Top Tips from Kevin Bees:
1. Adopt the Identity:
“Some people think you have to run the marathon before you have the identity of being a marathon runner. But no, you have the identity, then the thing shows up. Same is true in your business.”
2. Shift to High-Value Activities:
“We need to get you from a space of doing low-value activities… to a space where you’re doing the highest-value activities that are delivering you the most fulfillment as well.”
3. Mindset and Belief:
“Optimists get made way more of what they want in life… because they believe it can happen, so they find a way to make it happen.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, beliefs, business, debra, clients, write, mindset, started, point, business owners, identify, kevin, leader, hear, money, years, action, team, good, put
Kevin Bees 00:00
Some people think you have to run the marathon before you have the density being the marathon runner. But no, no, you have the identity. Then the thing shows up. Same is true in your business. Optimists get made way more of what they want in life, and pessimists do because they force things. They find a way to make them happen. They believe it can happen, so they find a way to make it happen. We need to get you from a space of doing low value activities you know that aren’t fulfilling to you, to get you to a space where you’re doing the highest value activities that are delivering you the most fulfilment as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:37
Welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry Taylor, and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:56
I’m a certified EOS implementer and FBA credited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to really help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using Eos, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. But I also work with experts who can help people improving their business too. Today’s guest is was a senior financial executives and large Australian companies before becoming a Tony Robbins coach. He has worked with 1000s of clients across more than 10 countries, and has worked with big name brands such as Amazon, Nike, Intel and Airbus, and he runs marathons for fun. Today he’s going to share how to change your mindset as one of the ways to stop leaking profit from your business. Kevin Bayes is a leading profit maximisation expert and also the founder of Profit Hive. Welcome to the show, Kevin, lovely to have you here.
Kevin Bees 01:48
So good to be here. Thank you for such kind introduction.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:51
Oh no, absolutely. I’m looking forward to having a bit of a chat to you. Obviously, we know each other outside of this podcast, but we’re having a quick chat before, and you’ve got a really interesting story, because you started in finance, but then moved through into coaching and strategic planning and mindset. Tell us all about your journey to where you got to today.
Kevin Bees 02:10
You know, in my late 20s, I had done very well in accounting, and I was being put into, I was working in some large organisations, you know, a large group, and it put them into the business units that weren’t working effectively. It was my role to go in there and identify, what do we need to change in this organization to help get them back to profitability or to get the cash flow improving. And given my training is a, you know, a charter Global Management Accountant, I was trained on that I knew how to see where the problem was. I knew how to identify what decisions we need to make to turn it around. But the problem is there, as we recognize in any business that’s not functioning or not working the way that it should. You know, you have challenges with team, because if things aren’t working, there’s a lot of stress on the team. And so I would be sat in my office, and I’d have, you know, these, these women, grown, women older than me, coming into the office and crying on me. And the best strategy I had was to say to Here you go, like, have a tissue, right? That was, that was, that was that was it. That was my training. I trained in accounting and numbers. I wasn’t really trained to understand people. No one would give me that skill set.
And so I realised, if I’m going to be in this leadership position, I better go out and understand well, what makes people tick? How do I lead them more effectively? How do I communicate more effectively? And in that pursuit to go and find those things, I learned a hell of a lot about myself. I learned how to think differently, how to change my mindset. I knew if I learned how to change the way I thought, would change the way that I felt, it would change the actions I took and the results that I get. And for me, what started happening is I started getting results a lot faster. And when I took this these ideas and these concepts back to the team, well, we’re able to get them more aligned and more in tune much quicker. And so it became fascinating to me, because once we got the team in the right place, we could implement the strategy, the results would come a lot quicker and a lot easier. And that became more fascinating to me. Rather than wanting to spend my time doing budgets or three-year plans or board reports or month end like this, helping people make any difference to people, was seemed way, way more exciting to me, way more interesting. And so ever since that, which would have been like a decade and a half ago, I’ve just been in pursuit of understanding human behaviour, understand change, understanding how to, you know, empower people to be more effective. And ultimately that’s, I guess it boils down to being a better leader, but, but prior to that, I guess before we can be better leader, we, need to be better influencer of ourselves. If we can influence our psychology and our mindset, then we can influence other people, then the results that you want in the business follows.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:29
That’s so true. So, yeah, it’s an interesting pathway. So when you said you kind of learned how to do some of this stuff for yourself, what have been the kind of the key influences or factors that got you changing the way you thought about things?
Kevin Bees 04:42
You know, I think some of these courses, I went and did a course, you may be familiar with it. NLP, sometimes it gets a bad rap or a bad name. People have used some of the principles from it, you know, to kind of manipulate people. And so the area gets a bad rap. But NLP, at his core was. A subject of a study where it was identifying people having success and modelling that and identifying, well, what are they doing to have success? What are they thinking, what are they believing? How are they showing up? If you could understand that and model that Well, you could apply it on to yourself. And so in doing that, I mean, I learned very quickly some things that were very helpful to my team and to my clients. I mean, I learned tools that would wipe out beliefs that have been holding them back. You know, would wipe out fears that were holding them back. I mean, give you an example. Now, um, I had a client recently. He has to fly around a lot for his work, and he’s got a phobia of flying. And, you know, within 30 minutes, like, we wiped out. And now there’s no issues. He can, he can keep doing his career? We had another lady, senior leader a very large bank. She came to me because she was concerned she was going to get fired because she had a phobia now of answering the phone. She showed me like, 58 unanswered calls and voice messages, you know. And you know, the cool thing about that conversation is we wiped out that phobia, you know, she was able to answer phone at the end of that session, you know, her phone rings, and she gets this panic look on her face like normal, like, oh, I don’t want to answer this phone.
