Meet Ryan Derousseau

Ryan [00:00:01] A planner, when they’re evaluating your situation, they’re looking at everything through the eyes of taxes. So how you’re saving, how you’re spending, how you’re paying back debt. It’s all through the eyes of taxes long term because we want to bring down the amount of you’re paying in taxes long term. And so a CPA is really good at that year planning, whereas the planner is good for the long-term planning strategy. 

Linzy [00:00:28] Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question How can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion, to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money really working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham therapist turned money coach and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today I’m excited to have Ryan Derousseau, who’s a certified financial planner on the podcast. I mention this in my conversation with Ryan, but I have been approached by many financial planners over the last few years of doing this work, who want to connect with folks who listen to this podcast and, you know, the folks that I serve. I’ve said no to everybody up to this point until Ryan. The reason that I’m excited to have Ryan on this podcast today is that he is a fee-only financial planner, which is a big deal. And we’re going to talk about that more in the podcast. Like what is the value of fee-only versus other more traditional models of how folks get paid for financial planning? But he also specializes in working with therapists and private practitioners, which is really rare. So you pay Ryan out of pocket and he specializes in serving us, the folks who, you know, serve other people, the helpers in the world. And his goal is to help people like us thrive financially so we can focus on our clients. Today in our conversation, Ryan and I talk about understanding more about that fee-for-service model of financial planning versus how people usually get paid, like why you should look for a fee-only financial planner. This is something that I’m really passionate about. So really great to talk with Ryan about this. Today we talk about some tax strategies and some interesting little tricks in your business that might already apply to you. Like you might already be in a position to be able to use some of these things to save you money on taxes. We also talked about succession planning and thinking about actually setting up your business so you could sell it even as a private practitioner, like a solo practitioner, which is a new idea to me, but I’m really into it. So we cover a lot of ground today using that big picture financial thinking that Ryan has as a certified financial planner and I think is really the value of having a certified financial planner in your life, which is somebody who can look at your personal finances, not from the perspective of today or this month or this year, but they’re thinking 30, 40 years for you and helping you bring that into the way that you’re planning your money. Here is my conversation with Ryan Derousseau. So, Ryan, welcome to the podcast. 

Ryan [00:03:13] Yeah, thank you for having me. Very excited to be here. 

Linzy [00:03:15] I’m very excited to have you here, Ryan, because you are the first certified financial planner that we’ve had on the Money Skills For Therapists podcast. 

Ryan [00:03:23] Oh, very cool. Yeah. Honestly, I’m not surprised. Well, one thing when I was looking at like – because basically I was a writer for many, many years and I covered financial planners, I covered personal finance topics and I was self-employed. And so when I was making the switch, just because I wanted to work with people one-on-one, a group that was self-employed that I saw there was not nearly as much people helping them and guiding them on the financial track, were therapists. And I like working with therapists. I think they’re great people, they do great work. And so – I have a therapist – so I am very much in line with that. And so it just it stood out to me as sort of a special. 

Linzy [00:04:04] There’s kind of a gap there, right? Like, there’s a lot of financial planners for doctors, for instance. Yeah, exactly. They get a lot of attention. 

Ryan [00:04:10] Everyone’s going for doctors. 

Linzy [00:04:11] Everybody wants doctors, which makes sense because doctors, you know, can have a very, very, very high income. They’ve got a lot of money to work with, which is kind of fun too, I would assume, as a financial planner. Like, you get to do all sorts of cool tax strategy and stuff like that. But yeah, therapists are certainly underserved and we very much need the kinds of supports that you are giving to folks with this long-term financial planning. 

Ryan [00:04:31] That’s great to hear. I’ll give a quick plug in terms of: look for a fee-only advisor. 

Linzy [00:04:35] Yes, thank you. 

Ryan [00:04:36] We have developed new ways for people to pay, so it’s not like doctors are not the only ones who get service now. All sorts of people get service now. 

Linzy [00:04:45] Yes. And let’s pause on that for a second, because this is something actually, Ryan, like in terms of putting folks in front of of our audience, right, our Money Skills for Therapists audience who are listening. Or Instagram. I’ve been approached by many financial planners, I will tell you, over the years, who want to be connected with the folks who are here for these conversations. And the reason I say no is because they’re not fee for service. And I feel really strongly about this. Let’s talk just a little bit more about the difference between fee for service and what you were referring to of like why folks want to work with doctors. 

