Every spring, we hear it from clients:
“I had a good year — so why do I owe so much in taxes?”
For many business owners, that moment feels like a gut punch. They worked hard, served clients, stayed busy — and yet the tax bill arrives to knock the wind out of them.
They’re not ignorant or careless. What they’re feeling is the uneasy result of a quiet disconnection from their numbers.
All year long, their tax liability hovers like a shadow — mysterious, unpredictable, and slightly menacing. And like anything that feels that way, it gets pushed off or avoided altogether.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. The good news is, there’s a path back to clarity — one that blends practical structure with energetic alignment.
In The Four Pillars of Integrity, author Gay Hendricks talks about integrity not as moral perfection, but as alignment with reality. The second pillar, keeping impeccable agreements, is how we maintain that alignment.
Each agreement we make — spoken or unspoken — connects our intention to the world. When we follow through, that line strengthens. When we don’t — when we say, “I’ll update the books later” or “I’ll sort out the taxes soon” — it weakens. It’s not just a missed task; it’s a small fracture that creates energetic drag.
Being impeccable with your agreements isn’t just about promises to clients or collaborators. It’s also about the commitments you make to yourself and your business. Keeping your books current, planning for taxes, and paying on time aren’t administrative chores; they’re acts of alignment — the daily practice of staying in the right relationship with reality.
Author and CPA Greg Crabtree uses the metaphor of physics to describe how business actually works. He identifies what he calls the Four Forces of Business Physics: Taxes, Debt, Core Capital, and Distributions.
These aren’t moral judgments or bureaucratic obstacles — they’re natural forces, like gravity. You don’t have to love them, but you can’t pretend they don’t exist.
When it comes to taxes, Crabtree’s advice is refreshingly simple:
When you do that, taxes stop being a source of dread. They become one of the natural costs of doing business — proof that your work is producing value.
You can’t argue with gravity. Once you stop fighting it, you can use it to your advantage.
When you bring Hendricks’ idea of impeccable agreements into Crabtree’s business physics, something powerful happens: you align energy with reality.
Hendricks offers the why — integrity as wholeness.
Crabtree shows the how — the structure that keeps that wholeness grounded.
Together they outline the directive: make the impeccable agreement to stay engaged in your numbers, set aside money for taxes, and adjust your expectations of cashflow accordingly.
At Songbird, we’re helping creative business owners stay in right relationship with their numbers — because integrity doesn’t live in theory; it lives in practice.
We’re introducing Quarterly Integrity with Numbers, a rhythm designed to keep you aligned with both your energy and your obligations.
Choose how you want to engage:
Each option is an impeccable agreement between you and your business — and we’re here to help you keep it.
When you stop dragging avoidance behind you, everything lightens.
Tax season stops feeling like a reckoning and becomes part of the natural rhythm of your business.
That’s integrity in numbers — and that’s where freedom lives.