Name: Keynote Fireside Chat: Productivity & Wellness in Tax Season - How to Optimize Both
Uploaded: 2025-01-08T17:37:37.429Z
Duration: 1 h 4 s
Description: Keynote Fireside Chat: Productivity & Wellness in Tax Season - How to Optimize Both

Transcript for "Keynote Fireside Chat: Productivity & Wellness in Tax Season - How to Optimize Both": Hi. Welcome to our session. Today, we're gonna be talking about productivity and wellness and tax season and how to optimize both. First, we're gonna start with introducing, ourselves, and then we'll get into some housekeeping and then into the content. So, Randy, would you please introduce yourself? Will do. And, first off, it's just an honor to be here with you, Brady. Appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to, the discussion we're gonna have today and and, the importance of what we're talking about. And even before I introduce myself, I'm gonna go into a a just real quick on that title, productivity and wellness in tax season. That is not an oxymoron. We can actually do it. We can be productive and, be mentally and physically well at the same time. So that's why I'm I'm super excited about talking about this topic, because there's so many tricks and things that we can do to be better during tax season because we're coming up to busy time, and we don't wanna be dragging for the next two and a half, three and a half months. Okay. That's my side note. Thanks, sir, for this, Brady. My name is Randy Crabtree. I am a CPA. I've been in this profession for a long time. Started in 1998. Had my own firm from 91 to 06. Sold that and started a, another firm, Tri Merit, in, 0 7. I'm very fortunate. The last 7 years, I get to kinda go out and just do cool things to help this profession, at least what I feel helped the profession. And because of that, I've been I get recognition, some ways, County Today did so. I host a podcast called the Unique CPA where I just get to talk about cool things you all are doing in this profession and how you are trying to make this profession better, mentally, physically, and, and work life balance wise. And and it's just, been a lot of fun, and and I'm really, proud that I get to work with Intuit too on their tax counsel. Awesome. Thanks, Randy. And I'm super excited to be chatting with you today as well. Just a little bit about myself. Before I get in there, this is very important to me. It's important to my team, this topic. So some of the tips that we're gonna be giving you has helped me personally and my team. So I just wanna call that out, and we'll we'll we'll discuss that more going forward. But, hi. My name is Brady Suggs. I am the director of product at the ProTax Group. So I oversee multiple products, including ProConnect tax, Intuit tax advisor, Will Served, ProSeries, and a few others. I've been with Intuit for over 13 years. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it's been a great great ride. I started out actually as a software engineer doing bank software and then consulting and then moved made my way into Intuit. So I, I love working for you with you, these last 13 years and looking forward to the next few as well. Just personally, I have a kid. I do like sports. I am from Texas, so that might come out, here every once in a while, little y'alls or whatever. Just please bear with me. So, anyway, thank you. So we'll go into a little bit of housekeeping once we go through the agenda. So just primarily what we're gonna cover, a high level is just why this is important, mental health, how we can identify it, especially around burnout and how that pertain tends to mental health issues, how you can assess your own situation, risk factors, and how you can help alleviate it for yourself as well as your firm. So so just a little bit about the tool you're in. So the chat, so that helps you converse with with us or other attendees. So there's that chat box. The polls, be sure to look for that poll question. It's important for you to to find it and use it because that's gonna be required for you to get your credit. So you just hit the poll, click on answer button, and just put in your text. Pretty straightforward. Q and a, helps you ask ask questions to the producer of the content. So we'll have folks answering there. And then the documents, we'll have some documents that could be beneficial to you at the end as well. So that's where that's at. And as far as participating again, make sure that the webcast has audio exclusively through your speakers. That'll work best. We prefer you use Chrome or Safari. That's gonna give you the best experience. We've had some issues with VPN ad blocker firewalls, so just be cognizant cognizant of it. If you see any issues, just look to make sure you're having you have these browsers and that you have your VPN or ad blockers or firewalls, allowing us, to, present to you. And, survey as Vivint is wrapping up, you're gonna have a short survey. This is important for you to answer so we can improve this going forward. So we very much appreciate any any feedback you give us. Again, for the credits, make sure that you're here the whole time and answer any questions, and then you'll get your credits as simple as that. So you just gotta click that poll, question, put your answer in, and you will get credit. Alright. So why are we talking about mental health in the tax keynote? Usually, we're talking about all these cool things we're building, trying to sell you on things, but that's not the case here today. There are some things we're working on that I do believe will help with it, but that's not what we're here for. Mental health is extremely important in in all aspects of life and especially in the accounting and professional tax, space where there's a lot of high demands, short time frames, dealing with people's financial livelihood. All that compounds into some interesting statistics. So, as far as the state of mental health, this comes from the general of accountancy. So currently, 52% of accountants feel stressed daily, not just stressed, but daily. And they believe that 60% pressure hasn't increased over the last 5 years, which is, staggering. 