Episode Transcript

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

Meryl: Hey Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan: Hey Meryl, how's it going? Thanks for having me.

Meryl: Yeah. I'm excited about today's episode where we are gonna be talking about how a cutting farm owners can. Earn more but work less. And that really fits in with the theme of the podcast, which is all about what's called The Lifestyle of Canada Show, is about how can accountants run a great business but also live a great life.

And I know you've got a bunch of things to share around that, but why don't we start with a little bit about who you are and what future firm's all about.

Ryan: Yeah, sure. So, really looking forward to chatting with you today. And my background, born and raised in Montreal, Canada. I'm a C P A here. I started a firm around 10 years ago called Zen Accounting. Was one of the first online. Firms in North America. In the early years I think I realized I was more of a systems thinker and was able to kind of piece together the system that took it from scratch. 2013, all the way to acquisition in 2018.

And as soon as my firm was acquired, I helped transition things over to the buyer and I knew I wanted to start future firms. So even before the acquisition happened I knew. That I wanted to help other firm owners. I wanted to be the resource that I wish I always had when I was running my firm, a resource for modern firm owners to help them create something more systematic, something more scalable, something more modern than the traditional firm.

And then as I progressed in future firm, I realized the importance of balance and, and lifestyle. And it's not just about growth and scaling. And, when I started Future Firm, it really started as just a blog to share tips and tricks. To people online that were interested, developed into a newsletter.

So lots of free content, giving out practical, actionable advice. I did a bit of one-to-one coaching and then two years ago launched Future Firm Accelerate, which is an online coaching program that has over 700 amazing firm owners from around the world that get together, collaborate online. They get access to online education to help them.

A more systematic business model that they love. And I also do some coaching in the platform as well. That's a little bit about me away from work. I love traveling as most people do, but I like going to like very remote locations ideally. And I also got into triathlon last year, so that's what I'm busy with outside of work.

Meryl: That's funny. I've spent a bit of time with you in person. I never knew that about triathlon. I used to do, I don't do it at the moment. But pre-kids I was really into triathlon too. Yeah.

Ryan: What race distances would you do?

Meryl: I was mainly sprint distance and Olympic distance. I remember when, back when I was working at B D O in Melbourne, I'd get up in the middle of winter 6:00 AM swimming training in an outdoor pool and freezing to go and get in and you could see the steam rising and it was warmer in the pool than outside of the pool.

Ryan: Yes it's a lot of time.

It's Yeah, agreed. It's funny when you said the future firms only been around for a couple of years. I've been in the community from the early days and it feels like a lot longer. I've built some great relationships there and at QuickBooks Connect last year you hosted a breakfast and it was really nice to meet some of the people I've been chatting with in the community.

Meryl: In person. And I'd say as a, a member myself, I find the community forum interesting seeing what people are writing about. And sometimes I don't even contribute, but it's still useful. Reading those threads and seeing your

Ryan: Aha. So you're a lurker then? No. You're a contributor actually. You're a contributor.

Meryl: I was a Luca for the first year and a half, and then after QuickBooks Connect, I thought I should put more effort into this and actually contribute not just.

Ryan: You know what I find cool about it though is that it's full of people just like us and that's the community that I wish I had access to when I was running my firm. We run modern firms, or at least I used to run a modern firm, and, getting access to these kinds of people and being able to pick other people's brains and see what other people are doing.

There's not many places online like that. Yeah, I'm really happy with how it's.

Meryl: And it looks like you're practicing what you preach. I was emailing you while you were away traveling recently, and I got your autoresponder, which said you were completely disconnected from email and either your assistant. Would get back to me or you would get back to me when you got back online.

Could you talk a little bit about that and, and what went into setting up? I, I realized you're not running an accounting firm anymore, but I still think it's relevant and interesting for accounting firm owners of what did you need to do to disconnect and h and how long did you step away from email for.

Ryan: Yeah. When I started future firm, I created the entire business around the lifestyle I wanted to have, which is not what I did with my accounting firm. Not to say I had a bad lifestyle with my firm, and I certainly didn't work nearly as many hours as most people do when running their firm.

