Episode 13: There Is Always A Way: It's A Matter Of "How" With Eric Green
Creating a successful partnership with your clients and the people you work with is not that easy, especially when you consider them like cancer. Negative people and a toxic workplace is not an easy environment to be.A partner at Green & Sklarz and tax attorney, Eric Green, has pivoted through this kind of situation. In this episode, Eric shares his journey from playing college football to shifting his focus to accounting, and eventually law then to handling clients. He dives deeper into the subject and talks about his earlier days as an accountant, the smart decision he made that still haunts him, and how he overcame it. Follow through as Eric discusses his views on marketing, client service, creating a successful partnership, and understanding when you need balance in your life.
---
Watch the episode here:
Listen to the episode here:
Episode 13: There Is Always A Way: It's A Matter Of "How" With Eric Green
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs where I interview Eric Green. He is a partner at Green & Sklarz, a boutique tax firm with offices in Connecticut in New York. The focus of Eric's practice is civil and criminal taxpayer representation. He is a frequent lecturer on tax topics for national organizations and the author of The Accountant’s Guide To IRS Collection and The Accountant’s Guide To Resolving Tax Debts. He is the Founder of Tax Rep LLC, a coaching program for accountants and attorneys. During my interview with Eric, we discussed his journey from playing college football to shifting his focus to accounting and eventually law. In this episode, we discuss his views around marketing, client service and creating a successful partnership, as well as understanding when you need balance in your life.
---
Eric, do you want to give us a little bit of background on yourself and what you do?
I am a tax attorney. In my prior career, I was an accountant. I didn't want to be an accountant anymore and I went to law school. What I found is that I enjoyed the speaking and the teaching aspect. In order to go get work, get clients, you need to be able to attract clients. For me, that’s showing up to a group of accountants, speaking and letting the phone ring. By the way, it works marvels. About ten years ago, I had an accountant, a CPA come up to me at one of the talks and said, “I would pay you if you would teach me to do this.” I wanted to be a professor. My parents were teachers like, “No, don't be a professor.” I created an eight-hour training course. It became 12, 16, 20, it kept growing. Ultimately, I licensed it to CCH. From that, my practice exploded. These people watch the videos and they would call and say, “I want to refer somebody to you.”
After a while, I would tell them, “No. Don't refer them. You do the case.” They said, “I don't know what I'm doing.” “I'll coach you.” That was the beginning of what is now Tax Rep Network, which is a coaching program for about 200, 250 accountants and lawyers where we help them build their representation practices. We train them, we consult with them on cases so I have multiple jobs. I am the managing partner of a 21-person boutique tax firm. I have my books and my speaking, which was how you and I met. I have Tax Rep Network, which is a coaching program. It's a whole online community now. We have a forum, we’re doing live events. It's taken on a little bit of a life of its own.
I want to start backwards. When you were a little boy, did you want to be an accountant? What was it that you wanted to be when you grew up?
I wanted to play for the New England Patriots. I played high school football and I'm an area star which means nothing. I ended up going to Hofstra, which was transitioning from Division III to AA in Long Island. I realized pretty quickly I was never going to play professional football.
Why did you realize that?
The game on AstroTurf at the college level, even Division III moves much faster than it did in high school. It became obvious to me that I did not have the athleticism. For instance, I'm a big believer that you make your reality and you could do whatever you want, but there are limits to that. I will never be LeBron James no matter how long I spent out on the basketball court. It was obvious I was never going to be at that level.
How did that feel though to make that decision? Was that a hard reality?
I made a decision that I'm going to be an accounting major because I'm good at math.
There were no accountants in your family?
I had an uncle but he had very little to do with me. We were not close. I saw him once a year. Frankly, I don't know that I ever realized he was an accountant until I went into accounting and suddenly, I became interesting to him.
I understand you're good at math but how did you even know about accounting?