30% of pros indicate that they suffer suffer from mental health themselves. Another interesting stat that I just learned about not too long ago is, overall, the adult population in in America, over 73% of, adults say that they or someone that they are close to have, you know, dealt with mental health issues. So it's it's much more predominant than, you know, you would think, and and it's actually increasing, which is why we it's so important for us to talk about it. And the last one here is just, you know, before the pandemic and after pandemic, 34% are saying they're more stressed than they were before the pandemic. So it's not getting better, and and that's why we we believe it's super important to talk about it. Randy, is there anything else you wanna highlight on these sets? Actually, the next slide. There's some things I'm gonna wanna add to it too because we're gonna be talking about stress, and and I think it's important to kinda define what that is. Yes. Yes. Okay. Go ahead, Randy. Alright. So so, you know, we all as Brady just said on the last side, you know, we we say we're dealing with stress, and and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So stress by itself, as long as it's controlled, you know, actually probably helps us perform in some in some areas, and so what we need to do is decide when that stress has gone too far. Because when that stress is going too far, that's where this can turn into burnout and mental health issues. And so there's a couple different ways to look at stress. Just in general, stress is is just this this feeling of emotional, physical, physical tensions. We feel this, you know, emotionally, physically, we just feel tight and tense, and and this could be in short spurts. And if it's in short spurts, that's acute stress, and this actually can help us act. Hey. There's this project that has to get done. Stress kicks in. Adrenaline kicks in. We get the project done, and then that those levels subside, and we're back to normal, you know, mental stress levels. Where the problem comes in is where we're just chronic, just nonstop. You know, tax return after I mean, we're talking about, you know, a tax keynote here and tax season. So nonstop taxes, we just can't dig out from underneath it. We feel like we're never gonna catch up. That deadline's coming too fast. We're never gonna make it. That chronic stress is where we have problems, and so that's where we have to that's gonna be the key of, I think, a lot of what we discussed today is, sure, stress by itself, not necessarily a terrible thing. Uncontrolled chronic stress is where we need to be working on and try to control to see if we can do anything, tricks, or or or or or change in the ways we're doing things to help us alleviate that. That's the key I wanted to talk about with stress. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. The the the constant chronic, stress, isn't isn't what we're wanting. But, yes, I've had stress where it actually, propelled me and motivated me and and and we're able to do good things. But the constant living in that stress, is gonna lead to burnout. And and, again, that's not mental mental illness, but burnout can lead to mental mental health problems. And then just the definition of mental illness, it's, you know, it it affects how you think, your mood behavior, your mood. It it's it's impacts your day to day. And so we're gonna go ahead and talk to our stories, here, before we get into more definition of burnout and what we can do about it. Yeah. And so for for me personally, I've got a couple different stories. This this one, I'll get to in a second, but I've dealt with burnout running my firm. You know, I started my firm in 1999, ran it to 2,006, built it way too tax heavy. My own fault, but tax seasons were crazy for me, and I got to the point where it was just nonstop. What I just described on that last chronic stress nonstop, working 7 days a week, working 12 hours a day. And and so that that was probably one reason that I ended up selling my firm in 06, and I'm not telling you you have to do that. That is not a solution. For me, that was the only solution that I knew at that time. My chronic stress during tax season was affecting my kids, and and I couldn't let that happen anymore. And so so that was the first, iteration of me dealing with, you know, mental health. And and as Brady said, burnout is not necessarily considered a mental illness that is being discussed that does this need to be redefined on what burnout is, and so it's it's pretty interesting there. My my mental health struggles, came on this day. This picture was taken, in 2014. I don't know why I'm smiling there because I am in the hospital had having just had a stroke. I'm very fortunate that I'm able to smile because when the stroke happened, that was not a possibility. Whole left side of my body went dead. I lost the ability to speak. It was totally incoherent. And so, I was from a from a positive standpoint, I recovered very very fast physically. I was as you can see in this picture, I there's no this is, you know, 6 hours after my stroke. You can't even really tell that something happened there. Normally, a stroke survivor will have, you know, sign of their face will be drooping or something like that. The smile will be off. Eye will be closed. And for me, it was very fast physical recovery. I was numb for 2 months afterwards. For me, what happened was it was more of a mental struggle, and that really kicked in because 4 days after my initial stroke, I had a second stroke. Very small very small. The first one was small. The second one was even smaller. But that started this thought process in my head that, well, it's just gonna happen again. You know? I'm I'm I'm what's the point? I'm gonna die. I'm gonna have another stroke. I'm not gonna see my kids, you know, graduate college. I'm never gonna see grandkids. I'm your brain, my brain, but in general, our brains can just start playing tricks with us, and that's what happened with me. And so I, for about a 5 year period, was struggling with panic attacks, with PTSD. Any feeling in my body was another stroke gonna happen, and that's what my head was telling me. Got to the point where it's like, you know, feeling hopeless. And and it took me a long time to admit, but it was depression, was kicking in. And it wasn't constant. It was on and off. And the reasons I'm talking about this story right now is because I look at what we are doing in our profession, and I see that we self induce some of these things that I went through. We we have to help everybody. We're nonstop. We're go go go. We have to get everything done. We have to work harder. We have to put my hours in, and we start tricking ourselves with that mentally. So for me, it took a long time to get out of that. It took reaching out for help, which there should be 0 stigmas attached to that. And I think in our profession, there still is stigmas just in the world in general. Mhmm. But there's too stigmatized that, oh, he went to see a therapist. Oh, what's going on there? That can't be the case. We have to we have to, make this a very unstigmatized, if that's a word, unstigmatized thing. I'm going with it whether it's a word or not. Unstigmatized thing. And so what I did is I went and saw a counselor's therapist. The other thing I wanna point out is if you are struggling with something, whether it's burnout or just uncontrolled stress or even further into into mental health issues, realize that not every