Just-in-time learning — only acquiring new information when needed for the job at hand — has been the story of my life for me!
To help set the tone, I'd like you to imagine brand new entrepreneur Kate hanging her head in shame after her accountant told her to go take Quickbooks lessons. Talk about impactful! Although it was hard at the time, those lessons helped me level up my skill set at a pivotal moment in my journey.
This incident made a big impression on me. In fact, I think something similar might be exactly what you need right now to get yourself organized for tax season.
This is a time of year that stops counselors in their tracks because of issues they have never dealt with before. Cutting through the noise is challenging, but this podcast episode may be a game-changer for many.
Listen in on this session to learn more about how you can learn to be good-enough at taxes. Enjoy!
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
Just-in-time learning — only acquiring new information when needed for the job at hand — has been the story of my life for me!
To help set the tone, I'd like you to imagine brand new entrepreneur Kate hanging her head in shame after her accountant told her to go take Quickbooks lessons. Talk about impactful! Although it was hard at the time, those lessons helped me level up my skill set at a pivotal moment in my journey.
This incident made a big impression on me. In fact, I think something similar might be exactly what you need right now to get yourself organized for tax season.
This is a time of year that stops counselors in their tracks because of issues they have never dealt with before. Cutting through the noise is challenging, but this podcast episode may be a game-changer for many.
Listen in on this session to learn more about how you can learn to be good-enough at taxes. Enjoy!
Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.
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Introduction
Kate Walker: Hey, it’s Dr. Kate Walker. Welcome to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses podcast. I’m talking to you today, I’m not a numbers person, person. If I had a nickel for every time I had a counselor tell me “But, I’m just not a numbers person,” I would have a lot of nickels.
Today’s podcast is all about you, I’m not a numbers person, person. So here’s what you’re going to get out of today. I’m going to talk about not only the issue, the problem – I mean, you know me, I’m solution-focused. So I really want you to come away today with some strategies for tackling your numbers, especially this time of year, during tax season. You ready? Let’s get to work.
You know, there are a lot of reasons we tell ourselves we’re not good at numbers. It’s the same thing I hear with people who say, well, I’m just not musically inclined, or I’m not an artist, I can’t draw, I can’t paint, or I’m just not an athletic person. I mean, we’re counselors, we know how this works. Maybe as a kiddo, you were told something, you were graded somehow, you were subtly given the message of something, and before you knew it, unconsciously, it became your identity.
So a couple of things I want you to keep in mind. There are a lot of reasons you may feel like you’re not a numbers person and you don’t have to do something about all of the reasons. I mean, one of the most common reasons, especially during tax season, counselors tell themselves, I’m just not a numbers person, is because this takes new organizational skills. This is something new. If you’re a counselor and this is the first time you’ve owned your own practice, or if this is the first career you’ve had, then trying to organize yourself so that you are ready for April 15th, it’s a new skill. And like anything new, you’re going to struggle. There will be a learning curve. I really didn’t have to learn how to do my taxes until I was in my mid-30s. That’s embarrassing. I mean, of course I filed my taxes, but I had one job, I was a school teacher, I took my W2, I combined it with whatever my husband had, we took it all to whatever tax service and it was magically done and we went on with our lives.
This is a different skill if you are a 1099 contractor or if you have several W2s or if you are a practice owner, it gets complicated. And because you have this master’s degree and you’ve established yourself as a professional, you’ve passed the exam, you’ve done all of the experience hours, you are a solid professional now in your career, sometimes it can take us by surprise when we still have a skill that we are lacking. And around this time of year, organizing taxes can definitely be one of those skills that we’re lacking.
Besides being something new, several of us, and I’m looking in the mirror right now, struggle with ADD, ADHD. So this type of organization, attention to detail, staying focused for a long period of time, this is going to be harder for us than it might be for folks who don’t struggle with ADD, ADHD. I have to literally turn my phone off or, as you’ve heard probably in my intro by my lovely daughter Ridgley, I put everybody on do not disturb when I’m focusing on my numbers. I just cannot go back and forth, back and forth, between texting and social media and knocks on my door or anything like that. I have to stay in this zone of silence in order to stay focused on the task at hand.
