Welcome to Underwithheld - the podcast by accountants and for accountants where we talk about our ubiquitous professional and personal struggles.

Spend some time with me and our colleague Scott Scarano as we chat about sleep. Scott is the owner of an accounting firm in North Carolina and also a host of the accounting podcast, Sons of CPAs aka Accounting High.

You can find Scott at Padgett Business Services and follow him on Twitter at scottscarano.

Timestamps:

[00:00:34] Episode introduction

[00:03:05] Scott introduction - nerves, family legacy in the accounting industry, podcasting, rapping

[00:07:07] Fighting sleep

[00:13:00] Habit developing & tracking

[00:17:50] Why sleep is important

[00:23:00] How employers can help staff

[00:26:24] What employees can do (and more thoughts for employers)

[00:34:08] Conclusion

Resources:

Scott references:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep

https://ouraring.com/

Also see:

https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/

And then, and then you say you know, this happened and you blame, you

know, you almost like you play the blame game on everything else besides look

at, you know, who you're pointing the finger at and it's really, you should be

like, well, I shouldn't have stayed up.

That last night, you know, or I shouldn't have done this instead of blaming this

client or this person did this or, or this, you know, my staff did this and just

kind of point in the finger at everywhere else on why things aren't going.

Right.

And almost always, it starts with, let's see what you did

to contribute to that first.

And I think that, to me, it always starts with sleep starts and ends with sleep.

Hey, this is Alison.

Welcome to under withheld.

The podcast by accountants and for accountants, where we talk about

our ubiquitous, professional and personal struggles, you are not alone.

This episode is a conversation I had with Scott Scarano.

Scott is the owner of Padgett business services and accounting

firm in Raleigh, North Carolina.

You may know, Scott is one of the hosts of the popular accounting podcast,

sons of CPAs, his firm, his podcast, his family, and his personal pursuits.

Keep him pretty busy.

And as we all know, from our own experiences, when we have so much going

on, something has to give for Scott.

This used to be But as you'll hear in this episode, Scott's perspective

on sleep has changed over the years.

He now sees a good night's rest is fundamental to his health.

I personally love sleep and have always embraced it as part of my

own physical and mental wellness.

However, I haven't seen our industry promote this.

As I mentioned in the episode.

I've had countless experiences where long hours were expected

of me, as well as colleagues.

One of the worst instances of this for me was nearly falling asleep.

And the car on the way to work.

The expectation of long hours among other concerns led me to

ultimately start working for myself.

I just didn't know how else I was going to get any meaningful rest.

While lack of sleep and its side effects are likely common among accountants.

I wasn't able to locate any industry-wide resources on this topic.

If you have resources specifically at the intersection of accounting

and Sleep, please reach out to me with those@underwithheld.com.

I will add them to the resources already listed in the show notes,

which include a book entitled why we sleep, that Scott recommends and

a sleep toolkit as developed by Dr.

Andrew Huberman of Hebrew urban lab.

Dr.

Haberman offers several action items that many of us as individuals can

such as avoiding caffeine within eight to 10 hours of bedtime.

In case it needs to be said.

I nor my guest, our therapists, we are not offering therapy.

We may say things that just don't resonate with you.

And if so, that's totally cool.

There's nothing prescriptive here.

Just colleagues talking about an issue we think is important and we hope

talking about it will help someone If something sounds helpful to you

here cool if not just ignore it

welcome to the

Hey Scott.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, Alison, how's it going?

It's going great.

Thanks for being here today.

I get nervous every time.

I'm a guest on anything

Tell me

when you hit the recording now, all of a sudden I'm nervous.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's excited now, you know, you try to mix nervous and excited

cuz it does the same feelings.

Hmm.

anxiety and excitement are basically the same thing.

So, but this is not the anxiety episode we ki we're not gonna talk about that.

Yeah.

Sorry.

I, I didn't mean to bring that up.

Yeah.

Hey, no, no.

All all is welcome.

I imagine there will be an anxiety episode at some

If you haven't had one already, you should.

Not yet.

Not yet.

