Earmark CPE

Earn CPE Anytime, Anywhere

Earmark Team

The Hidden Traps in Clean Energy Credits That Could Cost Your Clients Thousands

· ·

Picture this scenario: You just finished a call with a client who mentioned installing solar panels on her vacation home. Now it’s tax time, and she’s dropped off her tax documents, including information about the solar installation. Among the paperwork, you find two invoices: one for the solar panels, equipment, and installation labor, and another from a building contractor for roof work. Your client included a note explaining that the solar panel installation required structural retrofitting to make the roof suitable for the panels.

This is your first time dealing with solar tax credits. You know there’s some special tax benefit, but you’re not sure how it works. Which expenses qualify? How do you calculate the credit? And what about those two different invoices? Does the roof work count toward the solar tax credit?

This scenario comes from Jeremy Wells’ Tax in Action podcast, where he walks tax professionals through the residential clean energy credit. Wells, a CPA and Enrolled Agent in Florida, has seen this situation repeatedly as more clients install solar panels and other clean energy property.

While the residential clean energy credit offers substantial savings—at least until it’s eliminated at the end of 2025— tax professionals must navigate complex qualification rules, timing requirements, and cost allocation issues, often with limited regulatory guidance beyond the basic code section.

Understanding the Clean Energy Credit Basics

The residential clean energy credit comes from Internal Revenue Code Section 25D. It provides a nonrefundable credit for up to 30% of qualifying expenses on residential clean energy property. The credit was initially designed to be worth 30% of qualifying expenses through 2032, then drop to 26% in 2033 and 22% in 2034. However, H.R. 1, commonly known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” eliminated the credit at the end of 2025.

Since this is a nonrefundable credit, it can’t reduce a taxpayer’s liability below zero or create a refund. However, if the credit exceeds the taxpayer’s current tax liability, the excess carries forward to future years.

The qualifying property includes several types of clean energy installations:

  • Solar panels (most common)
  • Solar water heaters  
  • Small wind energy systems
  • Geothermal heat pumps
  • Fuel cell property
  • Battery storage property

It’s important not to confuse this with the residential energy efficiency improvements credit under IRC Section 25C, which covers items like new windows, insulation, or HVAC systems. Those fall under a completely separate credit.

What Makes a Residence Qualify

Unlike some residential tax benefits that only apply to primary residences, Section 25D has broader requirements. The property must be installed at a “dwelling unit,” a place the taxpayer actually lives in the United States and uses as a residence. This can include second homes, vacation homes, or summer homes, as long as the taxpayer uses them personally.

However, the credit doesn’t apply to rental properties or investment properties. If a client installs solar panels on a rental property, that falls under entirely different tax provisions.

Business use of the home creates additional considerations. If more than 20% of the property’s square footage is used for business purposes (like a large home office), you’ll need to allocate the expenses. The taxpayer can only claim the credit on the portion allocated to personal use of the home. For business use of 20% or less, no allocation is required.

Qualifying Costs and Technical Requirements

Determining which costs qualify for the credit requires careful analysis of invoices and documentation. Eligible expenditures include:

  • The cost of the property itself
  • On-site labor costs to prepare, assemble, and install the property  
  • Costs to connect the property to the home’s electrical or plumbing systems
  • Sales tax paid on eligible costs

However, not all installation-related costs qualify. Wells explains the critical distinction: “If the panels actually become a structural part of the roof, then we can include that cost. That’s different from saying that we had to do some work to the roof to be able to install those panels.”

In the opening scenario, the solar panel installation costs would likely qualify, but the separate roof retrofitting work probably wouldn’t. The roof work represents preparation rather than panels becoming part of the roof structure.

Different types of property have specific technical requirements:

  • Solar water heaters must be certified by the Solar Rating Certification Corporation or a comparable state-endorsed entity.
  • Geothermal heat pumps must meet Energy Star requirements.
  • Battery storage needs a capacity of at least three kilowatt hours. As Wells notes, “I’m not an electrical expert. I’m a tax professional. I’m going to ask the client for some piece of paper from the installer showing me that it has a capacity of at least three kilowatt hours.”
  • Fuel cells face cost limitations of $1,667 per half-kilowatt of capacity.