Now, let’s talk about shame issues surrounding being a numbers person. If you were given the message as a kiddo that you just aren’t good at numbers, or well, your sister, she’s the numbers person, you’re my dancer. Or boys are better at math than girls. Or girls are better at math than boys. Or girls mature faster than boys. I can’t even go through all of the cliched crap and anecdotal pseudoscience that we have been feeding ourselves, our unknowing parents fed us, and we probably feed our kids on a daily basis related to math.
So when we have shame issues surrounding our new skill learning curve combined with a little ADD, ADHD, what happens? We really have a recipe for disaster because we won’t ask for help. We think we’re the only ones who don’t know how to do this, and so we wait, and we wait, and we wait until it’s too late and then the anxiety is overwhelming. And so if you already suffer with anxiety, now go back and compound everything, because a couple of things are going to happen. With anxiety, you may fall into a system that works for you, but it’s very clunky. It doesn’t really help, it just kind of prolongs not asking for help, but you’re so afraid of changing, you just tell yourself it’s good enough and you really don’t want to change anything.
Or, the other extreme, you procrastinate. You put it off and you put it off and you put it off. Folks, procrastination is a form of self-care. It’s not a great form of self-care, but when you procrastinate, what’s happening is you’re protecting yourself from something that is very scary to your psyche. And so with anxiety, if you’re not locked into something super clunky that you don’t want to give up because if you do you’re afraid the world will fall apart, you may be over here just pretending like it doesn’t exist.
So today, I am here for you. I am here for you, I want to walk you through this, no matter where you are. You may have heard me tell this story before – actually, I have two stories. So the first story is the first time I took my taxes to my accountant, who was a wonderful man. He was just really kind of harsh. I mean, he was a no-nonsense guy. And I took everything in. I may or may not have had a shoebox, I can’t really attest to that. It’s all a blur, I think I blocked out the memory. And so when I took him this stuff, he took one look at it, handed it back to me, and said, go take QuickBooks lessons and don’t come back to me until you do. I ran out of that office with my tail between my legs. I was so embarrassed. But I did what he said to do. So that was the beginning of me healing my money issues.
Now, fast forward, I don’t know, let’s say ten years, you think I would have gotten better, right? Well, these things have a way of hiding until a new situation comes out, and I had hired a financial advisor, or a bookkeeper – again, I don’t remember, it’s a trauma memory, it’s gone. But as well as I can remember, I remember this person looking at my books, then he looked at me, and said, “Wow, you’re really living on the edge here.” And I wanted to melt into the floor. I felt every shame incident issue I had ever had just rise up inside of me and I just wanted to quit right then and there. Forget it, I don’t want to have a private practice. I don’t want to do taxes. I don’t want to adult. I don’t want to do anything.
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I got over it. I do my taxes now. But I want to share with you some things that I have learned, and I’ve learned them from people who are way smarter than I am, and they’ve written great books, and I’m going to share those with you in just a second.
Number one: you are not supposed to be good at everything. So, in other words, if you are right-handed, there is no reason in the world for you to work hard every day to learn how to become left-handed – well, I guess unless you’re learning how to be a conductor. Yes, there was a time in music school where I had to learn how to be ambidextrous because I was taking a course in orchestral conducting. So yes, in that case, if you want to learn how to be a conductor, yes, you do need to know how to be both-handed. But putting that aside, you do not need to be good at everything. The older you get, the list of things you don’t have to be good at gets longer and longer and longer and I am so happy about that. Learning how to be great at taxes doesn’t have to be on your list. You can just learn how to be good at taxes.
Number two, there’s the 80/20 rule, and I’m paraphrasing. The 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of your results comes from 20 percent of your effort. That means when you look around at your business and you see the really big gains that you have, that has come from the things that you have put in 20 percent effort on. So if you’re spending 80 percent of your time trying to wade through your numbers, you can almost guarantee that that will not result in a huge gain, alright? So learning how to be an expert tax person isn’t going to advance your business. Yes, it will clean up your taxes and it will make it easier for you to file taxes, but if you are telling yourself, I have to be good at this, I have to be good at this, I have to be good at this, the reality is, it’s not going to earn you more money. It’s not going to bring in more clients. Yes, it will keep your doors open because nobody is going to come in and audit you and shut you down.
