Today's Guest

Paul William Davis hails from County Dublin, Ireland, and he is the Founder and CEO of The Genius Code. As an awarded consultant with three bestsellers under his belt and a diverse background of expertise, Paul is on a mission to help individuals discover their true life's purpose and reach their fullest potential. When you passionately embrace your calling, you become determined to overcome any obstacles or challenges in your path. Businesses are more likely to succeed when their owners are aligned with their core motivations. If you're like many, you may not have yet unearthed your unique source of inspiration in life. Some of us may even reach retirement feeling unfulfilled. Paul shares how unlocking your Genius Role can create a profound transformation in both your personal and professional life.

Resources Shared

• Find Your Life Purpose | What to Do In Life | Life Purpose
• Business Development, Staff Engagement, Life Purpose
• PaulWilliamDavis.com | LinkedIn
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:

Hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street. This week we're in for something different. We're tackling the subject of your why. Why are you doing what you're doing? What's your life's purpose, and how should you apply that to your business? Our guest is Paul William Davis. Paul is a renowned business growth consultant, sought after speaker, intuitive personal advisor with a passion for empowering professionals worldwide to unearth their unique genius and lead in their field.

Paul's located in county Dublin, Ireland, just outside of Dublin. He partners with the international business owners, CEOs, founders, executives in transition, et cetera, to provide crystal clear guidance, direction and purpose for their lives and businesses. What should you, our listeners get out of this episode? Paul really tries to identify the core elements that bring joy, meaning, and personal growth to your life. And his approach combined with decades of experience has transformed countless struggling businesses into multimillion dollar success stories, we'll get into that. Maybe you'll be interested in taking his online course. He says we'll help you go from feeling lost and frustrated to confidently knowing the direction you're meant to take. So Paul, excited to meet you, lots to talk about. Let's dive in. First, just tell us a little bit about your background and how you got here.

Paul William Davis:

Yeah. Well, I originally trained as a management accountant, so that's my career path that I took and throughout my whole career, what ended up being was that I would go into companies and I would help them turn around financially. I got known in Ireland as being hugely successful in turning companies around very, very quickly. So my average was six months in turning company around, and I'd lead the company then from through higher levels of growth and to scale the actual companies themselves. So after my career and I got my examinations and all that kind of set of things and had experience in every single industry sector, I set up my own business consultancy in 2001. So a little over 20 odd years ago. And it was primarily aimed at small and medium-sized businesses, with the whole focus of helping them to grow and scale their business.

So the tagline for one better word, or the USP as we refer to as the industry, and you'll be familiar with that, Gordon, is I help people get more clients, more fees, more time. And that's really the three constraints that people have. So my niche when I started off was accountants, purely because I'm an accountant myself, but that extended into quite a few other niches in professional services. But I've also been involved in large scale companies, government organizations, NGOs and so on.

But what I actually found was that I can work with a business and very, very quickly, understand what their constraints are and what needs to be happening in order for them to develop and grow. But if we don't work with the individuals within the company, and primarily the business owners is typically within small, medium size business, from their own drivers, or what's going to literally get them jumping out of bed in the morning or to literally where they're going to get joy, fulfillment, that sets for life.

If we don't work in that aspect of it as well as the business systems, the business doesn't perform as well as it can do. So over the last number of decades, I'm 55 years of age, there's a part of me that has always been looking to understand what are we here for? What's our purpose in life? What's the meaning of life? What's all those philosophical questions that people typically ask themselves and what drives people? So drilling down, right down into human behavior and human nature. So now what I've done is I've developed my own methodology in relation to finding those elements for individuals. I debunk an awful lot of things that are out there in the mainstream, and I can share the reasons why they're not completely 100% accurate. So now I combine the systems of finding out what actually drives an individual, what gives them purpose, meaning, fulfillment, and then we structure the business around those elements, and that's where they achieve exponential growth.

Gordon Henry:

So maybe it would be useful to provide an example. So I'm a guy who runs a bicycle shop or I make pizzas for a living, or maybe I'm a consultant myself of some sort, and I help other businesses succeed. So you come along and say, "I can help grow your business by finding your why." How do you apply that to my bicycle shop or my pizza making shop? I mean, I'm just geeking out a living, right?