In high school, they had an Accounting 1 and Accounting 2. I take Accounting 1 and 2, I get straight A’s. I thought, “I'll be great at this.” It has nothing to do with anything. Accounting 1 is you have a brain, so fine, you can get through Accounting 1.
You can say that. I did horribly in accounting one.
Governmental for advanced accounting, I still to this day have no idea what that is. All of the intermediate accounting, it all kicked my ass. I was the worst accounting major in the face of the planet. The most people you know have a 3.2 but in your major, you're a 3.6. I'm reversed. I'm a 3.2 but in my major, I'm like a 2.7. The decision that I regretted was I injured my hip in high school. Now it's college, I injured my hip again. What the doctors do tell me is, “We can't force you to quit, but we highly recommend you consider retirement.” We're paying for this Division III. There's no athletic scholarship. I made a smart decision but it still haunts me that I quit. I turned in my uniform and walked off, which I should have ridden it out in the training room to the end. That way, knock on back my sophomore year, the quitting aspect, it may be the only thing I've ever quit at. For better or worse, that still bothers me. I didn't really want to be an accounting major. At junior year, I realized I am not cut up to be an accountant. I should go into marketing. I'm a great bullshit artist.
I have two uncles. One is this CPA who I think when he sat in his chair with his pipe and whatever, he could have died and we wouldn't have noticed. I'll tell you, what's fascinating is I would have told you he was the most boring human being on earth. When my cousin got married, he gave such a talk, that in his speech, he had a personality. He just didn't care about us. On the other hand, my other uncle was forever in business, whatever he got a deal on. That was the business he was in that a month or a year. I worked flea markets for him and everything. In college, I started a T-shirt printing business, the coed naked skiing and the bar hopper shirts and Absolute Hofstra.
By the way, it's all in complete copyright violation and the heat starts. Now, they're actively looking for the guy selling the shirts on campus. I ended up recruiting the cheerleaders. Whichever one lived in that dorm, I recruited and they would run around because to them, it was a quick $50. I would make $300, $400, $500 a night, cash. I'm running a T-shirt printing business in college while I'm an Accounting major, not a very good one, an international business minor because I thought, “Wouldn't that make me more attractive?” I can assure you it did not. In fact, most accounting firms would come back to me and be like, “We want to go international," it hurt me.
It's so weird because in today's world that wouldn't, but it's a different world.
I was ahead of my time. The CCH coaching program, people were like, “I don't know if I want to do representation tax rep. I don't even market." The thing keeps growing and growing. I was a little bit ahead of the curve. Accountants, CPAs and DAs have got to elevate themselves. When you and I were staff, moving the number from this box into this form and do it, that's all gone. AI is doing all of that. Folks have to become high-end consultants. I do IRS rep but state and local tax, there's international tax, forensic accounting, financial planning. Those were the days of being generalist accountant. That is the very boring story.
Creating A Successful Partnership: You make your reality and you could do whatever you want, but there are limits to that.
It's interesting because I want to go back to the football story. The one thing you take away from that is not to quit. How has that affected you in other decisions in your life, whether that be in business or family or whatever it is? Have you found yourself in a position where you're like, “I need to stop this,” and then you flip in your head like, “Would this be like quitting when I quit football?” How do you have that?
The football thing, I don't know if it was bad or brilliant. I don't know how to explain. There were two potentially brilliant things that I decided. When I'm being recruited for football, Penn recruited me. Wharton is the number one business school and it probably still is for undergrad in the country. The coaches called me. I'm getting into Penn. I am not getting into Wharton. My parents were school teachers. We could not afford $19,000 a year then. Knowing I wanted to go into business, I made what I think still to this day was the right decision and told my parents. To go for four years, even with Penn as a Bachelor's and undergrad, what they told me is I can transfer into Wharton with a 3.85.