therapist is gonna be a perfect fit for you. Mhmm. You know, we we and and to equate that with what we do too, we're not a perfect fit for every client as well when we're doing taxes. And we that's part of the struggle that we need to deal with because we can't help everybody even though we want. So for me, one soft therapist, took 3 therapists before I got to somebody that somehow had some magic, pixie dust that they sprinkled on me because that's what it felt like. And after 5 years of going up and down, I was sitting in my melancholy place at home because it in my mind, I didn't realize it was depression. I called it my melancholy place. And I was sitting there, and there was a mirror in this room. And after one of my sessions with this counselor, I stood up. I looked myself in the mirror and and, just so I don't scare anybody. I'm not gonna swear right now. I don't swear, really at all normally. I swore this day. And I looked in the mirror, and I said, get out of my effing head. You're not real. I'm not gonna listen to you anymore. And I just started chanting, get on my head. You're not real. I'm not gonna listen to you anymore. And and and it wasn't it wasn't like this epiphany, but it was like this, alright. I'm back in control. I am not gonna allow these feelings to happen. And for me, that's a that's a a a privilege the way I was able to do it because sometimes this is also not just, you know, mental. It can be chemical, and there's other ways to treat things. But for me, I was I was able to say, hey. I'm gonna take this control of my life back again, my head back again. And then we can go into this because I know I'm I'm rambling, and and I I will do this at times. But, probably somewhere later in this session, we'll talk about the changes I made afterwards because for me, it was looking at everything and what were the things I needed to keep doing, what are the things I didn't need to do, what are the things I'm passionate about, what are the things I'm good at, what are the things I'm not good at, and reevaluating everything, and then finding this path that has just brought me joy, that is just that is just every day is and it sounds corny, but every day is wonderful. Every day is beautiful. I love everything I'm doing. I love this moment right here, with Brady. And so if if I can, inspire anybody to get to that point, man, that is that is something that I aspire too. Alright, Brady. No. I love it, Randy. I mean, you are inspiring, and I do see the joy every time I'm with you. So really appreciate it. Really appreciate you telling giving giving your story, and, and I'm about to get into mine, but it's it's an interesting there are everyone has their own journey with this, and, you know, I come from a time where, you know, just take control of it or just just fix it. And, that's not always possible. It's a it's a journey. Right? It's, I mean, if you're going through it, it's a journey. I promise you. There's a way there's a way out. Right? And and a lot of it has to do with first just, realizing that the situation exists, and that's usually the starting point. And for me, you know, this is my son. He's he's much bigger now. This is kinda when I was going through it. You'd look at me and say, hey. He's doing fine. But, I was really good at hiding it, quite honestly. So this was about 8 years ago, and out of nowhere, I started to get anxious. And I'm, my wife will will agree with this. I'm kind of hard headed as well. And so I was just thinking it's nothing. You know, I'm just gonna I'll just get through it, whatever. You know? And some of it manifested itself with me just getting light headed. I couldn't focus. And then it ultimately, led to me having a couple panic attacks, and at the time, I didn't know they were panic attacks. I thought I was having a heart attack. And I even then, as hard headed as I am, I wasn't taking it serious as I should have. And when I went to the doctor, I was, looking for them to tell me about some blood sugar off or, you know, something physical, and they let me know, you know, like I said, anxiety and I even a theme here of me being hard headed, I I just didn't believe it because I was always the person that was cool under pressure, you know, just put me in front of a lot of people talking. That's fun. You know, I I didn't get stressed, but, you know, a lot of it was me just hiding it, over the years. So I didn't understand it, but, it was the best piece of advice that I got, was just to acknowledge it. And so although I'm hard hearted, I eventually did. And I again, I refused it for a while, but once I acknowledged it, then I could realize that it it was there. It existed, and it's that's okay. And something resonates with me, Randy, what you're talking about is, you know, in anxiety, there's definitions various definitions around anxiety. Anxiety is all about, you know, the future and and and kind of putting these, provocations in your mind that that something's gonna happen or whatever. And and depression is always kinda looking back and kind of wishing that you could have done something something better. And the anxiety piece of it, what helped me was just just focus on the moment. I I love what you're saying, Randy, about I'm very joyful now as well. I'm very glad to be here and talking with all of you. So, it was it was eye opening to me, but, you know, I'm I'm really glad I I went through it. At the time, I felt like I was only 1. And so, you know, some of these things that, you know, that kind of contributed to it and were a reason for it was me, you know, I was trying to be a perfectionist, OCD, super OCD. I was never able to rest. My dad's the same way. Like, he's 70 years old. I cannot keep up with him. You know, I had a one counselor tell me I know this is gonna sound funny, but, basically, I'd have to have my car completely clean all the time. I'm cleaning it once or twice a week. And she's like, you cannot clean your car for a month. And I was like as as crazy as that sounds, it made me realize, like, I was focusing on things that weren't as important, and then that started adding up, and that started to build up. And, it it wasn't it wasn't healthy for me, and it was just it was just getting in the way of me focusing on the present. So I've changed many things in my life. I prioritize my health, so I'm very into diet and exercise. And, again, everyone has their way of dealing with this. I'm not trying to say this is gonna work for everyone. This is just what worked for me based on my situation, but I do believe diet and exercise can pretty much help every anyone. And then I was more intentional on being present and more focused, and not everything needs to be perfect, which my wife, I think, is now, grateful for, that I've I've evolved in that sense. And I've also took on this mantra