Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript was generated by AI and contains errors including missing and misspelled words.

Meryl Intro:

 Hi there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Meryl Johnston. The Lifestyle Accountant Show exists to help today's accounting firm owners build successful firms while also living a healthy, happy life without sacrificing sleep your weekends, or time with loved ones. Today I have Ryan Lazanis back for a second episode.

We're exploring some issues within the accounting industry and also sharing our thoughts on personal productivity. Ryan is a CPA who founded Zen Accounting, a 100% cloud-based accounting firm. In 2013, following its acquisition in 2018, Ryan started Future Firm, which provides coaching, community and training to help accountants quickly scale a systematic firm of their own that improves their lifestyle.

I've been a member of the future firm community for a number of years and really enjoyed the collaboration and ideas that are shared there. Ryan currently educates over 8,000 firm leaders globally by his free weekly newsletter and coaches. Hundreds of successful accounting firms through his future firm accelerate online coaching membership.

Ryan [soundbyte begin]: It's a really hard thing to do. I'm, I'm getting a lot better at it. I'm definitely a lot better at it than before because before I always felt like I'd be missing out on opportunities and now like I'm willing to sacrifice opportunities for like my own sanity because the most important thing for me is my freedom and flexibility and not being tied down to something I genuinely wanna help.

If I get five of those requests every single day. It's just not possible for me to actually live. I have a set amount of time that I wanna dedicate to my business each week. To work. There's other things I want to do. Something has to give. So then it's just a question of like just, I just have to be very ruthless about saying no.

Ryan [soundbyte end]:

Meryl Intro: At the end of the day today, we cover the shortage of accountants and what to do about it. Will AI take over our jobs as accountants or will it not? Why Ryan rejects 95% of meeting requests and how he goes about doing it without upsetting people. Personal productivity and how Ryan manages his schedule to achieve business success, but still manages to have afternoons for triathlon training, Fridays for golf, and plenty of time for his family.

We also compare notes on the most important soft skills, or as Ryan calls them, human skills for accountants to develop all that and more. Coming right up from the Lifestyle Accountant Show.

Meryl: Let, let's jump straight in. I saw an article called, Earlier this week that said, no one wants to be an accountant anymore, but a program aimed at high school students is looking to fix the shortage. Wanted to get your take on this. First of all, are you seeing a shortage of accountants across the firms that you work with? And if you are, what do you think the best solution is here?

Ryan: I mean, that seems to be the consensus globally, that there's just less people going into the accounting profession just based on what I read and some of like the stats I see. So it seems to be the consensus. Why is that? Uh, quite simply, I think our professional bodies do a pretty poor job of, uh, of putting forth a compelling value proposition for why people should enter the profession.

So I think it really has a lot to do with marketing. Uh, I think our professional bodies like, you know, have to do a better job there. And I think just, yeah, I, I think that that's, that has to do a, a, a lot with it, you know, when you, when people see the way the world is wor, uh, you know, trending with technology, ai, and like the different skill sets, like, you know, what, what's, what's trending in certain directions.

Uh, I just think that a accountants, you know, we're trained with a pretty wonderful skillset. Uh, and I think, um, you know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's the language of business. I don't think that will ever change. Uh, I, I think the lack of interest is really driven by the messaging that's put out from our professional bodies.

I, think that's really what it comes down to.

Meryl: That's interesting. I've been thinking about this as well, and I've been wondering, uh, is, is the younger generation, are they. They're getting wiser about what they want and what's important in life because if you go into accounting, you, you, you're working at the Big four or you're working in a mid-tier firm.

Those first few years, or at least from, in my experience, working in audit at BDO, it was dinner in the office. I was studying on the weekends, studying at night. Long hours, a lot of pressure. The pay wasn't that good, but I was optimizing for learning, not earning in the early stage of my career. So I'm happy that I, for me, it was worth it to spend three years doing that to build a foundation, fast track my career, and optimize for lifestyle later.

So, For me, I was happy with that, but, but maybe the professional bodies or the, the information out there is isn't explaining that well. If you put in the hard yards for a few years, then it opens up a lot of options later.

Ryan: And I don't think that younger generation wants to even do one or two years like that.

And, and it's understandable. You know what I mean? And I don't think they need to, uh, I think, and I don't even think the big firms, I don't know, like are the big firms even. Doing that anymore. I, don't know if they are or not. Like, I don't think they could even get away with that as much anymore. So it's really just a messaging and communication issue in, in, in my view.

And, and if the big firms are, and most of the firms are, you know, grinding the younger people away like that, then yeah, for sure. Who, who wants to go through that? I mean, You know, the, the, that younger generation is really looking for something. They're looking for freedom. They're looking for flexibility.

They're were willing to sacrifice a little bit of money to make that happen. And, um, if they can't get that, they're gonna go somewhere else. So I,

Meryl: I posted about this on LinkedIn and someone wrote back outside of the accounting industry, a friend in a different space. And he said, I'm sure it's an oversimplification, but is AI not the answer here?

