In this episode, I bring back John Briggs, founder of Incite Tax and author of The 3.3 Rule, to discuss how you can maximize productivity while working less. We dive into the science behind work cycles, how intentional breaks can boost your output, and how this productivity method is helping business owners and accountants avoid burnout. Plus, we’ll explore strategies for keeping more of what you earn by working with a proactive accountant.
Here’s What We Cover:
- Why the government isn’t great at spending your money—and why John’s goal is to help you keep more of it
- The origins of the 40-hour workweek and why it might be time to rethink it
- How the 3.3 Rule helps you maximize productivity with focused work blocks and intentional breaks
- How having a proactive accountant can save you significant money in taxes
- The importance of a “partner relationship” with your accountant
- Tips for business owners and entrepreneurs to balance productivity and taxes
- Adopting a productivity model like the 3.3 Rule can transform your workday efficiency while working with a proactive accountant can maximize your tax savings and overall wealth.
John Briggs links:
- Book: https://33rulebook.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbriggscpa/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/incitetax/profilecard/?igsh=YzJ6cWFhMWRoeWJu
- Website: https://incitetax.com/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/incitetax
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/incitetax
TRANSCRIPTS
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Maybe people don’t know this, or if you don’t realize it, the government sucks at spending your money.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Every time I hear the word conservative from people like, oh, my financial advisor’s conservative, my accountant’s conservative, I just think, no, they’re ignorant.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Average productivity in a day for a normal person in an eight hour work block is two hours and 53 minutes.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hello, my fellow Ripples. This is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert and anti Financianal advisor on this show. That’s your show. Those of you that work so hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to start working harder for you today, not 30 or 40 years from now, but right now, so you can live that life as you love. But those you love by being work optional where you work because you want to, not because you have to, but guys, we know it’s not just about getting rich, about living a rich life because as you’re blessed financially, as you prosper, you now have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. And that is a ripple effect I’m here to do for you guys today. Thank you for tuning in, benching on our episodes. As much as you guys have been doing, you’ve been referring others to the show, again, we always appreciate it putting us in the top percentile of podcasts out there today in the world.
(01:18)
That’s all because of you guys helping create that ripple effect. As a reminder, guys, if you haven’t done this already, be sure to subscribe to both YouTube channels, not just the Money Ripples channel, but there’s the Money Ripples podcast channel as well. Be sure that you don’t miss out, not just on the episodes, but also the videos that we put out daily to help you progress and be able to hit your financial freedom journey faster. Okay, guys, I’m bringing back a return guest that I don’t know how many freaking times we’ve had John Briggs on now. Now I think about it, we’ve probably had ’em on at least minimum, I would say at least three to four times, maybe more. It’s almost like an annual thing that we do. And since we’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’m sure you guys, if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve bing enough.
(01:57)
You might even seen some of his episodes, but if not, it’s been almost a hundred episodes ago. So it’s about time we have ’em back because John Sly, the owner of Insight Tax, which they’re great, do a great job on the tax side of things, especially if you’re a business owner, you guys should definitely check them out. But also he’s this deep rooted passion for entrepreneurs and really helping you guys be able to increase your life, increase your productivity so that you can actually enjoy life more, which is a big part of our show, which is getting that time freedom back. And so that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So John, welcome back.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, thanks for having me again, Chris.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, man. So let’s just dive in. I mean, obviously let’s talk a little bit about what you do, right? Let’s just talk about that for just a bit. Tell us more about your services and what you offer.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yeah, so Insight Tax, we are a full service accounting firm. We do anything from bookkeeping for small business owners, cashflow management, and then tax strategy as you’re talking about it. I mean, my mind went to, yeah, I mean you and I kind of do the same thing. We’ve just picked different avenues. We want to help people grow their wealth, and the way we’ve chosen to do that on the accounting side is help them not pay unnecessary taxes to the government because maybe people don’t know this, or if they don’t realize it, the government sucks. It’s spending your money, so let’s keep it in your pocket and then you can use it to grow your wealth. So that’s what we do on the tax side. And then I guess, I dunno if I’m considered an author now, I have two books, but as you said, I am passionate about helping entrepreneurs stay in business. We see too often they have this passion and in die out if they don’t do the right things to stay in business because business can be harder than we initially think before we jump into that little event. And so my last book I wrote was published in January, and it’s all about productivity. How do we get more done during the workday by working less?