Finding Balance

Today, our guest is Lauren Baptiste. Lauren is—well, she’s doing some stuff that I am very excited about. She’s working on solving the billable hour burnout problem. She has gone from a Big Four auditor to a burnout coach. She now consults with professionals trying to figure out empowering ways that they can have what is not necessarily, or not at all, the mythical work-life balance. It exists and she’s there to help people get through this stress free. So Lauren, welcome to The Unique CPA.

Thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Well, I’m thrilled. I’ve been looking forward to this. I mean, we were introduced a couple of months ago, I guess. And the funny thing was, I think if I got this story right, somebody I was talking to said, you have to meet Lauren Baptiste, and at that exact same moment, you were connecting with me on LinkedIn!

Correct. And that person did not tell me to reach out to you, which is the funniest part. I found you here on the podcast. And I was like, this is a great podcast, I really appreciate the work you’re doing. I just want to say hi. So that’s the universe working for you right there.

Oh, that was crazy. It was definitely meant to be. Literally, as soon as I hung up with that person, I get a notification that Lauren Baptiste wants to connect. I go, whoa, what’s going on here? Alright. So that was pretty cool. And obviously anybody listening to the show knows that burnout is a topic I’m very passionate about. Not getting burnt out, but ways to avoid it. And that can be done. 

So let’s go into, before we get into this whole burnout, because I can go forever, and I’m sure you and I are going to have a great time. How did this become a passion of yours? Let’s hear the backstory of how you got to this spot. Oh, and tell us your company name because I can’t pronounce it.

I don’t make it easy for anybody. So you’re an award winner, if you can pronounce the name of my company, Acheloa Wellness. 

Acheloa.

All of my marketing has just shifted to Lauren Baptiste, so you can find me that way. So don’t worry if you can’t spell it or, all good. 

So I don’t think you’d be surprised to find out how I started my work in burnout, was, as a CPA working in a Big Four accounting firm ended up in an emergency room two days in a row.

Two days in a row? I didn’t know that!

Two days in a row. So for me, what had happened, I was on a travel assignment. I had recently transferred from the audit department to the consulting department, for me thinking it was going to be better, sexier, you know, from spreadsheets to PowerPoints. I thought my life is going to improve when I shift. And it was actually in the consulting role, came in, didn’t have time for training. They said, we’ll do your training later, but we need you in Minneapolis on Monday, and by the way, it’s -20° ’cause it’s January. So a couple of weeks of trying to figure that out, just continuing to try to have the work ethic that a lot of us do, okay, I can do this. Just one assignment at a time. One day at a time. One week at a time.

I was leaving 6:00 AM on Mondays, getting to Minneapolis for a 9 o’clock meeting, leaving Friday afternoons, laundry, rinse and repeat. A lot of people can probably resonate with that type of schedule.

Yeah, for sure. I wanted to, the one thing that I’m, you and I talked about last week before we got on the show is that I was reading the story of that, and what was it your supervisor said when you were going to the hospital, make sure you bring your laptop? 

Yes. Yes. So fast forward in the story. Okay, so we get the context of the background, you know, it was putting in a lot of hours on top of the travel, on top of a new thing that I didn’t really know what was going on in this whole consulting world, figuring that out. And it was just like a recipe for disaster. And on top of that, you know, the Big Four culture of working late hours and expecting to just know what’s going on. And so there was just a point where my body shut down, even though my brain was willing to continue. 

So we were at dinner and I thought I was having a food allergy. We all thought it was a food allergy. So that’s why my, you know, my manager said, hey, take your laptop with you. And I think that’s like error number one, was that he said that.

Yeah.

Error number two is that I did it.

Yeah, I had a feeling that was number two. Alright.

Mmm hmm! So I took the laptop, went to the ER, ended up finding out on the first night, well, let’s just give her medical grade Benadryl and she’ll be better, send her home around 2 AM. So I noticed the timestamp and I wanted to make sure everybody knew the timestamp. So I sent an email on my taxi ride back to the hotel saying, it’s 2 AM, I guess I’ll see you in the morning. Mistake number three. Like who’s in the emergency room and says, I’ll see you in the morning at like eight for breakfast?

But this is the mindset of all of us who are really hardworking. We’re people pleasing. We’re type a, we don’t want to show our weakness, especially for someone who’s like trying to prove herself now in this new profession of consulting. I was like, alright. Brush your teeth and get going. And so that was the third mistake where I ended up in the office. Everybody was very compassionate in the first five minutes of like, how was your night? How are you doing? And then it was when we finally got into the office, we’re unpacking our laptops and they say, Lauren, so what did you get done last night? 

Well, that’s, that’s insane! 

I laugh about it now. I wanted to die on the inside in the moment, in that moment, my body was like, what? It shut down again. I ran to the bathroom, I checked myself, I was like, oh my gosh, this is happening again. Ended up being hives, but hives was my reaction that my body had. I had never had hives as a child. I’ve never had hives growing up. I was like, this is strange. And that was, that’s the beginning of the story of like the moment that changed my life. Went to the doctor the second time. This one came in and said, I don’t think this is an allergy thing, I think you need to relax. He turned on HGTV and he left, came back two hours later and I was a healed woman. Go figure.