I was smart enough to recognize I would not go to Penn playing football and get a 3.85 with those other people in my classes and be able to transfer. It would be four years of Liberal Arts degree at a cost that we cannot afford. The other thing is it bothers me that I had to go stand there and face the coach and quit. That's the part that bothers me. It was the smart thing to do because I was injured on crutches. It was affecting my getting into classes and I was never going to be a professional football player, which had become obvious fairly quickly. It was the smart decision. It rankles the thought of walking in like that to quit.
Has it affected other decisions you've made?
I've never thought about it. It’s time to cut your losses sometimes and there's an interesting book called The Third Door. I was engaged and I ended it. I did take away the idea that this is not going well, end it now. I have to say this, I don't tend to be stubborn. Partially, it is in looking back, it was the right decision and there are times you cut your losses or have to rethink what you're doing. I wasn't given the advice but I overheard a great attorney on my first audit job. I overheard him telling one of the other attorneys, "We'll get the deal done. It's not a matter of can we, it's how do we get this done?" I remember thinking that is brilliant. There's more than one way to get things done. I've taken that away with me. One, don't be so bullheaded that you have to do because you don't, and that there's often another approach or maybe this deserves a rethink rather than beating your head against the wall.
That's what you've done in the business you have now. You've used the experience in accounting, your experience as an attorney and found another way to be able to deliver those services.
What is interesting is everything I've done has led up to this path. Sitting in and BSing with people in flea markets, I stand up and I tell funny stories about everything that can go awry in taxes. The phone rings and people will tell me, "You're a great salesman." I don't know why. There's knocking on doors and schmoozing with people. By the way, I was never much of a drinker, so I'm not a big drinker. I happen to like whiskey but I'll have one. That's about it for me. What do you do in college? That is the center of everything. I became a bartender. I could be out all night with everybody. I made a lot of money. I was cool. I injured my hip, I couldn't work out anymore. I was a fat Jewish guy with a lisp and glasses. I was cool. I got dates, I made money, I was with everyone and I didn't have to sit and drink awful beer.
There's always another way. It's the how.
All of those little things, those are skills that you take into whatever you're doing.
Even you describing being in accounting and not being the joy of your life, you've pivoted in your career but you found another way.
You asked me why did I stick with it. It’s because I looked at who was recruiting. I thought I'll go into market. I'm a BS artist. This is where I'm good at. Who was recruiting the marketing majors? Bloomingdale's. Back then, we’re still in business. It was retail. I'm like, “I didn't go to college to work in retail.” Most people think, "I'm going to go into advertising and I'll be doing Google's new ad.” No, you're not. It's a very, “Work your way out,” of thing. I looked around at management and marketing and didn't want to go into retail. I thought at least accounting gave me a base, a foundation to work with.
I got the same advice when I was younger. I go to these networking events with my mom and I would ask all the people there, "What should my major be?” They were always like, “Accounting. It gives you the background you need to do business.” It's true because there are a lot of people that open businesses, they might be good at what they do, but they're not understanding the business side of it. Accounting is one of those things that help you do that or you need to hire an expert to help you get advice.
Given what I do, we see a lot of people get into tax trouble or they’re very good at being a landscaper or a carpenter or whatever they are, but they don't have their arms around the business.
You've created your own firm through your journey. What lessons do you think you bring to your team based on how your beliefs have been matured along the way? As far as inspiring your partners, your staff or so forth and things that you want to make sure that they expand how they think about things or find another way to get there as well.
No one client is that important that it's worth doing things that jeopardize our character. You hear so often that it was a big client. It was a big file. The one thing about being able to market has taught me that there's another client. I'm unwilling to do anything that puts the firm or myself in jeopardy. We have fired clients and let clients go, including some fairly sizeable estate planning clients if they're not going to listen or they want to do things that we simply cannot go down that path. We are better off. If nothing else, we don't have to live in fear of that. I don't want to make it sound like our clients are not worth dealing with, that there's always another client, but there is some truth to that in saying, “Yes, if this is not a good fit. It may temporarily hurt, but there will be another client.”