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, I know that’s something that a lot of people would say, I want that, right? So how do they do it? How do you actually get more done during the day while working less? I have my own things. I know I read The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Mitz, and that helped me a little bit, but that’s still a struggle for me even. So how do we do it
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Well? So really quick summary of history. For us, back in the 18 hundreds, everyone worked a hundred hours a week,
Speaker 2 (04:23):
And
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Then early 19 hundreds comes along and there’s this guy selling motorized carriages, and he’s like, no one wants to buy these things because they’re exhausted. They’re working a hundred hours a week. So he’s like, how do I sell more cars? So he created the weekend. People used to work Monday through Saturday, and they used to work 1520 hour shifts. So he said, I’m going to give them Friday and Saturday off so they can have two days in a row off, which may mean they have more time to drive somewhere, and I’m also going to cap their work days at eight hours. So he created the 40 hour work week. This guy I’m talking about is Henry Ford, and that was a hundred years ago. But today, most people operate under the same model of I work nine to five, eight to five, whatever.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Why? What a way to make a living, right?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah. There’s zero science that supports that this is the way we should be working. We just adopted it and no one stopped to think, is there a better way and a hundred years? So with the productivity, I was looking at what we’re doing in our company, and I did a bunch of research and looked at the science man, our brains, we have a natural tendency that our brain cycle from focus to distractibility back to focus back to distractibility. And we also found things like average productivity in a day For a normal person in an eight hour work block is two hours and 53 minutes. They actually do work for two hours and 53 minutes. That’s it. And why? Because I mean, you can think about it sometimes depending on what we have going on, or if I’m working for someone, I’m sitting down at nine o’clock and it’s like, oh, I guess I’m here till five. So we just have a tendency to then take things. I have a lot of time to get stuff done. So what we need to do is take shorter work blocks and I can go into some of more of the science of it, but we get more done by intentionally taking breaks.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Yeah, interesting. So when you say intentionally taking breaks, how much of a focus do people usually have? I know in college it seemed like if I went beyond the 45 minute mark, then I was starting to lose focus in class. I mean, it’s something like that. Or is it more, is it less?
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, it actually depends because we’re all wired differently. You love running. I’m not that big of a fan. I’m not wired to love long distance running. So we do have to look at it individually, but that’s why I loved the science that I found because it supports a principle approach so that each of us individually can apply the principle. And so with all the science, I called it the 3.3 rule, and what it says is that the most efficient workday consists of working up to three hours at a time, followed by a 30% recovery period. So in your case, in the example of if I’m losing focus after 45 minutes, I’m probably going to take a 10 minute break after that 45 minutes
(07:28)
And then I’m going to come back. And because I take that 10 minute break, science supports that my brain, as long as it’s a proper break, we can get into that too. My brain resets and it can come back as equally focused on the next set of focus time that I want to work on. But there’s other people they have. If you give me numbers and say, Hey, can you do some forecasting for this company? I love that stuff. I’ll mess with an Excel file. I could do that for three hours straight. I love it. And I might even feel like I could go longer than three hours, but the science supports that after three hours, even if I love what I’m doing, I need to take a break.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I’ve noticed that too, and I’ve probably been guilty of that more lately. I’ve gotten this creative space all of a sudden, I don’t want to stop the flow. But then if you realize you’re like, wait a minute, I’ve been sitting down for three, maybe four hours straight, which is horrible for your body and your back. You barely stand up. You feel like you’re 80 years old and you stand up from that chair. And I realized too, I’m like, am I really doing it as effective as I could be?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, that’s fascinating. And so how do you see that tie in? I mean, that’s such a far cry from taxes, isn’t it? I mean, why are you personally passionate about this very topic here?