Alright. Well, that is a crazy story for one, but unfortunately, probably not an uncommon story, which you and I both know talking to people about burnout in the profession. For you personally, then, you know, obviously, it didn’t go away with two hours of HGTV, but you realized that just relaxing was helping make a change. Where did it go from there? Did you realize that burnout was affecting you, and, you know, I guess how did you then address that?

Well, after the two hours of HGTVing and chilling, the doctor came back in and had a conversation with me that this is like, you have two paths from here: You can keep going and pretend nothing happened and go back to work, or you can change your life. And that was what I decided to be my rock bottom, because I knew I had the propensity to keep going, push through, grit my teeth and bear it, and I was like, you know what? I don’t think I want to be dead by the time I’m 30. I think I need to do something a little bit different. And that was the, like that first step into the direction of the unknown.

Yeah. And I think what some of you just said there is that you chose that that would be your rock bottom and recognized it. But do you find yourself in this new role, maybe Somebody will say to you, hey, wow, you’re just working so hard right now, but you don’t feel like it? Or, have you completely changed it, you don’t have that same personality anymore that, hey, I gotta work like crazy to get where I want to be with this, ’cause I need to help people, people are dealing with burnout. Have you fallen into that trap at all?

In my own business, you mean? 

Yes. Yes.

Luckily I have not. I think, you know, there’s one thing of doing the work and helping someone up like through it, but it’s also being a product of my work and making sure I don’t let workplace burnout affect me. I’m also very aware, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, of signs and symptoms that came up, or that do come up in stressful times. I know when my eye starts to twitch, that’s like my yellow light—slow down. And I have other little symptoms that add, but the eye twitch is first. And then what comes after that? And then after that, right? Maybe I start to break out. Maybe I start to like, like get into fights with my spouse. I will notice that there are symptoms that lead me there, but now I know when my eye twitches, slow down.

You can identify that. Alright, so I jumped ahead in there. So now this was your rock bottom. You decided that’s it. You made a change immediately or what happened then?

It was actually a tough period because I didn’t know what to do. To me, this wasn’t a therapy thing. I didn’t even think therapy was an option, which maybe it was at the time. I didn’t know what coaching was. This was 2013. And it wasn’t burnout because burnout was in, well, while burnout came to be in the 70s, it wasn’t until 2019 that the World Health Organization declared it as an occupational phenomenon. 

I didn’t realize that.

Yeah. So for me, it was just, I’m stressed. Go back to work, kid. And in that moment, I actually started to have a little bit of a downward spiral, because I was now out of alignment, right? With what my head was thinking of, this isn’t right, but still having to show up every day. I still had about another six weeks in that project. So in my head, I was like, just survive these next six weeks—I’ll address it after this engagement, but that could be a very tricky mantra for a lot of us.

Oh, that’s so common. I just need to get through April 15th and I’ll be good again. I just need to get through this audit. I’ll be good again. And we don’t realize that it just is a snowball effect. Because there’s the next deadline, the next project, the next, I just need to get through. And so, yeah, that’s a dangerous, slippery slope.

Absolutely. Yeah. 

So then? I mean, I’m waiting for, okay, when did Big Four disappear for you, or what was the next step?

You’ll be surprised. Big Four stayed in the picture a long time for me.

Really!

I knew I could leave. I knew I was qualified to leave. I know I work hard. I know I’m smart. I know all of those things, but I knew I would take this baggage to this next job. So the type of person I am is like, figure it out there. So I spent years still in consulting, in the advisory practice, learning how to overcome my burnout while still balancing it, and building my first business while still working full time at the big four and doing it without burning out, which was like, okay, I had to really be mindful of energy, my health, decisions I was making on Friday night, since Saturday, and I had to be really mindful of how I spent each day of my life going forward, but I knew every day was going to move me forward to getting out of there in a way that felt sustainable.

Okay. So you got, you became in touch with this, this burnout potential and you were able to keep it at bay and you were able to do things to  have a healthier work life at that, I don’t even think there was a word “work-life balance,” or I guess multiple words at that time. But to figure that out. So then when did—alright, let me see if I can get this right—L 

How did Acheloa Wellness come to be? 

Wait, don’t say the “wellness” part. Just say the first part.

Acheloa.

Acheloa. I can say that. I think the “Wellness” throws me off. Acheloa.

Well, you know what’s funny? So for anyone wondering, Acheloa came from Achelois, which is a minor Greek goddess that focuses on stress and women’s health.

That’s perfect. 

So that was the inspiration for the name of my business when I started.

Well, I think that’s awesome. Alright. So I have to make sure I know how to say it from now on. ’Cause it’s a beautiful name.

No judgment. You’re good either way.

Alright. So then when did this come in? When did you make the full time jump?

