ryan lazanis: how to build the firm that suits your lifestyle

bigger isn’t better if it creates headaches.

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the disruptors
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

ryan lazanis started his previous firm, xen accounting, a 100% online accounting firm because he thought he could have a better life if he started his own business. now, he teaches firm owners from around the world how to build firms that support their lifestyles.

“your business is there to serve your lifestyle. we often lose sight of that,” lazanis says. instead, firm owners should think about what makes them happy and how their business will help them get there.

more: megan genest tarnow: hire for curiosity rather than compliance | clayton oates: one way to keep clients for life | randy crabtree: follow these three rules to keep employees happy | erik solbakken: yes, you can work less and make more | donny shimamoto: future firm growth requires a mindshift | jennifer wilson: empower young workers to build the firm everyone loves | mike whitmire: re-think your hiring and training practices | hector garcia: success strategies of a quickbooks youtube superstar | blake oliver: why tax work yearns to be free| private equity explodes in u.k. | brannon poe: the status quo must go  | accounting nerds, unlock your super powers  | disruptor: jason statts shakes up the status quo | think small to think big with matt wilkinson | when financial statements go extinct with corey schmidt | can geraldine carter save accountants from themselves? | re-inventing accounting with tyler anderson

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“growing your firm should start with that concrete end in mind. work backward to see what you should be doing next and how big you want your firm to be. “a lot of firms are able to grow, but to the detriment of someone’s work-life balance,” he said. adding to the top line can also mean “we’re driving ourselves into the ground.”

instead, lazanis wants  “to help firm owners create a business model that can scale, where we can add to the top line, but in a more reasonable fashion where we’re not adding to our existing workload.”

one model for doing that is to offer services not on a one-to-one basis to the client but as a one-to-many approach through group coaching or membership models. lazanis said we need to ask, “how can we leverage our expertise better?” with this model, clients become members of a firm-led group at a fraction of the price for services and have access to online course materials that teach them how to do their own accounting. regular group calls allow members to get questions answered, and members also share their expertise amongst themselves. this is the model lazanis uses for his future firm accelerate program.

9 more takeaways from ryan lazanis

1. treat the recruitment process as a sales process. most job postings are very bland, boring, and generic. people want to be part of something bigger than themselves, so your job postings need to sell candidates on the mission, vision, and purpose of the firm and the reasons why they should join your firm. every firm offers something unique, so make sure your job postings include that.
2. leaders should extract themselves from the client’s work so they aren’t the bottleneck for everything at their firm. instead, installing a coo or some kind of operations lead as a buffer between the ceo and the machine that outputs all the work and deals with clients.
3. to scale your business, focus on standardization and systematization. if you standardize your service offerings, and the type of clients you want, and have the right people and the right structure for your firm, you’ll have a much easier time adding revenues without adding to your workload.
4. many firms pull in clients, but it just adds to the chaos. while top-line revenue grows, people work more hours, busy season is more stressful, and work-life balance and personal life are sacrificed.
5. standardizing the type of clients you want to work with doesn’t necessarily mean you are working in a narrow niche. ryan grew his firm by working with online service-based businesses, which ranged from tech startups to e-commerce companies. because his services were standardized, they could onboard clients quickly and get them into routine service delivery processes quickly.
6. it’s not possible to create a scalable model if it takes four or five months to onboard a new client. it makes everything much quicker when as many elements as possible are standardized.
7. creativity, an entrepreneurial mindset, and being able to quickly adapt to technology will be crucial skills for the future. when everyone is at max capacity, it’s hard to switch your brain from production work to creative work.
8. consider not following the traditional path of a cpa. this path tends to lead to overwork and hasn’t necessarily served people well.

