Welcome to the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where accountants are not getting paid for their value and are forced to work long hours with high demand clients with little pay. Well, how do you escape the trap? One way is the topic today's episode, and that's by managing your mind so you can manage everything else, especially when it comes to time management.

To help me with the discussion, I've invited Don Goldberg, a certified professional coach to accountants and the author of The Smarter Accountant How to Eliminate Stress and Overwhelm. Create more Time gaining a competitive Advantage and more. Don, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam. It's great to be here. Yeah. So I think this is a topic that is really important to talk about, especially when it comes to accountants and bookkeepers who want to grow their practice and advance their skills and make more money, quite frankly.

And, you know, you're passionate and you wrote a book on it called The Smarter Accountant How to Eliminate Stress and Create More Time Gaining a Competitive Advantage. So let me let me ask you, why did you write this book specifically for accountants? Well, I've been a CPA for in public accounting now for over 30 years. I have worked for some of the big firms like Deloitte and Ernst and Young, and in my experience, being in public accounting for over 30 years, like just like every other accountant, I had normalized a lot of the issues that accountants deal with, like the burnout, the stress and overwhelm, not having enough time.

You know, feeling that imposter syndrome and all the all the things. And I studied to become a life coach and everything that I had learned, I was applying to my personal life. And then I decided to apply it to my career. It was kind of like The Last frontier. I was like, well, let me see if what I'm learning actually applies to tax season.

And so I applied it, and now I have stress free tax reasons. And I was like, all right now, now I need to teach accountants exactly what I have learned so that they can apply it to their careers and to their lives. And it has every, every coaching client that I have, literally, without knowing that other accounts have said this, they all say the same thing.

Why aren't we taught this sooner? This is game changer. This would have been much more, important for me to learn than cost accounting. Oh, wow. Okay, so before we go into the details, why do you think accountants deal with the imposter syndrome and the overwhelm and the stress that you were talking about? I think that it all comes down to the fact that we don't know.

We're never taught how to manage our minds. So really quickly, we have two part parts of our brain that we really need to get familiar with. We have this lower primitive brain, I like to call it the toddler. And the toddler is the part of our brain that is motivated by three things. It's motivated to seek pleasure, to avoid pain, and to conserve energy.

That is the part of our brain that is running our lives 90% of the time. We're not aware of it. Okay. Then we have the higher brain, which is, I call it the supervising parent. That is the part of the brain that can help us to plan ahead. It can help us to make decisions. It's the part of the brain that can manage that toddler like a parent would manage a toddler.

The toddler is freaking out over things all day, every day, and we don't realize that that is the part of the brain that is creating stress, that's creating impostor syndrome, that's making it you know, having us procrastinate, having us have difficulty with, you know, any aspect of being an accountant. And what I like to say is, there is no toddler on this planet that wants to do accounting work, and that's the part of our brain that is in control that then just starts to react.

And then we're working with other accountants who who have toddler brains too. They have the same thing. We're all it's like this dysfunctional, we're all in this together type of thing. And so our brain looks for proof of what we believe it's like. It's called confirmation bias. And so when we have other accountants who are like, I'm stressed and overwhelmed, I'm well, wait, do you see how stressed and overwhelmed I am?

Right. We just start to look for proof. Instead of challenging those limiting beliefs. That's what I do. I help accountants challenge those limiting beliefs to show them what is possible. Interesting. Okay. So can you give me an example of of a limiting belief that an accountant would have that, just that that restricts their ability to grow their firm taxes in a stressful.

That's not a fact. Right. Every accountant with this thinks if they're in public accounting and they do taxes that season is stressful. That's actually not true. That is a thought. That is a thought that our brain has about the fact that we have a deadline of April 15th and September 15th and October 15th. We have so many tax returns to have to get done.

We have this work, we have these type of clients or whatever. What our brain makes those things mean is that tax season is stressful. Then that optional thought, which every accountant in public accounting thinks that optional thought then creates the feeling of stress and overwhelm. And what do we do when we're stressed and overwhelmed? Well, our actions, our inactions and our reactions come from that feeling of stress and overwhelm.

So what I like to say is, like, we're trying to run a very expensive car by putting sludge in the gas tank. That car is going to burn out. We're going to have issues. So we're trying to take action. We're trying to get things done. We're trying to be productive and we're putting this dirty fuel into the tank and then wondering why we're burning out.

