235. “3.3 Framework and Over 400% Profit Increase” with John Briggs

Dawn welcomes back accountant and Incite Tax founder John Briggs, whose firm has grown to about 250 team members serving small business owners with bookkeeping, tax filing, and tax strategy. Briggs shares a key tax update: the 20% Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction, emphasizing that eligibility and optimization depend on specific circumstances, including wage and self-employment income considerations. He introduces his book, Take Breaks, Work Better, arguing hustle culture drives burnout and is mismatched with how brains naturally cycle between focus and distraction. Briggs explains his “3.3 rule” (work up to three hours, then take a 30% recovery break) and says implementing it increased his firm’s profit by 492% over three years while improving productivity, retention, and role fit, and he outlines practical recovery breaks and how leaders can reinforce the culture.

Who is John Briggs and whom does he serve? (00:37)

Tax Updates QBI (01:03)

Book And Hustle Culture (03:05)

Science Of Breaks (07:19)

Recovery Break Ideas (12:44)

3.3 Rule At Work (14:40)

Resistance And Coaching (17:30)

Self-Awareness Training (21:07)

Role Fit And Energy (24:59)

Courses And Freedom (27:37)

Turnover And Leadership (31:01)

AI And Tax Firm (36:53)

Wrap Up And Release (40:30)

John Briggs’ Information: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/therealjohnbriggs/

Website: https://takebreaksworkbetter.com/

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

DAWN KENNEDY: 0:03

Welcome to Business Mastery with Don Kennedy, your quick under forty five minute dose of expert insights and strategies to make a positive impact on your business and life. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Business Mastery Podcast. We're inviting John Briggs back on here again. He was episode seventy one. We had a great conversation about keeping more money in your pocket. That was back in twenty twenty two. We're back again. So we have some updates and a new book and all kinds of things. And can you tell everyone who you are and who you serve?

John Briggs: 0:38

Yeah. So I own an accounting firm, about two hundred and fifty team members. So that's also changed from the last time.

DAWN KENNEDY: 0:44

I.

John Briggs: 0:45

Was on here. We've had some crazy good growth. I am a married father of four kids. The people we serve are small business owners. We want to help as many people keep as much money in their pockets as possible. And we're also trying to help business owners avoid getting burnt out.

DAWN KENNEDY: 1:00

I love it. All right. So let's just do some quick updates. The last time we talked they were really fun sort of tax saving updates to like, hey, you can rent your house to your business for a week. Those kinds of little known sorts of things. So what's been updated over the last few years? What are some other things that we just don't know we can do?

John Briggs: 1:20

Most people don't realize their tax software, their CPA's doing this, but if they're not aware of it, they can hurt themselves. It's called the qbi deduction. This is so when the government changed the C Corp tax structure to be taxed at a flat twenty one percent, some people were like, hold on, most small business owners don't use that tax structure. What can we do? Like what are you going to do for us? And so they came up with this twenty percent qualified business income is what it stands for deduction. And if you play it the right way, like literally what we're saying is if you have one hundred thousand dollars of income, twenty thousand of. It's not going to be taxed. But part of that is there. Like everything, there are nuances and everything. So you definitely want to speak with an accountant about your specific situation. But the gist is you need what the IRS calls self-employment tax or sorry, self-employment income, which they charge self-employment tax on. So like that's schedule C income. If I have an S corp, I want to make sure my W-2 is high enough so that I can take the full advantage of that twenty percent just clean haircut right off the top.

DAWN KENNEDY: 2:32

Amazing. So it almost sounds like it acts like the the standard deduction on personal taxes. Is that similar?

John Briggs: 2:38

Yeah, it's one way to look at it. The standard deduction is way more flexible. Like if you're human and your US taxpayer and you file a return you get a standard deduction. There's no there's no crazy nuances to that. The twenty percent. Yeah. It's like a standard deduction for businesses, but you do have to make sure you have enough wage income or nothing come in general to make sure that happens.

DAWN KENNEDY: 3:02

Amazing. All right. So tell us about your book and taking breaks, keeping more money and how to prevent burning out. So you went from twenty twenty two to twenty twenty. We're in twenty twenty six right now. So you grew to two hundred and fifty employees and you're still sane.

