Who is Chris?
For 4 (and a bit!) years Dad and Daughter team Chris and Charlotte have been on a mission to share stories. Specifically stories of amazing people doing brilliant things to make the world a kinder place.
Along the way they've spoken to hundreds of people, and learned hundreds of lessons of why we should all try to be a little bit kinder, and how we might practically apply kindness in our lives.
Now you can get access to all of these amazing lessons in The Kindness project book due to be released later in the year.
Key Takeaways
How do you help people be kind? 0:22
The importance of financial planning and giving back. 2:50
Time is the commodity that’s most limited as opposed to money. 5:37
The one thing you can control is your reaction to the circumstances -.7:52
Focus on the right thing, not the wrong thing. 11:29
Why it’s all about relationships -. 13:50
How to reach out to clients in a way that’s not intimidating. 15:57
The fear of letting go and the fear of saying no. 19:46
Valuable Free Resource or Action
http://thekindnessproject.co.uk/book/
A video version of this podcast is available on YouTube :
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Subscribe to our newsletter and get details of when we are doing these interviews live at https://TCA.fyi/newsletter
Find out more about being a guest at : link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/beaguest
Subscribe to the podcast at https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/podcast
Help us get this podcast in front of as many people as possible. Leave a nice five-star review at apple podcasts : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/apple-podcasts and on YouTube : https://link.thecompleteapproach.co.uk/Itsnotrocketscienceatyt!
Here's how you can bring your business to THE next level:
If you are a business owner currently turning over £/$10K - £/$50K per month and want to grow to £/$100K - £/$500k per month download my free resource on everything you need to grow your business on a single page :
It's a detailed breakdown of how you can grow your business to 7-figures in a smart and sustainable way
————————————————————————————————————————————-
Transcript
Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, book, kindness, clients, business owners, business, life, money, fretting, chris, project, stories, spend, talking, stoic, interesting, read, financial planning, question, financial
SPEAKERS
Chris Daems, Stuart Webb
Stuart Webb 00:22
Hi, and welcome once again to five questions over coffee with me Stuart Webb and today I've got Christine's with me who is a really got I'm really looking forward to this is a really inspirational talk, I think we're going to have a chat about a really interesting project that Chris has been doing with his daughter. But Chris in his day job does financial planning. So you know, this is a real break from tradition to Chris, somebody who actually works in kindness and financial services.
Chris Daems 00:52
Combinations. Don't think I've ever had a conversation with somebody that is said to me. Yeah, kindness and financial planning, they come together really well.
Stuart Webb 01:03
Chris, welcome to the podcast, I'm really, really pleased to see you. Listen, you know, we normally start off with how do you help your clients? But you know, how do you help people be kind, I guess is the question I'm going to sort of put back to you.
Chris Daems 01:17
It's a really good question. I hope that we inspire people through the work we do on the podcasts, because, and we've been doing it for five years now, I know sort of podcasting is an interesting thing. It's something I've fell into with an inch with a desire to share stories of people doing good stuff in the world. And when we first started it, it was that case of going, we looked at the numbers, because I am a financial planner. And that's just sort of part of my personality is looking at now than others. And I think
Stuart Webb 01:52
the person but you can't take the person out of the planning.
Chris Daems 01:56
I think I think I'm a business owner as well. Right. So tracking the numbers and understanding what's going on is, is part of it's part of who I am. And it's interesting, because when we first started looking at so the amount of listeners we were getting on the podcast, I think week one was 17. And week two was 12. So we lost listeners in the first week for some bizarre reason. But now we've been doing it for five years, and we've consist you shared stories of people doing amazing stuff in the world. We get 10s of 1000s of listeners who tune in to the kindness project every month, and it's an absolute honour to share the stories of people doing amazing stuff in the world. I absolutely love it.
Stuart Webb 02:44
Yeah, it's a really, really great thing to do. You know, to be honest with your question, there's not enough kindness going around. Is there? That's one of the that's one of the messages that come through to me.
Chris Daems 02:54
Yeah, I mean, I mean, part of its interest in Islam, you know, what you said at the start about that combination between being in financial planning unkindness, even though even though we're in a position where that link might not be obvious, what I do in the day job is help people achieve financial independence so they can live the lives they want. And actually, there's nothing kinder than having that financial clarity, so that you can come and do stuff you want. And often, for a lot of our clients who are typically between 50 and 60, when they start to work with us, part of their life plan moving forward is giving back, because they've been lucky in their life to build a level of wealth. And it's often it's about that next stage of their life being in a situation where they go, Well, how can I help others?