I think anxiety and accounting go hand in hand.

So

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I'm predisposed to it in all aspects of life.

So something I gotta deal with.

Scott.

Tell us about yourself.

I'll try to relate everything to accounting.

So my grandfather had a CPA firm.

My dad was a CPA, so young, young growing up, my dad was working

at my grandfather's firm and they would get into fights all the time.

My dad would get fired every other week and still just show up

back to work that didn't work.

And my dad didn't really use his CPA after that he went into sales and

then they kind of started their own business and we picked up and they

picked up from New York and moved to North Carolina in the early nineties.

So I've been in North Carolina ever since they've always had their

own business, but they pivoted.

And my grandfather at his CPA firm started a software company within it.

And we're starting to see that a lot more now and now people building up,

building out their own apps, building automations, and selling that.

So my grandfather built a GL back in the day for nonprofits.

And back when with a lot of nonprofit accounting, you

were doing fund accounting.

He built a special GL just for that.

He called it IDs.

Institutional data systems, I think.

And then they this is my grandfather did this back in like

When did he do?

Oh, he sounds very progressive.

Well, he's not alive anymore, but I guess, I guess it

was very progressive for those days.

And he hired programmers and he funded that and built that up.

And then he couldn't do both.

He couldn't run a CPA firm and a software company, so my dad took it over

and that's what they still do today.

Parents, both their company is called array and the software's fast fund and

fast fund is the fund accounting software.

So they're, they're more like competitors to.

Razor edge blackboards systems.

Sage had had one too.

And now people just use QuickBooks for their nonprofits too.

Like it's now they're just competitors.

There's QuickBooks and I guess zero too, but yeah, it's a nonprofit GL,

so that's, so that tech and accounting has always kind of been in my blood.

I've been surrounded by it.

Most of my life.

And I didn't really know that there was an advantage to that until zero

came into the picture with my firm and, and I started to see a lot of

similarities with the way zero did things and the way my parents did things.

So I, you know, this, I don't know if I'm going too deep into that, but

that's, that's kind of like my origin story of how I got to where I am now.

And.

Now I just, I'm a talking head.

Like I don't even do anything at my firm.

I have, I have an accounting firm and, but now I just like talking,

I like talking about this stuff and I have a podcast now, too.

And I just, and now I started wrapping recently, so I'm making raps for business

and accounting people and trying to make that, you know, I'm trying.

Bring a little bit of light into it, a little fun, be a

little bit more entertaining.

I've always wanted to be an entertainer.

I've always, I love attention.

I crave attention in my life, so why not do it in a positive light and people

can learn from it a little bit too.

That's a little bit about me, I guess.

That's awesome.

So you're, you're wrapping podcasting accountant.

that's that's, that's my Twitter thing right now.

I say amateur rapper, cuz I'm not that good yet.

I really like I'm working at it.

I've been writing every day, almost every day.

This whole year I started this year saying I wanted to do one rap and

finish it and record it and release it.

And I've done that.

And now I have like five more that I haven't released yet.

So amateur rapper.

Are actually here today to talk with us about our industry's number one.

Is it, so it was never an enemy to me.

It was always something

No, Nora, I made our industry not, not us as individuals, by the way.

Well though.

No, no, but to, in a way I did fight it and I did think I didn't need it.

And what we're referring to is sleep, which if you're listening to this episode,

you would've heard Allison's intro.

So you, you know, this, this is about sleep, but it's like I

never thought I needed it that much.

I would.

I'd have a lot of caffeine.

I was taking Adderall or I had extra Adderall that I would take if I needed

to stay up or whatever it might be.

I, I take Viv vans, so I didn't really need that much sleep anyway.

Because that keeps you up, you know, it keeps you alert.

So I fought it, but I also felt like I didn't need it.

And I never really had a situation to where I need to sleep.

It was always like I would, I would go maybe.

A week and not sleep the whole night and just keep working tax returns,

review all the work that I needed to do, I would do at night because I was

meeting with clients during the day.

I was, you know, I was helping the team during the day.

I was doing things during the day.

