EP514: Syvonia Brown - Emotional Intelligence Every Bookkeeper Needs

Spotlight: It could just be not taking on the emotion, apologizing, and, you know, for something that is not your fault, right? The client or customer doesn't want to hear the apology of something that's not your fault. They just want to hear that you understand. They want to be heard. You're listening to the Spotlight Edition of The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Louie Prosperi. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com, the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm Louie Prosperi. Our guest is the Director of Sales, Sage 50 US. Please welcome Savonia Brown to the show. Thank you for having me, Louie. Uh, Savonia, I'm really interested to know a little bit more about you. Uh, it says here you've led teams and you've worked with many clients. And here's something that we don't talk about a lot, but it's integrated in our daily lives when it comes to bookkeepers and accountants is the emotional intelligence of the business. Could you tell us a little bit more about that or what you perceive that to be? Yeah, so to me, emotional intelligence is about being present and confident and showing up, right? Like, showing up as your authentic self and being emotionally available for your customers or clients. So you brought up a couple of things, presence and awareness. How do you do that? Can you give us some little things you talked about? So to be aware and present, what are some of the things that they should do automatically every time they engage?

So I guess self-check-in, see how you're doing for the day is a big thing. Making sure that you're available to pay attention because sometimes we let our own stresses or our own internal situations get in the way. So we have to be able to separate ourselves from that and make sure that we are emotionally available for our clients. So I, I like that, pay attention. I call that active listening. That's my, my term, but I think we're both talking about the same thing. And, and, and bookkeepers or accountants are naturally problem solvers. So I'm pretty sure what you're saying is don't go right into the solution, right? Can you explain how someone should be active listening or pay attention. How do we do that without automatically going into the solution? How