Sleep with Scott Scarano

Scott: 00:00:00

And then, and then you say you know, this happened and you blame, you

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know, you almost like you play the blame game on everything else besides look

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at, you know, who you're pointing the finger at and it's really, you should be

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like, well, I shouldn't have stayed up.

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That last night, you know, or I shouldn't have done this instead of blaming this

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client or this person did this or, or this, you know, my staff did this and just

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kind of point in the finger at everywhere else on why things aren't going.

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Right.

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And almost always, it starts with, let's see what you did

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to contribute to that first.

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And I think that, to me, it always starts with sleep starts and ends with sleep.

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Hey, this is Alison.

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Welcome to under withheld.

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The podcast by accountants and for accountants, where we talk about

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our ubiquitous, professional and personal struggles, you are not alone.

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This episode is a conversation I had with Scott Scarano.

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Scott is the owner of Padgett business services and accounting

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firm in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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You may know, Scott is one of the hosts of the popular accounting podcast,

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sons of CPAs, his firm, his podcast, his family, and his personal pursuits.

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Keep him pretty busy.

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And as we all know, from our own experiences, when we have so much going

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on, something has to give for Scott.

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This used to be But as you'll hear in this episode, Scott's perspective

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on sleep has changed over the years.

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He now sees a good night's rest is fundamental to his health.

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I personally love sleep and have always embraced it as part of my

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own physical and mental wellness.

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However, I haven't seen our industry promote this.

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As I mentioned in the episode.

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I've had countless experiences where long hours were expected

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of me, as well as colleagues.

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One of the worst instances of this for me was nearly falling asleep.

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And the car on the way to work.

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The expectation of long hours among other concerns led me to

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ultimately start working for myself.

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I just didn't know how else I was going to get any meaningful rest.

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While lack of sleep and its side effects are likely common among accountants.

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I wasn't able to locate any industry-wide resources on this topic.

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If you have resources specifically at the intersection of accounting

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and Sleep, please reach out to me with those@underwithheld.com.

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I will add them to the resources already listed in the show notes,

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which include a book entitled why we sleep, that Scott recommends and

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a sleep toolkit as developed by Dr.

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Andrew Huberman of Hebrew urban lab.

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Dr.

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Haberman offers several action items that many of us as individuals can

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such as avoiding caffeine within eight to 10 hours of bedtime.

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In case it needs to be said.

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I nor my guest, our therapists, we are not offering therapy.

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We may say things that just don't resonate with you.

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And if so, that's totally cool.

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There's nothing prescriptive here.

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Just colleagues talking about an issue we think is important and we hope

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talking about it will help someone If something sounds helpful to you

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here cool if not just ignore it

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welcome to the

Alicyn: 00:02:57

Hey Scott.

Alicyn: 00:02:58

Welcome to the show.

Scott: 00:02:59

Hey, Alison, how's it going?

Alicyn: 00:03:01

It's going great.

Alicyn: 00:03:02

Thanks for being here today.

Scott: 00:03:04

I get nervous every time.

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I'm a guest on anything

Alicyn: 00:03:06

Tell me

Scott: 00:03:07

when you hit the recording now, all of a sudden I'm nervous.

Scott: 00:03:09

Yeah.

Alicyn: 00:03:10

Yeah.

Scott: 00:03:10

It's excited now, you know, you try to mix nervous and excited

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cuz it does the same feelings.

Alicyn: 00:03:15

Hmm.

Scott: 00:03:16

anxiety and excitement are basically the same thing.

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So, but this is not the anxiety episode we ki we're not gonna talk about that.

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Yeah.

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Sorry.

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I, I didn't mean to bring that up.

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Yeah.

Alicyn: 00:03:25

Hey, no, no.

Alicyn: 00:03:26

All all is welcome.

Alicyn: 00:03:28

I imagine there will be an anxiety episode at some

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If you haven't had one already, you should.

Alicyn: 00:03:33

Not yet.

Alicyn: 00:03:34

Not yet.

Alicyn: 00:03:34

I think anxiety and accounting go hand in hand.

Alicyn: 00:03:37

So

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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And I'm predisposed to it in all aspects of life.

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So something I gotta deal with.

Alicyn: 00:03:44

Scott.

Alicyn: 00:03:45

Tell us about yourself.

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I'll try to relate everything to accounting.

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So my grandfather had a CPA firm.

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My dad was a CPA, so young, young growing up, my dad was working

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at my grandfather's firm and they would get into fights all the time.

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My dad would get fired every other week and still just show up

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back to work that didn't work.

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And my dad didn't really use his CPA after that he went into sales and

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then they kind of started their own business and we picked up and they

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picked up from New York and moved to North Carolina in the early nineties.

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So I've been in North Carolina ever since they've always had their

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own business, but they pivoted.

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And my grandfather at his CPA firm started a software company within it.

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And we're starting to see that a lot more now and now people building up,

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building out their own apps, building automations, and selling that.

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So my grandfather built a GL back in the day for nonprofits.

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And back when with a lot of nonprofit accounting, you

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were doing fund accounting.

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He built a special GL just for that.

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He called it IDs.

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Institutional data systems, I think.

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And then they this is my grandfather did this back in like

Alicyn: 00:04:50

When did he do?

Alicyn: 00:04:51

Oh, he sounds very progressive.

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Well, he's not alive anymore, but I guess, I guess it

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was very progressive for those days.

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And he hired programmers and he funded that and built that up.

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And then he couldn't do both.

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He couldn't run a CPA firm and a software company, so my dad took it over

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and that's what they still do today.

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Parents, both their company is called array and the software's fast fund and

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fast fund is the fund accounting software.

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So they're, they're more like competitors to.

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Razor edge blackboards systems.

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Sage had had one too.

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And now people just use QuickBooks for their nonprofits too.

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Like it's now they're just competitors.

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There's QuickBooks and I guess zero too, but yeah, it's a nonprofit GL,

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so that's, so that tech and accounting has always kind of been in my blood.

