Tax Chat ’24: How to pause and recharge when you hit the wall in tax season.
With Seth Fineberg
for CPA Trendlines
Randy Crabtree, perhaps best known as the host of The Unique CPA Podcast, tells Seth Fineberg in this episode of Tax Chat ’24 that tax practitioners can avoid tax-season burnout with just a few simple shifts in their workflows.
MORE CRABTREE: Follow These 3 Rules to Keep Employees Happy
More takeaways:
– Practical steps you can take immediately to pause, recharge and focus during the busiest time.
– The warning signs before you go off track and hit the ‘wall.’
– How to reset, get organized and finish the day and week strong.
– Why connecting with a community for support can be the best answer.
Mentioned:
- Download the free Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Reference Card here
- More about Bridging the Gap Conference here.
More About Randy Crabtree
Co-founder and partner of Tri-Merit Specialty Tax Professionals, Randy Crabtree is a widely followed author, lecturer and podcast host for the accounting profession. Since 2019, he has hosted the bi-weekly “The Unique CPA” podcast, which ranks among the world’s 5%most popular programs (Source: Listen Score). You can find articles from Crabtree in Accounting Today’s Voices column, the AICPA Tax Adviser, CPA Trendlines and Intuit’s TaxPro Center. He is a regular presenter at conferences and virtual training events hosted by national accounting associations, state CPA societies and other industry associations. Crabtree was listed in the “Ones to Watch” section of Accounting Today’s 2021 “Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting.” In May 2022, Randy was appointed to the Intuit Tax Council for a three-year term. Prior to starting Tri-Merit, Crabtree was managing partner of a CPA firm in the greater Chicago area. He has more than 30 years of public accounting and tax consulting experience in a wide variety of industries. He has worked closely with top executives to help them optimize their tax planning strategies. Schaumburg, Illinois-based Tri-Merit is a niche professional services firm that specializes in helping CPAs and their clients benefit from tax credits and incentives, including R&D tax credits, cost segregation, energy-efficient incentives (179D and 45L), the employee retention credit (ERC) and the work opportunity credit (WOTC).
Transcript
Randy: All right. Quick introduction. Thanks, Seth, again for having me. Randy Crabtree. As Rick put down here, I am host of the Unique CPA podcast. I don’t consider myself the unique CPA. I consider all my guests to be unique.
Seth: Some people do.
Randy: I might be unique, for sure. I have carved out an interesting role for myself in the business. A company that I co-founded 17 years ago is Tri-Merit, or a specialty tax consulting firm. I also am host of the Bridging the Gap Conference. Pretty much my role, which we’ll probably talk about a little bit today, that I redefined myself over the last six, seven years is I’m out speaking at conferences educating as much as I can on various different topics from tax, to burnout, to mental health, to corporate culture, to you name it. If it helps the profession, I’m passionate about it. That’s pretty much what I do these days.
Seth: Excellent. Just to level set here, this is a pretty open chat. It’s not for CPE. It’s really just designed so that you do have a break in your day, and to listen to some of the things that we’re going to talk about. We’re going to have a very pointed discussion about mental health, about the importance of it in this profession. I’ve actually put it down as one of my top three things that I want to see change in this profession, is that you put life, your life first more than anything else. That you put yourself, your mental well-being ahead of your clients. I know that’s tough, but ahead of everything.
Because the culture that I’ve seen in the 22-plus years that I’ve been covering the profession is something that really needs to change, one of the core things that I think in this profession needs to change. It’s a part becomes a priority from firm leaders on down. This whole working 50, 60-plus hours a week, dealing with clients that– Again, it’s going to happen. We get it. There’s just always those folks that you just grin and bear it and you deal with them year in and year out. That just needs to change. I have Randy on here because I know both personally and professionally, he takes mental health very seriously.
We want this to be an open chat, so when you do have the chance and you feel comfortable enough, put a question either into the chat or in the Q&A box. Randy and I will get to it. We’re probably going to be here for the next hour. We plan for that, and we want to get into some things. We’re not going to cover everything, but this is about just taking a break in your day.
Randy: One thing, Seth, if I could jump in.
Seth: Yes.
Randy: I think if they put the questions in the Q&A, everybody can see the questions. I think in the chat only the hosts and panelists will see it.
Seth: Exactly.
Randy: We might want to do that in the Q&A.
Seth: I was just about to say that. Please put them in the Q&A so everyone can see them, and it won’t just go to us. We’re happy to read them back, and we will. I’m going to just jump in here, Randy. By the way, let’s just call attention to the giveaway that we have, Randy. We’re going to put it back in the chat again. It’s at the top of the webinar chat here, and we’ll put it in again before we go. Randy, why don’t you go into what that is?
Randy: Yes. Again, on Zoom, Zoom’s a little weird sometimes. I’m not sure on the Zoom webinar that people can see the chat. We might have to put it elsewhere, but we’ll see. What this was, one of the things I think that we try to do as a profession is we try to do everything ourselves. What I put together is a checklist of industries and then potential, because Tri-Merit’s a specialty tax firm, but incentives that industry may qualify for. This way, and we’re talking taxes here so I’m assuming everybody’s involved in tax, you as the tax advisor-
Seth: Agree, yes.
Randy: -can be the one out there to be the hero to your client because you looked at software development, and then you saw that there’s about three different things in this chat that software developers can potentially qualify for. That’s what it is. It’s a cheat sheet to find out opportunities to save your clients’ money.