Paul William Davis:

Yeah, so most business owners, typically small business owners, they create a business because of either it's a passion or it's they want to make money because it pays the bills, pays the mortgage, pays the rent, and so on. But what you'll find typically is that they'll go through a feast and famine cycle. So when things are really, really tight, they put all their effort into the business in order to try and generate the business, market the business, get more clients, get more customers and all that kinds of things. But as soon as the money starts to come in and they've done all the marketing and things are happening, then the foot gets off the pedal or gets off the gas, as you would say in the US, and then they go through a famine cycle because they're not innately driven to achieve what it is that they're here to achieve.

And it's funny that you should pick a cycling shop because you can probably see behind me, I'm into aviation. So I've tried all different types of aircraft flight. Even last year I did a biplane Ming walk. So my son asked me, you paid to stand on the outside of the wing as opposed to getting the seat inside the plane. That's the kind of thing that I do. But if you go back to the Wright brothers, they started off, not many people know this, but the Wright brothers in 1903, were the ones that had the first flight. It lasted 12 seconds, did 36 meters. It was the very first flight. But in those 12 seconds, they changed the course of history. And what they invented is still applicable to aviation as of today, even space aviation. But they actually started off, believe it or not, in a print shop. That's what they started off doing.

So they would print local newspapers and all that kinds of things and local flyers for businesses. They then moved to and they opened up a bicycle store, and it was a bicycle store that literally was their business. The aviation, if you asked them, which they were asked, and Orville actually said, "We do this for fun." The aviation side was the fun part, because they were innately driven to find out, and their quest, and I call it a quest, their quest was how do we fix this flying problem? That's the problem that they were trying to solve. So where people and a lot of business owners, and I've seen this in business consultancy side and business coaching side, a number of years ago, people started to come out with this message in terms of find your why. And if you find your why, well then that will bring you an element of purpose or meaning or fulfillment in your life, in your business.

However, here's the mistake with that. First of all, people try and figure out consciously using their conscious mind, what their why is. And the premise of the question is, why is it that you do what you do? Now, if the Wright brothers were to apply that question to their print shop or to the bicycle shop, it would've been the wrong why, just as much as if people were to apply their why to what their current business is, it's going to be the wrong why, because they're consciously trying to work it out. But what they're currently doing, may not be true in the essence of what they should be doing, meaning they're innate drive of what it is they're to do? The Wright brothers were innately driven to understand flight and to fix the flight problem. So every single individual that I come across and have worked with over the decades, they have a unique, what I call your genius quest.

And your genius quest is that quest to find a solution to a problem that has been with you since birth, right throughout your whole years. Because the Wright brothers, again, just using that as an example, the Wright brothers started that problem or that quest at the age of seven, and they lasted literally that duration to try and find that problem. The bicycle shop and the print shop was just for one better word, a sideline. It was a mode of generating income. So now what I do when I'm going into companies is that I find out four elements of what drives them in innately, and what drives them innately is aligned to their purpose, what gives them fulfillment, but it drives them, they're innately driven to achieve what is they're going to achieve. And now we structure the business around that.

Gordon Henry:

Okay-

Paul William Davis:

Because your why, your true why, I refer to it as your genius inspiration. Now, inspiration comes from the Latin term, inspirare, which is divine guidance, and you can't refute inspiration because you have an emotional response to something that you're inspired with, so that's what we find. When we map that, now you've got your true inspiration for what it's that you're doing.

Gordon Henry:

So we hear often at college graduations, the speaker says to the graduating seniors, "Follow your passion. What you're supposed to do is follow your passion and that'll lead you down the path." And I always hear that, follow your passion and think, for most people growing up, I know when I was a kid, I either wanted to be a rock star, play guitar, or I wanted to play center field for the Yankees. So if we followed our passion, we'd all be rock stars or musicians, but most of us can't be that. And I often think, "Well, what you're supposed to do really is figure out what you're good at and then put in about 10,000 hours, become successful at it where you can make some money." And very often by becoming successful and making some money, you then find other things about your role that you enjoy. You like the camaraderie, maybe you like the leadership, you like building the company, you like making money, you like travel. There's other things. But we can't all become the lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin, right?

Paul William Davis:

Agreed. And that's one of the problems. So let me put it this way, passions are transient. So there's an awful lot of things that I'm passionate about, but they've nothing whatsoever to do with my purpose and what actually gives me fulfillment. For example, I enjoy jumping out of a plane, let alone flying on top of a plane. So they're passions, they're transient, and most people will turn their passions into a business and they'll try and monetize it and create a business from that. And you'll see an awful lot of professional services and typically coaches that will come across something. For example, you'll get somebody coming out of the corporate world and they've gone through a coaching program. They fall in love with it, because that's what a passion is. They fall in love with it, and then they turn that into their business and try and generate a business from that, or they come across another course.