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah, so the book and all the research actually started because I don’t love the word, it feels very Carl’s marey, which I don’t agree with his stuff, but I started writing a manifesto to the accounting industry. I wanted to put it on paper. I didn’t plan to publish it or share with anybody. It was just like I’m kind of tired of what my industry is doing to human beings and this expectation that, oh, if you’re an accountant, of course you’re going to work 70 to 80 hours a week. It’s just what we do. That’s what you’re signing up for is like, why are we doing that? I started looking at it and I’m looking at the macro economics of what’s happening. We have a shortage of accountants right now and we haven’t. The data that accountants are leaving the space to jump to different industry hasn’t changed.
(09:39)
So we have the same number of people leaving, but we have fewer and fewer accountants enrolling into programs. Why? Because of social media and things like Glassdoor and Reddit where people can share their experience. And now everyone knows like, oh, I heard accountants make great money, but it looks like their life sucks. And now some of these firms can’t even argue. They let their accountants earn great money. So I’m writing this kind of manifesto like You guys got to change. If we don’t stop this trend, we’re going to ruin our economy because I believe small business owners need accountants. But what happens when accountants aren’t there? The accountants that there are going to have to raise their prices, so now we have inflation problems, now they become too expensive. Well, they’re going to find an alternative, an option to trained accountants, which isn’t going to be as good.
(10:28)
So maybe now small business goes out of business faster, and they represent something like 94% of all net new job creation. Not the fortune 100 companies who get all the publicity, who are getting politicians scratching their backs, not those guys. It’s a small business guy. They are our US economy. And so as I was writing it, that’s how it came to be. And my hope is that as more accounting firms adopt the principles of the 3.3 rule, which we have done here at my accounting firm, people’s work life harmony improves drastically when they’re at home. They can be at home, not just physically, but mentally as well. They don’t have to worry about work because they are following the science that supports this and they’re having enough time for personal life, but when they work, they work. If we’re going to work, let’s focus on doing that. And by allowing yourself to have these breaks in between, you are like, okay, I know that I’m going to get a break and on that break I’m going to do absolutely nothing work related. We can go into that with a much more different mental focus, and we get a lot more done doing it that way.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Man, that’s awesome. Really, you’re trying to revolutionize the entire accounting industry is what you’re trying to do, aren’t you?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, that’s right.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah. Otherwise they’re going to burn out and like you said, makes it worse on us as business owners, just that you’re having a shortage of accountants. Even worse, and I know you know this for certain, there’s a shortage of good accountants especially, right? And even if you find that good accountant and you’re like, oh, this is the best person. When other people find out they all flock that accountant, they burn out. They don’t know how to scale or duplicate themselves either, and then the whole thing just collapses. And in fact, just today, I mean kind of go along with that, I’ll let you answer that thing too because I know you’re all about proactive accounting and actually saving people money, but I had a woman just today on another mastermind group I’m a part of on the app. She’s like, Hey, my accountant said I couldn’t write off this business mastermind membership due that I pay as part of this club. I was like, that’s bs. I’m like, I’m not an accountant, but just make a do’s in subscriptions. Don’t even tell that accountant, and by the way, fire that accountant because they’re full of crap. I mean, that’s just so bad. So even if there’s a shortage, just even finding good trained accountants that even know what they’re talking about is so hard to find.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, totally. One thing, as I started sharing the message with other people, come to find out the accounting industry isn’t the only one who’s treating their employees really badly. It apparently, attorneys, accountants, engineers, doctors, it seems like we’re not mutually exclusive with the accounting industry that corporations work their team members to death. And then what I found too is small business owners do this to themselves sometimes because it’s like, man, no one else is going to do this. I have to get it done. I might as well get it done. Now you’re actually hurting yourself by forcing yourself to do that too long. But yeah, from a proactive standpoint, absolutely. One of the big differences from a good accountant and a bad accountant is that they’re offering you ideas and suggestions. We live in this world, the business owner,
Speaker 2 (13:46):
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Speaker 1 (14:18):
Now, one of the things interesting about proactiveness, and I’ll just say this for all your listeners, we don’t have crystal balls. So we can be proactive only when we get more information from the client.