But then, with the work that we done together to shift her mindset, she looked calm. She looked real anxious, in control. She answered the phone, and she doesn’t answer the phone, then she looks at me like she couldn’t believe that she’d done it, because she’d been so avoidant of doing that for so long. But now, because we got her brain to link up different things in different way. It was like, the funny thing about that one in particular, it was actually a guy calling up to ask her out on a date. So it was like, Hey, that was good. When I couldn’t organize that one any better. So I just, I don’t even know if I’ve answered the original question, but I think there’s certain ways that we think, in certain ways that we behave, and go into the core of your thinking if you ask yourself better questions, you build better habits. Of course, you start taking different actions. I know small tweaks and changes can make a really major difference over your lifetime.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:52
So NLP, looking at core beliefs, peeling back the onion, finding out what’s really driving that, and then, more importantly, finding ways to actually bring that into a different pattern of behaviour moving forward.
Kevin Bees 07:02
Yeah, 100% and the two distinctions are, one for yourself, because as a leader, if you’re not synced up and thinking about things the right way, you’re not going to inspire your team to behave in the right way. But two, if you are a leader and you’re trying to implement your strategy, but your team aren’t going along for the ride, they’re not doing things well, the chances are, you know, it’s like you you’re in a boat, but you’re rowing in different directions. And I’ll give you one quick example on that wonderful lady where she she owns and runs a pretty decent immigration business, very large, very growing business, and we adjusted the prices to, you know, reflect the value and the quality that, you know, that was relevant in the business for themselves. Team member wasn’t selling at that price because they didn’t believe in the value. What they were looking at is they were looking at, well, how long would it take them to do it? And they were pricing up based on the amount of it would take them. They weren’t considering the fact that was all these years of IP in the business, was all the marketing, the sales and the rest of the overheads of the business. Now, once we identified that, of course, we go work with them on their psychology and their mindset belief, and of course, as a result of that, things can open up. I another example gentleman, he was selling kitchens. He would make the cabinetry and install them. He is a business owner. When he went out to do the conversations with people, he would convert 80% of people his team were conversing between 15 and 20% so again, once we went in and worked with them, we could understand there were some mindset beliefs on them, but I’m also some of the simple things, like, what were the scripts? What that they were using? How were they building rapport people? I mean, this is also like a mindset piece, right? If they weren’t primed to build those relationships and build that rapport and build that connection, it wasn’t going to help, you know, whatever they pitched on the kitchen, on the kitchen because, you know, these people didn’t feel connection with them. So we could begin to identify those issues. So if there’s a chance that you as a leader, are held back on your beliefs, it happens very frequently. Or if your team are they, they could be rowing the boat in a different direction to cause a lot of headaches.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:53
I think the pricing one thing is fascinating, isn’t it? I was working with a client the other day who had always had an internal sales team, and they were very fixed on, you know, trying to reduce the price and keep it all very cost effective. And one that the sales team, both of the team members resigned at the same time. They were suddenly left with that sales team for a short period of time. They actually brought in some contractors to do some cold calling and see if they could actually get some just to keep the sale ticking over while they were trying to find another full-time salesperson. These people who were on the phone were selling the this particular product, I suppose, yeah, product, product and service, for almost double what the regular salespeople were selling them for. And it was just because they didn’t have any perception of what it was. They just knew that that’s what they thought they could sell it for. I don’t know. It’s just interesting that sometimes we do. We get stuck in these beliefs. We get stuck in and if we can’t see the value, then there is no way in the world we can actually sell that value to somebody else.
Kevin Bees 09:49
110% is so true. I play this game with clients and even people I meet around. Well, if we were to offer your prospects, their best thing you could give them, like you were gonna give them the whole lot, the whole shebang, what would you offer them? And they kind of start to come up with all these ideas. And they position like they can give them this amazing thing as up here, but they’re currently not offering that. They’re not selling that. And it’s interesting because it makes this thing from a mindset point, a contrast frame. If they’re offering this thing up here, which is, you know, worth 100,000 but at the moment, they’re only offering things at 1020, 30,000 Well, we’re missing a big opportunity here. And look the way this works in terms like the contrast frame. I was working with an artist. The average price of his art was for four to $5,000 right in his gallery. And I asked him, hey, well, what’s the biggest thing you create? Well, if I pull out time so I could create a $25,000 piece. Okay, great. So you put a $25,000 piece up on the wall. I met with him a year later, and he was so excited to tell me, Hey, Kevin, my average dollar sales gone up to being $8,000 now, right? His average dollar sell, it over double, because people looking at the higher price point and then seeing a 567, $8,000 picture being, you know, way better value. You know, in comparison. The bigger thing I kind of someone who role modeled this very well to me, who does this in extreme, someone I worked in, he seems Tony Robbins. Some people love that guy. Some would hate him. And I take take the personality out of it. I want to talk about the principle, the strategy here. He stands on stage and he says, Hey, if you want to work with me one on one, it’s going to cost you a million dollars a year, plus a percentage of your business. Plus, by the way, there’s a five year wait keeps at a million dollars, a million dollars, a million dollars. So the more you’re in his presentation, you hear, no, it’s a million dollars. Presentation, you hear, always a million dollars to work with that guy. Well, he’s amazing. I love to work with that guy, but, you know, can’t do a million dollars. So when he comes out later, says, Hey, come on my intimate platinum program. He’s only 100,000 or 100,000 sounds like amazing value. You get time with me. You know, this seems amazing.
Or even better, if you don’t want to do that, why don’t you work with one of my highly trained coaches. They’re 15 to 20,000 now, all of a sudden, that seems very good. 15 to 20,000 in comparison to the million dollars or the 100,000 seems very good. And one game that we played, I’m taking that organisation he started in the beginning to present his prices to work with coaches. Here’s a three month package, a six month package, or 12 month package. What do most people buy? They bought the six month package because it was framed in the middle. So then we got rid of three month package and offered a six month, a 12 month and an 18 month. What do most people buy? 12 months?