And then I just knew I have extra time.

I all of this time at the end of the day, when nobody's gonna interrupt me,

that was like my, my my sacred time.

You know, some people wake up really.

And their sacred time is early in the mornings.

They're not gonna get any interruptions and I, I could never do that

cuz I would always stay up late.

You can't wake up early if you're pushing, pushing yourself.

As far as you can, when you finally do sleep at two or 3:00

AM you can't wake up early.

Like I, I just never really got into that routine.

So for the longest time in my life I fought sleep.

I was an, it was my enemy and I know we had this conversation.

You have a different relationship with sleep, right?

Like you're you did for most of your life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like

So

sleep is my friend.

I love it now.

It is.

I absolutely love it.

Now this is, I went through a transformation last year,

last two years, really?

Part of its COVID part of its self-improvement part of it's, you

know, now I'm on the other side of it and I realize what I've been missing

my whole life and it kind of excites.

To look forward to the next, you know, I don't know how many years I,

I got left 38, so maybe I got another 40, 50 years or something like that.

Maybe more give or take.

We'll see.

I don't, I said my grandfather was not living anymore.

I don't even know how old he was when he died, but I should look into that.

So that's like, I'm excited.

Like that's sleep to me now is my number one foundational habit.

I can't do anything else if.

Haven't got a lot of sleep and I'm starting to see how

much that can impact me.

Cause I don't have a lot of caffeine anymore.

But I'm, I think I'm going too deep down the rabbit hole.

We gotta, we gotta scope back out a little bit.

So where do you wanna start with this sleep conversation?

You know how it impacts you personally, professionally, either

getting enough sleep or lack of sleep.

Yeah.

So in most, in most cases I never really thought of it as a lack of sleep.

I never really.

Yeah.

Like I, I just would always felt like I was alert enough and I got through

it and I didn't know how cloudy my mind was or how much it impacted my emotions

or how much it impacted my decisions or how much it impacted my anxiety.

There's so many other things that sleep was impacting for me.

My appetite.

Everything else in my life until I started getting it and still

I started getting more sleep.

And then I got it.

It fit like literally and metaphorically, like I got it, but I

was because I was getting that sleep.

And so last year I went through this thing called optimize think they call it heroic.

Now where you kind of work on those foundational aspects of your life.

It was like the masterclass of life.

and, you know, I was working on the three main things was like sleep,

moving, eating, and sleeping.

And if you don't have your sleep under control, you

can't really do the other two.

Like you're gonna make bad choices eating.

You're not gonna have the energy to exercise and you're not gonna be

able to get the benefits of those.

So then you're gonna have medication that kind of fills that.

The medications I was taking was, was helping me with my anxiety.

I was taking for the last, you know, to last year for 15

years, I was taking anti-anxiety medication Coine I was taking.

I, I still do take the Viv vans, but that's, that's a whole nother

thing too, that ADHD is you can get as much sleep as you need and want.

You've already had that episode.

So we don't have to go too far into that, which was a great

episode, by the way, I loved it.

And I could relate to a lot of things that little text was saying on there.

But like, so getting, getting to the point where I understood how much

sleep meant and how much I understood.

I didn't need that medication that took a while too, cuz I was just

trying to improve a lot of different things in my life and trying to get

shit like in the right, you know?

that foundation that was crumbling that was like falling apart.

And I don't know how much it was falling apart, but I

wanted to get my shit together.

Like it just felt like that was the right time.

It was COVID, you know, we had a lot of space and time to think

and to, you know, reevaluate our purpose and where we want to go.

And that was part of what I had to do was I had to work on myself first,

before I could work on anything else.

And.

Understanding and learning more.

And I started to attempt to sleep more.

And then I realized all the other things that you have to change to be able to

sleep more, to be able to go to bed.

You have to phase that in if you're used to staying up late, like,

and you're you have bad habits?

So it all the things that had to change, right?

Like I had to change the way I ate changed when I worked out I, all the habits that I

wanted to start doing, I had to phase in.

Now I'm tracking 12 habits a day and they all are interconnected.

