In this episode of the CFO project podcast, we answer your questions around how to be more productive.

Welcome to the CFO project podcast. Today we're talking all about productivity for you and your employees to help me with the discussion, I've invited Marci Rader, the founder CEO of Raider Co, on Marci. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I have my CFO project mug right here I love it. Yeah, I love it. So we wanted to have you on the show because this episode is all about productivity and helping not only the firm owner, the accounting or bookkeeping front firm owner be more productive, but how to make sure their team, which is probably the largest expense item on their on their their PNL is payroll, how to help their team be

more productive. And you're the productivity expert. Tell us why you're the positivity productivity expert. And, tell us a little bit about your background. Sure. Well, I started Raider Co 11 years ago, and we specialize in health powered productivity. And what we mean by that is it doesn't matter how many emails you check, if you're doing it at dinner with your family, doesn't matter how many boxes you check off your to do list.

If you are losing sleep to do it and when I started this business, I just I'm not a an accountant. I'm not a CPA. I really just fell into, working a lot with the accounting industry. And over the years I have done consulting and coaching with different firms and with, individual coaching with many accountants and CFOs.

And it's just become this niche area where I'm speaking at a lot of accounting conferences and working with a lot of firms and getting, you know, gotten to know their business and, you know, not just understanding the high stress that the typical accountant is under, but also it's just like, I mean, I had a lot of respect for my accountant before, but it just like ten next, the more that I work with other accountants and I don't know how y'all keep up with all the regulations and all the things that change all the time.

Yeah, it's a it's a big job. It definitely is a big job. And I, I wonder, do you find that accountants and bookkeepers as compared to other professions, are they more they more in need of sort of this health productivity coaching type thing that you do because they not only own a business in many cases, but are also the the main producer.

Yeah. Yes. The doer, they're there to do it. They're then the brains and the actual task task person. I think it depends. I it's not a, it's not a blanket answer because it depends on what type of accountant. Yeah. Are you know tax accountants definitely have, you know, high stress periods. CFOs for certain have different, you know, periods within the year where it's more high stress than others.

But what I, I've heard a lot in the last few years especially is that there aren't enough accountants, there aren't enough bookkeepers. So people who want to just manage the business or be be the brains behind the business are still in the weeds to do anything. And I also know that, you know, the accounting industry was not ready to go remote when it happened.

And and it's funny because 4 or 5 years ago, I was telling every, you know, telling the firms I was working with, you know, you should probably start transitioning because this is, you know, this is going to happen no matter what. And then it happened and all the people, all the firms that said, you know, we can never be remote.

Well, when you have to be, then you figure it out. And I think that it took a couple of years for firms to kind of figure it out. But now we know, like, you know, we we've been there, we've done that. And now we're in the place where we can make it better. Okay. Very cool. Well, I'm excited to get into this episode.

So what's our first question? During busy seasons like tax time, how can accountants manage their workload without sacrificing quality or their own well-being? Good question. So we're talking about tax time or if you're maybe in an audit or anything like that, it is never too early to start blocking your calendar. If you have a vacation scheduled, if you, you know it's tax time audit whatever that is blocking your calendar out for those times to recharge.

Whether that is if it's a heavy week or two week period that you know, you're going to have blocking those out for meetings. If it is a vacation that you're going to have after tax season is over, blocking that out. Now, this is June and I have days blocked out all the way to the end of the year and really preparing for that.

The, the other thing is consider the use of something like loom. Loom is a video screen capture, app that you can download and you can pull up whatever document or, you know, if you have a specific portal that your clients use, then go through and do a voice voiceover of you, you know, clicking and and moving within that, program.

And then this way you can send that out and all your clients get it. They can speed it up, slow it down. And you're not retelling or retraining the same thing over and over again to all your clients. Anything like that. My my accountant actually started using loom last year, and he will send short video updates. He'll send an update and say, you know, like this is what's coming.

Be prepared for this. And it also just kind of gives you peace of mind as well. And so that is a big time saver that you can do. Because if you find yourself writing the same email or explaining the same process over and over again, number one templates. You should never be writing that email more than once. And two screen capture video.