Are these young graduates worried? Uh, the profession is potentially under threat in the long term. So, so what are your thoughts on the impact of AI on the industry?

Ryan: I mean, almost everything is under threat at the moment. It's just a question of how you use the tool, how you use the technology. So, I mean, it's not gonna go away.

It's gonna morph into something. Yeah, I don't, I don't know if I'd fully buy into that. I have a

Meryl: similar opinion. I think AI is very powerful. To me, it almost feels like when we, when Xero came out 10 years ago with cloud accounting, that completely transformed the industry, the business model, fixed fee pricing, remote teams.

It really transformed the industry and it feels like we're at the beginning of that again. And it's hard to predict exactly how it's gonna impact. The industry. But, uh, there's gonna be huge changes, but as long as you are on top of all of the changes, we'll still need people. We'll still need accountants that understand numbers and communicate.

So I'm not worried, um, or, but I would be, if I wasn't planning to adapt and stay on top of the technology and the changes.

Ryan: I mean, different things are just gonna become more important. I just recorded a podcast episode. This morning on this very subject of, with AI becoming more and more important, kind of taking over like different aspects of, of a firm, or eventually we'll be, we'll be taking over different aspects.

In a firm, what becomes the most important thing and it's the human aspect, the humanization of your firm. And, you know, people wanna deal with people. And especially when we're in like the business of trust and, you know, we're taking care of people's money, we're taking care of their finances, and there's an incredible amount of stress and anxiety, um, uh, that people have when it comes to like their taxes, their books, their accounting.

They just don't understand it. And like, even if, if a robot does almost an equally good job as a human, I still think they're gonna opt for a human, even if it comes at a higher price point. Just because of that trust factor and the warmth you can get. Uh, from a human versus a robot? Yeah. Maybe I'm taking this in a different direction here, but ultimately I think like, yes, the technology's gonna get better and better, but I think the trend is gonna be more towards the humanization of, of business and firms.

Meryl: And we can get into this a little bit later in the episode too, around soft. Well, I don't love the term soft skills, but I, I don't know a better term. Maybe it's human skills. What are the important skills that accountants should be focusing on developing and how do you actually know about that? So we'll come back to that.

I've got one other topic for you to discuss, and this one is around whether you should build teams or not in the accounting industry. There's many examples, uh, in other industries of people building a one person business, doing over a million dollars in revenue. So they don't have employees, but they might have some contractors, and typically they're tech businesses.

But I know of one business that's in a services space called Design Joy, which is graphic design, and that guy. Did over a million dollars in revenue with around 50 clients. Couple of contractors I believe, but no one helping with fulfillment. So no one helping him with design. Maybe had a bookkeeper, maybe there was a web, web guy, something like that.

And so that sparked this conversation of, well, if you want freedom, are you better going the solo route so you don't have to manage people? Or are you better off building a team so that you can take time off and you, and you've got a team there. So what's your perspective?

Ryan: I guess like those one-person businesses that are generating over a million dollars, like I read about that too.

And like they are relying on people at the end of the day, right. They're relying on people to do stuff to help them out. Like, you know, they have, they say they don't have like a team of employees, but they do have contractors that they rely on those contractors. And you could run a business like much leaner today than probably you could have.

You know, 10, 20 years ago because of technology and the scalability of, of, of certain business models, and, uh, I, I still think a lot of these businesses are relying on people, whether we call them a contractor, whether we, whether we call them, um, uh, whether we call them employees. When I first first started Future Firm, I said to myself, it's just gonna be me.

And I think like, uh, I bought a book. There's this guy I was following, Paul Jarvis, he like completely ghosted off the internet. Maybe you've heard of him or Yeah,

Meryl: I have his book. The company of one.

Ryan: Company of one. That's right. So I read that, I was like, yeah, I'm all in company of one, you know? And uh, and then very quickly I saw like, yeah, I have a very scalable model, but there's things that need to get done in the business.

Like if you're growing beyond a certain point, Even beyond half a million dollars. There's things that need to take place in the business that you just don't wanna do. So you have to have somebody that's gonna do it, otherwise you're not gonna be able to work like, you know, the hours that you probably wanna be working.

You know, if you wanna be working 20, 30 hours a week, something like that, you're gonna need people to rely on, whether it's contractors or whether it's employees. So I initially said to myself, because I'm not great at managing people, It's not my, like, it's not my, it's, it's the thing I like least in business.

So I initially said, I'm gonna be a company of one. And then very quickly I saw like, all right, well there's so much stuff here I don't wanna do. I'm gonna bring on a virtual assistant. And then, you know, um, this being my second business, I was better at hiring, better than betting, better at, um, managing.

And then I was able to, you know, slowly but surely start putting a team together. And I saw that. Uh, now I'm all in on the team concept. If you have the right structure, if you have the right people. And, uh, I made a lot of mistakes the first time around in my first business at my firm. So much. I had so much turnover.