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I've been surrounded by it.

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Most of my life.

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And I didn't really know that there was an advantage to that until zero

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came into the picture with my firm and, and I started to see a lot of

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similarities with the way zero did things and the way my parents did things.

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So I, you know, this, I don't know if I'm going too deep into that, but

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that's, that's kind of like my origin story of how I got to where I am now.

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And.

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Now I just, I'm a talking head.

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Like I don't even do anything at my firm.

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I have, I have an accounting firm and, but now I just like talking,

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I like talking about this stuff and I have a podcast now, too.

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And I just, and now I started wrapping recently, so I'm making raps for business

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and accounting people and trying to make that, you know, I'm trying.

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Bring a little bit of light into it, a little fun, be a

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little bit more entertaining.

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I've always wanted to be an entertainer.

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I've always, I love attention.

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I crave attention in my life, so why not do it in a positive light and people

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can learn from it a little bit too.

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That's a little bit about me, I guess.

Alicyn: 00:06:40

That's awesome.

Alicyn: 00:06:40

So you're, you're wrapping podcasting accountant.

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that's that's, that's my Twitter thing right now.

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I say amateur rapper, cuz I'm not that good yet.

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I really like I'm working at it.

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I've been writing every day, almost every day.

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This whole year I started this year saying I wanted to do one rap and

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finish it and record it and release it.

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And I've done that.

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And now I have like five more that I haven't released yet.

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So amateur rapper.

Alicyn: 00:07:08

Are actually here today to talk with us about our industry's number one.

Scott: 00:07:13

Is it, so it was never an enemy to me.

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It was always something

Alicyn: 00:07:17

No, Nora, I made our industry not, not us as individuals, by the way.

Scott: 00:07:22

Well though.

Scott: 00:07:23

No, no, but to, in a way I did fight it and I did think I didn't need it.

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And what we're referring to is sleep, which if you're listening to this episode,

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you would've heard Allison's intro.

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So you, you know, this, this is about sleep, but it's like I

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never thought I needed it that much.

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I would.

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I'd have a lot of caffeine.

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I was taking Adderall or I had extra Adderall that I would take if I needed

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to stay up or whatever it might be.

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I, I take Viv vans, so I didn't really need that much sleep anyway.

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Because that keeps you up, you know, it keeps you alert.

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So I fought it, but I also felt like I didn't need it.

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And I never really had a situation to where I need to sleep.

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It was always like I would, I would go maybe.

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A week and not sleep the whole night and just keep working tax returns,

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review all the work that I needed to do, I would do at night because I was

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meeting with clients during the day.

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I was, you know, I was helping the team during the day.

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I was doing things during the day.

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And then I just knew I have extra time.

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I all of this time at the end of the day, when nobody's gonna interrupt me,

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that was like my, my my sacred time.

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You know, some people wake up really.

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And their sacred time is early in the mornings.

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They're not gonna get any interruptions and I, I could never do that

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cuz I would always stay up late.

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You can't wake up early if you're pushing, pushing yourself.

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As far as you can, when you finally do sleep at two or 3:00

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AM you can't wake up early.

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Like I, I just never really got into that routine.

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So for the longest time in my life I fought sleep.

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I was an, it was my enemy and I know we had this conversation.

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You have a different relationship with sleep, right?

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Like you're you did for most of your life.

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Yeah.

Alicyn: 00:09:00

Yeah.

Alicyn: 00:09:00

I like

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So

Alicyn: 00:09:01

sleep is my friend.

Scott: 00:09:02

I love it now.

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It is.

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I absolutely love it.

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Now this is, I went through a transformation last year,

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last two years, really?

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Part of its COVID part of its self-improvement part of it's, you

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know, now I'm on the other side of it and I realize what I've been missing

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my whole life and it kind of excites.

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To look forward to the next, you know, I don't know how many years I,

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I got left 38, so maybe I got another 40, 50 years or something like that.

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Maybe more give or take.

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We'll see.

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I don't, I said my grandfather was not living anymore.

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I don't even know how old he was when he died, but I should look into that.

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So that's like, I'm excited.

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Like that's sleep to me now is my number one foundational habit.

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I can't do anything else if.

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Haven't got a lot of sleep and I'm starting to see how

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much that can impact me.

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Cause I don't have a lot of caffeine anymore.

Scott: 00:09:56

But I'm, I think I'm going too deep down the rabbit hole.

Scott: 00:09:59

We gotta, we gotta scope back out a little bit.

Scott: 00:10:01

So where do you wanna start with this sleep conversation?

Alicyn: 00:10:04

You know how it impacts you personally, professionally, either

Alicyn: 00:10:08

getting enough sleep or lack of sleep.

Scott: 00:10:10

Yeah.

Scott: 00:10:11

So in most, in most cases I never really thought of it as a lack of sleep.

Scott: 00:10:16

I never really.

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Yeah.

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Like I, I just would always felt like I was alert enough and I got through

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it and I didn't know how cloudy my mind was or how much it impacted my emotions

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or how much it impacted my decisions or how much it impacted my anxiety.

Scott: 00:10:31

There's so many other things that sleep was impacting for me.

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My appetite.

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Everything else in my life until I started getting it and still

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I started getting more sleep.

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And then I got it.

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It fit like literally and metaphorically, like I got it, but I

Scott: 00:10:44

was because I was getting that sleep.

Scott: 00:10:46

And so last year I went through this thing called optimize think they call it heroic.

Scott: 00:10:51

Now where you kind of work on those foundational aspects of your life.

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It was like the masterclass of life.

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and, you know, I was working on the three main things was like sleep,

Scott: 00:11:02

moving, eating, and sleeping.

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And if you don't have your sleep under control, you

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can't really do the other two.

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Like you're gonna make bad choices eating.

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You're not gonna have the energy to exercise and you're not gonna be

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able to get the benefits of those.

Scott: 00:11:16

So then you're gonna have medication that kind of fills that.

Scott: 00:11:20

The medications I was taking was, was helping me with my anxiety.

