Kim Christiansen (00:00:03) - Welcome everyone.
Kim Christiansen (00:00:04) - I'm Kim Christiansen and this is the Peaceful Productivity Podcast, where I share strategies to help you get the most out of your time and feel better in the process. Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Peaceful Productivity Podcast. I'm excited to be joined by my guest today, Dawn Goldberg. Dawn and I have so much in common. I'm really excited to talk to her today. I'm going to let her introduce herself in just a moment.
Kim Christiansen (00:00:38) - But before I do, I want to hear so much more about how she is a CPA. She's a coach that was certified at the same school that I was coached at. She has written a book. She's been the host of a podcast in the past and she's a business owner as well. So, can't wait to hear all of things. Dawn, welcome to the podcast.
Dawn Goldberg (00:01:02) - Thank you so much, Kim. I'm so glad to be here.
Kim Christiansen (00:01:05) - Welcome. And I would love if you could tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Dawn Goldberg (00:01:11) - Sure. So my name is Dawn Goldberg. As you said, I'm a CPA. I've been a CPA now in public accounting for over 30 years. Yes, I am still standing. I have worked for some of the large firms like Deloitte and Touche. I worked for Ernst & Young. And about, I'm going to say about 10 or so years ago, I've always been into personal development. And so I studied to become a life coach with a different school. And I noticed that it was not only helping me in my personal life, but it was helping me professionally to handle things.
Dawn Goldberg (00:01:54) - And then I discovered a few years later, I discovered the Life Coach School and the podcast, the Life Coach School podcast. And so I joined their membership and I was doing, as all accountants do, making sure I do my homework. So I was doing all the homework that Brooke teaches on that podcast. And I was noticing that everything was improving. My relationships were improving my work-life balance. I was decreasing stress. I was increasing my finances. Like every single aspect of my life was really improving.
Dawn Goldberg (00:02:34) - And I remember talking to a girlfriend and I said, I think the summit, the last thing that I'm not sure if this will work is tax season. And so I got coached by a coach because that's part of the membership. And I said something to the effect of, well, tax season is stressful. And the coach said to me, you realize that's a thought and not a fact. And I was like, oh, you silly woman, you're not a CPA. You have no idea. And she's like, no, it's actually a thought, not a circumstance.
Dawn Goldberg (00:03:12) - A circumstance in what we learn in the tool that we teach is a circumstance is neutral. It has to be proven in a court of law. Everybody on the planet would agree. So I said, all right, if it's not, I was like a little indignant. I'm like, well, if it's not tax season is stressful, is not a circumstance. What is the circumstance? And she said, the dates on the calendar or the work that you have to get done or the upcoming deadline. And that really blew my mind. I wanted to argue for her.
Dawn Goldberg (00:03:49) - What I've discovered with accountants and me included is that we want to argue for our limitations. We want to argue because we're so used to solving problems. We think that our problems are factual. So we think that, well, I'm so smart. If I can't figure this out, then it's not figure outable. So I noticed that I was loosening the grip that I had on a lot of beliefs that accountants have in common. And I noticed that each tax season got better and better. And I have more work than I've ever had. I'm running my own business.
Dawn Goldberg (00:04:35) - I'm still a CPA doing all my work. I'm coaching clients. I'm building a business. I'm doing, I wrote a book like, you know, during tax season, all the things. And I don't have stress. And that's all because of understanding how our brain works and how to manage my brain. And that is, that has been life changing and career changing for me.
Kim Christiansen (00:05:02) - That is fascinating. I love it. I love how you describe the difference between the circumstance and the story or the thought that you had around the circumstance. I think that is so helpful. And for myself, when I got coach at a similar experience, separating out those two things alone was really, really helpful. And I think that's what I'm hearing you say. Also helpful to me was associating the feeling with the thought. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about that, because you said it was life changing to realize that it was a thought. Kim Christiansen (00:05:41) - Why? Why was that really helpful to you? Why did it suddenly mean that you saw tax season and deadlines as neutral or how does the feeling play a role in all of this?