Kevin Bees 12:11
Well, that’s right, they so that initial purchase price over doubled. And now here’s the interesting piece. Some people always want the very best for themselves, so they actually sort a lot of those 18 month packages. Now, how cool is that? Because then you lock that value in, you’re not necessarily then waiting for the coach to do a good job on the next sale and bring them in again and again and again. We get up front, we can see this again and again. You know, I can give you a million examples of these things. So getting that psychology right around pricing, maybe even for yourself, one immediate thing you could do is, what is that price anchor? What is the biggest thing you can offer? It? Company I work with, they did the same thing. They’re working with like the top end of town, like large banks and those types of organizations. And they had this whole roadmap of things they could do, all of these things out here over a period of three years. But they were only ever pitching that first thing, but once we started pitching the bigger thing, then, you know, these banks had this roadmap of things they could do. They may have only made the first purchase, you know, as similar size they would before, but they’re already pre framed to here’s the next thing, the next thing and next thing. So the average dollar, or the lifetime value of the client increases as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:13
That’s fantastic. I’ve actually seen we did this happen in bottles of wine on a wine list right the middle one is usually the most popular, but then there’s always people who just want the best, and so they’ll pay for the top bottle of wine no matter what they cost.
Kevin Bees 13:26
That’s right. That’s right. So what happens if you put a more expensive bottle of wine on your menu this week?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:33
So it was, it’s interesting, because you know the title profit maximization expert, I suppose immediately it tends to make you think about numbers more than anything else, but what you’re really talking about is the old psychology and philosophy of sales, marketing, even consumer behaviour, right?
Kevin Bees 13:50
And don’t get me wrong, I can get into numbers with my accounting background. I can. I just appreciate that that’s not always the thing that’s most exciting for people to hear about and talk about. Going back to all of this, what I was talking about before with, like the NLP stuff, is what we think about impacts what we feel then impacts the actions that we take. If I start talking to you necessarily about looking at your numbers, you probably go, Oh, yeah. Okay, boring. My accountant does that. If I start talking to you about, how can we increase your sales price so you can earn more and work less, that’s more exciting. I can get you, uh, emotionally associated with something that’s exciting for you, more likely to take action on it. So, so yeah, we can get into, if you want to get into numbers, like I can talk to you about the number.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:33
That’s fair enough. And so you obviously work with companies of all different sizes, right? Because this is not these principles apply whether you’re a one-man band or whether you have several 100 employees, right?
Kevin Bees 14:44
So true, so true. Some of the largest organisations I work with, I work with leaders in organisations like Amazon, Nike, Walmart, had the privilege at one point working with the Admiral of the US Navy. You know, peak, peak, half. Least at the top of their career, at the end of the day, we’re all humans. We’re all driven by the same fundamental needs. We have different ways of meeting them, and we probably have different values we want to attain. But underneath it, we all have the same fears, same doubts. You know, I was working with the Admiral US Navy. He was about to leave that career and start another one. This is a guy who works, you know, he’s worked with multiple US presidents. These are world leaders that even he was having doubts about if he was gonna be good enough for his next role or his next opportunity. And for me, that was a real leveler. For me, like the light bulb went off as like, you look at people who are maybe you deemed to be ahead of you or more senior to you, and think that they’ve got everything together. And the reality is, they have fears and doubts as well. The only difference is, is that they don’t necessarily buy into them so much. They have these fears and these doubts, but then they choose to take the action, and you keep going and moving forwards. So we just got to get you wired up into taking action on those things. If you’re feeling doubtful, feeling fearful, we just got to get you to take those steps forwards.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:59
So when you first start working with a team, what are some kind of the first steps that you actually take? And actually, let’s go back a step before that, why would somebody actually normally come to you? What is the usual thing that they tell you is an issue? And then what? What happens from them?
Kevin Bees 16:15
It varies. It depends on where they’re at in their journey. So some of these business owners are coming because they’re they feel like they’re working too many hours. They’re working too long. They’re not making the income that they you know, they know that they could be making sometimes, because they’ve been inspired by one of the conversations that we’ve had on these presentations like this, one of the core things I think is really relevant for any business owner, no matter what stage you’re at, is for us to dig into their psychology and their mindset, particularly in relation to money and income. Because we, we all have these things that get wired into us, predominantly before the age of seven. We model what’s going on in our environment and what’s around us, and we we without knowing it, we absorb beliefs around money.
Now, if we’ve never stopped to examine those beliefs, that’s how we’re running things right now. That’s how we’re doing things. And the question I have is like, would you let a real drive your car and like, the answer is no, if you never stop to examine this, like you let the cereal drive your financial future, your financial destiny. So one of the first things I like to say, and we could probably even very quickly do a beginning part of this, on this call someone examine the money beliefs. And money beliefs are like, what associate with money? Do you associate is a good thing or a bad thing? I had a client. His business over doubled in the 12 months that we were working together. And then he started sabotaging. He stopped doing the actions. He started doing things to mess him up. And when we got into it, he started to understand his beliefs. He had this belief underneath. He was, he was, you know, in New Zealand, and, you know, he said, wealthy people are dicks, right? That was his or decks. So these are decks, but wealthy people are dicks. And now, if his association is that people with wealth are dicks, he doesn’t want to be a dick, so he’s going to find a way to sabotage it. Now, once we bought that to his awareness, of course, then we could start to change it, because that’s what he had brought up to him, you know, in his environment in past. But now he doesn’t need to believe that. He can believe something different. So we start to rewire those beliefs once we bring them into the awareness.