It could be NLP, it could be a nutrition course, and then all of a sudden, they're pursuing that particular path. But what they find is after a number of years when they come across struggles or challenges, and the business isn't running that well, now they've lost the passion for what it is that they're doing. When you're fulfilling your purpose, again, let's use the Wright brothers as an example, they came across no end of challenges. When you are aligned with your purpose, you don't see them as challenges, you just see them as obstacles that have to be overcome. So yes, you can build a business and put the 10,000 hours in, just as much as when I trained to be an accountant, I could put all the hours in and be really, really good at it, which I am. I can interpret numbers that most people can't, but again, it's not aligned to who I innately am.

When you align everything to how you are innately driven and what literally makes up the inner you, now you are congruent with who you truly are. And there's a reason I use the word genius, because genius, again, go back to the Latin word, gignare, is the innate spirit that you were born with, and every single individual has an innate genius, but unfortunately, because of the way our schooling system is and culture and society, we don't tap into that innate genius. But now we have a way of how we can identify those innate genius elements, and now that develops the career or the business or the past that we're best to pursue.

Gordon Henry:

Do most of us know ROI? Is it sitting inside of me and I should know it, or you help uncover it?

Paul William Davis:

I help uncover it. And most people, again, as I said, when people read particular books over the years, and this message was coming out with finding your why and answer the question, why is it that you do what you do? I'm going to say because I don't like using absolutes, but 99.9% of the time, it's always wrong, but there is a way to find your why, and that's what we help people to discover.

Gordon Henry:

Okay, terrific. So let's get into a little how you do it. First of all, you have a course, right?

Paul William Davis:

Yeah.

Gordon Henry:

Tell us about the course.

Paul William Davis:

So I developed the course, it was released last year, in May of last year. And it's a culmination of all the work that I've done over decades of working with clients to identify the specific questions I need to ask in order to find those innate elements for an individual. So how I work with individuals, if I'm doing it on a one-to-one basis or in a group environment, I'm asking very, very specific questions. And because of, again, I've been doing this for so many years, I'm able to drill down into those questions to get the most fine-tuned answers for individuals. The course now replicates what I do on a one-to-one basis, so it's very, very short videos. And each video, I'm asking a very specific question. And by the time we've gone through all the questions, we've now gathered all the evidence of how somebody is innately driven to fulfill something.

And now with that evidence, now we can say, "Look, that's what your genius drivers are, here's what your genius quest is." I've identified 10 different genius roles, and an individual will play one of those genius roles throughout their whole life. I even have a free online quiz that people can complete. If listeners want to complete it, they can absolutely complete it. They go to my website, which is paulwilliamdavis.com, and they complete the quiz. Now they'll know what their genius role is, and that gives them a huge insight of who they truly are from that perspective.

And the last piece then is their genius inspiration. When you bring those four elements together, now you have what makes up what I call your genius you, which is literally your innate genius. So by answering all those questions, find the evidence, now we know what literally how you're going to maximize your potential, how you're going to increase your confidence, your self-worth, how you're going to operate more from the executive center part of your brain as opposed to your amygdala. The executive center part of your brain is responsive for planning, objectivity, creativity, and innovation. So it's literally bringing an individual to be aligned with who they truly are.

Gordon Henry:

Can the genius or does the genius code always apply to business? If I'm a business person working in that bike shop, does my genius code always apply to business or maybe it's something going to a completely different direction, right?

Paul William Davis:

I've got individuals that have come to me that are either coming up to retirement or close to retirement or have retired, and they're still lacking. A common phrase that people use is, "I just feel empty. I just feel, you know what? There's something more for me to do." And that's where when we discover the elements, now they can align their life out. So it doesn't have to necessarily be applied to a business or a career. When you've got an individual that's been running a business or within a career, sometimes we'll need to alter their career path or we need to change their business slightly, in order to be fully aligned with who they are. Have there been radical changes? Yep, there have been over the years. But take for example, there's one that comes to mind. She's a manufacturer, now, she's running a training company, so two completely different business.

So you can have a radical change like that, but we do it over time. We don't take the old adage, we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We maintain the income stream for the individual and then transition their life around the business. Some people do it very, very quickly. Other people do it very, very slowly, but that's okay because it's where they're at. But as soon as they do it, and it's funny, I get remarks back through emails or messages from clients, and as soon as they become aligned, everything falls into place for them. And the difference it makes for them is huge. And other people, sometimes fear shows up, and that's where I work with people on an ongoing basis, to help them and put the systems in place, to develop and grow their business. So that's how I've used kind of for one better word, my background, to now do the work that I'm doing.

