Welcome back to Count Me In,

the podcast that explores the world of
business from the management accountants

perspective. I'm your, host Adam Larson.
Today we are joined by Nick Davies,

an executive coach to leaders and other
professionals looking to take their

expertise to the next level.

At the heart of Nick's coaching
philosophy is what he calls the achiever's

mindset and how learning to harness
that powerful mental tool can lead to

transformative results for
management accountants,

and other go getters in
both business and in life.

I hope you enjoy the show today. Let's
start the conversation with Nick.

So Nick, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast today.

We really appreciate you
spending time with us.

And today we're gonna be talking a
little bit about the achiever's mindset,

but before we get there,

I'd like you to kind of give a little
bit of your background for our audience

today and how you got to the
point where you are today.

How long have I got? You
know, it's interesting.

I was having this conversation yesterday
with someone about talking about their

story and fantastic story this lady had
working in a business and it's something

that I made a distinction of a long time
ago that I had a resistance to share in

my story. And I thought, well, who
wants to hear my story, it's my story?

And then what I realized was that, yeah,

it's boring to me because
it's my story, you know?

So I always like it when people can share,

because even if it feels like it's
just your thing, it's like, well,

other people haven't had
that experience, you know?

And so for me grown up in England,

I worked for almost 20 years in the
banking world all over the world.

I've lived in three continents and
five locations and been a long time

doing something that I didn't really
want to be doing and kind of went outside

this personal development
journey about 10, 12 years ago.

I asked myself like what did I
wanna do when I grew up, you know,

eventually moved to states
and lived in Florida,

worked on Wall Street for a while and,
and decided that's it like I wanna,

I like working with people.

I wanna work with people working
on what's most important for them,

whatever it is, whatever
industry, industry agnostic,

but use my experience working in the
corporate world and understanding how

things work, but also work for people's
goals that are most important to them.

And so I'd ask to become a coach.

And it's been an amazing journey over
the last six or seven years. This point,

coached hundreds of people,

people walk different walks of
life and a corporate setting,

every different industry, business owners,

non-business owners worked on
more people's part of life.

And it's something I get
very passionate about now.

And I'm privileged to do every day.

As you were talking,

it kind of made me think about a lot of
us are we may feel successful where we

are in our careers, but despite
having a pretty good handle on it,

we feel like we're missing something,
right. We feel like we're missing.

We wanna be a top performer. And,
but how do we get to the next level?

So maybe that's kinda where we're gonna
focus in on the conversation is how do

we boost our skills and wherever we are,
you know, this podcast is for folks,

affecting the accounting
and finance world.

So accountants and folks in the
accounting and finance world,

how do we get to that
next level? You know,

we're not talking about specific
accounting things right now,

but it's just that, you know, how do we
become successful in the next moment?

And I think that you talked about
skills and you talked about, yeah,

we don't wanna talk about the
technicalities of mechanical and finance.

That's not the point. And so what I
found out, what I believe is that right.

It really starts with,
well, where do you wanna go?

What type of person do you
wanna create within yourself?

What type of life do you wanna create,

rather than looking for skills
or practices or best practices or

strategies it's like, let's start with
the best version of what it could be.

What if you could have it
anyway, you would want it, like,

what would that look like? And
really start from that point.

And oftentimes that comes with a
resistance, like, well, what do you mean?

I wanna get 10% better this year. I wanna
get 20% better this year. It's like,

well, that's great and
good for you, no judgment.

But what if you could flip it on its head?

What if you could get a hundred
times better? What would that mean?

What actually does that look like for you?

And if you're thinking
with that end in mind,

then you tend to find
the path to get there.

So if you're thinking with that end
in mind, how do you get to that,

that change of mindset because
you're here and you're like,

I just wanna improve like 10% you said,

and you just mentioned a
hundred percent better.

Like those seem like very
drastically different numbers.

Yeah, absolutely. Right.