Dawn Goldberg (00:05:54) - Yeah, that's a great question. And that literally was the life changing part because I was like, well, wait a minute. If the circumstance is neutral and it's my thought that tax season is stressful is what's causing my feelings because our thoughts cause our feelings. It's not the circumstance. It's not the date on the calendar. It's not the fact that it's tax season or that there's a deadline on April 15th. That is not causing my feeling. What is causing my feeling is my thought. Tax season is hard. Tax season is so stressful. This is too much. Dawn Goldberg (00:06:30) - So if we cannot change circumstances, we rarely have control over circumstances, but we do have control over what we think about circumstances. I was like, oh, wait, whoa, wait a minute. You mean that I don't have to feel stress because it's only ever my thought that's creating the feeling of stress, not the fact that it's tax season. And the first tax season, my old program thoughts were with me every single day. This is hard. This is stressful. This is hard. This is tough. Whatever. And I just kept noticing.
Dawn Goldberg (00:07:07) - I'm like, oh my gosh, I had no idea how often I told the story. This is so hard. Tax season is stressful. This is too much. I've got too much to do. And once I had that awareness, then of course we have extensions, right? So it wasn't just the April 15th deadline. There was the next one was going to be September 15th and October 15th. And so I was like, oh, I'm going to do the work over the next six months to really manage my brain, to take a look at the thoughts that I believe are true, that are actually optional thoughts.
Dawn Goldberg (00:07:43) - And I'm going to choose thoughts that make me feel not stressed, that make me feel focused, make me feel motivated, make me feel something other than stress. And I started to practice those thoughts. And then the next extension deadline came and I just felt, I got so much more done in less time because I never realized. What I say to my clients is that our feelings fuel our actions and it's like we're putting dirty fuel. Accountants put dirty fuel in the engine. It's like having the most expensive luxury car and putting like sludge in the engine.
Dawn Goldberg (00:08:24) - And then of course it's not going to seize up right away, but eventually it will, aka burnout. So we have to pay attention. Like I think accountants have this misconception that feelings are soft skills and that couldn't be further from the truth because once I got control over what am I thinking that's causing me to feel this way. Now let me choose how I want to feel intentionally. Then the actions that I took, the things I started doing, the things I stopped doing, my reactions, I wasn't complaining, I wasn't spinning, I wasn't procrastinating.
Dawn Goldberg (00:09:04) - Like all of these actions changed and I was able to be so much more focused and have so much more done in less time, saving myself and giving myself the gift of time back and everything improved. It just got better and better each year because the old program thoughts were still in the background. They were like kind of nudging me. Like, oh, don't forget, tax season is hard. I'm like, I don't believe that anymore. I'm choosing not to believe that anymore. And that's why it changed.
Dawn Goldberg (00:09:35) - That's why the feeling, the thought causes the feeling and then the feeling drives the action. And that's why, yes, there are things that pop up where all of a sudden I feel that stress bubbling up and I'm like, it's just my thought. What's the thought that's causing this feeling? It's not the fact that I was just handed a list of 20 tax returns that have to get done. That's a neutral circumstance. It doesn't mean anything.
Dawn Goldberg (00:10:01) - What do I want to choose to make it mean so that I don't feel stressed? Because again, it's just a dirty fuel.
Kim Christiansen (00:10:09) - So good. There's two really powerful things that you said there. And I just want to, I want to really highlight them because I think they could be easy to overlook. So the first one was you suggested suggested that the thought is not entirely dependent on the circumstance. You didn't say it quite that way, but that was the, that's what I took away from it. So please correct me if I'm wrong, but the thought is independent of the circumstance. I.e.
Kim Christiansen (00:10:44) - for example, you said the circumstance is April 15th, and we know that that is neutral, that you don't have to think stressful thoughts about that because there are other people in the world that don't have stressful thoughts about April 15th. So we know that that's true. Is that kind of the epiphany or the insight that you had when you were first starting this work was that it wasn't mandatory to think certain things about certain circumstances that you had a choice there?