And if you don't want your face to be seen, you don't have to. It's just it's just showing the screen. So something like that. And never thinking it's, you know, too, too soon to block out time on your calendar. So and by the way, I use loom a lot. I love it. And it's, it is definitely one of those things where you can save a lot of time because you record it once, and it could save a phone call or, or a conversation with a client.

But I think the, the larger idea I love what you're saying is instead of if you find yourself doing the same thing with different clients, just do it once. Yeah. And then just send it out that that's how you can scale you in a sense. Yes. And it's also how you can train your team. Yeah. So, you know, we have a whole library of of how to's.

One firm that I worked with, we created a whole library of how to use. And if when they onboard a new bookkeeper, then it's like, this is the way we do things here, and they can go and they can watch it on, you know, in real time or, you know, on demand and not wait for you to do a 1 to 1 or for you to schedule a meeting.

Yeah. So essentially you're, you're leveraging yourself. You're, you're, you're able to to do more in the same amount of time or even less. Yes. Oh, and actually, one of my clients, just a couple of weeks ago, he recorded a loom video. He. Because loom is also an app on you can download on your phone and he has an area of town there office that it's very confusing to to park.

And so he did this whole walkthrough of the parking garage where you enter the building. He went to the elevator. He's like in go here and this is the door. And he said, you know, we always get, you know, I have to write out this long thing about how to get there. People still call and say, I can't find your office.

So it could even be something not even tax related, but just where to park and how to get into your building. And he was like, this is like, this is incredible. Everybody listening. If you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape the accountants trap, go to the CFO project.com/newsletter.

Going back to the calendar question is, is this one of your recommendation ones? Because accountants don't block out their time. Like why is it a recommendation? Because it sounds on the surface. Oh yeah. I have a vacation coming up. I need to block my time or I have. I need a schedule. You know, like like me personally, I block out 12 to 1 every day for just lunch.

I don't have an hour lunch. It's just I want to be able to have an hour where I could take the lunch during that time. But is that a problem with a lot of professionals? Tax accountants are better at blocking out the time right after tax season is over. Yeah, and then we'll go on vacation. But other types of accountants are not as good at doing that.

Really? No, no. I actually just worked with the CFO a couple of weeks ago, and she has vacation planned in July, and she's like, oh, I didn't. I mean, they block out their calendar for vacation, but they're not looking at the before and the after. They're not blocking out their days from meetings the day before. They're not blocking, you know, the day before they leave.

Yeah. I don't have any meetings the day before you leave. And that's when you're going to be, you know, wrapping stuff up. You don't want to have meetings the day you come back. That's when you're catching up. And so when I talk about blocking out calendars, it's not the actual time you're going to be gone. It's the time around that.

I'll give you another example. So I do I have coaching meetings. Coaching client calls. But then I also and then I have calls for like people prospects or for people who want to hire me for their company. And I also have something called just virtual coffees. Right. We all have them. It's like we're maybe it's a referral partner or somebody wants to introduce us to somebody.

Well, I don't offer as many virtual coffees that week, or maybe none at all the week before I go on vacation and the week before I come back from vacation. Those are very specific to my most important, you know, people, my clients, you know, the prospects and so on. So looking at my calendar that way, you know, in your calendar, you know, what can I get rid of?

That's kind of just like nice to have before and after those heavy periods because it's not just vacation, right. It could be like the launch of a program. Or maybe you're starting to use new software or something. You're like, this week I'm going to be so heads down in this implementation that I need to block my calendar so that, you know, people can't just schedule with me.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. What's your philosophy on blocking time for for, you know, like things like brainstorming or coming up with new ideas. Like, is that something that you should block out or just space space to answer emails or whatever? Yes. I love this question. I am a fan of time blocking, and I actually use this awesome old timer called Time Timer.

And the reason it's it's meant for people with ADHD, but anybody can use it. But what's nice about it is you can set the time, you know, however much you want, but you can see it counting down. And it and it actually gives you a sense of urgency and you're more likely to stay on task. It says something to your brain, and then it just goes off and you hear the little ding.

And so it's very easy if we're just blocking out time on our calendar to just move it around, right, and let things schedule over it. But if you name it and claim it, if you actually give that time, block a name of what you are going to do in it. It does something different to your brain. If you just put block Man, who cares, right?

