72 ⎸ The Other Side of the Burnout Bridge With S² (Scott Scarano)

[00:00:00] This week, I have a special guest on to share with you. A sort of continuation of my solo podcast last week. I have Scott Scarano. He is a fellow Xero enthusiast, a podcaster and a firm owner. And he's joining me today to riff more on getting through burnout. Purpose and building things your way. So if you don't like hearing how human other accountants actually are, then I would say don't keep listening. If you want to keep listening, you're gonna hear us talk about some checkered, pasts creativity versus productivity and going against the grain and a bunch of other real stuff. Listen to the end to hear Scott or Lil Toddler's, most recent accounting rap, and check out the show notes for ways that you can connect with Scott. Without further ado let's dive into this conversation

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[00:01:27] Serena: All right. I have Scott Scarano. Is that how you would say your last name? I've never even asked you. Scorano okay. 

[00:01:37] Scott: I always bring up the Sopranos, like however you say the Sopranos. 

[00:01:40] Serena: Got it. 

[00:01:41] Scott: Would be how you say my name. So if you say Sopranos, you can say scarano. 

[00:01:44] Serena: Okay. Well, I'm from New Mexico, so I tend to say things in a Spanish. Yeah. Way. 

[00:01:51] Scott: Anyways, my wife is from Mexico. So you're from the New Mexico, she's from the Old Mexico . 

[00:01:58] Serena: Awesome. So for anyone who doesn't know who you are, can you please introduce yourself? 

[00:02:04] Scott: Yeah. Scott Scarano. I have an accounting firm that I've had for maybe like 10 years, or I've been been at the firm for a while, so we got about 10 employees. So we have a pretty successful firm that I basically do nothing at anymore. Now I just focus on my microphone. I got my podcast now, Accounting High. Which we just finished. The rebrand was Sons of CPAs. And I do my raps. So I'm also a little toddler, so I am technically gonna be 39 and I feel like I'm like 24 right now, but I also identify as a teenager and a toddler. So there's a, there's a lot of layers to that, but I've just been able to like, articulate it in a, in a lot of ways now because my rap name's a Lil Toddler. I take that after my daughter and how I, everybody takes care of me in all aspects of my life. I can't even take care of myself. And as far as the teenager stuff goes, that's accounting high. My daughter's in high school kinda like your daughter, but they're about the same age and we, we have the same gap in kids too, kind of. 

[00:03:12] Serena: Yeah. It's crazy. 

[00:03:13] Scott: I know. And we're from different parts of the parts of the world here, so I feel like you're my kindred spirit. We both have our same initials. 

[00:03:20] Serena: Yeah. S squared, 

[00:03:22] Scott: S squared.

[00:03:23] Serena: I thought that was the coolest thing when, when you sent that over, I was like, I gotta figure how to do that . I still haven't figured it out. 

[00:03:29] Scott: Yeah. I'll, I'll give you a little screen share. I'll show you how to, how I do it, I just do an auto fill. So I save the, the power of the two, like the two, the squared, Save that, copy it from somewhere else.

[00:03:41] Put it in the for anybody that wants to square their initials, if they have a litter of names like us, put it in the um, like autofill in the iPhone and on the computer. 

[00:03:49] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:03:49] Scott: So then when I type two letters sequentially, if I type two Rs, it all of a sudden goes R two. Now that gets annoying cuz sometimes I don't mean to do that, but sometimes I do. And it's, it's always fun. 

[00:04:00] Serena: Yeah, I have that autofill. When I type LO Lo, which yeah, is my daughter's nickname, and then it auto fills to her name Lauren . 

[00:04:08] Scott: Ooh, that's cool. 

[00:04:09] Serena: It's very frustrating when I'm trying to do, cuz I have a client who has, "lo and behold" is part of their name. So every time I type that, it like changes it. So that's fun. But, 

[00:04:19] Scott: Well, that's a good thing about shortcuts, right? So when I type in P H n, it fills in my phone number. When I type in A D D R, it fills in my address. When I type in eml it fills in my email. So anytime somebody asks me, it's just like I think about what, I don't think about typing anything in anymore. I just type think about which three letters I'm gonna do for that response. 

[00:04:39] Serena: That's such a hack. It's such a time saving hack. 

[00:04:42] Scott: Life hacks, . 

[00:04:44] Serena: So we met at XeroCon and I've listened to your podcast before that and all the things and then we had intended on talking again at XeroCon. We never did. So we had to end up doing this on Zoom, I found out all sorts of cool stuff about you. So can you share basically before we hit record, you said that the previous podcast episode I did, which I think this'll air 

[00:05:14] Scott: Previously on Ambitious Bookkeeper. 

[00:05:16] Serena: Previously on the Ambitious Bookkeeper. 

[00:05:17] Scott: We were, you were talking about, I, I can give the previously on.

[00:05:20] Serena: Okay. 

[00:05:20] Scott: Right. So if you haven't listened to that episode, it was on throwing in the towel. The, you said when you were like ready to quit. I forgot the title of the episode, but you went over the six things that you are doing and that someone can, I mean, these, these were just, I actually wrote 'em down too, like you said.

[00:05:37] Serena: Nice. 

[00:05:37] Scott: Take a hiatus, focus on per your personal relationships brain dump what weighs on you. Block your calendar, cancel meetings, think about your vision and listen to inspiring content. 

[00:05:49] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:50] Scott: All those are pretty, pretty spot on. And I feel like I've gotten that advice from multiple different places. Like I, I feel like I was in that and I don't mean to interrupt your intro into this, but I want them to do the previously on. Yeah. So, 

[00:06:04] Serena: No, that's fine. Keep going. No, you, I want, this is what, where I was going. I would love for you to talk about this cuz because before we hit record, you said that, you know, it was great that you did this episode. People need to talk about this. And you said that you feel like you're pretty much on the other side of it, but, you know so if you're willing to talk about that whole journey and if you did anything that aligned with that hindsight, would you do anything different? All the things. 

[00:06:35] Scott: Yeah. So I was talking to somebody yesterday actually, and they gave me a quote that, that one of their mentors gave them. And it was like, There's different phases of awareness. You can be unconsciously unaware of something that, that you're doing or the way that you are. And then you eventually learn what that is, and then you become consciously aware of that, trying to fix that, whatever it is you're trying to do. And then that third phase is you're unconsciously aware and you just are on the other side of whatever it is. 

[00:07:12] So for me, there's a lot of things I've been trying to change about my life, a lot of things that I've internalized now, and I don't have to actually articulate what I'm trying to do or how, like one of 'em was, I want it to be a better listener. Starting this podcast. That f****** terrible listener. Sorry for my, Ian's gonna edit that out. It'll, he'll, he'll edit that out. He, he's been editing it. Mine too. Shout out to Ian. He's our, our editor now. Your brother. 

[00:07:34] Serena: Love you bro. 

[00:07:35] Scott: Yeah. So, so. You know, like there's, there's things that I am unconsciously aware of now, and I can focus now. I can focus, I can listen to people because there's not a million things running around in my mind. There's not like me trying to present something or, or butt into a conversation. And that's just that one little aspect. But going back to like feeling that you want to throw in the tower, feeling that you need that change. Like I was running either running away from something or running towards something for the last, like, I don't know, maybe 10 years, 15 years. And I didn't know what it was. It was just chasing the money. That's all I was doing. I was building up my firm, growing my firm, chasing the dollar signs, chasing the top line, chasing whatever goal that I hit arbitrarily. Like I didn't even know what these goals were for. I just knew I wanted to make more money to then get the next thing to be able to afford the next thing, whatever that is. Catch up, other person that's making more than me or doing better like. I never had any real purpose in what I was doing.

[00:08:39] Like who, what am I really doing? Am I helping business owners become better business owners? But I'm not really, like, we were just doing taxes, you know, we were doing cash bases, bookkeeping, taxes, you know, as, as we wanted to get into advisory and our firm and other things like that. We just never really had that ideal client persona or somebody that we were trying to help, and that person that we were messaging toward. We just, anybody will help anybody do anything, you know, as far as compliance and all that. So I didn't really feel like I was doing anything for anybody but myself. And I didn't really know that that was unconsciously, like, unaware of what I was doing. I was just like, just doing, doing me and whatever I thought was ways to make more money, I guess.

[00:09:21] And it wasn't until like I would say Covid that everything started to like catch up with me. And I realized, and that's. We weren't going to the office anymore. I was in Mexico for like four months because we never came back. We, we went a little bit before Covid hit really hard, like in March, and then we didn't go back until May. We didn't come back here until like May, May or June. So I was far removed, far removed from everything going on at the office, and things were still running, things were still operating. And then I realized maybe I don't have to do everything I was doing before maybe at the office, like maybe I don't have to wear as many hats that I was wearing. Maybe I don't have to do every review, every tax return or review this or do the books for this person. So I started really phasing myself out all the things that I wanted to eventually do. It was always like on the board of, get out of this seat, get out of this seat, you know, have somebody handle this. So then I could just do sales or I could just be the visionary. 

[00:10:25] And so it took, once I started removing myself from certain things. I realized I still need to be doing something. I'm very ambitious like you, right? I need to be occupying my time. So it was, I went to Mexico again during Covid, like January, early January. We were there for about a month again, and that's when I decided I was gonna do a podcast, or maybe it was like December, whatever it was. We started recording in January when I got back. And then that really occupied my time. That's where I started to feel like I was back into my element. Like, you know, before the accounting stuff, that's all I ever wanted to do was like, be an actor or entertain or do something along those lines. Be a rapper. That was kind of what I wanted to do, or early days. And I let all that go for money. Like I needed that money needed security, you know, that Maslow's hierarchy, where it's like you gotta focus on the fundamental needs. And I was past that. 

[00:11:22] I had enough money that I didn't know, like I didn't really need more, I didn't really need to continue doing that. It was just more of a um, the need to grow, always need to grow something. And growing the firm too much was not good for the firm, was not good for the employees, was not good for the team. Like they just, they were, they didn't know where it ended. And there was no end in sight when I was just growing it. So now there's a lot more purpose in the firm. The firm is a lot more focused. I'm trying to be focused on this story too and keep things going without like, steering in a couple of different directions. 