It was so painful. Uh, but yeah, now, now I'm able to work a lot less hours. Like I work 30 hours a week, less than that some weeks, which for some it's great. For some, it's. Nothing crazy, but, uh, I'm happy with my work week and it's attributed mostly to my team and being able to delegate the stuff I don't wanna do.

Meryl: So what does your team look like now, going from zero, it was just you and then what does the, your team look like now?

Ryan: So there's like 10 people on the team at the moment, and, uh, so number of VAs, which all have their own respective like, Duties at the business. Uh, um, a director of operations, which I think is super critical.

Um, two developers, a designer, uh, a copywriter. Uh, so yeah, that's, that's kind of the composition at the moment. The key there is the director of operations role.

Meryl: And are these, where are those team members based? Are they all overseas?

Ryan: They're all offshore, yeah. They're all offshore, so, mm-hmm. US, Panama, Philippines.

Meryl: Yeah, very interesting. So I'm still in two minds about this and I think there's almost a spectrum. So I felt the most pain when I was in the, uh, the messy middle. So for me now being in, there's a big enough team that there's a leadership team and that shields me from, from a lot of the day to day. So that's other people's job, to make sure that our team's happy and our clients are happy.

And so a team of that size we're almost. Or around 30 people that, that's great for me and I'm glad that I put in the effort to build that team. But in the middle of that, when there was about 10 or 12 people reporting to me, that was just hectic. And, and so to me that was the worst, that that was when I was working the most hours and the most stressed.

And so I think unless you're planning to, to build a team, Whether you've got enough people to have a director of operations or someone else that's doing the managing, then for me, I'd prefer to be one or the other. Really small or or big enough to have that.

Ryan: I mean, and you don't have to be super big to be able to have a Director of Operations.

Like I brought one on when we were like four people probably. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You know, so like I just didn't wanna do any recruitment. I don't wanna do any managing, I don't wanna be checking in. I don't wanna be looking at like debt, like task deadlines, and I don't wanna do project management. I don't wanna do any of that stuff.

Meryl: I mean, in hindsight, that was my mistake. That I was the, I was the project manager for 10 or 12 people of doing all of that. Have you done this? Why it's not done. Why isn't it done? Okay.

Ryan: Yeah. I can't do that again. And, and now, like, honestly, like my business is quite profitable, but I'm willing to sacrifice profits for like, you know, peace of mind.

So like a big thing for me is like just adding redundancy, you know, adding redundancy across the business and making sure like, You know, maybe we're staffing up more, a little bit more than we need to be, but you know, if something happens to one person, there's another person that's cross-trained that's able to like, you know, pick up the slack and the right structure, adding redundancy, like I'm happy to sacrifice profits for that.

Meryl: So the next topic, this is sparked by a LinkedIn post that you wrote, and it starts, I'm gonna read a bit of it. So it says, I reject 95% of meeting requests. While I'd love to meet with everyone, protecting my calendar is critical. Here's my approach to rejecting meetings. If the meeting won't advance preset business goals, the meeting gets rejected.

If there's a possibility for an interesting opportunity, I ask to flesh things out a bit more via email First. And the post goes on and I, this caught my eye. I, I was really intrigued by this and I wanna…

Ryan: So you're in the 5%, you're in the 5%,

Meryl: …yeah. I feel special. Made the cut. So have you always thought like this, have you always had this ability to say no to things?

Or is this a skill you learned along the way?

Ryan: It's a really hard thing to do. I'm, I'm getting a lot better at it. I'm definitely a lot better at it than before, because before I always felt like I'd be missing out on opportunities. And now, like, I'm willing to sacrifice opportunities for like my own sanity because the most important thing for me is my freedom and flexibility and not being tied down to something.

Uh, that's really what it comes down to. It's like, I love, I genuinely wanna help. I get people reaching out, some people that I even know, like over, over the years and say, Hey, like, you know, I'd love like you to, I'd love to show you this idea I'm working on and get your thoughts. Like, I'd, I'd love to help someone with that, but, If I get five of those requests every single day, it's just not possible for me to actually live.

You know? So like that's really what it comes down to. It's like I have a set amount of time that I wanna dedicate to my business each week to work. There's other things I want to do, you know, I like, I like training. I'm training for triathlon. I like going golfing in the summer. I like going, you know, enjoying my weekends.

I like going, traveling. It's just not possible to do everything. So something has to give. So then it's just a question of like just being like, For me, I really value an open calendar. I love seeing nothing in my calendar. I just have to be very ruthless about saying no at the end of the day.

Meryl: So one of the situations I find it hard to say no to is where a good friend or someone that you know quite well, does an introduction to you, to someone else.

And then it's not really clear why you should meet that other person or have a call with them and then they write back and say, great to connect with you. Let's jump on a call to chat. But you don't really know what the purpose is or why, but, but someone that you quite like or respect has made that introduction.

How do you handle a situation like that?