   

9. be globally interested. look at what accountants around the world are doing. when ryan started his firm, he looked at firms in australia, where he found the first few online accounting firms.

more about ryan lazanis

ryan lazanis, cpa, founded xen 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. ryan currently educates over 7,500 firm leaders globally via his free weekly newsletter and coaches hundreds of successful accounting firms through his future firm accelerate online coaching membership. 

transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)

liz farr
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host, liz farr, from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is ryan lazanis, founder of future firm. how are you today, ryan?

ryan lazanis
hey, liz, how’s it going? doing great. thank you very much for having me today.

liz farr
well, i’m glad to have you. i’m really glad to have people from around the world. how are things today, up and up in montreal?

ryan lazanis
so starting to get a little bit chilly out. so we just went through some record-breaking temperatures on the good end of things. so we’re quite happy about that. but i think we’re past the point of no return. now we’re heading into the winter, and it gets brutally cold here. so starting to get a bit chilly.

liz farr
wow, i don’t envy the cold at all. not one bit.

ryan lazanis
it can get tough here. that’s why. so my wife is indonesian. and we have plans to go there for the winter. so that’s, that’s what’s in the cards coming up this winter.

liz farr
good for you. good for you. well, we’ve got a lot to cover. so we better just dive right in. now, accounting talent in the us and around the world has been scarce for years covid made it worse. what are some things that you’ve seen for how firms can make things better?

ryan lazanis
yeah, i think, you know, there’s a number of things; i think that’s probably one of the biggest challenges right now is actually finding good people. and not only finding them but keeping those people. so i think the one thing that most people are looking for, and like a post-covid world, is lots of flexibility, you know, people are used to working from home. and people are used to adding flexibility. and we have to continue to give that kind of flexibility. so the more flexibility we can offer and promote and give to our team. i think the better. i think one thing that we can do, however, to start attracting higher-quality candidates a little bit more easily. you know, i often see so. so i’ve been coaching as part of future firm i’ve been coaching firms over the last few years. and i run a program called future firm accelerate, which now coaches over 600 firms inside the platform since we launched a year ago. and there’s one thing that i’ve seen work quite well. and what we need to do a little bit better is we need to sell ourselves better. and when i see a lot of people having trouble or really struggling to attract people onto their team, one of the first things i’ll ask them to see is their job posting. and that’s really the starting point for where someone’s going to learn about you and your firm for the most part. and, you know, it’s an employee’s world right now. they have their pick of the litter. and you know, when they’re going through, you know, there are dozens of job postings on a daily basis to find, you know, their next spot, you know, they’re gonna go for the one that excites them the most. and quite frankly, most of the job posts that you see out there are just very bland, boring and generic. so no one really just wants to sit in a corner doing tax returns all day. they want to be something part of something bigger. they want to be some part of something that has a purpose, that has a mission, that has a vision, something you know, where there’ll be part of a team with a shared set of values, where they’re going to gel well together with those people. so the key here is if we want to attract better people, and we want to give ourselves a better and easier and easier chance to land these people, we need to sell ourselves. we need to treat the recruitment process like a sales process. and we need to sell our firm, sell the candidate on the reasons why they should join the firm sell the candidate on the purpose, mission, and vision of the firm. so we really need to treat the sales part of the recruitment process as a sales process, which starts with your job posting, making it an exciting posting, and then bring them into that process every step of the way, just treating it as a sales process to essentially, quote-unquote, close the deal. so, i’ve seen this work very, very well. you know, i’ve seen, you know, members of our program, even when i even for myself hiring our own team members, you know, we just really try to make it as exciting as possible to apply to the company. so that’s what i would do differently, and i think that’s where that’s i think the easiest thing that most firms could do right out the gate is just sell themselves better.

liz farr
you just said one of the dirty words for most accountants, right? which is selling? yeah, i don’t want it. they don’t want to do that.

ryan lazanis
listen, i’m a cpa and i know i wouldn’t consider myself a salesman, i’m highly introverted. and i like to be behind the scenes. and i’d rather not, you know, i know full well, what, you know what a lot of accountants and owners and firm leaders and partners how they feel about the word sell or the word sales. but at the end of the day, whether you like it or not, that’s what it is, you know, we have to persuade people to join the company, just like we have to persuade clients to join the firm. and at the end of the day, that’s that’s what sales is. and, and yeah, so so yeah, people don’t love the word, but it’s the reality of the situation.