Seth: Nice. Thank you, Randy. Again, so if everyone wants to look in the chat there, they’ll see that–
Randy: Rick got it to everybody now in the chat. Perfect.
Seth: [crosstalk] Awesome.
Randy: He’s a genius.
Seth: Thank you, Rick. Rick Telberg, publisher of CPA Trendlines, who is our co-host for this chat. Let’s get into it, shall we? Look, accountants’ mental health, one of the top issues, as I mentioned, even to the point of wanting to just stay in this profession at all. I can’t tell you how many times, and Randy, you probably have too, just anecdotally really heard that I’m done with being an accountant, with tax more so than I have definitely in the last 20 years or so. It’s not that there haven’t been tough times.
What’s the one thing that folks who are really starting to feel that– what can you do to turn that around? I know that you’ve had personal conversations with other tax pros and other accountants on this very issue.
Randy: Yes. We’ll expand on a lot today, I think.
Seth: Sure.
Randy: If we wanted to do one thing, it’s valuing ourselves. I think we too often think we have to be the answer for everything, for whatever our clients need, and we’re afraid to say, “I need help with this,”-
Seth: Or just know-
Randy: -or, “I can’t do that.” Yes, just know.
Seth: -where’s your boundaries.
Randy: I had somebody multiple times tell me, and I’m the one that talks about burnout, and they tell me, “Randy, you have to learn when [chuckles] to say no.
Seth: [laughs]
Randy: Even me still has to find ways. The biggest things is just be vulnerable. You’ll hear me say vulnerability a lot today, probably. Be vulnerable, don’t be afraid to say, “I need help.” Don’t be afraid to say, “I need a break.” Don’t be afraid to ask a question. That’s one of the biggest things because what we try to do is we try to do it all ourselves. When we do that, all this stuff starts piling up and piling up and piling up, and you can’t dig out from under it. Vulnerability, we’ll go with that as one of the biggest things you can do.
Seth: I believe the phrase is it’s okay to not be okay. I’ve heard that more, and repeat it to yourself. When you’re feeling low, you’re feeling like you don’t want to open another email, you don’t want to take another client call, you really have stood on hold with the IRS long enough, just remind yourself that it’s okay and that we’re a community. The accounting profession is a community. Even if you feel like you don’t know someone necessarily that well, trust me, you’re in the same business, and that’s well enough to just be like, “Yes, I know we met at this conference,” or, “I see you online sometimes,” just check in, ask if someone’s okay.
Randy: Just I want to expand on that, Seth, because what you’re saying is super important. This is a community aspect of our profession. I think our profession has a better community than any other profession I’ve ever seen. We don’t look at each other as competitors, we look at each other as collaborators, as people that can help us, as people that have answers. We don’t do it enough sometimes because we want to do it all ourselves.
For me personally, for the last seven-plus years– I started Tri-Merit 17 years ago. The last seven years or so, I have pretty much lived at conferences, on the road, and I gained so much energy and knowledge from being together with others. During tax season, you can’t go do that, but you can check-in. Exactly what Seth just said. You can check in. You can reach out to somebody. You can see how they’re doing. Rather than telling them how you’re doing, you can have that. Collaboration, community, that is extremely important, especially what you’re doing, everybody.
There’s many other people that have been there, whether you’re dealing with something from burnout, or whether you just have a text question you don’t have an answer for. I’m on multiple text chats with professionals where it’s constantly, “Hey, does anybody know a nonprofit expert that I can run this question by?” Create if you don’t have a community already. Man, I’m going on a rant here. This is good though. [chuckles] I love it.
Seth: It’s a good rant.
Randy: If you don’t have a community, find one. The biggest place you can do that, I believe, is at conferences. Just attend a conference. Go to your first one if you’ve never had, and then a second, and what for?
Seth: We’ll get into that, for sure. I know it’s definitely out of some people’s comfort zones. I totally get that. I just had a column a week ago about doing the uncomfortable thing, living in the uncomfortable. We have an attendee here who, Randy, one of the issues that they’re facing is– I’m sure maybe some of the other folks who are on this call, on this chat, can relate, saying, “What gets me the most is that clients think that I magically just know everything about tax code. I don’t, and I get negative feedback. I tell them I need to research it.”
Guess what? That’s okay to say you don’t know something. It really is. If you’re getting negative feedback about that, then that’s something maybe for the checklist. What do you think about having that, just a client checklist of just going, “Okay, you know what? Maybe we’re not such a fit.” Questions come up, issues come up all the time, but recognizing problem clients would you say feeds into your own mental capacity?
Randy: It definitely does. Now, clients are great, but clients can be awful too, and we don’t need to help everybody. A couple of things. You’re onboarding a client. There’s one red flag. That’s not the only one, so you need to make decisions. Right now, there is so much need for our services that you can go get clients anywhere. The clients are available, so there’s no reason to deal with a client that is going to give you negative feedback.
Now, if it’s a one-off and it’s somebody you like working with, that’s fine, but there’s no reason to not be able to say, “Hey, this tax code is about the– Here’s these books you normally read. Take that and multiply it by 1,000, and that’s the tax code that we have to understand and we can’t be an expert at everything. You don’t want me to be an expert at everything because if I try to be, I’m not going to be an expert at anything. I’m really good at your industry.”
“Hey, you’re in the trucking industry. I’m really good at that. This question you have for me is outside my realm of expertise, but I know people that have that expertise. I can reach out. I can get this answer. I can get back to you.” If we have a client that questions that, you’re doing what’s best for them in that situation. You’re going to where the answer is. If a client has a problem with that, then you’ve got to reevaluate if that’s a client you want to work with.