[00:11:57] So there's the firm kind of now running itself without me. And I was doing sales and I was doing a podcast and spending all my time doing the podcast and wanting to grow the audience. And that's what I had been doing for the last, maybe almost two years now. Cause I think we started January, 2021. Now it's October, 2022, almost two years. And started meeting new people. And the whole, I have a whiteboard and it was like, what are the most important problems in the accounting and tax field and what are we doing to solve them? And I wrote that before I started doing the podcast. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but it was like, that's what I wanted to focus on. That's what I wanted to talk about. That's what, you know, it was like moving, It was the next generation. It's like this is, this is the cha. We're seeing this now, like the changing of the guards between like the boomers and our generation. We're seeing a lot of big changes happen in the cloud space and a lot of, a lot of new tech. And we're just, everybody is like bombarded with so much at once now, and they feel like for the last maybe eight years we've been hit with this new thing after this new thing, after this new thing.

[00:13:07] And it's, you know, maybe it's always been like that, but I think it's more so now. Everybody's coming at us with all of these new things we should be doing at our firm and all these changes that we should make. And it's just, it's too much. And you definitely feel burned out when you're chasing the next thing and chasing this and trying to change this.

[00:13:26] And that's all I was ever doing. I was just changing things and doing things. And so all these conversations that I'm having with people, everybody's having the same types of struggles I was, This is real life. Like I was talking to real firm owners, Not the, you know, early days on the podcast was really just a lot of my peers, people I knew through the community, people I knew just through different connections. And I started to go back to like my roots, back to how I was in high school, where I was just like sort of like the connective tissue from all these different groups of people. Like I would be in sports, but I'd also be with the slackers, like people getting high. I'd also be with like the drama club and like all different types of people. And I was always like the bridge between all these different groups. Cause I was like a social chameleon I guess. It didn't matter who it was. . But now I felt like I was doing that with the accounting world. I was like, I know this person, I know this person, but I, I felt like our, everybody already knew each other too.

[00:14:15] And so I'm just having these conversations as if they're like, Everybody's my friend. And they are like, I consider anybody that comes on the show, my friend, and like I'm learning from real people doing real things and everybody's having the same types of struggles and I'm just like really tapped into what, what I started to fig--

[00:14:35] I didn't really know what my purpose was. I didn't know why, why I was doing it. I just knew that that's what was driving me. That was my passion too, was this podcast and everybody makes fun of it. Like Scott has a podcast that's like, you know, that's this thing. That's all he talks about. But during that time too, I was also changing up a lot of things in my life and closing a lot of things off.

[00:14:57] I read Cal Newport's. I was You said something, you said Deep Questions in your episode and he's got a podcast called Deep Questions. Oh. And that changed my life too. that, like just listening to his process and, and, and then reading a lot of his books. He's got the book Deep Work. And then he's also got digital minimalism, and then he's got a world without email. All of those are perfect for you. You would love them. Probably your listeners would too. But Digital Minimalism was a big one. And that was a detox, a digital detox, and going through two, I think it was like two months. It wasn't two weeks, It was like two months of, And I think I did over a month of nothing. Like I didn't even, I, I stopped checking my email for a long time too. I turned all alerts off on my phone. I'm, I've never really been a big social person. I actually became a social person to promote this podcast and I am on there now. But that, that was a result of after being on the other side of stuff. And we can get into that. Cause social still f***** me up. Still messed me up. Sorry Ian. 

[00:15:56] So, so yeah, so it was like getting to the point of realizing that I had a, heavy addiction to my phone and everything I did surrounded around that. And getting dis not disconnected from the social, but disconnected from the phone was so, so hard for me. Like, everything's on our phones now. We could do absolutely anything we want at any time. And I would just be on my phone for hours at a time maybe. Maybe, maybe not hours, but it was like I go from this to this, to this, to this, to this, to this. And never do what I intended to do when I picked up my phone in the first place.

[00:16:33] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:16:33] Scott: Right. So you go there to grab somebody's number for somebody else, or go check a message or send somebody something and then there's 12 other alerts that are grabbing you and they're like, Oh s***, I should check that out. I gotta do this. And then, you know, so it was like just getting on the other side of the phone was the hardest, hardest thing to do.

[00:16:50] Serena: Yeah, I'm having a hard time wanting to use it again. Honestly, I don't even know where it's at. 

[00:16:56] Scott: Good . Yeah. So you you 

[00:16:58] Serena: I'm like, I left it somewhere , 

[00:17:00] Scott: But you're getting there, You getting to the point where you realize you have a life again and you realize you have people in your lives that you were, I didn't know I was neglecting people. Like I was, I would be in front of somebody and my phone would be out, and then I would be like nodding, like as if I was listening to them. And I see people doing this with me all the time. 

[00:17:16] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:17:16] Scott: And I'm, I'm try, I'm not trying not to be the one that's like, put your phone away when you're talking to me or you're not gonna pay attention. I do that with my really close friends though. I, I call them out on it cause they're totally unaware of it. And like, but my phone's now like, I can't even have it in eyesight. And if I do, it's gotta be upside down and I don't have any alerts anymore either. And it's still, I'm drawn to certain apps. When I pick up my phone, it still happens.

[00:17:39] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[00:17:39] Scott: Even a year later, like of doing this. So during that two months of like whole detox, you go through the phases of addiction, you go through. And I've, I've been on drugs, I've done all kinds of stuff, so I know how these, these addictions go. I've never really, like, never really been able to articulate it well because I've always also been able to just get off of things too. Like if I wanted to stop smoking, I'd just stop. 

[00:18:04] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:18:05] Scott: I haven't smoked since. Like, I, I was really, like, for the last 15 years I was also taking this medication for anti-anxiety Calatopin, and that's a serious addiction that I just stopped taking in June of last year along the same time that I stopped using my phone. So I had a lot of things that was like drastic changes in my life last year, and it's very hard to get on the other side of that. Like it was, I probably should have went to rehab just for the just for the phone. Not, not the drugs. That was the worst part about all of it, but it was happening all at the same time too.

[00:18:37] So eventually, like there's still borders and things that I had to do. There's habits that I had to create in order to break the bad habits and. I got really heavy into habit formation, habit deletion, a lot of different books on that. There's Atomic Habits. We've got three episodes on Atomic Habits on ours. I do some book reports too on the podcast at Accounting High, you know, it's high school book reports. So uh, you know, breaking habits and just simple ways of doing that. And those, it's very powerful if you can link up a couple habits. So there's 

[00:19:14] Serena: habit pairing, 

[00:19:15] Scott: Habit pairing, habit stacking. Yeah. I got 12 habits a day that I track now, and it wasn't until like March of this year that I was able to put those 12 together. They're all numbered. They're all like, it's very accountant esque. It's very analytical, but I got 'em numbered one to 12 and each one is tied to that number too. So it's I'll get to that part that's, that's actually a little further down in the story, but it's like-- 

[00:19:40] So back to like the phone. There were certain things, you gotta phase in some of these things too. You can't just go cold Turkey on it, because then once you do open it back up and he goes into great lengths of this in digital minimalism probably a great book for you to check out. I know you don't want to read too many business books now, but that's a, that's more of a life book too. So getting on the, like phasing things out, phasing them in. I think you, you do have to start with a full detox of it just to figure out and to tap in. I mean, you, you basically articulated the right steps and things to do to, to start getting on the other side of this, like I used to, I, I definitely had to do brain dumps almost every night just to be able to sleep.

[00:20:23] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:24] Scott: Being off, getting off that medication and trying to actually. Eight hours of sleep is very hard for somebody who traditionally only had like five hours of sleep at night. If that. You know, and some nights I would just go maybe four or five hours, two hours some nights if I was working too much. So trying to sleep again after like, all of these inputs, like at, you know, be working until like 11 sometimes. And how do you go to sleep after that? You don't, You go watch tv and I would watch TV for like till 2:00 AM sometimes just to kind of decompress. Yeah, that's not winding down. 

[00:20:57] Serena: No. 

[00:20:58] Scott: What's, Yeah, So, so then cutting all these things out. I cut out news, I cut out like any input that was changing where, what I wanted to do, anything that affected my mood, anything that affected that was telling me what I needed to. I deleted like out of my life altogether if I wanted to find out about the news. It was just in conversation. People told me what was happening and I didn't really give a s*** anyway. It just didn't really matter. 

[00:21:28] Serena: Yeah. I haven't watched news in years and years and years. Like that's just, I don't look at the news on my phone. It's never been, if I'm one of those people for sure that's like ignorance is bliss, but the other people in my household do follow the news and so anything that's very important I will know about

[00:21:46] Scott: Yeah. They tell you and they tell you everything you need to know, so you don't even really need to check out the article. Like it's 

[00:21:51] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:21:52] Scott: So, and, and so that a lot of different, a lot of little things. It's always like I can't just attribute anything to one thing. Cause it's always a whole lot of little things to really change your mindset around what our life has turned into too. Cuz I think we both know the other side of having a phone and not having a phone. Having a smartphone, let's just say, or just internet having everything at our fingertips. Like we grew up where I think we had a Im AOL Instant message and that was like one of the first social networks for us. 

[00:22:26] Serena: ICQ? Did you have ICQ? 

[00:22:29] Scott: I didn't have ICQ No. 

[00:22:30] Serena: It was a chat thing too in like Yahoo Messenger.

[00:22:33] Scott: Yeah. Yahoo Messenger. I, I definitely had that and there was like bulletin boards before that. But that was like the first real like social network I can remember. And that's where life started to change. That's where like I started to try and build little communities where we had all of our aim names in our high school. There was like 20 or 30 of us that had homey in the beginning of our name. It was like I was Homey Slice and everybody had homies and we were like the homies, Like it was, that was fun. But it's like building these little communities and that connected you to. Like, you know, during college was when Facebook came out and you had to have an edu you know, to get, to have the Facebook and all of that is great things. These are, these are, these are wonderful things that have changed all of our lives. But then it just got perverted over time. Email too. 

