7 Habits Series, The Center Of Habits — Accounts For Life Effectiveness
7 Habits Series, The Center Of Habits — Accounts For Life Effectiveness
7 Habits Series, The Center Of Habits — Accounts For Life Effectiveness
7 Habits Series, The Center Of Habits — Accounts For Life Effectiveness
Will Walker joins Howard to discuss entrepreneurship, working with your spouse , and how to keep relationship accounts full. WIll is the president and founder of Walker Financial Management . This episode is full of practical ways for entrepreneurs and business leaders to keep full accounts with their spouses, family, coworkers, and clients.
Will Walker joins Howard to discuss entrepreneurship, working with your spouse, and how to keep relationship accounts full. Will shows us how family life and work come together to help you grow professionally and spiritually – because all of work, all of life are given to us by God.
WIll is the president and founder of Walker Financial Management. This episode is full of practical ways for entrepreneurs and business leaders to keep full accounts with their spouses, family, coworkers, and clients.
Will Walker’s Path to Purpose
It’s no coincidence that we invited Will Walker to talk about relational accounts.This week, he celebrates four years since the official start of Walker Financial Management.
Will started this venture by examining the three key questions for identifying purpose at work:
- Needs of Others - What is the market need? What do people need? How do you help others?
- My Gifts - What are my gifts?
- Life Enablers - Could this opportunity provide my needs and resources?
Will felt confident that his new venture - Walker Financial Management - would seamlessly merge all three. His company’s mission: Equip businesses to run confidently by providing financial order and clarity.
What does that look like practically? In Will’s words, “We are essentially an outsourced bookkeeping and payroll company. So if you own a small to midsize business, and you feel as an owner that you're not necessarily equipped to handle all that – or you just want more time back in order to pursue what that business is – then we can step in at a cost effective number.”
Walker Financial Management provides monthly reports, serves as a trusted consultant, and works to bring order and clarity to their clients’ finances.
Relationships First
Covey’s Seven Habits laid the foundation for one of Will’s core goals: prioritize relationships first.
“Part of that,” Will says, “is making sure that we actually, truly have enough time to sit down with
our clients. You always talk about being interruptible. That's exactly what our goal is. When we get an email from a client that needs something by tomorrow… we want to at least be there
to talk through it and hopefully deliver what they need.”
In order to accomplish that, however, you have to be intentional about your growth. When you expand your capacity in resources, knowledge, and experience, you see work differently. You see other opportunities to help clients differently.
“You hear the analogy all the time of building the plane while you're flying it,” says Will. “And that's absolutely what it felt like. So it opened up my capacity to take a step back and think through, ‘how
do we make this sustainable and how do we also maintain quality amidst finding our own efficiencies in our business?’”
“At the end of the day,” Will says, “the question we want to get to is this: What does this client truly need? That comes through conversations and through working with them over time. And so we really do feel as though we become more partners than just contractors.”
Emotional Accounts
In the center of Covey’s Seven Habits is a section called “The Paradigms of Interdependence”. A core idea of this section is the concept of emotional accounts – or as Covey calls them, emotional bank accounts. And we certainly have them in our personal lives, as well as in our spiritual lives and in our work life.
It's all about people – in both life and business. No matter how much AI is able to automate the books, it will be about people. At the end of the day, business is provisioned for people.
Covey says this:
“We all know what a financial bank account is. We make deposits into it, and we build up a reserve
from which we can make withdrawals when we need to. An emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the emotional, the amount of trust that's been built up in a relationship.
It's the feeling of safeness you have with another human being. If I make a deposit into someone's
account through courtesy, kindness, honesty and keeping my commitments.”
I’ve made deposits into someone’s emotional bank account when I:
- Delivered the reports when we said we would
- Helped beyond what was required
- Said, “let me explain how to do that for you.”
- Introduced them to somebody else who can help
And naturally, their trust toward me becomes higher.