They're all kind of stacked up on each other.

And they, you know, if I don't do one, I end up not doing the other and

then the other, and then the other.

Oh,

So, and, and it's very methodical.

Like I, I have 12 habits and literally they are numbered.

We can get into that, but it was like I had to, I had to work to get there.

It took me about a year to even get to the place where I'm at now more

than a year, really to be able to get eight hours of sleep a night.

Was a huge struggle.

As I was changing a lot of different things too, I stopped taking that

anti-anxiety medication and I was physically dependent on that.

I probably should have went to rehab.

I didn't, I got off of it on my own.

I just flushed everything that I had.

But I had a, if I look at my aura scores during that time period,

it's like, I couldn't sleep.

Like you're physically dependent on a lot of that stuff.

And your body is, is react.

To not having it too.

And I didn't really know that I didn't know the science behind that.

I, I kind of know addiction.

I know I have an addictive personality, but I didn't know

the science behind all that.

I just thought I could power through it and I did power through it,

but it was a, it was difficult.

Like it needed, required a lot of power and a lot of change.

And nobody wanted to deal with me during that time because I

was all over the place, but I got on the other side of that.

And then I started to be able to sleep and my body wanted to sleep.

And now it like, you know, now.

Now I kind of know, you know, like I can't, one of my habits is I

can't stay up past 11, you know, I can't I can't do it because then

I'll, then I'll stay up even longer.

You know, I can't have, after 9:00 PM, everything is pretty much shut down.

Like I'm not using my phone, I'm not on my computer or anything.

I need that two hours to just get the blue light out.

And so there's, I guess I, I could talk about the 12 habits that I track.

So it's.

You know, because it's very accountant esque.

Like it is, they all have a place.

Everything is numbered.

And I have to check my boxes.

It's very much attention to detail, but it's so satisfying to track those things.

And in order to get that eight hours of sleep a night, I need

to do all these other things.

So the first one, first one is just writing a line every day.

For my rap stuff.

Like I wanna, I wanna build that habit.

I wanna get better at that.

The next one, two.

So that's one, one line a day.

Two is read two pages a day.

Three is actually do this.

So three is track three habits.

Four is wait until four or four 20 to get high.

So I, I am actually productive during the day.

So I don't smoke weed until four 20.

Five is five pushups a day.

Six is meditate for six minutes or sometimes six breaths.

If, if I can't even get the six minutes, seven is exercised

for at least seven minutes.

So some kind of physical exercise for seven minutes, not too

much, cuz to do that every day.

It's like you can't, I don't know.

I'm still phasing that in seven minutes seems to be enough at

least to get the mind right.

Exercise to me is for mind and to be able to sleep, not, not for, you

know, like it's also good physically too, but psychologically more.

Eight hours of sleep is eight.

Nine is no phone or shut down at 9:00 PM.

10 is walk 10,000 steps.

I'm a Walker.

11 is in bed by 11, sleep by 11, and then 12 is fill my

stand rings on my apple watch.

I gotta get 12 of those rings filled.

That's been the hardest one to do, actually, cuz whenever I

actually do try to work and I'm sitting in front of the computer,

I could sit for four or five hours.

And not know it, like

Oh,

whatever I'm doing, our jobs.

Like we, we sit almost all day.

I know, like, I, I, I could, I could have been sitting for eight hours straight

when I was doing a lot of taxes when I was doing a lot of client work, you

know, I, I just don't even get up to eat.

So.

But those, that stuff has kind of helped me in all aspects of my life.

Like, you know, all of 'em seem like very little things or very trivial, but to

me, that's like, what matters most now?

And I actually hit all 12 habits, three days in a row for the first

time since I started doing that.

Hey, that's awesome.

I know, three days in a row that was like, it's

hard to hit all 12 of those.

I don't hit 'em all every day.

Like definitely days I miss a bunch some days, but my average is going up.

I'm tracking all of that.

I'm keeping up with the data, you know, I love, I love the numbers, so.

but yeah, I mean, like sleep is starts.

Everything starts and ends with sleep with me.