[00:23:17] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:23:18] Scott: Check out World without email Cal Newport. Like that's, that's one of my bibles too. And I'm, I'm like one of the only people in the, I feel like I'm one of the only people in the world that doesn't really use email, but I still have to have somebody attending to my email.

[00:23:32] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:23:32] Scott: Like, and I think I know of a lot of people that do that where you have like a, I have a va, like a virtual assistant that's call him a va, but he is like assistant, like he's, he's in Philippines, but he's handling everything when it comes to like my email, a lot of my personal s*** too. Still, just getting on the other side of that takes a lot of phases and steps. And first it was getting sleep and then it was like, it was moving, sleeping and eating right, and changing the way I ate and changing a lot of the things I did to affect how I was in a business sense or at, you know, to be my full self, to focus and to be present in a conversation or to be able to listen to somebody because I didn't have something buzzing in my head, like something else that I needed to do later that I was thinking about while somebody else was talking to me. Like there was just all of these different things and just being more intentional about the choices and the things that I did in a day. So all, I'm very habit driven now and I wasn't before I, I, well I think I was always habit driven, but I just was unconscious about the habits that I was driven by. And now I'm more, a lot more conscious like I have these 12 habits that I'm tracking because without those, I fall apart in other areas too.

[00:24:43] So there's certain things that I can and can't do based on those habits. And if I don't, I don't, like, nobody's telling me I have to do this stuff, I'm telling me cause I know how it's gonna be if I don't. so like building on that, it was phases and phases of changing and changing and then iterating. And it wasn't until March of last year that I started articulating which habits I'm gonna track and how I'm gonna do those. And that was a lot of different books. It was a lot of different, like, things that I did over time. 

[00:25:13] And, and I do feel you, like, I would go through phases in my life where I take in all the books I can, like the psychology books, the business type books and everything. And then go through phases of not needing anything else because I already got enough in my head or enough things that I, I need to be doing. And then going back and like, you know, just kind of oscillating between the input, like taking in information and then applying it. So it's like theory and then practicing it and then mastering it before I could do anything else.

[00:25:42] Serena: Yeah. And curating the right ones for you. Yeah. 

[00:25:46] Scott: Yeah. That was a good suggestion you had. 

[00:25:47] Serena: It's hard for a lot of us because it's like, okay, I'm just gonna take, especially accountants, that they're like, Give me the black and white answer. I need the step by step. But it's like, but not every step is necessary for you. So you have to curate what works for you. 

[00:26:00] Scott: Yeah. 

[00:26:01] Serena: Nobody likes that answer. 

[00:26:02] Scott: Nobody does. Well, everybody wants the template, right? And they think the template's gonna work for them universally. And in most cases, a template does work, but you have to put your spices on it. You have to put your, you know, your own style and your own personality into it. And it's like, let's say a podcast, for example, let's say you wanna start a podcast. There's so many things out there, everything you need to do to do a podcast and every, all of 'em should be very. But every podcast is different because it's the host that brings their own flavor, their own spice to it. And I never really knew that either. I thought like, you know, I, I didn't know what the hell I was doing and I still don't when it comes to the podcast, but I'm learning iteratively along the way. And then at the end I realize I could have just taken this template in the beginning and applied that and just done my thing. It took me a lot longer to get there to figure out what's the format and what I'm bringing to the table on these episodes. It was just more of like, I thought I knew best. 

[00:26:57] I always got my own way and everything I've been doing still do. I still gotta consciously practice, you know, getting my ego out of the way. That's another book that we did. Ego's The Enemy cuz 

[00:27:06] Serena: Yeah 

[00:27:06] Scott: It is definitely the enemy for all of us. We just don't wanna admit it in, in a lot of ways, but, you know, just getting out of your own way at the firm. That was the biggest thing, was me realizing that they didn't need me and then having that feeling of when they finally don't need you, that hurt too. I was like, Wait, wait, they really don't need me for sales. They really don't need me for this. Like, I'm not bringing anything that special to the table. I just know, like, know what's in my head and I'm just doing it. Getting it out of your head and getting out of your own way is finding help and finding somebody else to do what you're doing because everybody can do it just as good as you if you let them f*** up, you know, let them screw up. Man, I gotta watch myself here. 

[00:27:48] You know, if, if you let, like, everything I learned in my life was through messing something up and learning the consequences of, of doing something wrong and, you know, kind of continuing to iterate off of that and to grow off of that. And that was, you know, part of the journey is to learn along the way. Nobody could tell me anything, especially like growing up and even now you can't tell. How to do something. Cause I gotta try it myself. I gotta try the opposite way. I see that in my son too. Yeah. Anytime we tell him not to do something, he does the exact opposite. Exact opposite of what we tell him to do. Or he does exactly what you tell him not to press that red button. The first thing he does is press the red button right in front of us, whatever it is. Like if we're at a museum and he can't touch something, he just has to touch it. That's how I was like, I see that in me and I still do it now. Like somebody tells me not to do something immediately when they're not looking.

[00:28:40] I'm gonna go do it, try it, see whatever it is. Like. Yeah. 

[00:28:44] We had Dave Barrett on from Expensify and somehow in the episode it came up and he said, There are no rules. There are only consequences. And that hit me. I was like, Ooh, yes. 

[00:28:54] Serena: That was such a good episode. That was, 

[00:28:56] Scott: He's like, 

[00:28:57] Serena: I'm mind blown to how he runs his company.

[00:29:00] Scott: Right? Like, we could go, we could have a whole reaction video just on that episode. That was, that was incredible. And like, you know, just, just being able to. Navigate life through knowing certain things that are you, like knowing yourself a little bit better allows you to help other people too. And so it, it took me learning through my kids. You know, when I say I'm, I'm all these ages, that's because I see myself in my young, but I had to be present to see these things. Cause I wasn't present when my oldest daughter growing up, I wasn't present. I was always working. I was always at the office. And then when I was home, I had my phone around, I had other things on my mind. I wasn't really there. So it wasn't until I started to become present and start to get on the other side of things that I learned more about myself through my kids. So I see a lot of me in all three of them, see a lot of my wife and all three of them and like just, you know. 

[00:29:53] You could learn how to become a better person if, you learn how you operate. And I don't, I think that that's, Dave said this in that episode too, like, we're. On a constant journey of learning who we are and defining who we are. We never defined, cuz we're always changing. You know, there's, there's certain things about, I can say this about me. Like, there's certain things about me that probably will never change if I can accept them and be okay with them, and then use those powers for good.

[00:30:19] Whether it's like things that have been getting in my own way and then just kind of pivoting, whatever that is, Like the breaking of the rules thing. There was never a rule that I didn't break. And I think it's always gonna be like that, but at least like now I do it with the right intent and the right purpose. I don't do it just for the attention of breaking a rule or just for the fun or the what's the word? Like the hedonism of doing something in the moment, right? Like, so there's, well it's unpacked there, but we can, That's a whole nother day too. 

[00:30:49] Serena: Such a rebel.

[00:30:50] Scott: Yeah. Right. Like I think we all have that. 

[00:30:54] Serena: Yeah, and being able to look at something and say, No, I'm gonna do it. Opposite is probably is what has gotten you to where you are too? 

[00:31:04] Scott: Well, to some extent, yeah. Cause So I'm part of a Fran no, exactly. Like I'm part of a franchise and I'm the last person that should be in a franchise that you have to follow rules. But , you know, in the, in a way it helped them because that's, it's a very old, like, bridging that gap, like talking about people retiring. This is a 57 year old franchise, like the, most of the owners like it. Ed had a heyday now is trying to revive itself. But most majority of of franchise owners are, are in the retirement age. And they were all doing things the same way forever. 

[00:31:39] And then when I bought the franchise from the previous owner who I was working for, everything they told me to do, I did the opposite. They told me, You market your firm by going. Door to door to your local businesses and asking them, you know, Do you like your account? Like they just had all their sales tips, right? And their, their formula, their, and I said, What, why, why aren't people doing this online? Like, why aren't, like, why don't you just put your sign up online, let them come to you like, Oh, nobody looks for accounting services online. This is what they said to me. This is like 2010, 2011. And I was like, No, this has gotta be a better way, easier way to do this. I'm not walking around in the heat or any day just to like, give somebody a flyer off chance that they might be available. Like there's, there's gotta be a higher impact. 

[00:32:26] So I was just doing everything differently. That's how I found Xero because they were using their own proprietary system that was like hand key and everything and Xero. It was like oof automation city. Like you can have bank feeds. That's dope. Like I don't have to key anything in, cause it's just gonna pull it straight from the bank. Like you can do all these things. We would take hours and hours of time to like do after the fact payroll. And then I find Zen Payroll, which is Gusto now. And Zen Payroll will just do it all for you. Like, s***, we'll take 40 of our clients that we were manually doing payroll for and throw 'em on there. And then they have a, you know, so there's like all these things that I was doing differently that I wasn't supposed to be doing. You can't defy the systems of a franchise. You can't change that. Well, now Xero's a huge sponsor of Pageant and Xeros, like goes to all of their events and pushing, you know, on all of them to start using it. And this is years later, this is when they told me, Where's Xero gonna be in five years? Like, why are you using that? Why don't you just use our product or whatever. They had their proprietary, you know, it's been around forever. Like, and what, what do you think? Like, so they were just always question everything. They even get it. They didn't get what I was doing. And now they're kind of like teaching that to the other franchises now.