Kevin Bees 18:13
And then, of course, he can move onwards. Now for everyone listening, you may not have that particular belief, but we all have some, some form of upper limiting belief. If you keep coming back to the same level of bank balance, or you can, you know, get through a certain level of revenue, it’s because you have one of these upper limiting beliefs. So there’s something here. I’ve seen it gain. And again, it’s almost like, um, like an air conditioning unit, right? It’s like a thermometer, you know, for temperature that you like. So now I don’t know what temperature you like the room. Debra, when I normally ask this, people say, 21-22 degrees. Some people like a bit warmer. 23-24 some people, as a presenter, I like it to be, you know, crisp. 17 degrees keep everyone awake, especially if I’m talking about numbers. Okay. Now everyone has a different temperature they like. But if we set the air conditioning unit say we set it for 20, when it gets to 21,22,23 what happens? It pumps in some cool air to get you back to the 20 that you set, and then maybe it overshoots, or the sun goes down, it gets to you 19-18, and it pumps you more back up to 20, up and down, up and down back to 20. Is the same thing with you know, your thermostat for how much you’re happy to earn.
Kevin Bees 19:22
And so for some of you, you’ll be thinking like, oh, yeah, I always come back to the same bank balance. Some of you is like, I can never bust through this amount of revenue. Just take a note for yourself, like, what is that? And when we think about that, we need to start covering Well, what are some of these beliefs that you have that are keeping you held in that place? And I’ll give you example, like, some of these get absorbed. So subconsciously, you’ll be able to finish these sentences for me, I’m sure. So if I said Money doesn’t grow on trees, money is the root of all evil. It takes money to make money. I said that in Sweden, in some guy in the front row shout out, it takes money to make out. And I was like, Oh, let me get let me do. Different hair. It’s very different here and but the whole point of it is, you knew the answer to that, because subconsciously, that’s come into your brain. And like, there are things there that you know, we know those, but there are things there that are unexamined for you.
Now, if you have those associations knocking around and in any respect, there’s a negative association, right? You’re making money, having money, you’re not you’re not going to create it. So one quick activity, or thing that you could do right now is just write down a list, you know, maybe, maybe even pause this audio for 30 seconds per minute, and write down everything you associate with money. You say money is you say money is happiness, money is joy, money is pleasure. Or don’t just think of the positive. What are the negative things you think about money? Money is hard. I’m buying I had someone say, are they? Money destroys relationships? If that was a belief I had, I wouldn’t want to go near money, because I value my relationships. Okay, so once we start speaking those beliefs out, we’re seeing them written down. We recognise, well, are those associations serving me? Are they helping me increase that set point? Are they helping me to allow higher amounts? Let me give you one quick final example on how this works. This set point you’ve probably seen, like, maybe, maybe someone wins a lottery. They’re used to earning this amount of money we consume. It’s is not they’re not position errors array. They’re probably used to having a low amount of money. All sudden, they have 10s of millions or hundreds of millions. What typically happens with most lottery winners? After two years, you find a way to get it in the back to nothing. Like that’s the statistic, because people gave them the money, but they never helped them update, update their beliefs or the mindset of their money. What goes the other way? If you hear about those entrepreneurs who are worth 10s of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions, and they lose it all, what typically happens to them comes back very quickly,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:37
Don’t make it again. Yeah.
Kevin Bees 21:39
They find a way, because it’s their belief, it’s their set point. They have a higher set point. They I’m worth 100 million, or I’m I should be earning. And so then they find a way to do it. So those, those money is that money conversation is probably a good starting point. You know, if you want to go through and just pause that and answer those questions and identify what it is. I had a client, and he said money is hard to come by. And once we started to question that, you can find heaps of examples. We said, money is hard to come by, like because you don’t you don’t believe what you see. You see what you believe, right? So he believed money was hard to come by. He could see lots of examples of that. When we challenged that and looked at it, and we flipped the belief, and he had the belief money is easy to come by. Well, he could see lots of examples of that. Hey, my house increased in value over the years. I never had to do anything for that. I had inheritance from his auntie, you know, the passer I didn’t even know, had a tax refund. You know, had that client, you know, who I thought went belly up. They just pay me. And then all of a sudden, he seen examples of money being easy to come by when we did that with him. Guess what? He was struggling to get clients. The following weeks, he had more clients come in. So this may seem, for some of you, this may seem like, oh, yeah, this is just like a bit wishy, wishy washy. Woo, woo stuff. But there’s a real, a real power under it. Once we shift the way you see the world, you start to see different things show up that they’re always in your army, they’re always there. But now you it’s almost like the key where you unlock them, you shift your brain, and then it shows up for you.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:59
Yeah, no. I’ve seen it in my own life as well. I mean, it’s sort of, I think when times are tough, you’ve got two choices, right? You can either go into what I call the downward spiral, where things are getting tougher and tougher and tougher, or you choose to have gratitude. See the positives, see what you can do with it. And it’s amazing, how it can change.
Kevin Bees 23:16
It is amazing. And I to that point, can I? I’ll show one other tip on that, because I think it’s really valuable. You just that. You just that positive spiral. One thing I’ve noticed with entrepreneurs as a group of people is we can often really suck at noting the wins, noting that we’ve done very well. We’re all too busy looking this long list of things we haven’t done yet, we haven’t gotten to yet, and we could beat ourselves up for that. But if we want to send that positive cycle you mentioned, if we could just start noting down every day. What were the wins? What did I do? Well, today, even in my worst days, when things have been completely sucky, and you got to get those, when you start writing down those, it builds a momentum, like your brain starts to notice and look for the wins. I kind of got this from a psychologist who was teaching at Harvard University. We’re having these conversations together, and I asked her, Hey, what’s the question you know that you’ve asked us had the biggest positive impact on your life, you know, or the biggest positive impact on all the students you teach? Kevin, it’s this one. It’s, you know, what were my wins this week? Should I ask my kids every every Friday night, we sit down at the end of the week and they have to share with me what their wins were for the week. And it’s not about them thinking about it on the spot, but for them to know that they’re gonna need to come and tell me about that on a Friday, the whole week, they’re looking for the wins. The whole week, they’re looking for what’s great. So if you want write it down in the journal for yourself every day, or embed it in something like that, when you have a family dinner, or family get together or with your coach, always make sure you answer, what are the wins? If you the more you focus on those things, what you focus on expands.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:39
I have a gratitude journal. I have a journal. I have a journal. It’s not gratitude. I have a journal that I actually feel like every morning and every evening, and it’s about being grateful in the morning and then, yes, what went well today, and what could I do better tomorrow as well? But Dan Sullivan is one of my favourite authors, and he talks about always measuring backwards. And what he means by that, it’s not looking backwards, but it’s actually saying well. But you know what? Maybe I’m not quite where I want to be right now, but I. Still better than I was yesterday, better than I was a year ago, better than I was 10 years ago. And so just being very mindful to to think about how far you’ve come, rather than always being focused on the future. Because being focused on the future, it’s a hamster wheel, isn’t it? You want a hamster wheel? He’s like, Well, I’m gonna get there, I’m gonna get there, I’m gonna get there. Wait what I get there’s gonna be great. Why can’t it be great?