of I'm not saying no to things that are not illegal or anything like that. But, we have friends. If I'm invited to something, if I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm not gonna say no. I'm gonna I'm gonna participate, and it's it's made all the difference in the world. I you know, being isolated, can can get you back in that space. It's always good to have friends and and be around people that you really care about. Yep. Yep. I can I add a couple things to that? Yeah. Of course. Sorry. Yeah. I didn't know if you're down there. So so they're saying no, I I completely agree with that, but then there's a point in time where we, as a CPAs or as a county professionals, say yes to too much. And so there's a difference between what you said there because yes. Not Correct. But we do that. The other thing is, you're more than welcome to clean my car anytime. I know. I don't do it every week anymore. So sorry. I can't do it. I have a lot of time. Yeah. And and then when you're talking to counselors, I think this is an interesting, story because it it it does show the personality we have as as accounting professionals. When I was see talking to the 1st counselor I talked to, her the way of looking and treating me was, well, Randy, you can't control the future. You can't control what's gonna happen, and so don't worry about it. And I'm like, I'm a CPA. You know that. Right? This is what we do. We control things. We're on top of it. We give the answers. We're helping everybody. And so that's what I meant by not every every therapist is perfect for you. No. She was right. It's just not the way that I needed to hear it. When I got to the third one, she basically said the same thing, but in a different way. And so that just I wanted to point out. No. That's great. Yeah. Some people react to different ways of how things are positioned. Right? I would not have reacted to that as well. It's like this get, you know, just get through it. That would not have worked for me either. Nope. Alright. Alright. So poll number 1. So we'll give you guys a few minute about a minute to answer this, and we'll get into the rest of the content. Yep. And I assume I didn't read it at the beginning, but I assume they're CP certificates. Is there a portal to get that from? Do you know, or is it just emailed to them? Yeah. You'll get emailed with, how to how to redeem it. So you'll get an email. And then, again, the poll, if you see on the bottom, how to how to, access it, it's on the poll tab, and you'll see the question. And it's just a quick answer. And then, again, it's good good call out, Randy. It's gonna be emailed to you, once this is over. Alright. That's perfect. Alright. Give it about 20 seconds. The other thing I wanted to point out, while they're doing this too, that maybe a little discussion if you if you want and but the one thing that I didn't do was hide what was going on with me. And I think too often people do hide it. I mean, there was a level of hiding, you know, from you know, I told my wife, hey. I'm having that melancholy feeling again. I don't know what's going on. Is it you know, my head's just different now because of stroke or what but but I let her know, and I and I wasn't internalizing everything. It sounded like maybe you looked at it a little different and tried to put up the wrong front. Yeah. You're right. I I put on the strong front. I wish I wouldn't have because I would have been able to probably make much more progress sooner. So I hit it for a while, quite honestly, over a year. And then when I actually just, you know, talked to to people, that's when I started to actually make progress. Yep. So yeah. Everybody's got their own timing, their own method, their own way of dealing with that. But I think at least at some point, you have to open up. I think that is necessary because you keep internalizing it, and it's just gonna keep, you know, building inside. Yes. Exactly. And this does a side note, Brady neither Brady nor I are medical professionals, so this is just personal experience for sharing. Yeah. That's a great call. Yes. We we are not saying we know how to fix this or that we're, have a doctorate in this, but we do have experience. So we think it's valuable to learn from. So alright. So, now you know a little bit of context of, anxiety, what it is, how it manifests itself. You have some different perspectives of, 22, professionals that have went through it. And now we wanna get into accounting for Brownout. So why why do we go through this? So I'll let you speak to this, Randy. Yeah. It's it's something that I kind of alluded to as we've gone through a couple slides already, but we are just so focused on client. We are so focused on helping everybody. We this is you asked every not everybody, but you asked many people why they got into the accounting field because they wanna help, because they like this they get joy from seeing the solutions that they can bring to others. And too often what happens is that's our main focus, and we forget about ourselves. And we start we start drifting away, and the client starts taking front and center at all times. And so what we need to do is realize that we also, you know, need help at times. We also need to, you know, have somebody give us some answers or find them internally because what we end up doing is, well, hey. I have a deadline. So what do I do? I work harder instead of, you know, 5 and a half days a week, half day Saturdays. Now I'm working all day Saturdays, and now I'm gonna put in Sundays too, And I'm gonna be sending out messages at 8 o'clock at night, at 10 o'clock at night, at 7 in the morning on Saturday, and I'm gonna set a bad example for the people I work with, and we're gonna start to have this this snowball. We all think, and this has happened to all of us, I'll guarantee in this profession, I'll just do it because it's gonna take me 10 seconds to send it back to somebody to fix it. It's gonna take me one second to make the fix. Yeah. That starts to add up. And you keep doing that over and over and over, you're not helping the people that, you know, are making the mistake, let's say, and you're not helping the people that you're not helping yourselves. So take time. We are we are we'd love instant gratification. We'd love to get that that billing out the door today, that tax return out the door this second. But what we miss is the long term solutions by taking a little more time now and saving a lot of time in the future. So those are those are some of the things that that really drive us into this. I'm gonna just call it downward spiral where it's just work, work, work, work, work, where all we can see is that we can't see an end then at all, and it just it just keeps going. And and burnout is is really like a snowball. In fact, we'll talk about that, I