And some of it starts
with being willing and

something within, could you
start to, to talk about, right?

Like some of us consider
ourselves successful,

but maybe there's something
niggling inside you go, well,

maybe it's not quite what I want,

or maybe I could be doing
this in a different way.

And it's really kind of
leaning into some of that.

And I believe that we all have it. And
a lot of us go through a life scene,

a little bit of a fog,

sometimes a lot of a fog just doing
what we think is the right thing to do.

You know? And I think about when I got
into banking, I felt was like, well,

that's good. They wanna pay me to do
this. All right. And I'll play your game.

And then they're gonna pay me
some more and I'll play some more,

I'll get paid some more. It's like,
and it just goes and goes and goes.

And that's really all, you know,

and it's not often you just get to chance
to step back and go, well, hang on.

Is this really what I want?
Like deeply to my core.

Do I get excited to do this every
day? Does it keep me up late?

Not just because I'm told to, or that
there's deadlines or is it cuz I want to,

am I getting up early to go and
practice to be the best version of this?

And that's a question that like hand
on heart that I believe most people

can't answer.

And I believe that that was just
something that wasn't available for me.

Like that wasn't the sort
of person that I was.

I thought that stuff was preserved
for small stars or, you know,

people that are in a creative field,

but I believe it's available for
everyone if you're willing to look.

Hmm. So if you're willing to look,
maybe we can start talking about,

can you define the
achiever's mindset for us?

And we can discuss that a little bit more.

Yeah. I think that, you know,

the achiever's mindset is really
about knowing that like there's

always something else. There are
no limits to what we can achieve.

The baseline,

the achiever's mindset for me is that
I believe that anything's possible.

If you think about what humans
have achieved, just watching,

me, my wife sat down last
night to watch Netflix.

We were watching the SpaceX
documentary that was on there.

And that what a great example, that is
about what we could achieve. You know,

even Elon Musk said, when
we first started out,

I thought there was a 10% chance.

We'd get someone to orbit and it just

comes from a place of look,
I'm willing to move forward.

I'm willing to throw
the other paradigms out.

I'm willing to think a little bit
differently. I'm willing to just explore.

It's not like I'm gonna be
committed no matter what.

I'm just willing to explore.

I'm gonna go from the baseline
that anything's possible.

And if you think about
it, that's one example,

but think about what we've achieved as
human race, but just in the last 10, 20,

30 40, a hundred years. It's ridiculous.

And so pretty much I believe that human
possibilities is pretty much endless

capabilities there. So we're all
human. So what's the difference.

The difference is deciding that you want
to go and get some of that or get more

of that. And the more that you
play in the sandbox, in that space,

the more that your mind starts to expand.

And then you start to see
other possibilities, you
start to play with it, right?

So it's more like it's a starts from
that baseline that anything's possible.

That's what really the human
mindset is as a starting point.

So that sounds wonderful in theory.

Can we maybe focus in on maybe
some more practical application

of that, and maybe you can share
some examples of, you know,

we don't know if you give any names
of folks who've been able to take this

mindset and do something
great with their careers.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's part
of it, right? Like it's like, well,

the theory and translating
it into the strategy, right?

Cause as soon as you get to the
strategy, you're back to the how,

when you're in the how
it's like, what come on,

I need to see the actual practical
steps right now. It's like, well,

that kind of defeats the purpose. It's a
balance, right? To balance going, okay,

well here's the part where
like anything's possible.

And those people oftentimes get
called dreamers, playing the sky,

blue sky thinking.

And those people that are working on the
practical things are looking at those

people going well, come on,
man, come down from a cloud.

So you need to make that practical. You
need to make that actionable. And you,

those people are actually
absolutely right.

But these people up here without these
people who wouldn't be able to create

things that aren't available
right now, we wouldn't best dream.

So where's the right place
to be. It's like both, right?

Cause if you're up here,
you can't do the action.

And if you are down here in the weeds,
you can't see where you're going.