Scott: 00:11:24

I was taking for the last, you know, to last year for 15

Scott: 00:11:28

years, I was taking anti-anxiety medication Coine I was taking.

Scott: 00:11:32

I, I still do take the Viv vans, but that's, that's a whole nother

Scott: 00:11:35

thing too, that ADHD is you can get as much sleep as you need and want.

Scott: 00:11:39

You've already had that episode.

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So we don't have to go too far into that, which was a great

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episode, by the way, I loved it.

Scott: 00:11:44

And I could relate to a lot of things that little text was saying on there.

Scott: 00:11:49

But like, so getting, getting to the point where I understood how much

Scott: 00:11:53

sleep meant and how much I understood.

Scott: 00:11:57

I didn't need that medication that took a while too, cuz I was just

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trying to improve a lot of different things in my life and trying to get

Scott: 00:12:03

shit like in the right, you know?

Scott: 00:12:05

that foundation that was crumbling that was like falling apart.

Scott: 00:12:08

And I don't know how much it was falling apart, but I

Scott: 00:12:11

wanted to get my shit together.

Scott: 00:12:12

Like it just felt like that was the right time.

Scott: 00:12:14

It was COVID, you know, we had a lot of space and time to think

Scott: 00:12:18

and to, you know, reevaluate our purpose and where we want to go.

Scott: 00:12:22

And that was part of what I had to do was I had to work on myself first,

Scott: 00:12:26

before I could work on anything else.

Scott: 00:12:28

And.

Scott: 00:12:28

Understanding and learning more.

Scott: 00:12:30

And I started to attempt to sleep more.

Scott: 00:12:34

And then I realized all the other things that you have to change to be able to

Scott: 00:12:38

sleep more, to be able to go to bed.

Scott: 00:12:40

You have to phase that in if you're used to staying up late, like,

Scott: 00:12:44

and you're you have bad habits?

Scott: 00:12:46

So it all the things that had to change, right?

Scott: 00:12:48

Like I had to change the way I ate changed when I worked out I, all the habits that I

Scott: 00:12:56

wanted to start doing, I had to phase in.

Scott: 00:12:59

Now I'm tracking 12 habits a day and they all are interconnected.

Scott: 00:13:04

They're all kind of stacked up on each other.

Scott: 00:13:06

And they, you know, if I don't do one, I end up not doing the other and

Scott: 00:13:08

then the other, and then the other.

Alicyn: 00:13:10

Oh,

Scott: 00:13:10

So, and, and it's very methodical.

Scott: 00:13:13

Like I, I have 12 habits and literally they are numbered.

Scott: 00:13:16

We can get into that, but it was like I had to, I had to work to get there.

Scott: 00:13:19

It took me about a year to even get to the place where I'm at now more

Scott: 00:13:23

than a year, really to be able to get eight hours of sleep a night.

Scott: 00:13:27

Was a huge struggle.

Scott: 00:13:29

As I was changing a lot of different things too, I stopped taking that

Scott: 00:13:32

anti-anxiety medication and I was physically dependent on that.

Scott: 00:13:35

I probably should have went to rehab.

Scott: 00:13:37

I didn't, I got off of it on my own.

Scott: 00:13:39

I just flushed everything that I had.

Scott: 00:13:40

But I had a, if I look at my aura scores during that time period,

Scott: 00:13:44

it's like, I couldn't sleep.

Scott: 00:13:46

Like you're physically dependent on a lot of that stuff.

Scott: 00:13:49

And your body is, is react.

Scott: 00:13:52

To not having it too.

Scott: 00:13:53

And I didn't really know that I didn't know the science behind that.

Scott: 00:13:56

I, I kind of know addiction.

Scott: 00:13:57

I know I have an addictive personality, but I didn't know

Scott: 00:13:59

the science behind all that.

Scott: 00:14:00

I just thought I could power through it and I did power through it,

Scott: 00:14:03

but it was a, it was difficult.

Scott: 00:14:05

Like it needed, required a lot of power and a lot of change.

Scott: 00:14:08

And nobody wanted to deal with me during that time because I

Scott: 00:14:11

was all over the place, but I got on the other side of that.

Scott: 00:14:13

And then I started to be able to sleep and my body wanted to sleep.

Scott: 00:14:18

And now it like, you know, now.

Scott: 00:14:20

Now I kind of know, you know, like I can't, one of my habits is I

Scott: 00:14:24

can't stay up past 11, you know, I can't I can't do it because then

Scott: 00:14:28

I'll, then I'll stay up even longer.

Scott: 00:14:31

You know, I can't have, after 9:00 PM, everything is pretty much shut down.

Scott: 00:14:35

Like I'm not using my phone, I'm not on my computer or anything.

Scott: 00:14:38

I need that two hours to just get the blue light out.

Scott: 00:14:41

And so there's, I guess I, I could talk about the 12 habits that I track.

Scott: 00:14:44

So it's.

Scott: 00:14:45

You know, because it's very accountant esque.

Scott: 00:14:48

Like it is, they all have a place.

Scott: 00:14:50

Everything is numbered.

Scott: 00:14:51

And I have to check my boxes.

Scott: 00:14:53

It's very much attention to detail, but it's so satisfying to track those things.

Scott: 00:14:57

And in order to get that eight hours of sleep a night, I need

Scott: 00:15:01

to do all these other things.

Scott: 00:15:02

So the first one, first one is just writing a line every day.

Scott: 00:15:06

For my rap stuff.

Scott: 00:15:07

Like I wanna, I wanna build that habit.

Scott: 00:15:08

I wanna get better at that.

Scott: 00:15:10

The next one, two.

Scott: 00:15:11

So that's one, one line a day.

Scott: 00:15:12

Two is read two pages a day.

Scott: 00:15:14

Three is actually do this.

Scott: 00:15:15

So three is track three habits.

Scott: 00:15:17

Four is wait until four or four 20 to get high.

Scott: 00:15:20

So I, I am actually productive during the day.