Like never had the crazy, busy seasons and like the crazy long hours and the nights and weekends. But I still didn't have exactly the lifestyle I wanted and. When I started Future firm, like it was built from the ground up a, around flexibility and being able to take off whenever I want to, and the asynchronous type lifestyle.

 My wife is Indonesian and her whole family is there we wanted something where we'd be able to go, like Montreal winters are pretty brutal. So we wanted to kind of check out a Montreal during the winters and head to Indonesia.

 We were there for around seven weeks. I was able to, work from there, do everything from there. And for two of those weeks was like real vacation, let's say. That's where I completely disconnected when I traveled to different places. I just like to put the phone down, disconnect.

 If I go to a place that has no electricity, I'm even happier. Like gimme something very, On a beach, just like a little hut. No electricity, no wifi, no nothing. And yeah, that, that wasn't exactly the case in this situation. But it was actually challenging to not wanna open the email.

I turned off all my notifications and I actually felt that I was weaning myself off of a drug. So I was able to feel the addiction and myself, weaning off of that addiction. So it wasn't a great feeling, but yeah, two weeks without checking email once. And I think what's necessary for that is a certain kind of business model.

And you have to have a team. You have to have a team that can pick up the pieces, pick up the slack , when you go on vacation and that kind of thing. So having a great team in place and having a certain kind of business model that allows for that.

Meryl: Yeah well, I think that's a really nice segue into how accounting firm owners can run businesses that can create opportunities like that, where they can disconnect, where they can have more synchronous communication and more control over their lifestyle. So why don't we start with some of the column mistakes.

That you see accounting firm owners make I, if that's their goal of more flexibility, working less hours, enjoying running their firm, what are some of the common pitfalls or mistakes that you see people making that's preventing them from achieving that?

Ryan: The big one is that, they're the bottleneck. They're the bottleneck for everything. They do the sales, they do the marketing, they do the quality control. They do, client management, client relations reviewing work the hiring, the management of the team. They do every single thing they wear, every single hat.

And when you are responsible for every single thing in your business, it's impossible to just kind of take off. You can maybe do it for a couple days or a week, but you certainly can't do it for weeks and weeks at a time without things breaking and falling apart. So you have to be able to have the right team structure, and be able to delegate roles, certain roles.

So someone is in charge of operations, someone is in charge. The HR aspect of things, someone is in charge of, managing the client portfolio. People have to be in charge of certain roles. For you to be able to have the flexibility that you want and not having to work, crazy hours.

So that's one of the big issues. One of the big pitfalls is wrong structuring the team, bringing on the wrong type of people and not delegating enough. The other issue is we're usually spread too thin. Speak to any firm owner, and they're just, nine out of 10 of them are crazy busy all the time, and they're just spread way too thin.

And that's a symptom of just doing too much for too little. And low pricing is usually the issue behind that. So we bring in a lot of clients. We have tons of clients on board, but we're doing the work for suboptimal prices, so we're just creating. A lot of busy work. And that tends to Drive people into the ground. So if we have strategies to employ higher prices, higher margins, we therefore need less clients to make the same amount of money. Those are a couple pitfalls. The other thing is, and these are I think a lot of things I share, I think I have a podcast episode about this.

Five things I wish I would've done differently, running my. You know, Reflecting back on what I wish I would've done differently. Couple other things is, not being clear about what you really want at a life. Not being clear about what your personal goals are and making sure that all business decisions are consistent with that.

Like the example I gave you with Future Firm, I knew from the get-go it was very clear to me what I wanted my life to look like. How much money did I wanna make? How much time I want to take off a year. Where do I wanna be spending my time? That kind of thing. Like being very clear about what I want my ideal life to look like, and then making sure that all actions that I take in my business are consistent with that.

So a lot of people just jump into business and have no clue. Like they say, oh, I want more freedom and I want more time with my family. But they just get into. Like hamster wheel and can't get off of it because I don't think they've clearly understood what they really want and it's easy to just want more and get caught up in that hamster wheel.

So those are a couple things that come to mind.