John Briggs: 3:21

According to some people I think my wife might disagree with sometimes. Yeah. So the book is called Take Breaks Work Better. I actually, I initially created it because I just wanted to send a little love letter to my fellow accountants in the industry. I saw this trend. I was super concerned with that enrollment for accounting programs was down across the country, but the churn rate of accountants leading the industry hadn't changed. And I felt like, you know what, you guys, we're gonna have to do something here because small business owners are going to need accountants. I don't care what happens with AI, they're going to. They still want a human to human touch, to look at things, to have a conversation with. And then I started talking to attorneys and lawyers and engineers and creatives. Apparently the same problem in the accounting industry is actually worldwide doesn't matter what industry. And I realize the root cause is hustle culture. Hustle culture has just it's so sexy. And the two things that it pushes of more money and more prestige are very appealing to a lot of people. I mean, who doesn't want more money? But what we haven't, what we haven't realized is it is ingrained. And because they feel like if I'm not working all the time that I'm lazy, that I'm worthless, that there's no value that I'm creating, uh, and it's just not simply the case. And so I wanted to write a book about that. I wanted to help people see the hustle culture is not The truth here, people. And the reality is we're working the same way we used to work one hundred years ago when Henry Ford created the five day work week and the forty hour work week, like he invented the weekend and he lowered it to forty hours. And at the time, that was awesome because they were used to working eighty hours a week and working six days a week. Right? But now here we are one hundred years later, we have a bit more science to tell us working that type of shift, just straight eight hours or ten hours or twelve hours. If hustle culture is telling us what to do, our brains are not built for that. We are physically not built to do that. And the science shows that you have to take a break if you want to be more productive. Right?

DAWN KENNEDY: 5:46

Yeah. And it's it's interesting. I almost feel like the pendulum swinging back, right? So Eric Reeves wrote the book in twenty eleven on the Lean Startup, and it was fail fast, make mistakes. And, and I think what got missed in the entrepreneurial sort of smaller business container at the time was these are highly capitalized businesses that have VCs and they have a lot of money and they have a really fast feedback loop. And for the businesses that you're talking about and the ones that you work with, right? Accountants and attorneys and some of these other things, I mean, how fast are the feedback loops? How fast can you make mistakes? And so the, the hustle culture sort of feels like that was developed in some way to be like, well, when you're making these really fast mistakes and you're really making these feedback loops quicker because you're working harder, you're calling more people, you're doing more things and whatever. So it's almost trying to like bottleneck a small business into doing things that maybe it's not designed to do. Because what's the durability in that? You've been an accountant for how long?

John Briggs: 6:52

Yeah. Fifteen years.

DAWN KENNEDY: 6:53

Okay. So how many small businesses that started with you fifteen years ago are still there?

John Briggs: 6:58

Yeah, I'd have to go back and look. I'd probably count them on my two hands. Yeah.

DAWN KENNEDY: 7:05

Yeah. So I think you're, you're definitely on to onto something that the, the hustle culture thing that forces people into the burnout. It kind of robs a little durability there.

John Briggs: 7:15

Yeah. It's, I mean, it's not sustainable, right? And yeah. I think. If we think about some of those elements, like, I'm not saying don't work hard, like based on the science. And if you really want to be as productive as possible when you work, work. But the reason is, the thing is people can't work that focused the whole time. They there are three or four studies that I found that all came. It's eerie how all of them got. Within about ten minutes of this same number I'm about to share. Wow. The average worker is productive for two hours and forty eight minutes a day.

DAWN KENNEDY: 7:55

Now I was thinking five.

John Briggs: 7:57

So yeah. two hours and forty eight minutes. And it was like I seriously for different studies, like there's two hours and fifty two minutes and two hours and forty three minutes. I'm like, this is crazy. They just all been this just under three hours. And the reason is because your brain, the Princeton Neurological Institute, did a study, and they found that our brains have a natural cycle between a state of focus and a state of distraction. It goes between the two, and it's a natural cycle. What I love about natural cycles is you can't fight them. And so I use this silly example because sometimes I can see a hustle culture. We did improv once, so I kind of like improv comedy and it's like, okay, there's a hustle culture dude sitting at a desk like, boy, I got to go to the bathroom. No, I'm just gonna to push through because I don't want to be lazy and I got to get stuff done. Well, if you have to go to the bathroom and you're trying to push through, you quickly realize something else is trying to push its way through. Like no one can hustle their way past the need to relieve themselves. It is not possible. The same goes with our mind. We're trying to basically fight this natural cycle. Your brain saying, hey, I'm coming into this state of being distracted and you're like, no, no, I'm going to push through. I'm just going to sit here. And so then those poor average workers, two hours and forty three minutes, forty eight minutes a day, they're sitting there. It's like their brain is just like, come like become numb because it didn't, we didn't give it the ability to take a real recovery break, which then allows you to come back totally focused. And so like, that is the element in the way we work that is completely missing. And the people who have figured it out. When I share it with them, they're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. There was like scientific reasons why I felt this need. They're just more in tune with themselves. Why I felt this need to take these breaks a little bit more often.