You're more likely to just put a meeting in there. Yeah, but and I'm not saying you have to put a specific task, but if you're putting something like power hours and that means to you, like prospect calls or your GSD time, you know, to get stuff done time or because you asked me about like time to think or brainstorm.

I actually have think state time I it's not meditation. I'm not clear in my mind. I'm thinking so it's my thing to take time. Think it take. Yes. And because a lot of us in leadership roles or business owners are trying to solve problems in between meetings. Yeah. You know, we have so many meetings in our world now and they're, you know, we have 15 or 30 minute chunks.

We're trying to solve big problems. And we can't do that. No, no. In between. So scheduling a block of like 2 to 4 hours. The horror. What? Yes. You can do that much. Like 2 to 4 hours an afternoon or a morning like once a week and just get outside, you know, get out of your office, get away from your desk, shut everything down and solve your problem.

Yeah, I love that, especially because so many meetings these days happen via zoom or something like that. And you're right, you, at least for me, I cannot work on any, anything, any problem, any project, any task that's meaningful unless I have about an hour at least to do it. Because. Because every time I get interrupted by something, a phone call or text, I just get out of the zone.

Oh, yes. And it's it's. You've got to protect your time. And that's science. It takes about 15 to 25 minutes to get into a deep focus zone. And, here, here's a fun little tip for you. It's called the cathedral effect. So if you are trying to be creative, like you have a problem to solve, it's actually best to go outside or be in a room with very tall ceilings.

But if you want to like heads down, focus and you're just test, test, test, you know, bust and things out, you actually want to be in a closed, closed room or closed space. And when I first learned this, it made so much sense because when I'm trying to figure something out, I'll go for a walk. But I used to go to this co-working space, and I would work in the phone booth for like two hours, and I had so productive.

And people say, like, why do you choose to work in the phone booth? It's like, I don't know, but I get so much done in there. And that's why, because I like interesting space. Yeah, that's very cool. That is very cool. All right. Well, what's our second question? What strategies can accountants use to prioritize tasks when everything seems urgent and important?

That is a good question. It is a good one. Well, I say to match your priorities at three. Our brains like odd numbers and likes the number three. And if everything's important, nothing's important, right? So thinking about your three priorities. And I like to think of it as annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily. And your annual is your spaceship.

You your quarterly is your airplane view. Then you have your skyscraper view. And then you're in the trees for week. And then you're in the weeds for daily. And, you know, really thinking about if I only could choose three. And it doesn't mean that you don't have more than three things that you do that day. You know, your daily task list, you might have ten of them.

But when you're trying to figure out which of these things do I do, you narrow it down to three. And you can think of it like, if I were to go on vacation tomorrow, what would I get done today? Because everybody's most productive day is the day before they go on vacation, and you get the important stuff done and you will not worry about, like, you know, the small stuff.

Or you could also think about it like, if I only had one hour of juice on my computer. Yeah. What would I focus on? And that can help you kind of get out of that swirl of, I kind of do it all like I did it all. Maybe you'll get to it. All right. But that's also one thing that I see is that people always start their days out with more things on their task list than they can handle, because they're not thinking about, I get a phone call or two.

Yeah, I might get a client. I might get a prospect that says, you know, I want to sign up with you, you know, all these different things. You're not they're not giving windows. Yeah, I'm guilty of that. Yeah. To. And then then you move things forward to the next day, and then it just feels like I failed today.

Right? Like I didn't get anything done. Yeah, yeah. And if I was realistic with myself at the beginning of the day, I probably got a lot done. Yes. Do you find that a lot of people place emphasis on urgent tasks that are not important? In other words, in your skyscraper forest analogy, airplane analogy. To me, the tasks that you should be working on when you're in the weeds, the daily tasks should have a direct correlation in to hitting your yearly task.

I think you called it the sky task or airplane. Yeah. Yeah. Spaceship you. Spaceship you. Whereas people a lot of times do you find this people are working on tasks that have nothing to do with the spaceship view. If they're just somebody else's urgent problem or, or something that seems urgent. But not really important. How do you handle that?