2018 was when I started the business. And if you’re watching this on video, you’ll see this like seesaw—I was working full time in my company, at the Big Four, and I started to build my company and over time I started to shift to part time, and I started to increase my hours in my business. And then there was a point where there was just diminishing returns of staying at the Big Four. And I was like, guys—they knew I was building this business, they’re like, they supported me in it, which was actually really amazing.

That’s great! 

Because they saw the work I was doing. I was working across the table and helping someone stop smoking, help someone lose weight, helping someone else overcome, like, imposter syndrome. And they’re like, you’re worth keeping around as long as you want to stay, we’ll have you.

That’s pretty cool. So they allowed you to just reduce hours and stay on and do the projects you wanted while you built this other business, so it wasn’t a top secret thing. Everybody knew that this other business—oh, that’s pretty cool. I’m impressed with Big Four with that. So that’s pretty cool.

Yeah. It also said a lot about my growth of who I was when I first burnt out and who I came to be being really transparent, holding boundaries, still maintaining a book of business over $4 million. Like still doing the things that are, for them, is worth me staying, and then they had this extra benefit of like, you know, what they would consider a therapist on the side at the time.

Oh, so they were just taking advantage of you!

Don’t worry, it was mutual. They were helping me too!

Alright, so I was going to say, great story—that is a great story of where you got to, how you got to where you are now and why this is such a passionate topic for you. And I want to, I’m going to dissect a little bit about the billable hour also in the, you know, you want to solve the billable hour burnout problem. Because I think there’s probably more than just billable hours, but I think that is a major culprit. But let’s just talk, we’re going to be talking about burnout, which we already have. And you said it was a 2018, ’19, this is when it got recognized as a workplace phenomenon. Do you, I mean, I’ve looked up the definition of burnout. Do you quote the same one that you see on the internet all over, or do you have your own definition of burnout?

I think it’s relatable when they hear the same definition—so exhaustion, cynicism and detachment, and ineffectiveness at work, right? Those are the three that we hear. And I think that’s good to maybe understand at that first level, but then it’s like, how do we go deeper? So exhaustion—there’s physical exhaustion and there’s mental exhaustion. A lot of us just think tired, but actually it’s mental exhaustion that’s usually the culprit when we’re really feeling exhausted. 

And then cynicism and detachment that might look like negativity. It might look like wanderlusting. There’s a lot of feelings that come up in that like mental health side. So that second one is where you can really tease it out. And then the third one, we’ll just say, Hey, if you’re not as productive as it used to be, something that used to take you four hours is now taking you a whole day. You’re feeling like it’s been years and even though you are working all the time, you’re not promoting the way you think you should be. There’s something there often that we’re not addressing that needs to be considered. So that’s kind of how I like to take that definition and how we apply it into our CPA world.

Yep. I like how you expand on each of those three. The thing that I like to talk about is that, you know, when we go through that, the exhaustion, the negativity and the, you know, the reduced productivity, is that what do we do? And this is a personality trait that we all have. Well, we’re less productive. So what do we do? Well, we work more, because we have a to do list that’s growing. So we gotta come in now earlier. We gotta stay later. We gotta work on the weekends because, you know, if I don’t. How can I ever get ahead in this profession? How am I going to get promoted? How am I, you know, all of those things. And that’s where the snowball effect comes. Because if you just start working more, just trying to, I just need to get through 4/15, well, what’s going to happen? It’s just building, building, building, building to a point where then you just explode with and end up in the hospital back to back days.

Yes. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid now, because there’s so much out there. This conversation that we’re having did not exist 11 years ago. And that’s why I think this is so helpful because even though it wasn’t a thing then, now there are stats, which I find bittersweet. They still say, they say burnout is plateauing around 39%. We see a disproportionate share between men and women, women carrying the brunt of burnout. And we’re seeing one of the bigger reasons that people are currently burning out, loneliness, being one of those factors. 

Cause we’ll often be like, oh, it’s my hours, it’s my boss, right? That was my story, but that’s not really the whole story. And I think, especially in the past few years with the pandemic, burnout looks a little different than it did in 2019. 

Oh yeah, for sure. I’m a big proponent of remote work. I love it. But you have to be intentional about still connecting with people. And so the loneliness aspect, I can see that for sure. I was just talking to someone recently who unfortunately has a child that developed severe OCD tendencies during the pandemic, just got into the workforce, was right when the pandemic started, was going into an office and then all of a sudden got thrown into this new world of, okay, you’re going to be at your apartment all by yourself for the next two years or whatever it was. And so that loneliness from him, you know, translated to OCD, to others, you know, burnout, to others, other, you know, potential mental health issues. And so, yeah, I can see how the loneliness, the isolation, can significantly affect it, but I think we have to find ways around it because remote work is not going away. That is here to stay and I’m happy with it. I don’t know, do you have a thought on that aspect of loneliness and how to combat that?