Seth: Exactly. Wow. That’s a rough one. Someone just posted, clients saying, “Oh, I’m not paying for an education. Wow. [chuckles] Okay. That’s a little prickly, I think. Look, sometimes, I get it, you have to. With tax code changes– Randy, people have questions about ERC, that’s your specialty, yes.
Randy: Incentives in general. ERC, I want to step back from that, we did a lot. We’re the legitimate ERC company. [chuckles]
Seth: Exactly. Yes, not from hell.
Randy: We’re not the ones promising everybody they qualify because that is insanity.
Seth: No.
Randy: Yes, if somebody has an R&D tax credit question, I tell people all the time, “Reach out to me. I can answer it. I can talk to your client. I can do whatever you need to get the information to that client. I don’t want to be the hero in that situation. I want you to be able to bring this to them.” That’s, I think, so important. Collaboration in general.
Seth: Randy, I love the questions that are coming in, and please keep them coming. A lot of them seem to be focused around specific issues that you all are having. We could definitely take up some of this time to do that because I bet that some of you are going through this too. One of our attendees says, “Randy, my struggle is taking the three or four or five different emails tasks that come up on a client, putting them together to some place that I can then schedule time to work on so that I’m not just reacting to every single email but working holistically on a project.”
That’s great. If you can get to that point, any hack, anything that you can do that’s actually going to work to keep your mental capacity and just keep the focus and not have that feeling of burnout, and I want to get to that, recognize it when burnout is going to happen before it happens.
Randy: Yes. Can I address that last question real quick too?
Seth: Please. Yes.
Randy: One of the biggest things you can do– I like that question about taking those three or four or five emails and setting them aside so I can figure out a time to respond to it. We’ll define burnout and we’ll talk about that in a second. One of the things based on this question that you can do is set focus time for yourself. You have to have time where you can spend three hours of uninterrupted time. You don’t even look at those emails. You don’t even know that they came in yet. Let’s say it’s the morning. 8:00 AM till 11:00 AM, everybody in the office, all my clients know I have an automated email response that goes to client.
I’m not saying me, but you can do this that says, “Hey, I’m in focus time. I’m working on this high brain power functions, tax returns that I need to get done. I’m not going to be responding to you until my designated time, which is 2:00 in the afternoon,” or something like that. Somebody else talked about setting expectations for your client. You have to be the one in charge. You can’t let clients dictate–
Seth: You got to go do it. Set those boundaries.
Randy: Yes.
Seth: Yes.
Randy: Boundaries are so important. From that standpoint, setting that focus time, I just wanted to address that while that question was up there. Let’s then talk to what you said before. What is burnout? How do you identify?
Seth: Feeling it coming.
Randy: Yes. Burnout as a definition is characterized by three different things. One is you just feeling exhausted. You’re feeling tired, which-
Seth: Physically-
Randy: -season it happens.
Seth: -or mentally. Mentally or physically.
Randy: Mentally and physically. Both. You’re just getting to this point where it’s like, “Oh, I just can’t go another minute.” Tired, exhaustion. Now, I’m assuming everybody’s going to say, “Yes, I got that. [chuckles] That’s me.”
Seth: Check. [chuckles]
Randy: Then number two is because of that, or in addition to that, you’re just starting to feel cynical and negative about what we’re doing. “Oh, I can’t believe this. I’m going through another tax season.”
Seth: Negative thoughts, negative thinking.
Randy: “I can’t believe I have to respond to that client.” You’re just starting to get negative. Because of that, what happens is you just start the snowball effect because our response to those two things– I’m a CPA. I know what we do. Our response is, “I just got to work harder. I just got to put more hours in. I got to come in earlier. I got to leave later. I got to come in on the weekends.” You remember when I wasn’t even going to work Sundays anymore? [crosstalks]
Seth: I just need more time.
Randy: Yes.
Seth: If every CPA could actually magically create more time, you don’t think they would?
Randy: Right.
Seth: “All right. let’s put these right at the end of the week or at this point in the day,” guess what? Today’s going to actually be 28 hours.
Randy: Right.
Seth: [chuckles]
Randy: That’s our mindset, “I need more time.” What you need to do is you need to reevaluate how you’re working, time, focus, and reevaluate who you’re helping and what you’re promising. Trying to catch up with that to-do list that keeps growing and growing and growing in tax season, that’s just going to contribute. It’s a snowball effect. Burnout is a snowball effect. “I’m going to work harder to catch up because my to-do list keeps growing,” and so I start to snowball down this hill, and that snowball that’s starting like this, that burnout snowball just keeps expanding, expanding, expanding.
Seth: Yes.
Randy: Further, we think, “I’ll be fine after April 15th, and then everything will be good again.” You know when you think that you’re lying to yourselves. I’ve been through many tax seasons. I’ve gone through burnout of tax season. I don’t recover. I never recovered until after October 15th and then barely did because of the holidays, and then it’s tax season again.
Seth: How many of you? Seriously, I can’t see.
Randy: [chuckles]
Seth: I’m willing to bet that most folks in this room, when I say the term Marchternity, you know exactly what we’re talking about. It felt like, particularly the last few years– It hasn’t ended. It literally has not ended. Maybe it’s partly, again, it’s tough to look yourself in the mirror and go, “Yes, it’s my fault.”
Randy: Yes.
Seth: It probably is, and that’s okay. This is why we’re talking about these things, people. That’s why we have Randy here.
Randy: It’s a lot self-induced.