[00:33:34] So that was like, so just to touch on what you said, like how it, how it has helped me, I didn't really know, Like I didn't know, I wasn't following the rules. I just did what I wanted to do and nobody could tell me anything. Like I would just do it anyway if they told me not to. And the consequences were, I grew faster than any other office and they gave me a ton of attention and fed my ego. Like the, everything, everything, the worst possible scenario for me was put me in a small pond to make me the big fish and then let me build that. Cuz then I'm just gonna keep going. That's why I kept growing my firm because they kept giving me awards. They gimme trips, like taking me different places across the country, like as a reward for paying them more. Right? Get more royalty growing the firm. And and then, so that's what kept driving me. That was like my motivation the next phase, like become the biggest office. Okay, I did that now be the first office to hit this million mark. And then it's like, be the first to do this and then what after that, like why was I even doing it? It was just feeding my ego. 

[00:34:31] So I think that's kind of circling back to that, but that's kind of touching on breaking the rules and not everybody's like this. I know, not everybody's like me, but I used to always think that people thought. Like I did in a lot of scenarios and then it would just seem like common sense to me. Cuz it was always, everything I learned was through doing and through the streets. Like I I say like, it's, people tell me, I, I had street smarts and I didn't quite know. Like I, I always thought that as a bad thing or I always saw that as like a, you know, I can be book smart too. I can get good grades, but really I got all my grades mostly from cheating in school.

[00:35:06] like the stuff that I couldn't do, math was easy. So I, I did get my grades in math. That was like, no problem. But when it 

[00:35:12] was like, on opposite math was not easy for me. And I like to, Oh yeah, I love to just, It's really funny because there's a lot of people in our industry that are like, Oh, we're numbers people.

[00:35:22] And I'm like, I'm not, But I think that's why I'm able to connect with the clients that I connect with because I can. You got something 

[00:35:29] special too, though. You've got this creative side that you're bringing to the table and you underst. The business of this too. So you bring it in a dif, a different X factor than I am.

[00:35:39] My X factor is like the more on the autistic Rain man type side, yours is like the, you know, relating side. And you, you can articulate things and write. I can't write like, don't ask me to actually do something that requires like reading and then comprehending like these book reports for me. I'm just kind of talking, right?

[00:35:57] Like, that's, that's easy to me. But I was never able to like, read something and then be able to write on it. That was always hard for me. I, I was never, because I always felt like I was doing it wrong or I always felt like I, I would always look too deep into the details and anytime somebody asked me to get the big picture of something, I couldn't give you the big picture.

[00:36:16] But I can give you every little detail that happened in that story and I just didn't know what it all meant. I was never able to like see that bigger picture. So were you able to do that with numbers? Yeah, numbers tell a story. They always do. They see, when I see the details in the numbers, I can see the bigger picture in something.

[00:36:33] So it's financials or it's people throw numbers at me and I can remember exactly the number, whatever it is. If I see a stat, I'll remember those things. And I didn't really like know that that was an asset until later because I was doing things, you know, I, I can talk about my history cause I always do anyway, but I'm trying to use this for good now.

[00:36:50] My mom always says, Can't talk about this s*** and just like leave it out there. Like when I was selling drugs, right? So that's one thing that happened in school. , I was giving people three options when I was doing that. I was, I had different form, different cuts of the product, right? So it was pure and it cost a lot more the pure, that was the A, A grade, B grade, C grade.

[00:37:14] And I was making the same amount of money on all three. But depending on who you were, you know, and what you wanted to pay, if you wanted to flash your money around, you would buy the A grade. Most people bought the B, like they knew it was good. It was good enough. It wasn't, it wasn't cut too much. And then the C was just like, people that just didn't have that much money.

[00:37:29] And most people didn't even buy C but that's kinda what we do at our accounting services. We'd selling, you know, different, different packages. People been telling that we were just selling different cuts of our product. Right. And that's not, I'm not saying that you should do that, cuz I don't even know how I feel about three options anymore.

[00:37:43] But it was just things that I learned intuitively over time. Like, okay, I can make this much by doing this. And now then I'm doing podcasts. Like, I just forecasted my year just in my head. Like, okay, I can sell ads for this much if I have this many listeners, I can do, I can, I can start selling my raps now.

[00:37:59] So I'm doing my raps, like maybe I can sell them for this much. I can do this many in a year. I can do, you know, I could sell different aspects of this to the right people. Oh, I can make about $350,000 next year just doing this. Like, that's not bad. But it's, it's only because I've, like, I don't ever set out to do things the right way or whichever way.

[00:38:22] And I never really had. It was always for like, what's the next hustle? What's the next thing I could do? What's the next thing I could grow? So just applying all that knowledge over time to something with, with purpose. So getting back to like having a, a drive or having a, Combining your passion with your purpose, that was something that I didn't learn until like midyear this year.

[00:38:46] So a year on the other side of like detoxing with the phone and doing everything else. I did an episode with Nicole Mackenzie. Mm-hmm. on purpose. So we always do P words when we do our episodes, we've done about 25 different P words. One of them is on purpose and I've been, I was holding that episode cause I didn't really have a way to articulate it when I decided we were gonna do that, and it wasn't until we were at a carbon event in Lake Tahoe that I kind of realized what the purpose is of everything I was doing.

[00:39:17] And then after I figured that out, I read a book that had an entire chapter on purpose and I was like, Oh s***, I did figure it out cuz this is what he is laying out here. Like, he's teaching you how to do it in the book. And I, I figured it out on my own, like through, through many iterations. Mm-hmm. , I've always like, I've always thought everybody was so serious around me, the business world and school and everywhere.

[00:39:38] I've always just tried to bring some kind of fun or light, you know, make things lighter than they are. So I never took myself seriously. And that was always like my secret weapon was I could go into any situation and as long as I could have some kind of self deprecating joke or humor, or not take myself seriously than anybody else could lighten up.

[00:39:56] Like they, oh usually do. Cuz they can laugh at what I do and doesn't impact them because I'm not hurting anybody else. And that was always like, where I could bring the fun in. Sometimes that's not good. Sometimes that would be like you know, that, that would hurt me in some ways too. Make like, create less opportunities because I would act like I didn't know anything.

[00:40:12] Like, and a lot of times I try to set the bar really low. For me. So then it's easy to kind of stumble over it and people are impressed if I can actually do something that's worth a damn, like, so sometimes that would hurt. And then other times it was like, it was all just part of the fun, right? And then it lets people loosen up and then all of a sudden all the conversations are better, whatever it might be.

[00:40:33] Whether it's like a potential client that's a little too buttoned up and if they can't ever get past that, then they can't. And that's, that's the downside of our societies is a lot of people take themselves too seriously. They take life too seriously. They take their jobs too seriously. They take everything just too seriously because what if I broke the rules?

[00:40:50] What if I you like, I'm not supposed to do that. Or sometimes not even real rules, they just create their own like paradigms or ways of being and you know, you gotta wear a suit every day or you gotta wear a tie just because that's what they, and then they make their employees do that. And it's just like, that just kind of turns into its own little I guess, I don't know what you call that, like a narrative of.

[00:41:12] This is the way we're supposed to do things. So that's like the accounting world. Yeah. We're supposed to, let's say it's tracking time or doing things this way or delivering things to the client this way or doing the books this certain way, that's what we're supposed to be doing, right? And nobody really opens up their mind to a new way of doing things.

[00:41:30] And I've always just, when I talk about the fun stuff, like I always just wanted things to be easier so then we can more time for fun or we can, we can take ourselves, take things lightly and have a little bit more of like levity in what we're doing. So because we're do spending most of our lives doing what we do for living for work, and Dave Barrett said this like work, this work life balance idea is toxic because it is, because you're separating two aspects of yourself.

[00:41:57] And it's like that show on Apple TV severance where you have two entirely different lives. And that shouldn't be, You should mix those up. You should have fun with both. So, You'll have to listen to that whole purpose episode, which I think you might have listened to. Yeah, I, I did. Yeah. That was like, you know, that, that was pretty eye opening for me to then finally realize that I could mix my passion and purpose to actually do some good.

[00:42:23] And it isn't just selfish. Everything I do has been selfish in, in so many ways. Like, I just do it for me for what I want to do. The podcast was so, so I can learn more about ways to have a better firm, you know, to run a better firm. I can learn from my peers. Yeah. Doing the, you know, doing anything I do is just because I want to, like, I love rap.

[00:42:41] I've always been listening to rap since nineties, so now these, these raps that I'm doing, I always want that to be a rapper. Anyway, so I was like, the first one I did, I did January of this year and it was one of my favorite songs growing up, Outkast at Aliens. It's from 96, and I just had this idea, I'm gonna do CP Aliens and I rewrote the whole song.

[00:43:03] With the same rhymes, same cadence. It's like learning a language that you don't know how to speak, but just by copying it. And that's what I did with this. It was a parrot full parody. I didn't know how to rap. I still kind of learned teaching myself how to rap, but I've been doing these parodies and it's sort of like it turned into a formula.

[00:43:18] So it's like I'm taking songs from my high school years that should be recognizable to most people that have grown up and been around our age recognizable enough. And then merging them into what I've been talking about and been doing anyway for the profession, Right? So for the accounting world. So it's like I'm, I backed into, everything's happened by accident.

[00:43:38] Everything I've done has been accidentally on purpose. Like, and now I've done about seven of these and they're getting pretty good. Like the one I did for Expensify. That all is the same kind of formula, like a song that I knew and loved growing up. It fit kind of perfectly with the whole super app. They call themselves the super app.

[00:43:56] And it's like, Okay, Super app, super rap, Superman. Ooh, I can do m and m Superman. So then I just like take copy of preexisting stuff. So for his, I did, I was really excited about it. When we first met, I, I made you listen to the whole thing too. I know excited about that. You watched me while I listened to . I I needed to get outta my own head too.

[00:44:16] You were one of the first people that heard it too. Like, I, I did this over the span of four days and it was just like, it all clicked. It was all like perfect. It was, I could take his five years of emails. His emails are gold. I love his emails. I, I mean, I don't know how much, how much accountants feel about how they feel about his emails.

[00:44:31] Some people don't like it. He's pretty polarizing. But I took all of that and then just kind of worked its way into the lyrics of the song based on what Eminem was saying. So it was the same kind of like theme or like, I just had the whole overarching, it's him talking first person to his app, which is Expensify Eminem's talking to a girl.