I think the way you said it is perfect: We need intentional ways of connection. You know, think about what was maybe at the office, the water cooler talk, which, you know, depending on how deep we go, I don’t always know if I love the water cooler talk because it’s more of a negative venting than it is, but it creates connections. So for now, I’ll let it be. I’ve seen information recently about what they call the “third place.” So for example, my grandparents played poker at night, and that was their third place. You lived at your home. You worked at your job and your third place was like, you know, think about Cheers, everybody hung out at the bar, or you hang out at your yoga studio. And there is a point where a lot of us want to be home, but we like, got to get out. We got to break out of the shell too. And we still have to do the things that put us around other humans, because it’s humans that give us that “humanic” energy where we get to exchange and connect and feel good.

Yep. Alright. So let’s talk about the culprits of creating burnout, which, you know, we’ve kind of addressed that already. One of it’s just, you know, trying to do too much and, and over, you know, just constantly on the go mentally, and then your body shuts down. But you specifically call out the billable hour. I’d like you to expand on that.

Hmm, billable hour burnout. I like it. It sounds good first. But I really do like the idea of it because it focuses on this idea of having to maintain a status quo no matter what. And a lot of firms are expecting 2,000 hours. I’ve heard firms that expect more, but 2,000 hours a year. So, okay, that sounds good. You know, you’re like, wait a minute, divided by 50 weeks, okay. that’s 40 hours a week. That’s not that bad. Hold on. We’re not dividing it by 50 weeks. We’re dividing it by 45, give or take, if we remove vacation and holidays. We also aren’t considering any sick leave. So what was 40 hours a week, we remove all that vacation we want to take, we’re now looking, with the remaining time of about 50 hours a week, if nothing changes—if there’s no emergencies, if there’s no fire drills. 

So that means you are starting your job at eight, you’re ending at six or later. You might be logging in a couple hours after kids go to bed or in the evening, just after you eat dinner, and maybe you’re sneaking in a couple hours on the weekends to catch up or prepare for the week ahead. And that’s what gets tricky is this billable hour. So that’s one thing about the billable hour.

The second thing about the billable hour life is that we have clients. We have clients that we’re always giving to. We’re having hours that we’re trying to like, make sure we’re not overcharging. We’re not trying to make anyone angry. We’re trying to not eat time. We have teams, we have leaders. The way that some of these like, billable hour setups are created actually set us up for failure. So that’s where I think there’s just a lot of things that make that billable hour life a little more unique. Because if you think about just like a flat rate, salaried employee, that’s not worrying about it, there’s a one extra layer of less pressure that that person has than a billable hour employee.

Yeah, and, and billable hours, just to go further, what, what I see is that, alright, my worth is an hour, and I want to show I’m more worthy here, that I’m more valuable here. Well, I’m going to put in an extra hour, I’m going to put in another extra hour, I’m going to put in this, I’m going to start working 60 hours a week because I want to advance in my career. I’m fresh out of school and I’m ready to go. And so now I’m going to be doing 80 hours a week because, you know, Sally was doing 70, Bob was doing, you know, 65. If I do 80, I’m going to look all that much better and I’m going to get noticed. And it’s just backwards. I mean, we really should be in my mind—man, I can go on a rant on this.

Me too, I’m taking notes!

In my mind, and I honestly just got off a roundtable webinar before you and I started talking, and this was something I kept talking about is that I would much rather sell—I don’t know if that’s the right term—but sell an outcome, sell a result to my client. And my client wants that. They don’t want to not know how much I’m going to, they’re going to pay me, you know, hey, okay, how much is this project going to cost? Well, I’ll tell you when my hours are done on it. They don’t want that. They want to know what it’s going to be. What are you creating for me? What’s the outcome of this? And then how much are you going to charge me for it? And by doing it the hour, there’s no motivation for me to go faster. Why am I going to go faster? Why am I going to be innovative? This is where—oh, I’m ranting now—his is where our profession is just so antiquated in my mind. And it goes back to the billable hour.

Because why am I going to change anything? Why am I going to be innovative? Why am I going to be creative? Why am I going to try to be more efficient? Why am I going to try to automate? Because I’m going to get paid by the hour, so let’s just keep doing this. And we get paid well in this profession. So, you know, why would we want to change anything? Well, we want to change because burnout. Alright. I’m ranting. If you want to expand on that, you can. 

No, this is so good. I mean, on top of what you’re saying, I would say clients are paying for the results, but what happens is the firms are the ones that are hurting each other. They’re competing for price versus competing for results or competing for the way they do it. And so at the end of the day, well, okay, every firm has their technology, every firm has their bells and whistles, but who’s going to give it to me at the best price? So the client is now conditioned to look that way. And then we as a firm keep cutting each other down, that margins are tight, and it creates the pressure versus being like, okay, firms, let’s all decide, like, this is the appropriate rate to keep our people balanced. 

I mean, even as you were saying, you know, the person who’s like, I’m a go-getter, look at me, I did 80 extra hours than the person next to me—they see that in their reviews and they’ll say, oh, this is a metric for how we give our people a five out of five, or, you know, depending on the firm, a three out of three, whatever. But everybody knows what I’m talking about. The high rated person is the person that puts in the most hours, and that is a farce for saying that person did the best job.