Any property that serves additional functions beyond energy production, like a swimming pool or hot tub heated by solar energy, can’t include those additional components in the credit calculation.

Rebates, Incentives, and Excess Generation

Rebates and incentives can affect the credit calculation. Direct or indirect rebates from manufacturers, distributors, sellers, or installers reduce the eligible costs. However, state government incentives typically don’t reduce the federal credit calculation.

A particularly complex issue arises when solar installations generate more electricity than the home needs. If the taxpayer sells excess electricity back to the grid, only the portion of costs related to the home’s actual electricity needs qualifies for the credit.

Wells acknowledges the challenge this creates: “Do we allocate this based on actual electricity generated and over what period of time? Should we be using data from the home’s electrical usage prior to installation? These are all unanswered questions as far as the guidance we have now.”

Timing Rules That Matter

When a taxpayer can claim the credit depends on the type of installation:

For existing residences, the credit applies when the property is completely installed, when work crews are done, and when the property is ready for use. For new construction or reconstruction, the credit applies when the taxpayer begins using the dwelling unit, which may be later than when the clean energy property is installed.

This distinction can shift credits between tax years and impact tax planning. Wells sees many situations where taxpayers start work in one year but don’t complete installation until the next year, or where installation happens late in the year but certification doesn’t arrive until the following year.

If taxpayers finance the purchase through the seller, they can calculate the credit based on the full cost of their payment obligation, not just the amounts actually paid. However, interest on financing doesn’t count toward eligible costs.

Documentation and Reporting Requirements

Tax professionals often find themselves helping clients gather documentation that the client should have obtained during the purchase process. This includes:

  • Detailed invoices breaking down eligible and non-eligible costs
  • Certification documents showing technical specifications
  • Information about any rebates or incentives received
  • Details about excess electricity generation and sale back to the grid

Taxpayers report the credit on Form 5695, Residential Energy Credits, with different lines for different types of property. The form calculates the maximum credit amount and applies limitations based on the taxpayer’s tax liability.

Since this is a nonrefundable credit, it can offset the alternative minimum tax but can’t create a refund. Any unused credit carries forward to future years.

Practical Takeaways for Tax Professionals

Wells emphasizes that, unlike most areas of tax law, practitioners have limited guidance beyond the code section itself. “We really don’t have much guidance beyond what’s in the code section itself. We don’t have any Treasury regulations related to this code section, which is not very common.”

This means tax professionals must rely heavily on professional judgment when making determinations about qualification, cost allocation, and timing. The key is asking the right questions:

  • Is this the taxpayer’s personal residence, and what percentage do they use for business?
  • What costs did the homeowner pay, and are there any rebates or incentives?
  • For a solar electric property, is the property owner selling any electricity back to the grid?
  • When was the property completely installed, or when did the taxpayer move into a new residence?

Wells notes that sometimes by helping clients gather proper documentation, “we actually help them ensure they’ve gathered all the documentation they might need in the future.”

The residential clean energy credit offers significant tax savings for qualifying installations, but success depends on careful analysis of costs, proper documentation, and understanding the technical requirements that vary by property type. While the guidance may be limited, a systematic approach to qualification and documentation helps ensure clients can take advantage of these valuable credits while maintaining compliance with tax requirements.

To hear Wells’ complete analysis and additional examples of how to handle complex scenarios, listen to the full Tax in Action episode.

From the Courtroom to the Classroom: How a Former Prosecutor Views White-Collar Crime

· ·

When Bernie Madoff received his 150-year prison sentence for a massive Ponzi scheme, it seemed like justice had been served. Yet after the 2008 financial crisis, which devastated millions of Americans, virtually no high-level Wall Street executives faced criminal charges. Why not?