[00:44:50] Mm-hmm. . He's talking to his, his true love, like his Expensify and. It could have went two ways on that one that he could have been like, What the hell is this? Like, this is kind of weird. Or he really likes it. I was hoping for the latter and I guess you'll have to listen to the episode to find out, but now I'm working on one for Fresh Books and it's like same kind of thing, Fresh books.

[00:45:12] Okay. And it was had in the back of my mind. I didn't know what the song was gonna be, what I was gonna do. And I'm thinking about it. It's like outcast. So fresh. So clean. Like to me that was perfect. A lot of people know that song. Mm-hmm. , a lot of it's like it was, it was popular in its day and I can now take a lot of the fresh books, stuff their copy and merge that into there.

[00:45:32] So I'll curse, I'll say things in the songs, I don't really care. Like what I'm. And there, and I can make a clean version for the Dave Barrett one. I haven't recorded the clean version yet and I still want you to help me with the hook on that one cause right, that you were gonna help me with that. So I'm gonna do a clean version of these.

[00:45:48] I gotta figure out the whole copyright stuff cause I am breaking rules with this cause I don't know what I can and can't do. Like I don't know how, how weird Al does this stuff or other people that do parodies on like YouTube. But I see people doing this, these things all the time. Like event, like, you know, there was a guy that called himself, I guess he still does.

[00:46:05] I had him on my podcast, wrapping cpa and he did like a parody. He did another the accountant's anthem. His episode is like the balancing act is what I called it on the show. But he didn't really do it that much anymore. Like I'm, I'm hungry to find other people doing this, so then I could collaborate and I could do things.

[00:46:21] Cause I just don't see anybody doing this. And I think it's kind of cool. It's kind of fun. Yeah. I'm 

[00:46:25] always amazed when I meet other accountants that actually are creative because it's, for some reason a lot of people like put themselves in a box and they're like, I'm not creative because I'm an accountant.

[00:46:38] And then, and then I find out that they're like amazing at playing piano or something. Yeah. And I'm like, But you are . 

[00:46:45] I think everybody has that. And that's again, who can keep going back to the Dave Barrett episode, he said anybody that labels themselves a creative usually doesn't really, isn't really that creative.

[00:46:57] But then I also find the people that label themselves as non-creative, they're undervaluing what they bring to the table and how creative they are. Cause I've always said that s*** too. I've always kind of seen myself as like other people have told me. I'm creative in ways, but I just don't see it because what I'm doing is common sense.

[00:47:12] Like what I'm doing is just kind of like what I intuitively think. Yeah. Like what my bookshelf is color coded. Right. I don't think that's creative. I think that's easier for me to find where things are because I think of them in colors. So I think of what an album m and m's m and m show, I know to go in the red cuz that's where it's it would take me longer to figure out where the ease are if something's alphabetical than to just go to the red and find it there.

[00:47:35] And I, so it's like I, I've never been able to think alphabetically. That goes back to like not being good in the lit stuff and all that numbers are, I'm good with, I can kind of tell numbers, but I still can't do my multiplication tables. I don't know, six times, seven. I never will. Like I have. I never will go, 

[00:47:51] Oh my, so much relief over here.

[00:47:53] So that's why I've never considered myself a numbers person, because like everyone learned their times, tables in third grade. Mm-hmm. . And I was still like figuring out the closest one I knew and then adding to it . 

[00:48:05] I do it in my hands all the time now. Still do it closest one I knew and add the next three or four.

[00:48:11] Like I can do the fives and once I get to the five, I gotta add another 14. Like if I'm doing sevens, like I gotta do that. Like it's, And I've always to count on my fingers. Yep, me too. Yeah. If I gotta if I gotta do nine something, I'll just like take the, Okay, so 86, like, that's the, the finger trick and trick.

[00:48:28] Yeah. The finger trick or count on my hands. And that's, yeah. Always has been like that. I can't do simple math, but I can do the real, like I placed outta math in college and that's part, like, part of the whole college thing too, when I started selling drugs was like, I realized I didn't want to go into business.

[00:48:44] When I first went into school. I, I placed out of all the math stuff, so they put me into higher. Things there. And it was like I was on track to start the business school and I'm like, I don't wanna wake up early every day in my life. Like I, I actually just want to go into entertainment. So I had a, I had a TV show when I was at Carolina.

[00:48:59] I was doing like screenplay, screenwriting. I changed my major to communications from business communications. Everything was like on track to doing some form of like entertainment or something like that. But honestly, I'm so glad everything happened the way it did because otherwise I would've struggled.

[00:49:15] I probably wouldn't have made any money doing what I did, and I, you know, would've been in the sea of everybody else trying to do the same thing, even if I had talent. It's still so hard to be successful in that world so hard. And I don't think I have any So , I dunno, I don't even know. I honestly don't sometimes 

[00:49:35] like hear me out.

[00:49:36] Do you ever feel like.

[00:49:41] When you get, you got to where you are, like with accounting and everything and you've seen success and you've now formed that like business mind that you need. If you went into the industry now, if you approached it like a business, would it be that hard? 

[00:49:54] Probably not. And I don't think I have the guts yet.

[00:49:57] I'm, I'm not ready for that yet because I still like, feel comfortable doing what I'm doing. Right. Yeah. In front of a smaller audience and being a niche, and this is about how nicheing your firm is, is a smarter thing to do. I'm nicheing the entertainment to a specific persona, specific audience, and I've always seen it as entertainment.

[00:50:15] I'm trying to be educational, I'm trying to bring the education, but that's why I have co-hosts cuz I don't want to be the one educating people. I don't want at accounting high, I'm the custodian. I'm just the rapping custodian that gets people high under the bleachers. Like that's, that's my role.

[00:50:29] Everybody else should be the fa the faculty that we're gonna have at the school. Like, you know, this is still metaphor of school, right? Is gonna be people that actually want to bring their education stuff to the table. So you could be a founding faculty at school and bring forward everything you're already doing with Ambitious Bookkeeper and just have another outlet, another platform to get in front of more people.

[00:50:50] And prob probably a way to get paid doing it too. That's kind of what I wanna do is bridge that whole, like, similar to what Blake's doing with earmark, but in a different way, in a different light. More, more heavily sponsored in the public school. And private school's gonna be like this one to one mentoring, coaching.

[00:51:07] Stay tuned. This is probably before we graduate. We're in freshman year here, so we gotta bear with me. Where we graduate and we go to accounting. You we're gonna get this high school thing nailed down. So got about four years to get this right? Yeah. But back to like the the entertainment thing, it was like, I think I'm, I'm glad everything happened the way it did.

[00:51:25] I took about 15 when I said I was, I feel like I'm 24. It's cuz that's around the age I was when all this kind of like came to a head. and I decided, okay, after I got arrested, after everything happened, I probably, my parents helped decide that too. Like they never really saw the entertainment stuff as a way to go and they always downplayed that they said I wasn't good or they would, they think I was like copying my s*** from somebody else or, or all that.

[00:51:50] They just never really. Cause you are . Well I am. Exactly. I am like, I would take my ideas from like a couple of different things. Like when I was writing screenplays, I would like take from four different places and merge it into one and make it its own little unique whatever it was. Little movie like a little short things like that.

[00:52:05] And that's all stuff is these 

[00:52:07] days anyway, 

[00:52:08] that's all it is. It's all it's ever been. But was packaging. He always told me that s*** was wrong and so I was like, okay, I'm not that original and I still am not like exactly. This is why I think everything I'm doing is not that original. I'm just taking things and kind of puzzling 'em together.

[00:52:21] So, but it was, it is a good thing cuz I think I did need that whole like 15 years. So I'm 39 now, so 15 minus 39 I think is 24. If I did that right in my head, but I, at the calculator, I've worked that out already. This, I, I've told this story time or two before. But once I, yeah, so technically 23, cause I'm still 38, but it'll be 39 in a couple weeks

[00:52:45] So so like, but that's where I was at then and building this business and growing and like, I'm at the point now where I'm making pretty good money, like just having an accounting firm and I've learned a lot about the industry. I know a thing or two and I've gotten my head outta my own ass, outta my own firm and started learning what everybody else is doing and like, this is what I'm passionate about as well.

[00:53:05] I'm pa definitely still passionate about the entertainment stuff and I love that, but very passionate about the profession too, because that's my life. My grandfather had a CPA firm and he's actually started a software business within his firm. And my dad took over that software business. My dad still does, has accounting software for non-profits.

[00:53:25] So I've always been kind of surrounded by that my whole life anyway. Mm-hmm. . And that's why I went to school for accounting first. And then changed. And then changed back, Right. Like, so I think I get the creative stuff from my mom and the accounting stuff from my dad and his side. So it's sort of like that.

[00:53:43] You know, once it all comes together and once you kind of realize it, you knew it the whole time. Everything was by accident, but on purpose too. So, 

[00:53:50] Yeah, I was so I, I have one-on-ones with my team and they're more focused on like mentoring them as people. Mm-hmm. and one of my team members, we had this discussion that, you know, he was.

[00:54:03] I don't know if I'm like that all that into accounting, but like, I'm gonna do it anyways. And I was like, you just have to look at it as a vehicle. . Yeah. Like it's okay to not be passionate about the actual accounting, but you see it as a vehicle to help the business owners and a vehicle for yourself to make the money so that you can do the things that you wanna do.

[00:54:24] It's a vehicle and it's a language to look at it like learning a language. Like I'm not, I'm married to a Mexican, my wife's from Mexico and I still don't speak Spanish. I'm not good with the language stuff either. Like this is, this has been a struggle for me. So 15 years of being married and I still can't speak Spanish, but I think I know the, be the language of business because you can go any country or anywhere and if you do know accounting, that's the language of business.

[00:54:49] That's, that is the streets of like learning how the business works and that once you learn that language and you're fluent in it, you could pretty much do anything. So that vehicle is like that fluency in the language. And, you know, you could pretty much go anywhere and you know, I guess things are different.