Ryan [00:05:16] Yeah. 

Linzy [00:05:16] Have to explain the difference in how you get paid. 

Ryan [00:05:19] Absolutely. And this is one of the first things like when I covered financial planners, this was one of the first things I learned. And so as- my entire writing career, I would only speak to fee-only or fee-for-service advisors because they’re basically the ones you can trust where their advice is aligned with you. Because what you have are three different options a fee-only, fee-based, and commission. And commission and fee-based, what they’re doing when they’re providing you advice is they’re also getting commissions on the side from a life insurance agency, a mutual fund company, or some other service. And so when they’re saying, hey, you should put your money into this X mutual fund, well, is that the right mutual fund or is that the mutual fund that’s kind of works for you, but also pays them really well? And my first experience was this was personal. Like my wife’s father had a financial planner for 20, 30 years. He sent us to the financial planner. And, you know, he wined and dined us and we’re like, how is he getting paid for this? It wasn’t a couple of years later till I learned about this stuff. And I looked at it and I was like, Oh, that’s how he’s getting paid. He’s in a mutual fund that’s not growing at all, but paying him every single time we put money into that account. And so that personal experience really kind of lit a fire under me as well. 

Linzy [00:06:45] Yeah, it’s going to be hard for somebody to give you the best advice for you when they’re also thinking about their own paycheck. And this mutual fund here is going to pay them a bunch of money. And this one over here that actually might be more appropriate for you, they don’t get as much money from. Like it puts their financial interests and your financial interests in conflict. 

Ryan [00:07:02] Exactly. Yeah. Said better than me. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:07:05] So fee for service, then. Tell us, like, what does that model look like? How is that different? 

Ryan [00:07:11] Yeah. So I only get paid by my clients. They come to me and, you know, there’s three different ways I tend to work with them. They might need a specific plan for something. They’re going through something or they’re DIY or who likes to do it themselves. And so we just basically we have an hourly rate. How long is the plan going to be? Okay, here’s the plan. Here’s how to get started. They’re off on their own. They go do it. You know, what we found was people are hesitant to go off on their own. So like, let’s say you’re opening a solo 401K if you’ve never done that. Are you picking the right button? You know, when I first did it, the experience was, I hope this is right type of experience. And so what we did is we created a subscription model. And so essentially we take the cost of the financial plan divide by 12. And so you have access to me every quarter where we’re going through a portion of the plan and whatnot. And that helps also because life changes, things change. Inflation changes, laws change, that sort of thing. And then if you’re, you know, a little further along in your journey and you have assets that you want someone else to manage, then there’s also the asset under management strategy, which is, you know, where we’re investing for you. We do broad-based index funds. It’s not like, yeah, you know, we’re picking stocks or anything like that and then you pay via the portfolio, right? 

Linzy [00:08:35] And with assets under management, basically it’s like if I have a bunch of money invested with you, if the money does well, I do well and you do well. Right. Like where. 

Ryan [00:08:44] It’s somewhat. Yeah. And you know, like I always this is a probably something to talk about with your audience just because a lot of people look at investing is like returns and gains. Like how much am I getting back and how much am I losing. A financial planner who’s worth his salt or her salt is really not looking at gains and losses in the short term. What they’re looking at is are you invested in a way that matches your risk willingness or risk tolerance? Yeah. So essentially, if the market drops, are you going to sell everything and hide under the couch or are you going to keep it steady? Because we want to keep it steady. This is a long-term plan. It’s not a short-term plan. We’re worried about that and your time horizon or when you actually need that money. And so this is what the value of index funds is, because we can really figure out sort of your risk tolerance, determine how much risk you need to be exposed to via the index funds, and then plan that over time. And so that’s really how we invest, even if, you know, we’re investing for you. But that’s gains and losses type of thing. Sure. Yeah. If it goes up. Yeah, I want to make a little bit more money in that case. 

Linzy [00:09:56] Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, what you’re mentioning here is such an important quality that folks who do the work that you do can bring to somebody’s life, which is that long-term perspective. Yes, because I think I think, too, there still is so much of this kind of like a get-rich-quick narrative around business in general, you know, money in general. And like, we, you know, can be trained to think short term and think like, oh, things are really good. Things are really bad. Right? But someone with your training knows that it’s about decades, right? Not about a week or a year even. 