Meryl: I can really relate to the last point you mentioned before I started be Ninjas. I had another, it's more like an accounting consulting business doing systems implementations. And I hadn't thought about any of those personal things. And then when I started Bean Ninjas, I think it's almost like when you start your second business, you have an opportunity to rectify those mistakes.

And so that was where I really reflected person. What I wanted, and same with my co-founder, Ben, of okay, we wanna work less than 20 hours a week? What kind of revenue do we want? But we only really focused on that in the beginning. But that's something I do with Wayne, my business partner, and other leaders at the business, what we want personally needs to drive the business decisions.

So we don't wanna have to be available for calls five days a week. That means we can't work with clients that expect that. And we don't have a phone number. It's just email and you can schedule times to talk with us, but you can't expect just to pick up the phone and contact us. So that means we turn away certain clients, but that helps us achieve our lifestyle goals.

So I'd say be Ninjas is very lifestyle focused about. What we do. What we do well, and I think, I mean, we've made lots of mistakes, but I think one thing we have done well is have clear boundaries that help us achieve our personal goals.

Ryan: And you stay disciplined to that. That's not easy to do either. You have a vision of what you want, you're clear on what you want, but you stay you're disciplined in your actions. So I think that's not an easy thing to do either.

Meryl: So following on from those pitfalls, I think you've got a bit of a framework of if you were. Talking to a accounting firm owner, a bit of a step-by-step of, focus on this first and then that and I think maybe it's a little different for each firm owner, but there's probably a bit of a playbook of how can you go from working with a whole lot of different clients with different service offerings, the business owner working in the business, working long hours, maybe not feeling like they can rely on their team.

Maybe they've not got a scalable marketing channel. What are some of the steps that you would take if you were talking to a someone like that?

Ryan: Yeah. This is something I'm still honing in on, but again like figuring out systems and if I wanted to create a business, a firm, an accounting firm, which is. Again, most accounting firm owners, they don't have the lifestyle they want. They're working too many hours.

They're not spending enough time with their family, they're not going on enough vacation, they're just not getting the life that they want. So if I were to go through it again, what would I do to significantly reduce the time that I'm spending in the business and be able to create something systematic that also gives me the opportunity to grow it and make the money I want from it.

So what would I do? This is what I would do in six steps. The first step is I would. Focus on creating profitable standardized service packages. So I feel that like everything that we do in our firm if we're doing a million different things for a million different clients in a million different ways it's just.

It's impossible to standardize the operation. There's like a million formulas for how things need to be done for client A versus client B versus client C. So I think we need to focus on who we're gonna be servicing and what we're gonna be offering them and then. The processes, our workflows are gonna flow from that.

So having good packages in place that are standardized and priced well so that we're bringing in the right margins, that will allow us to bring in the right resources following that. That's a step one for me. Step two is we need to obviously have business coming our way, so we need to develop some kind of inbound lead generation tactics.

A lot of firm owners struggle with marketing. There's some of the marketing tactics are very complicated. Sometimes they take very long to see results, but I think there's some easier ones that we can put in place to have some leads flowing to us on an ongoing basis. So putting in place some simple inbound lead generation tactic.

Third thing I would do implement capacity planning. So I never had time sheets at my firm, but what I did do was forecast time into the future. And that would allow me to identify when the team was over capacity, under capacity, when to hire resource. You know, Months ahead of time before we have a capacity crunch.

So implementing some kind of capacity planning. Fourth. We have standardized packages that are priced well. We have leads coming in. We understand our capacity. Now, it would start determining who we need to bring onto the team. What are the resources we need to bring on and when, so how are we gonna structure that team so that.

We're no longer the bottleneck. And who are those resources that we're gonna bring on at the right time? So developing a more autonomous team. Fifth is standardization of all processes and putting in place frameworks across the business. A lot of firm owners, they wanna focus on that first. If they're very busy, the first instinct they have is, we need better processes, we need more automation.

We need more. I think the structure of the firm has to be fixed first, which are some of the other elements I've just mentioned. The process automation, technology framework side of things comes a little bit later in the process for me. And then the last thing is having a strategy, having some kind of strategic plan in place.