liz farr
yeah, and in listening to you, one thing that strikes me is that the prerequisite for attracting somebody is that you’ve got to have something a firm that is worthy of attracting good candidates, you’ve got to have a good culture, you’ve got to actually have values that the firm practices. so, you know, how, what does, how do you start building that and creating that?

ryan lazanis
that’s a good question. and, you know, coming up with the values is not like something you could just do in like an hour. and it takes a little bit of time. and you know, there’s, there’s successes and failures that you might have to go through to find those values. but i think, at the end of the day, every firm could offer something unique, every, every firm is unique, every firm has something to offer. so values aside, there’s probably some perks or some benefits, or something of interest in your firm already, that you can offer to candidates that you’re probably not already putting out there in your job posting, you know, so you have to find out what those are. maybe it’s even like very small firms, maybe it’s the mentorship that you’d get from, you know, one of the partners, or some certain skills that you’d be able to, like upskill yourself with, you know, maybe there’s certain type of expertise that the firm has, that most other firms have that candidates might be able to learn from, or grow from, you know, how do we promote the flexibility that we give at our firm, you know, what other perks can we provide, you know, every firm has something unique, every firm has something to offer. but when you look at 99% of the job postings out there, all it says is, you know, we’re a full-service firm that focuses on creating value and helping small businesses, and we’re looking for an accountant to do tax returns and reconciliations and, you know, audits or whatever it is. so, you know, you’re saying the same thing as everyone, and you’re not giving the candidate a reason to join you. so you have to at least give some reasons. and yeah, like coming up with the values, it takes time and took me a while to put them in place, i had to scratch my head for quite a while to figure out what those were. and i had to bring on the wrong people to the team to figure out, okay, i need the opposite of that on my team. so i need the opposite values that they had. so it takes time to figure out some of these things. but other things we could probably come up with relatively quickly.

liz farr
and i really love what you say about every firm having something unique to offer, because i think that is true. now, even if it does look like a very traditional, very solid cpa firm. there is something there that no other firm has, maybe it’s the client mix. maybe it’s beautiful office space, if you ever want to go into the office. maybe it’s a you know, you get to be mentored by somebody that everybody in the business community knows. yep, it’s something there’s something there.

ryan lazanis
there’s at least one thing that you could offer. so let’s put that forward. but that’s what it comes down to is we need to persuade candidates, and it starts with your job posting.

liz farr
now until recently, the business model for accounting firms really hadn’t changed much for many, many years. but we’re seeing firms today move away from the billable hour and away from the very strict hierarchical org charts. what are some things that you are seeing in the firms you work with?

ryan lazanis
i think there’s one thing that i’m seeing a lot of, or a lot more of, and then something which i think is a trending area, which i’m personally very excited about, which still is like really bubbling below the surface. so i think the first thing is when you talk about the org charts, and you know, what i coach students of my program on is, most of them don’t want to be doing client work, yet, they’re the bottleneck for pretty much everything in their firm, especially the client work. so we need to extract yourself from that. and in order to do that, we need to have the right org chart in place, we have the right have the right firm structure in place. and what i recommend installing is some kind of coo, some kind of operations lead, which goes is going to be the buffer between you as the ceo and the machine, the machine is what’s outputting all the work and dealing with all the clients. and that’s kind of how i had modeled my firm. when i when i had my firm is there was the ceo, which was me on top, there was a ceo below that, and then below that as the machine, and i wasn’t dealing with the day to day i wasn’t dealing with the stress of the processes i wasn’t dealing with, you know, quality control or client related matters, except for like a few fringe cases. and i think like those are the structures that we’re seeing a lot of success with today that are leading to better lifestyles for the firm, owner and partner. and that eliminating a lot of the bottleneck. so treating a firm, not like a practice that has their partners that are in silos but more like a corporation that has a ceo, coo, you know, heads of departments, etc. so that’s where we’re seeing a lot of success with, like the structure of firms today. on on the other end of the spectrum, if you can just remind me the the first part of that question again, liz.

liz farr
we’re moving away from the billable hour. yes.

