account and say producer funds to a statement from my business and demand it because most accounts will come down, they produce a cash flow statement and most business owners will have cash flow statements. Not a lot of them, but a good majority would have cash flow statements, but it won’t have a fund fellow statements. And when you see it funds flow statements, you’d be surprised at what information are you going to give you? Interesting, you know, and then your matrix that you referred to? I mean I look at it very much from a service based business. is that is that applicable to services? And if so, what would it look like as a general summary?
Well, you’ve got, it depends on what are the individual centres that you’re doing. So when I work with service professionals, I will bring a true business model whereby you will start off with something for free and you’ll notice any Thomas as well, you start off with something for free and then once and I talked about, I call birds because birds, it is something you give up value is for free. But in effect, what you’re doing is you’re attracting all your clients to you okay from the service based company. For you see it in all businesses, all different types of businesses. It can be a product or service. If you take software, for example how that works, you will, if you go to get software online, you will typically see where they’ll give you a seven day trial or they give you one month trial or they give you a cut down version of that software and you that cut down version is for free. But ultimately what they want to try and do is bring you into the next level of the sale. So it operates pretty much, sorry, it can operation pretty much every single type of business.
However, most business owners don’t know that concept and why it’s so important to have what I call bird seed. Now, when you have birdseed within that, that’s fine. The next step from that as well. It’s low for sale, your loafer sales, you’ve got to get them into that transaction of buying from you. They’ve got to take, you know, put their hand in the wallet and take money out, that’s a low for sale. But again, you’re giving something that’s of huge value and that’s of a low risk to potential client. But that client is getting to experience what it is that you’re like to work with and that’s what low for sale and then you’re going into your ladder than of your sales. And so you have multiple tiers from that perspective. So can you have a matrix, you can have a matrix covering all the difference types of businesses in your, your bird seed, low for sale and all the different tiers that you have. But there will be a clutter of series that you will have whereby it’s applicable to all customers.
So if I take my own business for example and pilot’s manual flight plan and then it’s into one of my service offerings. So a client should have all of those three elements. As part of my Matrix if that makes sense. There’s my bird seat is my love for sale. But those three elements are common across pretty much every single one of my clients. You encourage all businesses to have some sort of bird seed. Yeah, absolutely. Without a shadow of a doubt, no question about it. So let me just wait and Apple changed their model. But I used to talk about apple in terms of if you look at Apple, their bird seat was iTunes, but now they’ve moved to a subscription model because now with apple music, okay? But if you’re back in the time it was iTunes if you’re buying a luxury car, how birds he works in in in in say as an example of luxury cars. And if you’re buying a luxury car you go to the garage and if you if you look decent meaning you look like you have the money, that’s what that way and there’s no risk for the garage owner.
The garage owner will give you a lend of that car for the weekend and typically you’ll leave your other car behind. You bring the car around which is so what is the Mercedes BMW or whatever might be. But you’re driving that car around for the weekend and you’re showing to all your family and by the time you come back on the Monday morning to get your old car back, the last thing you want to do is get back into your old car, that’s bird safe. Another thing that you’ll see it across is if you go into your grocery store and so whatever store that might be, Sainsbury’s Tesco or whoever might be. You see people that will be handing out samples of food. So it could be bred, it could be sausages or what it might be sort of cooking the sausages in the store but they’re giving out samples of those sausages to the customers. That’s bird seed. So is it applicable for every single business? Absolutely is and what I recommend it for every single business, every single one of those businesses. Yeah, it’s really interesting. Thanks for providing that value. you mentioned some purpose growth. what would you, I suppose what are your top tips on the purpose related stuff?
From a from a personal perspective? Okay, so each individual has their own unique purpose. It’s fingerprint specific. The vast majority of people don’t know what their purposes, but they do come across the crossroads of trying to figure out what it is that the purposes underline that. So let me drill down into that area. There is people that will consciously think about what could potentially be their purpose or what could potentially that would, you know, as we were talking earlier on what is that? Why for them? But they’re thinking from a conscious perspective. Stafford their conscious thinking is not congruent to what they’re unconscious blueprint is? You’ve got to tap into the unconscious side because let me put this way, the conscious mind and science don’t ask me how they’ve proven this. But scientists have proven that the conscious mind produces our processes, 50 bits of information per second. The unconscious mind produced processes, 11 million bits per second.