Dawn Goldberg (00:11:21) - Yeah, I didn't, first of all, I didn't realize that tax season is stressful was a thought.
Dawn Goldberg (00:11:27) - I thought it was a fact.
Dawn Goldberg (00:11:29) - So there was that. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute.
Dawn Goldberg (00:11:33) - So I can actually think whatever I want.
Dawn Goldberg (00:11:37) - And that was the interesting thing is that as I was doing this work, I didn't tell anybody at work what I was doing.
Dawn Goldberg (00:11:43) - And they were all doing the thing that they do, a lot of drama, a lot of complaining, a lot of manic energy around the office. And I was super calm and I was just super focused. And I witnessed people trying to get me because we like to mirror each other. It's like a way that we connect with each other.
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:04) - And unfortunately, in a very dysfunctional way, we connect with each other based on the feeling of stress.
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:10) - Oh, you're stressed.
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:10) - Oh, I'm stressed. Oh, we're all stressed. Yay, we're all stressed together.
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:13) - Oh, it's so miserable.
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:14) - Oh, we're just miserable accountants. And I was not playing that game anymore because I knew how it affected me.
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:21) - I just decided I'm not doing that. And I got some like strange looks like, like, are you okay? Is everything all right?
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:31) - And then I didn't tell my husband what I was doing. And he was like, it seems like you're having the easiest tax season you've ever had, is that right?
Dawn Goldberg (00:12:39) - And I was like, I'm just showing up differently. And then I told him after the fact what I had been doing. And he's like, yeah, yeah, keep doing that.
Kim Christiansen (00:12:46) - Amazing. Yeah, two things came up there. You're raising so many good points. So thank you for that. I was curious to know more about the choice of when you realized that it wasn't mandatory to think that tax season is stressful, that you could think something else, you could choose a different perspective. And just one thing I would like to note is it is really, really easy to think that when you're surrounded by a lot of different people who are thinking the same thing and giving you evidence for that.
Kim Christiansen (00:13:28) - And to your point, it's almost a means of connecting with your colleagues and your peers and with other people in your immediate orbit. So I'm curious, once you realized that it was a choice and you chose to think other things, what did that do to your connection with your colleagues and your immediate family?
Dawn Goldberg (00:13:55) - So with my colleagues, I just found a different way to connect, right? So I'm the one who's feeling connection. I create my feelings. I don't create theirs.
Dawn Goldberg (00:14:07) - They may have felt disconnection, but that's not on me, that's on them. So I felt like, okay, if the only way that I had been connecting with them was our similar level of stress, then I've got to find something else to connect with them on. And so I was like, well, I'm just gonna feel focused and I'm gonna connect with them on that level. And I'm gonna feel motivated or determined or some better feeling than stress. And with my family, I think my husband just saw how much more relaxed I was, how I just, I wasn't complaining.
Dawn Goldberg (00:14:47) - And we get very dramatic.
Dawn Goldberg (00:14:49) - We get like, oh, it's so hard.
Dawn Goldberg (00:14:52) - And oh, you, like if somebody asks you, you wanna go out this weekend, what are you talking about? It's tax season. Are you kidding me?
Dawn Goldberg (00:14:59) - Like, don't talk to me from January 15th to April 15th.
Dawn Goldberg (00:15:03) - And I was like, wow, we just, we wear busy as a badge of honor.
Dawn Goldberg (00:15:09) - We wear stress as a badge of honor. Here's a really funny story. So I was walking in the hallway of my building and there are a few accounting firms on the same floor as us. And they were two gentlemen. I know their accountants. They were walking ahead of me.
Dawn Goldberg (00:15:23) - And I heard one of them say to the other, did you see that Joe's car wasn't in the parking lot last night?
Dawn Goldberg (00:15:31) - And the other accountant said, hmm, he must not be very good at what he does.