(14:34)
That’s why we’re really good when we do sit down with our clients, tell us what’s going on, just maybe they may say something, it’s like, oh, hold on, there’s a tax thing there. Let’s go down that rabbit hole for a second. Like, oh, I didn’t know that we could talk about, that’s to saving me taxes. Absolutely. So what we do from a practice standpoint, which most firms don’t, most firms, it’s like you see your accountant during tax season and then you can’t get ahold of ’em until next tax season if that. We constantly are sending out information of things that we’re seeing valuable education because our hope is our clients read it and it triggers something for them. It’s like, I think I did something like that insights asking me to reach out to them and tell them about what I did. That’s how we can be proactive, but it is a partnership relationship with our clients. It can’t just be a one way stream of communication from us. We do need info from them in order to help ’em with that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
That brings an interesting question in my mind too. When you talk about, because obviously the client has to be proactive too. They got to take their own personal responsibility, but if they’re in a position like mine as a CEO, you start juggling all these different balls and it’s like one more thing to add to the list. And just a few weeks ago before we recorded this show, we brought on a guest where he does a fractional CFO service. Most of us getting a full-time, CFO may be overkill, right?
Speaker 1 (16:01):
A little overkill. Fractional C pretty expensive.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah. But fractional CFO where they’re actually saying, Hey, let’s get really strategic about what we’re doing, make sure that the activities you’re doing actually makes you money. But even the fact that they’re making you do as in-depth reporting as they do, does that help you as well? On the accounting side, a
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Hundred percent. The cleaner the data is the better. Having other eyes or mentors in that person’s business saying things to them,
Speaker 2 (16:25):
All
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Those things help trigger what’s going on. Because what happens is you mentioned the bad accountants, they’re kind of just of the no, you can’t do that. We train our team to be more of the idea of, okay, I see what you’re saying, and in the back of my head, I’m familiar with the tax rules. How can we make this work? So then it becomes a conversation of maybe instead of buying the rental property this way, we buy it this way and that gives us a better tax benefit. So it’s kind of a matter of instead of immediately saying, absolutely no, you can’t do that, which most lazy accountants do. Let’s entertain the idea. How could we make this work? Worst case scenario, we go through the whole process and it’s like, yeah, sorry. The tax realtor are pretty clear on that one. We are not going to get a good benefit out of it, but a lot of times we can find something and that’s something usually results in real money saved for the client
Speaker 2 (17:24):
For sure. Well, what’s your opinion when you hear someone say, I have a conservative accountant, I use air quotes with that conservative account, right? What’s your response to that?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, it’s so interesting. Conservative is such a hot word these days with political stuff because either conservative or you’re liberal seems like these days, I hate that reverence because in my mind it’s like at the end of the day, my understanding, if someone asked me and they talk to me and I share with them some of their tax things, depending on who they are, where they’re coming from, they’re going to be like, this guy is ultra aggressive. So now
(18:03)
I’m on the opposite side of this I’m conservative thing. It’s like you with your lack of knowledge may perceive me as aggressive, but I mean the government can take away my ability to prepare taxes. They can literally say, Nope, can’t do it. And I can tell you guys, my wife would be pretty pissed at me if that happened. So I can’t break the law. I can only do things that I believe we are allowed to do, and I just take the approach that here’s the law, here’s my interpretation of it. I feel like I can back this up if I have to talk to an IRS auditor about it, so I’m going to take this position because it benefits my client. If you underpay taxes and don’t claim all your expenses, no one is ever going to come to you and say like, Hey, I think we owe you some money. I think you overpaid in some taxes, right? So we’re always worried about the opposite end. But yeah, if someone says, my accountant’s conservative if most of those people I’m guessing are not in the accounting industry. So if someone outside of the industry thinks they’re conservative, someone like me is going to feel like they’re doing you a disservice and they probably shouldn’t be in the space at all because they’re not doing any good other than making you feel like they work for the government and not for you.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Amen to that. Every time I hear the word conservative for people like, oh, my financial advisor’s conservative, my accountant’s conservative, I just think, no, they’re ignorant. They don’t even know where the line is. And granted, there are some gray areas in accounting, of course, depending on the IRS and how they interpret things. But for the most part, it’s usually because ignorant, not because they’re conservative, they just like, I don’t know where the line is. I’m just going to stay a mile away from the line because that’s where I’m comfortable.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, I would add lazy as well. I mean, I remember
