Who among us couldn’t use a little more balance between our business and personal lives? As a busy working mother, and now grandmother, I have spent most of my adult life trying to achieve an equilibrium between my career goals and my desire to spend time with the people I love while also pursuing my other passions, like fitness and music. Over the years, I have come to realize that the key to finding some sense of balance between home and the office is working not more but more efficiently.
We were fortunate to recently co-host a webinar conversation with Amy Vetter, a renowned expert in mindfulness, work-life harmony, and personal transformation. She joined us to discuss her insights on how we can all strive to integrate mindfulness into our daily lives and create a more fulfilling, purposeful, and connected existence.
Amy is the creator of the B3 Method Institute, a transformative program that helps individuals and organizations achieve business balance and bliss through mindfulness and self-discovery. Having spent over 25 years as a successful CPA technologist and business executive, Amy brings a unique perspective to her teachings, combining her passion for mindfulness with her expertise in business and finance.
Opening our minds to new tech tools
To kick off our conversation, Amy and I discussed some of the fears that accountants, bankers, business consultants, and other sales professionals may have around time-saving technology tools like AI and automation. Amid the apocalyptic predictions of AI taking over the world and destroying humankind, it’s certainly understandable to have concerns about how technology will change the future of your work!
But I believe some of the concerns about utilizing time-saving technology tools are rooted in our human desire for control. There can be anxiety tied to letting someone else — or something else — do the heavy-lifting that we’re so accustomed to doing ourselves.
In accounting, for example, there are a lot of repeatable tasks that lend themselves to automation — work that could be delegated to AI. We naturally ask the question: “Can I trust this technology tool to do as good a job as I can?” And then when it comes to AI, there may be additional questions and concerns around security and information privacy.
In the case of the Industry Intelligence found on Vertical IQ, I’ve seen this exact scenario play out. New users will have apprehensions about leaning on a technology tool to provide the research that they are accustomed to spending hours and hours gathering themselves. As a result, they will be concerned about the reliability and verifiability of the data and other content they have at their fingertips on Vertical IQ.
A tool that gives you actionable, convenient, focused insights on more than 97% of the economic revenue in the U.S. and Canada through more than 920 Industry Profiles and 3,400 local economic reports, saving you countless hours of research? I totally get it: It does seem almost too easy — too good to be true.
But as Amy pointed out in our conversation, perhaps we should open our minds and consider this from another angle. When properly vetted and used effectively, technology tools aren’t a threat. They are a means of achieving the work-life balance so many of us have been seeking. Amy explained: “We need to think about how we flip this into thinking about the gift that technology provides us — that it really is there to free up our time so that we can have more human connection, not less.”
Reconciling cost versus value
Amy noted that another important consideration about technology tools is of course cost. She explained: “One of the things that I see a lot is when people are looking at technology, they’re looking at the ROI [return on investment] of just that technology — not thinking about what is the difference in the experience that I can create with my clients or my teams or my customers because I put this technology in place and incorporating that into the ROI. It’s the intangibles that it can create for us when we have this as part of our business.”
I could not agree with Amy more. Selecting any technology tool should not just be about the price tag; the value that tool offers must be calculated into its ROI. In some cases, that value can be challenging to quantify. For instance, for Vertical IQ users:
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- How much is it worth to not have to scroll through hundreds of internet search results, trying to determine which ones are current and reliable?
- How much is it worth to spend only a few minutes on call preparation instead of hours upon hours?
- How much is it worth being able to have an industry-focused conversation with a prospect that incorporates key industry terms and the latest industry trends and challenges, making that first call seem more like a third call?
- How much is it worth being able to nurture an existing client relationship by sharing industry benchmarks or timely industry news articles with that business owner?
These are difficult things to put a specific dollar amount on. But I would contend that a trustworthy technology tool that can help you prepare for calls in just minutes, win new engagements, close deals more quickly, and deepen existing client relationships — all while saving you time and frustration — is nearly priceless. And that’s exactly what Vertical IQ does.
High tech can enable high-touch interactions
I genuinely believe that people will never be entirely replaced by computers because we all crave interpersonal connection. As Amy explained, companies must determine “where it is appropriate for a human to be involved, and not the computer, in order to create the best experience for my teams and for people outside of my company.”
Consider the times when you’ve needed customer service. There are some tasks and scenarios for which most of us are fine with interacting with a chatbot or an automated system — asking for an account balance, for instance. But there will always be times when we want to talk to a human being, no matter how good the technology gets. Effectively using technology tools frees up business professionals’ time to perform those high-touch tasks — from prospecting to client nurturing to relationship expansion.
I am fortunate to have firsthand experience with empowering business professionals and advisors with technology tools that make their jobs easier. Once people ease their anxieties and skepticisms about using a tool like Vertical IQ, they will realize that it can actually free up so much of their time, enabling them to become more of a value-added consultative partner to their clients and prospects — what Amy has referred to as a “cherished advisor.”
Change can be difficult, and adopting new technology and processes around it can feel challenging and even threatening at first. But using the right tools can make a world of difference in how we do our jobs, allowing us to find better balance between work and life. Amy beautifully summed it up: “Innovating is about finding the path of least effort rather than keep pushing against something you’ve always done.”
Vertical IQ gives you access to easy-to-share Industry Intelligence that engages while saving time and adding value. Contact us to learn more!