Stuart Webb 03:49
Yeah, yeah, I, you know, you're probably aware a little bit that some of the work that I do, and I'm working with business owners to try and grow their business, but nearly nearly all, I mean, it's not true that every one of them, but pretty much every one of them wants to be or grow their business, because what they want to end up doing is saying, Well, I've got this charity, or I've got these people that I want to help actually what I want to do is liberate enough money from the business at the end of the day to go into, you know, there's only so much time you could spend on the golf course. So you know, they want to do something else. They want to spend some time with some people, they want to be there. I mean, now I've just helped one guy, he's grown his business. And what has he done, he's done two things. One, he's now spending a lot more time in a hospital because as he said, the one thing that you hear about people when they get to this stage in their life is they've spent too much time in the office and he wants to get people out of doing that. And the second thing is that he actually sort of developed devoting some of that money back to helping other people grow their business so he can see them get back out and do good things after they finished with their business. Like financial financial planning is important part of being able to give back.
Chris Daems 04:56
I mean, one of the things I'm really proud of is and again, we talked about that Okay, one of the lucky things I've managed to do is take all of the stories from the podcasts and put them in a book. And that was published late last year, it's doing really well. About 100% of the profits we get from that book, go into our local hospitals, funny enough, some proxies who do amazing work. But for people at the end in the lives and certainly go in, and we've got really good close relationship with our speakers, they've been on the climate project a number of times, and I did the marathon for them in 2021. So we've we've done a lot of work together supporting what they do. And I've been lucky enough to see the work they do firsthand, by going into spirits and meeting the team and stuff like that. And you look at that, and you go, it does give you a different perspective on life, when you realise that sometimes it comes to an end quicker than we think. And sometimes we need to think about the decisions we make with our time, which is the commodity that's most limited, as opposed to the money.
Stuart Webb 06:11
Yeah, Chris, you're absolutely right. I'll put the link to the book down at the bottom of the screen. So the kindness Project book.co.uk, forward slash book, that's the kindness project, book.co.uk, forward slash book can't recommend that everybody just goes and gets a copy of that themselves. Because there's, there are some great, great stories. Chris, you just mentioned something there in terms of time, and I'm sort of constantly aware that time is the one thing that you can't get, you can make more money. You just can't make more time time passes, you know, whether you like it or not. And I'm, I'm constantly aware that, that, you know, I talked to people who own businesses, and they talk about time management ago, time manages itself, whether you like it or not, it passes at 60 seconds per minute, whether you do what only thing you can do is manage your attention during that time. And I think that's one of the things that you're sort of talking about there is it it's about attention isn't it's about people being attuned to what they're trying to do and being and thinking about more what they're trying to achieve with some of the stuff that they're talking about. Yeah,
Chris Daems 07:13
I mean, I mean, for me, and again, this is the planner coming in, coming out. And it's about having a clear strategy, step one, because the amount of people we speak to, like in our professional lives, talk about, I've done the setup this investment, or I've done before we start talking about any of that what the plan, you know, and it goes back to be intentional with your time and look at sort of how we have we do that. And just having been financially clear about where you are, so that you can move on to to where you want to be. And it's interesting, because when I get through it, I'm not perfect. You know, if you've read the book, I tend, I tend to stories about the fact that I am liable to make mistakes like goal averse. And so one story in the book about I travelled with my dad every year, my dad's in his 70s Now, and we do like a little weekend, boys weekend, every year where we go away together. And a couple of years ago, we went to you brought up and I booked a hotel, the hotel Gibraltar and not booked flights and stuff like that flew into Gibraltar airport, got in the cab at Gibraltar airport and said, Look, we'd like to go to the hotel with Gibraltar. It went I can't take you there. Okay, interesting. Why not? Cuz, because sir, the hotel Gibraltar is an interpreter. It's in Spain. And I bear in mind that we manage millions and millions of clients were really good at what we do. Hopefully, we do all that sort of stuff. I don't know anybody else do it, who's booked a holiday in the wrong country, you know, who's put in the wrong place. Now, I thought I'd done my research on Google Maps, it was 10 minutes from the airport, it was just over the border. But one thing I do write about in the book, and the reason I share that story, particularly as business owners, is I think the starting point to be kind to others is also to try and be kinder to ourselves. And understand that life isn't perfect, but also sort of navigate that in a way which allows you to do the best for you and your clients.