Don’t ask me how to calculate it. But that’s if you google it, that’s what you’re fine. So wouldn’t that make sense for us to access our unconscious side of things more. So when it comes to a business, so when it comes to a purpose, it’s about, we’ve got to access our unconscious now we’re unconsciously programmed to fulfil what I refer to as your genius drivers. It’s those things that are going to give you fulfilment. So let me bring a little bit back on this Aristotle discovered that true, the formative years as we’re growing up, we create in our lives what are called voids, what he referred to his voids, we then spend basically the rest of our life trying to fill those voids. That’s where fulfilment comes from. So if you think so, the way I explained to my clients is that if you can picture that you’ve got three buckets in front of you and ultimately tracked your whole life. You’re trying to fill those buckets, but you don’t know it from a conscious perspective, it’s all your unconscious blueprint.
So your unconscious mind is trying to literally fill those buckets and if you fill those buckets, that is what’s going to give you fulfilment. But equally toast buckets are what I call them, your genius drivers because it activates the executive central part of your brain. And when you activate executive centre part, your brain, its whole purpose and function is to get you from A to Z and the quickest, easiest fastest, most resourceful way possible. That’s what it functions as what most people operate from is the regular part of the brain, which is about, you know, instant gratification, it’s where people will each more cake or have a pint of beer or whatever, that’s the immigrant part of brain, if they’re not operating from the executive centre part of the brain. So if you want to achieve huge growth in your business, you’ve got to be operating from the executive start part of the brain. Now, also the executive centre part of the brain connects with the unconscious and as I said earlier on, the unconscious process, so much more information. So we want to access the unconscious. So if we have an unconscious blueprint which we do and it’s trying to guide us to find what our purpose, what our mission is and therefore it’s trying to fulfil ourselves, meaning is trying to fill those voids or fill those buckets.
Well then those genius drivers is what we need to identify. And when we go through a process to identify, how is our unconscious mind trying to and make manifest in their life to give us those, you know, I I use the analogy of bread crumbs from the perspective of if you remember Hansel and Gretel the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel and went into the forest, but how do you want to find a way home? Was they left bread crumbs? If you if you want to find your way home, you’ve got to find where those breadcrumbs are in your life, where is your unconscious mind actually trying to show you your way home to what ultimately to find out what your purpose is, It’s all from an unconscious perspective. So when you do that now, you’ve got literally what I refer to, or what I would say is that’s more a purpose driven business, because it’s all about you as a business owner, what is that you want to achieve? What are you unconsciously driven to achieve? Because that’s where you’re going to get your driving your motivation from? I 100% agree with everything you’re saying, so I’m totally on board, but one of the things which I suppose comes from the concept of achieving goals is that once you achieve your goals, perhaps using your metaphor, once you fill those buckets, it’s like, there’s another bucket ready for you and waiting.
And some people refer to enjoying the journey rather than trying to get the outcome. What are your thoughts on those two things, because you’ll never actually fill those buckets, that’s the problem, because it goes, goals won’t be, everybody say you’ll always be pushing because you’re getting fulfilment the more okay, let me just backtrack in here, right, people put forward in a sense of that and you’ll see this online, you’ll see it from a whole lot of other people and so on, and they say, because as soon as I say, you’ll know it, they say, find your passion and when you find what you’re passionate about? Well then that’s what you build your life around you, build your business around, and that’s your purpose. Find your passion, that’s your purpose. Oh my God, totally wrong, completely, totally, utterly, absolutely wrong. Don’t find your passion because if you look at it behind me, I’m passionate about everything that comes to every different mode of flying.