Interesting. Okay. So how would somebody taking the example of tax time is stressful? And you're saying that's essentially omit that's people make that up. It's an optional thought. Yeah. It's an optional thought. How do you overcome that. How do you make it and not optional thought? Yeah. So that, you know, if you've been if you're new to accounting, you're an accounting student.

You haven't had experience with tax season. You wouldn't have that programing in your brain. Right? Your brain has these neural pathways. And the more that you think a thought, the neural pathway is like a connection, right? You think a thought and you feel a certain feeling and it starts out is like a very thin thread. It's very weak.

But the more you think that thought over and over and then you see people thinking it and you're you're talking about it, you're complaining about the same thing. That neural pathway gets stronger and stronger and stronger. It becomes like a superhighway. Okay. So it becomes so automatic that you can't even like, you don't even realize that you're thinking it or saying it or believing it.

It's just so strong. Just it's our default programing. So what we have to do, which is what I started to do a number of years ago, was I had to catch myself thinking that same thought, and then I had to be like, all right, we're not thinking that anymore. We're choosing to think this more helpful thought, like taxes and doesn't have to be so stressful.

Or it's possible the taxes and doesn't have to be so stressful. So it was just like this little adjustment, this little pivot that made me feel about, I don't know, 10% better, but I would notice the old thought and I would catch it and I'd be like, typically what I would do is I would catch how I was feeling.

I'd be like, oh, I'm feeling stressed. The only reason I'm feeling stressed is nothing to do with the date on the calendar. It has nothing to do with the work that I have. It has everything to do with what my brain is thinking about those things. So I'm like, okay, I'm feeling stressed. What's the thought that's creating it?

Tax season is stressful or this is too much or I don't even know how I'm going to get all this done. Okay, those thoughts are not helpful or useful. What is what is a thought and optional thought that I could think that would make me feel about 10% better. So that's how you start to untrain your brain. Those neural pathways that were super strong, then get weaker and you're starting to replace them with the new practice.

Thought. Interesting. Hey there Adam here from the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. I'd like to personally invite you to a free masterclass that we're conducting this Thursday called How to Start a CFO service. To register, just go to the CFO project. Com and click Free Training at the top. See you then. Okay, so when you start to think of these new thoughts and you start to pivot your your mindset, your thinking is does that act in and of itself help you come up with other ideas for how to approach the obstacle?

Yes. Is that what it does? So glad you said that. So here's what I teach my clients. Everything. Feeling is like walking. And in high school we had that long hallways, right? All these doors are on the right and on the left. Every feeling that we have is like walking down a particular hallway. Okay. So the hallway of stress and overwhelm.

There are doors that options that are not open. Right. Thinking clearly creating a plan of action. Not procrastinating. Not giving into distractions like email which I jokingly say email is the drug of choice of accountants. So that that feeling of stress and overwhelm is only going to open up certain doors. Okay, but if you were to choose to feel focused on purpose instead of stressed and overwhelmed, all of a sudden there's so many more doors that would open that were not possible when you were going down the hallway of stress and overwhelm.

Oh, wow. Okay. So so let's walk through this. So if we're walking down the stress of overwhelm when it comes to tax season, and there's doors that we can choose to not open, and then there's doors that we can choose to open. So what would be a door that we could choose to open. And in that matter in stress and overwhelm.

You know, just think about everything that that accountants do. They're spinning. They're complaining, they're catastrophizing. They're, procrastinating. Like, those are all the doors that are open. They're hustling, they're pushing themselves. They're working longer hours than they want to. They're not setting boundaries with their time, with their clients. They're people pleasing, right? There's so many things. There's so many actions that we take because we don't realize that we're in control.

We are at the affect of our feelings because our feelings drive our actions and our reactions. So what happens is, and why the learning how to manage your mind is so important for managing your time, right? Anybody can put words on a calendar, in blocks, on an outlook calendar, or on a paper calendar. Anybody, any account can do that.

It's your ability to follow through that is completely dependent on how well you manage your mind, because the things you have to get done if you're trying to take those actions and get those things done again from the fuel of stress or overwhelm, they're going to be very ineffective. Action. Interesting. I have heard from high achieving people, whether it be athletes or or business people, politicians, people that have done a lot of things in their life.