ryan lazanis
yeah, so so the other interesting type business models that i think are like, starting to become more and more popular with a lot of like, forward thinking firms is like, the billable hour and value pricing and those types of building models are like, they’ve been around for forever. i mean, the billable hour has been around forever, then value pricing and subscription pricing is becoming has become more popular over the years. and that’s certainly the methodologies that i advocate for. but it’s still a one to one relationship with the client. so i am delivering expertise on a one to one basis to the client. what i’m more excited about is how can we deliver more of a one to many type of approach? so how can we leverage our expertise better. and we’re seeing a lot of like, really cool accountants really cool firms launched like online courses, that are membership models at a fraction of the price that you would maybe charge but in a more of a leverage setting. so let me explain what i mean. 50 bucks a month, you’ll get a group call with other members or other clients or customers in that kind of plan, a group call with the cpa at the firm to ask whatever questions you want, you’ll get access to training resources, perhaps to do your own bookkeeping. so the firm no longer has to do the bookkeeping for a few $100 a month, you know, some are pricing really, really low just to get the client for a few $100 a month, not a great margin. so instead of doing that 100 bucks a month, 150 bucks a month, you give them training resources, they could do their own bookkeeping, you give them a group call once a month. so when they’re stuck, they could ask called, they can ask questions in a group setting. you could have a community type component attached to this. there’s tons of apps out there that allow people people to join and create these community settings where people can kind of troubleshoot issues amongst themselves. so we’re seeing these types of models becoming more and more popular. this is actually the model that i have for my future from accelerate program. but we’re seeing a lot of these types of models pop up for firms these days, whether it comes to tax advisory, bookkeeping, we’re teaching, we’re teaching clients how to do some of them, some of it themselves. we’re pairing that with some kind of leverage support, some kind of group call. and we’re creating a very high-profit margin offering which i think is very appealing for a lot of firms.

liz farr
i really like that that membership model you know, and i have seen quite a few people starting to do that. i think the first one i saw do that was steph hinds in australia. and she had a couple of days for in levels that depended on the client’s business expertise and familiarity. so there was kind of a beginning level for people who were just starting a new business, and then it went up. and so you would be with a group of peers who are in that same position, and you could graduate, you could move up in different levels. still, i liked that.

ryan lazanis
i’ve heard of steph hinds, i forget the firm. but yeah, i’ve heard i’ve heard of that. for a while, i didn’t know they had a program like that. but there’s a lot of ways to split it. but if you can pair some kind of self paced training, or courses, or videos or content, with some kind of like group support, that’s the ultimate combination. because we can get all that knowledge out of your head, that you’re delivering on a one to one basis to your clients, we could put that into a form of content. and when people have questions, they’ll be able to tap into your brain or someone’s brain at your firm, like once a month, or once a quarter on a group call. i love that kind of model. and it’s infinitely more scalable. and then the traditional billable hour value pricing or subscription pricing model.

liz farr
yeah, the book, the future, the professions talks about that, with accounting firms and with all kinds of knowledge workers, that it’s really the democratizing of expertise. instead of professional services being one to one and highly customized, you find ways to make them more available to the masses so that more people can have the benefit of that expertise. yeah, it’s something that is it’s no longer such a financial barrier.

ryan lazanis
future of the professions. yeah, how old is that book?

liz farr
it’s a few years old,

ryan lazanis
i think. but i don’t think i read it. so maybe i’ll have to check it out. again,

liz farr
it’s pretty interesting. i read it a couple of years ago. i think they have a new book out. but i don’t haven’t read that one yet. but it talks about the different professions, not just accounting, but legal services, medical services, clergy, education, all the professions, and how the internet and online applications are making it possible for more people to access information and expertise that before there was no way they could get to.

ryan lazanis
and that’s exactly what i’m suggesting is we can offer this at a different price point that you would not normally be able to accept those kinds of clients on that on that price point. but with the internet and these new tools that we have available, it’s easier than ever to create that more democratized service. so i think i totally agree with that.

liz farr
i think so. now, what about growing? do firms really even need to grow?