Kevin Bees 25:19
Now, such a valid point. It’s so, so valid. I’m glad you said that, because it reminds me I had had one of those moments recently. I ended up having a bit of a tear over it, because I did a presentation for a new a new group I hadn’t presented before, before, and then I got the feedback, came back, and it was amazing. I think it was like a 4.8 score. So pretty much everyone on this event gave me a five out of five was one person I don’t know. I didn’t hit with them. I got a two kind of like, but it was like, and someone wrote there, it was like, the most impactful presentation they had. Now, I don’t say that because I want to, you know, big myself up or anything, but it was to the point you made. I started off in my corporate career. The first chance I had to speak, I had to speak in front of 400 of my peers in the corporate environment, I sucked. I hated it. I went to hid in the toilet. Afterwards, I want to hid in that toilet. I said, I’m never going to feel that way again. I’m going to have to get good at speaking. And the only way I could get good at speaking was to go out to in Sydney.
The only place you get speaking time was open mic gigs. I’m an accountant by trade. I wasn’t funny, I but I put myself in that environment because it was an opportunity to have a microphone and speak in front of people. And, you know, I hit the very first gig I did. It was in a room where there was lots of, lots of hecklers right there. They paid they want to see someone funny, and they’ve got this boring accountant on stage. So I got heckled. I got I got beat up. It was, it was bad. And now I kept going back though I kept doing that. And eventually, at some point, I got started doing, you know, business presentations, and then Tony and now present on many different stages that the recent thing in the last few weeks was having that feedback and going like, oh yeah, thinking back to a decade ago, or maybe 1230 years ago, I have come a long way. Every presentation, I think I backed from once the next one is not good. There’s always things to improve. But to your point, Debra, I think you made a really valid point. If you haven’t stopped to look back where you were, you know, a decade ago or longer, maybe you should do that today, because how far have you come?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:15
I’ve got some questions I asked at the end of every year to myself as well, just in terms of, you know, where, where have you come from? Where have you got to what are you really proud of? I think it’s really important. Because I think, I think particularly kiwis. I work between Australian, New Zealand, you know. So I’ve got an office in Melbourne, an office over here in Auckland, and I think Kiwis are hyper, hyper critical. I mean, if they said they had got those, those that feedback that you got when it was all fives, but there was just one, two out of 400 people, they would have focused intently on that too. And like, why did we only get when we left a two, whereas natural fat, hold on a second, you got 399, five. So I think we’ve got to be very careful that we we’ve got to celebrate the little wins. And I know that when I used to present, I had the same thing. I’d look at things, I’d always jump straight to the negative. And it’s like, hold on a second. Look at all the positives. Look at all the great things people have said about you. You can still always improve, but still take the wins.
Kevin Bees 28:06
And, if you were the two on the score, listening, contact me. I want to know why I do want to improve. That’s that you’re right. We do need to focus on the wins and the things that were the were the negatives. Because, like you say, it’s a spiral, to your point, it’s a spiral. Everyone be. It’s, you know, upward spiral on a downward spiral. And to that point, Debra, I think it’s also super important that keep the right environment, have the right people around us. Because, you know, if you have people in your environment who aren’t looking to play the game at the level you are, aren’t looking to move to grow in the same way that you are, it’s very easy for them to talk you down from these aspirations and to hold you back because, oh, it helps them feel better. And two, they don’t.
They don’t want disconnect from you like the fear is, if you go and succeed and you do well, you’re not going to hang out with them or be with them anymore. So we’ve got to make sure you put yourself in the environment people are succeeding. I mean, this analogy is overused, but you hear that too many times like you, you will earn the same as the five people around you that that belief or that environmental thing, I mean, it’s true to other things. You know, if you are hanging around with four divorced people, you’re likely to become the fifth divorced person, right? Is it’s part of your environment. It’s part of the way that you’re thinking. So make sure you’ve got people around you. Who are you aspiring to be like who you want to, want to grow into being and yeah, make sure. Make sure you have them all right, too.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:24
I want to go back a little bit. We talked about sort of these self-limited beliefs that we have a lot of that comes from our childhood. Like you said, it’s sort of you’re up until the age of seven, so it’s based all around your environment, and you may not be even aware of them. So how do you how do you even become aware? I mean, I’ve done a lot of work, and I used to run weekend sessions where we’d actually help people understand what those limiting beliefs were, but it’s yeah for somebody sitting here listening, I think, you know, I don’t think I have my problem with money. Why don’t they got a problem with that? What have you identified that there might be something going on?