That allows us to focus our efforts, focus our time, and be clearer on the pathway to help us achieve our goals. So this would be the step by step, the six step process that I would follow if I are going through it all again. To help me lead a firm that's giving me a great lifestyle that's reducing my workload and giving me more freedom.

Meryl: There's so many directions I could take this conversation. I think there's so much value in that the fifth point you mentioned around automation, that's actually a pet topic of mine. I write about it a little bit on LinkedIn about over automation disease because there's a lot of accountants don't do any automation and so maybe they need to think about some, but then there's a category of accountants that love automation and I think over automate instead of structurally changing things, resetting expectations with clients, changing scope of work, standardizing p.

Often, which involve change management or convincing someone else. It's a human element. And so I really like that you mentioned automation can help and systems can help, but it often shouldn't be the first step. There's actually other structural things that need to be changed before diving into thinking that tech is gonna solve that problem.

Ryan: I totally agree. There's not that many people that talk about it. I talk about it as well on my podcast. Was probably some of the least popular stuff that I put out on my podcast.

Meryl: I've got a bit of hate with my LinkedIn post

Ryan: Yeah. It just doesn't move the needle as much as people expect it to. Right. Like how much more efficiency can you squeeze outta your business from implementing all these apps versus better pricing, better packaging to eliminate clients and keep the best ones, like that's gonna move the needle more in terms of like profitability and workload compared to more automation.

It's not what people wanna hear. It's, again, it's the first instinct that people think when they're really busy. They just jump to, okay, I need to automate my processes more. It's just not gonna it's not gonna move the needle as much as people think it's something to do a little bit later on.

Once some of the foundational issues are. But , yeah the, the other thing is when I first started future firm, I actually thought I was gonna be a technology and automation and process improvement consultant. That's how I started future firm at the beginning.

And I did these 50, 60 the first clients I had were firms that wanted to be less busy and automate more. And they were coming to me and they already had 50 apps and all these automations. And they already had chaos in their firm. I'm like, I was putting forward like these 50, 60 page long reports with my recommendations and after a couple I was.

W wait a second. Like This is not the solution. You don't need more technology. You already have that. So that's how I got into the other stuff I talk about at Future Firm, which is pricing and systematization of the business and all these other things and bringing on board the right people and structuring the firm the right way.

So yeah, I have strong opinions about that. It's just not what people want to hear.

Meryl: Yeah, agreed. And I actually think you've seen a whole lot of different accounting firms, but from my personal experience, it's number one, the standardized packages for me that's had the biggest impact. And when we started Bingers, we were super specific and we were trying to be.

The business model of a productized service. So we actually started with a $99 bookkeeping package. Hard to make that profitable if you're trying to build a leadership team. But it was pricing on our website. Three packages you could sign up without even talking to us. And the goal was just to be very standardized.

That, that actually didn't work. We realized people actually wanna talk with their accountant and their bookkeeper, but we're trying to be like a software company. But I think

our roots came from that. Everything being standardized. We've deviated a little from that and moved. We tried to move up market because the margins are better, so we

priced a lot higher.

Now, our typical bookkeeping packages would be more like a thousand dollars a month.

Ryan: I like that.

Meryl: Yeah. Our roots are still in trying to do exactly the same thing over and over. So anytime we are doing, oh, we are doing a little bit of sales tax or a little bit of payroll, I like to ask the question, should we be doing that?

Or should we be referring that to someone else so we can stick to our core business where we're making all the margin? Why are we saying yes to that? Are we gonna. Just for one client and build a process around that. Or are we building this new product to cater to 30 clients?

Cuz if it's for one, then maybe it's not worth it.

Ryan: No, I totally agree with that. Like spot on, in my opinion. And what's interesting, actually, when I first started Zen Accounting, my first website was like an e-commerce site. Just like you. I didn't know you had that where people could sign up to these like three packages, sign up, put your credit card, don't even talk to anybody.

It was a disaster. Absolute disaster. Especially cuz uh, like I still put this picture out every so often, what my packages look like on the site, which I'm very proud of, what they look like. But the price, it was 150 bucks a month. You get everything, books, tax Advisory, unlimited Consulting, like everything.