Yeah! But that’s what we measure it on. I agree. Yeah. It’s so crazy to me. Alright. Billable hour: bad. We addressed that. Okay, other culprits, then, that contribute to burnout—what else have you seen?

The one thing I don’t hear talked enough about, because we go to the obvious things, so the boss, the hours, okay. Let’s talk about our contribution to the burnout. We are often type-A, perfectionist, people pleasing, overachieving, competitive individuals, which make us great for the work, but it can also lead to burnout. It’s like a razor thin edge of I’m successful and I’m about to lose it all.

Yeah! So it’s us, it’s our mindset. It’s our—people pleasing is one thing that I completely think is that we want to help everybody. And that’s a great attribute to have. We want to be helpers. We want people—our clients have problems that we need to help solve, whatever it is, and we have answers. So let’s help everybody. And that’s where we got to realize we can’t help everybody, because we’re hurting ourselves when we do that.

Well, that’s the problem, right? It’s at the cost of our own wellbeing. And that will add up. You know, I don’t know if everybody’s following all the news, but it’s not an accounting partner, but a law partner, that we found that committed suicide, someone in consulting committed suicide. These are scenarios and instances that have happened in the last month. So we need to be really mindful that it’s not just about being like the best employee or selling the most or working the hardest, there is actually an urgency to this conversation of why it needs to be had, because we’re seeing people who have seemingly perfect lives saying this isn’t enough, I’m not working hard enough, I’m not doing enough. 

I was one of the lucky ones where my body cut out, but a lot of people who are overachieving, who are listening to this are probably thinking, I don’t know how to stop. And that’s when it becomes a real problem that we need to address immediately.

Yeah. And that’s, and I don’t know how much you’ve heard my story, but my story, the reason I’m so passionate about burnout is that I struggled mentally after a stroke I had ten years ago. And that sent me down this path. And that’s why like, I can see people going down that mental illness path. with burnout. And I don’t think I’m 99 percent sure burnout isn’t recognized as a mental illness at this point. I think it’s being discussed right now that it’s added to the list of mental illness. I think it is, but maybe there’s different ways to define it.

But what I can see is yes, if you’re dealing with burnout, then your mind is starting to kind of play tricks on you and you’re going to go down this path where, you know, unfortunately you go into depression and anxiety and panic attacks and, and your body gets rashes and shuts down. And and so, you know, that’s why I think this is so important. So we set the stage and here’s what burnout is. Here’s your story. People have heard my story plenty of times. So I’m not going to go deep into that. Cause they’re going to get bored with this podcast if I’m, aww, I’m going to hear about Randy’s story, so we’ll skip it today. 

We love your story! We want it.

We’ll skip it today I think. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You got out of it. I, I mean, besides the post-stroke mental struggles I had, I did deal with burnout when I had my accounting firm. I sold that in 2006, but the reason I sold it is because I was working too many hours, and I could see that my kids were being affected by it. You know, not just me, but during tax season, my kids were different. And my wife finally, you know, she said, she figured it out. She goes, I was wondering why the kids were acting different, and then I realized it’s tax season. They start acting out and our kids are perfect. Tax season was when they would act out. 

And so it’s not just you that it’s affecting, but it can be others as well, the family members that you’re dealing with. So how do we start to, one, I think we talked about how we identify, you know, other people probably have other ways to identify. So we need to identify that we’re going down this path because often it’s too late before we even realize it, and then two, what are things that we can start changing to avoid this? Because you did it. While still working full time and starting this business, you were able to identify the signs and address it, and put things in place to make sure you didn’t go to that next level. So let’s start talking about those things, what we can do.

There’s so many things that we can do that can almost feel overwhelming to someone burnt out.

Yes, yes, I agree.

So many materials, so many things to listen to. So what I like, the approach I take, when I walk my clients from where they, you know, where they are currently to where they want to be, from burnt out to not burnt out, or even better, happier, but we start with really recovering from burnout and this takes time. Everyone comes to me at the point, usually saying, “I’ve got to get out of my job.” But I would say 90 percent of my clients end up staying in their job. They think it’s their job that’s the problem. It’s how they’re showing up in their job that’s creating the problem. 

So what can we do? Because that’s a lot. I always say, start really small, start with 15 minutes a day to do something for you. Even when you’re in the busiest of busy seasons, if you’re not willing to make 15 minutes, it means it’s not a priority to solve for. Because we always have 15 minutes for Facebook and Instagram and all the things. We have 15 minutes to rant about the boss that’s like really griping us right now. We make the time. So we need to just decide that this is important to solve for. 

And the easy things that we can do in 15 minutes—listen to content like this that you find. Follow people. There are so many professionals in the burnout arena. Now, you know, if you love my work, great, follow it. But if you’re not resonant, but you get the message that you need this, then maybe there’s someone else, their books, their materials. There’s so much out there that we can listen to. That was one of the first things that helped me get out. I was listening to a lot of positive psychology at the time, and Ted Talks, and all these inspiring things that help me understand my life can be happier and better, and I just had to take action. 