I love the something I thought
of a long time ago, Adam.

I just love the thought
of like being in a jungle.

Like let's say you're in a jungle and
you're with a bunch of people and you've

got like a machete and you're hacking
through the jungle and you can only see

what you hack down in front of you.

And you are heading towards a camp
for the night. Let's say a direction.

You're gonna try and find something. And
you've been doing this thing for hours,

just hacking away, hacking away
going, are we in the right direction?

And everyone in your group's getting a
bit fed up and tired like, Hey leader,

Hey boss. Like, where are we going?
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

And everyone's getting a bit uptight
cause they're not quite sure.

And they're like, you're going the
right way, going the right way, hacking,

hacking, hacking more and more effort.
And you know, this helicopter comes past,

right? And you're like gives
you a rope to jump on. You,

jump on the rope and you get wood up to
helicopter from the helicopter and you

see everything and you see the whole
jungle you're in and you see exactly the

whole place of where you're supposed
to go. And you can notice that, look,

you know what? I'm 200 feet
from where I wanna be going.

And so you can come back down into the
jungle. You go, Hey guys, we've got it.

200 feet. Now the mood completely
changed. The outlook completely changed.

What they believe is
possible, completely changes.

Cause you go 200 feet in that
direction. And then you're there.

It's like from the place in the
helicopter, you can't do the work.

But if you haven't got the outlook and
know when to get back into helicopter,

you're gonna quickly drive yourself into
place where all you believe is all you

doing is go around in
circles, go around in circles.

And that's the balance to get
to. Right? It's like, there's no,

here's another way to
think about it. Right?

Oftentimes in life we think
binary it's yes or it's no,

you're in and you're out,

but really life is more of a scale, right?

It's like one extreme to the other.
There's so many stops along those ways.

So it's just, what's the right balance.

And so if you find yourself
bias in a particular direction,

which most of us do, everyone
has their biases. No good or bad.

Just that's just our,
and you might say, okay,

how might I lean get a place to perhaps
open up some more possibilities?

Yeah. Everything you said kind of helped
me think about in lot of different

directions,

but it's great for leaders
to be able to take that,

you know, helicopter trip up to be
able to see everything and say, okay,

this is where we need
to go to help your team,

understand the why and what we're
doing and get that morale going.

But what if you are standing
there watching your leader
go up and you're like,

wait, but I wanna see up there,

how do you get from where you are and
go up there because maybe you're a staff

accountant and you're just
in the numbers every day.

But you want to get to that CFO level
so that you can see all the things.

What's that first step you need to take?

Beautiful question. Thanks Adam.
Thank you for contextualizing that,

that's really powerful. Yeah. You you've
got to, especially in organizations,

you've got to make sure that you're
still playing your own game. Right?

So for instance, I worked with the
quite a few financial advisors.

There's a guy that I worked with this
morning and like here's a particular goal

that his company's given him for a
certain amount of transactions and dollar

value for the year, of course. And
that's the goal that they've given him.

And so, okay, this is what
you need to go and produce.

Now that's based on what they
think that they need in totality.

There's some general
generalities to it as well.

Cause it's spread across
many different people.

And what we work on is what's
his actual goal within that?

What does he own? Right?

So if you're the junior guy looking
up to the CFO, you've gotta go look,

where do you wanna be going? You've
gotta get your own helicopter.

And you wanna make sure that either it
is in line with where the helicopter's

going for the CFO, for the company.
And you've gotta know that.

And if it is awesome, then you can plot
that path within that. Or if it's not,

then you wanna know that as well.
Then you can take a different path.

It's really knowing where you are going
either inside of someone else's game

or creating your own game. And again,
that's part of the fog of it. It's like,

all I can do is I've gotta wait
for the next person to move up,

to move up again. It's like, are
you really playing your own game?

Or are you playing someone else's game?

I really like what you're saying, there
is you have to get your own helicopter.