In this episode of the “Oh My Fraud” podcast, Miriam Baer—a former prosecutor with the prestigious Southern District of New York, corporate compliance professional, and former Vice Dean at Brooklyn Law School and currently Dean and President of California Western School of Law—shares insights from her unique career journey that help explain this paradox.

From Princeton to the Prosecutor’s Office

Baer’s journey through the world of white-collar crime began far from where she expected. After attending Princeton (where, yes, she knew Ted Cruz) and Harvard Law School, she initially had no intention of becoming a prosecutor.

Her path changed after working at a law firm on securities fraud cases, which gave her a crash course in understanding how companies manipulate their books. From there, she joined the prestigious U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York under then-U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White.

At the prosecutor’s office, Baer handled everything from mail and wire fraud to bank fraud and money laundering, learning the intricacies of federal criminal prosecution. This experience gave her first-hand knowledge of how prosecutors decide which cases to pursue—knowledge that helps explain why some financial criminals face justice while others seem to escape it.

Why Some Cases Get Prosecuted While Others Don’t

When massive financial scandals don’t result in criminal charges, public frustration often follows. “Why aren’t these people in jail?” becomes a common refrain. But Baer identifies a more nuanced reality than simple theories about wealthy people being above the law.

“There’s a tendency to look at the scope of the harm,” Baer explains. “Someone says, ‘Well, he caused all that horrible harm. Why aren’t you prosecuting him?’ The answer is, well, I’m bound by the statute.”

Baer identifies two distinct thresholds prosecutors consider:

  1. The “threshold of liability” – Whether a crime technically occurred under statute
  2. The “threshold of viability” – Whether prosecutors believe they can win the case

This second threshold is crucial but often overlooked in public discussions. Based on past wins, prosecutors develop mental “prototypes” of successful cases that shape how they evaluate new evidence.

“When someone says, ‘Is this a fraud case? Is it a viable fraud case?’ [prosecutors] think in their minds about what most recently was viable,” Baer notes.

During the 2008 financial crisis, prosecutors’ mental prototype of fraud was based on early 2000s accounting scandals that featured whistleblowers, clear paper trails, and cooperating witnesses—elements largely absent in the financial crisis cases.

“My whole theory is that especially what happened with the financial crisis is, yeah, there were folks who had passed the threshold of liability, but the prosecutors weren’t sure they were over the threshold of viability,” Baer explains.

This framework helps explain why more recent cases like Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried resulted in prosecution. Both featured the crucial elements prosecutors recognize from successful cases: cooperating witnesses and defendants who “constantly talk all the time” and eventually contradict themselves.

The Problems with White-Collar Criminal Statutes

Beyond prosecutorial decision-making, Baer identifies fundamental flaws in the design of white-collar criminal statutes. Her book, “Myths and Misunderstandings in White Collar Crime,” explores these issues in depth.

“The statutes themselves are confusing us,” Baer explains. She identifies three primary problems:

1. “Flat” statutes that lack gradation

Unlike homicide laws that distinguish between first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and manslaughter, fraud statutes don’t meaningfully differentiate between degrees of severity.

“If I look up fraud, it’s just all falling under the fraud umbrella of mail fraud or wire fraud. And it really doesn’t matter that you were charged with mail fraud and I was charged with wire fraud from a moral valence,” Baer notes. “It just means you use the mails and I use the wires.”

2. “Bundled” statutes that combine vastly different crimes

Baer points to the Hobbs Act as a prime example—a single statute that criminalizes both robbery affecting interstate commerce and bribery by public officials.

“That’s very different from robbery…it’s all under the same statute,” she explains.

3. Statutes that fail to generate useful information

Perhaps most importantly, these flaws create a system that doesn’t effectively track patterns or provide clear information about white-collar crime.

“The system itself should produce information because we are the ones in charge,” Baer argues. “We can’t do that job if the system doesn’t give us information or information that we could get at.”

These structural issues create an “insider/outsider” divide in criminal justice. Those working within the system understand its peculiarities, while the public is left confused and suspicious.