Kevin Bees 29:57
Okay? Normally, the best way. Is to bump into a boundary condition. Now, what do I mean by that is, let’s say you’re working with a coach or a mentor, right? And Debra, you’ll send your, you know, your clients, how to do tasks or activities. Now what will happen is, at some point, they’ll bump into an issue or a problem. There’s some reason they can’t get it down, or they can’t make it happen normally. Behind that there’s a thought or a belief, there’s a reason why it’s not happening. Because, you know, you let a step-by-step process if you can’t do it, well, why? What’s in the way? What’s preventing so having someone around you who can identify what was it about that what actually blocked you, what prevented you, is normally the key thing. Now, if you have skilled mentors and experienced mentors around you, they’ll often catch this in your language, right? Your language tells so much about you, and you’ll get this as soon as I give you examples around this. I had someone say, Oh yeah, okay, Kevin, I’ll try and do that. Like, is it immediate thing for me? Like, you’re not going to do it. Like, there’s no commitment there. There’s not there’s not a you know, that’s going to happen. Or I have someone say, like, Oh yeah, you know, I might do that. Well, it’s so wishy washy. So you can begin to hear, hear the language, or even back to the money, things like, oh yeah. You know, money’s hard to come back. It works in the other way as well.
I was interviewing Jim Penman. Now he owns a franchise through 500 million a year, I think is one of the largest franchise systems in the world. I hear it in his language, he said, Hey, Kevin, there’s opportunity all around us. You just need to bend down and pick it up. Wow, how true is that? For that guy, he’s believed that all that time, and now he’s seen opportunity everywhere. He started off cutting people’s grass, and now he’s got dog grooming. I think he’s just gone into beauty. He’s got a, you know, building and pest and all of these different operations, because he believes there’s opportunity everywhere he finds it. But if I hear in your language, you’re saying, Oh, this is going to be difficult, or this can be hard, or there’s no way I can do this. Well, it already tells me before you even go and take the action. So I think around doing new things, bumping into boundaries, and seeing what you can’t break through is a good clue. Having someone around you to listen, listen to that language is probably the other good one. We can pick it up so frequently.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:01
Perfect makes perfect sense. Okay, so asking the question around what’s blocked you’ll prevent you from doing something when you run into an issue. Can start to identify some of these things just thinking from a practical perspective. Okay, now that means I’m going to go off of a township. I heard you say that. You know, it sounds a bit woo, woo. I have this thing about the book, The Secret. I actually have a copy of the book The Secret, and I’ve read it and I but I remember watching the movie many, many years ago, and they kind of talked about, oh, you know, you could write down you need a million dollars in your bank account. It would just appear. And it really did. My headings, like, actually, that’s not the way it works, right? You actually still have to put take the action. So your mindset is actually about creating a a thought process, creating an emotion, a connection, a desire to do something, but then that then leads to the actions that you have to take to get there. Is that the way it works? It’s not just writing it down and going, Yes, that’s what I want, right?
Kevin Bees 32:55
And give you a yes and a no answer to that, because you do need to take action. You need to go and do something. And I think that’s the bit that’s missing from the book. In the secret, you can’t just sit there and you sit on the couch and think, I’m going to be, you know, I’m going to have a six pack, I’m going to have a six pack and have a six pack, and then you’re not going to, you have to go and take the action. There’s, there’s work that needs to be done to accomplish these things. On the flip side of this, I’ve seen too many examples of this, thinking about what you want, and then it’s showing up. Okay, there’s something in it. I don’t think the science is there to prove it or back it up. We talk about, you know, quantum mechanics and those things. I’ve had personal examples. I’ve had examples with clients.
Let me show a client example. I had this wonderful lady. She was a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, and we started, I laid out a whole process with her. Here’s how you can get referrals in your business. We gave her the scripts, a process of procedures. She went away for two weeks to do it. She came back, and we also had it go. Did you get referrals? Yes, Kevin, I got eight more clients from her. Like, wow, that’s amazing. So use the scripts. The scripts work. No, I didn’t use the scripts. Like, well, then, then how? How did you get these eight clients? Well, Kevin, I was really thinking about it for everyone in these classes that come in. I was thinking I was going to ask them about getting more referrals. And they all started just volunteer referrals to me. And I’m like, this is interesting, right? This is someone who’s tapped into energy, and she starts thinking that. And they haven’t been doing this before, and now they don’t. She got, she got eight in that two week period. And I’m like, There’s something in this. I’ve seen it from personal example. I was at an event and they were talking about this. I was skeptical, as you like, as an accountant at the time, and they were saying, um, they were telling this story how, uh, Tony, Tony Robbins was walking down the street with his wife, and she, she had this feelings, she needs to go down a side street. And she walked down the side street, and there was this bird there, and it was, you know, Loki was dead on the floor. And so, like, come on. She picks this thing up, and she focuses her energy on it, and puts her energy into this thing, and puts her energy into it.
Kevin Bees 34:47
And then sure enough, the bird gets, gets life, gets energy, and flies off. And I’m like, oh, yeah, this is, this is we were, like, in the same event, they were saying, like, hey, well, the same thing is true. Like you have to write down your goals. When you write down your goals, you get re. Difficult on these things, they’ll show up. And I think, Oh, yeah. Anyway, I went down the beach the next day, and I threw my towel down. As I throw it down, I see there’s a butterfly there. And I kind of think the butterfly is going to fly away, and the towel hits right next to it, and it stays there. And, well, that’s weird. So I kind of picked this butterfly up, and it’s not moving, and I thought, Oh, give this thing a go. And I focus on this butterfly. I focus my energy on it. I focus on it, you know, love and wise and, you know, for a few minutes I looked at it. It flaps his wings. I did a little bit more. And then the thing flew off out of my hands. As it flew off, there’s a whale jumping out of the water. And I’m like, right? Maybe there is something in this. Maybe there is. And I get back to the event, and they’re like, Hey, today you’re going to set the goals.