Scott: 00:15:23

So I don't smoke weed until four 20.

Scott: 00:15:24

Five is five pushups a day.

Scott: 00:15:26

Six is meditate for six minutes or sometimes six breaths.

Scott: 00:15:30

If, if I can't even get the six minutes, seven is exercised

Scott: 00:15:33

for at least seven minutes.

Scott: 00:15:34

So some kind of physical exercise for seven minutes, not too

Scott: 00:15:38

much, cuz to do that every day.

Scott: 00:15:40

It's like you can't, I don't know.

Scott: 00:15:42

I'm still phasing that in seven minutes seems to be enough at

Scott: 00:15:44

least to get the mind right.

Scott: 00:15:46

Exercise to me is for mind and to be able to sleep, not, not for, you

Scott: 00:15:50

know, like it's also good physically too, but psychologically more.

Scott: 00:15:54

Eight hours of sleep is eight.

Scott: 00:15:56

Nine is no phone or shut down at 9:00 PM.

Scott: 00:16:00

10 is walk 10,000 steps.

Scott: 00:16:01

I'm a Walker.

Scott: 00:16:02

11 is in bed by 11, sleep by 11, and then 12 is fill my

Scott: 00:16:07

stand rings on my apple watch.

Scott: 00:16:10

I gotta get 12 of those rings filled.

Scott: 00:16:13

That's been the hardest one to do, actually, cuz whenever I

Scott: 00:16:15

actually do try to work and I'm sitting in front of the computer,

Scott: 00:16:18

I could sit for four or five hours.

Scott: 00:16:20

And not know it, like

Alicyn: 00:16:22

Oh,

Scott: 00:16:22

whatever I'm doing, our jobs.

Scott: 00:16:24

Like we, we sit almost all day.

Scott: 00:16:27

I know, like, I, I, I could, I could have been sitting for eight hours straight

Scott: 00:16:31

when I was doing a lot of taxes when I was doing a lot of client work, you

Scott: 00:16:34

know, I, I just don't even get up to eat.

Scott: 00:16:37

So.

Scott: 00:16:37

But those, that stuff has kind of helped me in all aspects of my life.

Scott: 00:16:42

Like, you know, all of 'em seem like very little things or very trivial, but to

Scott: 00:16:46

me, that's like, what matters most now?

Scott: 00:16:48

And I actually hit all 12 habits, three days in a row for the first

Scott: 00:16:51

time since I started doing that.

Alicyn: 00:16:53

Hey, that's awesome.

Scott: 00:16:54

I know, three days in a row that was like, it's

Scott: 00:16:56

hard to hit all 12 of those.

Scott: 00:16:58

I don't hit 'em all every day.

Scott: 00:16:59

Like definitely days I miss a bunch some days, but my average is going up.

Scott: 00:17:04

I'm tracking all of that.

Scott: 00:17:05

I'm keeping up with the data, you know, I love, I love the numbers, so.

Scott: 00:17:08

but yeah, I mean, like sleep is starts.

Scott: 00:17:11

Everything starts and ends with sleep with me.

Scott: 00:17:13

Now that's the foundation of all of it.

Scott: 00:17:15

I took my son to a concert last week, red hot chili peppers

Scott: 00:17:18

concert, and it was in Charlotte.

Scott: 00:17:20

So two hours for me, I'm in Raleigh and North Carolina for the listeners, but.

Scott: 00:17:25

You know, I had to drive home after that concert and I was able to stay up.

Scott: 00:17:29

Like, it wasn't like I was falling asleep at the wheel, but really

Scott: 00:17:32

affected me for the whole weekend.

Scott: 00:17:33

So the concert was on the first, it was Thursday night and then we went

Scott: 00:17:37

to the beach over the weekend and I was sluggish almost the whole weekend,

Scott: 00:17:42

just trying to recover from that.

Scott: 00:17:43

And you know, I attribute that to not getting a lot of sleep that Thursday.

Scott: 00:17:47

I felt fine by Monday or Tuesday, but the whole week, you know, Monday

Scott: 00:17:51

was like labor day and I was starting to feel better then, but like, it

Scott: 00:17:54

wasn't like I was sick or anything.

Scott: 00:17:55

It was just, I was tired, you know, and I never used to feel that I never

Scott: 00:17:59

used to even acknowledge that I always would just power through it in all

Scott: 00:18:02

aspects of life, like going to concerts.

Scott: 00:18:04

That was nothing to me.

Scott: 00:18:05

I do that all the time, I guess maybe cuz we're getting old too.

Scott: 00:18:09

Maybe I'm getting a little old.

Scott: 00:18:10

Maybe, maybe that's part of it.

Scott: 00:18:12

I don't know.

Alicyn: 00:18:13

Could

Scott: 00:18:13

need our sleep.

Scott: 00:18:14

We need our sleep, but that's the foundation of it.

Scott: 00:18:18

Like, I, I definitely feel it too.

Scott: 00:18:20

I was the last trip I went on was new Orleans, I think for zero con and.

Scott: 00:18:26

Time difference gets me too

Alicyn: 00:18:27

for sure,

Scott: 00:18:28

I've been traveling a lot more, you know, all kinds of things.

Scott: 00:18:31

I'm I'm fortunate enough to be going to Toronto next one.

Scott: 00:18:35

And that's not a different time zone, but every time I go to like

Scott: 00:18:38

Vegas, Vegas is its own thing.

Scott: 00:18:40

You don't get much sleep in Vegas.

Scott: 00:18:41

That's you go to another planet there by going to like new Orleans, you know,

Scott: 00:18:46

getting home, it was adjusting to that.

Scott: 00:18:48

Just that one hour difference is a big deal.

Scott: 00:18:50

Like I was reading in that, in that book, the science of.

Scott: 00:18:53

You know, the, the amount of car crashes after daylight savings increases and

Scott: 00:18:59

the amount of accidents that people have increase when you lose an hour of sleep.