You can't use your
current CFO's helicopter.

You have to get your own helicopter so
that you can start to see where you need

to go. You can't focus
on his journey. I mean,

you can learn from their journeys. You
can learn from steps they've taken,

but you can't jump on their helicopter
and expect to go the same place.

Yeah. Like, and if you are good
with that, then that's fine.

But it's having the awareness to know
that you are on someone else's journey.

Yeah. Like if you haven't
got a plan for your life,

you'll end up fulfilling someone
else's plan. You'll be part of that.

And there's nothing
wrong with that. Again,

just having the outcomes or the
awareness to know what that is.

I think it's really, really powerful.

Yeah. That is very powerful.

And I think the other thing
that I was thinking about too,

is if you're sitting there, you know,
you've gotten your own helicopter.

You may recognize that my journey will
not continue at this organization.

Maybe my journey needs to go to
another organization. And so, you know,

that's a scary place to be because you,
you may be just early in your career.

And you're like, if the place
I want to go is over here,

but I see that my journey
is not gonna stay here.

And you don't know, like
there's a lot of unknowns there.

And the unknown is very
difficult, especially when
you're trying to, you know,

trying to change your mindset.

Yeah. We are people,

all people are driven or not
as the case may be by fear.

And whether we wanna admit that
or not, that's really what it is.

And certainly true for me. I can
tell you that for nothing, right?

Like it's something
that's always coming up.

But what we do is we tend to optimize
for the fear of taking action.

What we don't tend to think about is
the fear of inaction. And that's for me,

the biggest opportunity cost.
It's like if I take this,

my journey is not at this
place, it's like, oh no,

like now I'm not in a place
where I wanna be. That's scary.

I've gotta make some change. I've
gotta like, get uncomfortable.

I've gotta move to somewhere else.
I've gotta figure some stuff out. True.

But the alternative is that
you don't make a change.

Even though it's something in you that
tells you, that's not quite right.

You don't make a change.
You follow the beaten path,

you do the things that you're supposed
to do. You take the next part up,

you take 10% and 10%. And then somewhere
down the line, 10, 15, 20 years,

goodness could be, you go, oh man,

I've just spent 20 years in a
place I didn't want to be in.

And that's what I get so passionate
about what I do. Now I honor my journey.

Cause I did spend 20 years doing
something I didn't wanna do.

And it gave me a lot.

And that's exactly what my path
has been is supposed to be.

And now I get to share with people, right?

Let's come back and compress
some of that time. Cuz deep down.

I knew if I'd really ask myself the
deep questions, at any of that spot,

I could tell myself that like
this isn't the right thing.

Gotta start thinking about doing something
different and figuring something out.

And it doesn't have to be a huge change,
but just be honest with yourself.

So if you're being, I like the
idea of being honest with yourself,

cuz that's something that I think a lot
of us kind of struggle with and just

growing in our careers and our personal
lives is being honest with ourselves.

And I think something we need to remind
everybody is, is that these journeys,

this getting to these mindsets is not
something that happens like today I'm here

and then tomorrow I'm gonna
be at a hundred percent.

No it's an actual journey
that takes time. So yeah,

you may be taking those incremental steps,

but eventually that helicopters
and you gotta grab on. Right?

Absolutely. And that's why
playing up at this place,

which feels like it's pie in the sky
and going what's that difference between

10% is that what's a hundred percent,
it's it's opening possibilities.

It's saying, well look, what if I
could have it any way I want it to be?

And if you let's say,

you're just starting out in where
you are in your accountancy career,

let's say you're like,
okay, what do I wanna do?

What's the best version of this.

If everything went exactly
as I wanted it to go,

if I could snap my fingers and
create that, what would it be?

And you might say what for because I
can't get there yet. There's no point,

but the sooner you can do
that and create something,

you have a place to move towards and
your life will start to optimize for that

just naturally cuz you'd be thinking
about it and then you can take actual

action, make it real, take those
steps. And you might also say, well,

I don't know yet. Well,

part of that is also a game of just doing
what's the right thing for right now.