I had people signing up for those without even speaking to me. Plus there was no scope in place for any of this, so was a disaster. But yeah. I'm sure you probably saw something a bit similar with your $99 packages.

Meryl: Absolutely. We had a hundred percent close rate for sales, which is probably a bad sign. Prices are too low. And then the mistake I made was I'm a chartered accountant, which is like a C P A, so I had all this professional pride tied up in doing really great work, but then was selling packages for $99.

Didn't have a. So there was me, instead of earning my nice fat consulting rates, me doing bookkeeping for a very low alley rate at, with, and I had to, it took me a couple of years to remove my professional pride. Say, no, I'm not selling my skills. It's actually, we are building a brand and this is about the brand in the business.

 So next up, I thought it'd be interesting to jump into some case studies. I put together some scenarios of accountants who are running different size accounting firms, and so they've got different sets of issues. I'd like to get your opinion about if you were in this situation, what would you do yourself or what advice would you give to.

the first one is an accountant who's just starting out. They're starting a new firm, they're at zero, and they wanna get to annual revenue of 250,000, replace their income plus a little bit more. What would you focus on if you were starting a new firm from scratch?

Ryan: Yeah. The first thing is what we've already discussed is have good packages in place. Be confident in your pricing. Even if you're just starting out. You don't have to give it all away. If you have a good sales process, you have packages that are attractive you can price well and bring in proper margin right from the get go.

So a lot of people are just pricing too low right off the bat. That was my big mistake. That's one of the things that I regret doing because it just drives you into the ground very early. You can be very busy. At 200 grand a year, which is not where we wanna be. What I personally did is I hired very early as well.

I hired experienced, and I hired early, which meant I had to personally take a hit. So not everybody's willing to do that. I felt that it was necessary to make the sacrifices early on, to reap the rewards later on which turned out to be the case. I hired a CPA. A chartered accountant, right up, I think we had less than a hundred thousand dollars coming into the business, and I hired a C p A so that I could pull myself outta the stuff that I wasn't good at, that wasn't giving a good o i to the business.

So it's one thing that I recommend, it's not something that people need to do. Depends where people wanna be spending their time. Some people like doing some of the client work and dealing with clients, and some people are good at doing that, so for me personally, it was recognizing where I was weak and hiring someone early on to take care of some of the weaknesses and some of the areas that weren't bringing a good ROI to the business.

But definitely packages proper pricing, good sales process. I'm obviously biased, but surrounding yourself with other like-minded individuals like you so that you're avoiding a lot of the typical pitfalls that take place. Because most people that are starting a business from $0 a lot of the time it's their first business.

And like you or I, we made a lot painful mistakes that cost us a lot of money and a lot of time that could be avoided. It's easier than ever to get help now for running this kind of,

Meryl: Yeah, I remember when I started out, my first challenge was sales, so just try to generate enough business. But once we invested in marketing early on, then I did a lot of networking, so I solved that problem. But then the next challenge was hiring and trying to figure out who to hire. And my hiring philosophy now is to hire, similar to what you mentioned, hire.

Really experience people and then have them build out their teams. So if I was starting again, I would try and hire an accounting manager. That would probably be my first hire. Someone that can manage the team, build a team, and train them to execute the client work. We didn't exactly do that.

Because we didn't have the money in the early stages. I did something similar. I think I paid myself $700 a week for the fir. It was a very low salary for the first couple of years and tried to invest in building systems and a team, and I was lucky I didn't have kids, no mortgage back then. So I could see it would be more challenging if you have financial responsibilities.

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah.

Meryl: So I think you've already mentioned who your first hire would be. Who would your second hire be?

Ryan: So my first two hires were two experienced CPAs.

I had both manager level one in tax, one more in accounting. And then, I went for someone that was like an accounting student, so I was kind of covering my bases. Someone very strong in tax, someone very strong in accounting. They were doing certain things that they were more experienced for.

But it was part of the role and it was part of what they were pitched on and, I think people were attracted to the kind of model that I was building at that point in time. It was a little bit different than what was out there. So yeah, I was able to kind of differentiate the firm and get some experienced people onboard very early on.