That goes with defining the kinds of personas you want to work with because of the culture you create. It's very hard to replace people. If customers create a different culture in your business, it's something you can't control unless you figure out how to control it. I remember I had in my business a client that was bringing in tens of thousand dollars a month but they mistreated my staff over and over. I got on the phone with them. I warned them, “This is not the culture that we have here. I don't know how you interact in your business, but this is not okay for mine.”
I gave them a number of warnings and then I had to make the very hard decision to fire the client. Let me tell you, from my staff, they were so much more loyal to me after doing something like that because they knew how hard that would be to let go of a client of that size. It's not about letting everyone go but it's also understanding, who is it that I want to work with? Who is it that's the right fit for my business? It’s making sure you define that so that you create happiness in the work environment that you've got.
We spend so much time at work. There's one of those sayings, find something to do you enjoy and never work a day in your life. That's a little bit glossy, but it goes two different ways. One is the client aspect, like you said. If the client is going to become a cancer, it's got to go. Staff that are going to become a cancer, they have to go. The one thing Jeff and I, Larry and Mark do is we vigorously are policing the firm. Most of the folks we've recruited and we know, only once we had to let somebody go, but if it's going to start heading there, I can't have the whole pool get poison. Backstabbing, politics, I won't have it. I have no tolerance for it. There are some people that enjoy that. There were some politicians in the White House who did seem to enjoy that kind of an atmosphere of people backstabbing each other up. I couldn't buy it. It is critical that you do that and also know that you've got to this point, there will be another client, there will be something else. The other thing too is do keep in mind that you can't erase what hits the internet and what goes on the front page of the newspaper. It is about also managing your brand and making sure you don't do things or take on clients that will damage your brand.
When you go back from your beginning to where you are now, at every stage of our career, we think our career is something different than it is. For instance, when you started out in accounting you were like, “This isn't what I expected when I got into it. I have to pivot. I’ll go to law school, get into law practices." As you get better and better at what you do, you start becoming the leader and then you're in charge. That's a whole skillset that people don't anticipate how hard it is, some of the things you're talking about of having to make hard decisions about clients or staff or customers or whatever that is. You're trained in the expertise of being an accountant, an attorney. How did you make that switch to understanding the people side of leadership? That's a hard shift to make that a lot of people aren't prepared for.
I don't know that a lot of people do it well. Managing people is tough. It is hard. Partly, it comes from marketing, schmoozing with clients, being able to deal with people. What also part of it is you can't lose sight of your goal. The harmony in the firm, knowing that that is first and foremost, that drives a lot of the way I'm going to react to things. In many ways, we give in, but we'll do certain things that Jeff and I maybe otherwise wouldn't have done. I know it helps morale. It's good for morale. It's good for the staff. It does create some esprit de corps. We do those things even though Eric would much rather not.
Creating A Successful Partnership: Don't be so bullheaded to think there is only one way to get things done. There is often another approach that does not take beating your head against the wall.
That's also figuring out who's better at it because we all aren't good at the same things. If he doesn't enjoy doing that part, it might get offset on you because that's something that you're okay doing.
I do know that between me and the scary litigators, anytime there's an issue, people like to come to me, not Jeff. I always noticed that they always come to me with their problems. It's because they figure I am the more even-tempered of us. The truth is you do need to know what you're good at and what you're not good at. You delegate the things that you're not good at to people that are.
You being in a partnership is another shift. What did you think it would be like versus how have you had to make some shifts in your way of working to have partners? That's hard too.
I was solo and I've been a partner. There were different stresses to both. On the one hand, if you're a solo, you don't have to deal with partners. Whenever you decide goes, it's all on you. The flip side of that is it is all on you. You have to decide these things. You're never on vacation. I can't miss the call or get back to people. Now, I can leave and I've got a whole team of people that can respond. Cases are still being worked, hearings and still being held with the IRS, even though I'm not there. I'm in New York talking to Amy Vetter. You take the good with the bad. What I would suggest if people want to be partners is to be really careful who your partners are. Choose your partners wisely. It's like choosing a spouse. For better or worse, you're in and the worse can be bad. Business breakups can be worse than divorces.