Seth: Yes.
Randy: It’s a lot self-induced, for sure, and there’s things we can do.
Seth: He knows. Absolutely. Recognizing that burnout, very key. also, some people maybe don’t feel like, “Hey, look, I’m not a partner, I’m not in charge. I’m at a firm, I’m an associate. I’m a junior accountant. The partners say this is how we work, this is how long we work, this is what we do. I got to do it.” What do you say to that?
Randy: I say, one, you have to take the initiative no matter what level you’re at. I’m hoping that leadership is open to hearing ideas, open to hearing that you want to try to do things different. Unfortunately, if they’re not, you have to reevaluate if that’s the spot for you because I think it’s so important as a leader, and a lot of the people on here are leaders– I’ll give you some examples even too. Treating your people as people and not job titles is so important. With us at Tri-Merit, I don’t even care. I want to hire a good person. We’ll find or they’ll find the role. Now, we have a little more flexibility in that because we’re larger, we’re about 80 people, so you can get yourself.
I had someone come in two years ago as my assistant, and within months, I was doing a lot of work with our marketing department, and I could tell that she was just loving the work we were doing with marketing. I was like, “Okay, why don’t you go into the marketing department? I can always get another assistant.” I think she was the one that brought it up, not me, so she felt comfortable saying, “Hey, I’m a lot more-
Seth: Food culture.
Randy: -passionate about the marketing part of things.” If you are in a position where you don’t feel you have the ability to lead, don’t just sit there and take it because you’re just going to internalize-
Seth: Maybe it’s time to think about–
Randy: -everything and it’s not going to be good mentally. Go to whoever your supervisor is and say whatever it is. “I know you’ve got me doing partnership returns, but I really don’t like them. I don’t understand them. I love working with 1040s. Can I start concentrating more on 1040s?”
Seth: Whatever it is.
Randy: “I think my skills are better there.” Whatever, bring that up. If it’s a complete no, that’s a problem, but if it’s a, “Yes. Hey, we have to get through this tax season, and then let’s look at this because, yes, we want you to be happy, we want you to do what you’re good at and what you’re passionate about,” that’s important. Don’t think you can’t make a difference at whatever level, just try it.
Seth: Maybe not right now. I know you’re all in the thick of it, and once again, thank you for pausing your day or some of your day for this chat because we’re really getting into some of this stuff. Clients who yell at you and you haven’t fired them yet, I’m sorry, but that’s not a red flag, that flag’s on fire, [laughs] right?
Randy: Yes. Offboarding clients is so important. You have to have a skill because that’s another thing we don’t like to do. We don’t want to disappoint anybody, and so, yes, we’re going to keep-
Seth: Of course, you don’t like to.
Randy: -helping people,-
Seth: Of course.
Randy: -but you have to come up with the skills of offboarding. Sometimes it’s better for the client too. They’re in an industry you’re not passionate about, your skills aren’t there to the level you hope they were or want to be. I have a friend who you and I were talking about actually right before we went on, she had off-board a few clients this year that were great clients. They were clients she loved. They were friends of the family.
Seth: What was the flag?
Randy: It wasn’t even a flag. It was, “Hey,-” and I hate the word bandwidth but we’ll go with bandwidth, “-we have this much bandwidth–”
Seth: Capacity?
Randy: Capacity. Love it. See, that’s why you’re the writer and I’m not.
Seth: [laughs]
Randy: [chuckles] “Capacity and I’m not going to overwork my people. We’re not going to get through into this. I want to concentrate on these two industries now and they don’t fit in that.” Even though they’re good clients, they pay well, they’re responsive, they’re just not going to fit the vision we have for this firm, and she off-boarded some clients, but she helped them. I think that’s a skill that-
Seth: Burn them on.
Randy: -helps avoid burnout.
Seth: Yes. I actually have heard, and encouragingly, more firms starting to do this because they literally are saying, “Yes, this would kill us. This would literally tax my people too much. I cannot take on this business. I cannot take on this work. I will do my best to refer you on.” This is putting yourself and your team first, their capacity first. Let’s talk a little bit, Randy, about– We talked about hitting the wall this time of year. Why is that and what can accountants really do about recognizing it happening? Seeing the wall coming.
Randy: Yes. Especially if we’re in tax season, we’ve all hit it. You know it’s coming, but there are so many things. You can identify it. You know. It is the burnout. It’s you’re tired, you’re exhausted, you’re starting to get cynical, you’re feeling negative, you don’t want to get up in the morning, you’re waking up at three at night because client questions are running through your mind. If you’re interested, do you want to go into some solutions, how we mitigate that wall?
Seth: Yes, that’s something I would like to address here today. Again, these are not prescriptive or definitive answers, but just something that you can take away and really go, “Yes, Seth and Randy, they definitely touched on some things. You’re right. I am going to recognize when this is happening.” One thing.
Randy: One thing. Let’s do one. That three in the morning waking up, which during tax season everybody because you’ve got things running through your mind nonstop. There’s some counterintuitive things that we can talk about that you won’t think is going to be a solution at will. Before we do that, let’s talk about just shutting down at the end of the day. Our brain needs rest as much as our body needs rest, and not just sleeping at night. There’s studies out there that show that when you’re dealing with burnout, when you’re dealing with this uncontrolled stress– That’s what burnout is, uncontrolled stress. It’s just nonstop stress, and that’s what tax season unfortunately is.
Seth: That’s your constant state, and that’s-
Randy: Right.
Seth: -not okay.