Kevin Bees 35:39
And I start writing down my goals. I’ve been single for four or five years. I was very unhappy single, and they said, the more specific you are with your goals, the more likely things are to show up. So I’m writing down and I’m getting through this list. As I’m getting through this list, my phone beeps. I ignore it. I finished. I got 28 specific items, you know, describing my ideal partner. You know, what’s your background? What’s he into, health, all these different things. And then look at my phone. Is my good friend, Sue’s. I know Sue’s for eight years. At that point, she never, ever set me up on date with anyone, and she messaged me say, Hey, I just met this girl. I think she’d be really great for you to contact her and see if you go on a date as I well. I’d better do this anyway. I contacted this lady. We went on a date. Now here we are. I don’t how many years, 12, 13,14, years later, we’re married, we have two beautiful children, and it’s like it happened that fast right now. We six months after getting together, we found this list. I wrote and I said, Well, let’s go through it. And we ticked through it. She ticked through every single item on that list, all of them. And I say to her, now, man, I wish I’d written down that you had a Ferrari, right?
So it’s like, so I think there’s, there is something in this. Now, can we just sit on the couch and wish that we had a bazillion dollars? You know, next week, like my friend Sue, she’d known me for a while. She already knew. She knew better than I did that I wanted a partner. She actually knew who my ideal partner was. She we’d already had conversations around she’d already knew it, even though I hadn’t formally said in my myself. Now it’s time. Now I want this. She’d probably known that she never knew was at the event, at that moment, you know, writing this thing down, but it was just maybe it’s a major coincidence.
Kevin Bees 37:10
That was a coincidence, maybe butterfly things coincidence. But I think there’s something in this. I think you’ve got more chance of creating something and making something in your life if you focus on it and put your energy in it. There’s some psychological studies that show that optimists, you get made way more of what they want in life, and pessimists do because they they force things. They find a way to make them happen. They believe it can happen, so they find a way to make it happen. So I don’t, I don’t think there’s scientific evidence here to prove this stuff, but I’ve seen too many examples in my own life that when you put your focus on what you want, and you take action like intelligent action and move towards it, you find a way.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 37:43
But I think this little bit goes back to the kind of the business stuff of what gets measured gets improved, right? It’s like, if you’re very, very specific and you’re really focused on it, I was just thinking as you were saying this, you know, I’ve got, I’ve actually got my goals on my phone. I’ve got them on my remarkable I’ve got them actually in the shower, so I’m looking at them every day, and they’re quite specific these days. I think I think I used to be very generic in the old days, and even before I actually my husband. I had a list for my husband as well, and I got very, very specific about what I wanted, which wasn’t getting into more detail. It was more that I was trying to be really clear about what was important or what wasn’t. So in the past, I would say they had to be tertiary qualified. They had to dump it. No, no. I actually want somebody who shares these values, because this kind of person, and so once I got really clear on that, Steve turned up. But I do it every year with my goals, as well as having all these things around me. And even if you think about the whole EOS thing, that the point, you know, we have a plan. We have a business plan that’s written down, that you’re committed to, because that way, there’s an element of specificity something you can actually look at and you can do something with. And yes, you’ll make it happen if it’s written down, I believe.
Kevin Bees 38:48
Well, that’s right. And then the other important piece on this is you communicate it to others. So if you’re the visual, you can communicate that to integrators. And once you start telling other people it’s more likely to happen. Here’s the other cool piece about that. I think there’s once you make that plan or that goal to tell other people. I don’t know whether it keeps you accountable, but something changes in the energy around you. So I set personal goals. I want to challenge myself, and I had personal goal of running a marathon. I’d never run a marathon before, but I started telling people I’m running this marathon on this date, and I started saying I am a marathon runner before I’d run the marathon, my identity came first. I have a marathon. Have a marathon. Now, when I started saying that, I started acting like a marathon runner. I had to go buy the types of shoes, I had to go in, find a training plan the marathon. I had to eat the things that marathon were doing. And then I started behaving like the marathon runner. Then Then I became it. Then we could show up and do it. Some people think you have to run the marathon before you have the identity being the marathon runner. But No, Runner. But no, no, you have the identity. Then the thing shows up. Same is true in your business. I go back to full loop on this story. When I was an accountant, you know, and I had a team of people, I didn’t call myself a leader. I was calling myself an accountant, when I realised I had to be a leader, as I am a leader, I am a leader.
Guess what? I started. Eating. I started showing up. I started doing things in those ways. So what’s, what’s the identity you know that you need to have? Like, what? What identity can you put in place for yourself now, what should you start calling yourself from saying that the power, the power behind this Debra, is so real you would have met people along the way said, I am a terrible sleeper, and he can’t sleep. I am terrible remembering names, and they never remember anyone’s names. I often say to people, hey, if I give you a million dollars for every name that you remember, would you be good to remember names like I would? So it tells you it’s not about, it’s not about the belief. It’s about, it’s not about, it’s not about the actual you are about. It’s about the belief you change that belief I am great in remember names. Guess what? You’d be great at remembering names. So there’s something you aspire to. Let’s go down this identity route as well. How do you need to see yourself? Who do you need to be? Who do you need to show up as to get that goal that you written down on your Eos plan? What identity do you need to step into love it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 40:52
Hey, I know that your book that you’ve written is kind of How to Stop Leaking Profit. Is that right? That’s what the name of the title? Yeah. Tell me, what are the kind of the three biggest profit areas that businesses have?
Kevin Bees 41:04
Oh, I’m not sure I can. Can leave it with three. There’s, you know, in that book.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 41:08
There were, what’s number one then? Then number one would really fascinate me.
Kevin Bees 41:12
I’ll give you, I’ll give you a quick, very quick overview. In that book, there’s 125 ways you can stop making profit for free. And if you want to get a copy of that book, you have it with my compliments. Is profits, dot, gifts, G, I, F, T, S, and is written in a way where you can read this thing in maybe 20 minutes and identify where these gaps are. But if I was to summarise just quickly as an overview, that there’s seven, the seven key areas number one, a lot of business owners because they’re not generating enough leads, enough qualified leads. They don’t have a system to get qualified leads. But two, if they do get the qualified leads, they’re not doing a great job at converting they’ll bring in 10 people for conversation and convert zero or one. They need to be better at that conversion conference. And if they’re very good, like the example you had before, they will convert people at higher amounts or higher margin products, if they can get those things right.