Dawn Goldberg (00:15:37) - And I was like, are you kidding me? They were seeing his car not in the parking lot as a sign that he can't be very good. So if your car is in the parking lot, if your lights are the last one on in the building, you're more valuable. And we get into this belief and I was just like, no, I'm actually more valuable to my clients and to my firm by managing my brain so that I change those.
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:10) - Okay, so in our brain we have neural pathways. So there's a practice thought. You have a little pathway in your brain. And the more you practice and practice and think the same thing, that neural pathway gets stronger and stronger. So it just becomes automatic.
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:25) - We don't even realize that we're thinking it or believing something.
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:28) - It's just automatic. And for accountants, and I know for myself, the thought, tax season is stressful, was just automatic. That's why when that coach said to me, it's a thought, I was like, what?
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:39) - No.
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:40) - So I had to start to create a new neural pathway in my brain. And that was, it started out with, it doesn't have to be that stressful.
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:51) - It doesn't have to be that hard. Maybe it's not as hard.
Dawn Goldberg (00:16:54) - Maybe it doesn't have to be that hard. And I started to create that proof of that. I started to think that way and I felt better and I took different action.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:04) - I got better results.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:05) - And then my brain was like, oh, okay.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:08) - So I started to notice when I was thinking the old thought and replacing it and being like, okay, that's what I used to think, but I'm gonna think this instead and just started to create these new neural pathways.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:20) - And now, yes, I have moments of like, oh, I've got this big list, but I'm like, no, there's no need to get stressed about it.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:31) - Because the list and the amount of things I have to get done are completely neutral.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:35) - I get to decide what I want to think about that, that creates the feeling that I wanna feel. That's typically I have under my computer screen at work, I have my top three emotions that I need to feel at work.
Dawn Goldberg (00:17:51) - And that is, I need to feel focused, motivated and determined. And those are just like my little touch point. I put it right under my computer as a gentle reminder that when I feel overwhelmed, I go to those, which one do I wanna feel? And I'll just kind of like, glance over and I'm like, oh, it's just that nice reminder that your feelings are optional. Just as your thoughts are optional, so are your feelings.
Dawn Goldberg (00:18:17) - And that helps to redirect me.
Dawn Goldberg (00:18:19) - If I start to feel I'm going off course, I just look at that post-it and I'm like, all right, which one, I'm gonna feel focused. All right, what thought do I need to think in order to feel focused? Boom, right back to getting the work done.
Kim Christiansen (00:18:31) - So good. Just like we have the option to choose how we're going to perceive tax season, we have the option to choose how we're going to perceive other people's feelings, thoughts, relationship. All of that is completely within our control too. You talked about how your ability to connect was really largely defined by the way that you were looking at connection. So you found a new way to look at it. And it sounds like your relationships actually improved as a result. Is that fair to say?
Dawn Goldberg (00:19:07) - Yeah, initially when I discovered this work, I worked on my relationships first, my personal relationships, my relationship with my husband, with my children. And I realized that I had this controlling nature where I needed, I had these, people needed to behave a certain way.
Dawn Goldberg (00:19:28) - People, I had a lot of shoulds. People should do this, people shouldn't do that. And I was making, because I didn't understand that my thoughts create my feelings, I thought other people made me angry. Other people made me upset. Other people.
Kim Christiansen (00:19:44) - You're not alone, sister.
Dawn Goldberg (00:19:46) - Right, all of us, we think that other people cause our feelings.
Dawn Goldberg (00:19:50) - And when I saw, wait a minute, it's my thoughts that create my feelings. Other people are neutral. They're just a circumstance.
Dawn Goldberg (00:20:00) - that mean anything until what my brain makes it mean. All of a sudden I dropped what we learn in coach school is called the manual. I took a look at the instruction manual that I had just for my husband alone. I was like that, that instruction manual was hundreds and hundreds of pages. It was, he needs to say this and he needs to do that and blah, blah, blah. And if he doesn't, then I'm going to feel fill in the blank. And the same thing with my kids. You know, my, my daughter is very good at texting. My son is not.