Randy: One thing we need to do is we need to learn to shut off at some point during the day because we can’t be on 24/7. That’s just, again, the snowball. I have a friend, Brian Kush. He explained this three-step process to me, and I love this. Brian’s a great guy. Intend2Lead I think is the name of his organization, but he’s out consulting. Three-step process, and we did a whole hour webinar on this. I’ll do this in two minutes. [chuckles]
A three-step process. One, you have to, at the end of each day, bookmark your work. Whether you’re working at home, whether you’re working in an office, whether you’re working in a hotel like I am right now– Obviously, I assume people realize where I am with that microwave-
Seth: [laughs]
Randy: [chuckles] -in the background. That’s one of my mental health things. During tax season, I’m not busy. I’m busy the rest of the year. I go travel for fun during tax season.
Seth: Yes. Randy hits the road.
Randy: Yes. Bookmark your work at the end of each day. Tell your morning self where your evening self left off. Now you’re training your brain to like, “I don’t have to think about this anymore. I don’t have to think about what I’m doing tomorrow because I’ve already told myself what I’m going to do. I know when I get back to my desk or into the office, I have a game plan sitting there.” Be consistent. Have it in one spot. Have it on a Word document, so when you open your computer– or you can tell Siri, “At 7:00 AM, remind me these are the three things I am working on, I need to finish.
Seth: Set an alarm. Yes. Okay, I guess I’m done.
Randy: Bookmark your work.
Seth: Yes, good one.
Randy: Two, have a “Instead of” plan. Instead of thinking about work when I go home or when I leave the office in my house, instead of that, I have a plan. When I close the computer down at the end of the day, I know I’m going to go home and make dinner. I’m going to watch this show. I have a book I want to read. I’m going to go exercise. I’m going to go to a movie with my spouse. Have a plan. Now, you’re also telling your brain, “I don’t have to think about work anymore because this is what I’m doing. I’m going to go and I’m going to do that jigsaw puzzle that I’ve been wanting to do forever,” which is actually a good thing too because your brain gets to shut down when you’re doing that.
Seth: You’re focused on–
Randy: Right. Number two, have this “Instead of” plan. Bookmark your work. Instead of thinking about work, I’m going to do this. I have a plan to do something else. Then three, have a shutdown ritual. This is all you can train your brain. You can trick your brain. If you do these things consistently, you start to see a difference. A mental and a physical ritual is what Brian suggests.
Mental can be I’m going to say a poem at the end of each day, or I’m going to say a prayer, or I’m going to meditate, or whatever it is for me. I’m going to do this. This is me training myself that the day’s over. Mental shutdown. A physical shutdown could be as simple as turn your computer off. Slamming– not slamming. Closing the monitor there.
Do those three things and you are going to, over time, realize that I’m no longer checking my emails at eight o’clock at night. I’m no longer responding to text messages at ten o’clock at night. I’m no longer waking up at three in the morning trying to figure out what I’m working on tomorrow because I know that’s all taken care of for me already.
Seth: We know that that’s happened to some of you. Thank you for sharing.
Randy: I got more, but that’s one of the biggest things, is just shutting down because your brain needs that rest. Oh, and I didn’t say this. I didn’t finish this sentence. That nonstop chronic stress is just not something that, “Hey, after April 15th, I’ll be good again.” I’m no medical professional, so should have said this from the beginning. I’ve just gone through some experiences that maybe we’ll talk about.
Seth: That was going to be my next question. [chuckles]
Randy: We will talk about that. This nonstop chronic stress actually can cause physical and chemical changes to your brain. This is what I’ve read. This is what I’ve seen from medical professionals. I’ve talked to doctors, and they’ve said the same thing, that it can do that. Now, if that keeps going on and on and on, I’m guessing that that’s not very reversible. I think if you start to control it, you can reverse the effects of this chronic stress. That’s why it’s so important to shut your brain down. Not even at the end of the day. Even during the day sometimes.
Seth: Let’s get into it. I checked with Randy prior to this chat. He’s okay talking about this. A few years ago, something very personal happened to him, and it really gave him pause. Talking about how things can affect your brain, your whole physicality. Randy, why don’t we share about what happened to you and how you got through to where you are now?
Randy: Yes. A big thing I talk about is mental health. To me, burnout is part of mental health. Now, it’s not officially a designated mental illness, but for me personally, I call myself, and it took me a long time to say this, I actually identify myself as a mental illness survivor.
My story is that 10 years ago, and in fact, a month ago was my 10-year anniversary, or you can call it stroke anniversary. I had a stroke 10 years ago. I am so fortunate from a stroke survivor standpoint that physically, I’ve recovered 100%, which is not normal. Most stroke survivors have a deficit of some level. There’s a spot in my brain right here that died and that doesn’t come back, but luckily, I wasn’t using that part too much, I guess. It got rewired.
From a physical standpoint, recovered quickly, but mentally, it took me about five years to recover. That’s why I’m so passionate about this burnout and this mental illness and mental health because I saw what I went through. What I went through, I can equate to accounting. I went through triggers. There was triggers happening in my life where I started to feel a little dizzy. Boom, I’m going to have a stroke again. I’m going to die this time. I’m not going to survive. I’m going to be disabled.
Seth: It had to really just do a number on you. Just feeling like, “Oh, is this it?”
Randy: Oh, yes. I can equate that because we have triggers during tax season. That client call we don’t want to get, that starts this negative impact to our brain, this negative effect. For me, this just kept going for five years where I stubbed my toe, “I’m going to have a stroke,” to that level. That’s what I kept telling myself. My brain was tricking me into thinking negative thoughts about everything.