DAWN KENNEDY: 9:55

It's interesting too. We have much more cognitive load now than maybe one hundred years ago when you were working for Henry Ford.

John Briggs: 10:03

Yeah.

DAWN KENNEDY: 10:04

I'm wondering, do you if people are going to listen to that, I'd be like, no, I can do five hours. Okay, but what are you doing over those five hours? Right. So accounting work, lawyering work, any sort of very focused cognitive work is, I mean, exhausting. How many times have you finished a day and been more tired than you would have been if you were just puttering on the garden and building a stone wall, for example? And I don't know that we have been really honest with ourselves and our employees about what is the cognitive load of the people who are in accounts receivables or the the people who are even doing warehouse work or any of those kinds of things at all. And then your consultants and all these people that are having to do a lot of, I'm going to just call it brain bandwidth, because that's what came to the top of my head.

John Briggs: 10:55

Yeah.

DAWN KENNEDY: 10:55

So from this two hour and you said forty eight minute before you need a break, that's the focus time. Was there any anything in those studies? I mean, did they look at all between like the Henry Ford's of being on the assembly line. And today is much, much more digital cognitive load sort of thing. It's not like.

John Briggs: 11:15

You can.

DAWN KENNEDY: 11:16

Just the mail comes at three o'clock, you open all the letters, you type out a few responses and you send it out. Now it's like ding, ding, ding, the emails hit in your box.

John Briggs: 11:23

Yeah, the cognitive load, that's such a good phrase because most people haven't heard it, but it is exactly what we're talking about here. The more cognitive load you have, the faster your brain wants to cycle back into that state of distractibility. And all the stuff you mentioned is true. Yes, because it's the age of the knowledge worker now, right? Right. And I guess some people are saying it's now more of I don't know what the new thing is like. It's not even just the knowledge worker. But yeah, lots of brain powers necessary when we think about the past. They didn't have that. But what they also didn't have were cell phones and Slack and Outlook pop ups. Like we are so inundated outside of just the normal work stuff, because why marketing companies have spent billions and trillions of dollars over the hundred years to figure out how to convince people to buy their stuff. Well, the way to do that is to get their attention. That request on our attention is a cognitive load. And so like, one of the worst things you can do, which is most people's immediate go to habit, oh, I need to take a break, pull out my phone and start scrolling on Instagram and TikTok. Guess what? That's not. Releasing your. Brain from cognitive load.

DAWN KENNEDY: 12:39

So that's not a break. And that is so built in. So what does a break look like then. What are we supposed to be doing.

John Briggs: 12:46

Yeah. And I'll just first say, look if you want to do that, that's awesome. When I talk about breaks, I'm talking about a recovery break in between. I just had a focus session. I need a recovery break so that I can come back focused. If you're done for the day and you like, want to do some of those things that are fun but still have cognitive load from a personal standpoint. Awesome. I'm not trying to say don't do that if you don't want to, but a recovery break as you asked, it has to give your brain a break. You have to let lighten that cognitive load. The gold standard is walking outside because movement is good. So if you can't walk outside, even doing some light stretching, moving around in your office is helpful. If you don't like to walk, just sitting outside in the sunlight is really good for you. But if it's a cold area, maybe stand in front of a window. Hopefully you get it that way. Yeah. Walking's the gold standard. Interestingly enough, most people who aren't creatives doing creative like things like painting, drawing, coloring in a coloring book, those actually aren't cognitive load on our brains. I mean, there's a decent amount, but ultimately what you're trying to think about is this a complete detachment from work? Like if I'm doing tax returns and then I'm going to check email for my break, that's not a break. If I'm consulting with clients and then going and having a one on one with a team member after that, that's not a break. It's something different, but it's not a break. So we're really looking for things that help us really just mentally check out during that time period.