A lot of that, when people are doing that, it's in their inbox. Yeah. And they're just in and out of their inbox or teams or slack all day. Yeah. And it is a it is a way for us to procrastinate. It feels like it's important it to my inbox, but, you know, it might be important, but it might not be urgent.

Yeah. And most people, when they send you an email are not just sitting there waiting for you to respond, you know, and and actually, when my accountant replies back to me immediately, I'm like, are you just sitting in your inbox? Like I don't want him to reply to immediately. I want him to be, like, focused on, you know, whatever it is he does and know that, like, maybe he batches his emails, you know, because an e emails are tasks.

They're, you know, an M chat. You know, it's not checking my email. Yeah. But throughout the day it's like, okay, now I'm going to do the task of processing my email. Yeah. And so what I call that, you know, going back and forth is we're really working on our busyness with the Y and not our business with an eye.

Oh I love that. That's fantastic. Hey there Adam Levine with the CFO project podcast. Are you an employed accountant or bookkeeper that would like to start an advisory service on the side? Well we have a free training for you called Side Hustle CFO, where we'll show you how to start a business on the side, offering CFO and advisory services to small business owners.

We conduct this training every Friday at 3 p.m. eastern and 12:00 pm Pacific. Go to the CFO project.com and click on free trainings to register. All right. What's our next question? Accounting can be a high stress profession. What are some effective stress management techniques that accountants can incorporate into their daily lives? Good question. Curious question. Yes, I am going to throw one out there.

And it's I do a lot of, continuing education for accountants. And across the board, I would say most of you do not take a lunch or eat lunch in front of your screen. And while it may seem like, yeah, is that really my big, you know, productivity thing? Yes it is. We your eyes need a break.

When we are staring at a screen, we actually breathe shallow and we don't take as full of breaths, which affects our diaphragm. And our brain doesn't move up and down as much, which affects our digestion. And so, even from a health perspective, if we are eating in front of a screen, we're more likely to snack more in the afternoon.

Because our brain, it has not been imprinted that we have eaten anything. And my goodness, we just need to step away. We are not robots. We're not robots. And it's when you're eating your lunch away from your screen that you might just solve that problem at 20 minutes, that you think that you are going to, you know, get at the end of the day, you missed your recharge, your batteries running on fumes.

Yeah, you you might actually still get to 20 minutes, but because you took that lunch and just so your audience knows, you know, this is not something that I, you know, I wasn't always like this. I used to be the one who, you know, typed out emails late at night. I never took a meal, you know, away from away from a screen.

And I was just go go go go go. And I very I would call hyper achieving. There's a difference between high achiever and hyper achieving. And I, released a TEDx X in on April called The Relentless Pursuit of more. And I talk about that, you know, this pursuit of mine led to irreversible health issues, relationship issues with my husband, and in the end was not effective in my career.

But if anybody would have looked at me, they would have thought I was the healthiest person in the room and that, you know, I was I was on the ladder to success. Yeah. Oh, wow. So it's the where where could somebody find that? By the way, it is on YouTube and they can Google my name, but it's probably easier if they go to my site.

It's MRC writer.com, MRC y rad air.com/ted x and okay. Right there. Perfect. Excellent. Well Marcy this has been a fantastic discussion. If somebody somebody's listening, they're like, I need Marcy's help. I just need some help in this space because I'm burnt out. I'm burning the candle at both ends, and I don't know how to get out of this.

Where can they go? The best place to learn about all of our services, because it's not just me in this show is. Hello greater co.com. Hello greater token. And on that site we actually have some case studies and one is of an accountant, a business owning accountant who when they hired me, was actually secretly looking for a job as an employee.

And by the time we were done, she had bought two more firms and was living in Belize. So that case study, they'll want to take, check out. And then there's also another case study. Well, there's a case study of a fractional CFO, who, was able to start unplugging on the weekends and evenings. And then there is a case study for an accounting and finance, financial advisory firm on there as well, that I worked with their entire firm.

Very cool. All right. Well, Marcy, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Thank you. And to everyone listening or watching. And if you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape the accountants trap, go to the CFO project.com/newsletter. See you next time on the CFO project podcast.