“It leads to this level of people feeling estranged from the system and feeling like this system is rigged,” Baer says.

Case Studies: Timing, Complexity, and Expertise Gaps

Several practical challenges further complicate white-collar crime prosecution. One is simple timing—evidence of sophisticated fraud often emerges years after the fact, sometimes through academic research long after the statute of limitations has expired.

Baer references a paper published in 2015 that uncovered significant misrepresentations in mortgage-backed securities markets from the 2008 crisis. “Little late,” she observes wryly.

Another challenge involves proving intent at the highest corporate levels, where decisions flow through layers of management.

“The public hungers for the very top person to fall,” Baer explains. “They don’t want to hear that you got Mister mid-level dude.” Yet proving that a CEO directed fraudulent activities is often nearly impossible without direct evidence.

A third challenge stems from expertise gaps. As Baer candidly acknowledges: “I think people don’t realize the degree to which lawyers in particular are generalists… after three years of law school, I absolutely did not have forensic accounting skills.”

This knowledge gap means prosecutors must learn sophisticated financial concepts while simultaneously building cases against defendants represented by specialists in these areas.

To illustrate how criminal law sometimes misses the mark, Baer points to the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal. While the fraudulent behavior was clear, she questions whether criminal prosecution addressed the deeper issues.

“Whatever way you should deal with this type of behavior, which of course is terrible…it wasn’t clear to me that criminal law was doing anything to really fix it,” Baer reflects.

Implications for Accounting Professionals

For accounting professionals, Baer’s insights offer a valuable perspective. Understanding the gap between technical violations and “viable” criminal cases is crucial for effective compliance work.

“Being a world-class jerk is not the same thing as violating the mail fraud statute,” Baer points out, highlighting the gap between unethical behavior and criminal conduct.

The expertise gap between legal and financial professionals creates both challenges and opportunities. Accounting professionals who can effectively translate complex transactions for non-specialists provide immense value in both preventing and addressing potential misconduct.

Baer’s solutions include creating gradations within fraud statutes, unbundling combined statutes, and designing systems that generate better information about financial misconduct patterns. These changes would not only improve enforcement but potentially rebuild public trust.

Moving Beyond Simple Narratives

The paradox of white-collar crime enforcement shapes how our financial system operates and who faces consequences when it fails. As Baer’s analysis reveals, the seemingly contradictory patterns of prosecution stem not primarily from corruption, but from structural challenges built into our legal framework.

“If you want to have a better understanding of where the problems are and how you fix them, you need better information,” Baer emphasizes.

Baer’s book “Myths and Misunderstandings in White Collar Crime” explores these themes in greater depth. For those interested in hearing more of her insights, the whole conversation on the Oh My Fraud podcast offers a fascinating look into the world of financial crime prosecution from someone who’s seen it from multiple perspectives.

Admitting You Don’t Know Everything Became This Young CPA’s Secret Weapon

· ·

Picture this: You’re 26 years old with a newborn baby, eating rice and beans from a bulk bag because your accounting firm is three months away from bankruptcy. Your Excel budget calculation was catastrophically wrong, and you’re facing the reality that your entrepreneurial dream might be over before it really began.

That’s exactly where Nate Goodman found himself in 2022. He was staring at his wife across their kitchen table in Black Mountain, North Carolina, wondering if they’d bitten off more than they could chew. “I told my wife, ‘We tried it, I failed. We’re gonna have to eat rice and beans,’” Goodman recalls.

Fast-forward to today, and Goodman’s firm, Goodman CPAs, just closed 2024 with $1.7 million in annual revenue. His team of 12 professionals serves clients across the country, and he’s building toward a $2 million run rate.

His transformation from struggling bookkeeper to successful CPA firm owner didn’t happen because he suddenly became a better accountant. It happened because he discovered something many of us resist: admitting you don’t know everything can be your greatest competitive advantage.

In the latest episode of the Who’s Really the Boss? podcast, Goodman shares the raw details of his journey, including the pivotal moments when crisis became his catalyst for growth.