DAWN KENNEDY: 14:25

So that's interesting because you're one hundred percent. I see it now from your from what you just described, that we do think by switching activities, we're taking a break, but that's actually not really a break. We're just switching activities. So with a team of two hundred and fifty, how do you implement this in your own company and how have you found it affects productivity or getting tasks done? Because I know you practice what you preach. So how do you do that inside a team of two fifty, there's going to be business owners on here who are listening and going, wait a minute. Not everybody. Yeah, they can't step outside all the time. Every two hours. You want them to go outside. What's going on? So we address.

John Briggs: 15:07

That. Look. I completely understand because once I understood the science, I still fought it. I'm like, hold on. No, no, I'm gonna pay him to just sit there and I'm literally requesting he do absolutely nothing for the work, like for my company during that time period, I'm paying him and at two fifty that you add up the hourly rates of all your team members. It's a very expensive hourly rate. But here's the deal. That's exactly what I'm saying. One because if you think about the numbers I just said, the average worker working the way hustle culture has pushed us and the way people just do it naturally without realizing it doesn't support science. Two hours and forty eight minutes of productivity. That means you're already paying people five hours a day to be unproductive. So with the take breaks work better. The rule itself is I call it the three point three rule, and this is what defines how we should approach work. The most productive workday consists of working up to three hours at a time, followed by a thirty percent recovery break. Hence the three point three. So and it's up to three hours. It's a framework, and we can get into why it's a framework versus like a strict rule. But so what I'm telling my team members is, okay, work up to whatever that hour is. And yeah, whenever you're done and you're like, I'm mentally need to like go through my state of distraction mode here, then detach from work. I'm saying that because in an eight hour work day, my three point three rule will give you six hours of productivity versus three hours of just under three hours of productivity. But no, it was hard. And until I realized, wait, I'm already paying them to not be productive. So what we have seen is that productivity has increased. The first three years following me implementing this rule, we increased by four hundred and ninety two percent in profit. And that was before our crazy amount of growth that we experienced afterwards, which I'm convinced would not have happened if I didn't already have the foundational element of letting my team members have the permission to take the break so that they can come back and be more focused.

DAWN KENNEDY: 17:28

So what was the resistance in the ranks, because I'm pretty sure you hired in some experienced rock stars. What was the resistance in the ranks and how did how did you address that piece?

John Briggs: 17:39

Yeah, so we were probably about forty team members when we really got serious about implementing this. And yeah, the the resistance was company wide. They're like, wait a minute. This feels like a trick. Is John trying to like, just catch us. Set us up? Yeah. Not working. And he can fire us because we're not working. That was the first immediate, like what I started seeing. I'm like, guys, this isn't really it's not a trick. And so as I asked some of my A players, I'm like, I really need you to do this. I would go out of my way to catch them in a break, ask them about it and thank them for it so that everyone else in the company could say publicly that I'm like, I am serious about this. Thank you for taking a break. Man, that's such a great break idea. Really good. And so then that got people starting. Okay, we're maybe he is serious. He's not trying to just fire the whole company. I don't know, sometimes business owners are like, why would I want I'm. Not trying to I want you to be. Successful. Like I'm leveraging my money for you to do work like I want you to be. Anyways, the next thing that I found was I had some team members go immediately to, okay, cool. I'm going to block out. I'm just going to know that I'm going to work from noon or one to four every day. That's my three hour block. And then I'm going to take the last hour of the day off because that's my three point three break, which is theoretically allowed. Like if you're ending your workday on a break, then I don't need you to just sit around, go on, go home, do your thing. Right. The problem with that is you cannot predict that far in advance what your body needs because and this goes back to something I mentioned. We are all different, right? Introverts, extroverts. Ambivert. Ambivert. I think they have all different names these days. But we all approach differently. We have preferences. Different things give us different energy. And like for me, you give me a spreadsheet and some financials and say, hey, do some forecasting. I'll geek out. I love that stuff. I could go in the full three hours. I got to set my timer to remind me like, hey, you're at the end of your three hour block, be done. You asked me to like be a receptionist and answer the phone for an hour. I'm, I'm like toast after an hour. And that's just my normal preference. Now, you added the fact that work life harmony is the phrase we need to be thinking about because work affects life, and life affects work. How did my morning go? Did I have an argument with my wife? Did one of my kids tick me off because they're being irresponsible? I then carry that into work. And so now that spreadsheet forecasting tasks that I love, I'm having a hard time focusing because I've carried some personal weight into it, which is natural, and you can't ask your team not to do that. So that day, I might only be able to do an hour before I need a break. And so you have these swings in our ability to focus, which is why it's a framework. And I would tell people like, look, best case scenario, you could potentially plan the day before of when you're going to try to take your break, but to just block off the last hour of your day for an entire three years. The next three years, not going to happen. So that those were the two biggest resistance we've had when we implemented it. And then you just coach them through it and get through the roadblocks and talk people through it.