So I’ve flown helicopters, light aircraft, gliders, hot air balloons. I’ve flown pretty much nearly every single type of aircraft right now. The mode and one my desires is to, I would love to fly in space. So when Richard Branson and Elon Musk have the spacecraft created, we could do commercial flight, I literally beyond that weight and it straight away, I’m passionate red wine. I’m passionate about skiing, I’m passionate about horse riding, none of them whatsoever have anything whatsoever to do with my purpose. So when people try and find what they’re passionate about, it’s not going to give him the word purpose. Passion follows purpose. You find your purpose first and your passion increases exponentially. Now why I’m saying that is because when you, if you were to think of those buckets in front of you, those buckets become larger and larger and larger because your passion is increasing exponentially every single day, week, month, year as you’re going along, they’ll never be filled for one about word because you’re getting so much passion.
Joy fulfilment from what it is that you’re doing, being on your purpose goals and objectives are very, very different for people, they set a goal or they set an objective, but if it’s not in line with your genius drivers, what you’re unconscious blueprint is is trying to guide you towards, that’s where you won’t achieve your goal and objective because it’s not in line as soon as you make your goals and objectives in line with your genius drivers. Now your unconscious mind wants to literally attain those goals and objectives, so that’s hence the reason why an awful lot of business owners or people in general won’t achieve your goals and objectives because it’s not in line with the unconscious blueprint. So to kind of summarise what you said or at least my interpretation is that the goal wouldn’t necessarily be to fill the buckets up, it would be to grow the size of the buckets. Yeah to an extent yeah way I’m glad I’m glad I asked you about this because there’s an awful lot of good information there and I think we’ve touched on some of it regarding misconceptions but what would you say the biggest perception misconceptions are around both the personal growth and purpose that you talk about but also the business side.
Sweet. Oh probably touched him already if I would say she quite a few jump into my mind right now at the moment and first you hear them all the time. Yeah first of all don’t start with why so that that that that’s one thing when it comes to the business side of things, and you’re definitely your passion follows your property, you got to find your purpose first. Um, so that that that that’s a given when 11 thing I come across and here’s what’s jumping into a mine Thomas. One thing that comes about for a lot of people is that they don’t, they feel they don’t have the confidence to do something. So even people that are perhaps, maybe listener watching your YouTube channel and saying, I’m thinking of getting into business, but I don’t have the confidence in doing it. Conference shows up for an awful lot of people, so I’m gonna touch this is going to straddle the personal side, but it’s also going to struggle with the business side of things, so they label themselves as being, I don’t have the confidence to do X, Y, and Z, but actually, when you look at confidence, so I’m going to completely dismiss that myth completely, and it’s not confidence, its competence.
When you make the distinction between competence and confidence, now, you can do something about it. So the tree pillars of competence, our skills, knowledge and experience. So, when somebody is saying, I don’t have the confidence, what they’re really saying is, I’m not competent enough to do X, Y and z. But when you realise what you need to do in order to actually do what it is to grow your business or development or whatever, B and so on and you develop your skills, your knowledge and experience. Now you become competent in what it is that you want to achieve confidence to treat pillars of confidence or self-love, self-belief and self-worth, treat complete different pillars altogether. So if you want to feel more confident, being on your purpose and fulfilling your life for your genius drivers is bringing that massively increases your self-worth when you increase your self-worth. If you’re you mentioned service industries, which is a lot of clients I work with as well, you will only charge the fees according to the level of your self-worth. So if you want to increase your fees, you’ve got to increase your self-worth, that’s the bottom line, so the more you increase your self-worth, well then you’re hired, you’re hired to hire your fees are going to be, then you’re gonna look at from a self-care perspective or self-love for, for the for the females, I use self-love for the guys, I use self-care because guys don’t like love, they look like using the word love, so I make this leaving, but it’s the same thing, it’s looking after yourself, but allowing other people, it’s when you’re looking after yourself, you’re making sure that nobody’s impacting you either.