Stuart Webb 09:39
Yeah, absolutely. Right. You know, Chris, that's a really interesting. Yeah, a really interesting story to illustrate that because, you know, too often I find business owners who are beating themselves up and, you know, I think you and I both fans as well of the daily stoic, I sort of sit and read, I sit and read that that's the first thing I sort of read pretty much every day is To just centre myself on the fact that there are a lot of things in this world that you cannot control. But the one thing you can control is your reaction to the circumstances. Often we're trying to fight against data, we're trying to control things which are just out of control. We can't control the world, we can't control the weather. But what we can do is decide what we're going to do to react to it and deciding to react to a setback like that. I go, Okay, fine. So we're gonna go on, go in a hotel, that's 10 minutes down the road, but in a different country, we'll make the mess that will make better that will find a good
Chris Daems 10:30
thing. It's about perspective, isn't it? I mean, my dad wasn't happy for money. So I mean, drag it and 74 year old men through them. And the thing is, we tried to get a cat the other end, but we didn't have any euros because I didn't expect to, like need any, because to still use sterling. But we woke up in the morning, it took a while for him to get over it. But they'd say we are now getting international travel every day of our trip. So so it did it did potentially help. But I mean, you've allocated I'm glad you brought out that. If there's one book that I recommend anybody read. It's the daily stoic. It's the book that I read every day. And it's a really interesting discipline that book has around, only read a page or die. I've never done that before. But throughout 2022, I did it. And it really helped my morning routine, and having a perspective in the day. What's your, what's your favourite stoic teaching?
Stuart Webb 11:29
Oh, gosh, I think I was probably getting towards it towards the end. And we started doing it when we were talking about just now which is, which is that that concentration on the fact that you know, I remember very clearly it was towards the end of December, the the momentum, alright, you know, everyone is going to die and you sit there and you think I don't want to think about it, but at the same time, it focuses your mind on and it's so difficult to get across to people who are younger, and I work a lot with students. And you I watched them spend hours debating if they could spend 20 Pence less on this or 20 quid less of that. And you think the time that you're spending debating that you could actually put into something which you're gonna make 20 quid later on the new life. But yeah, just focusing on that, we'll come back to that thing. It is that focus, it's the focus on the right thing, not the wrong thing. People spend too much of their time and I was just dealing with business owner, just before we got into this call, and you know what, he was fretting about something and I was going, let it go. It's just not that important. You know, in the grand scheme of things, when you get to the end of the business life, you're gonna look back and go, What the heck that was about, you know, that was a day of fret wasted because I could have got on with doing what we're doing. It is that focus on, remember, you've got a legacy. Remember, you've got something you're going to leave and make sure what you leave in worthwhile rather than fretting about the money or fretting about the it is it is, you know, you look back and you go, did I have the right relationships? Are people going to look back on me and think I was, you know, a reasonable nice kind person? Or are they going to I can go why was he always constantly worrying about the money? You know, that's, that's, I think, the teacher,
Chris Daems 13:16
and I agree, I mean, the money, what we what we sort of start with is all money is a tool to allow you to live the life you want. Now without money, life can be fairly difficult karmic because it brings worry where you don't need it. But thankfully, the clients who try to start off with their, you know, accumulate wealth and savings, and that's a responsibility insurance we take really seriously are in a position where they've either financially independent or getting there. And ultimately, it's all about relationships. You know, the reason we started the kindness project, and it was really selfish, if I'm honest, the reason the reason I decided to climb this project is she's 19 Now, but she was 13. And I was really worried about maintaining a really relationship with a teenage girl, because what do I talk to the teenage girl about? And having that project, we work on it together, particularly as we, you know, we published every week and record content pretty consistently. It's been a really good anchor to that relationship, you know? And it's inspired, hopefully, you know, she's at uni at the minute and Strathclyde studying journalism, hopefully, that curiosity of helping understand and tell other people's stories has inspired her to do that. But
Stuart Webb 14:43
yeah, and I think it's a great Oh, it's a really great way of maintaining that relationship by I don't know, with my son the relationship revolves around something so much more shallow and sport but I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, it's,
Chris Daems 14:58
it's whatever you Hold on to isn't it when my youngest, it's out because she loves she loves. So it's just a thing, you've got to go where they are.
Stuart Webb 15:11
Now, that's interesting, Chris, I'm sorry, we've sort of gone off on off the kindness project a bit, but actually go where they are, it's really, it's really an important lesson for business, isn't it? Because so often, you know, as business owners, we are not reaching out to where the customer our client is. And, you know, I say this, so often, he sort of alluded to it a little bit, then, you know, we don't add, reach to our customer and try and put ourselves in their shoes nearly enough do and that's kind of where I was sort of thinking, it's sort of some of the kindness project sort of comes into this, we don't actually try and put ourselves in their shoes, we try and sort of hope that they will come to us. But actually, The Secret to Building a business, the secret of kindness is going out and saying, What do I do to put myself in your shoes, and then look at it from your point of view. And actually, that's a good lesson for business.