Dawn Goldberg (00:20:31) - And if, you know, I don't feel connected if Brendan doesn't text me back and had all these like rules going on in my head. And once I realized, wait a minute, my thoughts create my feelings.
Dawn Goldberg (00:20:44) - So if I want to feel connected to Brendan, I can choose to think something that creates the con the feeling of connection. It's not dependent on him texting me back.
Dawn Goldberg (00:20:58) - And when I took full responsibility, what we learn in coach school is called emotional adulthood versus emotional childhood. I didn't realize that by me blaming other people for how I was feeling, I was in such emotional childhood. And when I understood that, no, I'm responsible for how I feel based on what I think, then I just let everybody do what they do.
Dawn Goldberg (00:21:24) - And because I wasn't so controlling or needy or, you know, the way that I showed up, if my husband, if we have gone date night and he didn't say something nice to me, you know, that I had this expectation once I gave that to myself, I'm like, what am I looking for?
Dawn Goldberg (00:21:41) - If let's say, for example, my husband gives me a compliment and what do I feel? I would feel, you know, love. I can give that to myself because it's only my thoughts that are creating that.
Dawn Goldberg (00:21:53) - So he's now off the hook and I just relaxed and I wasn't as, like I said, needy or controlling or dependent. I just took full responsibility. If I'm feeling a feeling, it's only ever, ever my thought that's creating that every single one of my relationships improved.
Kim Christiansen (00:22:19) - It sounds so liberating too, because I would suspect, and I know this from my own experience, that that controlling that need to control. I mean, we actually have the title job title controller in the account. We come by it quite honestly, but that need to control. That can be sparked by feelings of anxiety or stress, like feeling out of control causes us to want to control things more so that we can feel better. I mean, it makes perfect sense, but when you're not feeling that stress, like you said, then the need to control largely decreases.
Kim Christiansen (00:23:04) - You can let go of all of that. You can just make peace with what, how everybody else is showing up, how tax season is going, what my schedule looks like. You can make peace with all of that. Just sounds incredibly liberating, like freedom. Is that fair?
Dawn Goldberg (00:23:21) - Yeah, it feels better. And then how I show up, the things that I do, the things that I don't do, how I react is completely different because I feel different. And so I'm not procrastinating.
Dawn Goldberg (00:23:38) - I'm not spinning.
Dawn Goldberg (00:23:40) - I'm not complaining as I'm going to put that in air quotes as much. I still have a human brain, so there's still some complaining that happens, but I understand that my feelings fuel my actions. And if I want to get things done or I want to show up as the best version of me with my children and with my husband and with my coworkers, then I have to take a hundred percent responsibility for how I show up based on how I feel.
Dawn Goldberg (00:24:16) - And that is like, I used to think my feelings were the, the issue with my feelings was that they were somebody else's cause, like they caused it, right? I was just living at the effect of my feelings. And now I understood, no, I have a hundred percent control over that and how I showed up just completely changed my results. And everybody slowly, gradually, people started to notice. And I had been doing the work behind the scenes for a while. And then I, somebody just said to me the other day, like, you're really not stressed.
Dawn Goldberg (00:24:53) - And we're, you know, we're in the middle of doing extensions. March 15th is a big deadline in the United States. I'm in the middle of doing extensions and I'm like, nope. I just, I take responsibility. If I'm feeling stressed, I know that it's a thought and I can change that. So why would I choose? Why would I choose to feel stressed? I think stress is just an overused emotion because we don't understand that we have an option.
Kim Christiansen (00:25:19) - So good. And I love also too that you said that you still from time to time have awareness of yourself complaining. I can resonate with that because I think too, once we do realize that we have options around the way that we think and choices around the way that we fuel our actions, our feelings, that we might just say to ourselves, well, I'm just going to choose to be happy all the time. And what my own experience has been is that, number one, that's not helpful to me because there are all the emotions I find.