Scott: 00:19:05

There's a lot of studies that show, and that's why eventually, I, I

Scott: 00:19:09

think that eventually they may stop doing that because of the adjust.

Scott: 00:19:13

Because of losing that hour of sleep actually makes a pretty big difference.

Scott: 00:19:16

They also something recently too, a really interesting part, that book is

Scott: 00:19:20

teenagers actually are, we are built like as humans to be staying up later at

Scott: 00:19:27

those ages because we have to socially acclimate and there's, there's some

Scott: 00:19:32

studies and there, everything behind that you know, this, this gets into

Scott: 00:19:35

like anthropology type stuff, but we.

Scott: 00:19:38

To be socially active.

Scott: 00:19:39

Like during the tribal days, the kids would be up later kind

Scott: 00:19:42

of figuring out their own place while others went to sleep.

Scott: 00:19:46

And then we go through that phase.

Scott: 00:19:47

And so that's why teenagers tend to stay up later and be a,

Scott: 00:19:50

they're able to stay up later.

Scott: 00:19:52

And I'm starting to see that with my daughter, but their school

Scott: 00:19:54

starts the earliest of anybody.

Scott: 00:19:56

Sometimes high school starts at 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM.

Scott: 00:19:59

So I'm starting to see that changing in certain states.

Scott: 00:20:02

So they were shown a study in the book where.

Scott: 00:20:04

They moved back school for like two hours or three hours.

Scott: 00:20:08

And all of a sudden the kids' test scores went up, everything went

Scott: 00:20:11

up across the board for the kids.

Scott: 00:20:13

It was like in Montana, or I forgot what state it was in that they did that.

Scott: 00:20:16

And so other states are starting to take it up on.

Scott: 00:20:18

And my my sister-in-law she's a teacher and just recently

Scott: 00:20:22

they changed the curriculum.

Scott: 00:20:23

And this year they changed the start time for the older kids at

Scott: 00:20:27

the school district that she's in.

Scott: 00:20:29

I don't know the full details on that, but that's because of, because of

Scott: 00:20:32

sleep because kids, you know, at that age, I guess, you know, we're just

Scott: 00:20:37

predisposed to be staying up later.

Scott: 00:20:39

Not because we have to watch the tribe while everybody's asleep or socially.

Scott: 00:20:44

I mean, I guess, you know, that is true kids socially acclimate at that age,

Scott: 00:20:48

but that's that's really interesting to me, like to start learning more.

Scott: 00:20:52

And the more I learn, the better equipped I am.

Scott: 00:20:54

Deal with different things.

Scott: 00:20:55

And the more I understand, like, you know, you just blame your mood on other things.

Scott: 00:21:00

If you don't know, it's, it's just something as simple as

Scott: 00:21:03

getting enough sleep, right?

Scott: 00:21:05

Like, You know, it's

Alicyn: 00:21:07

You're missing something fundamental.

Alicyn: 00:21:08

Right.

Alicyn: 00:21:08

But yeah.

Scott: 00:21:09

right.

Scott: 00:21:10

And then, and then you say you know, this happened and you blame, you know,

Scott: 00:21:14

you almost like you play the blame game on everything else besides look

Scott: 00:21:18

at, you know, who you're pointing the finger at and it's really, you should be

Scott: 00:21:21

like, well, I shouldn't have stayed up.

Scott: 00:21:22

That last night, you know, or I shouldn't have done this instead of blaming this

Scott: 00:21:26

client or this person did this or, or this, you know, my staff did this and just

Scott: 00:21:31

kind of point in the finger at everywhere else on why things aren't going.

Scott: 00:21:35

Right.

Scott: 00:21:36

And almost always, it starts with, let's see what you did

Scott: 00:21:39

to contribute to that first.

Scott: 00:21:41

And I think that, to me, it always starts with sleep starts and ends with sleep.

Scott: 00:21:44

Everything else I can handle.

Scott: 00:21:45

So at the, at the firm, We were tracking our, like we have, we have

Scott: 00:21:51

leading indicators of that's our scorecard or our OKRs or our KPIs.

Scott: 00:21:57

Like our KPIs are the things that we can control the things,

Scott: 00:22:01

the habits that we can do.

Scott: 00:22:02

So meeting with clients.

Scott: 00:22:04

There's a, there's a whole list of things.

Scott: 00:22:05

But the only one that I was in charge of was my sleep.

Scott: 00:22:08

like I, because I don't do much client work or anything else, the

Scott: 00:22:11

ones that I was tracking every week on our scorecard was how many

Scott: 00:22:15

nights I got eight hours of sleep.

Scott: 00:22:16

And it correlated like when I was still doing sales are sales,

Scott: 00:22:20

numbers were better and everything worked was better on anything I had

Scott: 00:22:25

control over when I had more sleep.

Scott: 00:22:27

So that's why.

Scott: 00:22:28

that was, those were the things that we tracked.

Scott: 00:22:29

We weren't tracking the goals or the outcomes we were tracking the inputs.

Scott: 00:22:33

And I think that's, you know, to me, that was the one thing that mattered most to

Scott: 00:22:38

me because I can control everything else.

Scott: 00:22:40

If I've had enough sleep.

Alicyn: 00:22:51

I think since you're starting to talk about how sleep and work

Alicyn: 00:22:55

overlap, maybe we could talk a little bit about your thoughts for

Alicyn: 00:22:59

folks who are on the employer side.

Alicyn: 00:23:01

Maybe they're running a firm of their own, or they're running an

Alicyn: 00:23:04

accounting department of their own, you know, what are things that they

Alicyn: 00:23:07

can be thinking about for them and for their staff in terms of sleep?

Scott: 00:23:11

Yeah.

Scott: 00:23:11

I mean, you know, like, I think it's obviously, it's always

Scott: 00:23:14

gonna start with that's what they say in the airplane, right?

Scott: 00:23:17

Like you gotta put your mask on first, so it's gonna start with the

Scott: 00:23:19

owner, figuring it out themselves.

Scott: 00:23:21

You can't.