So those are the small things you could do. Even ask yourself, are you drinking enough water every day? How are you eating? Are you—yes, I love it. We should all take a water break right now. Just drive safely, but everybody take a sip of water. Start with the small things that are in your control. Yes, it can be challenging to start to say, okay, well, how do I have the hard conversation with my team that I need to recover from burnout? How do I manage my time better? Those things are achievable, but it takes more work. But we can start with small actions that fill 15 minute gaps of time: Go for a walk, call a loved one. All of these little things have profound impact when they’re done consistently. What happens in our busy season is we cut out the people that we care about, we cut out the activities that bring us joy, we cut out the things that—we just focus on the things that we have to do. And we let go of the things that we want to do. And we create a life that’s miserable. And then we’re surprised that we’re miserable.

That’s true. That’s the one thing that I do, I mean, there’s plenty of things I do, but the one is the 15 minute walk twice a day, 10 a.m., 2 p.m. It’s on the calendar as long as it’s not raining and it’s raining here right now. So in 45 minutes, I may not be walking just because it’s raining, but you know, twice a day, just go out for a walk. Nothing, you know, don’t be reading your phone, your text messages, your emails while you’re out doing that. This is just you time—well, for me, it’s my wife and I time with our dog to just go out and clear your mind. So a little thing like that makes a big difference. 

And then the thing that I hear is like, “I don’t have time to do that! I got so much work to do. How am I going to do that?” I’m curious on your opinion on this: Your brain needs rest, not just at night, but it needs rest during the day. I honestly believe you’re more efficient if you give your brain some downtime multiple times a day. And so for me, it’s just okay, boom, not thinking about work. Don’t come back clueless, leave a note or something when you leave so you know where you left off, so you don’t have 20 minutes to restart what you’re working on. But do that, and just get rest for your brain I think is so important and you’ll be more productive.

I don’t think we think of ourselves as olympians, but we really should. Because if you are an olympian, you work really hard. But your job is also to rest really hard. 

I love it. 

And are you resting hard? Even if you only get six hours of sleep—five, six hours of sleep, right? Like I know a lot of you are like pushing that as a minimum, but can you prioritize that sleep, even if it’s only five to six hours and make it count? Can you do the same five to six hours every night? Can you turn away from your phone 30 minutes before you go to bed, so that your brain can start to digest all the things? So I love that you said the brain needs rest, the body needs rest, to do the complex work that we do all day long for 13+ hour days.

Yeah. And then the other thing from that standpoint is there is times where you just have to be going. I mean, you have big projects you work on, but I think it’s so important to have this focus time where you can’t be interrupted, and your phone’s not going to be on, because if you look away for a minute from something you’re working on, you’re going to take two minutes to get back to what it is or 20 minutes to figure out where you were going. And so just block out time, you’ll end up being more efficient. in the work you’re currently doing, and then have the time where distractions are okay, where you respond to text and emails and phone calls. Because if you can set it up that way, I think you can get the same amount of work done in less time, your brain gets downtime, a lot more downtime. And, you know, if you do it right and shut down at the end of the day, you’re going to, your brain’s not going to be working at 3 a.m., trying to remember what you’re working on and waking you up, and you’re not going to get that five or six or seven or eight hours of sleep that you just said. So I think focus time is really important to burnout too.

Yeah. I mean, I think what’s important to like, discuss right here is that we were never taught this when we got our CPA. Unless I missed the session, the class in college, or that question on the exam, we were never taught how to time manage.

No.

We were never taught how to stress manage. We’ve never really embodied work-life balance. I know some of you are like, that doesn’t exist. It does when we decide it’s not all work. So we were never taught these skills. And then we get mad at ourselves when we’re not perfect at them. So now we have to take action. If we notice that I’m burnt out, well, I need to do something about this because I’m at the point of my career, I can’t keep saying yes. I’m at the point where I need to solve these new problems, but it’s not going to be with old solutions.

Yeah, but what you just said, we say yes to way too much, and people have even told me this, because I’m on the road all the time now. I love what I do, but that’s why I asked you that question a while ago about do you find yourself maybe going a little too far? I honestly don’t feel I do because I love what I do. But there were three times last year where I cut trips short because I started to recognize that, okay, I’m starting to, the cynicism was coming in a little—okay, I can’t believe I’m going to go do this again. And I’m like, okay, no, no, no, I can’t go down that path. And so rather than go out, you know, speaking at a conference, rather than going out all three days of the conference, I flew in the morning I spoke, and flew out the evening, or the next day. And so recognizing that is important, because we don’t have to say yes to everything and to every client which we often do.

Which brings me to, I got a question for you, man, I’m going on rants today. This should be all your time, not my time. 

I don’t feel that way at all. I feel like we’re doing great, I’m loving, we’re hitting all the points. You’re good. 