think, in a little bit when we talk a little more about burnout, but that's what drives us. It's this need to help everybody, this need to constantly be on, and we forget about ourselves. Yeah. And I I used to just think, okay. No. It's me just leading by example, quote, unquote. But, really, I wasn't. I mean, I it was it was kinda making others work longer than they should, and actually not growing the way they could on the team. And then when I kinda let go of control, I realized well, I knew already, but I have some amazing people that I get to work with on my teams that are ready to step up and wanna wanna help out. And, yeah, it's it's that controlling nature. It's not really controlling. We we we have good intent. Mhmm. But, it doesn't help in the long run. You're right. It doesn't help build up our team, and it it's just gonna lead to burnout. Then that's the thing when I was saying with, like, the messages. We send what expectation do we send when we send a email out at 10 o'clock at night? Well, the people reading that that are working with you go, well, Brady, my boss is sending out an email at 10 o'clock at night. I have to be looking at my email all the time. I have to be looking at my Slack or Teams or or whatever. What's up message what's app messages? What's up message? What's app messages, all the time? And then we set the stage that, okay, you have to be on 247. That's what we're telling you because we do these things, and that's, a habit we need to break. Yes. For sure. For sure. And, if you don't, you'll get these are the signs of burnout from mental health. So we we've kinda touched on our own stories, you know, around your mood, how you feel. For me, it was almost like a roller coaster. I'd have some of these really good highs, and then all of a sudden, it felt like out of nowhere I was feeling down. I also had some time issues with concentrating some, and I could never pinpoint, like, a thing that was triggering it. It wasn't like if I did this, then that would happen. So that was that was difficult. And I just thought it was maybe me being tired or, you know, again, me me not really addressing and and being present and understanding what was going on, affected my energy, sleep. You know, it just it it it can affect everything in your life. So not just how you show up, but how you how you feel, how you what you can produce from it, as well. So, Renny, any anything you wanna add to this? Yeah. So let me define burnout just as it's clinically defined because I think this is this is pretty interesting. You'll we'll see when I talk about this how we become less effective the more we work because of of what burnout does. And so burnout's actually, from everything I see, everywhere I look, it's a workplace phenomenon. That's where burnout kicks in. There's not really I'm I'm I'm burned out, you know, cooking green beans every night for dinner. That I never heard that that statement that's at work. And so the it's conceptualized by 3 things. 1, and when you're working too hard, when you when this is kicking in, you just start to feel tired and exhausted. You feel depleted. It's just part of it. You start to feel cynical about what you're doing. You start to have negativity around your job. And then because you're tired and you're negative now, I mean, it's almost an immediate reaction or or or it's going to happen, you just lose efficiency. You know? If you're moping there and you're tired, you're gonna become less efficient. And so I just said on the last side, what do we do as a profession? Generalizing, but I'm guarantee you most of us fall into that. We just work harder. I have to put more hours in. And then what happens? It's just a snowball effect. This this burnout, which started here, is rolling down that hill, that that big hail of snow, and it's growing and it's growing because we have to work harder because we're tired, and we're gonna get more cynical. And now we're gonna get more tired, and it just keeps going that way. So so if you feel if you sense this this cynicism and you this this negativity about what you're doing, I don't wanna deal with that job again. That client's calling, and I'll guarantee you we all do this. That's happening. Yep. We become less efficient, and it just just snowballs. And then what we think is, well, I just need to power through. I keep saying we think. I feel like I could put myself in everybody else's shoes. I thought this way. I know a lot of us do, but then what happens is I just power through it. I you know? Hey. April 15th's almost here. I just need to make it through the next 60 days, and we're gonna be counting down and kicking off those days. And then when 60 days hit, we're like, yes. But that never happens because now we're catching up again. Now we have the next deadline. Now we have the sales tax returns and the payroll tax returns, and we have September 15th October 15th when we're talking taxes and other, obviously, deadlines. And so just that snowball effect. Once we get in that cycle of burnout, it's really hard to break without being intentional about it. Yeah. That's a good call. It's a snowball effect for sure. And, yeah, the cynical piece resonates with me when I'm looking back when I was going through that period. The things that I would get cynical about was not anything that I should have really paid much attention to or or put so much effort in, but it it just has compounded for some reason during that time. So, alright, you got some ideas of, mental health, stress, how that can lead to burnout, and how to assess, you know, what how it manifests itself in in yourself. So what can we do about it? Randy, you wanna talk through some of these? Yeah. There's so many things. I mean, we can start with what we can do with the client. We often too much let clients I keep telling everybody what they're doing, but we're gonna keep going this way because I'm I'm projecting myself into you here. As a profession in general, we let clients take control too often. We have to take control. We have to be the ones setting deadlines. We have to set boundaries. We have to let them know that it's not okay to to talk to our people this way. It's not okay to get us things on on April 10th and think we're gonna get the the work done for you. It's not okay to, call us at 8 o'clock at night. We have to start setting these boundaries with clients, and we have to do it early on in the process. Every time we get a new client, we need to start with this. Any existing clients, we have to be more intentional about doing that. We have to set the rule. So so for me, setting client expectations, not letting clients set the deadlines and and and how you're gonna work together. You set how you're gonna work together. That's one of the key starting points for me. Yeah. No. That makes sense. And and