Now that's the foundation of all of it.

I took my son to a concert last week, red hot chili peppers

concert, and it was in Charlotte.

So two hours for me, I'm in Raleigh and North Carolina for the listeners, but.

You know, I had to drive home after that concert and I was able to stay up.

Like, it wasn't like I was falling asleep at the wheel, but really

affected me for the whole weekend.

So the concert was on the first, it was Thursday night and then we went

to the beach over the weekend and I was sluggish almost the whole weekend,

just trying to recover from that.

And you know, I attribute that to not getting a lot of sleep that Thursday.

I felt fine by Monday or Tuesday, but the whole week, you know, Monday

was like labor day and I was starting to feel better then, but like, it

wasn't like I was sick or anything.

It was just, I was tired, you know, and I never used to feel that I never

used to even acknowledge that I always would just power through it in all

aspects of life, like going to concerts.

That was nothing to me.

I do that all the time, I guess maybe cuz we're getting old too.

Maybe I'm getting a little old.

Maybe, maybe that's part of it.

I don't know.

Could

need our sleep.

We need our sleep, but that's the foundation of it.

Like, I, I definitely feel it too.

I was the last trip I went on was new Orleans, I think for zero con and.

Time difference gets me too

for sure,

I've been traveling a lot more, you know, all kinds of things.

I'm I'm fortunate enough to be going to Toronto next one.

And that's not a different time zone, but every time I go to like

Vegas, Vegas is its own thing.

You don't get much sleep in Vegas.

That's you go to another planet there by going to like new Orleans, you know,

getting home, it was adjusting to that.

Just that one hour difference is a big deal.

Like I was reading in that, in that book, the science of.

You know, the, the amount of car crashes after daylight savings increases and

the amount of accidents that people have increase when you lose an hour of sleep.

There's a lot of studies that show, and that's why eventually, I, I

think that eventually they may stop doing that because of the adjust.

Because of losing that hour of sleep actually makes a pretty big difference.

They also something recently too, a really interesting part, that book is

teenagers actually are, we are built like as humans to be staying up later at

those ages because we have to socially acclimate and there's, there's some

studies and there, everything behind that you know, this, this gets into

like anthropology type stuff, but we.

To be socially active.

Like during the tribal days, the kids would be up later kind

of figuring out their own place while others went to sleep.

And then we go through that phase.

And so that's why teenagers tend to stay up later and be a,

they're able to stay up later.

And I'm starting to see that with my daughter, but their school

starts the earliest of anybody.

Sometimes high school starts at 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM.

So I'm starting to see that changing in certain states.

So they were shown a study in the book where.

They moved back school for like two hours or three hours.

And all of a sudden the kids' test scores went up, everything went

up across the board for the kids.

It was like in Montana, or I forgot what state it was in that they did that.

And so other states are starting to take it up on.

And my my sister-in-law she's a teacher and just recently

they changed the curriculum.

And this year they changed the start time for the older kids at

the school district that she's in.

I don't know the full details on that, but that's because of, because of

sleep because kids, you know, at that age, I guess, you know, we're just

predisposed to be staying up later.

Not because we have to watch the tribe while everybody's asleep or socially.

I mean, I guess, you know, that is true kids socially acclimate at that age,

but that's that's really interesting to me, like to start learning more.

And the more I learn, the better equipped I am.

Deal with different things.

And the more I understand, like, you know, you just blame your mood on other things.

If you don't know, it's, it's just something as simple as

getting enough sleep, right?

Like, You know, it's

You're missing something fundamental.

Right.

But yeah.

right.

And then, and then you say you know, this happened and you blame, you know,

you almost like you play the blame game on everything else besides look

at, you know, who you're pointing the finger at and it's really, you should be

like, well, I shouldn't have stayed up.

That last night, you know, or I shouldn't have done this instead of blaming this

client or this person did this or, or this, you know, my staff did this and just

kind of point in the finger at everywhere else on why things aren't going.

Right.

And almost always, it starts with, let's see what you did

to contribute to that first.

And I think that, to me, it always starts with sleep starts and ends with sleep.