[00:55:06] Gap is different in different places, but I don't pay attention to the details anyway. , like I, that was another thing I learned too about myself. I feel like this is a pretty important tip as well. As far as, as far as getting on the other side of, of this is the control factor that I've given up in so many areas in my life that I used to think I needed.

[00:55:26] I used to try to control everything. I used to try to plan stuff. I used to have to drive places, like I don't do anything. That's why the toddler thing came up. Like because I don't do anything for myself anymore. Cause I just don't care about those details. I don't, I'm okay to be along for the ride on whatever it is.

[00:55:41] And I used to be the one that had to play in the trips and it always stressed me the f*** out. Like for every little detail didn't go the way I planned it then it was terrible and I'd be stressed out and like, I just didn't need that. Like, I didn't really realize I didn't need that until I was on the other side of all this other stuff that I realized I don't care about driving anywhere.

[00:56:01] I wanna be the passenger. I don't want to make any decisions for myself. I can't even go to the store and make a decision because I get stressed out over the choices. , it's so I can't even go on Amazon anymore because there's just too many choices. There's one, you looking for a product on there and there's something for $70, there's something for 15.

[00:56:17] How the f*** do you know? And they both have good reviews. Which one's better? Like, it's the same thing. So I, yeah, I just have a lot of trouble making decisions and I know now, like, I just don't want that, I don't want that control over something because I don't wanna have to like, you know, there's certain things that I have to make a decision for, and that's, that's usually trouble, but I can get past it.

[00:56:38] Like understanding, like you can make the wrong choice too. It was always like, I felt like that was so much on the line there that I couldn't go back to the store. I gotta figure out what I'm gonna buy otherwise. I've made the wrong choice like I can't go return. Whatever. 

[00:56:49] Serena: Yeah. That's why I don't hang stuff on my walls. 

[00:56:52] Scott: Yes, yes 

[00:56:53] Serena: you know, like, I think it's gotten worse over the years, my decision making capabilities, because when you're running a company or a business like. There's now the pressure of making decisions for the business. So it's like all the other little decisions are like, I can't handle it. Like, I can't handle figuring out what to wear every day. I mean, Steve, Steve Jobs had it down a black turtleneck. It's one less decision You have to make. 

[00:57:17] Scott: I have to match everything that I'm wearing. So that's why my clothes are very color coordinated and I'm only wearing like, grays, blacks, and blues pretty much. I'm starting to introduce red though. That's a, that's a new thing. I think that's a midlife crisis thing for me. Like instead of getting a red Corvette, I'm, I might start getting red Jordans because accounting high is red and I'm been feeling that black and red combo. So I'm slowly getting some stuff. Today I'm not doing it. I got a little bit of red on me today, but yeah, I'm like bridging that. Sorry to get off track, but it was, it's easy if I do everything based on the color. So I start with usually the color, like my boxers, the band on the boxers and build it up from there. So everything of my watch band has to match that. The shoes I wear have to match that. The socks I wear, and it all has to be the same brand too. So if it's Calvin Klein, everything I'm wearing has to be Calvin Klein. So then it limits my options. It very, it's like a controlling it's a what do they call that? Constraint. 

[00:58:11] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:58:11] Scott: Like I create the constraint initially and then every other decision is based off of that. And it's easy. So everything I do is just usually based on the Boxer band. So you check my boxers and usually everything else matches because if I start, but then if I start with like white or gray, then it opens it up to the next choice. And then it might just be a white or gray palette for the day. Whatever I'm feeling, the mood, it's the mood that I'm in too. Red is like more passion and like more like that fire, like I'm, I got that energy in me and a lot of like, I have that now without that medicine. I have a lot of anxiety, but I've framed it as excitement. So anxiety can be excitement. It's the same feelings, it's the same emotion inside of you, but if you frame it the right way, you can anticipate something to be excited about it. Or you could be anxious for it and scared of, and whatever it might be. Whether it's something in the past or the future or something that's happening in the moment. So I've been able to, maybe 80% of the anxiety is now excitement, but then there's still that 20% that gets me and like, I gotta go to the hospital because I'm gonna die this day or whatever. Like a panic attack is terrible. Yeah. So still gotta deal with that s***. 

[00:59:19] But yeah, I don't know where I was going, but I think the whole part about like the report where I was at with color coding and like mm-hmm. , the, you know, figuring out the decisions, like making the decisions, like giving up the control over, and I'm like that too, with pictures and frames. And finally one day I get it in me to just put it all on the wall and then I still f*** it up. Like, I, I had, I had a bunch of stuff that I had to put on the wall and then I got sheep with the command tape and I knew what I was doing and I knew like I didn't wanna have to go buy more. So then I cut 'em all in half. And half of the things fell off the f****** wall and they still aren't back up. Still not back up. 

[00:59:54] Serena: Yeah. So you feel like you're on the other side of your detox now? 

[00:59:59] Scott: Yeah.

[01:00:00] Serena: And that looks like spending time in your creative zone, 

[01:00:04] Scott: color coding your books, 

[01:00:06] Serena: and your boxers, 

[01:00:07] Scott: and my boxers and everything. I spend time on the things that seem very trivial to everybody else. And like, Why did you spend your day doing this? Or why? Like, But to me it's it's essential. Like it's, to me, I gotta do these things to make everything else easier and like create those constraints. And it's like the, the habits that I track. Right. And I feel like I will stay on the other side of this as long as I'm still tracking those. So there's 12 of them. Every day I gotta write one line of something, and that could be just journaling, but I try to write one line of a rap every day. And I don't always do that, but I still journal or I write something by the end of the day. Read two pages of a book a day. Real reading, because I used to not be able to read before I was on the other side of this. I couldn't read. I had too much in my head, so I would just keep reading page after page thinking about something else. Anything, Yeah. Yeah. Gotta go back. Even listening to books too, I would be thinking about something else while the book's on and have to rewind. Like then they catch my ear and rewind. I can actually focus now. Like that's, my mind is clear enough. But that's, that comes with some of the later habits. So I gotta track three habits. Three is tracking three habits a day. So just checking three boxes off. I've had days where I've only checked two, so I can't check that third one.

[01:01:17] Actually, if I check two and I checked the third one, That's the third one. So, Well, I can't lie to myself on here. You'll, that's, that's, I'm like, Lying is something that I've not been able to do in the past couple years. Like, I'm not, even if somebody asked me a question, I have to answer it straight up because I can't lie anymore. I used to lie for everything. I used to lie all the time. Now I just can't do it. It's, it's hard for me. So I'm a little too honest with most people, anybody. I mean, I'm just too honest. And that's something 

[01:01:48] Serena: someone gave you like a, a no lying potion or something? 

[01:01:52] Scott: Yeah, somebody did And I've 

[01:01:53] Serena: Honesty potion, 

[01:01:54] Scott: still got it in me too. And it's, it's actually very f****** liberating to not have to lie or not have to lie to yourself about stuff too. It's lying to yourself. That was what it always got me, was lying to myself waiting until four 20 to get high so I don't get high before four 20 every day. And that has helped me a lot too. Five pushups a day, meditate for six minutes or six breaths. So that was like me putting in the fine print because some days I couldn't get six minutes and it would be the end of the day, so I just had to do six breaths. So six breaths, workout for seven minutes. So some type of heart activity working out for seven minutes. That one's hard to keep up with every day, but seven minutes isn't quite too much. Like I can still do seven minutes sleeping for eight hours. That one's tough. Gotta have all other kinds of things going on just to be able to sleep for eight hours, like that's gotta close everything down. So then the next one is like shutting down at 9:00 PM. No phone, no anything, no inputs after 9:00 PM So I can't even pick up my phone to check a text or else I can't check the box. So lately I, I added a little mt. Little Mountain time. Sometimes I do like just do one little thing so I'm not lying to myself. I can still check. 

[01:03:02] Serena: I have a question on that one, because that is one that I struggle with because I have a teenager who drives.

[01:03:08] Scott: Yeah. 

[01:03:09] Serena: And so I don't, I'm, I think if you're in a certain season of your life, it's like you do still wanna keep your phone, 

[01:03:17] Scott: You make the rules. Right. You make the rules so you could Right. 

[01:03:20] Serena: Cause I would my daughter Yeah. 

[01:03:22] Scott: But you make the rules. Right. So you could, you could say, I only use it for this, and if I used it for that.

[01:03:26] Serena: Yeah. 

[01:03:26] Scott: And I didn't do anything. Then I can check the box. But if you pick it up and then you end up going on Instagram after you checked her text and then you end up being on there for another 20 minutes or even 10 minutes, then like, I missed it today. And you said that on another episode, you have Mariah, you were like, you know, sometimes you break your own rule cause you, you set the timers. Timers don't really work for me, like setting a timer for an app. I just cheat and I just type in the password. 

[01:03:49] Serena: Yeah. 

[01:03:49] Scott: And I just keep going for the day. So I have to actually have to have this, these hard rules, like bright lines and not cross those lines. So moving 10,000 steps, so just hitting 10,000 steps for the day, being in bed by 11:00 PM like in bed. And I got 20 minute buffer on these two. Right. So if it's nine 18 and I'm doing something, I'm okay. So 1120, I'm, you know, 11, 15, whatever. And then, and that's the four, the 20 minute buffer was because of the four waiting till. For to get high, but I usually wait till four 20 cuz that's the, that's the time. And standing 12 rings. That's the hardest one to do cuz when I have podcasts or when I'm editing or just when I'm doing, I'm not editing as much anymore. Thanks to your brother. 

[01:04:31] Serena: Yeah. So standing 12 what? 

[01:04:34] Scott: 12 rings. So on the Apple watch you've got like, it reminds you to stand up but so it, I think other things do that too, but, you know, I think it's a good thing. Well I don't think, like, I've, a lot of people said like, sitting is the new cigarettes now. Like we sit too much and I did it, I did it when I was working at the firm and I do it now when I'm doing this cuz I'll be right in a wrap and I'll be like sitting there in the zone for like four hours and just not know the time passed by.