Seth: It’s like any survivor of trauma. You still get triggered. How did you get through that to where you are now?
Randy: It took about five years only because I had that CPA mindset. I can fix everything. I can do this myself. I’m in charge. I’ll get through this. I finally got to a point where I realized I can’t. This is beyond me. My brain somehow is telling me things that I don’t want to hear. Not hearing voices, but that’s kind of what I felt like. There was another entity inside my brain that kept bringing me down into this depression, panic attacks.
I finally made the decision and I waited too long, although looking back, if I get to this point where I am right now and it took five years to get there, I’m happy with that because I love what I do now and I love where I am. I realized I had to talk to a professional. I couldn’t do it myself. I had to reach out for help, which we have a hard time doing as CPAs.
Seth: This is what we said at the beginning, right? Community.
Randy: Realize that not every counselor, therapist, whatever you want to call them, a psychiatrist, psychologist, I interchange them and I’m probably bad, but not everyone is a perfect fit for you either, just like every client’s not a perfect fit for you or you’re not a perfect fit for every client. I went to see my first therapist and she was a great person, and we’re talking. After a few sessions, her advice was, “Well, Randy, you really can’t control what’s going to happen, so don’t worry about it.” In my mind, I’m thinking, “I’m a CPA. That’s what I do. We control things. We have the answers.”
Seth: Exactly, yes.
Randy: “We help everybody. You’re telling me I can’t help myself?”
Seth: That innate sense of, “I need to control this.” I think that that’s definitely one of the key ways that as a profession, you’re all going to move forward, is just that feeling that you really don’t need to do it all. You don’t need to control it all. That takes time and discipline. The more people that you see around you doing it– I’m looking in the chat here and somebody brought up the point about how we’ve got a shortage right now of CPAs because they’ve never seen clients fired for being rude to staff.
I know that there are firms out there now that are really taking this whole mental health and really having the kinds of clients that you want. All of this is connected, people. It’s all connected to how you live, how you work, and wanting to actually stay here, and yes, ultimately, attract more people to this profession because right now, the image is as we see it. I don’t want to do that with my career. I work all kinds of hours and you just take it. Don’t get me even started on the IRS and our tax code. That’s not for me. Randy, what are you hearing out there? Why do you feel accountants do this to themselves-
Randy: It’s the personality.
Seth: -year in and year out? It can change people. I’m seeing from where I sit, it is changing.
Randy: We’re seeing changes.
Seth: It’s not all doom and gloom.
Randy: No, it’s not.
Seth: It has to be a conscious choice to say, “No more,” to the hours. I don’t know if you saw– some of you might be on LinkedIn, I love that Logan Graf started doing it. Logan was posting every week, “Tax pros, how many hours you work this week? How many hours you working this week? I tell you what, if it’s more than 50, something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong.” I don’t care, I know right now you probably feel like you’re up to here, but you got to go say, “Stop.” You have to know when it’s not okay anymore.
What, Randy, do you think– you’re a CPA, you’ve been doing this long enough, what can break the cycle?
Randy: There’s a few things. One, what you just said, we want to help everybody and we undervalue ourselves, so we end up giving away a lot of our expertise without even realizing that we’re doing it. We have to start, one, valuing the services we’re giving, and advisory is a big deal, a big buzzword, and advisory–
Seth: It’s different things [unintelligible 00:41:13].
Randy: Exactly. The definition is all over the board, so bottom line to me is advisory is you’re affecting the tax return rather than report on a tax return. Anything you’re doing to affect– effect– affect– I think it’s affect, right?
Seth: Yes. One is a direct impact and the other is a larger philosophical–
Randy: I’m getting English lessons today too. This is awesome. We’re going to have an impact on the tax return. We do this– here, simple example. We’re sitting with a client. A couple comes in. We’re doing a 1040. One, we probably shouldn’t be sitting with taxpayers anyways because that takes time away from things we can be doing, but let’s say we’re on a Zoom call with a client, and we look at their W-2 and we realize that they put 5,000 in a 401(k) and they make 250 grand a year, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be maxing out their 401(k), so we tell them, “Hey,” whatever the max number is. If they’re over 50, it’s probably 30,000 now or something, whatever the number is.
We tell them, “Yes, put more money on your 401(k).” Now, we just saved them $5,000, $6,000 on taxes this next year, and in our mind, it’s like, “Well, that’s what I do. I just told them to put it in there. There’s a value to that. There’s a value to what you’re doing.”
Seth: Big time. They might not feel they need an education, but guess what? There’s value in that.
Randy: They want that. They want you to be bringing these types of things, and if you do it, you can value the services you just brought. You can show the savings, you can show what you’ve done, and start charging what you’re worth for it. This is where we can go on forever. We could get Ron Baker on here too, but stop charging hourly. I’m seeing a big change on that. For me personally–
Seth: You’re just doing volume and not–
Randy: Yes, the hourly billing is one of the worst things for our profession, in general, in my mind, and Ron, obviously he’s a friend of ours, he would agree. He’s all about the subscription pricing now, which I see where he’s going with that. I still like the value-based pricing as well because it’s easy to identify. One is just do that, just start not giving away your services.
Seth: Yes, don’t give it away.
Randy: If we do that, we’re going to generate more revenue, we’re going to free up time, and we’re going to do what we love because we’re not going to be sitting there doing this stuff that is mind-draining for us, so that’s just one thing. Value yourself.