From Churches to CPAs: The Humble Beginning

Goodman’s story doesn’t start with grand business plans or venture capital. It starts with chickens, three young boys (ages 5, 4, and 2), and a simple desire to help churches with their bookkeeping while maintaining work-life balance.

In December 2019, fresh out of his MBA program, Goodman launched what he thought would be a small bookkeeping practice focused on churches. “I have some mentors doing this and only working  20 or 30 hours a week,” he explains.

But a conversation with Jim, an experienced CPA firm owner, changed everything. When Goodman pitched his church bookkeeping idea, Jim asked the hard question: “What are your credentials? Do you have any experience? Do you have any education?”

Goodman had an MBA but admitted to a limited accounting background. Jim’s response was direct: “Well, no one’s going to trust you if you don’t either have education or experience.”

Instead of getting defensive, Goodman chose to be teachable. Within a week, he re-enrolled in school for his accounting certificate so he could sit for the CPA exam. Jim sweetened the deal: complete a tax course, and he’d bring Goodman on as an intern for the 2020 tax season.

The Crisis That Changed Everything

By 2022, things looked promising on the surface. Goodman had purchased Jim’s practice (Jim was 85 at the time) and another practice through owner financing. But underneath, the numbers weren’t adding up.

The problem was embarrassingly simple and devastatingly expensive. Goodman had built his budget in Excel, but made a critical error. “I got the calculation wrong. My shareholder distributions were being added back to the cash,” he explains. “When I figured it out, I was like, oh, we only have like three months left, and we’re not going to make it to next tax season.”

The timing couldn’t have been worse. The CPA he’d hired was asking for more money than the firm simply couldn’t afford. “That was my first time terminating somebody. And that went very poorly,” Goodman admits.

That’s when the rice and beans period began. “We bought the big bulk bag of rice and did that whole thing to make it work,” he says. They were literally living on the most basic provisions while trying to save their struggling business.

But this rock-bottom moment became Goodman’s turning point. Instead of giving up, he finally discovered something that would transform his business: CPA communities and coaching groups.

“I did not even know that CPA communities existed, that there were other CPA owners out there that would share common knowledge. And so I was just going blind through 2022. And that was a very dark year for the business,” he reflects.

The transformation began in August 2022 when he found coaching groups that taught him proper pricing strategies and service delivery models. “I could price a 1040, but to price a CFO engagement or a bookkeeping engagement, I was just shooting from the hip and hoping for the best.”

The Systematic Turnaround

The results were immediate and dramatic. After implementing the new models and pricing strategies, Goodman’s firm grew from roughly $300,000 to $1.2 million in revenue in 2023—a nearly 300% increase in a single year.

Part of this growth came from strategic acquisitions. The acquired practices brought about $150,000 in revenue, and a third acquisition added $275,000. But the real growth came from transforming how they served existing clients.

“We were able to present to them, hey, instead of getting your financials once a year, what if we did your bookkeeping once a month, and you could make some more decisions? And what if we could save you $30,000 in taxes next year, and it’ll cost you a fraction of that, but it’s more than you’re paying now?” Goodman explains.

The firm also benefited from being the only CPA practice in Black Mountain. “We’re the only people here that can provide this service now,” Goodman notes, which helped with client retention during the transition.

Building Systems That Weather Storms (Literally)

By 2024, the firm had grown to 12 team members working in a hybrid model. Some work in the office, others are fully remote, and they even have team members in the Philippines. But their systems faced the ultimate test in September 2024 when Hurricane Helene hit.

“The eye of the storm went through our town,” Goodman explains. “About a 10th of a mile down from our house turned into a lake.” While their community was devastated, with power lines down and infrastructure destroyed, Goodman made a crucial decision.

“We’re like, well, we could take the server, take the networking equipment so people can VPN to the office, and we can set it up at my parents’ house in Roanoke, Virginia,” he recalls. “So we drove to Roanoke, plugged in the server, hooked it up to their internet, and then our team could work from my parents’ living room.”