Oh, we are hitting the points. And this is, I knew it’d be a great conversation. When you talk to people about their work and what they’re doing and how to avoid burnout, do you get into—I mean, one thing I think is so important, especially, and I know you work with more than just accountants, but within accountants, and we just talked about this, rather than having to help everybody, find the clients you’re passionate about, and work on those. Find your niche. I’m at a point where I’ve found the intersection between my passion and my skills, and that’s why I love every day. And I think that helps obviously avoid burnout, even though, I mean, I’m on the road 150 days a year or whatever it is, it’s crazy time, but it doesn’t feel like that because I found that niche that fits me. Is that something you ever talk about with clients is finding that passion in their practice?

Absolutely. And I work with folks that are in firms, I work with those that are small. Like I work the gamut, and I will definitely hear that certain clients will bring certain stressors. And we then understand, right? What’s the contribution or what are the things that are stressing you out? But how are you also allowing that? What boundaries are you not enforcing that give your clients that permission to run all over you? And so we definitely, like I’m thinking of one client I’m working with specifically right now, has had a really successful business with a slate of really challenging clients. And she’s like, this is making me miserable. So we’re pedaling back, and we’re figuring out there’s things that we need to do in her business that can change who she’s bringing in, what she’s willing to tolerate, how to stay in scope, how to make sure what happens when she’s not in scope. And this is what then creates best clients, and then often, like, like you said, lower levels of burnout. 

And I love the idea of niching. Because that’s something, too, that can really benefit us in the profession, right? Are you going to have a cannabis client and a medical client? That can be a lot of work. Maybe stay in financial services. Great. And then that be your place where you become an expert. You also become more of a thought leader when you specialize. So there’s a lot of benefits of really having best clients, and one type of client.

Oh, I agree. I’m very fortunate, and I’m sure you are too, dealing with some people that are very progressive and innovative and they’re building their practices and had somebody a friend of mine just the other day. She was talking about how she had to let a couple of clients go and they’re great clients from a standpoint that they’re not stressors or anything, but it is not an industry that they want to concentrate on anymore. And so that by itself, okay, I got to know this, like you just said, I know medical and I need to know cannabis both? No. This was a, you know, say they were in construction and she wants to deal with financial services to another thing you said. Well, those are two hard industries to know a lot about. And so she just decided she couldn’t, even though they’re friends and they’re good payers, and they’re good clients and they weren’t creating stress necessarily, but when I have to learn this industry and that industry, it will create stress, which can lead to—that’s what creates burnout—uncontrolled stress. And so she just had to let some good clients go. That’s something that not a lot of people think about doing, because “I need the revenue. I need the client.” And that’s something I think we all need to look at even to that extreme. They weren’t even C and D clients.

I feel like I need to like give like the secret I hear as still a CPA, but not really, besides doing my own taxes and not a practicing CPA, I can’t tell you how many people come to me asking for a good CPA referral. Now, the secret to everyone here, if you do your job well, your business will boom, because everyone I know is looking for a good CPA.

Oh, it’s, it’s everywhere. That’s why this burnout is so, I think, something that we need to address, because the profession in general, we’re not getting enough people to come in as we should. 

Yeah. 

But the opportunities in this profession, if we do it right, are unbelievable. It is such a great profession that we have to address these things. 

Agreed. It’s getting in the way. Why are more people not coming? Because they see the way that we are currently working, and it’s not attractive. To be frank, like, I don’t want to work like that. I remember being like, I don’t want to be a partner because I don’t want to have that life. 

But that’s, that woman I was just telling you the story about. She was Big Four before, she had that same, you know, thought process. She was on partner track, this is where she was going. They were even using her in marketing campaigns. And she’s like, no, I don’t want this. I see what you’re doing, my partner that I’m working under, I don’t want that. And she just made that decision, and she, I think has a, I just, brag about her all the time. She has such a good practice and such a good work-life balance. And she built a practice intentionally around a certain client base, that’s why she had to let a couple go, but she also built intentionally around an employee base: Working mothers. All, everybody that works with her are working mothers, and she wants to create a space where they have that autonomy to be able to be a mother and, you know, do the work.

Incredible!

And so, yeah. Alright. So those things are out there and those things are so important and those are why we are going to, again, be an unbelievable profession going forward.

I agree. I love that.

Alright. So the one aspect I think we haven’t talked about yet is we’ve been talking about us, how we handle it, what we’re doing, but there’s also leadership and we might be leaders and we’re probably all at one level. We’re all leaders, whether we are managing people or not. But as the leaders of the firm, what can we be doing? How do we make sure that we’re not putting people in a position to deal with burnout? What are some traits that we can have to help avoid this for our people?

I really love that you start with acknowledging that we as leaders are also people because as the leader, we are still the employee, or, you know, give or take, you know what I mean when I say that. 

Yep!

And we have the responsibility to take care of those that work for us. And one client comes to mind specifically, that I’ve been working with, who is a leader, and when we were doing this work, what came up so clearly is that she needed to be more transparent about how she was dealing with her stress with her people. Because I think a lot of us, when we are looking up at the leader, assume they’re perfect. They’re fine. It’s like our parents have no flaws, our teachers are perfect, right? We think like, as we look up, like the sky is, you know, bluer up there. 