there's a and, thankfully, there's technology. Of course, I'm gonna say that. I'm a product manager. A lot of what we work on here at in the pro pro tax group is around the tools to help you with advising, working with your your clients, setting expectations. So leverage technology, but, yeah, it's up to you to to set the client expectations. And if they're not willing to to meet them, then, you know, you you have a decision to make. Once you set the client expectations, again, technology is, extremely important to help you reduce, you know, maybe work that is not necessarily needed from your skill set and and your expertise that you can provide. So it's taken away from what you can be doing more of for your clients. So it's always good to assess your your tech stack, and see where there's areas that might not be as efficient. There's technology is always evolving at a rapid pace. So it's always good to to keep on top of, you know, where there's potential with you to improve your processes, and then if there's some technology that can help address it. And, again, that if you don't have the right processes, or you gotta identify some of those processes that can be bolstered with tech. So technology is your friend. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it. I feel like that as well, but once you get it right and you get it incorporated into the firm and and it's it's working for you instead of against you, it it can be life changing. So, Ray, you Yeah. I think when and and and not that, you didn't no one asked me to talk about this, but into a tax adviser. I think that's, something like that. You know, it's a newer product. Things like that, evaluating, seeing if you can integrate it because advisory in general, that's where we thrive. That's where we feel more comfortable. That's where we feel we're really given these answers rather than just being a, reporter of what happened. I mean and there's nothing wrong with compliance. We can all be reporters. We can all show what happened last year. It isn't we have to do that, but where we really feel like we're making an impact and making an impact is important to us as tax professionals. Where we feel like we can make an impact is on that advisory end of things where we can talk with the clients all year long and and affect that bottom line tax return, not just report, okay. You owe $30,000 this year. We did everything you we could. You were going to owe $50,000 between all this advisory planning that we did. We got it down to 30,000. That's a better story. You know, when I go tell somebody you owe 30,000, what's their first reaction? When we talk during the year, we they know they were gonna owe 50,000, and we got to the end of the year, and now they only owe 30. It's the same number, but the story is better because we've been intentional about it, and that's where technology can greatly help us in all aspects, not just advisory, but everything else. So Yeah. I love that. And the everything else so we rolled out into rolled out into a tax adviser a couple years ago, and primarily one of the main obstacles for pros to adopt it was the time. And they're spending a lot of time on some things that probably aren't necessarily as value add as it could be on something like using into a tax adviser for that. So there's technology for those capabilities as well. So so just look at your whole your your whole stack. See where you're inefficiency, where you're spending time, where you don't wanna be spending time, and look for technology to help you. Alright. We both can talk on this one. Self care. So this is near and dear to my heart. This was, critical for me, and I I even took it to another level, probably, like, 8 to 9 months ago. So, exercise is is extremely important, and it's it's depends on what you wanna do. Some people like to go in the gym and do run or whatever. Some people, that's boring. So maybe there's something you like to do, pickleball, you know, that's pretty popular or or something. It's just get moving. It's it your mind and body are tied together. It's very important. Diet as well. I meditate. So it for me, the OCD part of my mentality and not being able to focus on the moment was greatly helped with meditation. And, you know, the this next one's not like an easy one for you. Just go do this. But, rest, you know, if you if you don't get enough rest, it's it's gonna gonna creep back up on you. I'll I'll admit 6 months ago, I started getting back to some old habits. I wasn't able to sleep, and I was starting to get that, anxiousness again. Luckily, I I got back into my routine. And part of it was because of the last one. I I I started not to disconnect. I got a a bigger role within, my company, and, you know, I just wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could to to set it up for success. But realize that I I you get to a point as Randy was talking earlier that you're you're you're counterproductive and and not probably, making as much of an impact as you could be even if you're working more. So, all of these are extremely important for me, and you can and there's no one prescriptive way of this is your diet or this is your exercise. It it's it's more personal. Randy, anything you wanna add on that? Yeah. I couldn't agree more with diet and exercise. It's it's a, for me, it's a a necessity. I feel like I have to work out almost every day no matter how bad my knees feel. Mhmm. But I just mentally feel so much better after a workout. The rest of the day is is better because of it. And so that's one thing. And if you exercise, like you said, doesn't have to be in the gym, you know, pumping iron and whatnot, although that is my thing, elliptical and and weights, is my thing. But this another thing that we do I do. It's on my calendar. And, actually, Brady was in a session I did last week, somewhere. On my calendar at 10 AM and 2 PM, when I'm in town, because I travel a lot, walk with my wife. So we take the dogs out. We go for a 15 minute walk. Clear your mind. Don't think about work. And just get out there, smell the fresh air, relax, talk about what you're gonna do for dinner or something. But one thing I wanna point out on that because the rest, I think, is and we have some time yet. The rest is extremely important. I have a trick that someone else taught me on this because, yeah, you had mentioned, okay. Well, then, you know, it's rest, yes, is important, but how do you do it? Part of that's the disconnect, which is what you said right after rest. Mhmm. And so real quick, there's a 3 step process that you can do at the end of each day to turn your brain off from work. And I think this is important to go through real quick because it's so easy for us to be on 247 as we mentioned earlier. And so for my friend of mine told me, here's what I do. He said, at the end