What have been the changes you've made in your life along the way with your career? How has it affected the people around you?
I was trying to get more balance in my life. I didn't have it because I felt like I had to do something, I always had to keep going. I had to be doing or I'm letting everyone down. In rethinking the balance in my life, I am now a better person with the staff. I am more present when they have things to talk about, I can actually do more coaching. If my staff have to go to other companies to listen to my talks, to learn something from me, that's a problem. It’s embracing the idea that I need to separate from the business. When I leave in the evening, I'm done. For a long time, it was seven days a week and I'm burned out and I'm tired. I am edgy, unpleasant to be around. We created the environment around us. It was in Japan, they did the snowflake thing experiment where the vibes you put out distort or change the crystalline structure of a snowflake.
The idea being is that there’s something to the aura, the energy that we put out. I'm sure that that was affecting other people around. The truth is like Jeff, no joking aside, he has been on a tear of trial after the trial. He is under severe stress. Inevitably his patience is naturally way thinner than mine. Who frankly gets to sit in the office and yell, enjoyed storming the castle as they all head out the door to go fight in court. I was very concerned in, if I start detaching myself more, is that going to negatively impact things getting done or whatever? I found the exact opposite by bringing more balance into my life. I think it's brought more balanced to the firm.
That's a great observation and belief system to break that we can only be so good for so long. Our brains get on overdrive. The fact that you created that awareness for yourself of that this was happening for you because a lot of people don't want to admit that. It takes a lot of strength to admit, "I'm the one creating this energy around me. I need to shift something in my life. Something's not working." You could text me or going to jump off a bridge as you did.
What's funny is I'm driving into work when I texted that. I was at a red light. There are people who have real problems, health problems, financial. You think that this is a good problem. You're just so busy. There is such a thing as too busy. You start having these thoughts, would I be better if I didn't get up in the morning, if I roll-over and that was the end? One of the things I heard was when you start to get depressed, what you do or should do consider is stacking gratitude. What are the things that are working? What are the things that are going well? While I'm driving in, you can listen to YouTube. There's an app that does that. One of the podcasts I listened to is Impact Theory. Tom Bilyeu was talking about this very thing. He met a friend who said, "What have you got to be happy?" He was like, "I got nothing, brother." The person is like, "You really got nothing?” He talked about this stacking.
On my way in, I was thinking about my wife, my family, my partners, our fights in our partnership are very unique. At the end of the year, we fight about money but it's usually, "No, you take it." "No, you take it." We don't fight. There's no greed. That is what my understanding is fairly unique among firms. My thought is there's a lot to be thankful for. Things are good, you'll not get depressed. You're good. I need to get my arms around it. I need to make some changes, but I've got a nice piece of granite to work from. I've got stuff to with because I have lawyers as clients who can’t pay their bills. “Enjoy the little victories and enjoy it as you go,” that is so hard. When people tell me, "Enjoy it, it goes quickly," I'd be like, "What? I got 70 or 80 years. What are you talking about?" Now, I'm feeling it. My clock is ticking. I get to enjoy this while I can.
It's an important point to make of not running away in those moments, in giving everything up. Where do I need to stop and pause, listen to other experts, go find a therapist, whatever you need to do, find some outside activity to relieve that stress. Sometimes we get in these cycles of we feel like we have to do everything, control everything, and it's not possible. It's not humanly possible and we're not at our best, like you said, then you get burnt out. It's such a great example that you shared. It’s important for people to know that from the outside, someone can look really successful but there's inner turmoil going on and most people, and they're not wearing it on the outside for everyone to see. It's our personal journey that we each have to take to get ourselves on that even keel.