ryan lazanis
i think, i think it comes down to what their objectives and goals are, i think. i think a lot and certainly this was, this was the case with myself when i started my firm as well, about 10 years ago, where, you know, i was employed somewhere, and i was not happy where i was employed, and i figured i could just have a better life if i started my own business. so i just started and i just started, you know, the first thing you do is i just need to get clients, and then you get clients. you’re like, okay, i need to start hiring people. and then you get into this cycle of like, you’re not even thinking about like, what, what’s at the end of it all? and i think that’s what we need to like, firms need to grow if, you know, there’s certain objectives, concrete objectives that they have in mind, because your business, sir, is there to serve your lifestyle, we often lose sight of that. so we need to, we need to think about what do i want in life? what’s going to make me happy? and how then how is my business going to help me get there? so i think we, in some instances, we do need to grow to get to where we want to go in life. but we often lose track of that we often we often don’t have in mind what our end goal is, and we don’t have concrete yet we often don’t have those concrete goals in mind. we just start a business we just start accepting claims if we start hiring people, and it just snowballs into something that maybe we didn’t want in the first place. so i think it really start helps to start with the end. start in the end in mind first, and then work backwards to arrive at what we should be doing next and how big we want to get to and that kind of thing. i also think like some people don’t want to grow, because they see that it might add complications to their life. a lot of firms are able to grow, but to the detriment of someone’s per perhaps someone’s work life balance, they might see more stress, more anxiety as a result of that growth. i think that has to do with like the business model itself, accountant running an accounting firm could be a very stressful business. when i want to help people with is i don’t want to help them grow, i want to help them scale. and growth is really about, you know, we could add to the top line. but usually, when we’re adding to the top line, it’s to the detriment of, you know, our personal life, our work life balance, and it means yes, we’re adding more revenue or adding more clients or us adding more work for ourselves. so we’re, yes, we’re adding to the top line, but we’re driving ourselves into the ground. i want to help firm owners create a business model that can scale where we can add to the top line, but in a more reasonable fashion where we’re not adding to our existing workload. so that’s what i’m more interested in is the differentiation between growth and scale. so to answer your question, i kind of went in a few directions. i think, not everyone needs to grow, i think it comes down to figuring out where you want to be in life. and then figuring out a model that can scale rather than grow.

liz farr
and yeah, i’m curious what you mean by scaling? you know, how do you go about creating a firm that’s scaled? does that mean, bringing in the people in concert with the clients? or what does that mean?

ryan lazanis
so i have a podcast episode called the six-part formula to scale an accounting firm. and i think to scale a business, we have to focus on standardization of the business systematization of the business, and there’s a couple of components involved to actually scaling a firm, i think, if you are standardizing your service offers, if you’re standardizing the type of client you’re working with, if you have a marketing engine that’s allowing you to bring leads in a little bit more passively. if you have the right people in place and the right structure in your firm. if you have some of these elements in place, we’re gonna have a much easier time adding revenues and not subsequently adding to our workload. so we’re creating more of a machine, we’re creating more of more of a standardized machine. whereas most firms are the exact opposite. so they can pull in clients, but it’s going to just add to the chaos. so it’s going to it’s going to grow the top line. but in a more chaotic fashion, where they’re working more hours dealing with more and more stressful, busy seasons, sacrificing their personal life and their work life balance. so i want to create a model that just operates more smoothly more systematically. and if we can do that we can scale the business rather than simply grow it

liz farr
sounds like what you’re talking about would be really suited to a firm that has developed a specific industry niche or expertise.