DAWN KENNEDY: 21:05

Love it. So now my my next question is how many people were instantly including yourself, because I'm now contemplating this on our conversation, how many people instantly knew what it felt like to have that overload and need a break? And how many people were gauging it like, well, maybe another ten minutes or it. I wonder if there's a lot of self awareness because of, again, that hustle culture training and wanting to be responsible. Was that something that also sort of needed to be trained? Did you have to walk people through? What does that feel like for you when you actually need to stop?

John Briggs: 21:42

One hundred percent had to walk people through it. I would say for sure, less than ten percent. I haven't ran the actual numbers, but my gut tells me it's less than five percent. Having immediate innate understanding of, I'm in tune with myself. And that's one of the auxiliary benefits. I feel like the three point three rule, I don't know if there's anything more powerful than having that self-awareness to just naturally know I'm not focused right now. I'm just going to take a quick break and then I'm now I'm just a more productive person if I understand that. Yeah, most people are not that way. So what we've actually done, we created effectively training wheels. People have an idea. We break it down into three archetypes. You have the sprinters. And so that's someone who really is like more than an hour. I know that I need a little bit of a break. You have the joggers for somewhere in the middle. And then you have the marathoners where, like me with the forecasting, I can be a marathoner on that stuff. No problem. I think coders sometimes can like find themselves in the like, Cal Newport deep work and they're like, I'm a marathoner and I'm none of those are right or none of those are wrong. They're all great, right? Because when you work, you need to work, right? And so if I'm a marathoner, that's still a sprint, like I'm still trying to run fast in a marathon versus a sprinter anyway. So you have those three archetypes. You then break it down into the different tasks that you're doing. And so people can start with like a foundational knowledge of, I think I'm, this is who I am. But for the training wheels, we call it the three point three starter week for five days. We recommend starting it on a Monday. You just have a breakdown. Like I want you to live the short blocks, the short focus blocks. I want you to live the long focused blocks and I want you to rotate them. Start. Start this day with the short block. Start this day with the long block so that by the end, at the end of every day, I'm asking you to like take some self-reflection and answer like about three questions. Which blocks felt better? What tasks were in those blocks? Did it give me energy? So by the end of five days, you now have a better idea of where to start with. Oh, I, this is where I do lean more. I'm more of a sprinter or I'm more of a jogger. But yeah, no, people needed the structure in the beginning. So I'm not a fan of long term rigidity. Right. But the Pomodoro technique is a portable method. Whatever. People are familiar with it. Sometimes it was designed by a guy who couldn't focus for more than a minute when it came to studying. And so while that method is probably effective for people when they're studying, not super effective for us when we're working, because when that timer goes off at twenty minutes, at twenty five minutes, it goes off. You could be in the zone. You just broke yourself out of that trance of like flow state. I don't want people to do that. And so we only recommend the three point three starter week at the beginning. And then maybe after you've lived it a little bit, maybe you do a refresh just to confirm your findings with your own self. But it is about self-awareness.

DAWN KENNEDY: 24:58

So I'm curious because I have an instant sort of idea of a side effect is if somebody gets into this and they realize ninety percent of my stuff doesn't give me joy or give me energy. Have you been able to find people who request to move or they want to, like they've had more time to look and see. These are all the tasks that every time I get into them, I can do the three hours I'm geeking out on spreadsheets or whatever it is for them, and the rest of it is just not doing it for me. Maybe I should try to find a role where I'm in my energy for a greater proportion of the day. Has that happened?

John Briggs: 25:33

Yes. And here's the thing any small business owner will eventually their team members will eventually come to that realization, regardless of this. What we're talking about. But what I love about the three point three rule is it accelerates the discovery of that situation way faster. Can you imagine having someone in the wrong role? They're miserable. They hate it. Look, I don't care how good of a person that is. They're not doing as good of a job as they could be compared to someone who loves that job. And so you've just saved yourself like years potentially of less than ideal productivity because you've helped someone identify quicker that they may not like their actual job role. Now, that being said, we have two hundred and fifty team members, so we have the luxury of multiple departments. So we have had admins switch to bookkeeping like we can. We have that luxury where we can switch some people around, but when we were a smaller business, there's no way. It's just like, yeah, I'm sorry Bob, that you don't like your job, but like, I don't have other options for you. So thanks for letting me know. And I guess this is our mutual parting of ways. And I need to find someone who does like that job.