People see Amy and the TED Talks, the two books and your keynote speaking here and there. What they don't see is everything that went into that, the good end of that. People talk about the same thing on books and every major conference when people don't realize they get up at 4:00 and get PowerPoint slides done to get all that stuff done and went and spoke. I once spoke in a karaoke bar for a group and somebody fell asleep on the front row. I'm on this karaoke stage in this crappy bar in Connecticut giving this talk to people who clearly don't care. Everyone does that.
That's how you get experience. Again, it's having your eye on the bigger goal, the bigger vision and not thinking that things come at the snap of your fingers when looking at someone else. I always ask some rapid-fire questions. You have to pick a category first and then I ask you the question. The category is family or friends, money, spiritual or health?
Health.
What are things or actions I don't have that I want with my health?
I have an issue with food addiction, to the point where if I'm going to engage the same time you are, I am not thinking about the talk or being there or the beauty of it or whatever. I'm thinking about where are we going to dinner? What crap can Eric eat while he's in Vegas and his wife is not going to watch him? For me, I have an unhealthy relationship with food.
We all have to notice and figure out how to work with that. What are things or actions I do have that I want with my health?
I have been going to the gym fairly consistently, which is good. I’ve got to keep that up.
Make time. What are things or actions I don't have that I don't want with my health?
I'm getting to a lot of things. I don't want to take my health for granted. Most of my grandfathers died in the early 60s. True medical technology has improved. What they died of, I will not. I can't assume I'm going to be around until 85 or 90 or longer. I don't want ugly, nasty illnesses but the bigger thing is I'm not to take my health for granted.
Creating A Successful Partnership: You need to know what you're good at and you delegate the things that you're not good at to people that are.
Last one, what are things or actions that I do have that I don't want with my health?
I drink way too much coffee. Coffee is healthy but not when you give yourself arrhythmia. I ended up going to my doctor. I keep getting like that racing heart sensation. He does EKG, everything. I'm fine. They don't see anything. Finally, he says to me, “How much coffee you drink in a day?” “They’re 6, 7, 8 cups.” He said, “Do you drink any diet soda?” At that time I did, “About 3 or 4." He's like, “Maybe you should cut back on the caffeine. Let's see if it clears up." Meanwhile, he did send me to a heart specialist, cardiovascular doctor. There’s nothing wrong with me. They were like, “Keep it to two cups a day for a while.” I have a really bad habit with caffeine and it's something I wish I could stop.
From this conversation that we had, to end with, I want to make sure to give you an opportunity if there is anything you want people to come away with as your message and anything about your company as well that you would like people to know.
There are a bunch of them. One is it's very easy to become depressed over whatever the problem is ahead of you. Do stack gratitude, keep in mind the things you do have working, go get help. You and I sat at lunch, we talked. We could sit and talk and I always come away with, “If things are not dire, it's good to have a board of directors, which could be family, but it may be other colleagues. It can be people in other industries you're just friends with. Keep in mind all the good things you've got going on.” Don't be afraid to pick. I like this but I don't like this and I know this is traditionally what I should be doing, but I'm going to take it in a different direction and I am going with it, go for it.
Where can people find you if they want to find out more about what you do?
If you Google Eric Green, there's a lot of stuff up there. Tax Rep Network, which is the coaching program is at TaxRepLLC.com. The Tax Rep Network Podcast is on every major podcast channel, Google, iTunes. The law firm, Green & Sklarz, we're in New Haven where you can certainly find us there.
Thank you so much for being on and I really appreciate how authentic you were during this interview and hopefully a lot of people learn from some of your messages.
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.
---
For Mindful Moments, we take some time to pause and think about the discussion that we had with Eric. There are some areas that I noted that are important for us to think about. One is going back into our past and understanding how we even got to where we are and why we made the decisions that we did and maybe how some of those decisions have affected us internally without us even realizing it. When Eric talks about quitting football, you can feel the emotion behind that decision and the way that he went about it, whether it was right or wrong but that has stuck with him all of these years since. It's important that we do identify those moments in our lives where maybe we weren't as happy the way we made a decision. We are happy about a decision but making that intentional observation of how it might have affected us internally or the decisions that we make in the present moment because of something that happened in the past.