ryan lazanis
that couldn’t be part of it. but i don’t think you have to be super narrow in who you deal with, i think we just have to be a little bit more picky on who you bring on as a client. i think it can be very powerful. if you just focus like from from a scaling standpoint, from like standardization of the business model. i think it can be very powerful to have like, one very narrow niche, but you don’t necessarily need to have that. you know, when i was running my firm, i knew the kind of clients that that we wanted and the client kind of clients we didn’t want. so as an example, like we were, we were one of the first online firms when we launched. we were one of the earlier online firms when i launched around 10 years ago. and we started attracting like, you know, tech startups and e commerce companies and more online service based businesses. and like that was our sweet spot. we knew how to get them in the door quickly. we knew the right solutions for them. we can onboard them quickly. we can get them into the routine service delivery processes quickly. like everything was like a machine but we didn’t want to accept like manufacturing businesses, we didn’t want to accept, like, you know, heavy inventory based businesses, because we just couldn’t get them into the machine quickly enough. we made those mistakes early on where we got some great businesses got some great clients, but if it took took us four or five months to properly onboard them, then it’s just it’s just not possible to create a scalable model. so we’re, we’re adding, we’re increasing revenues. but we were decreasing, let’s say efficiency. so so yeah, like, i wouldn’t say like my firm was like, ultra narrow in the niche. but we had a focus, we had a sweet spot, and we stayed true to that sweet spot.

liz farr
okay, well, that’s, that’s good advice. and that, that would have made my life and public accounting a lot more pleasant. i think, rather than jumping from a salsa manufacturing company, to a law firm, to a doctor to an hvac company, you know, it was just a little bit crazy.

ryan lazanis
i guess it’s hard to just understand, you know, the processes for each one of those businesses quickly, like you could figure it out, any of us could figure out, it’s just a question of time. so that’s the big part about standardizing a business and standardizing all as many elements as possible and your business model is, it just makes everything much, much more quicker.

liz farr
yes, that is very true. now, it used to be that to be a good accountant, we had to keep the tax regulations in our head. we had to keep the fasb and all all of gap in our hands. and we had to be really good with a 10 key to that was really important. but technology’s changed that what skills do accountants need today to be successful?

ryan lazanis
i mean, i don’t think the technical knowledge is as important anymore, certainly not i think, creativity and entrepreneurial mindset. you know, being able to quickly adapt to technology, i think, like these are, you know, the soft skill side of things are certainly a lot more important these days. i know those types of skills treated me well. i’m a terrible accountant, actually. so i think like, yeah, i mean, i’m happy with the skills that i think i’ve innately had. and even though i struggled through accounting and working in accounting firms, and it just never clicked for me, i’m actually happy that looking back on it, that that stuff didn’t come naturally to me. but i think like the creativity aspect, problem-solving abilities, you know, ability to adapt the technology and use technology, i think these are the skills, you know, like i said, have more of an entrepreneurial mindset, i think these are the skills that a lot of firms are looking for, and that a lot of clients are looking for these days that are accounted for.

liz farr
i think that’s really true. and when i think back at my time in public accounting, you know, it was really an assembly line, and we had a lot of pressure just to get the workout. so it was really a challenge to even have the bandwidth or the mental energy to even be creative. and so i think that the firms today that are trying to have a more reasonable work balance, and we’re not even looking at work-life balance, but just a more reasonable work regimen. those are the ones that will attract the really bright people who can do that kind of work.

ryan lazanis
yeah, and if we have everyone at max capacity all the time, or even above max capacity, all those skills that we might be looking for, they’re not going to be utilized, because it’s hard to kind of switch your brain from production work to some more creative type work. so so yeah, i think i think that’s a challenge for firms these days as well.

liz farr
yeah, you know, and i, as i’ve discovered, being a writer, you have to have a certain amount of rest and rejuvenation, just to be able to be creative. it’s a really different part of your brain than you use when you’re just keying in numbers mindlessly oh, okay, here’s a interest that goes over here, dividends that goes over here, capital gains that goes here. it’s a really different mindset. and i think we really need to be cognizant of the need to give people the room and the energy to be creative.

ryan lazanis
i couldn’t agree more.