Scott: 00:23:22

You can't coach anybody to do anything that you're not already doing?

Scott: 00:23:26

I think the best, the best advice I could give anybody.

Scott: 00:23:29

Is the stuff that I've finally started to figure out and I'm, you know, I'm

Scott: 00:23:34

still learning, I'm still a novice at a lot of these things, but you know,

Scott: 00:23:37

the things that I know of are the things that I used to struggle with

Scott: 00:23:40

that I'm on the other side of now.

Scott: 00:23:42

So I think the same thing with, as an owner for your team, you know, to be

Scott: 00:23:45

able to project things that you want them to do, you have to embody that

Scott: 00:23:50

first and you have to show that first.

Scott: 00:23:51

So, you know, do, are you getting enough sleep?

Scott: 00:23:54

Like, you know, a lot of people think.

Scott: 00:23:56

Just because I'm in bed for seven hours, I'm getting seven hours of sleep.

Scott: 00:24:00

You know, I think a lot of people think six hours is enough.

Scott: 00:24:03

And I started to learn, like I would, I would love to be able

Scott: 00:24:05

to get nine hours of sleep, but I just can't get to bed that early.

Scott: 00:24:08

And if I sleep too late, then I've slept the day away.

Scott: 00:24:11

Right.

Scott: 00:24:11

So eight hours seems to be about right for me.

Alicyn: 00:24:13

Sure.

Scott: 00:24:14

But.

Scott: 00:24:14

I have an aura ring, you know, maybe get one for you and possibly offer to get one

Scott: 00:24:20

for the people in the team that want it.

Scott: 00:24:22

Like, I kind of offered that, but they were like, I don't wanna track my sleep.

Scott: 00:24:24

You're gonna see how much I sleep.

Scott: 00:24:25

Like, no, I'm not doing it for me or to see how much they sleep.

Scott: 00:24:29

I would like, because what you measure you can improve on.

Scott: 00:24:31

Right.

Scott: 00:24:31

And what I was realizing is I could be in bed for eight hours and I

Scott: 00:24:35

wasn't getting eight hours of sleep because there's, you know, it's track.

Scott: 00:24:40

And it's, it's not like a, you know, it's using gyroscope and it knows

Scott: 00:24:44

what you're moving and it using your blood your heart rate to measure

Scott: 00:24:49

how much deep sleep you're getting.

Scott: 00:24:50

And.

Scott: 00:24:51

It's data that I can improve on.

Scott: 00:24:53

If I know it, like if I knew that I needed to be in bed for 10 hours, just

Scott: 00:24:57

to get eight hours of sleep in those early days, that's what I had to do now.

Scott: 00:25:01

It's like, I can do I get about a 90% sleep rate when I'm in bed?

Scott: 00:25:05

So if I can do about nine, I don't know.

Scott: 00:25:07

I haven't looked at my score today yet, but I was looking at it every day and

Scott: 00:25:11

it measures a lot of different things and it gives you your readiness too.

Scott: 00:25:14

So this aura is, is great.

Scott: 00:25:16

Like.

Scott: 00:25:16

That's changed my life too, is being able to see that data.

Scott: 00:25:19

You know, you kind of have a rough idea of how much sleep you got based on when you

Scott: 00:25:23

went to bed and based on when you got up, but, you know, like all accountants know,

Scott: 00:25:26

once you really dig into those financials, or once you really dig into the data,

Scott: 00:25:30

then you know what the problems are and then, you know, what you can improve or,

Scott: 00:25:33

you know, the things that you can fix.

Scott: 00:25:35

So, you know, I think part of it is the first thing is, you

Scott: 00:25:38

know, get your, get yourself.

Scott: 00:25:39

Right.

Scott: 00:25:40

And if you're, you know, like, like you like.

Scott: 00:25:42

You say you've, you've always been one to, you know, and I, I admire that because.

Scott: 00:25:47

There's a lot of, there's a lot of people in my life that always

Scott: 00:25:49

would say like, I need my sleep.

Scott: 00:25:51

And I was like, well, I don't, you know, it was always, always

Scott: 00:25:54

like, oh, I don't need my sleep.

Scott: 00:25:55

You know, you need it.

Scott: 00:25:56

And I don't, and that's all bullshit.

Scott: 00:25:58

Like now I say that and if somebody says they don't, I actually

Scott: 00:26:02

care for them a little bit more.

Scott: 00:26:03

And I say, really, you don't like, tell me, tell me why.

Scott: 00:26:06

Gimme a little bit more on why you don't think you need sleep.

Scott: 00:26:09

Cause if anybody asked me that I wouldn't have been able to give him a good answer.

Scott: 00:26:13

I'd give him I.

Scott: 00:26:14

Kind of gloss it over.

Scott: 00:26:15

Well, I don't need sleep because I'm not tired.

Scott: 00:26:17

You know, it was like, I have all these reasons why I didn't need

Scott: 00:26:21

it, but they were all bullshit.

Scott: 00:26:23

So

Alicyn: 00:26:24

How about for the folks on the employee side who maybe have less

Alicyn: 00:26:29

control over their work schedules, maybe expected to be working long hours maybe

Alicyn: 00:26:35

commuting back and forth to an office.

Alicyn: 00:26:37

So that takes up some time in the day, you know, do you, do you have any

Alicyn: 00:26:41

thoughts for folks on that side of things?

Scott: 00:26:44

Get a new job.

Alicyn: 00:26:45

You heard it here.

Scott: 00:26:46

I mean,

Alicyn: 00:26:47

Get any job

Scott: 00:26:48

I don't know.

Scott: 00:26:49

Come, come work for me.

Scott: 00:26:49

I'll let you get sleep.

Scott: 00:26:50

No, I mean, it's, I would say

Alicyn: 00:26:53

stop hiring.

Scott: 00:26:53

you gotta like it's.

Scott: 00:26:55

Well, I think we're starting to see that trend.

Scott: 00:26:58

More and more with certain progressive firms and firm owners

Scott: 00:27:02

that, you know, don't put as much emphasis on the billable hour.