Everything else I can handle.

So at the, at the firm, We were tracking our, like we have, we have

leading indicators of that's our scorecard or our OKRs or our KPIs.

Like our KPIs are the things that we can control the things,

the habits that we can do.

So meeting with clients.

There's a, there's a whole list of things.

But the only one that I was in charge of was my sleep.

like I, because I don't do much client work or anything else, the

ones that I was tracking every week on our scorecard was how many

nights I got eight hours of sleep.

And it correlated like when I was still doing sales are sales,

numbers were better and everything worked was better on anything I had

control over when I had more sleep.

So that's why.

that was, those were the things that we tracked.

We weren't tracking the goals or the outcomes we were tracking the inputs.

And I think that's, you know, to me, that was the one thing that mattered most to

me because I can control everything else.

If I've had enough sleep.

I think since you're starting to talk about how sleep and work

overlap, maybe we could talk a little bit about your thoughts for

folks who are on the employer side.

Maybe they're running a firm of their own, or they're running an

accounting department of their own, you know, what are things that they

can be thinking about for them and for their staff in terms of sleep?

Yeah.

I mean, you know, like, I think it's obviously, it's always

gonna start with that's what they say in the airplane, right?

Like you gotta put your mask on first, so it's gonna start with the

owner, figuring it out themselves.

You can't.

You can't coach anybody to do anything that you're not already doing?

I think the best, the best advice I could give anybody.

Is the stuff that I've finally started to figure out and I'm, you know, I'm

still learning, I'm still a novice at a lot of these things, but you know,

the things that I know of are the things that I used to struggle with

that I'm on the other side of now.

So I think the same thing with, as an owner for your team, you know, to be

able to project things that you want them to do, you have to embody that

first and you have to show that first.

So, you know, do, are you getting enough sleep?

Like, you know, a lot of people think.

Just because I'm in bed for seven hours, I'm getting seven hours of sleep.

You know, I think a lot of people think six hours is enough.

And I started to learn, like I would, I would love to be able

to get nine hours of sleep, but I just can't get to bed that early.

And if I sleep too late, then I've slept the day away.

Right.

So eight hours seems to be about right for me.

Sure.

But.

I have an aura ring, you know, maybe get one for you and possibly offer to get one

for the people in the team that want it.

Like, I kind of offered that, but they were like, I don't wanna track my sleep.

You're gonna see how much I sleep.

Like, no, I'm not doing it for me or to see how much they sleep.

I would like, because what you measure you can improve on.

Right.

And what I was realizing is I could be in bed for eight hours and I

wasn't getting eight hours of sleep because there's, you know, it's track.

And it's, it's not like a, you know, it's using gyroscope and it knows

what you're moving and it using your blood your heart rate to measure

how much deep sleep you're getting.

And.

It's data that I can improve on.

If I know it, like if I knew that I needed to be in bed for 10 hours, just

to get eight hours of sleep in those early days, that's what I had to do now.

It's like, I can do I get about a 90% sleep rate when I'm in bed?

So if I can do about nine, I don't know.

I haven't looked at my score today yet, but I was looking at it every day and

it measures a lot of different things and it gives you your readiness too.

So this aura is, is great.

Like.

That's changed my life too, is being able to see that data.

You know, you kind of have a rough idea of how much sleep you got based on when you

went to bed and based on when you got up, but, you know, like all accountants know,

once you really dig into those financials, or once you really dig into the data,

then you know what the problems are and then, you know, what you can improve or,

you know, the things that you can fix.

So, you know, I think part of it is the first thing is, you

know, get your, get yourself.

Right.

And if you're, you know, like, like you like.

You say you've, you've always been one to, you know, and I, I admire that because.

There's a lot of, there's a lot of people in my life that always

would say like, I need my sleep.

And I was like, well, I don't, you know, it was always, always

like, oh, I don't need my sleep.

You know, you need it.

And I don't, and that's all bullshit.

Like now I say that and if somebody says they don't, I actually

care for them a little bit more.

And I say, really, you don't like, tell me, tell me why.