It just meant that we. That profitable in the very early days.

Meryl: Yeah. So let's look at a, let's talk about another accountant. They've gone through the early stages. They're probably a year or two in they're doing about 250,000 in annual revenue.

 But they're trying to get to the next stage they wanna get to. Over half a million in revenue. What do you think firms typically look like at that stage around the 250,000 in terms of their team and their systems of marketing and where do you think they need to focus to get to that next level?

Ryan: Yeah, we have to start putting in place some marketing tactics, some marketing strategies. You can be a bit scrappy to get to 250 K. You could be a bit scrappy to get to 500 K as well, but once we're getting beyond that point, we need to start putting some actual reliable marketing tactics.

That bring in the kind of clients we want. So I would focus efforts on one particular marketing channel. I don't really care what it is, just do it really well. It takes time to ramp up like a good six months if you're very consistent at it to actually see any results at all.

Meryl: What would

be an example Of a

channel

that an accountant?

Ryan: like a podcast like this you're not gonna see instant results episode one. But it's gonna take, , consistency of putting out episodes or if you do blogging, some people say, I'm gonna do a blog, four blogs a month and for the first month, and, then they give up after month too because nothing's coming in, so it takes.

Marketing these days. There's not many silver bullets out there. There's little quick wins that you can get. But like really good marketing. It takes a good six months if not more of consistent effort. Social media, you have to learn. Learn the tool, learn the platform, like trial and error, different strategies, and only then will, something pan out six months or so down the line.

Meryl: I agree

with that. So we started blogging day one with binges and now s e o, when people finding us on Google is one of our primary channels, but I think it took two years for any kind of client to say, I found you by reading your blog article or to even notice anything. So that was two years of consistent

blogging. Absolutely. Yeah. But we didn't know if it would work. I just had blind faith that it, it was gonna work and it took a while to crack the code. So I'll throw it back to you again

Ryan: Yeah, so I would start like at around the 500 k. Uh, Probably a little bit more, and this might get to your next question above 500 K I'm starting to think about the operation side of things, cuz most firm owners are not good at managing operations. They hate managing operations, even though like process improvement is always like top of their list and automation, they just never get around to doing it.

Because they're too busy and they're just not good at it, is getting some kind of outside help to manage the operations or put processes in place. You can get part-time help, I think would be very good at 500 k. But even when we're approaching the million mark, like getting someone full-time to manage operations for the firm.

 You have someone to manage the team. You have someone to put processes in place and frameworks in place and stuff like that. Back to the 500 K, I'd also start looking at putting some strategic planning in place so that we're focusing our efforts and not bouncing around from shiny object to shiny object.

Meryl: Yeah. And so what does strategic planning look like to you? I mean, I'm a big fan of it, but I think sometimes the concept of strategic planning can feel overwhelming of what does that actually mean? Do I, I go into a room and win a whiteboard with some of my colleagues or the leadership team.

Could you break down a simplified version, or if someone was just getting started with strategic planning what would they.

Ryan: I think for me, like my approach and it's kind of modeled off of the traction methodology, we can really overly complicate that entire process, but essentially we're just trying to reverse engineer your plan, like where do you wanna end up? And then reverse engineer what you should be doing right now.

I think that's the most simplified way. Say it. So getting very clear, this is where we wanna end up. These are our objectives, this is our vision. And then what's the plan to get there? So where do we need to be in 10 years? Where do we need to be in three years? Where do we need to be in one year?

And working back to determine what we should be focusing on in the next quarter. What could be realistically accomplish in the next quarter that's gonna move the needle, the. So that's my simplified view of how to approach strategic planning.

Meryl: Yep.

Ryan: if you have any thoughts on that.