Scott: 00:27:07

The hours worked a lot of, you're seeing a lot of firms like we're fully remote.

Scott: 00:27:10

Now we used to have an office and I used to kind of let people work hybrid.

Scott: 00:27:14

But now we don't even have an office and they're in total control of what they do.

Scott: 00:27:18

And I'll be honest, I'm making more money than I ever was not doing any work because

Scott: 00:27:22

they're in control of all their shit.

Scott: 00:27:24

And they're, they're doing a much better job of me not micromanaging.

Scott: 00:27:27

Anything, you know, like the best way to manage is to not manage and not

Scott: 00:27:32

mic, definitely not micromanage, but is to let them manage themselves, let

Scott: 00:27:37

them hold themselves accountable and that's giving them the freedom to do.

Scott: 00:27:40

And so that's one thing I did.

Scott: 00:27:42

And I think that the only like I, as a boss, I wasn't allowing

Scott: 00:27:47

certain things in the past, but that's, cuz I didn't understand.

Scott: 00:27:51

So maybe educate you know, your managers and your bosses a little bit more.

Scott: 00:27:55

If it's something that you wanna pay more attention to share it with

Scott: 00:27:57

them, go to them and tell them, look, I wanna start getting more sleep.

Scott: 00:28:01

What can I do?

Scott: 00:28:01

Like how can I, how can my job change?

Scott: 00:28:04

How can, how can this change?

Scott: 00:28:05

I can't be staying here till 9:00 PM.

Scott: 00:28:08

You know, it's not just about work life balance.

Scott: 00:28:11

It's about, I need this.

Scott: 00:28:12

Like, this is what I need to live, you know?

Scott: 00:28:15

And it's not everybody puts as much emphasis as I do on sleep.

Scott: 00:28:18

I go a little extreme with almost everything.

Scott: 00:28:20

If I go in on something I'm, I'm a thousand percent in, I.

Scott: 00:28:23

All in, it's like a one or a zero with me.

Scott: 00:28:26

So I think now that I understand it, anytime anybody asks me anything related

Scott: 00:28:31

to their health or their wellness that comes first before anything else,

Scott: 00:28:35

you know, if somebody's a little too stressed out, okay, what can we do?

Scott: 00:28:38

How can we ease up your client load?

Scott: 00:28:40

What, what do we gotta do?

Scott: 00:28:41

It's not, you know, it's not about the immediate, it's about the long term.

Scott: 00:28:45

And, and that, you know, I think that all starts with their foundational health too.

Alicyn: 00:28:49

Yeah, it's hard.

Alicyn: 00:28:51

I, I can remember some of those days.

Alicyn: 00:28:52

It, it always seemed to be that the late nights were followed by early mornings.

Alicyn: 00:28:57

Because you were trying to get a deliverable out the door, first thing.

Alicyn: 00:29:00

So you're staying, you know, up later than you needed to be working later

Alicyn: 00:29:03

than you needed to be the day before.

Alicyn: 00:29:05

But then you had to rush back into the office very early before, like anybody

Alicyn: 00:29:09

else to just, you know, if it was something that had to be printed, did

Alicyn: 00:29:12

it get printed and putting it together and you know, the clients probably

Alicyn: 00:29:16

coming in at eight and yeah, like I.

Alicyn: 00:29:19

As much as I love sleep, there were many, many days where

Alicyn: 00:29:22

you're just, you're struggling.

Alicyn: 00:29:24

There's a lot of caffeine or there's a lot of, like you were saying the other

Alicyn: 00:29:28

week, there's just a lot of catching up on the weekends, which catching

Alicyn: 00:29:31

up is sort of overrated as well.

Alicyn: 00:29:32

So it's, it's

Scott: 00:29:34

Oh, well catching up, actually isn't even a thing in the

Scott: 00:29:37

book they, he says, and I've read this other places too, catching up.

Scott: 00:29:40

Doesn't exist.

Scott: 00:29:41

Once you lose that sleep, you've lost it forever.

Scott: 00:29:43

You do have to, your body wears out and you do need more sleep, but you're

Scott: 00:29:47

not catching up on what you lost.

Scott: 00:29:49

You've already lost it.

Scott: 00:29:50

You're not getting it back.

Scott: 00:29:51

Once you squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube, you're not

Scott: 00:29:53

putting that shit back in.

Scott: 00:29:55

You know, you can go buy more toothpaste, but you're not getting that back in.

Scott: 00:29:58

Maybe there is a way to do that.

Scott: 00:29:59

I, that's probably not a good example.

Scott: 00:30:01

There's probably, I could probably figure out a way to get toothpaste

Scott: 00:30:03

back in if I've got it out.

Scott: 00:30:04

But that's not, that's not the best example, but like, you know, like part

Scott: 00:30:09

of it is the things that you can control and in the moment when you're

Scott: 00:30:14

staying up late, because you have a deliverable the next day, you're not

Scott: 00:30:16

gonna change that in the short term.

Scott: 00:30:18

But you've gotta note the things that you can change for next year.

Scott: 00:30:21

What caused you to be in a position to have to stay up late

Scott: 00:30:25

in order to get that deliverable?

Scott: 00:30:26

Why couldn't you get it done a couple of days before, you know,

Scott: 00:30:30

and be prepared for it and have it ready before the day before?

Scott: 00:30:34

Like, what are the things you can change next year to do that?

Scott: 00:30:36

And that's hard.

Scott: 00:30:37

I I'll be first to admit that is, I was terrible at that.

Scott: 00:30:41

Cause I never had the perspective or the bigger picture of like.

Scott: 00:30:45

Yeah, we can change this next year.

Scott: 00:30:46

Cause there would always be, it was always somebody else's fault or, you

Scott: 00:30:50

know, the client got it to us late.

Scott: 00:30:52

We're in control of who's our clients in the first place, you know?

Scott: 00:30:55

And like we, we always would complain.