This wasn’t just crisis management—it showed how the firm’s systems had evolved to handle unexpected challenges. The team maintained operations while their entire region struggled with basic utilities.

The Power of Peer Networks

Goodman’s discovery of peer communities happened almost by accident, but it became a game-changer for his business. During summer 2024, while mowing his lawn and trying to complete CPE requirements, he discovered he could listen to accounting podcasts instead of sitting through webinars.

“A friend of mine told me about Earmark to earn CPE with podcasts. I was like, ‘This is great. Now I don’t have to sit down for like a webinar or something,’” he explains.

That’s when he found the “Who’s Really the Boss?” podcast and heard discussions about fractional CFO services and team structures, and listening to the podcast helped him discover the team structure the firm needed to move toward. 

The remarkable part? His firm had just overhauled its structure two months earlier. But instead of sticking with something that wasn’t working, Goodman brought the new model to his leadership team with complete honesty. A willingness to abandon recent work in favor of proven systems accelerated their growth significantly.

Current Focus and Future Goals

Today, Goodman’s firm operates with metrics and systems that would impress much larger practices. Team members earn performance bonuses based on four specific metrics: maintaining accuracy above 90%, achieving client satisfaction scores of 90% or above, keeping client retention at 90% or above, and completing month-end closes by the 15th.

The firm also specializes in serving direct primary care practices—doctors who’ve left the traditional healthcare system for a subscription-based model. “We really believe in what they’re doing and the model they’re building. So we’re trying to be the great back office so they can focus on patient care,” Goodman explains.

They’ve even hired a dedicated salesperson with a compensation structure of $50,000 base plus 8% on collected revenue and 4% on first-year residuals. It’s a sophisticated operation for a firm that’s only five years old.

The firm’s current focus is on process optimization and AI implementation to help their team work more efficiently. Their goal? A 36-hour workweek with half-day Fridays while maintaining their growth trajectory toward $2.5 million in revenue.

The Lessons That Matter

Looking back, Goodman’s transformation offers clear lessons for other firm owners:

  • Be willing to admit what you don’t know. “I’ve been surprised at how many people are relatively open with what they’re doing and willing and wanting to help you and your development,” he reflects. “And so just asking the question, asking for a virtual coffee has been extremely helpful.”
  • Find your community. The isolation of trying to figure everything out alone nearly destroyed Goodman’s business. Once he found coaching groups and peer networks, his growth accelerated dramatically.
  • Implement proven systems rather than reinventing them. Goodman’s breakthrough came when he stopped trying to create everything from scratch and started following blueprints that other successful firms had already tested.
  • Stay teachable. When Goodman discovered the team-of-three structure just months after reorganizing his firm, he didn’t let pride prevent him from making another change. That flexibility to adapt has been crucial to his success.

At 29 years old, Goodman is quick to acknowledge he still has much to learn. “I love to learn from people who have been here and done that,” he says.

His advice to other young firm owners facing similar challenges is simple: “Don’t stress out so much. It will work out.” But pair that with action: seek mentorship, join communities, and be willing to admit when you need help.

Your Next Step

Goodman’s story offers insights into pricing strategies, team structures, acquisition approaches, and the systems that enabled his dramatic growth. If you’re ready to move beyond struggling alone and start leveraging the collective wisdom of successful practitioners, listen to his full interview on “Who’s Really the Boss?

Sometimes the difference between eating rice and beans and building a multi-million dollar firm isn’t what you know; it’s your willingness to learn from those who’ve already walked the path.

The crisis that could have ended Goodman’s entrepreneurial dreams became the foundation for extraordinary growth. Your current challenges might be setting the stage for your own breakthrough if you’re willing to be teachable enough to find it.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a Texas-based, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 15 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, groups, and one-on-one advisory.

When Your Time-Blocking Superpower Becomes Your Kryptonite

· ·

“I’m proud of my time-blocking superpower,” Nancy McClelland admitted during a recent episode of She Counts. Co-host Questian Telka nodded in recognition. They both lived by elaborate color-coded calendars that managed every minute of their days.