They say that that most of it's mental, that they don't have the average skill, above average skill, or that other people, they just have above average mental outlook on how they approach things. Yeah. So so it's that's really a great point. So what I teach my clients is that and then studies have been done that emotional intelligence is is is a better indicator of success than your IQ.

So your IQ, your emotional intelligence is a better indicator of success versus your IQ. And so your emotional intelligence, the way that I describe to my clients is most accountants, no offense, are in what's called emotional childhood. Okay. What I mean by that is they're blaming circumstances for how they feel. They're blaming tax season for the fact that they feel stress.

They're blaming their clients for feeling frustrated or overwhelmed. They're blaming all these these neutral circumstances for how they feel. On the other hand, what I teach clients is emotional adulthood. Emotional adulthood means that you understand that there are neutral circumstances, and then there is your brain's interpretation of those neutral circumstances that is what's is what's causing you whatever you're feeling, right?

The fact is, you know, it's today is September 13th in two days. Is the extended deadline for S-corp in the United States. That fact that it's September 13th and let's say you have ten returns to get done. That's a fact. You don't feel overwhelmed because of that fact. You feel overwhelmed because what your brain is making that mean, our brain attaches meaning to to neutral circumstances, and 90% of the time it is that toddler brain that's creating the meaning that's been that then creating the feeling.

And so when we understand how to be in control and we take our power back, then I have ten tax returns to get done. I'm probably going to want to feel focused. I'm probably going to want to feel determined or motivated. The last thing I want is I say it's like putting on the parking brake and trying to drive a hundred miles an hour, right?

Stress and overwhelm again are just dirty fuel. But if I have to get some some things done, I'm going to choose to feel focused by managing my mind. And then I'm going to just be incredibly productive. This is how I get more done in less time than anybody else in the office. Why? Because I understand how to manage my brain.

Okay. And so I mean, you you you said that you transform your practice from from one being, you know, a highly stressful, overwhelming practice to one where you're in command of of your, your mind and your practice. So walk us through that journey. What did it look like before? What does it look like now? Before I was a hot mess.

Okay, I'll just say it this way. Okay. The before and after. So I married my second husband, and it was the first taxis. And after we were married, and he was like, what just happened? Like, this is insane. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, is this really the life of an accountant? I'm like, yeah, like it's just the way it is.

It's like, seriously, are you kidding me? So then I had I had studied, to be a certified life coach in addition to being a CPA. And I started, like, again, I started applying these things to my life, and I started applying, managing my mind to my to my work. And I didn't tell my husband the first year that I applied this to tax season.

And at the end of tax season, he goes, I'm afraid to say this. I was like, what? He goes, it seems like tax season was easier. And I'm like, yeah, for you. It was I'm like, no, no, no. But seriously. So I told him what I was doing. He goes, whatever you doing, keep doing that. Because you were so much more calm.

You were you just seem to be much more in control. And I'm like, yeah. And I got done a week early, like everything just it it was incredible to see how much time we waste when we again are using stress, overwhelm, frustration, dread. Any of those emotions do not drive effective or productive action. Wow. Yeah, that makes sense.

What are some other tips that you would suggest to accountants to overcome? Time management issues. Yeah. So like I said before, time management nobody teaches time management the way I do. I blend brain science with time management and what I teach my clients, they first have to understand and the process for managing their minds. And then I teach them a better way to manage their time.

One without the other doesn't work because it's the mind management piece that makes sure that you follow through, right? Again, we can schedule things on a calendar. And how many of us can I oh, I didn't get it done. Or oh, the interruptions or you know, I got confused or I just was in the middle of doing something.

I got so overwhelmed I was more prone to check social media or again, check email, do something easier. Our brain again does not like accounting work, so we have to be on to that. We have to plan for that to happen, and we have to use the higher brain in the planning process. The higher brain is the only part of our brain that can plan ahead of time.

And that's what we have to do. We cannot be reactionary in the moment. We have to use that higher brain and plan our time more effectively. And then when it comes time to do the thing, we need to be much more intentional with how do I feel right now about to get this thing done? I've got, you know, X, y, z client tax return has to get done.

And I have allotted, let's say, two hours to get it done. Well, when I was planning, if I was using my higher brain, then I was making more informed decisions. I was deciding, yes, it's going to take me two hours. That makes sense to me. So I'm using that higher brain. Now it comes time to do it. And your toddler brains like that doesn't sound like fun.