But the truth is, everyone’s having their struggles. Leaders in particular are trying to balance all of the things. And when we bottle it up, it is actually a disservice to the greater good. So I love this idea of like really being transparent in our leadership about what we’re experiencing. And of course, when we’re going through it, there’s a line that maybe we don’t want to share too much, but we can also be very aware of ourselves, and when we’re aware of ourselves and our thoughts and our mindset, then we’re maybe more understanding or empathetic when somebody is going through something. We’re less snippy, or if we are snippy, we’re like, I’m not doing meetings right now, but let’s talk tomorrow, right? We can be so much more in control when we’re aware of the burnout that’s existing.

Yeah. Now, everything you said, I agree with. And I think someone needs to tell me that, that maybe you can’t share too much, ’cause maybe I sometimes go, go too far down that, of sharing everything. But I just think it’s, vulnerability, I think it’s so important. And that’s why, like, I mean, when I tell my story, I’m almost always crying and other people are crying, you know, and I think that vulnerability is important to show that it’s okay. This is kind of a corny saying and you hear it too much, but it’s okay not to be okay. I think there’s a better way to say that. It’s okay to show that you’ve struggled with something.

I think it makes you look [like a] better, more conscious leader. I think it shows that, like, it creates, like, a mutual understanding, like a humanness that I think in a profession that we’re so worried about AI taking over, you know, like the future of robots and all of that, the more human we can be in these exchanges, I think the better. Hey, I burnt out too. Let me share. Let me share what worked for me, or let me give you some resources, or let me put you in touch with someone I know, right? There’s so much we can do to just even listen, and if we’re one of those leaders, that’s like, I don’t know what to do with this, like, I really have no idea, find someone who does know what to do with it. So then you can pass them off, and it doesn’t mean you don’t care, but that’s not all of our skillsets. We’re not like good listeners. We’re not all transparent leaders. But if we can hear that our people are struggling, then that is our sign to do something, bring someone in, make a connection. There’s so much we can do now, where there’s really no excuse not to take any action when you see your people are struggling.

Alright. So this is, I can go on forever with you. You and I are going to have to have just a standing call every day so we can talk for an hour. But just this whole, hey, you’ve been there. You’ve dealt with burnout. You now see the signs, you know, are passionate for helping others and helping others avoid it. And we’re talking about things that we can do personally to help manage the path of burnout to make sure we don’t go down it, to have this, what is not a mythical work-life balance, things we can do as leaders then to, you know, help the people that were with whether, you know, I can be a leader to my boss, too. A leader is not necessarily just because they’re your boss. So you’re a leader at some level in your firm, no matter where you’re at and things we could do. 

So before we go to a couple of final things, you want to give us a wrap on what we talked about today or what we should do, or whether there’s some—you know, I’ll let you decide what to say.

Alright. I’ll give a little summary. So burnout is plateauing. That might be good news, because the numbers aren’t as high, but it’s also not going away. We need to be really mindful that if four out of ten of us are burning out, that’s a bunch of us in our family. That’s a bunch of us in the audit room. That’s a bunch, not a majority, but there’s a lot of people that you know that are also burning out, and you might be one of them. So the best thing that you can do is take one small action that’s going to help move you in the direction forward. So many small actions that we talked about, but starting somewhere is the difference of you getting out of this, and you staying in it forever. Choose that this burnout is your rock bottom burnout and let it go up from here.

Great advice. Start somewhere and don’t get overwhelmed with the 72 things you can do. Pick one. I love that. 

Alright, so then I think one thing that we haven’t touched on really, and I think this is important, and so this is a question I didn’t warn you ahead of time, but I think it’s so important to have, obviously, you’re a human outside of work. You’re not a job title. You are whatever your outside of work passions are. And so for you personally, what are the things you enjoy doing when you’re not helping people avoid burnout?

Ah, I love this. I have become a big walker too. So it’s funny that you mentioned walking. I live, after the pandemic that we moved essentially into the woods, and I have the luxury of trails in my backyard. So we do a lot of walking, hiking. I love travel. I have been to probably 40 countries at this point and most of it in the past, like, 15 to 20 years. So I love to travel. And I think, yeah, I think a lot, like a lot of us, any good foodie, I love a good meal. So that’s probably how I spend a lot of my time.

Those are good passions. My wife and I just got back from 72 days on the road where it was a combination of hiking and wineries. So that was hiking and walking and all that is a big passion of ours as well. And then if anybody wants to, oh boy, I already forgot how to say it. Find out more about you or the firm, where would they reach out?

Amazing. They would go to AcheloaWellness.com. A-C-H-E-L-O-A, wellness spelled out, dot com. I’m on LinkedIn a lot. You can find me, Lauren Baptiste, Instagram @TheLaurenBaptiste to make things a little easier. But I’m in all the places, YouTube, I don’t know, you’re looking for it, I’m likely there. So you can find me if you Google search me.

And they should search for you, for sure. You have a lot of great things to say. Well, Lauren, thank you for being on the show today. It was a lot of fun.

Thank you so much!