Gimme a little bit more on why you don't think you need sleep.

Cause if anybody asked me that I wouldn't have been able to give him a good answer.

I'd give him I.

Kind of gloss it over.

Well, I don't need sleep because I'm not tired.

You know, it was like, I have all these reasons why I didn't need

it, but they were all bullshit.

So

How about for the folks on the employee side who maybe have less

control over their work schedules, maybe expected to be working long hours maybe

commuting back and forth to an office.

So that takes up some time in the day, you know, do you, do you have any

thoughts for folks on that side of things?

Get a new job.

You heard it here.

I mean,

Get any job

I don't know.

Come, come work for me.

I'll let you get sleep.

No, I mean, it's, I would say

stop hiring.

you gotta like it's.

Well, I think we're starting to see that trend.

More and more with certain progressive firms and firm owners

that, you know, don't put as much emphasis on the billable hour.

The hours worked a lot of, you're seeing a lot of firms like we're fully remote.

Now we used to have an office and I used to kind of let people work hybrid.

But now we don't even have an office and they're in total control of what they do.

And I'll be honest, I'm making more money than I ever was not doing any work because

they're in control of all their shit.

And they're, they're doing a much better job of me not micromanaging.

Anything, you know, like the best way to manage is to not manage and not

mic, definitely not micromanage, but is to let them manage themselves, let

them hold themselves accountable and that's giving them the freedom to do.

And so that's one thing I did.

And I think that the only like I, as a boss, I wasn't allowing

certain things in the past, but that's, cuz I didn't understand.

So maybe educate you know, your managers and your bosses a little bit more.

If it's something that you wanna pay more attention to share it with

them, go to them and tell them, look, I wanna start getting more sleep.

What can I do?

Like how can I, how can my job change?

How can, how can this change?

I can't be staying here till 9:00 PM.

You know, it's not just about work life balance.

It's about, I need this.

Like, this is what I need to live, you know?

And it's not everybody puts as much emphasis as I do on sleep.

I go a little extreme with almost everything.

If I go in on something I'm, I'm a thousand percent in, I.

All in, it's like a one or a zero with me.

So I think now that I understand it, anytime anybody asks me anything related

to their health or their wellness that comes first before anything else,

you know, if somebody's a little too stressed out, okay, what can we do?

How can we ease up your client load?

What, what do we gotta do?

It's not, you know, it's not about the immediate, it's about the long term.

And, and that, you know, I think that all starts with their foundational health too.

Yeah, it's hard.

I, I can remember some of those days.

It, it always seemed to be that the late nights were followed by early mornings.

Because you were trying to get a deliverable out the door, first thing.

So you're staying, you know, up later than you needed to be working later

than you needed to be the day before.

But then you had to rush back into the office very early before, like anybody

else to just, you know, if it was something that had to be printed, did

it get printed and putting it together and you know, the clients probably

coming in at eight and yeah, like I.

As much as I love sleep, there were many, many days where

you're just, you're struggling.

There's a lot of caffeine or there's a lot of, like you were saying the other

week, there's just a lot of catching up on the weekends, which catching

up is sort of overrated as well.

So it's, it's

Oh, well catching up, actually isn't even a thing in the

book they, he says, and I've read this other places too, catching up.

Doesn't exist.

Once you lose that sleep, you've lost it forever.

You do have to, your body wears out and you do need more sleep, but you're

not catching up on what you lost.

You've already lost it.

You're not getting it back.

Once you squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube, you're not

putting that shit back in.

You know, you can go buy more toothpaste, but you're not getting that back in.

Maybe there is a way to do that.

I, that's probably not a good example.

There's probably, I could probably figure out a way to get toothpaste

back in if I've got it out.

But that's not, that's not the best example, but like, you know, like part

of it is the things that you can control and in the moment when you're

staying up late, because you have a deliverable the next day, you're not

gonna change that in the short term.

But you've gotta note the things that you can change for next year.

What caused you to be in a position to have to stay up late

in order to get that deliverable?

