Advanced Tax Strategy Most CPAs Never Discuss

Sharon Galluzzo: The profit doesn't happen by chance, it happens by design. Let's dig in on this podcast. We talk a lot about strategies, systems, consistent sales, and we really dig into sort of the left brain side of what it means to have a profitable business. I really do focus on structures and, and systems.

Being a profit strategist, that's kind of my wheelhouse. And the less often we've talked about something else that I think is becoming more and more and more important in our business lives, and that is the topic of connectivity, being connected to one another in this AI economy. Whenever AI is coming in, and it can do so much in our businesses, we still need to be having that human connection to one another, so let's face it. I mean, AI is everywhere, whether it's here to stay or it's a passing fad.

Right now, it is absolutely everything. And AI can do so much for you. It can save so much time. AI can write an email for you, it can build a quote, it can do all kinds of things that that you need done.

It can generate content, it can take meetings for minutes, and and compile all of your notes. It can help you work faster, but what AI can't do is keep that human connection, because let's face it, people buy from other people. I know it's increasingly common for us to buy things on our devices, right? You'll see an ad, and, oh, that looks super cool, or I can use that, that'll make my life easier, that'll help me with my diet.

Oh, that's a really cool thing for my pregnant daughter. And we are interacting with the device, however, more often than not, those ads that we are responding to have a human face to them, and sometimes that face is an AI-generated face. However, whenever we are looking for clients, when we are building our business, when we are building that relationship, it is a human to human relationship. People buy from other people that they know, like, and trust.

People will make a referral to your business because they did business with you and had a good experience. Teams stay in businesses because of relationships. I don't know if you've heard this, but in a business setting, whenever you are, when your employees are working for you that they will leave a job that they love because they have a manager that they cannot stand, and they will stay in a job that maybe isn't the most amazing thing they've ever done. However, they will stay because of the relationships, because of the thing that you've built together, I've had employees like that, where the interaction of working together, of us being a team, was the thing that kept them there.

Relationships and human connectivity is huge in everything that we do, even in business to business interactions, those decisions are still made by human beings. So, it isn't just a numbers game. We talk a lot about it, is a numbers game. It is also a relationship interaction.

I know that whenever I have been in businesses that I love to shop in, there was a particular boutique in our downtown that I would go and, and look and look through the racks all the time. I would go in there frequently, even if the inventory hadn't changed, because when I walked in the door, they said, "Hi, Sharon, how are you? What's going on? What's new?

They knew my name when I walked in the door. They knew my family. They knew what was going on in my life, because we had a human connection, and it made me more willing and more excited about doing business with them. And increasingly, as we are going into this economy, where machines are doing a lot of the, the copy, a lot of the words, a lot of the interactions, there is a loss of that human feeling.

I was talking to someone the other day and. AI came up, and what they said to me was everyone sounds the same. Everyone is using the same tools, so the same voices are coming back, no matter what you put into the device, whatever you put into that particular model. If everyone is using that, then everyone becomes the same, the same sound, and it becomes homogenous, and everyone sounds like everyone else.

So, what do we do? How do we break open and be show our human face, along with, you know, the AI is really good at writing copy. The AI is really good at consolidating our thoughts and putting them back out to us. So, what do we do?

You know, the AI cannot build genuine trust. It can't. You need another human being to build that trust. It can't read the temperature of a room, if you walk into a room and you start talking and you get a vibe, and you're like something is different about this room, or you walk into a room prepared to talk to a bunch of people wearing suits and ties, and, and you know, very formal, and you walk in and everybody's barefoot wearing T-shirts, AI can't, can't adjust for that.

It can't walk into a room and see, oh, I need to be a little bit more casual or I need to be a bit more polished in what I say. It can't read a room, that's what we are for. It cannot create the experience of being truly seen. Have you had that experience where you met someone, or you talked to someone, or you were in a space, and someone on the stage, or someone who was giving a presentation to you to buy something, made you feel completely and fully seen.

A machine can't do that. That is a human to human thing that we need. There is something about us human beings that we have a presence, we have a spirit, we have an electricity that a machine doesn't have a machine has a different kind of electricity, we have a, we just have a spark, and, and that spark, when we come in contact with another human being, just makes the difference, it makes all the difference in the world. So we want to encourage that spark, that human connection, so you know, what do you do?

How do you show up and be your authentic voice, be that little quirky-ness that you have? How do you show up that way and still be professional in business? My biggest advice, my, if the biggest takeaway, if you can take from this podcast today, is be authentically you, don't be somebody that you're not. The problem with creating a, a persona or a face of the business that is very unlike you is that once people connect with that version of you, you must maintain that mask, you must maintain that.