Ryan: Uh, the person that that's doing the introduction, I'll probably take them off the thread.

Yeah. I'll probably say, okay, thanks. Like, you know, and then like, uh, you know, I probably would take them off the thread, you know, but, um, yeah, I just say like, look like, uh, gimme a little, give me a brief overview of like, what, you know, what you wanna discuss, and we'll take it from there. And that's it. Yeah.

And oftentimes it's not something that like, You know, sure. Like maybe it's an opportunity or sure. Like it's something that like might generate some revenue, but it's not like part of the core business model and it's just gonna take me in a direction that I don't wanna go in. So then why am I gonna have that call?

Meryl: So something else that stood out to me here, it's not just about saying no in order to say no to things that don't align with the predefined goals. First of all, you actually need to define those goals cuz otherwise you don't know whether this thing aligns or not. So I'm interested in how you think about goal setting for your business, but also I think personal goals tie in because it seems like a lot of how you're running your business is.

Tied to how you wanna live your life as well. Yeah,

Ryan: I'd love to say that I'm like a master strategic planner and like I have like everything dialed into the absolute fullest. I think it's probably better than most, but not nearly as good as it could be. I think like I have like an idea of, you know, after going through my first business, after running my firm, like just losing sight on what's really important.

Like I never had terrible lifestyle, but I was like all in on the business and like really didn't have like, Really didn't think about anything else and like what I really wanted in life. And then with future firm, I had like an opportunity to start from scratch and really think through that a little bit more.

So I knew it was really important for me, which is the freedom, flexibility, working a certain amount of hours per week, having an understanding of like what kind of income I, I need to just be happy and not just chasing money for the sake of it. I know how much money I need to make to be happy, and anything above that is a bonus.

I know how many hours a week I wanna work. You know, I know I wanna have a lot of flexibility so I can travel whenever I want and not be tied down to any particular location. So working asynchronously is is very, very important for like 99% of the time. So I have that clearly in mind. And then what I do is I just make sure that the strategic planning that's done for the business on a quarterly basis.

That, uh, were just working on three to five big priorities each quarter, not overloading anyone on the team and just content with the business as it is not just chasing every single opportunity out there. So, I don't know if that answers your question, but. That's kind of how I handle it. It does.

Meryl: And this whole concept of saying no to a lot of things or what to say yes to, I think it was Ali Abdul who, who was talking about it.

You can be in the exploring phase of business or you can be in the exploiting phase. And I, I think as I'm forgetting some of what he said, but I think when you're new to business or you're starting out, you're exploring lots of different things. And so if I think back to binges and marketing, we had to test about 10 or 15 different things.

I tried cold calling. Physical mail drops, partnership building, uh, BNI, networking and, and so I was doing a whole lot of exploring, saying yes to everything, trying to figure out what works. And then you can be in the exploiting phase where you've figured out what works and it's about doubling down, and that's probably where you, you make the money.

That is true, but I think a lot of people aren't very good at that transition of, they stay in that exploring phase when once you've got enough information or data, that's when you really should be doubling down on a few things. And, and focusing on that,

Ryan: that is very, very true because if I look back to when I started Future firm, I didn't know what the heck I was even doing.

And I was like, oh, lemme try this, lemme try that. So I, I think there is a time for you to be accepting opportunities and talking to people and saying yes to things and, and exploring and experimentation. I fully agree and I, I don't think that. Ever should fully stop. But yeah, there is a point where it's like, okay, this is working well, business is growing.

Like let's, let's double down on like the, the things that are like bringing in the most and the best customers and the things that are just working the best. So I think you do have to play around a bit until you have a model and then you could run with it.

Meryl: And have you got any examples business-wise of things that you are saying no to or where you're focusing?

So there's lots of different things that you could do in, in your business or, or in my business there's, there's so many different things where we could be focusing our time. It could be on marketing, it could be on improving our product, it could be on hiring more people. I was wondering how you think about whether you've got an example of that or how maybe last quarter when you were doing your strategic planning, how you approached, considering all of the options and then.

Uh, how do you actually figure out what's, what's the most important thing to focus on?

Ryan: I think there is a little bit of judgment required. I have a bit of a one track mind, so for me, it's all about growing the membership, the future from accelerate membership. I just want to grow the membership. You know, sometimes I have like, you know, partners that say, Hey, we'll pay you X dollars, like to do this speaking gig.

But there's like, not much, like, maybe it's like a, a decent amount of money, but it's not like it's not gonna bring new members or it's not gonna like, advance that aspect of the business. So, uh, for me it's just like, Grow the membership. Like everything else for me is secondary. Most other things, uh, uh, you know, I'm, I'm blocking outta my blocking outta my mind, and I'm making sure that the business is smooth, running, low stress, you know, um, you know, it's not just about sales, but it's about making sure, like we have a business that's structured well.

We have a good foundation in place and like running smoothly, good workflows, good processes. So those are the two things that I'm, that I'm really focused on is like, A smooth running business we're, you know, myself and the team are, are very happy and, uh, making sure that we're growing the membership while at the same time delivering a lot of value to our customers.