Ryan [00:10:30] Yeah. I mean, that’s also, you know, when we’re talking about the like the therapy business, right? You know, we get very excited when we’re like, oh, things are going really, really well. Yes, I think I’m going to hire my first employee and I’m going to, you know, maybe buy a spot as opposed to rent a spot and things of that nature. And that’s all well and good. These are all things like we want our clients to do, eventually do. But we’re also looking at it with that sort of broader look like what are the protections in case you buy that and suddenly you lose like 10% of your clients and then what next? Or you hire that person. And while they’re not performing like they should and business is slower, then what? So we’re worried about all the ifs and buts of like. 

Linzy [00:11:18] Yes, okay. And you know, related to that, I know that there’s this this term which is probably going to be familiar to folks who are listening, which is this idea of backstops. Backstops in your money. Can you explain to folks listening what a backstop is? 

Ryan [00:11:33] Oh, yeah, absolutely. It’s not a technical term, but I feel like it’s a term that’s really started to pop up as sort of a way to just a synonym for buffer, you know? So because we love, you know, marketing like lingo. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:11:48] But got to make it slightly different. Absolutely. 

Ryan [00:11:50] You know, really stand out. Yeah. But yeah. So the backstop or buffer is really sort of how you protect your business. As we’re building that business, we want to make sure that we’re putting layers in place so we never feel that like real anxiety when you’re first starting out because just we want to go forward. We don’t want to go backwards. And that’s really where the buffer or backstop is. And so this can take shape in many different ways. You know, for a business owner, I’m always talking about them building a – not just an emergency fund for their family finances, but an emergency fund for their business. And people are like, oh, I don’t want to just have cash sitting in there in an account. But what that does is it really provides that, you know, like serum of anxiety reducer? When things are going not quite right, but it also like tells you when you can expand. So when someone’s like first starting out, what I’m telling them is sort of look at your expenses as on the personal side, right. How many, how much expenses do you need to have or do you need to cover from your business every month? That’s your salary. You may be a business owner, but you’re getting a salary just like everyone else. And you don’t pay yourself more than that just because you did really good one month, you instead keep that salary the same and, as you do well, you’re building that emergency fund with that extra money. And that’s how you build the emergency fund on the business side. And then on the personal side, most people know they need to have 3 to 6 months of expenses. And I’d say that for business owners, because you don’t want the need to fix a roof to impact your business, you know, you don’t want a water heater to determine. So change the fact that how you view your business like it may- like you may need a new water heater and suddenly you may have felt great about your business and now you’re not and you don’t want that because that makes bad decisions. So that’s kind of what the backstops is, is always have these protections in place. 

Linzy [00:13:55] Yeah, and I love that looking at the relation between those two things, because I think first of all, for lots of folks there, there’s such blurriness between those things, right? It’s kind of like they’re not doing the regular salary. I’m like such a fan of the regular salary. I love that you said that. And that’s something that I teach in my course. That’s one of things you do at the end is like, set your regular paycheck, have that buffer so you can be taking time off and you’re not getting punished because you took vacation. You don’t need a smaller paycheck because you went away. Right. Like that doesn’t make any sense. No employer can get away with doing that to you if you’re a salaried employee. But also, what I’m hearing here is by creating buffers or backstops in both places, you protect both of those things. You protect your business and you protect your home by creating stability in both places, right. And then a personal problem, personal financial problem, doesn’t end up impacting the business because you have to like clean money out of the business or you’re just like super financially stressed, which shows up like that affects the way you can show up for your clients or the decisions are going to make in your business. You know, somebody might call who is not a good fit for you, but you’re feeling really financially stressed by this water heater. You need your place at home that you’re in a money force. You’re going to say yes to somebody who’s actually going to not be a fit and make your clinical work really difficult and make you feel incompetent as a therapist because it’s not the work that you do. Right? There’s all these like knock on effects that can happen when we don’t have that stability. 

Ryan [00:15:10] Absolutely. And, you know, it could like hit the fees you’re charging because you’re like, oh, well, I lost a client. Now I need to get that other client back and I’m going to charge them half the price. 