The next thing is, how do we help increase the average dollar sell now people aren’t getting their customers to spend enough money with them and our How can you increase the number of transactions? How many times does that prospect or that client come back and buy from you? One my favourite example is we had a guy come here to know the Lord needs to be cut every two weeks. He came once and never showed any interest in coming back again. I think it was, yeah, I don’t even think he even invoiced me for the thing, right? And so he could have said he could have increased his revenue 26 times just by asking, Hey, can you help you? Can I put you on a recurring payment? Get recurring revenue these things. That’s for it.
Number five, managing your expenses. Every business owner I speak to says they do a great job managing their expenses. But if I go through line by line and ask the question, Is this really necessary? Is this really necessary? Ask that question of every item in your p&l, you’ll find things that aren’t necessary, or you’ll find things that aren’t necessarily necessary in the way you think so. One of my clients, he had a big operation running transplant at Brisbane airport. He had staff members work in late shifts, where very few people would come in. So is it really necessary to have that? No, we can put, you know, iPad there, and people can self check in. And that’s that saved him a seven figure sum every year, right? Because he changed the shift patterns. And you people self served, no detriment to the customer.
So is it really necessary? And then six and seven. Number six is about cash flow. Cash isn’t profit. I get that. But is your cash flow tied up in areas that you can’t put to work for you? Are you having your customers take too long to pay you? Is your money tied up in too much inventory, you know? So is your is your is it in assets that you’re not really using? Can we get that cash back in the business? But it’s a higher, you know, higher yielding, you know, assets and deliver you more profit. And finally, time, Debra, we all have this issue, which, with time, some of us are working too hard, too long, you know, or not being as productive or as effective as we can be. That’s probably one of the biggest killers. You know, you for business owners in achieving the goals or the visions that they’ve got. We need to get you from a space of doing low value activities you know, that aren’t fulfilling to you, to get you to a space where you’re doing the highest value activities that are, um, are delivering you the most fulfillment as well.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 44:18
We call that delegate and elevate. And it’s so important, right? Because a lot of us, business owners, myself included, you know, we’ll find ourselves doing things that really there are people who are way better qualified, can do it a whole lot quicker and will cost you a whole lot less. And the stuff that you’re really loving are really good at, is the stuff where you land the most value to the business.
Kevin Bees 44:36
Love it, delegate, elevate is the right words for it. I say we delete the automate and then delegate. Because sometimes we try to delegate things that we just shouldn’t be doing. We should delete it, stop doing it. And if we can put it in automation with all the AI and automation or some optimization, that’s, I’m not even sure it’s a word, but automation stuff, then then we delegate it. So, but yeah, delegate and elevate. Love it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 44:56
Yeah, no, I do about the four things you can either because you go, you can just. Stop it all together. Sometimes with the stuff you’re doing, it’s like, why are we doing this? Is it? Is it really necessary? No, stop it. You can delegate it to somebody within your team, or you can outsource it to somebody as cheaper, or, as you said, automate it. I mean, honestly, there’s so much opportunity now to automate things that just don’t need to be done by human anymore. So I always ask my guests to kind of finish up with three kind of top tips or tools that you can take you’ve already given so much value here right now. But just to kind of summarize what were the three things that people should do either during or after listening to this podcast.
Kevin Bees 45:31
So, I think number one, we spoke about the money. You know, the money is activity, just if you didn’t do that, pause and do that. Identify what those associations are, and you flush out, what are the negative associations that are holding you back? There were second parts of that then. So, number two, we spoke about identity. Just now. Start writing down what are all the things you say about yourself after I am so I am a, you know, energetic. I’m a leader. I am, you know, I hear this one for you. I’m a procrastinator, you know. So write down what are all of those things and identify? Are those identity beliefs serving you as well? If not, we probably need to look at changing those.
That’s number two. Whilst I’m I talk about profit, and we can get into all of the strategy and all the numbers, you know, and those things we’ve gone down a mindset route, stakes, I think, is so key. If you wanted to hear more about that, I’m going to put in cheeky plug for my podcast, not because it’s about me, but because I interview some amazing people on, you know, Debra included around their psychology, how do they think about things? And when I hear how these great leaders have different thoughts and different beliefs, I can try this belief song. I can use them. What difference you think is made? Made to me, saying, hey, yeah, you know, like Jim PEMS belief. You know, there’s opportunity all around us. You bend down and pick it up. When I start seeing things like that, I do see opportunity everywhere. You mentioned the secret just now. Dr DeMartini is someone who’s in that he’s been on the show before, and he’s coming back again this week, so we’ll be speaking to him. So we could probably even delve into some of your secret questions for him as well. Maybe I’ll just relay the same question to him say, hey, his secret thing, you know, it’s not very trim, is it? You need to take some action. So we’ll ask him about that one as well.
So, so I think the third thing is, you jump on this life changing questions for business owners podcast, and you hear some, some world class people share their insights on how do they how do they best? You best, think about things, you know, and move things forward in their business. Okay?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 47:21
So just to just repeat that item slowly, what the title the podcast is?
Kevin Bees 47:25
It’s called Life Changing Questions for Business Owners.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 47:29
And we’ll put a link to that in the actual podcast notes as well. Hey, look, Kevin. Great to see you. As always. I love our chat, so they always come away feeling kind of completely inspired and very, very energetic. Energised is that I would, yes, energized to have so thank you so much for your time. Appreciate you sharing all of your insight, and don’t forget you can get hold of Kevin’s book as well. We’re going to put that link in the in the in the notes as well, and do get on to that life changing questions for business owners.
Kevin Bees 47:54
Yep, love it. That’s it. Thank you so much. Debra, I really, I really appreciate our time today.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 48:00
Yeah, same here. Thank you very much. Thanks, Kevin.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
Certified EOS Implementer Australia
Certified EOS Implementer UK
Certified EOS Implementer NZ