Gordon Henry:

So who's your ideal client? Is it someone who's feeling lost or wondering, or is it somebody whose business is going in the wrong direction? Who is your ideal client?

Paul William Davis:

It's those ones that feel lost, to be quite honest. I've got executives or business owners that are still doing extremely well, but yet they still feel lost. So they have all the cars, the houses, the holidays and all that, but yet they're asking themselves the question, why am I doing this?

It's not the why question. It's more around, I can't do this any longer. There has to be something more to my life than doing what I'm currently doing. So they feel lost. They feel discontent, they feel empty. They feel that there's no meaning or purpose in their life, and that can be from any line of business. My main businesses that I work with are primarily people in professional services. People tend to come from that particular area because again, they're in the service industry and they're more inclined to be asking those questions, what is it that I'm supposed to be doing in life?

Gordon Henry:

Got it. Sounds like your practice requires quite a bit of psychology, I guess I would say, but you're not trained as a psychologist or a psychiatrist. So how did you gain the knowledge or experience or insight to be able to deliver that type of service?

Paul William Davis:

10,000 hours. Yeah, I've been mentored by the best of the best over the world. It's literally, as I said, I'm 55. I started this quest at the age of 12, believe it or not. So not the business side, more around the personal fulfillment side. So I've read so many different books, mentored with so many individuals and so many training courses. I probably have multiple degrees than your stereotypical psychologist.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. Got it. Can you give us one or two success stories of businesses that have come to you, wondering, asking, and who through your efforts have flourished in a new way?

Paul William Davis:

Yeah, no end. Let me give you, I'll answer that question in a few different ways because it depends on what people define as being flourished. So some people say actually, because ultimately what they're coming to me for is they feel lost. So flourishing for them is they love life, they're jumping out of bed and they're really loving life. One individual, she's running a consultancy business, just as I think of her, running the consultancy business. And what you find, Gordon, is that if the person isn't doing well, the business won't do well. So as soon as they are aligned to who they truly are, so she was actually running the consultancy business, but more aligned to her was actually, believe it or not, running the equivalent of, it wasn't a bed and breakfast, but equivalent of a very, very specialized guest experience. And she absolutely loves what she does.

I regularly get texts from her, hence the reason why she jumped into my mind. Financially, she's earned an awful lot more money than what she was doing in the consultancy business. So she's flourishing in all aspects of life. Other one that comes to mind, distribution company, was doing about 3, 4 million when I started with them. Probably, I don't know how many years now it is at this stage, but they're up to double-digit millions of what they're doing. And they are in the process of going global, whereas before they were domestic and all we had to shift was, in some respects, we expanded the range of products and we're getting rid of some of the products, but it's more alignment to what the individual and what really makes the individual tick.

Gordon Henry:

Got it. Paul, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in just a minute. A lot more questions to ask you. Don't go anywhere. We'll be back with Paul William Davis.

Speaker 2:

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Gordon Henry:

And we're back with Paul William Davis. Fascinating conversation about finding your why and how you apply that to your business. So tell us a little bit about what it is like to work with Paul William Davis. What is your style? What should somebody expect in the experience of working with you?

Paul William Davis:

Okay, that's a good question, because funny enough, I actually asked my clients this a number of years ago. And clients will probably describe me as just your best friend that's going to call you out. So I get told significant secrets, that they don't even tell their spouses or anybody else. I've got people that have come to me that have wanted to and have planned or even attempted to check out of life and they wouldn't have told anybody else.

So I'm dealing with that spectrum of individuals right through to some confidential information that, because it's one of my highest values, is confidentiality. But I want to have fun along the way, to be quite honest. I want to enjoy how we work together, but when things have to be done, they know a bit like the school teacher or the school principal, if they haven't done their homework for want of a better word, they know I'm not happy, so let's put that way. But we have a very, very easy going relationship, let's put it that way. And I've got clients that go back years because of the level of work that we do.

Gordon Henry:

Okay. And with your background in accounting, do you also get into the financials of the company? Are you digging in through the numbers? Is that part of the-

Paul William Davis:

Sometimes, yeah. It really just depends on the clients, to be honest with you, Gordon. Some clients will come to me and say, "I'm completely lost. I want to know what is that I'm going to do and what's going to give me a zest for life, or what's going to get my mojo back." So I bring them through a particular process is what I call the pilot's manual. Again, it's just using the aviation term. I call it your pilot's manual, and we identify those four elements of what I spoke about, and then that could be literally just one piece of work.