Kim Christiansen (00:26:04) - I'd love to hear what you think about this. All the emotions have value. To eliminate all of them or just one of them, it actually robs us of that full buffet of life, that full human experience. And also I add to that that our default thinking has been programmed over for myself decades of time. And so I have come to accept that some of that old default thinking, it still comes up around old habits, old habitual thinking, and it will continue to come up in the future.
Kim Christiansen (00:26:46) - And I don't make it mean something about me or about myself, because this is also something that I talk about. I actually wrote a book about it is that I don't tell me what you think, but I noticed that for myself and a lot of my accounting friends that perfectionism can kind of rear its ugly head. And so when we come across thought work, we can almost get into this thing where I can be a perfect thought manager or I can be a perfect emotional manager so that I don't have unproductive thoughts and emotions.
Kim Christiansen (00:27:22) - And I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.
Dawn Goldberg (00:27:25) - Yes. Oh, my gosh. Yes, I definitely dealt with that. I thought, oh, my God, like as an accountant, we want to get an A on our paper. So I'm learning all of this work. I'm like, oh, my God, I'm just going to scrub my brain clean and I'm only going to have lovely thoughts and I'm only going to feel lovely things. And that's not having a human experience. The full like you said, the full spectrum of emotions is runs the whole gamut. And life is 50 -50. And so when we accept that we're feeling sad, when we accept that we're feeling mad.
Dawn Goldberg (00:28:03) - There is just the balance in that we're not resisting the fact that we're feeling sad or resisting the fact that we're feeling mad. So I got coached a number of times on once I understood, oh, I can feel better by what I choose to think, I'd be like, whoo, I'd rush to the to the better feeling. And the coach had helped me to see I feel sad, dot, dot, dot. And that's OK. And I remember the coach saying this to me and I started to cry and she's like, what's happening?
Dawn Goldberg (00:28:35) - And I said, I never realized that I wasn't giving myself permission to have negative emotion. That my son had moved away to Denver, he left New York and he moved to Denver. And I was just like trying to stuff it and I go, just sweep it under the bar.
Dawn Goldberg (00:28:53) - Oh, yeah, you're going to have such a great life.
Dawn Goldberg (00:28:55) - And oh, you know, it's OK, it's over. And deep down inside, I was really sad. And she's like, your son moved away. What do you think about that? And I was like, well, here's what I you know, I think it's great. I think she's like, no, really. What do you think about it? And I'm like, I'm going to miss him. She goes, how does that make you feel? I said, sad. And she goes, and that's OK. And I was just like, oh, my gosh.
Dawn Goldberg (00:29:21) - But what I've learned is that to allow myself to have those negative emotions, but to but to be more intentional, to be like, oh, I'm feeling sad. You know, I want to choose to feel sad about this. Or I feel mad about this. Yeah, no, I want to feel mad. So it's like knowing the emotions that you really that make up that full experience. There are those indulgent emotions that kind of are they can waste your time. There could be more useful emotions. And I just think for me, stress when I'm at work is not useful.
Dawn Goldberg (00:30:03) - So that's when I will go to, you know, focused, motivated or determined. But if I'm frustrated, I'm going to give myself permission to feel frustrated. I'm not going to be like, no, no, no.
Dawn Goldberg (00:30:15) - You can think a new thought and you can feel a new feeling.
Dawn Goldberg (00:30:17) - I'm like, no.
Dawn Goldberg (00:30:18) - Do I want to feel frustrated in this situation?
Dawn Goldberg (00:30:20) - Yes. Do I want to feel sad in this situation? Absolutely. I want to feel sad. And I give myself permission to do that.
Kim Christiansen (00:30:27) - So good. That is very powerful because there are certain circumstances where stress is very helpful. Stress helps us get out of bed in the morning and go after goals. And it can be an activator. But the chronic prolonged stress, the stress that happens as a result of our unconscious thinking. I think there's been a lot of research that shows that that can have a lot of negative effects, including physical.
Kim Christiansen (00:30:54) - in problems as well. So I notice that's been my experience as well. So powerful. So just because we can choose our thoughts, just because we can choose our emotional experience doesn't necessarily mean that we would always choose one at the expense of the other.