I cannot tell you how many stories I have heard of famous people who created an image. I believe that Lady Gaga has said this, that she came with this persona, she came out with this, this character, this character, character, and caricature of herself, that was Lady Gaga, but Stephanie, the human being, is not Lady Gaga. There are a lot of entertainers who have created on stage personas that are different from who they are in real life, and once the public connects with that persona, you have to maintain that persona, so unless you want to have that experience and be put on that specific face of the business and maintain that continually, because if you don't maintain it, that will break trust, because now you've shown up in a different way.

Start off just being you. If you are a person who loves Pokémon cards, it's okay to talk about it. It's okay to have Pokémon cards and wear Pokémon T-shirts, depending on where you're going, it's okay to dive into who you are as a person, as well as a business owner. Myself, I don't know if you've ever noticed, but in the back of my videos, sometimes, if the camera is wide enough, you can see my Wizard of Oz collection, that is my thing that I.

Love that lights me up, and I will bring that into what I do sometimes, and nothing that I've built precludes me from having that as part of my identity. So be yourself if you are a really quiet person. If public speaking is difficult for you, if you are somebody who just struggles to be the face of the business, and you do need to be the face of the business, you can be quiet, you can be subtle, you can speak at a slower pace, you can do whatever you need to do to be authentically you.

You don't have to be me. You don't have to talk fast, and you don't have to talk loud, and you don't have to be in your face. You don't have to be that. If that's not who you are, that for me is part of my personality.

I am big and loud, and I talk fast, and I love that part of myself, and I do bring that into my business. So, whenever you are on a podcast with me, you'll experience me this way, and when we work together, you, when you see me on a call or a Zoom workshop, you're going to see the same person. I'm not showing up in a different way, I'm bringing my personality, my humanity into the space, so that people can see who I am and connect with me that way, and that is a really powerful part of what your business persona is.

I know a lot of people have, instead of or in addition to business brands, they have personal brands, and your personal brand goes even deeper into this, whoever you know, uniqueness of who you are, this originality. There is only one you on planet earth, no one else can be you or be the person that you are, and AI can't be that person for you either. So, embrace who you are. If you have, you know, if, if you are someone who is, you know, very technical, you like to get into the weeds of technical stuff, and you like to talk tech.

It's okay to do that. Now, you can't necessarily do that in every conversation, because you might lose people. However, you can bring some of that into your conversation. If you want to talk about, you know, really technical things, you could start out saying something that's very technical, and then step back and explain what you mean in plainer, regular person English, or whatever language you speak, speak the common language again, so that they can take the journey with you, because they'll love that you are technical, they'll love that you get into the weeds on things if you don't speak only in that language.

If they're not a tech person too, if they're a tech person too, you are golden. You can keep going and going and going. It's magnificent when you find someone who speaks the same language as you, but you really just be authentically who you are, it's so much work to try to be someone else, to try to put on a mask, and then have to maintain that mask. Now that being said, there are some things within your industry that you will have to be, you know, they're, they're, you know, things that you need to do to be taken seriously or be respected in the space.

So, you always want to be cognizant of those things, keep those things in mind, but they don't have to drive who you are and your personality and how you show up, and when you show up as yourself, when you are are authentic, when you are true to who you are, you will naturally, without having to work for it, create and build connections with other people. Connection isn't luck, connection is intentional and it is easy and valuable, and will bring you more of what you want when you actually are being authentic and making that human connection.

So, how do we, you know, strengthen that connection whenever we're talking to other people. The first thing that you can do, and this is something that I will admit I struggle with a little bit, because I'm very, very literal. When someone tells me something, my brain goes in and it starts the filing system, and it goes and it puts it in this little box over here. Here, and so I go, oh, okay, that's what you told me.

I have a deposited it in the box, and I now have that information. And something that I am getting better at is getting curious when someone tells me something, I am learning to ask more questions. Oh, that's really interesting. What did you mean by that?

Or tell me more about that. Or ask a follow-up question if it's, you know, they say something and there's a natural follow-up question, you can ask the follow-up question. Asking more questions actually enables the person that you're talking to to feel heard and feel seen, because they didn't just give you information and you went away and put it in a box, but you're now interacting with them, you're making a connection, and the second piece of that is to really seek to understand when someone says something to you, you can say, "How you know, tell me more about that.