DAWN KENNEDY: 26:44

You know, when they walk away from that, they also have some more really deep awareness from themselves where they can maybe find something that gives them more satisfaction. We have also moved people around. We have a small team, but it was enough to have people say, well, treat it as like you were filling enough for a little while and let's get you where you really, really feel good about, you know, showing up every single time. So beyond the science and all of the resistance and all of the self-awareness and all these things just for everybody listening as you're driving into work, remind us of the productivity increases from implementing this framework.

John Briggs: 27:22

Yeah. So the three years following implementing the framework, we grew four hundred and ninety two percent.

DAWN KENNEDY: 27:28

Yeah. Profit.

John Briggs: 27:30

That's significant. Yeah.

DAWN KENNEDY: 27:34

Yes, absolutely. So do you teach workshops on this or be on the book? Are there any frameworks and things that people can get their hands on? If you're listening to this today and we've been doing the Business Mastery podcast for a very long time, this is the first time I'm hearing it. It's so funny because they do have so many productivity tools out there, like the Pomodoro or some other hustle culture productivity guides. We're going to swing the pendulum the other way and we're going to get back into. I also wrote a book, and the biggest thing that came out of that was decisions propagate through people, not spreadsheets. Right? So the human has to come into what they have to carry. And this is just a beautiful. Hey, this is an application of the fact that people are carrying what you're asking them to carry, and now they can do it in a way that makes them more effective and more successful.

John Briggs: 28:23

Yeah, totally. Yeah. So the website for the book is Take Breaks work better dot com. I have a website. It's called The real John Briggs dot com. Yeah. We work with business owners. We have a bunch of tools from the book. Depending on when you're hearing this, it might be pre order stage. There's some bonuses if you pre-order the book. Okay. And then we have a digital course that walks people through the different elements of first implementing with yourself, like the actual format of the three point three starter week. And then once you've implemented it, how do you implement it with your team? And I'll say this too, because sometimes I talk about this and I get it, some people see those messages from the hustle culture guru guys who are just a phenomenal marketers. And I actually like a lot of their business stuff, but I just feel like you'd be smart enough to pull out the. That's a business principle. That's a hustle culture belief that is contingent on the business principle. There are. One guy a post recently was like, if you don't have a billion dollar mindset, I don't even want to hang out with you. And so like, it's off putting to some of us like, yeah, but maybe I just want to make six figures and spend time with my family. That's okay too. And some people are like, I don't want to grow a business. And what I've been talking about is implementing with your first yourself first and then with team. The reason is my personal belief is when we start a business, we say we want more freedom. But I don't think a lot of us take the time to really define what does that freedom mean for me? I think if they do, they realize there's three types of freedoms they're actually looking for. You want financial freedom, you want time freedom, and you want mental freedom or freedom from stress. Like when you leave work, you want to leave work at work and come. I think those are the three freedoms that most business owners haven't had anyone say like, yeah, no, I don't want all three of those. Like. So with that being said, I say I believe the best way to get those three freedoms is to have team. And I'm not saying that doesn't have to be W-2 team members. There are many structures to team. You can have out contractors, right? You can have joint ventures. But if it's just you and you take a vacation, which is awesome, take vacations, you come back to the pile of work that was there while you were off. But if you have a team when you come back, you can come back to just your normal flow of things. And so that's why I'm, that's my personal belief. I'm not trying to push people down a path of saying, I gotta be a billion, million dollar company. But I do believe you need team to really enjoy those three freedoms.

DAWN KENNEDY: 30:59

Absolutely. And again, coming back to your framework, beyond the growth and stuff, how much more durable would you say that your teammates are. What's your turnover now? Right. So there's got to be not just benefits to the individual and benefits to the business. They need to kind of work together. And by letting people work well in their natural rhythms, what are you seeing overall for things like turnover costs and training burden and ROI on the team you've invested in and you invested in them by saying, I'm going to pay you a couple hours to take breaks, and it's not like you're spending really much more than you would on an average eight hour day. It's sort of what I'm hearing.