liz farr
yes, i completely. yeah, it’s tough. now, we’ve talked about things that accountant should do. what are some things that accountants should stop doing immediately? that’s a good question. i think, i think,

ryan lazanis
i don’t know if they should stop doing immediately. but i think they should maybe heavily consider not following the typical path. and the typical path that we’ve seen is, you know, studying for studying for your cpa, or studying for your accounting degree in a firm, and then leaving that firm, and then going into industry, and then maybe staying in industry, maybe you start a firm, and then you fall into the typical cycle that most firm owners do, and they just start overworking themselves, like, that’s not a path that’s necessarily served most people very well. and there’s a lot of different directions that we can go. and there’s a lot of different paths that you can take, there’s a lot of skills that you gain from going through the cpa profession and cpa training that we can utilize in a variety of different areas. so we don’t have to follow that path, we can kind of break out of the box. and yeah, so i think like not following the traditional path is one thing that i would, i would maybe urge a lot of people to heavily consider.

liz farr
i agree with you there, you know, i’ve been following on tax twitter, there’s a young cpa, who was a rising star in his firm, and the owner wanted him to buy him out at some point. but he is realizing that that’s not the path that he wants. he’s talking about all the different opportunities that are coming to him, and being a controller for an arts group, or being ceo or cfo of a startup. and i think that that’s really encouraging to see that, that being a cpa does not mean you have only this narrow range of job possibilities. there’s a huge, huge world out there that we don’t even know about.

ryan lazanis
i mean, you’re proof more than anyone i’d say lists.

liz farr
well, yeah, i there aren’t very many cpas who write books. so you are correct there. now, what keeps accountants from changing what blocks them from changing?

ryan lazanis
it’s just the way we’ve been trained. we’ve been trained to be skeptical. we’ve been trained to question everything. and that teaches us to be conservative in nature. and that goes against change that goes against innovation. so we’ve been trained to be like, this is why the accounting profession has lagged so many other industries in its evolution. so yeah, it’s only natural, and if i think it’s a good skill to be skeptical, and to question things, but i think, how do we balance that out? i’m not i don’t have the solution. but like, that’s one of the reasons why we just haven’t evolved very much.

liz farr
that’s very true. yeah. and what are some things that accountants can do to make themselves a little more open? do you have any ideas? i’m sure you do.

ryan lazanis
what can we do? that’s a very good question. i’m not sure what the answer is there. what can we do? what i think has helped me quite a bit as travel and getting different perspective on life. and i think that’s helped me open up my mind, i think more than anything. like i’ve been very fortunate to be able to travel all over the world and see all kinds of different cultures. and i think that’s been really helpful for me, at least, to give me perspective. and again, open up my mind. is that the only thing? probably not, but i think that’s been helpful for me at least.

liz farr
i think that’s the, that’s a good idea. and even if you don’t travel, it’s fascinating to see what accountants around the world are doing.

ryan lazanis
that’s a good one. that’s a good one, a lot of what i learned, actually, in the early days, when i was launching, you know, an online firm, 10 years ago, when no one was really doing it, at least in north america. and i was forced to kind of look outside the borders. and, you know, i landed on australia, that had the first few online accounting firms, and made connections with people there, and was able to see how, how they were running their business, which was a lot different than what most firms were doing it here and still are. and i actually had a linkedin post about this. maybe about a month or two, which was just echoing your comments, liz, which, you know, one of the most, one of the things i love most about my future from accelerator program is that it’s a global program. and, you know, there’s firms in there from singapore, from new zealand, from canada, the us, south america, all across europe, the middle east, africa, and they all get together and kind of share how things work in the different parts of the world, and how they might do things differently. so yeah, even if you don’t travel to all these different destinations, i think, you know, being part of online communities, being part of online communities that aren’t necessarily located in your like immediate vicinity, or in your country, like being part of these global communities, doesn’t even necessarily need to be accounting communities, but like, could be business communities, and just see how people do things differently. so i think that actually, i think that’s a good point, liz.