So that’s from a self-love perspective and then when you take in self-belief, those are the three pillars for building confidence. So you want to build your confidence in something and build your confidence in some tree completely different, completely different pillars. So in answer to your question, because I want to kind of maybe straddle both sides, the personal side and the business side of things. That’s where I would encourage people to look at first very profound point. perhaps one that I would also add is that people refer to it as risk, like it’s too risky to do X, Y and Z, but that it’s the same problem, right? So it wouldn’t be risky if you had knowledge, expertise and education in that area. Yeah, I feel like a lot of our conversation today and I’m sure you probably you can probably tell me more on, this is around definition of terms. So you’ve obviously thought a lot about the differences between certain words and how and why you would apply them in certain instances and it makes me think of Socrates, The definition wisdom begins with the definition of terms.
So how much have you spent, how much time have you spent? Right, the nuances between certain terms and that sort of area. It’s one, it’s one of those things that kind of fascinates me in a sense of what, what are the meaning of particular words? So those kind of indirectly fascinate me and people’s understanding. So let me give you another funny one, Passion. People were really to look up the definition of passion, they wouldn’t call it passion again. So we’ve just gone through in the Christian calendar, we’ve just gone through easter, which is very, very important week within the Christian calendar, which was the, you know, Jesus was crucified on the cross and so on and so on. So, but it was referred to as the passion of Christ, passion is suffering. So when you think about it, people say, and I know he said it’s in a sense of find your passion that you got your purpose, but a passion is suffering well then why on earth would you want something that you want to suffer from? So I’m always interested in kind of, the definitions are the meanings of words and what people interpretation of the market because it’s, it’s when you, but this, this is with all of life Thomas, I’m sure you’re, you’re similar as well when you actually step back from, you know, away from the madding crowd and you just observe and you see so much more as opposed to what a lot of people will do is they become part of that crowd and they become part of the blaze of what’s going on and the conversation and what’s the groupthink within the crowd itself, as opposed to independently thinking for themselves and seeking out the information in the wisdom from that quest of what they’re trying to find out as opposed to just taking what somebody else says.
So really what I would say to be with, don’t believe anything. I say, ask for yourself is a, it’s a good point. And uh, you know, I’ve been guilty of following the, or even giving the advice of following your passion. Um, and I think a lot of influential people have, So one of the first person that comes first, people that comes to mind is Warren Buffett. And you know, he always gives that advice and I think he’s like highly influential and successful and everything. But perhaps if he were to look up the definition, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t give that. It’s one of those, it’s one of those words such uh, across all boundaries, that sort of way, but I will google it, I promise. Yeah, yeah. So you’re a, an author. Can you give me the story behind that? Because there’s, there’s normally always a story about the writing of the book and how it went and yeah, my first book was called evolve And uh, it was published in 2012.
Um, it took me about, I don’t know, probably about seven years to write, it was never right. And then as soon as I, there’s a part in the book that I wasn’t going to include and then as soon as I included the book, hey presto, all of a sudden within a month I find a publisher and within three months is published. Um, so that would kind of indicate how powerful the universities. Um, so evolved with a very, very different buckets? It’s literally how can you use the lessons that you can learn from how the universe works and implement those into your business, into your personal life? So evolve, is there a hidden message in the word evolve. I don’t talk about it until the conclusion of the book itself And evolve is also an acronym within the book itself. So that was, that was my first book came best centered in 2012. My second book that came out which was purely just a business book, which was called more and that’s how you get more clients, more fees, more time to sit specifically aimed at people in professional services published that book.
Uh Oh my God, I can’t even think, I think 20, 2014, 2015, something on those lines. And then the third book that was published was in collaboration with 60 other authors. And the question that we were asked was what’s the advice that we would give our grandchildren to build a better life, A better business and a better world. So amongst 60 authors, we were to give our take on what was the advice that we would actually give our grandchildren? So the book is called Better Life, Better Business, Better World. And it’s basically our take on the advice that we will give. So it’s the best advice bases is what is contained in the book? That’s the way I feel like that’s such a cliff-hanger pool? Yeah. is there any way that you can share some of the advice that you would give? Your grandchildren? Oh, let me just say it’s I kind of in the opening of the chapter I play with less motivating sense of, you know, I go along the lines of, you know, eat more ice cream and less cabbage.