So those are the only things I'm thinking about. Most other opportunities I'm gonna turn down.

Meryl: What does your day-to-day look like now and is it different to when you, you were running your firm? You mentioned you do maybe a 30 hour work week. You like how you like opening up your calendar and seeing blank space. So I'm curious about what it looks like now, day-to-day for

Ryan: you. Yeah, it's not like super interesting, but I find what works well for me is the following.

My calendar is only available for meetings from. 12:30 PM to 3:30 PM Monday to Thursday. Friday is completely off. I don't work Fridays. And then the other, Monday to Thursday, like the first half of the day, I start my day at, let's say 8:00 AM. Those three or four first hours is just like my focus time to like get actual creative stuff done.

I'm always trying to like carve out as much creative time as possible because that's what I enjoy the most. And yeah, so that's really, that's really my week. Like I'm most productive in the mornings. I wanna spend my creative time in the mornings. I don't want like to give everybody. Access to my calendar.

So it's either 15 minute meetings or 30 minute meetings. I always default to 15 minute meetings, uh, which some people might find a little bit weird. It's like, yeah, can we talk? Yeah, sure. Here's a 15 minute meeting. But yeah, it's like, okay, let, let's talk like, let's get into this. Because honestly, most things really only take 15 minutes if you get right down to it.

Mm-hmm. So, uh, so yeah, that, that's kind of how I manage my schedule. You know, I have like certain tasks on my list on a daily basis. And, uh, I just try to make sure that what I have on my plate is reasonable. And how do you spend your Fridays? Uh, depends if it's the summer or the winter. So, truthfully, if it's in the winter, I might work a couple hours in the morning on Friday, but in the summer I'll, I'll go golfing.

I go up to our cottage on the lake, you know, take long weekends. You know, I live in a very cold place, uh, a lot of the years. So, gotta enjoy the, gotta enjoy when the weather is warm. I don't wanna work a five day work week.

Meryl: And how do you manage your to-do items? I mean, this is probably getting a little bit specific, but I'm really into personal productivity, so I'm always curious about how, how people manage things like that.

Ryan: I don't have anything super fancy, although do, I do have a system and it's borrowed from the, uh, David Allen’s getting things done. I have a feeling you probably know it. And, uh, basically how that came about when I started my firm, it was the first time running my business and I was actually driving myself crazy, not being able to stop thinking about the business.

So like when I was like an employee, like, you know, you went to work, you went home, and like you just don't think about it. You don't care. That's it. It's outta your mind. But this was like a 24 7 and it was literally like, I was like going. I'd never experienced that before and I was literally going crazy.

Then I like, I don't know how I stumbled upon this book, but it like, it just made so much sense where, the way I work now is if I have an idea, if I have a thought, if I have like, you know, something that needs to get done right away. I'll add a task in like this master task list, um, which I call my inbox, which is borrowed from that book.

Uh, and I just like dump it in there. I don't really formulate much thought. I just like get it outta my head, so I know like I have a way of just like getting things outta my head like instantly. And then every Friday morning, Or it could be on Thursday. Thursday, um, Thursday before like the end of the week.

Um, I will sort that list. So maybe there's like 20 or 30 items that I like just dumped in there. During the week, I'll better formulate those items. I'll sort them. Maybe I'll add some deadlines to those items. And now I just know that like nothing's gonna really slip through the cracks. I have a system for getting things outta my head.

I just feel better about. Getting it all out into some system, into some place where I could sort it at a later point in time. So that's how I handle it.

Meryl: I think that first step of just getting everything out of your head is important. The designed to think, we're not designed to store information our brains.

So getting everything out, I, it is a way to free up space. And I had that same trouble when in early days of being in Georgia 24/7, always thinking about things and thinking if I miss something, I still do a lot of thinking about business. But now it's less about, oh, did I forget to do that thing or I have to do that.

And it's more the fun, creative thinking, running a business, which I enjoy. Jason Andrew from SBO Financial. I'm not sure if you know of him. Yes, of course, of course. So he wrote something recently about the self-care routine that someone like a Tim Ferriss or an Andrew Huberman. Right to bound with the journaling, the, the morning stretches, the physical strength training, and saying, well, you'd probably need three and a half hours every morning if you wanted to do that properly.

And he said, obviously, neither of these guys have kids.

Ryan: Yeah, okay. I remember seeing that. I think it was on LinkedIn. I'm not sure. But yeah, I, I like his content. He has good content. It does.

Meryl: Yeah. Great content. And I thought that was funny because pre-kids, I was very into the morning routine and the green smoothie and the affirmations and, and I don't know, I never knew how much I'd move the needle.

Um, but I think carving out a little bit of time for yourself is important to think or to exercise. Uh, but maybe the three-hour version is, is a little bit over the top. So I'm interested in what that looks like for you. I know you've got a young family. And so how you carve out that time for yourself day to day?