Dawn Goldberg (00:31:16) - Exactly.
Kim Christiansen (00:31:16) - Some of the work that I'm been working on recently is there are no negative emotions. There are no positive emotions. There's just emotions and they're all just messages. They're all just information. So something I've been working on a lot lately. Go ahead.
Dawn Goldberg (00:31:33) - Yeah. I had just, I had done a podcast once called Feelings are Information, Not Problems. Kim Christiansen (00:31:41) - Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So good. So good. Okay. So we're getting close to the end of our time. How do you help your clients? I understand your coaching clients are accountants. You help them with their mindset around time. How do you help them?
Dawn Goldberg (00:32:02) - Yeah, I help clients in two ways. I have the, I wrote a book called The Smarter Accountant and that is really teaching accountants how to stop underutilizing their brain. And so there's typically like 12, what we call pain points that accountants experience, you know, stress and overwhelm, working too many hours. They're not as productive as they like to be, maybe self-confidence that there's 12 pain points that they deal with. And so what clients will do is they'll take the smarter, the book is called The Smarter Accountant.
Dawn Goldberg (00:32:38) - They'll take the smarter accountant quiz and that will be able to tell them in what ways are they underutilizing their brain, which of those 12 pain points. And so then what we'll do is we'll work together for six weeks. My coaching program is six weeks and I'll teach them how to manage their brain. Then they pick three out of the 12 topics to dive a little bit deeper in. And with time management, so there's two ways that I work with clients. It's the Smarter Accountant program and it's the Smarter Accountant Time Management program.
Dawn Goldberg (00:33:11) - And I think time management has truly become one of my superpowers because of being an accountant and because not only being an accountant in public accounting, but then also having my own business and my own coaching clients and, you know, writing the book. I had set this goal to have the book written in one year. I said by July 31st, 2022, I was going to have this book delivered by Amazon to my mailbox. And July 29th, two days early, I had the book delivered to me.
Dawn Goldberg (00:33:44) - And it proved to me that year how I teach time management, which works with mind management. You have to understand how to manage your brain in order to manage your time. Because I just was telling a client recently that time management is really more about self-management. Time just is. It just is, right? Time isn't a problem. We think time is a problem. There's never enough time. Oh, there's too much to do. I don't have enough time. Time isn't the problem.
Dawn Goldberg (00:34:17) - It's our ability to manage our minds, to manage our brains within the construct of time and to be more intentional, to use that higher brain that plans the planning part of the brain. And to understand that when it comes time, like anybody, what I like to say is anybody can write to do items in blocks on a calendar. It's your ability to follow through that matters. We all can color. I had the client once ask me, what color should I put on my Outlook calendar? I'm like, the color doesn't matter. You doing the thing matters.
Dawn Goldberg (00:34:53) - We get caught up in these little tips and tricks and hacks. But if you don't know how to manage your brain, you're really not going to be able to manage your time as effectively as you possibly could. And so that's what I teach my clients. Again, that's a six-week program, the time management, teach them how to manage their brain and teach them my process for managing their time.
Kim Christiansen (00:35:16) - It's the same with business management and money management as well. Basically, self-management. So good. So if people want to find your quiz, the Smarter Accountant quiz, where would they find that? Dawn Goldberg (00:35:31) - Just simple, the smarteraccountant.com, my website.
Kim Christiansen (00:35:36) - Okay. And smarter is spelled conventionally or the thing that is your book? Dawn Goldberg (00:35:40) - My New York accent. People will be like, wait, what did she say? Yes. The smarter, the smarteraccountant.com.
Kim Christiansen (00:35:51) - Perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming to the podcast today, but I know that you helped a lot of people in the audience. So I'm really, thank you so much. Yeah.
Dawn Goldberg (00:36:02) - This was such a pleasure getting to speak to you. Yeah.
Kim Christiansen (00:36:05) - Thank you. Take care.
Dawn Goldberg (00:36:06) - Bye-bye.