Meryl: Yeah So we've also follow e os, the Entrepreneurs Operating System from the book Traction. And we've modified it a bit over time. We've found some bits work really well for us, some don't. We've got three different business units,

I've got three different business partners and so once a year they do the annual planning process and then we do quarterly as well. And that's really useful for them. We everyone presents it to each other just to crystallize where do they want the business to be in three years? What's the North

star? What does it look like in three years? What does the revenue, what's the profit? What does the team look like? What are the service offerings? And picturing all of that. And does that tie with. Their personal goals of the type of business they wanna run. For one of them, when he did that planning process and looked at how many staff he would need to manage for bookkeeping business, he actually decided not to do bookkeeping anymore and just run a C F O business and actually create a separate brand to bes.

That was how useful that process was of actually forecasting out, oh, that's how many clients. That's what the team would look like. So I think that's interesting in thinking what it will look like in the future. We always found it hard or I found it hard to look 10 years ahead, so I just looked three years ahead.

I find it too, it is too far for me to do 10 years. And then we also had trouble intraction, they call it rocks, which are like goals. And we always set too many and then we never could achieve everything. And then it was really frustrating and demoralizing for the team cuz you'd have someone with three to five rocks and then we'd never get it done.

And so now we just try and pick one Different people. And then if they can do that, great. We've got a list of other things we can tackle. And I, we also find quarterly too often. That's our other problem is by the time we've done the planning, then you've only got two months to actually get stuff done and then you're already rolling around, into the next planning cycle.

Whereas some of these projects take longer than that. So I don't know whether we're not

simplifying

Ryan: planning

the. Before the Quarter

Meryl: Yes. I, I prefer to do that too, but if you do that, I don't like planning and executing at the same time. So if that happens, then you only have two months of execution. Something I'm thinking about is should we change up from quarterly and actually have bigger chunks to focus on these projects and less.

Planning, assessing and resetting. But we haven't actually done that. I love planning and strategic thinking, but we still haven't nailed our exact process. We kind of still tweaking it and try to figure out what, works. All right. Let's move into the next scenario, which is someone that they're doing around half a million a year and they wanna grow their business to over a million dollars in revenue.

What would be some of the key levers or things they need to focus on at that

Ryan: So it's really how you structure the team. Because now we're getting into, we're having more people on the team. Like at 500 K you could still manage everything. The owner could still manage everything and have a life at a million. That's not possible. If you're the bottleneck for everything, it's gonna really drive you into the ground.

A director of operations that doesn't necessarily need to have accounting experience to take care of the team, to take care of processes, to put frameworks in place, and to do all the stuff that the firm owner doesn't like to do, like someone experienced. We're not talking about a virtual assistant or an operations manager that has some admin experience.

I'm talking about someone that has experienced running a company.

The other thing is a director of client services to remove the bottleneck of the firm owner. Having to be involved with all client related matters. So what I want is I want the firm owner to be looked at as a c e o and has one or two people reporting up to that person and

everything else happening inside the company, it's going up to one or two of these individuals. So that's the way I like to do it. I like to have the CEO buffered from the machine.

 The day-to-day stuff. So that's what I'm doing is I'm thinking about how do we structure that company and install those kind of people in and create that buffer between the CEO and the day-to-day work and the client stuff and, managing the team and that aspect of things.

So the structure of the team for me is critical from 500 K to a.

Meryl: With that customer success role that you talked about, how technical does that person need to be, in your opinion? Are they also doing the reviewing so they're solving all the technical problems and

talking with clients?

Ryan: I don't think there's any rules. I think I could take on a few different forms, but at the end of the day, I don't want every single like. complaints that a client has escalated up to the firm owner. You know, So all that stuff should be escalated to someone else that's able to communicate very well, that is technical, that's able to talk through some of the problems that might be happening with the client that might also be doing like, some of the CFO level work or some of the more.

Technical work at the firm as well. And I'm not saying it's an easy role to find, it's definitely not an easy role and it's an expensive role. But I think it's an important role if we need to buffer the c e o from a lot of the client related matters that take place.

Meryl: Yeah we tried something around that role. We call it director of. Service delivery, which I think is similar. So that's someone that's responsible for the accuracy, timeliness of the reports going out. So that's a senior technical accountant. And then we actually split off a customer success role to an accountant who had really good people skills but wasn't as technical.