Oh and by the way you could also say
I'm not prepared to do anything on that

yet, but either way,

you're being honest with yourself and
being intentional about what you're doing.

Yeah. That's so important is that you
may not be ready for the next step.

And this idea of like, you can't
always be in the clouds obviously,

because you'll never get anything done,

but you can't always be in the weeds cuz
then you'll never see the big picture.

Right. So finding that balance.

So we've talked about the person
who is early in their career.

So maybe let's talk
about leaders. You know,

I'm a leader and I have a team
of 20 people and I'm like, okay,

I wanna have this achiever's
mindset. I wanna see the big picture,

but also see the practical.

I wanna find that balance for myself
and then also teach it to my team.

How can leaders help get their team
to a place where they're starting to

find that balance as well?

Yeah. Great question. Thanks Adam.

And so first things first it's knowing
as a leader, where are you going?

Can you specifically
articulate super quick,

what is success for you by
the end of this year or the

next relative point that you're looking
at in your career or that business line

or that area of focus.

And then when you know what that is and
what you are doing every day to get you

there, even without sharing it,

people gravitate to that because
that's the guy that looks like he's got

everything figured out, right? It's like,

you can tell it when you
even look at people, right,

when you're walking around the
office, if we do that anymore, right?

And you see people and the
people that know where they,

you can look at people and go, that
person knows where he is going.

And because he has an in intentional
outlook of what success looks like to him

or her that day, that week, that month,
that year. So that's the starting point,

right? And that will create people
will naturally follow you anyway,

people in your team.
That's what leadership is.

Management is the sorting
it out and figuring it out.

The leadership is just doing the thing
and people follow that people will

gravitate towards that.
So it's, first of all,

knowing what it is for you and as
a leader, likelihood your goal,

your vision is something
that's bigger than you. Anyway,

you need to enroll other people in it.

And part of your power as leader
and part of your requirement,

your responsibility as a leader,
is to be able to share that,

share what that is and articulate in a
way that we can attach to it. Right? And

sometimes people will share that. Like,
I'm not thinking about this emotionally.

I'm not thinking about it in that way.
I just need to do these things, do that.

And I get that. It's like, alright,
cool. There's a practical sense to it.

If I do that, I do that.
And now I get that,

but everything has emotion tied to
it. Everything is tied emotionally.

And if you don't think yourself
as an emotional person,

and then there's a reaction to that, no,
I'm definitely not an emotional person.

It's like, well, that's an
emotional reaction. We can't
get away from it. Right.

And then we should honor those feelings.
And however, that means to you,

how it show up, everyone's a bit
different, but that's part of it, knowing,

be able to articulate that to your team
is a really good step. And then again,

going back to being honest, this
is where we're going as a team.

And this is where I wanna go
overall, are you on bull face?

So you are helping them.

You are in your leadership
helicopter to extend the analogy,

looking back at the other
helicopters, going, Hey guys,

or looking back down on the fit,
down in the jungle, going, Hey guys,

are you in your helicopter yet?
You wanna hit your ride on mine?

Cause I'm going over here.
So you are creating a way of,

so some people might not be ready
to get in their helicopter yet,

but you're saying I got mine. Are
you willing to get into it with me?

Cuz we are going this journey as well.
Right? So that's really what it is. Now,

once you're aligned, all the
things that are part of it,

which is basically communication
will figure themselves out.

We can't go anywhere until we're aligned.

I like that picture of
there's times where we,

as leaders have to pick people up and
carry them with us and saying, Hey guys,

come with me. See what it's like up here.

And then here look your helicopter's
right there. Jump in. Right.

Yeah. Absolutely. And all done with
like no judgment. And it's like,

this is where I'm going. I'm all in.
I'd love it for you to come. And if not,

then I wanna know that as well.

Yeah.