But their guest, burnout coach and CPA Lynnette Oss Connell, was about to challenge everything they thought they knew about professional efficiency. What followed was one of the most honest conversations about burnout you’ll hear in the accounting profession.

Nancy and Questian were upfront about why they brought in an expert. “This is something where we both feel completely lost,” McClelland explained. “We don’t have advice for others because we’re both struggling with burnout ourselves, at times sort of teetering on the edge.”

Lynnette, known as “the Burnout Bestie,” built and sold her own successful CAS practice before becoming a coach for accountants struggling with chronic stress. Her story reveals why our greatest professional strengths often become our biggest vulnerabilities (and what we can do about it).

The Efficiency Trap: Engineering Your Own Over-functioning

Lynnette’s story starts exactly where many of us find ourselves. She had what looked like the perfect setup: a thriving firm, organized systems, and the ability to juggle multiple roles with precision.

“I had engineered a life of my own over-functioning,” she explains. Her elaborate time-blocked calendar enabled her to serve as a firm owner, CFO of several companies, and soccer team manager for her kids. When other parents marveled at her ability to manage it all, she’d think, “I just time block—it’s a superpower, right?”

But here’s the problem she discovered: despite all her backup plans and support systems, everything still required her to function as the central hub. “I thought I had done all the right things,” she recalls. “My mom is my backup with the kids, I have a neighbor who’s a backup, and I have employees with tasks. But at the end of the day, all of those systems relied on me to keep them going.”

The most deceptive part? By traditional metrics, Lynnette had achieved work-life balance. She worked only 3.5 hours per day running her successful firm. But those remaining hours weren’t filled with rest. They were packed with equally demanding caregiving responsibilities.

“I’m working the rest of the time, too,” she explains. “Your family work is work, too.”

This led to her biggest realization: she had trained herself to override her feelings “like a light switch.” Whenever she felt resistance or exhaustion, she would do what she calls an “analytical assessment” by asking herself, ”Does this feeling serve my goals?” If not, she would simply shut it off and continue with her perfectly planned schedule.

Energy Auditing: The Game-Changer You Haven’t Tried

This is where Lynnette introduced the concept of energy-blocking.

While we’ve mastered scheduling when we do things, we’ve completely ignored whether those things give us life or drain it. The energy audit reveals what’s really happening within each role we play.

“Within your role, are you balanced?” Lynnette asks. “There needs to beintentionality around what gives you life. Am I pouring out and receiving in?”

This isn’t about achieving a perfect 50-50 balance in every task. It’s about recognizing that some aspects of our work energize us while others deplete us, and being deliberate about maintaining that balance over time.

The efficiency trap is particularly seductive for women in accounting because our profession rewards exactness and the ability to manage complex systems. But what we’re actually doing is creating increasingly sophisticated ways to make ourselves indispensable and irreplaceable when everything falls apart.

Community vs. Connection: The Support System You Truly Need

Lynnette’s next revelation cuts deeper. “I have community,” she explains. I have friends, I have work friends, and I have family who cares about me deeply. But what I didn’t have was conversations around what happens when life gets lifey.”

The problem isn’t a lack of people in our lives. It’s that we prioritize efficiency over intimacy in relationships. We collect connections like productivity tools: broadly and systematically, but without the deep investment required for them to support us when our systems fail.

This lesson became crystal clear during Lynnette’s son’s medical emergency. After spending all night in the hospital, she found herself at 8 a.m. in the parking lot, calling a client to explain why she couldn’t make their regular appointment.

When her client—a father himself—learned what was happening, his response stunned her: “Get off the phone right now. I don’t want to hear from you for a week. Why did you even call me?”

He wasn’t upset at her absence. He was upset that she even thought she needed to work while her child was in the hospital.

“I was living in this tunnel where I was holding myself to these impossibly high standards,” Lynnette reflects. By failing to give people credit for basic human decency, she created a world where no one was allowed to show up for her.

