Episode 26: Being masters of our craft (In Demand Accountant Part 1)
In this episode, Sam explores part 1 of being the In Demand Accountant, which is all about mastering our craft. This involves getting clear on what you do and why you're doing it, which you may not have done recently and is a powerful activity.
Sam also discusses what you can ask clients in order to figure out how you can best communicate with them the problem you are solving for them.
Finally, Sam covers why it's so important to be curious and innovative with our craft going forward to make sure we remain relevant into the future.
Listen to a snippet
What we cover in this episode
The four aspects of mastering your craft
Aspect 1: Loving what you do
How to get clear on what you love about what you do
Aspect 2: Knowing your stuff and valuing your work
Aspect 3: Connecting what you do with client/market needs
What you can ask clients in order to figure out how you can best communicate with them the problem you are solving for them
The real reasons you need to understand your clients
Aspect 4: Curiosity, Innovation and Continuous Learning/Development
Why that curiosity and innovation is so important for us individually and collectively as an industry
Quotes
“I never lost sight of the importance of compliance work, particularly around tax restructuring and protection.”
“I always get the impression that people are saying we need to move away from compliance into business advisory. Now these are totally different skill sets and it's very important to point out that while compliance processing is certainly decreasing, compliance as an advisory space is not going away and is, in fact, actually growing.”
“Each individual's accountants pathway is different, but it will add value to clients, which includes being able to communicate their value and be more proactive in delivery.”
“If you're not really enjoying or clear on what it is that you do every day as we go forward in this age of disruption and disturbance, and you do have to change some of the skill sets or have challenging conversations with clients, if what you do in principle is not something you really love and connect to, it becomes really hard as you go forward.”
“You really can't be true masters of any craft until you can actually message it back in a simple way to your client base or your market at large.”
“Honestly, sometimes even our clients don't actually know what they want, because they don't know what they don't know. So we've got to get much better at educating, and really messaging out the value no matter what aspects of accounting that you actually do.”
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