Next piece of work might be that the flight plan, which is, okay, how do I turn my pilot's manual into, how do I monetize it, how do I turn it into a career or trajectory? And that's ineffective flight plan. And other clients will want me to work with them on an ongoing basis, whereby I'm helping them to literally develop and grow their business, which is now I'm going back to the old world for one bit word of how to get more clients, more fees, more time. Some clients I would drill into the financial aspects with them. The vast majority, I don't have to, it really just depends on where the client's at and what support they need.

Gordon Henry:

Got it. Okay. And if you don't mind me asking, what does it cost to work with you?

Paul William Davis:

To do the course, right now at the moment, because the price went up is 247, that's euros, and then people can do a one-to-one with me that I think off the top of my head, I think it's 497 right now at the moment. If people are working with me on a one-to-one basis, you're typically talking 1500 to go through pretty much the same. Again, that's euros. And if people are working with me on a one-to-one manager perspective, it just depends on how they do want to engage. The vast majority of my clients, because again, there's probably about 25, 26% of my clients are US and Canada, 25% of Ireland, 25% are UK, and then 25% are all around the world. So the vast majority of my clients are virtual, meaning through Zoom, and then a small number of clients. I keep them quite small, I work with on a face-to-face basis, but that'll give you an idea of price points and such.

Gordon Henry:

Got it. Okay. And you began the discussion, you mentioned the quiz online. So can people go through the quiz? Does that cost money or can people-

Paul William Davis:

No, that's completely free.

Gordon Henry:

... just do a certain thing for free?

Paul William Davis:

Yeah, that's completely free.

Gordon Henry:

So they go to paulwilliamdavis.com and find this free quiz and what does that tell them?

Paul William Davis:

So what it does is it identifies what I call your genius role. Your genius role is when it comes to your purpose, it's how you are best to fulfill your purpose. Over the years, I've identified 10 different genius roles, think of it being archetypes. So it's not a personality assessment, it's more aligned to your innate genius role. So an individual will play one of those genius roles throughout their whole life. But again, typically with a business owner, they're wearing multiple hats. So therefore they're not really fully aligned to who they innately are.

So what we do is we identify what their genius role is, but every single genius role has a shadow side and frustration point, and it's those elements that cause self-sabotage. So what people get at the end of it, when they complete the quiz, and it's only whatever, 12 questions I think it is. When they complete the 12 questions, they get sent an ebook specifically for their genius role, and it gives them everything that they need to know about their strengths, what the positives, the negatives, how to build on their positives and so on. It tells them everything that they need to know about their genius role in effect.

Gordon Henry:

Okay, great. Well, I hope everybody who's listening will go to paulwilliamdavis.com and do the quiz and find out their genius role, and maybe that's a way to get started on potentially even working with you. So that's very helpful and I'll be excited to see if we get any comments and whether people have done it. So just in closing, Paul, what's next for you? What's on your roadmap of where you want to take your life and your business?

Paul William Davis:

I am currently trying to finish my fourth book. I published three already, so I'm trying to finalize the fourth one. I'm hoping to get that published by the end of the year. So that's one, I suppose, short-term plan. My next one is literally trying to reach the numbers of people that I intend to reach, because again, there's a lot of misinformation out there in the world in terms of finding your why, completing [inaudible 00:29:05] guide, finding your passions, all the kinds of things, and they don't give them the answers of what people are looking for. So honestly, I'm trying to reach as many people as I possibly can.

Gordon Henry:

Terrific. Well, I really want to thank you for coming on the show, this is a fascinating subject, and I'm going to go take the quiz and I hope other people will as well. And I assume if they're interested in proceeding, anybody can just connect with you online through your website, right?

Paul William Davis:

Yeah, all the resources are there and the course is available there on the website, so they can literally sign up directly for the course. And if people want to find out, work with me on a one-to-one basis, yeah, they can book a meeting that way as well. Yeah, absolutely.

Gordon Henry:

Okay, fantastic. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, really appreciate you joining us today.

Paul William Davis:

Thanks so much, Gordon. Great to be here.

Gordon Henry:

And I want to thank our producer, Tim Olima and coordinators DF Barnett, Daniel Huddleston, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe and please leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it, it helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv, get a free demo at thryv.com/pod and check out our new free product command center at thryv.com. Until next time, make it a great week.

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