The solution requires what Lynnette calls “controlled vulnerability”—sharing appropriately about where you’re struggling and observing how people respond. This creates a sense of “who your community really is, who you can go to, and who has the capacity for it.”

Why Women Burn Out Differently: The Biology Behind the Breakdown

When Nancy mentioned that many of her high-performing female friends have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and panic disorders, Lynnette’s response was both validating and alarming: “The research shows that those are all symptoms of burnout.”

The biological differences in how women and men respond to stress explain why traditional burnout advice often fails us. While men typically experience “fight-or-flight” responses dominated by testosterone and cortisol, women’s stress responses are dominated by oxytocin, creating “tend-and-befriend” behaviors.

“Women feel threatened, and so we nurture,” Lynnette explains, referencing research from “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA. When accounting deadlines loom or client crises emerge, instead of getting forceful as male colleagues might, we internalize the pressure and respond by taking on more responsibility.

“Women don’t tend to get forceful or demonstrative in our stress until several more notches down the burnout journey,” Lynnette notes. “We instead internalize.”

By the time anyone recognizes we’re in trouble, we’ve already done significant damage to our nervous systems. The three warning signs to watch for are:

  1. Emotional exhaustion. Bone-deep depletion from constantly nurturing others while your own needs go unmet.
  2. Depersonalization. Suddenly resenting work you once loved because you’re running on fumes.
  3. Lack of accomplishment. Feeling like no matter how efficiently you work, you’re always behind.

“I could be hugely efficient for hours on end and leave the day and be like, darn it, I feel like I didn’t get ahead,” Lynnette recalls.

Building Prevention and Recovery Plans That Actually Work

The solution isn’t just better time management; it’s creating systems that work with women’s biology, not against it.

“I want everyone to respond to the stressors in their life, instead of reacting to the stressors in their life,” Lynnette explains. When you’re reacting, you’re putting out fires with a heightened stress response. When you’re responding, you’re coming from a grounded state, approaching challenges as a capable person with options.

Prevention strategies include:

  • Energy audits to balance life-giving and life-draining activities
  • Deep community relationships that provide practical support
  • Regular exercise that metabolizes stress hormones and adrenaline
  • Quiet practices that help you reconnect with what actually serves you

But equally important is having a recovery plan. “You don’t just take a break and go back to ground zero,” Lynnette warns. “You need to heal from burnout, because it’s a whole body experience.”

Recovery means knowing exactly who to call for different types of support, having scripts prepared for difficult conversations, and allowing yourself to scale back without shame.

The most profound insight is reframing resilience. Instead of viewing recovery as returning to who you were before, Lynnette challenges us to see it as “traveling through change in a way that honors who you’re becoming.”

The Bottom Line: Sustainable Success Starts with Honest Assessment

If you recognize yourself in this conversation—the proud efficiency expert, the person everyone counts on, the one who’s engineered elaborate systems of over-functioning—you’re not alone.

The question isn’t whether you’ll eventually hit the wall. It’s whether you’ll recognize the warning signs soon enough to choose your own path forward.

Start with an energy audit of your current roles. Which activities energize you? Which drain you? Begin shifting that balance deliberately. Practice giving people credit for their capacity to show up for you. Build movement into your routine as essential medicine for your nervous system.

Most importantly, challenge the metrics by which you measure success. The goal isn’t to eliminate efficiency—it’s to become efficiently sustainable and build systems that preserve the system builder.

Listen to the full episode to hear more of Lynnette’s story, including the difficult decision to sell her firm and her husband’s role in recognizing their diverging paths. You’ll also get practical scripts for difficult conversations and deeper insights into building the kind of community that can actually support you through crisis.

What does burnout look like to you? Share your experiences in the comments on the She Counts LinkedIn page. Your story might be exactly what another woman in accounting needs to hear.

Find Lynnette Oss Connell at burnoutbestie.com and follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram for practical burnout prevention tips.