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Purpose powers Profit

Episode 13 of Better World Leaders, with transformational accountant Harvee Pene.

Harvee is the Co-Founder of Inspire Accountants – Accountants Who Change Lives, a TEDx Speaker, Author and all-round transformational dude who has been recognised as one of Ten Outstanding Young People in Australia.

In this episode we discuss in so many ways the meaning of life. Or at least, how to lean into the toughness of life in order to learn, grow and find meaning. In particular, we look at the journey of discovery to find a greater purpose than yourself in your work and through your career – in Harvee’s experience that as an accountant his opportunity is to change lives and enable businesses to become forces for good.

He has come a long way from a under-privileged upbringing in New Zealand to founding and leading a company regularly recognised as one of Australia’s Top100 businesses – Inspire Accounting. Having recognised an inclination to do more and to change the world, the way he chose to realise that was to confront a life-threatening cancer and focus his life and energies on a greater cause in response to this questions – If today was your last day, would you be happy with what you’re leaving behind?

His response to this question was to embrace the call to reach beyond his own success, and the success of his clients and to do good and inspire others to become forces for good themselves. This shifted his life mantra from YOLO to YODO, from You Only Live Once to You Only Die Only. We get to live everyday, and in doing so how can we inspire before we expire!!!

The question that we then go on to explore in depth is how to do this, how to maximise your contribution and the inspiration this brings to the world. For Harvee, this involved first achieving two goals – to save his clients $10million in combined tax savings, and to give 10million days of live changing access to clean water and sanitation to the worlds poorest people. What he found from a business perspective was that the more good they achieved in the world, the better they did as a business – motivation was higher, team engagement was higher, productivity was higher and all manner of client processes and outcomes saw huge improvement.

Having achieved both of these initial goals, he’s now more than doubled down – aiming to achieve the seemingly impossible task of giving 1billion days of life changing help.

One of the ways Harvee is progressing towards this goal is by launching (along with Better World Leaders very first guest, Paul Dunn) a global network of ‘Accountants for Good’, to connect and enable accountants everywhere to act as forces for good in our world.

Key messages from this episode;

  • Life is tough – prepare yourself for a walk in the park – Jurassic Park!
  • Make every opportunity to make your legacy one you will be proud of. Ask yourself, if today was my last day, would you be happy with what you leave behind?
  • All business have the potential and the opportunity to be a force for good
  • Accountants can change lives, and if you’re in business anywhere, so can you if you chose to focus on contributing to a purpose higher than yourself
  • That purpose powers profit, engages teams, engages customers and makes leadership more impactful
  • We have the opportunity to change from viewing our fellow practitioners in any area as competition, and shift to making them collaborators, and by sharing what we’re doing and what’s working, to make a live changing contribution.

Get in touch with Harvee via any of these points of contact;
www.harveepene.com

Additional resources mentioned in our conversation.

  • T-0 app – here
  • Harvee’s TEDx talk here

As always, great thanks and appreciation to the team who contributed to bringing Better World Leaders to you;

To Brendan Ward for production of all audio recordings and composition and performance of original music throughout each episode.

To Cooper and the team at RadioHub studios for technical support and creative guidance during the episodes that are recorded face-to-face. You can find out about Radio Hub’s services here – https://www.radiohub.com.au/

To NokNok Studios for website design, hosting and advice. Find out about NokNok’s awesome services herehttps://www.facebook.com/NOKNOKstudios/

To Cirasa Design for logo and site graphics – Find our about Cirasa’s inspiring work here