[01:05:01] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[01:05:01] Scott: and, or I'd be reviewing tax returns or doing something. But even having these conversations, like today, I have two different episodes of, of things that I'm probably gonna be sitting, I probably won't hit my 12 rings. For stand, you gotta stand a minute out of every hour is what 

[01:05:16] Serena: Okay. 

[01:05:16] Scott: Is what the rule is. So that's the one. I don't, that's the one I break the most often. But that's only on the days that I'm focused, like, and getting other stuff done. If I'm like out traveling, I always hit it. Cause I never sit down. Like I don't even travel my laptop anymore. I can't, like, I can't go do work when I'm out and about. Like that's just not something that I can't, I can't switch. I don't have balance. And I've given that up. That's Ron Baker that kind of taught me that on his episode. He said balance is overrated and so did, I'm pretty sure Dave Barrett said that in so many ways too, but I've always thought I needed balance in my life.

[01:05:49] Everybody always says, you gotta balance this out. You can't just be all in. I've always had a one or a zero in everything I've done like the matrix, like just one or a zero and that's it. I'm either doing it to 100, like I'm doing it to my fullest of efforts up to 11. Or I'm not doing it at all. And I'm better that way than trying to balance things in there. I'm never, I'm never one to be in the middle of something I'm either gonna go at it 100. I feel like you can relate to that in some ways too. 

[01:06:14] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[01:06:15] Scott: Yeah. 

[01:06:16] Serena: Hence the, Well, if I don't wanna go all in, I should just throw in the towel right? 

[01:06:20] Scott: Exactly. Exactly. Though I'm, But see, that's me. That's like, and I've, I relate to that in so many ways because you might as well just throw in the towel. If you're not gonna be all in then f*** it. Might as well just not even do it. S***. I'm sorry. That's okay. You might as well just not even do it like that. That's the way I feel. And, and I'm almost leaning into that now a little too much. And that hurts too. So, you know, I'm not gonna tell everybody you shouldn't have balance. Cause I think you should in some aspects, but you gotta be able to find it and finding it's hard for me. You're still finding it. So I wish I could, I hope this helped. Like in some ways, I don't know, I don't even know where we're at in the story, but it's uh, 

[01:06:54] Serena: I don't either. It's kind of, Well, we went through your 12 habits that, did you form those after? How, how long ago did you form those habits and did you do it one at a time? 

[01:07:05] Scott: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So March of this year was when I started rereading Atomic Habits for the third time. I was rereading it with Twila, a fresh book, shout out to our fresh book reports that we do. And I have this habit tracker. I spent, like, I probably spent like $80 on this book and pen and I was like, this is, I'm gonna use this. And I had it for like a year and I didn't use it. And then, and is the James Clear Habit Tracker? And he wrote Atomic Habits. And so I was like, All right, I'm rereading this book. I'm gonna start using this. And it wasn't until I laid out about 10 habits that I realized there were some numbers associated with them. So I didn't number them at all. It was just like sleep for eight hours, meditate for six minutes, or it was meditate and then like close the stand ring and exercise, you know, just different things. And I was like, there's numbers associated with these. And then, wait, I got about eight of 'em already that have a sec. Like I can shift them around so that the first month I just had 'em on there and I was just tracking them. And then the next month I realized I gotta add two more habits and I've got 12 habits cuz there was 12 and there was like an 11 and then it skipped three and four. Three and four. I didn't have anything for, that's why like three was like a cop out track, three habits and four. I didn't stop getting high until I realized that I can't do other things if I'm high during the day. And I would get high by accident. Like I walk around my fanny pack most of the days and that's just easy cause I can wear gym shorts and walk around with fanny pack and I have my weed pens in there and sometimes I'm just on a walk and it's feeling good and everything's like good for the day. So then Id just get a little high and then it would kill the rest of the day. Episodes that I recorded would come out bad because I was too high and I was like too tunneled in on something. So I can't really record if I'm high anymore and I can't really do things, I can't even like focus, right? Like I'm sure, I don't know if anybody gets high, they can relate to that. I shouldn't be talking about that too much. Like I guess that's not like a common thing these days anymore. 

[01:08:58] Serena: I also feel like there's a subset of people in the weed community that are like, Yeah, oh no, weed helps me focus. I'm like, You're fricking lying to yourself. . 

[01:09:09] Scott: Yeah, you're lying to yourself. Maybe. Maybe it does, Like sometimes it brings out creative stuff, but to me 

[01:09:14] Serena: creativity is different than productivity, 

[01:09:17] Scott: right? Yes. That's a great quote out of this. It's like the best thing that was said all day out of all my hour and a half of talking. Like that's, that was the best thing. Creativity is not the same as productivity. I'm gonna write that down. But no, and it was like, but it was really just. I didn't, I, I stopped smoking weed for like 15 years. Right. I just started smoking again when I stopped taking that medication. And, and I was, going a little too overboard with it, but I started because I realized, like I was in California and I, I was outside and I was like, I know that smell. And I forgot that it was legal in California. This was like, I forgot when this was. And then I was like, I know that smell. Wait, you could just buy weed here. Like this is, this is like, I'm back in high school again. Like, all right, but I stopped doing all that. It was like, I can't, like I can't live a life and also get high. But then I realized, now I can tell you I'm on the other side of that too. Cause I was probably smoking too much as I stopped taking that medication, still trying to get on the other side of all this stuff. I used that as like the bridge to get out of something else.

[01:10:15] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[01:10:15] Scott: and, and also in order to have the balance that I needed with the work life stuff, which I thought you needed work life balance. I needed to get high to be present with my kids and to be present with my family. So the only way to be present with them was to get my mind off of the things that didn't matter. And the only way to get my mind off of the things that didn't matter was to get high. So that was my, 

[01:10:34] Serena: The stories that you told yourself. 

[01:10:36] Scott: The stories I told myself. Right. And now I don't need that stories. I'm on the other side of it. But being in the middle of that transition, I was telling myself all kinds of things to create the narrative that this is what I needed. Like, and so I, I couldn't do any work for the firm because I was too high. I shouldn't be doing anything anyway. I'd be screwing it up. So it was, it was all like creating that narrative of trying to get to the other side of it. Now I can't get high until four 20 every day or else I can't check that box and I gotta check my boxes.

[01:11:05] Yesterday I checked all 12, so I went back and reviewed. And the most I've done all 12 in a month was four last month, four days out of the month, I checked all 12. Most days I'm getting, like, I'm averaging now nine or 10. Because there's always something that I don't get. Sometimes it's like the sleep, sometimes it's the past nine, sometimes it's whatever. Like a lot of times it's a stand. But 

[01:11:29] Serena: do you ever battle with not like feeling like you wanna give up on all those habits cuz you're not hitting 'em every day? 

[01:11:35] Scott: Yeah, yeah. Because it's all or none, right? Like, if I'm not, so it's not, So now I'm okay with not hitting all of them because I'm working on my averages and I'm working on, so I'm, I'm tracking everything. I'm tracking my mood at the end of the day too. So I got like a little smiley face, a straight face or a sad face. That's, We have a lot more moods than that, but that's what I'm tracking for the day too. So see if there's correlations and I'm tracking my daily totals and then monthly totals for each one. And all those numbers matter because, you know, we're accountants, analytical, I like, I like the numbers. It makes me feel better, but to me, I know, 

[01:12:06] So the reason I don't throw the towel in these is cuz there's so many of 'em and there's so many that at certain times I am on a streak. With a lot of them. Like I missed meditating the other day and that I was on like a almost two month streak of not, of not missing meditating. And I, I felt the difference because I couldn't sleep and it was like 1230 and so much racing on my head and I realized right then I forgot to meditate today. Like I just didn't fit it in. Like it's, so, I don't think I'm gonna stop all forever because I noticed, wait, I can't sleep. And that's probably part of the reason why I can't sleep because I didn't clear my head, I didn't clean up there. Mm-hmm. 

[01:12:47] So people that don't meditate, I feel you. Like, for anybody that doesn't meditate, I couldn't like get my head around the idea of meditating cuz I felt like you had to clear your mind the whole time. I felt like you had to be totally empty and, and it wasn't worth doing because I couldn't do that. But it's not about that. It's like practicing anything else. Some days you will be able to clear it all out. Some days you won't, and you have to pay attention to what's coming up and everything that you're thinking about, and then that helps you decide what you're gonna focus on that day too. It's kind of like when you said to block, you know, to kind of think about your vision and journal and recommit, you know, walk. Meditating's the same thing as all of those different things too. 

[01:13:30] Serena: Yeah. So, yeah, I, I don't meditate . 

[01:13:34] Scott: I know. Well that's, I'm, I'm with you. Cause I didn't. 

[01:13:37] Serena: I'm one of those people that like, I've tried it, like, and I'm, I'm not, I'm not saying like, it's not for me. I'm not, I'm not one of those people that's like, it's not for me. I've tried it. I'm one of those people that continues to try it over and over and over again, which probably means I do meditate, but whatever. 

[01:13:52] Scott: Yeah. Well, it, it was me to, for me it was redefining. So when I first started doing it, there were some days that I actually hit a point where it was like a euphoric meditation where I felt like tingly and it, I felt really good after because I really did like clear my mind and that was. That was the tipping point of realizing what meditation was and then, and then I couldn't keep doing that. So then I stopped because it was like, if this isn't gonna happen every time, then I'm not doing it and I'm doing something wrong. I just shouldn't be doing it at all. And then eventually I started to catch these like guided meditations, and it didn't have to do it alone. I would put my headphones on and then I would just, I had this guided meditation playlist from Apple Music, and I just hit shuffle whatever came on. I just did that for that amount of time and that's what helped me keep doing it. Now it's the Peloton app. They have meditations on there, and the meditations are different things to focus on. So it's like kindness, gratitude, patience. They have sleep meditations. So all of these things are just like, kinda like taro cards where you just pick the thing you wanna focus on and then do that for the day. So that's like just part of my habits now. And I realize most days I still have too much going on in my head that I can't even listen to what they're saying. but I still gotta do it because it's still like part of that practice. It's like, it's never, it's never perfection. Practice is, this is why they call accounting firms practices, right? We're not perfect. We're always practicing, we're always iterating. We're always getting better. So meditating, I'm like, I'm a toddler's stage of meditation, like I'm not a monk or anything. I just kind of go at, go through the motion sometimes. Sometimes I'm doing it right, but at least like I'm still doing it and I'm doing it. 