I want to understand you. I want to understand where you're coming from, that sort of your mindset, instead of saying, "You know, you need to understand me, asking those questions and drawing out that information from them allows you to understand where they're coming from. I know I've told this story before, but whenever we had a storefront, people would come in the door and they would ask a question. It would be a very specific question, and it was almost always, What does this service cost?

And I, myself, my husband, and we trained our employees to get curious and ask them, oh yes, we can definitely do that for you. Tell me about what you have. What's the story behind that? Where did you find it?

Tell me more about that thing, and that act of asking questions created a connection, and people, whether they did business with us or not, were felt connected, felt heard, and seen, and when they left, they were talking about us in a positive way, because we had a genuine connection. The second thing that you can do to sort of strengthen connection, whenever you are interacting with your potential clients, your clients, people who've already done business with you, while you're doing customer service, is to be fully present to stop everything and give that person your full attention.

If you have a phone in your hand, put it down, turn it upside down. If it's not something urgent that it, that you, that can't wait a few minutes, put it down, connect with them, be fully present. If you can bring all of the pieces of yourself into the room with you at while you're talking to someone, whether it's by phone, whether it's on Zoom, whether it's in person, when you are talking to someone, if you can be fully, fully present, they, it, the, they will feel that connection.

Your interactions will be better. Your business will be stronger, because you are actually present at that moment. I have a pet peeve, if you will, and that is when I'm specifically, when I'm deeply engrossed in something, when someone interrupts me, it's, it's, you know, it's like nails on a chalkboard, it's a very.. I have a physical reaction to being interrupted, and I had to train myself to not be that way in my business, and that if someone came into the store, if someone called on the telephone, if someone was reaching out to me, if someone was in front of me, and I still do this today, I stop everything, and it wasn't always easy to stop that interruption, right?

So, what I would do was, when it was particularly when it was phone call, was easiest to train on a phone call, when the phone would ring, I would go, and then I would stop. I would take a deep breath, change gears, then I would answer the phone, and because I practiced it every single time, instead of taking 10 seconds, it was almost instantaneous. So you can train yourself to be present with the person that you're speaking with. You can make eye contact now.

I will give you a caveat here on making eye contact as a literal person. When someone told me about making eye contact, I would lock eyes with. Person and never let my, my sight leave them, and I would stare at them, and for a lot of people that makes them feel great, that you and you are locked eyes, you are totally connected with them, and then there are some people who that becomes too much, it's it's it's too intense, it's too intimate, so take cues from the person that you're talking with, make eye contact, and, and make sure that they are comfortable with that.

If they, you know, stop making eye contact with you completely, it's maybe a little too much, but you can make eye contact with them, and you know, make sure that you blink, and you can look down and look back up, but making them see be seen eye to eye is a really powerful way to make a connection, and then the third thing about being fully present is going to be a little bit hard, because of the way that we are designed, because of the way that we are in our society, whenever there's a conversation going on, we are always listening for our turn to speak, so we're listening to them, and we're formulating the cool thing, funny, expressive thing that we're going to retort back to them, so that we can be clever or we can be helpful, and we don't fully listen when you are listening to someone else.

Be fully present, listen to hear what they're saying, and not to respond, because if you are listening halfway and you don't actually know what they're saying, you could actually answer them in an incorrect way, you might be answering a question that they never asked, so make sure that you're listening fully, that you're listening to hear and understand, and not just listening to respond. And then the third piece of being connected with our businesses is following through. If you say that you were going to send an email, send the email.

If you say you're going to do some research and get back to them, do the research and get back to them. Follow through on what you say, because that is a part of the trust. Whenever you make an agreement with them, even if it's just a verbal agreement for something like I'll send you an email later that's an agreement, and if you don't follow through, that will break the trust. Here's a little tip on making promises to your clients, your potential clients, your vendors, people that you're working with.

If you don't want to do something, don't offer that thing. Don't say, "Well, yeah, I'll do research and, and I'll give you numbers, and I'll get back to you on that. If that's not something that you really want to do, and they haven't asked for that, you don't have to over promise something that you really don't want to deliver, so be aware of what you're, you know, what you're offering when you're talking to someone. One of my clients would set, would was talking to me, and she was like, "Oh, I've got to do this research, and I gotta take this in, I gotta do the numbers, and I gotta get back to them, and it's just, it's just so much work, and I just don't want to do it.