Chris Daems 15:57
It's a really interesting one, particularly in the business that we're in is a financial planning practice. Because I think we underestimate how scary it is comes to somebody like me, I think in the UK, money's still quite taboo. It we're in a position where having open and honest conversations about money is something we're not, we're not that great at in the UK. But come into somebody like me and saying, I'm not clear about where my financial future lies, and I need your help, is scary. So when we were thinking about how we could help clients in a way that the mic is intimidating, part of the reason we, we put videos on our website, client testimonials and, and things like that is to show that smart, sensible people get the help, they need to get the outcome they want. And it is scary initially, but we're quite friendly. So and if we can show that if we can show that the spirits and speak to a financial planner, getting the help you need is a I was gonna say painless, less pain than you expect. Then hopefully, more people will then get get out they need to achieve their goals. But we, as I said, We Never underestimate truckers, people putting us you know, somebody's worked 2030 years building their business, building their careers, building their wealth to achieve what they want to do in the next chapter of their lives. Trust me and my practice and my team with it is it is a big jump. So think illustrate in the fact that we're decent people who want to do the right thing is important. Now, the kindness project has nothing to do with that. I didn't expect the two to overlap. The kindness project was about a desire to share stories of people doing good good with well, when a time I was looking at the world and going where are all the good stories. But I think it does help for clients to be too to recognise that we believe in doing well and doing good.
Stuart Webb 18:23
Yeah, I agree with you, Chris, there must be something you're doing at the moment to reach out to those clients, giving them that help without sort of going to charging them the earth before you sort of do it. What what do you what's the what's the way that people should should engage with you both as a business owner with you as a person sort of now promoting the kindness that you're talking about in the book?
Chris Daems 18:44
Yeah, so typically, it's interesting. So we're 12 years into the practice now. And we're typically referral one. So all of our clients come through introductions, either through our professional network people who know unlike us, and trust us, or through our existing clients, and that's a really nice position to be in. But I'm always looking to connect with fun, interesting people. One of our roles as a practice is we only work with people we like, that's really important to us, because we want to have a great time while we work in as you say, if we were intentional about who we work with its interest and want to get your perspective on this. How many business owners you do you work with? Are we take on clients they know they're not?
Stuart Webb 19:36
Yeah, boy, you know, that's interesting, because I had a discussion with a with a with, with somebody about that the other day. When I say the other day, it was back 10 days ago. So it's a bit more than a week. It was just sort of the turn of the between the Christmas and New Year period. And they were basically saying, you know, I have problems, and I just sort of went through and then it's a quiet period. Let's just spend, I spent, I spent a couple of hours and when let's go through all the current customers you've got and just sort of ask the question, are they making your profit or not? Absolutely every single one he basically Terminator are they're difficult. I don't make much with them. They're difficult. And I looked at him and I said, Why do you have these customers? Yeah. Anyway, I couldn't do without him and I went, are you having fun with them? No. Well, what's the point? Well, you know, they might be profit. And we've just proved that to have those losing money, working with people that are losing your money, and the fear of letting go the fear of saying no, I don't want to, because there was this, but they might produce better results in the future when the evidence from history is that they won't. And if the only business just to hope you're in business, just to sort of expect some miracle, you're in the wrong business. So my advice to him was start start basically quitting clients just turn around, say, sorry, your behaviour is not what we want. We're not interested in working with people like you, you can change your behaviour or, or we're firing him. And he looked at me and said, couldn't possibly do that. And I went, I don't think we're gonna be able to work together, because that's my attitude. My attitude is not to turn around and work with people who, frankly, you're gonna cost me more effort than I'm gonna get
Chris Daems 21:14
out of it. Yeah, yeah. And I get positive. I get why it's difficult, right? Because I've been there in terms of the the sort of my journey as a business owner in the first couple of years not being able to do that. And then getting to a point where I go, Well, why am I why am I doing that? Brian? Brian's obviously pro just commented side hope he's not the strategy. I agree with that. I mean, it's, it's having that having that clear plan, and having the difficult conversations when clients aren't working with you. That's the bit that I think a lot of business owners avoid.