[01:15:33] Serena: I think that's the big secret for like a lot of things that we think that every, you know, someone has their s*** together or like some CEO knows what they're doing, but it's like this is big secret that there's still days where they're just like, I'm just pretending . 

[01:15:48] Scott: Yeah. It's like me. I'm a pretend rapper and this is what I wanna do. I want to call myself a rapper. So if I'm just practicing and I'm doing it, I'm still learning how to rap. The latest one I did was a book-- so I'm doing, I'm pairing the book reports with Raps now too. So it's we did The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek's Infinite Game, and Eminem's first Track, or first album was Infinite. So I was like, Ooh, I could take that one and pair that with Infinite Game. So I took a bunch of the copy from the book and put it in there and like did, I used the same style Eminem did, but I had to, I couldn't do the same raps, I couldn't do a parody. So I actually had to teach myself how to rap for this one. And that was eye opening. I didn't know that. Every bar has, like, it goes to four beats and that each bar is like, there's 16 of them in a verse. So I'm learning even more. Like I realize I'm opening this door of like, now the possibilities are endless and now that there's certain things I can do now that I never could do before. Cause speaking that language without really knowing the language. I was just copying it. Right. so yeah, I don't think I'll ever know how to rap, but one day I hope to call myself a rapper. I hope to have a real chain. This is like $50 one. I got off of Amazon, but eventually I'm gonna use my profits for the podcast and buy a cool chain.

[01:17:03] Serena: Awesome. Okay, so we have a little bit of time left. 

[01:17:07] Scott: Cool.

[01:17:08] Serena: Thank you for sharing your real story. I think that as we were talking before we hit record, like another one of those big secrets, like no one wants to share that like they're struggling and I struggled with sharing that I was struggling.

[01:17:24] Scott: Yeah. Well that's, You did good. Like I've never done a solo episode and so you kind of inspired me to start doing these. So I'm gonna start doing so-- 

[01:17:33] Serena: wow. I didn't realize you'd never done a solo episode. 

[01:17:35] Scott: Never. Never. And I, I've nev, I've always feared that because I've always like I didn't, I've always wanted to be the center of attention, but I've always fought against that. Cause my parents just said, That was not the thing that you should want. Like you should give everybody else the spotlight. So I always saw that as a bad thing. So combine somebody that wants to be an entertainer, wants to entertain, with the fact that they think it's bad for attention and that you shouldn't want attention. That made for a very toxic combination of my most of my life. So now with the whole podcast thing, I feel like I have nothing to say. I shouldn't be the one that's just sitting there talking. Cause nobody wants to hear me. They want to hear the guests, they want to hear the co-host. They wanna hears 

[01:18:13] Serena: It's total BS that you're, 

[01:18:15] Scott: I've learned it's a 

[01:18:16] Serena: Tough love over here, but you're, those are just more stories that you're telling yourself. Like, I think people really wanna hear what you have to say. And solo episodes hit different, like, I don't know. I, I usually ha I used to script them entirely if we're completely honest. I used to actually just read my blogs. 

[01:18:35] Scott: Okay

[01:18:36] Serena: Spoiler alert, don't go back to the earlier episodes. 

[01:18:38] Scott: Yeah, don't worry about it. Like it's, but that's what people thought. Like So you inspired an idea yesterday. I was like, I've, I have one of my rap names. I got a lot of different rap names. One of 'em is S three x, right? So three S's. So I don't even know what the third S was. It could be Scotts Carrano something, right? S3X, because it also looks like a backwards E. The three looks like a backwards E, so it just looks like sex. So it would be the Scott Scarano show, right? S three X. But I would just put sex on there with like a backwards E or with the three . And then people go under the covers. They get to actually hear the episode and it is just the Scott Scorano Show. Whatever I wanna talk about that day. There's plenty of things I could talk about. It's like I got a whole notebook of ideas of things that I wanted to do. That I haven't done, I can just go flip through that notebook and just talk and then let Ian edit it and then just release it. So it'll be volume one, sex volume one will be the first one that I do. And then I, I'll see what the click bait does to that. Cuz sex and accounting don't tend to mix ever. Like, so this is a show for accountants that I don't know how, how that's gonna do. We did an episode on poetry and it was a great episode cuz Nicole did a rap too. So that was another P word and not so many people picked it up, but everybody who did pick it up loved it. Like they said it was a good episode. 

[01:19:56] Serena: I don't think I've listened to that one. I'm gonna have to go back and check it out. 

[01:19:59] Scott: Check it out. It's, it's introducing the first rap I did and it's also introducing the one she did and her rap on LinkedIn got like 43,000. Like, you know, at the time we were recording it had so much activity on there, like, whatever they call it, impressions or, or whatever. And then the episode just did Okay. Like, so I don't know, you know, it's kind of context for everything too. Yeah. So I push the envelope like Laura Lynn Wilson, her episode with Big Dick Energy, because she said that during the episode and I thought it was appropriate to call that title cuz it was click baity and that did do well, like, and you know, probably because Laura Lynn was on there, She's fun and everything, but Ian also wants to keep the podcast clean, so I gotta listen to my editor. And I don't know if he's gonna wanna put sex on the title there. He might not. He might not be okay with it, but we'll see.

[01:20:46] Serena: Oh, it's so funny. 

[01:20:47] Scott: It'll say S3X though. So really technically it'll be like A2X but a Step Up. Right? Isn't that app in our space A2X? 

[01:20:57] So If we can 

[01:20:59] Serena: find a way to do a power of four, that's what we should name this episode. The power of four. I have not figured out and make that little four though.

[01:21:06] Scott: Can we just do s Well? Yeah. I, I haven't been able to figure that out either. I can't do three. You can't do the power of three, but we, would it be S4X 

[01:21:15] Serena: didn't we? Yeah. Didn't 

[01:21:17] Scott: Serena Scott? That's S four s. 

[01:21:19] Serena: That's like the power of four. Or we could just write that out, I guess, but 

[01:21:24] Scott: it's not about, 

[01:21:25] Serena: Not as cool.

[01:21:26] Scott: Yeah. , well let, let's, let's ruminate on it a little bit more, cuz s to the power four would be dope, but it could be just S two, plus S two. Mm-hmm. equals S four. Right. Or it doesn't equal S four If you do s 2. So now we're going back to math that I placed out of in high school. So I haven't done this kind of math since high school 

[01:21:45] Serena: and I didn't go beyond algebra two

[01:21:48] Scott: Yeah. So this is algebra right here. So if you have something to the second power plus something to the second power, I think it's to the fourth power. Especially if it's the same numerator, right? Yeah. So S two plus S two equals, and we're just gonna do an S four. 

[01:22:02] Serena: Mm-hmm. 

[01:22:02] Scott: for the title. Like you can't do the power, but you can do the two power cuz I already discussed how to do that. Just copy and paste it. That's a good title. Although I don't think anybody's gonna pick it up because it's just like not descriptive enough too. But we'll see. Hopefully this episode gets some listens. 

[01:22:17] Serena: Yeah, we'll sh we'll share it out. So we will be doing a part two on, 

[01:22:23] Scott: and part two is gonna be all you. And I'll let you talk that time cuz I did 98% of the talking on this one, so 

[01:22:31] Serena: that's okay. You're my guest. So that's to be expected. But do you have any other words of wisdom to share with those listening on getting on the other side of this? Because I know I'm not the only one. I've heard from lots of people, 

[01:22:47] Scott: so I heard from somebody recently. Creativity is not productivity. 

[01:22:53] Serena: Yeah. Creativity is different than productivity. It's not better or worse. 

[01:22:59] Scott: It's not better or worse, it's just not the same thing. 

[01:23:01] Serena: Yeah. 

[01:23:02] Scott: And you wanna tap into your creative, I'm gonna bridge it though. You wanna tap into your creative side to help you figure out, you gotta tap into who you are. And that's, I think that's everybody's id their creative side. It's not their ego, ego's the enemy, but their id, like who they really are at their core to help find your purpose. It's obvious once you figure it out, it's gonna feel, and it's gonna be like, I should have known this my whole life. Right? It's something that you're already interested in. That's how you find your niche. That's how you find your niche at your accounting firm, your bookkeeping. That's how you find anything is what do you already pay attention to? What do you already like? And that helps you bridge to get to the other side of that, because then it's easy. Like to me it's the rap stuff, it's talking, it's, I've always, I've always talked a lot, obviously I didn't need to talk about that because that's an unconsciously aware thing. I am now, like, I know this. So tapping into your creativity helps that, but you need to create that space. So, you know, just use Serena's suggestions in her last solo effort. Where take a walk, you know, clear your head, have an hour where you just write, just write whatever is on the top of your mind. Anything, and go back to that in another day. Do something that you can really figure out. What's getting to you? Why? Why do you wanna throw in the towel? Because you started what you're doing for a reason. It's probably not time to quit. So let's figure out a way to pivot. And this way you could do what you're doing with a little bit more purpose and a little bit more intention. Sometimes that means you gotta do something else. I just don't know. Cause it's always different for everybody. 

[01:24:43] Serena: Yeah. So good. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Yep. I appreciate you. 

[01:24:47] Scott: Thanks for having me on. 

[01:24:49] Serena: All right 

[01:24:50] Scott: Peace out. 

[01:24:50] Serena: Talk to you soon.

[01:24:51] 

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