John Briggs: 31:42

Totally. Yeah. From that standpoint, my labor cost is the same, right? Yeah. I just have doubled my productivity because I'm giving them permission to not focus on work for periods of the day. So from a turnover standpoint, I mean, with two hundred and fifty and we, I mean, we grew so fast, we definitely had to work through some hiring system problems. I would say this though, out of, I would say the last ten years ish that we've been for sure running the three point three rule. I could probably count on my hand less than five people that I didn't want to lose. That left the other team members. Look, you're going to have some people that are just phenomenal interviewing. They get through the thread and they're just not the right fit, right? You can't keep them around. And that's a sometimes a mutual choice. Sometimes it's your choice. And they'd rather stay because like, hey, I'm getting paid to not work. This is great. Drawing cartoons.

DAWN KENNEDY: 32:36

At lunch. Why are you getting rid of it? Yes, I get it.

John Briggs: 32:39

And that's one of the other things. Like people are like, well, you're just encouraging people to be lazy with this three point three rule. I'm like, no, actually, if anything, the three point three rules highlight who is lazy because we have metrics. There's a level of productivity we expect out of our team. In order to do that. When you work, you got to work. And when you're done with the work block and you don't have the metrics to show you got projects done or tasks completed, we can tell you didn't do anything. And so for me, it accelerates the uncovering of who's really not going to work out in your business anyways. Oh, I.

DAWN KENNEDY: 33:14

Really like that. That's something that people traditionally can hide for a while. Just kind of. Hide for a while is all I'm going to say, right? You don't find out until later when it's like, surprise, I didn't actually do that. It's like, oh.

John Briggs: 33:30

Yeah. I we, we have a saying now. It's like, if you think it's bad with a team member and their work effort and what they're producing or what poison they're causing and unnecessary drama, it's always worse. Whatever. If you think it's bad, it's always worse once you actually uncover what is going on. Right?

DAWN KENNEDY: 33:50

So I do have one other question because again, you're doing the hiring and now you're with a pretty good enterprise size team. How have you trained the level? I'm going to say beneath I don't mean beneath you as in it's just org chart beneath you.

John Briggs: 34:02

Yes.

DAWN KENNEDY: 34:03

So I hope I'm clear to everybody. I don't.

John Briggs: 34:05

We're.

DAWN KENNEDY: 34:05

All equal whether or not we're owning and carrying some of the load or if we're.

John Briggs: 34:09

You.

DAWN KENNEDY: 34:09

Know, getting a check, we're all equal. How did you implement this or did with certain levels of other leader that can be there to maybe support or potentially enforce if you are not walking around and able to do that?

John Briggs: 34:23

Yeah, it's taking it's training just like anything else. This is a skill we expect our supervisors to have and they need to help facilitate the vision. I am in a mentor group with a lady named Kelly Roach and the legacy leaders. And one of the phrases that I got from her is your model citizen. You, those of you, your team members are that are a-players, they become your model citizens and you want everyone else. If you had all of your team members acting like that person, you're like, that's a model citizen. So it's imperative for me that if you're a supervisor, you are what we define as a model citizen. And if you're not earning that position because you at the size that we are, like, it can't just be me being the one. Here's our vision, guys. Here's what we're looking for. We want you to enjoy your life and we want you to work hard. And we want you to take care of our clients. We want all those things. It can't just be me. It's got to be the supervisors. And so I've definitely personalities. I mean, same the same stuff I had to battle through before I even implemented the rule in a company. I see that sometimes in my leadership team, like I was like, no, just let's just work hard. I'm coming in at five o'clock in the morning and I'm leaving at like ten o'clock at night. I'm like, no, you're not. We're not doing that. That's not what we're doing. That's not in our culture. You're going to survive. You're going to work a normal life. You're going to normal work day. You're gonna have a normal life. This is going to be great. And they eventually come around if they allow it, the principles to work within them. But no, you gotta have if you have anyone who has responsibility for someone in your company other than. And it's not you. You need them on board with this. And so they need to understand, like thank the people when they take the break, encourage them to take the break. If people if they see someone's not taking a break, ask them why they aren't taking their breaks. Yeah, you have to. It's got to be any it has to top down. Right?