Seth: Exactly because if you’re overworked, your brain starts shutting down, you physically start shutting down, and somebody just– one of our attendees just shared a pretty harrowing experience. He said last week on their way to their firm, they went through a red light, hit another car in the intersection, flipped over, landed upside down, they were able to open the seat belt, and he was able to crawl out of the car.
Fire trucks came to the scene. It was a mess. His car was demolished, but walked away without any physical damage, but man, I am sure that you’re still shaken by that. It gives you pause. Randy went through a stroke 10 years ago. This gentleman nearly lost a life– you’re driving, just driving to the firm.
Randy: My guess is he probably went to the office that day too.
Seth: I don’t know. They could say what happened, but just thankfully, this person is still with us and is given another chance to say, “Wow.” I know that it’s still probably– you’re not feeling like getting behind the wheel of a car anytime soon. Just the bigger picture of how it got to that place where you’re maybe thinking about work or just the day itself just got to you.
Randy: When you get a second, let me go over a few other things. I think we need to do some simple things.
Seth: Yes. For sure.
Randy: This is where I said you’re going to be counterintuitive on some of this. You need to take breaks during the day. You need to, one, have the focus time. Have that time where you know you’re going to be just– you’re uninterruptible. You do it, but then have times where you walk away from your desk. I’ll tell you this, one thing I do is on my calendar, I have 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM walk, a 15-minute walk. It’s scheduled on my calendar.
Seth: Love it.
Randy: It pops up and I block it out, so nobody can put anything on my calendar at that time. I just go out, I do it, I get away.
Seth: It’s scheduled, it gets done.
Randy: It’s scheduled, it gets done. Perfect. Now I’ll tell you what I say to do and then I’ll tell you what I do. I say leave my phone behind. I try to do that as much as I can. I don’t even want that chance that I’m going to look at text messages or an email. If I’m at home, it’s with my wife and our dog. If we’re on the road together, which we are now, it is the three of us out for a walk. If I’m on the road traveling for business, I still try to take that time out, and on the road, often the 10 o’clock is a workout. I’ll go down to the gym and work out.
The counterintuitive part is, well, if I’m away from my desk, how am I going to get all my work done? Your brain will be so much more refreshed. You’ll have so much energy, you’ll get away from that cynical and negative and exhaustion that burnout is by giving yourself rest during the day. Doing that sounds counterintuitive, but in reality, you’re going to be more productive by doing that.
Seth: One of our attendees, and this is something that comes up too, I’ve covered business tech for a lot of my career as well. I got to know accounting tech and know where it’s going and the impact on this profession, AI being the next level of automation that’s coming, but this is another thing that can cause burnout. All of the hundreds of little tasks that you have to manage throughout the day.
He says, “I’m still looking for the solution to how to handle those three or four things from a client that they need done.” Digital replacement for a client folder that you printed out the emails and then they’re in various documents and then you stuck them in a folder. Then you lined up the folders to work on, and you might pull a folder out and put it in the front of the stack, a digital project binder that they can easily, quickly drag and drop. Or do they just need to go back to having physical folders to put things into?
All of these little things, when we talk about automation, Randy, really the first thing is look at the things that are taking up most of your time, that you’re spending the most time doing. To this person, I personally would say, as much as you can automate, maybe not in the middle of busy season, but definitely make that a part of your planning for the rest of the year and going into next year. Set yourself up for all of the things digitally for sure. Learn that tech. Get onto [unintelligible 00:49:00] or Canopy or any of the dozen other solutions that are out there to keep you organized, to keep you from having to move stuff around and prioritize. Dealing with physical folders, I know that’s probably something that you’re comfortable with. I don’t know, it’s–
Randy: Automation is key.
Seth: Automate your lives as much as we can.
Randy: I know why we don’t do it as much as we should. One, because, we follow the SALY method, same as last year. Hey, it’s working, I’m making money, I’m fine, I don’t have to do this. Two, and our brains are wired this way where I’m talking about brains being wired and rewired and you can change it, but our brains are wired to avoid pain in general. What our brains do is really think, “Whoa, automation that’s going to take time and effort and I’m not going to do that, I don’t have time to do it.”
Seth: It’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable. You’re out of your comfort zone.
Randy: You see the short-term comfort zone pain and avoid it at all cost when, in reality, the long-term gain is so tremendous that once you do it, you’re just going to be like, “Why didn’t I do this five years ago? Why didn’t I do this 10 years ago?” You can’t get past that, “AH, I don’t have time to do this right now.” We just keep going under that same path and we do the same tax season.
Seth: I’ll get to it, and it doesn’t. I’m definitely a victim of that myself. I started my own business about a year ago and I started doing things in a way that I personally started seeing papers pile up and seeing things that weren’t organized. I’m like, “You know what? I am going to–” doing individual invoicing myself, I’m like, “I’m not going to do that. It takes too much of my time and I hate it.”
Get a solution, and one clear way, we’ve got about 10 minutes left here, and thank you all for sticking with us again and taking that needed break. We’re not going to get to everything, but if you do have some more questions, please throw them in. I want to throw out, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that one of the best ways to really get that sense of community and even learn about some of these automation tools that are out there that will help you in your work life and really make that work life that much better is getting out to a live event.
Now, there’s several new ones I’m very happy to see post-pandemic, to see several new events come into this space. One, again, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, is the one that Randy and Unique CPA and Trimeric Group are hosting. It is in its second year. It’s called Bridging the Gap. There is a link in the chat. Rick can probably drop that in again, but talk to us about that. Mental health and people’s mental well-being is very much front and center. It’s not just about the latest tools and technologies and things that we already know and have heard before. What’s different about Bridging the Gap? Why should this crowd be there?