I really don't want to do that. Maybe you should do something else. Maybe you should do this. You you should probably check this other tax return. That's probably more important. There is this thing in our brain called the mere urgency effect, where our brain tends to tend to think that everything is urgent. Right? We have to understand that that's what it's doing and be on to that little tricky thing that it does use that higher brain.

Now I get to to do the thing and I'm like, okay, it's x, y, z return. I scheduled two hours on Wednesday from 9 to 11. And now how do I need to feel in order to get this done? Because if my lower brain is in charge, it's going to be confused. It's going to be overwhelmed, and I'm not going to get it done in a timely fashion.

When I manage my my brain and tie that into time management and I teach my clients how to do this, we get four hours worth of work done in two hours. Wow. Because of the brain management. So on the topic of time management, what is one very specific practical thing that somebody listening today can can do to? What is one thing that they should stop doing?

Let me put it that way. What is one thing that that accountant should stop doing today to help with time management? I think the thing like there's there's so many time wasters. I was just putting together a webinar on procrastination and there we all have permission giving thoughts and permission giving feelings that lead to procrastination. Okay, right. We feel overwhelmed.

So we procrastinate. We feel dread. So we procrastinate. So the thing that the the the most important thing when it comes to time management and productivity is how do I feel right now? I am constantly checking in with myself. How do you feel? How do you feel right now? Because if it's not a helpful or a useful emotion that I'm feeling, then I need to.

I call it stop drop and like the tool that I teach is called the model stop drop and do a model. You've got to understand that. Don't take action for the sake of taking action. You've got to check in and see how do you feel. If you feel fine, if you're like, yeah, I'm good, okay, keep going. But if I'm in the middle of doing something, this just happened a couple of weeks ago.

I had this return I had to do had the, you know, from soup to nuts. I had to do the work papers in the tax return. And I just I don't know why I had this, just natural resistance. I've been doing this tax turn for years. And I was like, oh, here we go. I'm being resistant again. Isn't that interesting?

So I'm like, well, that's not going to be helpful. I know that's going to make it take longer for me to get this done. So intentionally choose how do I want to feel? I want to feel determined that that's what I first I thought, focus. I'm like, no, I want to feel determined. Okay, cool. What do I need to think?

To feel determined? Come on. Like I, I often joke that I'll say to myself, get over yourself. That's like my favorite thought. Like, just get over yourself and get it done. So I said that now I feel determined and I'm starting to work on it. And I had allotted, I think, three hours, and now I'm like maybe a half an hour in and I check in with myself.

I'm like, how are you feeling? And like, I'm starting to go down that that hallway of this is, this is hard. And I'm feeling stressed. I'm like, bring it back. You need to feel determined. So brought it back, I feel determined. I start working on it. Half an hour later, I check in again. How do you feel?

And I'm like, yeah, I think I'm okay. Okay, cool. So it's like constantly checking in with myself. Am I using the right fuel to take this action? And if I'm not, then it it really is beneficial to just stop and then choose intentionally. How do I need to feel to get this done? And what's the thought that's going to create that feeling?

Wow. Well done. This has been very and eye opening, very enlightening. If somebody listening is thinking, I want to learn more, where can they go? Yeah. So, just simply go to my website, the Smarter accountant.com. I have the Smarter Accountant quiz, which is such a great quiz. It will teach you it will, it will be, a quiz to test how well you are using your brain.

Okay. How well you are using your accountant brain. It's not about debits and credits. It's not a, you know, an accounting test. It's literally do you can you relate to these 12 issues that accountants typically deal with. And that's an indication that you're under utilizing your brain. I also have the, The Smarter Accountant book, okay, on the website.

And then if you take the Smarter Accounting quiz, once you've taken the quiz, then you can just schedule a free call with me and we'll talk about, you know, what, how you did on the quiz and how becoming a smarter accountant can help you. And my program. I have two programs. I have the Smarter Accountant program. It's a six week program teaches you how to manage your brain, and it's one on one coaching sessions and teaches you you get a workbook and all the things.

And then there is a timeout at the smart accountant, time management program, where for two weeks I teach you how to manage your brain, and then for weeks I teach you a better way to manage your time. Okay. Wow. Fascinating. We'll put those in you in our show notes, the smarter accountant, dot com and the book and the.

And the quiz. That sounds exciting. Don, thank you so much for being on our show today. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. And to everyone listening or watching, thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with us as we discussed how to escape the accountant trap. Bye for now.