So she was the one that would handle customer complaints, jump on a call that worked except choose based in Australia. So when our business shifted mostly to the US then the time. Didn't work so well because she only works school hours. But that model actually worked well for us in having she had enough understanding to talk about accounting related matters as an experienced accountant.

Which was just really strong on the people side negotiation, conflict resolution, all of that. So we are not doing that anymore. But that's something I would consider for us again. And then it allowed the technical person her happy place was not so much on calls with clients, it was more solving these really hard e-commerce

accounting

Ryan: Yeah, I like that. As long as you have someone taking care of those responsibilities. And it's not the firm owner, like most people aren't hiring senior enough, so it's all going up to the firm owner.

Meryl: Yeah.

Ryan: that's why we need to install senior people to take on those responsibilities.

Meryl: We're almost at times, but I've got just a couple of rapid fire questions to get your opinion on and then we'll wrap

up. The first one is, who should handle sales calls? A new client is coming in, is that the partner? The c e o is. An accountant that's been trained to do it.

Is that a salesperson that's been trained

Ryan: Yeah.

Meryl: accounting? What's your opinion?

Ryan: I actually have no opinion on that because I've seen it work very well for Respectable firms on both ends of the spectrum. If you're more volume based, it makes more sense to have like salespeople if you're more higher margin based and like more boutique oriented than probably the partner.

Meryl: And what do you think about sales close rates? What kind of percentage so if you have a call and send out a proposal, do you have an opinion on how many of those you should be closing?

Ryan: That's a good question actually. Realistically, let's say, I think it would be great if you could do one outta three

Meryl: Yeah, because some people say, oh yes, I've got a hundred percent close rate. And to me that says, actually, are you pricing high enough? Because if you are okay losing a couple of those, you could charge probably significantly higher prices if you've built enough of a lead generation machine that you're okay not

Ryan: agree.

Meryl: biggest marketing mistake

Ryan: Biggest marketing mistake for me or just in general?

Meryl: in general that you see people make?

Ryan: So many putting money into Google Ads when you have no marketing strategy.

Meryl: I've wasted thousands, possibly tens of thousands of dollars on

Ryan: Yeah.

Meryl: Back in the day, the,

Ryan: Yeah.

Meryl: get a single lead that converted.

Ryan: So I did worse. Maybe not worse, but I bought, like when I first started a book this Thick on Google ads and it was the worst, hor, most horrible book I've ever read. And I tried to manage it myself, and it was like the biggest waste of time ever.

Meryl: All right, and we'll finish up. The last one would be the biggest hiring mistake that you've seen.

Ryan: The biggest hiring mistake that I've seen just hiring two junior. It's just bringing on juniors, and maybe a senior accountant, but ultimately it's still all bottlenecks up to the the firm owner. Hiring not senior enough.

Meryl: Yeah I'd agree with that. Another LinkedIn post I wrote back in the day that made people angry was, I said you shouldn't, your first hire shouldn't be a va because a lot of business coaches say, oh,

Ryan: yeah.

yeah.

yeah.

yeah.

Meryl: something about that. I got a lot of hate for that one too,

Ryan: I.

gotta resurface these LinkedIn posts and just swipe them.

Meryl: That one was a couple of years ago. Amazing. Ryan, it's been really fun having you on the podcast. I think there's so much value there for accounting for owners to really think about the decisions they're making and how to structure their firm so they can run a business that they actually enjoy running, and they've got some freedom to spend time with family, go on vacation, not check their email for a couple of weeks.

So Ryan, anything else that you'd like to add before we wrap?

Ryan: That's it. This was fun Meryl. Thank you very much for having me.

Meryl: Wonderful. And if anyone wants to connect with you, where should they go?

Ryan: Yes, that's the most important part actually. Follow along on my newsletter. There's over 7,500 firm owners from around the world that get weekly tips and tricks to help them improve their firm. It's free newsletter, future firm.co/newsletter.

Meryl: Fantastic, and we'll link that up in the show notes. So head over there and you'll be able to head across to Ryan's newsletter. And also make sure to check out the future firm community as well, . Fantastic. Thanks Ryan.

Ryan: Thanks a lot Meryl. Appreciate it.