Scott: 00:30:58

I, I, I would, I don't want anymore, but like of clients getting stuff

Scott: 00:31:02

in late and like I would always hear the firms and the people.

Scott: 00:31:05

We just don't let our clients bring it to us late.

Scott: 00:31:08

You know, for us, it was always like, oh yeah, they're gonna pay more.

Scott: 00:31:11

If they're bringing in late, we're gonna charge them more.

Scott: 00:31:13

And that's not a, that doesn't fix anything that doesn't solve any

Scott: 00:31:16

problems because maybe you're making a little bit more money, but you feel

Scott: 00:31:20

miserable, you know, and you really.

Scott: 00:31:22

Yeah, you're burning out and these are the people that are ungrateful anyway.

Scott: 00:31:25

So you're gonna rush to get everything done for them last minute.

Scott: 00:31:28

And then they're gonna bitch what they owe or that the refund

Scott: 00:31:30

isn't big enough or whatever.

Scott: 00:31:32

Like they, these are people that you never satisfy, never keep happy.

Scott: 00:31:36

And it's, and it's still, I'm still trying to figure out how to weed them out.

Scott: 00:31:39

In the initial phase, like we just stopped doing individual tax returns

Scott: 00:31:43

only like that, that was a way to do it because business owners

Scott: 00:31:46

have a better perspective on it.

Scott: 00:31:48

And they, you know, they know that we're handling their shit.

Scott: 00:31:50

So they're not as concerned about the deadlines and they get us their stuff

Scott: 00:31:54

cuz we're working with them year round.

Scott: 00:31:56

So our solution was to just not do individual only anymore.

Scott: 00:32:00

And I don't think that's the right solution, either.

Scott: 00:32:02

My co-host on my podcast.

Scott: 00:32:04

He's they still make a.

Scott: 00:32:06

They do great.

Scott: 00:32:07

Just doing a lot of individual work and they've, they've got

Scott: 00:32:10

a system that works for them.

Scott: 00:32:11

And I think that's, that's part of what I'm learning is we could still

Scott: 00:32:15

do that, but it just means that, you know, I also don't like the variability

Scott: 00:32:20

of tax season versus regular year.

Scott: 00:32:22

Like I've tried, I've basically trying to eliminate what tax season is for.

Scott: 00:32:27

If we structure the business the right way, then we don't necessarily, we do,

Scott: 00:32:31

we do a fraction of the tax returns we used to do, and we're making a lot

Scott: 00:32:36

more money because we're working with the right clients, the clients that are

Scott: 00:32:39

right for us, we don't necessarily have an industry vertical yet, but we have a

Scott: 00:32:44

client type that, you know, we are, we are attracting that we're working with that

Scott: 00:32:49

we know we can make good margins on that.

Scott: 00:32:50

We're you know, that we can, we can handle everything else around

Scott: 00:32:53

that once we've kind of define.

Scott: 00:32:55

What it is.

Scott: 00:32:56

And now we're starting to rank our clients as like giving them client scores based

Scott: 00:33:00

on what they filled out on our type form.

Scott: 00:33:02

So we have, you know, we have a good idea of who's gonna be a good client or

Scott: 00:33:06

not based on our current client base.

Scott: 00:33:09

And I've asked my team numerous, numerous times, like, what's the best industry that

Scott: 00:33:13

you like working with and consistently they, they never care about the industry.

Scott: 00:33:17

They always care about the owner or the person they have to deal with.

Scott: 00:33:20

and some industries they can, they like because of the owner.

Scott: 00:33:24

And then if it's somebody that they don't like working with, or that's

Scott: 00:33:27

just not a, not a good client, that's what defines not a good client

Scott: 00:33:31

for them is the owner's attitude.

Scott: 00:33:32

And that, that person, and we can control that.

Scott: 00:33:35

That's the one thing we can control.

Scott: 00:33:36

We can't necessarily control, you know, it's, we can't control after

Scott: 00:33:41

the fact cuz then they're already paying us and now we gotta deliver

Scott: 00:33:43

this and you know, it's like, it.

Scott: 00:33:45

I have a hard time.

Scott: 00:33:46

Once we take on a bad client, I have a hard time firing clients.

Scott: 00:33:50

Like I've, I've never been good at that.

Scott: 00:33:51

Cuz the worst ones you could raise their fee as much as you want.

Scott: 00:33:55

And they won't leave.

Scott: 00:33:56

I would always be very passive aggressive on that and I would just keep raising

Scott: 00:33:59

their fees and they just kept paying it.

Scott: 00:34:01

They just kept paying whatever it was cuz they don't, they didn't

Scott: 00:34:04

want to go deal with somebody else.

Scott: 00:34:05

They don't want to go find somebody else.

Scott: 00:34:07

They'd rather just pay you

Alicyn: 00:34:09

yeah.

Alicyn: 00:34:09

Yeah.

Alicyn: 00:34:10

To your point change what you can control, focus on what you can control.

Alicyn: 00:34:14

, scott, is there anything else you would like to.

. Scott: 00:34:16

It's that, you know, sleep is very important, but if you have

. Scott: 00:34:18

an hour to just openly think and ask yourself questions, Just write down a

. Scott: 00:34:24

hundred questions on a piece of paper and see where you get, try to do that.

. Scott: 00:34:28

Like, you know, or try to write down a hundred different things in an hour,

. Scott: 00:34:33

probably won't be able to get to a hundred, but you know, try to do 50.

. Scott: 00:34:37

See where you get with that.

. Scott: 00:34:38

I think that's, that's where you start to realize what you really

. Scott: 00:34:41

want and what you need to change too.

. Scott: 00:34:43

It's probably a good exercise.

. Scott: 00:34:45

That's a wrap, my friends, reach out and let me know what you think.

. Scott: 00:34:48

I appreciate you listening in to this episode of under withheld, the podcast

. Scott: 00:34:52

by accountants and for accountants, where we talk about our ubiquitous

. Scott: 00:34:56

professional and personal struggles.