DAWN KENNEDY: 36:18

You realize that's turning conventional wisdom on its head. Like on this podcast right here. It's like we were walking around and we're not asking why the project's not done. We're like, why are you still working? How does that sound in a Dilbert cartoon? Right. I mean, if we're just being honest, this conversation is defying all of the conventional leadership and supervisory wisdom. But I'm, I, I really think that the, the results that you've had should at least be a door open for people to go, huh? Maybe there's another way, a better way. And your results have been phenomenal. So all right, so other than the book, we have the website and stuff. How can people reach out to you if they need some small business support with bookkeeping or with accounting. And then also you work with clients on keeping more money in their pockets. I want to make sure that we can we cover that too, because people mean, especially to your point, there's a lot of people leaving the field right now. Good ones. And part of that is the AI thing. We didn't get too much into it, but there there have been some stats about people who are now putting their. And I'm a lawyer, so we're going to do this with our head in their hand. Personal financial data into ChatGPT. So and their business financial data into ChatGPT.

John Briggs: 37:30

Yeah. I mean. AI is awesome. I use it every day. I'm a cloud guy. I started with ChatGPT, switched to cloud and haven't looked back and I've played around with it. I mean, I did enough research to know with the paid version and your special projects, if you're putting your stuff in, it's not going out to the ether and like all those settings and look, it's pretty good with some pretty good some basic ideas on tax strategy, things like that. I have found it's doesn't do as great of a job analyzing Excel spreadsheets, but for bookkeepers like I see, it should help accelerate the way companies like me do our job, which ultimately, if the industry allows or clients put enough pressure, should reduce and decreased pricing, right? Because now I can get more done. Of course, there's those people who want to tax AI usage like you were paying an employee. I don't know if you've seen those articles.

DAWN KENNEDY: 38:29

No, I haven't yet.

John Briggs: 38:31

That's absurd to me. But anyways. Well, you're going to replace human workers and you should have to pay something. I'm going to pay the government as if they're one of my employees as basically a penalty for using a. Anyway, sorry, I digress. I could go on. I mean, I have a lot of thought. I've thought a lot about the AI element in our business because obviously it's going to for sure change the landscape, but I see it creating more jobs than I see it taking away. I think there's going to be a shift in responsibilities, but just like electricity, people freaked out when electricity happened.

DAWN KENNEDY: 39:02

Sure, sure. Yeah. Put it in their house. I get that. And again, from the lawyer perspective, people are using the free versions and putting those things in there. And that's scary. Yeah, it is a little scary. So. So how can people reach out to you? Yeah.

John Briggs: 39:16

So our tax firm is insight tax. And that's a unique spelling because I am a little aggressive in my approach to not liking the way the IRS treats us and the way the government spends our money. And I'm just saying that across the board. I don't care what political party you're from. I think your party isn't good at spending money. Okay. Just saying it.

DAWN KENNEDY: 39:36

None of them are good at spending money or accounting or even sending seeds.

John Briggs: 39:40

Yeah. So let's keep our money in our own pockets because that's the best thing for our economy if we're the ones choosing how to spend our money. Insight tax. It's E I t e t a x dot com. Yeah. Do we have blogs on there? You have there's a contact us. Some of our team will reach out when you fill that in. We have bookkeeping tax. We like how they play together. We can help business owners strategize. Clean financials are really good to make decisions. Sometimes people just want the clean data to file tax returns. That's okay. We think of bookkeeping can be more elevated than just reporting mechanism for your taxes. But if that's all you want, we're certainly going to apply what you have. And we're going to try to find all the strategies to keep as much money in your pocket as possible.

DAWN KENNEDY: 40:27

Amazing. All right. So we're going to put all that down inside the show notes. Get the book. I don't I don't know what is the book date release August twenty fifth. Okay. So we may still be on pre-order. If not, it's going to be shortly thereafter. So get the book, think about the framework. Try it for yourself, of course. And then if you need any sort of tax or financial or keeping money, this is your second appearance. Love having you on here. Love our conversations and thank you so much seriously for doing the work that you do and supporting the small businesses in a way that keeps it human and keeps it durable. So much appreciated out in the world. We need more of you.

John Briggs: 41:09

Thank you Dawn.

DAWN KENNEDY: 41:10

All right. We'll talk to you all next time on the next episode of the Business Mastery Podcast. Take care. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Business Mastery Podcast. If you want to learn more about me, you can go to Don k Kennedy dot com and you can now check us out on YouTube as well as, of course, any of your favorite platforms that host podcasts. Take care.