of each day, I bookmark my work. I just write down consistent place. I think with him, it's a word document that's just sitting on his computer. He opens his computer. It's there. So then now he gets back to his desk or the office or wherever he's working, the airplane, the hotel. He opens the computer, and he knows what he's working on. He doesn't have to think about it anymore. He doesn't have to keep that in his mind all night long. Like, okay. Yeah. What am I working on? Waking up at 3 in the morning. What what is that tomorrow? Oh, yeah. I can't forget that. I gotta get that done. No. It's right there. Bookmark. You told your morning self your evening self told your morning self what you were working on. Then step 2, you have a plan. So so this is all stuff you can train your brain. My my brain trained me to think negative thoughts, and then I was able to reverse that. Your brain can be trained to think positive, to do what you want, and so the step 2 is an instead of plan. So instead of thinking about work when I go home, I'm going to, cook dinner. I'm gonna read a book. I'm gonna go to the movie. I'm going to knit a scarf. I'm going to do a jigsaw puzzle. Whatever it is, you have a plan in place so that your mind's not gonna wander to work. And then 3, at the end of the day, whatever it is, hopefully it's early. Hopefully it's 5 or before. You just have a mental and physical shutdown routine where, you know, could be as simple as physical as I close my computer. The mental could be I meditate for 5 minutes like like Brady would or or, you know, recite a poem or say a prayer or or, you know, something. If you do those 3 steps every day, it's amazing how you can train yourself to shut down, how you don't have to be thinking about work, how that rest, how you start sleeping through the night better. Honestly, give it a try. Even if you're not consistent, just keep going, and it really makes a difference. No. I love that, Randy. I think this is a, yeah, very key, and there's a common theme on all that is how intentional you have to be on these. And in training, right, it's it's for me exactly the same, like, exercise. I I have a time every morning I go and exercise. It's it's I'm not gonna miss it. It's not it's not gonna be an option. My diet, I plan it through the week. So and and all the things that you're talking about. So and and you can train your brain. You get to a point where it's just a a a good habit, that is actually benefiting you and helping you with your mental state. So just one over outlying theme is is just being intentional about this because it's it's critical, and then it gets to a point where it's just second nature. Yep. Alright. So now we'll go into, how this can manifest and help and how you can help build a healthier firm. Yep. Alright. So these are some stats that Randy has been presented on multiple times, which is, is very interesting. This last one was I did not realize. Randy, I'd love to for you to kinda walk us through these. So I'm a big fan of, of of John Garrett who's wrote a book called What's Your Hand, and John talks about this. And so a lot of this I got from John, but there there's a few things. One is we as a company before I knew John, but John helped me put a word to it. This book, what your end is, you're you are your outside of work passions or your ends. And so on allowing people to share their ends and bring their ends to work, their passions is so important to them mentally because now they feel valued. They feel like somebody knows them. And so there's a couple stats that I've I've that John has has got other places, but I I I always love sharing them. And one is that 92% of us have an outside of work passion, which which if you ever heard me talk before, you heard me say, I guarantee it's a 100%. It's just 8% of us don't know how to define it, but we'll go with that stat. 92% of us have an outside of work passion. 96% of people who have 3 close friends at work are more satisfied with their lives. I mean, if you're satisfied with your life, I think mentally, you're gonna have a a better outlook on things. And then how do you become close friends with somebody at work? I mean, you know, we all love what we do. Hopefully, we do, but it's not because we all enjoy auditing. So we talk about auditing, and we become such close friends because we talked about the the gap rules or or we talk about tax code rules. Great. That's what we do, and we probably, hopefully, enjoy it, but we become close friends because we realize we both love playing basketball or or or or we all love, you know, going out and enjoying a craft beer, which is one of my passions. Or we like hiking or mountain biking or or movies or gaming or whatever it is. That's how we get close friends. And so if we can share who we are and we develop these relationships I'm all about relationships and work. I think it's so important. If we develop these relationships, people are just going to be healthier mentally, and they're gonna have close friends. And then one other stat I wanna add to this, if you don't mind, Brady. Yeah. Go ahead. Is that, another thing that John has shared with me in the past is that there's a statistic out there that shows that it only takes 40 seconds of true interaction with somebody on a daily basis for them to feel valued, for them to feel appreciated. Mhmm. And and so, you know, instead of, you know, Brady and I walk into the office and I say, Brady, hey. Where's that where's that new program we're working on? We gotta get out the door now. People are clamoring for it. It's, hey, Brady. You know, how was, the weekend? Did you go for a hike? You you know, did you did your your son was playing soccer, and how did that go? Or whatever it is, you just start talking on a personal level with somebody. 40 seconds. That's great. 