But remember that 80/20 rule. It’s almost like if you said, you know what? I’m going to invest in building my own doors, so I’m going to get an office and I’m going to take down the doors that are there and I’m going to learn how to carve and be an excellent carpenter and I’m going to craft my own doors. So by the end, yes, you will have these amazing, beautiful doors, and you may have a certificate on your wall that says you are a master carpenter, but not one client will have been brought through the door because you have decided to become an expert door maker. So spending time learning how to be an expert tax preparer or bookkeeper is not going to further your business. So if you are still trying to become an expert bookkeeper or tax preparer, stop it. Where can you get some quick tips? You can get it from people who are already good at this.
Here’s what I did. I took a Dave Ramsey course. Now, Dave Ramsey does not sponsor this podcast. He does a lot of stuff with money and teaching people how to manage money, and he has a course called “Financial Peace University.” It costs about $100, there were some DVDs. Back in the day, there would be a central location, so maybe several couples or individuals would all meet at a church or a restaurant or someplace, a meeting room, and they would watch the DVDs together and then discuss later. I don’t know what they do now. They probably just have you download something. Dave Ramsey courses are wonderful.
If you’re just trying to learn the basics of managing money, Ramit Sethi is another really good money teacher. Go to his website, download his free stuff, do what he says to do. Or listen to their podcast. Everybody has a podcast now. Listen to the podcast and learn about basic money management, basic bookkeeping principles.
If you’re still dealing with mindset, if this is a shame issue, if it is something you have learned and you just don’t feel like you’re good at numbers or you’re not good with money or money is the root of all evil, then you need to pick up a book that’s going to address that. Jen Sincero, who everybody knows that I love, because she wrote “YOU Are a Badass,” also wrote a book called “YOU Are a Badass with Money.” Pick it up, address your mindset issues.
Another book that I recommend is Tim Ferris’s “Four-Hour Work Week.” This little book written – I guess it’s over a decade ago, completely changed my paradigm when it comes to what is success? What does it mean to be successful? How much money do you really need to have a happy life? So we’ve got resources to address the mechanics of money and books and podcasts to address money mindset issues.
Finally, if you do suffer with ADD, ADHD, anxiety, treat your issue before you tackle your money. One of the biggest, deepest holes we can dig for ourselves is to just try it – try managing the money, try diving into the books – without treating our issue, and then if we fail, we’ll go back and take our medicine or do the meditation or employ the coping skill. So, think about that for a second, counselor. What that means is you’re going to put a “fail” on the books, like that’s going to make you feel better and motivated, and then you will start feeling good about managing your money? No. It doesn’t work. Anytime you put a “fail” into your psyche, it’s not going to motivate you. Starting with a fail as a way of leading to motivation is inefficient.
If you’re serious about treating whatever it is you struggle with, and however you want to treat it - I don’t promote, I don’t endorse one thing over the other. However you feel, you should treat your ADD or your anxiety, treat it. Treat it as a separate issue from preparing your money, your books for taxes. But prioritize you over your books. Treat your issue and then go in for the win. Now, going in for the win, what does that mean? If you know that being great at bookkeeping and accounting isn’t going to further your business goals – and rewind about ten minutes if you’re not sure about that – then ask for help. Ask someone to help you with your books. You can Google “accounting services for therapists.” You can go back and listen to other episodes of podcasts. I did an episode with David Frank not long ago, I know I’ve got more podcasts and there are people out there who are willing to help counselors get their books together. And yes, you’re going to have to pay for that, but what’s the cost if you don’t?
So I’m talking to you, I’m not good with numbers, I’m talking to you, I’m not a numbers person, person. I get it, I really, really do, and we are at the eleventh hour. If you’re listening to me at the end of March and the first of April and you haven’t done what you need to do to prepare your taxes yet, there are still things you can do to get the job done. Number one, you can file an extension. When you file an extension, that buys you some time. Now, it will not stop the clock on anything you owe, and if you do owe the government, you will have to pay interest on what you owe, but it will buy you some time in having to file.
Okay, badass, you’ve got this. You are too important to lose to having to quit because you didn’t ever file your taxes. Thanks for listening, this is Dr. Kate Walker.