And I said, well, did they ask for that? She goes, no, no, no, I was just trying to be, give really good service, and, and be proactive, and, and think ahead, and I was like, well, don't, don't offer that if you don't want to do the work, if you do promise something, make sure that you follow through, make sure that you are find a way to remember details that they shared with you. Me, for me, I am constantly writing notes. I'm writing notes with my hand on a piece of paper and a pen, not necessarily typing.

There's nothing wrong with typing, but for me, the using more of my senses, my sense of touch, my sense of sight, my sense of sound, my speaking. By using as many senses as I can, I will remember details better, and I have it written down, so that when I talk to them again, I can look back over my notes and go, oh, this was the detail, these were the things that we talked about. Now, I do have a pretty good memory, and sometimes I remember it without the notes. However, I speak to a lot of people, so I can't always rely on my memory.

So, here's a trick that you can try: remember one thing about that person, one thing, one personal detail. I worked at a university, my actually my alma mater, I worked there, and I worked very closely with the president of the university, and he was an amazing guy, really knew everybody, remembered every. Buddy and I watched how he interacted with many of the people around him, and what I figured out was he remembered one personal salient fact about that one person, and every time he saw me, because he saw me when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, so it was very evident that I was about to have a child, and that I did have a child, and I continued to work, and so every time he saw me, he would ask about my daughter.

There was a custodian. Every time he saw that custodian, he asked about a very specific thing, and it always generated a really interesting conversation, and it made everyone feel that despite the fact that this man was a president of a university with 1000s of students and 1000s of employees and tons and tons of board members and everybody that he had to interact with, and he always knew something personal about everyone, because he chose one thing that is a tip that you can try and see if remembering one thing about everyone you meet, instead of trying to remember everything about everyone you meet, will not help you have a really good connection with people, and then finally, as you're interacting with people, build those small, build those small moments of trust, those things where you return the phone call you promise to make them, you give them the information that you, they asked for, they ask you a question, and you have the information that they need.

You have, because of your expertise, you're able to answer that question and meet that need in a deeper way. Build those small moments of trust, and these are all things that build that human connection, because we are humans, and we are doing business with humans, and even though we're using technology to make those things easier, there is still that magnificent power of the human connection. And let's bring it back to business. When you have your strong relationships, they are going to make referrals for you.

They are going to continue to do business with you. Like I used to go back into that boutique over and over and over again. It was my favorite place to shop. It wasn't that I didn't shop somewhere else, but I was always going to go back to them because of the strong relationship and connection we created as humans.

There is the loyalty that is built by those, like we said, the small moments of trust. Building those small moments of trust builds the loyalty, the loyalty that keeps them coming back, the loyalty that enables, or that encourages them to tell others what you do, and recommend you, and to build your referral network with you. It gives you collaborations when you have these connections. People want to do business with you in a wider way.

I always say, I don't have competition, I only have collaborators. No competition, collaborators. When you have collaborators like I work with with Janet, she was when I did my, my, my offer the other day. She is a bonus on my offer because she does something that I don't do, and we have connected as human beings, and we like each other so much, and we really vibe on what we do for business owners.

She is now part of my collaboration, because we had that human connection, and of course, the bottom line, the big big deal of that human connection, of the collaboration of bringing together that connection as human beings is the core of trust, the trust that is built through human relationship far exceeds what AI can do for you, because an AI isn't okay, I'm gonna say sometimes not trustworthy. Sometimes these platforms will say things that are not accurate. They will give you information that might not be totally correct.

You always need to verify what you're getting from AI, whenever you're, you know, you're getting that information back because they are built to create an in a relationship with you and they want you to continue to use them, they want to flatter you, they want to make sure that you are continuing to use them, so that that real basis and foundation of of. Trust is not, not there with AI, so the trust is between the human beings, you know. Revenue is important, profit absolutely matters, but behind every sale, every referral, every opportunity, and every thriving business is relationship, so I encourage you this week to work on those relationships.

You know, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this whole thing, like what.. what is.. what about what we talked about on this podcast today really popped for you? Was really like, oh, that was an aha moment.

Yes, connection, that's the piece that we need to maintain in this AI frenzy, where everyone is, you know, looking towards their computers and not necessarily out towards the eyeballs of other people. Send me a message, let me know what you thought, and if this podcast really resonated with you, I would love it if you would share it with someone else. Share this podcast with them to encourage them to, you go ahead and utilize the AI if you would like to, but understand that beyond, underneath, above, and around all of that, AI is human beings, and we need connection, we need relationship, and we need, above all else, trust.

So, remember to build with clarity, grow with intention, and the stronger your business becomes, the more impact you can make. I'll see you next time. Unknown: Bye.