40 seconds. Yeah. And then, then they feel more valued. I love it. I love it. It's yeah. I did not know those stats before I went to your session. I love it. So what can what can we do to help? Like, us as far as being leaders in your firm or just being a part of a firm, you know, obviously, work life balance is something that's that's preached. But again, going back to you have to be intentional about it. It's and you can still be productive, and I believe you can actually be more productive. And it there's studies that show that. Yep. Making sure everyone's clear on the role and their expectations. So I I lead multiple teams here, at Intuit. And one thing that's I didn't do well when I first started to to lead teams was have really clear role and expectation settings. So I'm I'm hopefully, my teams, if they're watching this, they feel like that's not the case anymore. But it it makes all the difference in the world. People know what their role is, what's expected of them, and and it and it just frees them up to to focus on that. Love that you talked about some of these tools, Randy. What these tool kits and some self assessment tools that you've used. Yeah. And so so what we've done is is we've just make sure we have play tools in place for people to be able to reach out if they need some help. You know, 1, we wanna train managers. We wanna train everybody teams to signs of burnout and signs that they're struggling mentally, and so we have those tools in place. In addition, we wanna make sure that if somebody does get to that point, they're deal they're dealing with burnout, they're dealing with some mental health issue, that there's resources available for them. And so whether it's just a self assessment tool or it's you know, they can reach out to a a therapist. I don't always know the right term, but we'll go with therapist even online, which I've done before as well and just have discussions. I recently did, in in conjunction with a conjunction with a few other people, a satisfaction survey in the profession to find out, you know, where dissatisfaction levels fall and what makes people more satisfied in the profession, more satisfied in their jobs. One of the key things that came out there is that oh, I think it was only about 4% of individuals in midsize firms. We did small, midsize, and large firms felt comfortable reaching out for help if they were dealing with burnout. I mean, that's if only how do you make it feel comfortable? You have to have tools in place and then destigmatize it or unstigmatize as I said. Destigmatize it. Yes. Yeah. And so those kind of tools have to be in place, but not just in place. They have to be encouraged. You have to encourage, like, the words you used before. Be intentional about allowing people to reach out and use these, letting them know it's okay to do that. That is important, and that's one thing that that I think we've done very well, and and we've been intentional about it, and that's why. I love it. I love it. So we're we're close to the end here. So this is a quote that I've, our CEO actually just talked about and I've heard, recently. You know, some some of this, there's some old school thinking around, you know, well, that might mess up our productivity, or it's gonna, impact our bottom line, but that's absolutely not the case. And the right mindset, which is not easy to do, I mean, you have to have a healthy mental state, is critical for you to be able to act and and take the actions that are needed to drive outcomes. So, just just keep that in mind when you're you're thinking about this and you're looking at how you can improve this for you and your firm. It it not just improves your life, but it it does quite honestly. And there's a lot of companies as Randy's has shown. It shows the outcomes are are tied to it as well. Yep. And and just to add to that very quick because I know we're we're getting to pull. We'll give you a minute. Okay. Go ahead, Randy. Yep. Put the poll yeah. Polls up. Make sure you answer that. You need this for your CPE or your c oh, no. There is no CE. This is not a tax. It is a tax. We don't get IRS CE for this. Alright. That's my side note there. I thought I saw that at the beginning. Just be intentional about this. Go into this next busy season, whether it's today or in 6 months from now, and be intentional. I love Brady's word intentionality. Be intentional about making changes even if it's a small change. We are we are a profession that's based on consistency, so I can understand why people wanna do the same thing that they did last year and last year and the year before and the year before. The Sally method, same as last year. But we can make change, and it can be incremental. It doesn't have to be overnight, but make some little changes. Start taking that 10 o'clock walk and see how you feel after that. Start start, you know, eating a little bit different during tax season rather than, okay, and I'm gonna order DoorDash McDonald's. You know, have a salad or something. Just do a little intentional changes and see how that that, you know, changes your outlook and things. I love that. That's a great a great call out towards the end of this is because it can seem overwhelming. Like, I need to change all of these things, but you don't realize, like, these small changes, how they start to add up and build momentum. And it's not necessarily requiring you to completely change your life. Right? There's those baby steps, incremental things that you could do that start to add up and and ultimately will turn into bigger things. Alright. So the poll's done. Alright. We are launching the survey. So please answer the survey. We we just wanna get your feedback on, you know, what went well, what we could do in the future to improve this. And we really, really appreciate you being here with us today. This is obviously something that's very, near and dear to both of our hearts, considering our background and then how important we think it is for for everyone to destigmatize, which I think it's made a lot of progress, but we're we're gonna continue to to work on that. And, so if you're looking for more free training and resources, so we have an education center. So if you go to accountants.intuit.com/training, so you can just go to accountants.intuit.com. I think that's easier to explain, and there's a big old training butt button on there. So, just click on that, and you'll be able to to get some really great resources and our tax pro center. So we have a lot of articles from, folks like Randy and others that have or influencers that could really help, you know, in a variety of different ways of of areas that you're looking to improve for your firm. And then we have our support, and our community. So we again, you just go to that account, start into account. You'll see support. You'll see also community. So these are places that you can, connect with us at Intuit or with your peers to, to ask anything you you you want. And and you'll get some really great advice in the community, and you'll get some, information you need from our support team, whether it's help with a product or some suggestions on how to do things potentially better with the products that we we provide. So thank you so much for attending. We really appreciate your time. Again, please provide feedback. We wanna continue to provide the best content we can here. This is something that we really care about, and we think it's really important for for you to to implement this and start to think how you can maybe take some of these learnings that we went through and hopefully not be as hard headed as I was in in in implementing them. So, again, thanks again for your time. Randy, thank you again. It's great to see you. You too. And, everyone have a a great rest of their their day or evening. Thank you.