Stuart Webb 21:52
Yeah, absolutely. Right. Chris, I mean, I've taken up far too much of your valuable time. So I'm just going to very quickly get to the sort of the final question I've got for you, which is, you know, I've asked you some questions. You've asked me some questions. But there must be one question that we haven't yet sort of asked. And I know we sort of veered into this a bit. So you know, what's the what's what some of our sort of strategies, but what's the what's the one question that I should have asked you, perhaps about the kindness project, perhaps about financial planning, perhaps about life itself? But which one? Would you like me to have asked, which I haven't asked yet?
Chris Daems 22:21
Well, firstly, let me say you say, I've really enjoyed it's been a short chat, but I've really enjoyed our conversation today. And thank you for helping me promote the book.
Stuart Webb 22:31
We're gonna push this out, Chris, you know what I will get out of that with but yeah, I think it's great book. I think it's worth everybody getting a copy.
Chris Daems 22:39
Yeah. I mean, I mean, thankfully, the sales have been, uh, been pretty decent so far. The more we can raise space, the more I'll be happy. And one thing I do want to mention on the book for us to talk about the question is we've got a event at NSX in the middle of Feb. So it's a bit of a light book launch slash celebration event. We'll share that with everybody. If you're if you're in the area or you want to travel down, we should have a really good turnout help us celebrate the impact of the book. One thing one thing that I think we could have explored more is reading material, because I think the starting point was when people were building their financial plan is self education, right? You know, what can I learn to learn to empower myself with before actually come to speak to a professional, and there's a few books number one is happy money by Elizabeth Dunn, talks about the fact that spending money can make us happy, but spending money on certain stuff makes us happier than others. So that's a really interesting book to read. Wellbeing by Tom Rath is another good one. That's all about looking at all aspects of well, being not only financial, the ultimate Millionaire is one of my favourite books by David Bach. And interestingly, the daily stoic I definitely recommend that in all aspects of your life reading the daily stoic is worthwhile.
Stuart Webb 24:13
Can I Can I just because I we've just talked a little bit about sort of daily routines progress on I don't know, as I said, one of the first things I do is get up and I read the Daily stoic, but I also have a routine that means that the one of the first things that I do in the morning is actually read myself in the way that you've just discovered. I'm just going to show you the book that I'm currently reading that's, that's on my desk. So that's, that's a really that's a good book that I recommend. I take the other one that I've got, which might surprise you. But that is absolutely brilliant. Anybody who hasn't read that book will know you're not expected that to be a really good business but but it's a brilliant business, but because it's about people. It's about how you manage to get inside the head of somebody and you You know, we just talked about it too often business is not about try, I'm going to try and put these down without locking everything down and show off to business owners are not thinking about the people are they? They're not thinking about the, the, you know, how do you make somebody's you know, happy in their life. And I said this to a business owner recently I turn around said, he said to me, I'm afraid of selling and when everybody's afraid of selling, we're all afraid of rejection. But I'll tell you what. Yeah, I like that from Howard Bullock is another financial advisor, which I'm going to do. So we'll put that up in a minute. But you know, the one thing that I keep saying to people about selling is, if you've got a solution to their problem, and you've understood their problem properly, if you just reach across the desk and say, Do you want help, they will buy it from you, you don't sell a solution to anybody, you, they will buy it from you. So to be honest with you work with the people you like and just offer them help, you'll be surprised.
Chris Daems 26:01
And interestingly, I mean that our approach is, it's got to be when you're ready, you know, and sometimes that element of speed somebody initially and then not being ready yet, doesn't mean they don't need your help sometime down the future. The amount of times clients have come back when they've gone. The pains got too much. Now I need to get financially cleared to go to the next stage in my life. It's it's an interesting model.
Stuart Webb 26:26
Chris, this has been a really fabulous discussion. Thank you so much. I am very aware of how valuable your time is. Look, everybody go get this book, go get the kindness project. Book. It is it is it is it is an interesting, but it is not your standard business book. Except it is. So if you see what I mean. Chris, I wish you all the success with that. I'm just gonna just gonna, just gonna put one. One final thing up if you would like to get onto our mailing list so that you get an email on a weekly basis about who I'm talking to on the podcast this week. Really interesting conversations like this. So you can join us we've had people today, putting comments up and talking about the sort of comments that people like interesting people like Chris, we only have interesting people on this podcast, we don't have any wasted time. That's the link to get on, which is TCA dot FYI, forward slash subscribe, that's TCA dot FYI, forward slash subscribe, Chris. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us. I'm just gonna play the outro so that we finish this off, and then I'll make sure that we get out we really helped you to promote the kindness project, but because Thank you, no problem at all. Chris, thank you very much.
Share this post