If trust is built up, I can make mistakes, and my payment into this account will compensate. Even a mistake can become a place of higher trust, if they've already trusted that I do the basics well.
On the other hand, if I have a habit of discourtesy, disrespect, cutting you off, overreacting, ignoring you, becoming arbitrary, or not making my commitments, not doing what I said I would, my account's overdrawn and the trust level gets low.
We need reserves, and that's loving our neighbor – personally and professionally.
The Business of Reconciling Accounts
The concept of balancing and reconciling accounts hits close to home for Will Walker:
“One of the most common problems we see when we're looking at a new client's books (especially ones where they might be coming to us because they're a little bit disorganized) is there's a lack of account reconciliation.
Basically what that means is on the books, your bank account is showing one number, but in the account itself, it's showing an entirely different number. And those balances can get off-track for a number of reasons.
On a monthly basis, we match up what's on the books to what's in the bank, and we find the issues.
So I think the idea of reconciling accounts is one that I knew when I was reading this chapter.”
List off the most important relationships to you, and ask yourself:
- Am I actively reconciling those accounts?
- If I were to score this account, what would it be?
- If I’m under a 5 with someone, why is that?
- Are we on the same page in how we’re evaluating our relationship?
Goose & the Golden Eggs
Covey relates this principle of keeping accounts to the fabled Goose and Golden Egg:
“As the story shows, true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden
eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose).
If you adopt a pattern of life that focuses on golden eggs and neglects the goose, you will soon be
without the asset that produces golden eggs. On the other hand, if you only take care of the goose
with no aim toward the golden eggs, you soon won't have the wherewithal to feed yourself or the goose.”
“In business,” Will reminds us, “it's easy to fall into the trap of only focusing on the golden eggs: What am I getting out of you? What are you getting out of me?
Instead, [Covey] challenges us to focus on the goose. Who's laying the eggs? Focus on the person.
Make those deposits on that side and then you won't even be able to count how many eggs there are because of that.”
Podcast Links
Article: Where Do You Want To Go?
Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Graphic: Aligning with Life Purpose
Graphic: Continuum of Redemptive Work
Verse: Matthew 11:28–30
Verse: John 14:6
Verse: Romans 11:36
Walker Financial Management: https://www.walkerfm.com/
Will Walker joins Howard to discuss entrepreneurship, working with your spouse, and how to keep relationship accounts full. Will shows us how family life and work come together to help you grow professionally and spiritually – because all of work, all of life are given to us by God.
WIll is the president and founder of Walker Financial Management. This episode is full of practical ways for entrepreneurs and business leaders to keep full accounts with their spouses, family, coworkers, and clients.
Will Walker’s Path to Purpose
It’s no coincidence that we invited Will Walker to talk about relational accounts.This week, he celebrates four years since the official start of Walker Financial Management.
Will started this venture by examining the three key questions for identifying purpose at work:
- Needs of Others - What is the market need? What do people need? How do you help others?
- My Gifts - What are my gifts?
- Life Enablers - Could this opportunity provide my needs and resources?
Will felt confident that his new venture - Walker Financial Management - would seamlessly merge all three. His company’s mission: Equip businesses to run confidently by providing financial order and clarity.
What does that look like practically? In Will’s words, “We are essentially an outsourced bookkeeping and payroll company. So if you own a small to midsize business, and you feel as an owner that you're not necessarily equipped to handle all that – or you just want more time back in order to pursue what that business is – then we can step in at a cost effective number.”
Walker Financial Management provides monthly reports, serves as a trusted consultant, and works to bring order and clarity to their clients’ finances.
Relationships First
Covey’s Seven Habits laid the foundation for one of Will’s core goals: prioritize relationships first.
“Part of that,” Will says, “is making sure that we actually, truly have enough time to sit down with
our clients. You always talk about being interruptible. That's exactly what our goal is. When we get an email from a client that needs something by tomorrow… we want to at least be there
to talk through it and hopefully deliver what they need.”