Randy: Bridging the Gap, and thank you for that, Bridging the Gap came out of this journey that I’ve gone through the last 10 years of this mental health struggle and coming out of this, and seeing– and then over the last five years, the Unique CPA podcast, getting to meet all these people that are doing things different, that aren’t following the SALY method, that are figuring out ways to be more efficient.
Bridging the Gap came out of that from a standpoint that we’re not going to be a technical gap in FASB and tax code, but what we’re going to do is we’re going to help people realize that they can run a practice different. They can figure out ways to–
Seth: And your lives, your professional lives differently.
Randy: Professional lives, for sure. It’s all about mental health, physical health, corporate culture, treating people right. How do we work more efficiently? How do we automate to avoid these burnout issues? Honestly, one of the key things, one of the differentiators is the whole mental health aspect, but it’s not just mental health. It’s practice management in general. One of the cool things that I’m really proud of at this conference is, well, multifold, but I’ll mention a couple.
One, we’ve talked about this already, the community aspect, just as you said it. All the people there, the people you meet, the people that will help you in the long run that have answers that you don’t have. We talked about this at the beginning.
Seth: We’re just the sounding board, right?
Randy: Yes.
Seth: For all of these things.
Randy: Like I said earlier, I’m probably on 8 to 10 text chat groups of tax professionals, now I have to mute them because we need focus time, but I’ll go look at them when it’s not focus time. The community is there, they’re helping. The other thing that I’m really excited about, and we did this last year, and we’re going to do it again this year, is we have a wellness room that is manned by a yogi the entire conference. Every single hour you can go into the wellness room and do yoga, do mindfulness.
Seth: I love that. It’s [unintelligible 00:54:33] quiet. You can stretch. You can just chill.
Randy: Mindfulness, meditation, just learning, just doing the jigsaw puzzle, like I mentioned earlier. They should have jigsaw puzzles on there where you can just go there and clear your brain.
Seth: That’s a note, Randy likes jigsaw puzzles. [laughter]
Randy: We don’t have craft beer in there, I like craft beer a lot, as you do as well.
Seth: Yes.
Randy: There’s no craft beer in the wellness room, but there is craft beer at the evening events. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that as well. I was very fortunate that you and Rick were both there last year. I appreciate you being there. You both are going to be part of this year’s event as well, so thank you for that.
Seth: Gladly, gladly.
Randy: I see Liz Farr is chiming in today. She was there last year. I sure hope she’s going to be there this year as well.
Seth: We’d love to see all of you there as well if you can make it. All the details Rick posted in the chat here. We’re promoting this event only for the simple fact that it connects to this chat, and the topic of this chat so much is that in all of my years of going to accounting events, rarely did any of them really focus much on just your well-being. Somebody brought up about the accountant shortage right now. I would definitely say, just the culture that has been propagated for so long needs to change if we are going to get more people. Let’s face it, you got into this because you want to help.
Randy: Sure.
Seth: You want to make money, of course, who doesn’t want to make money, but you are helping. Otherwise, you probably would’ve done something else to make money. People need you, businesses need you, we need you and we need you healthy, and not feeling like you’re going to go and do something else. I hate seeing it because I’ve gotten to know personally, so many accountants over the years.
It’s why I’ve stayed to try to do my best to say, “Okay, this is how I think it should be better.” Having chats like this and having an event like Bridging really where you’re not just on someone else’s agenda. I think there’s some great events out there, but this in particular is one that really I think puts the accountant, puts you and your business first. We’re nearly at the top of the hour here.
Once again, thank you so, so much for taking the time. I hope that we’ve gotten to at least most of your questions. I’ve tried to. Randy, how can people get a hold of you if they need to reach out? Definitely take the Tax Season Survey that Rick is posting in here. Check out Bridging the Gap, see if it’s for you. Final thoughts, Randy?
Randy: One final thought is just don’t be afraid to think differently. It doesn’t have to be the same way. There are ways we can do things different. I think as accountants, consistency is something that’s drilled into us, doesn’t mean we can’t change the way we’re running our practice in the future.
Seth: Absolutely.
Randy: Do that for sure. Then Rick just put my email in the chat. You can email me. You can– LinkedIn. We have a really good marketing department. I seem to be all over LinkedIn.
Seth: You do. They make sure that you’re out there, Randy. [chuckles]
Randy: You can reach out to me on LinkedIn as well.
Seth: Actually. Same. Rick, thank you for co-hosting, for being a part of this. Any final words for our audience here. We’ll let you get back to your day, which we hope is successful, productive, and-
Randy: Efficient.
Seth: Efficient and full of less stress.
Rick Telberg: Seth, Randy, thank you very much for an excellent job. Randy, thank you for focusing on the joy of work and what brings us to work every day. Stay tuned for announcements for the next chat for 2024. In the meantime, check out Randy’s conference Bridging the Gap. Thank you. Check out the Tax Season Survey from CPA Trendlines. Watch for the Fineberg Review coming out every week.
Seth: Yes. That’s my newsletter. For those of you who don’t get it, you can definitely watch for that if you are a member of CPA Trendlines, or if you want to know more about me, again, you can easily find me on LinkedIn or at sethfineberg.com. Thank you all, have a really great rest of your day. Thank you for being with us. It’s been my pleasure. Be well, have a great weekend as well.
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