(19:48)
Years ago I had a client and she went to the same church with her accountant. He’s just such a nice guy. He’s so nice. And I reviewed her return and she was making good enough money and for her, she had been filing on a Schedule C, she had some business activity filed all that on her personal return, which is on Schedule C, and that cost her $10,000 per year in unnecessary taxes just by taking her Schedule C and making an election to have it taxed like an S corporation to be a separate entity, that one move alone, nothing else would’ve changed for her other than having one additional tax turn would’ve saved her $10,000 a year. And she had been using the same guy from her church for a decade talking about a hundred thousand dollars. What could you do with that person with helping them create passive income with an extra $10,000 per year on one simple thing? And still because the guy’s like, well, I just don’t want to do US corpse, so he never brought it up as an option. That’s
Speaker 2 (20:58):
Horrible. Sadly, we see that all the time, don’t we?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
All the time.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
All the time. Well, ma’am, before I ask you my last question for you here, if someone wants to get your book, the 3.3 rule, if they want to get that book, where would they find it? What’s the best way to follow you?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Yeah, so Amazon is the best place to buy it. You can also check out our website, three rule book.com. Our tax firm is insight tax.com, and Insight Tax is our handle on all the things. So we have a YouTube channel, Facebook, all those things. But worst case scenario, you know how to get ahold of me too, so they can always ask you and you can introduce us
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And we’ll be sure to put the link in the show notes. I know Insight is spelled I-N-C-I-T-E, not S-I-D-H-T. Right. It’s CITE. So yeah, we’ll definitely put that in show notes as well as the Amazon link for the book. Yeah, that’s awesome. It sounds great. I mean, really what I hear you saying is you’re trying to help people with a little bit with the offense and be able to be more productive and buy time, freedom, but also a defense too on the tax side as well to make sure, how do I keep more of my money so I can keep more of my time, and can I keep my money too at the same time?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, let’s focus on both. Both are good more.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, that’s right. Don’t have more
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Than the other. Let more and keep more of it.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Exactly. Well, last question for you. What do you feel that your ripple effect is in this world? What do you feel like you’re here to leave on this planet?
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I think about the different business owners who I’ve interacted with over the years, and I also think about our economy and the small business owner, like I mentioned, studies or statistics support that most of the economy is on the small guy, it’s on the back of the small guy,
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But
Speaker 1 (22:45):
That’s still a very, very, very, very small percentage of the overall population. So if someone has the courage to go into business themselves, because such a small percentage, we want to keep them in business. So as we help those people, whether it’s saving a thousand dollars this year or 15,000 or a hundred thousand dollars this year, I know that because of who they are, the fact they had the courage to start their business, they then can take that money themselves and increase their whole legacy, their whole community footprint, whatever they have there. There’s that. And then we’re up to 220 ish team members now, and when we surpassed the 200 milestone, my team surprised me with a really nice book with, they’ve even gone back to people who are no longer with us. Some of my favorite employees decided to be stay-at-Home moms after they had their kids. And so they even asked them, what has Insight Tax meant to you? I can tell you, I’ve had a ripple effect on their lives, which benefits their spouses and their children, and they have more money, they have more personal time. I feel like that ripples out as well to bless the world.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
That’s wonderful, man. I love it. Well, I appreciate you being that living example of that ripple effect. I really do.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Thanks, Chris.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well man, appreciate your time here today, everybody. Be sure to check out the show notes, insight tax.com. Also look for the three by, I was going to say three by three. That’s not it. The three rule book. Again, we’ll put that link in the show notes so you guys can get a copy of that as well. But remember, you can be listening to this stuff all day long and listen to podcasts, but until you do something with this information, your life will remain the sam