Ryan: Yeah. I used to love my mornings cuz like my wife likes to sleep in a little bit late. Like, I'll get up like, you know, 6:00 AM kind of thing. Uh, so like, it was just like always silence and like when my, my daughter was born, like she would like be sleeping a little bit more. So like, I had those mornings and like I got into meditation during the pandemic.

Nothing crazy, but just like, You know, 10 to 20 minutes of meditation a day. And like, that's kind of suffered because I've prioritized some other things. Like training for triathlon could be, you know, many, many hours a week, you know, so, um, and I like to go golfing, so it is hard to kind of squeeze it all in.

That's why I like to end at, let's say three 30, because then I could do, you know, our daughter's at daycare, we pick her up at, let's say five. So, you know, sometimes I can have like, You know, one to two and a half hours depending on the day of like training. And, um, yeah, it's hard to squeeze it all in, but that's why I arrange my schedule, my calendar, the way it is so I could have those couple hours after work and before my daughter comes home.

So that's kind of how I do it. Or I just do it like early morning. On the weekends I'll do it, I'll go at, at like 7 30, 8 8:00 AM on the weekends for a couple hours and then come back and then, Everyone's ready to leave the house and I'm, I'm there with them.

Meryl: Yeah, that's something I think one of the advantages of running your own business is that you can structure your schedule for yourself to optimize for when you work best, deep work in the morning, or for some people their night hours.

And so you can really structure things. In a way that works best for you. And that's something that I think I could never go back to working nine to five in an office with young kids. I don't know how you'd ever carve out time and do it. When do you fit in time to exercise or to do meal preparation? Uh, in between a full, a job with full-time hours and a young family and trying to save fit and healthy, I, I'd.

Just dunno how people do it. So, hats off. 

Ryan: Never. I would never, ever, yeah, I couldn't, I, I don't know how, yeah, I don't know how, but yeah, I would never go back.

Meryl: So let's switch gears now and talk a little bit about content creation. Can you remember your first step into creating content A and why you got started?

Was this were, were you creating content or doing content marketing at your old firm, or was this more something that, that you moved into afterwards?

Ryan: So my firm grew primarily due to SEO and blogging. It was really by accident. You know, when I started my firm, I started with zero clients, with zero experience in marketing.

I had expenses coming in because, you know, I took out a lease, like a three year lease on an office with zero clients, you know, so that was like the first thing I did. So I was like, okay, now I gotta get some business. So, you know, I went out to networking meetings, mornings, evenings, as much as I could. I, I really didn't like doing that.

Then I was like, okay, let me try and like leverage the internet. And I went to like these business directories online. These probably don't even exist anymore, but I find like all these email addresses for these companies and then I would just like one by one, like send them an email, like a real, like pure, like a horrible, like cold outreach, like sales pitch email.

I had no clue what I was doing. Obviously I got, I didn't get any hits from that. I just wasted like, Tons of time trying to generate some leads that way. I was doing all these different strategies that just like were, were horrible and just completely failed and. When I was running my firm, it was one of the first online firms in North America at the time.

So it was very easy to differentiate. And I remember for whatever reason, I never really liked writing too much, but for whatever reason I decided to like, um, you know, I had a couple clients that were like tech clients cuz they understood like, you know, the way that we wanted to operate. Like they understood that so, I said, oh, there's this like big tech blog in the, in the, in Canada.

Like, let me, uh, let me see if maybe I could do a guest blog post. And I, my first post was, you know, online accounting and the Death of a Dinosaur. I still remember that title, which is like, the dinosaur is like the traditional firm and it's gonna die. And like, here's this new model, and like, this is what it's all about.

And like, as soon as I did that, like I started getting like some attention, I, I, I had no strategy. I just kind of wrote what was on my mind. And I started getting like some attention. I started getting some comments and some people reaching out. I was like, oh, like say I, I gotta like do more of this stuff.

So it took me a long, long time to figure out like how to actually blog in a way that actually gets eyeballs on the blog. Like it took me years, but I didn't need a super sophisticated strategy when I was running my firm because no firms were blogging. So any blog I'd put out, like got good visibility on Google.

So we just got a lot of leads that way. You can't do the same strategy now you have to be pretty sophisticated with your blogging. But uh, yeah, that's kind of how I got into it.

Meryl: And what are your thoughts for accountants, the accountants of today? Should every accountant be thinking about trying to build some kind of audience or is it not worth it?

For some accountants, it's probably not worth it.

Ryan: For some, I think it's worth it for many. Uh, but like, you know, there's some that just don't need like a ton of clients and like, You know, there's some that just have like coaching, you know, a firm that, um, focused on like nonprofits and they went like very, like high ends, like premium, uh, services.

She wanted, you know, uh, she wanted to just have freedom and flexibility was very important. Uh, small team. And to reach her goals, she only needed like a handful of these clients. So why are we gonna build like a huge audience and get into like this complicated, sophisticated strategy when if you could just build a couple partnerships with a couple key partners, that's gonna be a lot easier than like building up a huge social media following, or a huge email list or any of those sorts of things.