Linzy [00:15:22] Right? 

Ryan [00:15:22] Right. And then what’s that do long term? You have a number of clients that are paying half your rate. And you don’t want that.

Linzy [00:15:29] No, no, no. You know, stress, stress and desperation does not lead to strategic decisions. 

Ryan [00:15:34] Absolutely. 

Linzy [00:15:35] That’s for sure. Yeah. So another thing that I would love to ask you about is something that I don’t teach or touch at all, which is like tax strategy. I feel like for the therapist brain where this is, you know, therapist help situations where this is not the world that we live in. I feel like there’s this like complex web of rules. I’m almost picturing like in A Beautiful Mind, there’s all these, like, you know, equations running everywhere that is kind of like the world of taxes and making sense of it and plugging in. And something that you do as a certified financial planner is help folks understand strategic tax moves to make. So I’m curious, like, what are some of the moves that you suggest that people make regularly to your clients to help them create stability and flexibility and all those good things? 

Ryan [00:16:18] Yeah, this is where the caveats come in. I’m not a CPA. What I do is I look at- basically a planner, when they’re evaluating your situation, they’re looking at everything through the eyes of taxes. So how you’re saving, how you’re spending, how you’re paying back debt, it’s all through the eyes of taxes long term because we want to bring down the amount you’re paying in taxes long term. And so a CPA is really good at that year planning, whereas the planner is good for the long-term planning strategy. And so from a long-term planning strategy perspective, a few things I would say one, so a lot of people think that like you get a business and in the therapy world you have to have a business. So this is not like new. You have probably an LLC, P LLC, or an S corp of some sort, but just jumping into the S Corp or jumping into the LLC is something that you need to consider, not because those tools inherently have tax differences, but what you can do with those tools are different from a tax perspective. And so when you’re starting out, it may make sense to be more like an LLC just because you may be losing money in your business for the first year, even because you’re investing, investing a lot and clients are only starting to come in, that sort of thing. And from a tax perspective, one thing to think about is that’s okay. 

Linzy [00:17:44] Yes. 

Ryan [00:17:45] Because, if you’re losing money, guess what you’re going to tell the IRS? I’ve made no money and I don’t pay any taxes. And so so that’s fine. And but the LLC allows you to kind of bring that money, those losses directly to your personal because it’s a pass through entity like that. And so let’s say you have a spouse and they’re they have a good income and so you’re using that income too. While the LLC might be able to impact the overall family income, so the family as a whole is now paying less in taxes. The first thing I would say is determine- like look at your business for what it is right now, not where you want it to be or what it is right now, because you may be able to just get tax gains from that or protection from that. And then, you know, the other thing that I would say from a tax perspective, and I always like to liken retirement as this like, it’s like this secondary income stream, this passive income stream that people kind of forget about. And, you know, when we’re talking about backstops earlier, that’s really what retirement planning is. Because, you know, if you’re putting in $10,000 a year, let’s say, into a retirement account, and that’s growing 7%. And after ten years, you have let’s say – this is total B.S. math – but let’s just say, yeah, yeah, $150,000. Just let’s just say, well, you’re gonna feel a lot more comfortable in your business if you know you have $150,000 sitting there protecting you long term. And meanwhile, the beauty of those is if you have the right tax plan and you’re putting that money into, you know, a solo 401K, a Sep IRA, especially if your income’s little lower. So you’re not taking- I don’t want to get into like Roth versus IRA, but as long as you’re putting that into a vehicle that’s reducing your taxes now, well, you now reduced your tax impact by $10,000 a year. And that, you know, is the number then that gets evaluated by the IRS. Right? 

Linzy [00:19:51] So, yes. Right. And then from that, you would not be paying taxes on that money. And there’s money that’s going to be coming back to you. Right. So there’s kind of like this – this might not be the right language – but I know at a higher level of finances, you can kind of build like a machine or an engine where it’s like, I do this and I get this benefit, but then I also get this thing back, I get cash back, and then I get to think about what I want to do with that cash that I get back. Do I invest again? Do I do something else with it? You’re you’re starting to get the rules working for you. 