So I played along those lines, but ultimately I’m finishing each section of So, for a better life, it’s about making a difference. So every single day, no matter who you come across, can you make a difference in that person’s life when it comes to your business? If you were to construct your business in such a way that your whole aim was to make a difference in your client’s lives or your business or your customers lives? Well then that’s the focus that you should have within your business itself, because if you’re making a difference in their in their lives, will then, you know, if you take from a business growth perspective or a marketing perspective, ultimately that’s what our customers want. And then when it comes to the world, well then, if we go about our life and saying, well, I want to leave this world in a better place than how I entered it. So how can I make a difference in the world? So it’s the same. My own person chapter in in that picture book was under three headings was how can we actually make a difference love it.
Was there any other presumably read it? Was there any other advice that you liked in the book? And I’m being biased? But was best, mine was best athlete behind that. There’s a lot of really, really good advice and they’re absolutely huge, huge device. A lot of that I’ve come across over the years. So it was just interesting to see other people’s takes on of what they would, where they were coming from and what, what advice I would give. So very interesting from that perspective. Yeah. Sounds interesting. Is there anything that we haven’t discussed today that you think would be valuable to the listener or viewer? Mm hmm. In order to a question. Yeah, I leave you on this one. And if you come close to the end, but I live in this contemplation. And if little suite Growing the business is one thing and perhaps maybe it’s because of a lot of customers and clients that I’ve come across whereby they achieve a lot of success.
And it is the old cliche of look at your watch. Success is one thing. But when you’re actually not really enjoying your life or getting more from it. Well then, yeah, let me first say I’m reflecting on people that I know and have known in the past and family members and all the kinds of things. And what I would say is that, you know, when it comes to the end, when they’re under deathbed, because we had a couple of occasions already when they’re on their deathbed and they’re looking back and they were asking themselves actually too much did I live the life that I really could have, should have our desire to have? And for majority of cases, unfortunately it’s no, um, so, you know, I suppose if I sleeve with a piece of ice, Jesus has a life you really desire, not necessarily, that’s not necessarily about, you know, striving for success, as you mentioned earlier on Thomas, you know, if you’ve got to enjoy the journey, but enjoying the journey is, you can have one heck of a journey and it’s such an amazing way, jumping out of bed every single day to do what it is that you want to be doing and that’s the life, that’s absolutely life you want to work, living.
Very good answer. The deathbed is a powerful one, for sure. Yeah, it’s tough to be beside the sort of way. But yeah, are you willing to share your goals? You know, there’s two trains of thoughts on this one and haven’t settled on it to be honest with you. One is where, you know, you share your goals to other people and then there’s another train of thought, which gives accountability and all of those things and there’s not a train of thought that actually, no, you should keep your goals private. I’ll give you my mission is saving lives and is upset already in terms of metaphorically, and literally, and I do it every single day, but I do have a personal target when it comes to the number of lives they want to save. So if it’s okay, I’ll keep the target to myself. But you’ll understand as regards where, where my mission of where my goal for my objective is. Yeah, yeah, sure. Again, highly meaningful. So Paul Davis, where is the best place for people to find you?
The best place with everything on it is my website, which is paulwilliamdavis.com. And within that, then you’ll see links to my podcast, which is called the Executive Code. You’ll see links to my Facebook community, which I’ve created over the last number of months, and that’s a growing community, which is great. It’s people that were want to build purpose driven businesses want to find out what their purpose is and it’s a great supportive community. What’s happening there already is just, oh my God, it’s just phenomenal. And so, but yeah, paulwilliamdavis.com is probably the best place for people to go to. Okay, well, I normally do speak to, you know, informed people and normally do have good conversations, but in this particular instance I will enjoy editing, re-watching it. So hopefully that means something. So thank you very much for your time and I’ll speak to you soon.
Thank you, Thomas. Thank you.