When he talks about quitting, you can feel the emotion behind it. How we resolve it in our heads to make sure either we don't make the same mistake that we feel we made or how it affects our decision-making ability into the future. He also talked about that whole notion of it's not a matter of can we get something accomplished, but it's the how. That's important for all of us in our careers that often we hear a lot of noes where people come up with ideas and everyone around will go, it can't happen because of this. It can't happen because of that. There are lots of noes and it's important that we step back in those types of discussions. Instead of immediately saying no or thinking about the how, the details and so forth, it's stepping back from a higher level and saying, “Is this possible?” and brainstorming it. There is always a way to make something happen. It may not be the way that you envisioned it originally, but when you brainstorm it and think about different ways to get to the same result, sometimes you come up with an even better idea than where you started.
Another big important point we talked about was about client service and when clients don't fit with our model. For a lot of us, we don't necessarily define the clients and the customers that we want to work with and whether that fits into our culture. It's important that it's not just about us getting business, that when we're bringing customers or clients into our business, we're interviewing them for a good fit as well. Replacing staff is a lot more expensive than any one customer and we need to protect our culture. Number one, people feel valued, whether that be from the people they work with or from the customers that you interact with. We can all create a culture where people feel safe around the customers and the staff.
In order to do that, we have to monitor that culture. We have to monitor those interactions and police it to ensure that we are able to create the kind of business and environment that we intend to create. We can't just expect that to happen. We have to actively work on it. Another important observation that I had was when he was talking about his partners, the partnership that they had and how unique it was. He talks about that none of them have any greed. It's more about, "No, you take this or you take this." That is so different than many of the partners that I've ever worked with as clients that we don't always see that partners put others first, that everyone's usually looking at it from their own perspective.
When you look at successful businesses, they have leaders that put the business before themselves, before their own ego. This is an important lesson about whether we have greed or not in the work that we do or whether we're serving for a higher purpose and we understand why we do what we do. At the end of the day, we are happy to be doing it and want to share in the benefits or the rewards that we have together. Lastly, I felt honored with Eric that he shared his own emotional turmoil that he's gone through and he shared with it personally where we've had many discussions as well. The fact that he's sharing it with all of you as well is important because he's gone on a journey himself of rethinking his life and making sure that he is living in the present moment that he's not getting overloaded. He also is ensuring that the energy that he's creating for the people around him, whether that be at work or his family, that he cares enough about them to do the work on himself.
What I'd like you to leave with is to ensure that we aren't looking at when we work on ourselves, when we try to figure out why we feel burned out, rather than being negative about those issues. Instead, it’s looking at our lives and saying, “What could I say no to? Where can I put boundaries in my life? What things are not feeling good? How can I continue to be grateful for what is wonderful in my life?” I want you to do what Eric was talking about. About having this gratitude practice, this stacking practice of what are you grateful for today rather than focusing on the negative? It’s figuring out, are you proud of the energy that you're putting out in the world? If you don't feel good about it, what could you do differently tomorrow to start making those little shifts in your life so that you create the environment that you want to have with those around you?
Important Links:
iTunes - Tax Rep Network Podcast on iTunes
About Eric Green
Eric is a partner in Green & Sklarz LLC, a boutique tax firm with offices in Connecticut and New York. The focus of Attorney Eric L. Green’s practice is civil and criminal taxpayer representation. He is a frequent lecturer on tax topics for national organizations.
He is the author of the Accountant’s Guides to IRS Collection and Resolving Tax Debts, and is the founder of Tax Rep LLC, a coaching program for accountants and attorneys. Attorney Green is a past Chair of the Executive Committee of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Tax Section, and is a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel (“ACTC”).
Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!
Join the Breaking Beliefs community today: