217 24 Tips to Run A Firm While Maintaining Your Health

Eighteen months into owning an accounting firm, I was playing with my kids and was convinced that my heart just stopped. Literally stopped. I've got heart issues in my family. One of the scariest moments of my life. Took an ambulance on down to the hospital and it was a whole. It was a whole thing. And it was at the peak of all of my accounting firm stresses. And why does it always take something spectacular to get you to open your eyes, like a near death experience or losing someone close to you or something massive in your life for you to like, pull your head up and be like, oh, yeah, no, this, this is actually pretty dumb. I have zero perspective. It's unfortunate that sometimes it takes something wild like that. But today I'll share that story and just a rundown of a whole bunch of things I try to do to like, build, I don't know, healthy habits into being really busy. Because I'm definitely still busy. But you may have noticed by now I'm something of a, of a collector of like, kind of like little tricks to either trick your brain into doing something in a better way or build helpful stuff into your routine. So we're going to run through a whole bunch of those today. Come on in. Let's talk about that big accountant body of yours. No, that's weird. So wild situation where I literally am like, what is happening to my heart right now? Full on panic. I'm blacking out. And otherwise, like, I've been in great health. I do, I shared. I have heart stuff in my family. But it's. It's weird for folks my age to have heart issues like the doctors tell you, like, no, you don't really get this stuff until later on. So go to the er, go through all this stuff. They do like, you know, an imaging of my heart. It was around the time when they didn't know with COVID if there was some complication with heart stuff. And it was during COVID So they're looking at things like that put you on a scanning thing for 30 days. I went back to the cardiologist after that. I sat in a little room for over an hour waiting for him. And he came in and in under three minutes. Is not an exaggeration. In under three minutes. Said I went through all the data. You're good. Whatever your problem is, it's all in your head. You got to get over it. And that is, that is not an exaggeration. That was the payoff for, for a month of inconvenience wearing this heart monitor thing. I've talked to A couple other people who have had similar experiences with that. And I would go on to have some similar things where there's seemingly nothing going on. All of a sudden, adrenaline just goes to a million, and you're like, what the heck is going on right now? Like, not because anything happened, it's just like, what my body's just. I don't understand why it's doing what it's doing. I'd go on to learn that this was probably panic attacks. They appear, like, differently in different people and don't necessarily come up for, like, any good reason or, or, you know, you know, in a, in a high pressure moment necessarily. But I can tell you that stage in my life, running the firm, it was very stressful. Very, very stressful. Friction with managing the team, with the business partner. There was just a lot going on. And at the time, everybody around you tells you, like, okay, well, figure out whatever medication you need to get back to work. And like, that's, that's the solution. And I'm like, well, why. Why is this happening, though? I would. I would much rather like, get to the bottom of what the cause of this is, then start taking a medication where I'm like, maybe this will help, maybe not, but I'm just going to pop it in just in case it does help. I didn't want to do that, really. And being on the other side of all of that and being stripped of a lot of those things that were stressing me. It's been a long time since, since I've had any of those issues. But it did open my, my eyes to just how quickly things can slip away from you, how you have this, like, capacity for carrying stress and busyness and all of that that can build up over time, but never seems to reset. You know, like, it just becomes the new normal. And then you keep piling on and piling on and piling on, and before, you know, a whole bunch of time has passed and you're just eating like crap, doing all these things that's just, you know, in service of everybody else. You're the hero for everybody else, and you are paying a huge price for it, which we all know is completely backwards because. Because the people that ultimately pay for that is you, but also your family, like the folks who actually care about you. And for me, that's what it took to take things seriously. And hopefully for you, it's not something serious. But most of us have bumped into something like that in our life. So I'm going to rapid fire 24 little things at you, I've kind of been collecting. Hopefully there's one or two here that's helpful for you. Okay, first up, brain stuff. It's worth acknowledging, man, everything that we do, from, you know, burnout to the satisfaction we could take, from our work to depression. Like, all of that stuff starts in your head, and you think about all the things we're constantly trying to optimize but then are oftentimes, like, unwilling to sleep as much as we need to sleep or go for a walk, or any of these things that actually impact and benefit Command central. Like, where all that stuff's actually happening. Everything starts there. Like, that's the reason why I love physical exercise and why I just can't go a day without doing it. It's for my brain. And a few specific to the brain things that folks are spooked about or don't do enough of. One, processing. Processing your feelings. There are certain things that just don't get resolved until you say them out loud. And until you do, you're carrying those things around. And nobody gets through life without baggage. You just don't think of this as, like, taking out the mental garbage. Like, there needs to be some sort of. Whether that's, you know, monthly counseling, something like that. You need to somehow build that into your life, because if you're not creating an outlet for it, it's affecting all the other people you talk to. Like, if you don't give yourself a place to dump that stuff, it's impacting everything else. And at its worst, that's, you know, your kids paying the price for it. It's. It's the people around you. Second, do something meditative each day. And I was really bad at this for a long time. So increasingly, our brains are never able to turn off, right? Like, we're constantly listening to a podcast or doing this or that, consuming something as we do everything. And now we're talking about, you know, VR headsets so you can watch a. A show, you know, in augmented reality while you're cooking. Like, everything about what we do now, we're just assaulted with content. But you got to give yourself a bit of space for the opposite. And that could be actual meditation. It could be going for a run with, like, no music or no podcast going. Going for a walk without any of that. Just dead brain time. And that can actually be really hard. And some people will also use, you know, brown noise or green noise for this. If I ever need this, I use the Better Sleep app. It's like white noise, but a whole bunch of different versions of that. And sometimes that can make it easier to turn your brain off. But myself, who's like an avid consumer and there's never enough hours in the day to consume all the things I want to consume. That's the deal I've made with myself is like 30 minutes or so. At some point during the day I got to do something meditative if you want to go extreme. Boy, I love saltwater floats. Sensory deprivation. Oh my gosh, I love that stuff. I'm even a little claustrophobic if you've ever been curious about that. Highly recommend. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow discussion going on online this week. Frustration with accounting ledgers and the tools not always doing what you want them to do. And so it's like, why are all these like additional kind of ecosystem tools necessary just to augment the core app with the things that I want. And oftentimes the things that you want are going to be very different than what anybody else wants. And this is where LifeFlow can actually be a way to customize your QuickBooks experience because it can sync out to Google Sheets just about anything that's in QuickBooks reports. So Ledger activity, specific account balances. You can lift all that information out, organize it however you want, but then give access to that Google Sheet to whoever needs it, like third party stakeholders, internal users, maybe even members of your team. And then because they have a consolidations product now obviously you can use that to, you know, consolidate and roll up related companies books, they can also use that for internal purposes. If I'm looking at a cross section of, you know, 30 beekeeping clients that I have, and there's specific things that we want to monitor or benchmark. We're really like augmenting the ledger experience and kind of building whatever we want in the spreadsheet. Because LifeLow bridges all that data from QuickBooks to Google Sheets can do a one time sync, can do like a sync that continues like auto updating anytime the data inside of the accounting system changes. I've always been a like let me kind of build my own solution sort of guy. Live Flow could be a good way for you to do that. Learn more about liveflow link in the show Notes this episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly, no middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines, hire the person, not the company guys. Gals Gang, here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you so you can retain your team for the long term. Team up could source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Xero, QBO and Dex. Also recruit specialist roles, team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants. Thought experiment. What if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season? Just. Just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky old inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever gonna get Robert Half to sponsor this podcast? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team Up Number three. You gotta give that noodle some variety throughout the day. I don't care what sort of superhero you think you are, nobody's gonna be at their best staring at a computer monitor for 12 hours. That's just, that's just not how it works. It is extremely hard to get myself to do it, but I like I gotta get myself out and go for a walk. That's how my brain resets. And then I'm wildly more productive after that. So some body stuff. I'll do these real quick. Quit eating so late. Give yourself three hours time. When you're done eating before you go to bed. It may not keep you from falling asleep, but it will hurt the quality of your sleep. Your ability to get into deep sleep. I know a lot of people like the sleep tracking stuff's kind of in vogue and people aren't always quite sure what to do with that data. I think that the best thing that you can do is learn what's impacting your deep sleep. That can be eating too late, can be caffeine, can be alcohol. A lot of people think they're like immune to certain things when they just don't realize they're impacted by it. You're just not aware of it. It's much more likely that you are impacted by that thing and just not Aware of it then are like this unicorn that somehow the rules don't apply to you. Number five, here's permission to eat breakfast. Man, when a breakfast gets so uncool, right? I've gone back and forth between the intermittent fasting thing and doing breakfast. One issue if you don't eat breakfast is it can cause big time overeating in the evening. I know that was the case for me. And oftentimes if you're like me, that evening meal is, is the least healthy of all the meals. So you're trading a breakfast, which on the whole is usually one of the more healthy meals of the day. You're trading that breakfast for just like even more gut bomb in the evening. And that's not always a good trade. If you do do breakfast, get some protein, like eggs, turkey bacon, protein shake, something like that. That protein will like reduce the cravings of you to go out and eat like processed carb junk. Mention this kind of watch out for caffeine reducing sleep quality. And if you do any caffeine in the afternoon, it will almost always impact your sleep quality. Again, you may be able to get to sleep just fine. It's your deep sleep that it's probably gonna impact. Number seven, more generally on caffeine. I don't know how to tell you this, but if you are pounding a pot of coffee a day, and you have been for the last year, it's not doing a thing for you. You're gonna pay the price big time when you don't have that pot. But at this point, you're back to the baseline. It's not doing a thing now. You got to like shoot it into the back of your knee to get any kind of effect for it, right? So like, you have to build in some sort of cycle there if you actually want the caffeine, like, benefit. Now there's the whole ritual of it and the smell and like and all that. And that's, you know, a lot of fun. I didn't used to be into that sort of thing. I am a lot more now. But let me tell you, it's way more satisfying when you cycle off of it. So these days, I now only do it like three or four days a week. And then every month or two, I'll do like a full week or two cycle off. And. And when you do it, it makes it awesome. I know that's hard. Give it a try. Number eight, alcohol is just going to hurt your sleep. Sorry. Doesn't mean I never do it. But something to be aware of because People can fall asleep, they think, oh, it's not impacting my sleep. It does, it impacts your deep sleep. Number nine, just quit eating stuff that's in boxes that's not food. Number 10, if you pay attention to all the thought leaders now around, like reversing aging and all that stuff, arguably the biggest thing that the average person is missing from their diet is just eating piles and piles of greens. Like these people eat unbelievable volumes of greens. Generally we're not getting enough of this stuff. A big one for me, number 11 was trading in some fruits for vegetables. I grew up on like eating fruit like crazy and I love fruit, but it usually meant I was eating like next to no veggies. If you're going to keep eating fruit, berries are generally going to be best. And if you're looking for veggies to add in addition to just the green stuff, try to get color. That's been the easiest rule of thumb for me, is like a variety of color because I'm not a veggie buff, but I can understand colors. 12. Always have a plan for a meal. If you're going to work and you know you're going to have to eat, have a plan. It's when you don't have a plan that things get ugly. And you might be like me and you like, you like living in that unknown because it's in that unknown that oftentimes the fun stuff happens. You hit, you hit the Mexican drive through across the street, you hit the taco truck. I get it. Like the unknown is fun, but it's when you don't have a plan that it always goes worse. Or then woohoo. Or you wait too long to eat because you don't have a plan. And then when you do eat, you eat like twice as much. Oh, if I can circle back for a minute to the eating too late thing, something has been really hard for me. My kids go to bed at like seven in the evening and there's nothing better than eating with my wife after the kids go to bed. The problem is I don't go to bed that that late. So like the meal's too late in the day and I get hungry like 5:30. And if I would just eat at 5:30 with my kids, I wouldn't be super hungry. Instead I don't eat anything and I wait until 7 and I eat like twice as much food. Whereas if I would have just eaten at 5:30, I wouldn't have eaten as much. And that'll take me to bedtime just fine. Man, that's the worst. Okay, number 13 have emergency meals on hand. Now I'm going to get made fun of for this. I have done a lot of the, like, meal replacement drinks just because they were so convenient. So like back in the day that was Soylent and everybody made fun of it. Now I think the biggest one's probably Huel. H U E L and back in the day, my dad, he was pounding slim fast when he went to work. So this is hardly a new thing. I do think they're newly, much, much healthier than they used to be. And when it comes to like these meal replacement things, people are always like, no, that's not as good as food. I gotta eat something real. And no, it's not as good as food. But what it is better than is that crap meal when you don't have a plan. So we're not comparing it to a big delicious meal. Everybody agrees that that delicious meal is better. We're comparing it to the taco truck or that pizza. So I pretty much always keep like meal replacements on hand because it's something that's super quick to make. It's not as good as a real meal, but it's way better than a unhealthy meal. Number 14, keep healthy snacks because we all snack. So give yourself the option of something that's healthier, like nuts, jerky, that sort of thing. But keep them out of reach. As we're going to talk about in a bit, you, your environment is going to lead you to like, do way more snacking than you should if you can see those things as you're working. Number 15, if you're going to do breakfast, ditch the cereal in favor of leftovers somehow. And I was definitely raised this way, breakfast can be like, not real food, just like a bunch of processed stuff like cereal or something like that. Absent other healthy options, opt for leftovers instead. Like real food. Number what are we on 17? Feel like we missed one. If you're super busy, see if there's a way that you can lean into like a boring routine. And I know that's not fun, but routine is what, like, compounds long term. Now when I was at my busiest, oftentimes that would be a justification for not having plan. I didn't have time to make a lunch or something like that, but it would actually end up taking me more time because then I'd have to go figure out how to eat and it'd be super unhealthy. The better thing to do is try to like, settle into a routine of like something you can live with. Number 18. This was a big one for me. Drink fewer calories. I just said meal replacement drink. That is one thing. Drinking calories. I'm talking about like beer, juices, stuff like that. That stuff sneaks up on you big time. Especially if it becomes habitual. Like you look forward to doing it as part of the workday each day. Ooh, 19. Supplements aren't a replacement for healthy stuff. You can't just ag one your way to never having to eat vegetables or healthy stuff. The exception here, if you have specific deficiencies like an iron deficiency, something like that. And I would argue vitamin D. I live slightly north, so there's not a ton of sun for most of the year. Vitamin D is probably the exception to that rule. This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Accruer. If you have not heard about Accruer yet, all it does is it gives a sick, sweet new skill to your QuickBooks. All you do in a QuickBooks online description, you type for the period, start period, end period, and it posts accrual entries covering that whole date range. If this is a payroll journal entry that straddles month ends, you say the work period and it will automatically post a journal entry. If it's a sales contract, an invoice for 14 months, you know how much bloody work that is. Post every single journal entry, do the recurring thing, set up a spreadsheet to tie it out. Oh, and then it changes and you go delete all those things. Accruer one word. Accruer all you do, you type in the description for the period, start date, end date. You might have to have a 2 between the start date and the end date, it posts all that stuff automatically. And if you got to go back and change it later, it'll do all that too. You change the date, it'll wipe out the old ones, update it to be correct, and then when you log into Accruer, it gives you a schedule of all of your accruals. Plop that baby in the workpaper file and you got an email. Easy thing to tie out to. Simple as that gang made by a bunch of accountants because it was a thing that they needed. Hop over to their website to do a demo. Demos are just 20 minutes. Or skip the demo and sign up directly@accruer.com with code JasonDaily1 to try for just a dollar this month. Oh my gosh. $1 code Jason Daily1. Do it. I'll put the link in the show notes. Go use that promo code. What do you Got to lose. Today's episode is sponsored in part by the folks at Cloud Accountancy Staffing. How's this resume sound for you? This is a real resume. Let's do a tax one this time. Four years US tax prep experience, LACERT ProConnect CCH access, Taxdome carbon tally for QuickBooks Zero experience. 1120, 1120s, 1040, 1065. They've done it all. This is a real resume from Cloud accountant staffing where you can hire the accounting team of your dreams from the Philippines. This person's got looks like last four years doing US Tax and another three years beyond that working with western companies. Sounds pretty darn good, right? Well, maybe they just cherry picked that one. Maybe they're not all that great. Gang, here's the thing with Cloud Accountant staffing. You don't pay a dime until you hire somebody. So you can go hop on a call, you can talk through your needs. They will cut their recruiters loose. Go find some folks that could be a great fit for you. You can go through the resumes, you can interview them and you're only gonna spend a dollar on. Once you have found somebody that you are jacked about, that's it. Worst case scenario, you get some experience going through the process. You have the chance to ask a bunch of ignorant questions about, you know, doing this for the first time, building your offshore team. Whether you're looking for tax pros, accounting pros, they can help you find what you're looking for. Not to like be overstated just how much big foreign regional firms and the industry has invested in the Philippines. There's so much great talent over there now. I've shared before, when we started hiring folks in the Philippines, it completely changed the strategy of my firm. Got some really, really good people. Like I said, you got nothing to lose. Check out the link in the show notes below. Book a call to make sure you get back to it. At the very worst, you learn something. The very best, you hire a killer employee, right? So check that one out in the show notes. Okay, bringing it home here. Life planning stuff, number 20. Always think in terms of habits, not willpower or something like that. Like a diet is willpower. A diet's like, I'm going to try really hard and do this thing for the next 30 days and it's really, really hard. And the reality is you're probably going to like rebound from that and not actually make any progress. Habits are like, what can I build into my life that I can do for the next three years where, you know, two Years from now I'll be in a much better place than I am now. And as sexy as it is to get like quite a quick results, that stuff just doesn't, just doesn't stick. I heard the statistic. Upwards of 40% of our day are spent on habits. Whether we realize it as a habit or not. When you sit down at your computer, there's a routine of things that you do. You check the email, you do this or that. When you get out of bed, there's a routine of things that you do. We want to find a way to build like little micro things into that routine that over a long time horizon are beneficial to you. That could be having a big old glass of cold water when you get out of bed in the morning. It could be always standing at your desk after lunch. What's like one little habit that you could build into your day that's really easy for you to do? That you know, if you did it every single day for the next three years would leave you in a healthier place than you are now. 21. Hack your environment. I did a study with a bowl of M&Ms. Basically said if you put a bowl of M and Ms. Next to someone versus six feet away while they work, the people who had it next to them ate 250 calories more every day. That's how lazy you are. You won't reach 6ft for M&MS. That's a lie. You will just not as much as if they were closer. So be mindful of what are the things that are in view of you in your workspace right now? Are they things that are ultimately working in service of you? For me, I can't have any food like in my view or it's, it's going to be gone so fast. If you've got shelves, would there be a good reason to like hide the things that are on those shelves? Like have them behind doors? What are the first things you see when you open the fridge? Is it a cake or is the unhealthy stuff in the back of the fridge? Same with the pantry. What's the stuff that's eye level when you open it? Are you seeing the healthiest stuff or the least healthy stuff? Makes a really big difference. I moved the kids candy basket, you know like where you dump all the stuff from Halloween and Valentine's Day and all that. I put that behind some stuff and oh buddy, what a difference that made. So put your environment to work for you. Even put like positive things like within sight like gym gear or A bike or something like that. The treadmill, that's actually something I've done. I can see like out the doorway of the room that I'm in which goes into the garage and I will like park the treadmill when I can see it and it totally makes a difference and I usually end up going for a walk on it. 22. Create boundaries to keep you at your best. For example, you like taking naps. You'll fart block out an hour in the middle of the day every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, whatever it is. You got to be selfish to a degree and that's okay. Like you got to give yourself permission to do what you need to do for yourself to keep you at your best. Otherwise ultimately hurts everybody else if you're not at your best. Fun Nap Fact 15 minute nap can be as restorative as 90 minutes of sleep. Tuck that into your fun fact folder. Okay? 23. Be mindful of what you identify as when it comes to like long term behavioral changes or folks will generally make decisions that align with the type of person that they see themselves as. And some practical examples of this for me, like getting into like fitness culture. It's kind of a meme and kind of annoying. But like when you get into that stuff like it actually impacts the way that you make decisions because you think of yourself as like oh yeah, this is who I am now and so these are the things I'm going to do. And as hacky as that can be, especially if done like the wrong way, it actually impacts the the things that you do. So is there a way that you can use that to your advantage? Also along those same lines, be mindful of what you consume like the content that you consume. In fact I got a Recommendation for you Dr. Rupee. I can't remember his first name. His branding is the Doctor's Kitchen. I'll put a link in the show notes gives just some killer like straightforward, a lot of stuff around food advice and a bit of inspiration in the feed of like that's a good idea. That's the thing that I should be doing. So that's a meal that's both healthier and tastier than what I just ate. We're absolutely programmed by the stuff that we read and listen to and all that. So if you can curate that feed to get some positive stuff in there that's going to make a difference. Last 124 Think about your productivity arc throughout the day. I can tell you where I'm at right now. I had about 2:30 in the afternoon And I am useless. And I have to get up and go for a walk. Like, the treadmill doesn't even do it anymore. I got to go for a walk outside. Talking with a guy yesterday who's like, I hit midday and like lunchtime, for whatever reason, I'm just useless. So he goes home for like an hour and a half and he'll like mow the lawn or just go do something. And then when he comes back in the afternoon, he's ready to go again. That probably looks different for everyone, but the one thing that like, just isn't going to work is just powering through and pretending that it's not a thing. And this used to be me. I used to be like, you know, I'm not a. I'm no sissy. Just got to suck it up, drink more coffee in the afternoon. That was my solution. But that's just me pretending like that my body didn't need what it needed. So if I can send you with three things to think about. One, what's one small thing you can commit to doing? One microhabit that you can commit to doing over the next seven days. Not a big dramatic thing, an itty bitty thing that's easy, where if you looked out and you're like, oh man, if I was still doing that two years from now, like, yeah, I'd be this much healthier. Find a little microhabit like that that you can implement. Two, think about how your calendar can be your friend. Maybe that's blocking out nap time. Maybe that's blocking, you know, a walk at 2 o' clock every afternoon, preferably out from in front of your monitor, like outside, if that's possible. Get your calendar to help you out there and maybe the forcing function to like enable that bit of selfishness that will keep you at your best. And then number three, what's one thing you can do, one thing you can consume to hack your attention? So where do you hang out? Do you hang out on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever it is. Go out and find a few folks who will be a positive influence for you there that will take you back to like a healthy mindset or a mindset that will align you with the type of person that you want to be. That identity thing is really powerful. That's like. That becomes your new default. And if you aren't intentional about the stuff that we are consuming from a media standpoint, then you kind of just get programmed by whatever rabbit hole you get sucked into rather than something maybe more aspirational. Right? The stuff that's taking you to, like, being a better version of yourself. Obviously. Very obviously. I am no doctor, but those are some of the things I've been jotting down over the last, like, month. Like, things I've been trying to optimize for. I'm not like, a meal plan. I'm not really, like, a prepper guy. But I'll tell you what, that whole panic attack thing that, like, geez Louise, that got my attention. I would love to hear your tippy top tips, because there is nothing about sitting in an office chair for 50 years that, like, the human body was designed to do. So you got any top tips? Please share them in the comments. I'll see you tomorrow for Q and A.