Why couldn't you get it done a couple of days before, you know,

and be prepared for it and have it ready before the day before?

Like, what are the things you can change next year to do that?

And that's hard.

I I'll be first to admit that is, I was terrible at that.

Cause I never had the perspective or the bigger picture of like.

Yeah, we can change this next year.

Cause there would always be, it was always somebody else's fault or, you

know, the client got it to us late.

We're in control of who's our clients in the first place, you know?

And like we, we always would complain.

I, I, I would, I don't want anymore, but like of clients getting stuff

in late and like I would always hear the firms and the people.

We just don't let our clients bring it to us late.

You know, for us, it was always like, oh yeah, they're gonna pay more.

If they're bringing in late, we're gonna charge them more.

And that's not a, that doesn't fix anything that doesn't solve any

problems because maybe you're making a little bit more money, but you feel

miserable, you know, and you really.

Yeah, you're burning out and these are the people that are ungrateful anyway.

So you're gonna rush to get everything done for them last minute.

And then they're gonna bitch what they owe or that the refund

isn't big enough or whatever.

Like they, these are people that you never satisfy, never keep happy.

And it's, and it's still, I'm still trying to figure out how to weed them out.

In the initial phase, like we just stopped doing individual tax returns

only like that, that was a way to do it because business owners

have a better perspective on it.

And they, you know, they know that we're handling their shit.

So they're not as concerned about the deadlines and they get us their stuff

cuz we're working with them year round.

So our solution was to just not do individual only anymore.

And I don't think that's the right solution, either.

My co-host on my podcast.

He's they still make a.

They do great.

Just doing a lot of individual work and they've, they've got

a system that works for them.

And I think that's, that's part of what I'm learning is we could still

do that, but it just means that, you know, I also don't like the variability

of tax season versus regular year.

Like I've tried, I've basically trying to eliminate what tax season is for.

If we structure the business the right way, then we don't necessarily, we do,

we do a fraction of the tax returns we used to do, and we're making a lot

more money because we're working with the right clients, the clients that are

right for us, we don't necessarily have an industry vertical yet, but we have a

client type that, you know, we are, we are attracting that we're working with that

we know we can make good margins on that.

We're you know, that we can, we can handle everything else around

that once we've kind of define.

What it is.

And now we're starting to rank our clients as like giving them client scores based

on what they filled out on our type form.

So we have, you know, we have a good idea of who's gonna be a good client or

not based on our current client base.

And I've asked my team numerous, numerous times, like, what's the best industry that

you like working with and consistently they, they never care about the industry.

They always care about the owner or the person they have to deal with.

and some industries they can, they like because of the owner.

And then if it's somebody that they don't like working with, or that's

just not a, not a good client, that's what defines not a good client

for them is the owner's attitude.

And that, that person, and we can control that.

That's the one thing we can control.

We can't necessarily control, you know, it's, we can't control after

the fact cuz then they're already paying us and now we gotta deliver

this and you know, it's like, it.

I have a hard time.

Once we take on a bad client, I have a hard time firing clients.

Like I've, I've never been good at that.

Cuz the worst ones you could raise their fee as much as you want.

And they won't leave.

I would always be very passive aggressive on that and I would just keep raising

their fees and they just kept paying it.

They just kept paying whatever it was cuz they don't, they didn't

want to go deal with somebody else.

They don't want to go find somebody else.

They'd rather just pay you

yeah.

Yeah.

To your point change what you can control, focus on what you can control.

, scott, is there anything else you would like to.

It's that, you know, sleep is very important, but if you have

an hour to just openly think and ask yourself questions, Just write down a

hundred questions on a piece of paper and see where you get, try to do that.

Like, you know, or try to write down a hundred different things in an hour,

probably won't be able to get to a hundred, but you know, try to do 50.

See where you get with that.

I think that's, that's where you start to realize what you really

want and what you need to change too.

It's probably a good exercise.

That's a wrap, my friends, reach out and let me know what you think.

I appreciate you listening in to this episode of under withheld, the podcast

by accountants and for accountants, where we talk about our ubiquitous

professional and personal struggles.