So I think it depends on your goals. I think most would benefit from an audience, which is. Not easy to build, uh, but some don't necessarily need it.

Meryl:  I'd agree with that too. So I think it's nice to have an audience and there's definitely a lot of things you can do with it, but I think a lot of accountants make the mistake of thinking they have to have it when actually, if you look at the business goals and sales, you could probably.

Generate the business you need through much faster strategies like building relationships and in-person networking if you're not, if you don't need to get to a huge scale. I always found that in-person networking, not my favorite, but that was the fastest way for me to get clients. Took me about two or three years of writing content to get any kind of result.

Uh, and, and so I believe in the strategy, but I don't, unless you're willing to pay, play the long game. I don't think it's the right strategy for everybody.

Ryan: I completely agree.

Meryl: So I'm interested you create a couple of different types of contents. I know that you, I read your articles on the Future Firm website.

You've got a newsletter. I, that's something I open every week. And I also see that you're active on LinkedIn and you have a, a podcast. So what's your favorite type of content to create?

Ryan: I like the newsletter still the blogs I actually don't write anymore, so the team writes the blogs. I am involved in planning the blogs, the topic.

Research for SEO purposes. Outlining the blogs, you know, editing them, but I don't write the blogs anymore.

Meryl: When you say team, are you talking about the ChatGPT team member of yours?

Ryan: So we had one blog where we, it says like, uh, artificial intelligence for accountants written by, Artificial intelligence.

So a lot of that was, but it was more of like, kind of like a, a fun, playful kind of thing, uh, where we're just like saying like, yeah, artificial intelligence wrote like a big chunk of this, but we, we want like, our content to be like practical, actionable. Uh, we want it to be kind of interactive where it's not just like reading a block of text and there's like kind of images or videos there.

So like, you know, I think it, it, like I don't, A robot can't really do that. But I think it could help with some of the writing. But yeah, we have like, uh, virtual assistants that have been trained on like, the blog writing process and like putting together blog posts and, you know, optimizing it for seo. So I don't really enjoy that anymore.

I don't really have the time for that. I think I enjoyed it more in the, the earlier days, but after like, I don't know, almost 10 years of blogging. I'm kind of, kind of a bit bored of it. I like the newsletter because it's like short content, short form, a little punchier, more on the creative side. I'm trying to think about like, interesting thing I'm trying to maybe like relate certain stories or pieces of news or things happening in the industry to like accounting firms in a way that maybe they might not have thought about before.

Just trying to get their creative juices flowing as well. So a lot of it is like, I'm not necessarily advocating for it, but I have some themes that are important and I want them to kind of think about their business in a different way. So that's kind of what I like about the newsletter.

Meryl: Something I think you do well in the newsletter is the little headlines because it always, it's intriguing.

Often it makes, I'm intrigued enough to click, I click. I don't normally click that many links in a newsletter. Maybe it's cuz I'm in the accounting industry, so I'm interested in these topics. But I'll often click a few links, which I, to me is a sign that you must be writing the hook or the, the title.

Well, what's your approach to that? 

Ryan: I actually think I write terrible titles, so I don't know. Thank you for letting me, I don't, yeah, I don't have any approach Sometimes like I have, what do I write for this title and I just don't overthink it. I put a couple words down, like I don't overthink it as much. I don't look at like the numbers that much, truthfully.

Mm-hmm. I'm not like looking every week. Okay, which did someone click on this link? And like what? Maybe I'll look at like the top click links, just, uh, just for my own personal interest, but I'm just sharing what I think. People are interested in and what interests me. So that's really what's driving the newsletter.

It's not like really driven by like a lot of data, truthfully.

Meryl: So at the beginning of the podcast, we talked a bit about the future for accountants and the kind of skills that they'll need to develop to provide more human style services. I can't remember the exact term you used. Uh, I was using the term soft skills.

Uh, what do you think are the most important skills for accountants to focus on now? Let's assume that their technical skills are fine. Where do you think they need to spend time?

Ryan: I don't even know how to build some of these skills. Like if you look at the World Economic Forum, they have this like future of jobs report they put out every year.

I always look at it, it's like interesting stuff. It's like a hundred pages, but there's some charts in it and they always look at like, I. The skills that are trending. And I don't even know how they come up with it, but it's like, you know, uh, problem solving skills and like, you know, innovation and like, I don't even know how you train someone on innovation, to be honest with you.

You know, I think like the customer service aspect of things is probably like one of the most important aspects, like dealing with people. How do you train people on, like there are ways to train people on customer service, but I think some of it is like, I. Naturally within us as well, whether someone's empathetic or not, like that's kind of naturally embedded in us or ingrained in in our personality.

So, You know, I'm, I'm just seeking those kinds of people that are like empathetic because they're naturally gonna be helping our customers. More people that are problem solvers, like there's natural problem solvers. You know, I'm just seeking those kinds of people in the recruitment process. I'm not necessarily training on soft skills, uh, but I'm recruiting people that have the tendency to excel in those types of soft skills.

And then it's a lot easier. It's like, okay, like, you know, this customer is approaching us, you know, they're unhappy for this reason. Okay. Like, This is how I would handle it. And then, you know, documenting some of those solutions along the way so then they could kind of pick up the ball and run with it. So that's kind of how I'm approaching

Meryl: It's interesting to think about what skills are trainable and, and what skills are ingrained. So some of the skills I've been trying to develop for myself, uh, sales skills, storytelling, negotiation, and so a lot of those skills, I think you have a base level of. Your original skillset, but I think you can improve these skills too.

And so something like with sales, I think life is sales. So convincing your partner to marry you, that's sales. Okay. Convincing your employees to follow your vision is sales. It's not just necessarily selling to a customer. So to me, I think that's an important skillset set. And the same with storytelling.

So if you're a leader, then you're telling stories all the time about your vision for the firm, about the opportunities that are there. And I find things like values. If you're trying to communicate values, they're best framed in a story. And if you keep telling the same stories over and over, people remember those stories.

So there are a couple of examples. But I think there's a whole bunch of other skills around personal time management, um, leadership. I, I don't have a defined list of skills I think that accountants should be building, but I'm aware of some of those skills that I've been trying to improve myself.

Ryan: Definitely. Those are all great ones.

Meryl: Is there anything that you are trying to improve an area of your professional life where you are trying to improve at the moment? 

Ryan: That's a very good question actually. I think I'm just kind of in a, uh, I'm just kind of in like I know what works right now and I'm just doing more of that.

Uh, I probably have to zoom out and like think about that a little bit more on my mind. I probably wanna get better with AI chat. G B T, like I've kind of neglected that a bit. I got, I got into it and then I just haven't used it for a while. So I think that's one skill I would probably wanna develop. Yeah, I'm just kind of like in a, in, in a, in a cycle of, of what works at the moment.

And, um, yeah, there's definitely things that I'm weak at. There's definitely things I gotta get better at. Delegation. That's still a, a weaker area of mine, although I think I've gotten a lot better, uh, and just gotten more comfortable with letting go and just letting the team run with it and like just trusting the team.

So, but that's probably one where I probably need to go through a little bit more training when it comes to that. So that's one I would probably develop more. And uh, on my mind is just, Getting better with chat G B T and these different AI tools.

Meryl: Awesome. Well, we're pretty much at time, so Ryan, that's been a really fun conversation.

We'll talked about all different things in the industry. Did you have any final comments? And then also if you just want to share where people can get in touch with you.

Ryan: Yeah, so, um, I, it's always a pleasure, Meryl. We could do this on a weekly basis, monthly basis. You let me know. But, uh, always a pleasure.

Uh, I think you have a lot of great insights for the industry, so, uh, keep up the good work. And if people wanna follow along for what I'm doing, my newsletter is the best place. There's close to 9,000 people on it at the moment. And uh, it's future firm.co/newsletter. And there I'm just sharing, you know, tips, tricks, templates.

On how firms could systematize their firms so that they're working less well, giving themselves the opportunity to scale up and earn more. So future firm.co/newsletter. Awesome. Thanks Ryan. Thank you very much, Meryl.

Meryl Outro: It was great having Ryan back for a second chat. I'm always inspired by his discipline. In ignoring new things and staying ruthlessly focused on what is actually important. Here are a few things that stood out to me during our chat. Ryan's default is 15 minute meetings. I thought I did well moving my 60 minute meeting, default to 30 minutes, but 15 minutes seems, it seems a little hard actually.

Um, there would be no time for any chitchat and it would be getting straight down the business. So I, I admire that Ryan's made that move. Still gonna think about whether I implement that myself. So, When Ryan started Future Firm, he thought about doing a company of one style as managing people was one of his least favorite things to do.

So it's interesting that he changed his mindset on that as ultimately he did hire people, but one of his early hires was a director of operations, so that they were then in charge of managing everyone else and making sure that both clients and the team were happy. I also like how Ryan builds redundancy into his business so that if someone leaves, it doesn't create a world of pain.

Instead, people are cross-trained across multiple areas of the business, but he also mentioned not just the cross-training, but there's extra capacity built in, and he's okay if that means slightly less profit, just for peace of mind, knowing that if someone's away or someone leaves, that the business can still keep operating and doesn't have to scramble to quickly hire and retrain somebody.

Next week, I am chatting with an accountant who did go down the sole practitioner path. She also didn't enjoy managing staff like Ryan, but instead of hiring a team, she built a thriving business with no staff. I'm chatting with Heather Smith and Where're gonna be talking about the pros and cons of not having a team and how to manage some of the challenges of being a solo operator.

Like taking leave and how to maintain work quality when you don't have a peer review or an internal review process.