Because it can be, and I've been in
leadership positions where it's just like,

what's wrong. Like this is
what's laid out like this is,

which is what you signed up for. Like
why can't you do it? What are you doing?

And there's so many things
to pick out of that.

Like they might not
have signed up for that.

Where do we have the explicit
conversation about this particular thing,

we might not have done! And I'm judging
them in that moment. I'm saying like,

what's wrong with you? Or I'm
implying what's wrong with you.

And when people feel like they're
being judged, they're gonna shut down.

They're not gonna play. And so the goal
always is to think about things like,

okay, well where do you want to go,

and put yourself in their shoes and
create the opportunity for people to step

into it. Right. Rather
than close things down.

And so that's a real big part of it.

So as we wrap up our conversation,
I think this has been really great.

Just kind of understanding
this achiever's mindset.

It seems like there's one word
that you may have said it already,

but there's one word that seemed, or
it's a hyphenated word I should say,

that seems to be very important in
this whole thing is self-awareness.

You need to be aware of self,
of how you're feeling of how,

where you are in your journey,
because that's where we have to start.

Maybe we can talk a little bit about
self-awareness and how it connects to

everything.

Cause I feel like that's a real connector
for a lot of this that we've been

discussing.

Absolutely, absolutely. Adam.
Yeah, self-awareness is great.

I just call it awareness because
it fits within the model,

which I think that we live in and
everything starts with awareness.

Without awareness, you are nothing.
It's not everything by itself,

but it's a place that
we need to start. Right.

Cuz when you can understand where you
really are and be honest with yourself and

like, if you're gonna build
anything, you wanna dig down first,

make sure you've got the right
foundation. So that's what awareness is.

It's like taking stock. What's really
true. What's really important for you.

Where are you? Yeah.

And then that awareness then
allows us to jump off to action.

So I call this the Triple A
approach, right? And I believe,

I mean that's semantics, but I believe
we're always in this Triple A approach,

it's a cycle of life. So awareness knowing
where you are jump off to the action,

which is actually creating a plan right
back down to the very specific roadmap

of where we're going. Like that's the
actual strategy, the tools, skills,

all that stuff is very important,

but we can't do that until we
start with the awareness part.

So we move off into the action
plan and the action is now, okay,

this is where I'm specifically going
over this particular milestone,

this timeline I've defined,
here's the action I'm gonna take.

And then that last A of that
Triple A approach is achievement.

And the achievement part
is the checking in part.

That's how we know whether we should
be up on the helicopter or down in the

weeds because it constantly changes.

And so every week can say I work with
my clients every week we come back

together, go, did you do the things
you said you were gonna do? Oh, great.

What results did you get based on that?
Good, bad, different? Again, again,

again. And you know, life happens
or sometimes it'll be like,

I didn't do anything. Okay. Where
do you wanna get back to now?

Cuz without that last ADA achievement,
even if, here's the scariest part, Adam,

perhaps is that you see
some self-awareness to call
it your way and you start

to go, yes, I'm committed to this.

I've thought about something
that's completely different.

You start to take action, you
have a little plan in place.

And then something happens. Life
happens, you get smashed in the face,

emotion and you get hit
down. You forget it.

And you come back to it a month
later six months later. A year later.

And it didn't happen for you and
you think, oh man, it must be me.

So it must be wrong with me. Maybe
this isn't on the cards for me.

And it's just the process. And
that's like the scariest thing,

cuz the next time you get
yourself back up again,

you're gonna be a little bit
less certain than you can.

And that could have been a year gone by.

But that's why it's so important to
have something around you with that

accountability and that place
where you can check in every week.

Cause the maximum you can lose is a week.

I get very passionate about this because
I know how powerful it can be to keep

in that space.

This has been Count Me In,

IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

the accounting and finance profession.

If you like what you heard and you'd
like to be counted in for more relevant

accounting and finance
education, visit IMA's website

at www.imanet.org.