liz farr
when i first got started as a writer, one of my first clients was visiting. yeah. and they hired me to write website copy for firms in new zealand, australia, canada, and the us. and so to do that, i had to look at the websites of firms around the world and figure out, well, what, what are the words that they use to describe what they do? what is it that they do? you know, and how is it different from what we do here? it was really fascinating. i really learned a lot. and that was, that was how i learned about a lot of really, forward thinking firms. you know, i would have a new client, a firm in vancouver, and so i would just google accounting firms in vancouver, and just get an idea of what it was like, and well, let me also figure out well, what is the climate like there? what is the weather? like? what is the landscape? what is what is it like to live in vancouver? compared to where i live? what are the kinds of things that somebody in vancouver would be looking for in an accounting firm? and so it was very fascinating. i totally agree. yeah. now, client accounting services, client advisory services, client accounting and advisory services, whatever you want to call it. that’s a big thing right now. what do you think will be the next big thing and accounting? ryan? i wish. pardon. you already kind of mentioned it with the membership groups.

ryan lazanis
i think that’s the next big thing, i think. i mean, it’s a much different model. i mean, it’s more like an e-commerce model than anything else. so it’s a different kind of firm that’s going to run that. maybe a firm that’s a little bit more marketing savvy is going to opt for that. kind of approach. but yeah, we’re seeing, you know, the online course model, you know, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a membership where they subscribe for 100 or 150 bucks a month, but it could be like online course model where, you know, you’re teaching someone how to up maybe, i don’t know, tax saving foundation course or something like that for a couple of grand er, i’m seeing a lot of this stuff take place right now.

liz farr
i mean, you know, cas was the hot–and still is–the hot service line. is there going to be other hot service lines that come out?

ryan lazanis
i mean, i can’t really say i think like, these are just service lines that have already existed, and they’re just becoming more popular. so it’s not something entirely new. i’m not too sure. i think that the new thing on the block right now is the membership model, or the online course model geared towards a certain kind of firm. and i’m seeing a lot of appetite for that among the more modern firms. but it’s not going to suit everybody.

liz farr
no, no, it’s not going to suit everyone, it will really be best for people who really want to help teach who have that as their prime reason for being in business. it won’t be for the ones who want to guard and protect their knowledge and their skills.

ryan lazanis
that’s true, i mean, and some people like doing like, some people really enjoy, like the advisory work and like tailoring the solutions specific to an individual client, like some people really enjoy doing that. whereas some would just maybe be looking for something that’s a little bit more scalable. and they would maybe find the online course model or the membership model a little bit more appealing.

liz farr
i think it’s to each their own. and i think that there are certainly enough avenues out there that people can find their own way forward.

ryan lazanis
the other thing that i think is, is that i think we could talk about actually is technology consulting. and i think there’s a number of firms right now that are, you know, hiring developers on the team to build out like more custom workflow automations for their clients. so, you know, when cloud accounting hit, you know, we had xero and quickbooks online, and they have these app ecosystems and you, you would connect, you know, these, you know, these third-party apps to your accounting software. and, you know, you’d become an expert in the app ecosystem, and be able to recommend, you know, certain apps to, like, optimize workflows for your client, to make the accounting more automated. but now it’s being taken up. and we’re taking things up a notch, where to have a competitive advantage. now, we have to create custom workflow automations for clients. so when there are apps that don’t exist, and we want to fill in the gaps, we create our own apps, we create our own custom automations. we have developers on our team that do that, and we can charge good money for that right now. so you’re seeing some firms build up these departments for no code. these no-code departments to help automate things for their clients that most other firms can’t do.

liz farr
i think that that is really going to be something that will be bigger in the future. i really do. and i think that the accounting curriculum is going to have to work hard to catch up with that.

ryan lazanis
definitely, and i am not sure exactly how it’s playing out in the us, but i could say here in canada, we’re very far behind. i think in the us, the aicpa has introduced some kind of technology, skilled training of some sort, for cpas. i’m not sure how that’s progressing at the moment.

liz farr
not as rapidly as it needs to be, i’d say we’re still far behind. but rather than go into how far behind we are, i think we should probably just in there and remember that for what you’ve said that for every kind of firm, there is something unique about them that they can capitalize on. and i think that that’s a really good thing. for firm owners and members of firms to keep in mind. there is something unique about what you’re doing.

ryan lazanis
i like that. we can end on that one.

liz farr
yeah. well, thank you very much, ryan.

 

posted on may 22, 2023