In order to accomplish that, however, you have to be intentional about your growth. When you expand your capacity in resources, knowledge, and experience, you see work differently. You see other opportunities to help clients differently.
“You hear the analogy all the time of building the plane while you're flying it,” says Will. “And that's absolutely what it felt like. So it opened up my capacity to take a step back and think through, ‘how
do we make this sustainable and how do we also maintain quality amidst finding our own efficiencies in our business?’”
“At the end of the day,” Will says, “the question we want to get to is this: What does this client truly need? That comes through conversations and through working with them over time. And so we really do feel as though we become more partners than just contractors.”
Emotional Accounts
In the center of Covey’s Seven Habits is a section called “The Paradigms of Interdependence”. A core idea of this section is the concept of emotional accounts – or as Covey calls them, emotional bank accounts. And we certainly have them in our personal lives, as well as in our spiritual lives and in our work life.
It's all about people – in both life and business. No matter how much AI is able to automate the books, it will be about people. At the end of the day, business is provisioned for people.
Covey says this:
“We all know what a financial bank account is. We make deposits into it, and we build up a reserve
from which we can make withdrawals when we need to. An emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the emotional, the amount of trust that's been built up in a relationship.
It's the feeling of safeness you have with another human being. If I make a deposit into someone's
account through courtesy, kindness, honesty and keeping my commitments.”
I’ve made deposits into someone’s emotional bank account when I:
- Delivered the reports when we said we would
- Helped beyond what was required
- Said, “let me explain how to do that for you.”
- Introduced them to somebody else who can help
And naturally, their trust toward me becomes higher.
If trust is built up, I can make mistakes, and my payment into this account will compensate. Even a mistake can become a place of higher trust, if they've already trusted that I do the basics well.
On the other hand, if I have a habit of discourtesy, disrespect, cutting you off, overreacting, ignoring you, becoming arbitrary, or not making my commitments, not doing what I said I would, my account's overdrawn and the trust level gets low.
We need reserves, and that's loving our neighbor – personally and professionally.
The Business of Reconciling Accounts
The concept of balancing and reconciling accounts hits close to home for Will Walker:
“One of the most common problems we see when we're looking at a new client's books (especially ones where they might be coming to us because they're a little bit disorganized) is there's a lack of account reconciliation.
Basically what that means is on the books, your bank account is showing one number, but in the account itself, it's showing an entirely different number. And those balances can get off-track for a number of reasons.
On a monthly basis, we match up what's on the books to what's in the bank, and we find the issues.
So I think the idea of reconciling accounts is one that I knew when I was reading this chapter.”
List off the most important relationships to you, and ask yourself:
- Am I actively reconciling those accounts?
- If I were to score this account, what would it be?
- If I’m under a 5 with someone, why is that?
- Are we on the same page in how we’re evaluating our relationship?
Goose & the Golden Eggs
Covey relates this principle of keeping accounts to the fabled Goose and Golden Egg:
“As the story shows, true effectiveness is a function of two things: what is produced (the golden
eggs) and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose).
If you adopt a pattern of life that focuses on golden eggs and neglects the goose, you will soon be
without the asset that produces golden eggs. On the other hand, if you only take care of the goose
with no aim toward the golden eggs, you soon won't have the wherewithal to feed yourself or the goose.”
“In business,” Will reminds us, “it's easy to fall into the trap of only focusing on the golden eggs: What am I getting out of you? What are you getting out of me?
Instead, [Covey] challenges us to focus on the goose. Who's laying the eggs? Focus on the person.
Make those deposits on that side and then you won't even be able to count how many eggs there are because of that.”
Podcast Links
Article: Where Do You Want To Go?
Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Graphic: Aligning with Life Purpose
Graphic: Continuum of Redemptive Work
Verse: Matthew 11:28–30
Verse: John 14:6
Verse: Romans 11:36
Walker Financial Management: https://www.walkerfm.com/