Ryan [00:20:16] Right? Yeah, exactly. And that’s really what the planning process is, is putting all those, like, engines in place. But, you know, I mean, there’s there’s tons of stuff like that. Like, like more advanced business owners with kids. Like, you can actually give your kid a job and pay them a minimum wage. It has to be a legit job. But now you have passed on that money that you were making that you were going to give your kid anyways. 

Linzy [00:20:40] Right? 

Ryan [00:20:41] And they pay a much lower tax even if they get past the standard deduction. So there’s that. There’s all the business expenses. And, you know, we can talk about business expenses, but there are tons of bizarre expenses that are legitimate that you need to spend, that you get a nice little break from. And so, you know, not avoiding those, like, embracing those is important. 

Linzy [00:21:01] Yeah. Yeah. And I think for a lot of folks listening, the first step would be just starting to learn what those are, right? Like, knowledge is power, start to learn what are your options and there might be things that you know you already have. One of your children is helping you already cleaning your office or like helping you with filing or something like that, that you could legitimately be paying them for that work rather than giving them allowance later after you’ve already paid taxes on that money? 

Ryan [00:21:24] Absolutely. I mean, I have a seven-year-old and he’s not he he’s not capable of now. But as soon as he is capable of like I’m going to put him to work because one, he needs to learn a little bit of the value of a dollar. 

Linzy [00:21:35] Sure, sure, sure. Yes. Yes. 

Ryan [00:21:37] Because the money goes into his hands and out. But yeah, like I’m sure plenty of listeners have older. Like I you know, back when I was a writer, I knew a writer who’s like, she is a profound writer, Like, she’s written bestselling books and whatnot. When she does work for clients, she’ll have her 19-year-old kid just do the first run at the block, you know, And she pays the 19-year-old that and the 19-year-old knows exactly how she wants it. And so. Right. Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t have to hire that workforce. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:22:09] So and with that, I don’t know if this is a question that it would be different in different states, but like, is there a minimum age for paying your own child? 

Ryan [00:22:17] It has to be legitimate. Like you don’t want- 

Linzy [00:22:19] Right. They can’t be seven. Yeah. 

Ryan [00:22:22] I mean, if, if my kid could truly file and like, be effective at it. Sure. 

Linzy [00:22:30] Okay, So there isn’t actually, like, an age, but has to be reasonable. I can’t I can’t be saying that my four-and-a-half-year-old is like mapping out my social media. That’s obviously not real. Exactly. 

Ryan [00:22:38] Yes. But like, you know, there’s been cases I just know that there’s been cases where business owners pay their kids like a lot of money for technical help because the kid understood computers and was a whiz at it. And the case would go to the Supreme Court even, and they would say, hey, I mean, this kid is as legit as an employee as you can find. And it was it was deemed to be okay. Yeah. So. 

Linzy [00:23:07] Yes, it does have to be legit. I am Canadian and Canada too, like they’re- they really cracked down a couple of years ago on income sprinkling. So making sure that, you know, we- I have a corporation that if you have anybody working for the actually doing legitimate work like you have to show some sort of record or evidence they’re doing real work and my spouse does work for me. He does our tech and he does payment stuff and he does he just filled out a form for us, for the IRS that we had to do. You know, another team member brought it. I was like, Oh, that’s a Rodrigo job. If it’s bureaucracy, that’s our man. And I got a call from, you know, the Canadian Revenue Agency, the CRA. Saying, like you need to. What does he do? Like, you need to prove to me that he’s doing the right things. And I was like, Oh, he does things I literally don’t even know how to do. Like, it’s so legit, but it needs to be like. 

Ryan [00:23:49] Cause and you need to have a record. 

Linzy [00:23:50] Because you do need to be able to answer those questions on that phone call to make it really clear that this person’s doing real work for you. 

Ryan [00:23:56] Yeah. And the records, the bookkeeping has to be. Yes. 

Linzy [00:24:00] Yeah. 

Ryan [00:24:00] But those are more advanced strategies. 

Linzy [00:24:02] Yeah, they are. They are. Yes, yes, yes. But a great example of some of the things that maybe folks haven’t thought of that might already apply to them. Those who are listening, this zoomed out perspective then that you have as a you know, a financial planner, is so valuable for therapists because I think so often we’re in kind of just like the week to week, month to month, year to year. So what is the importance of thinking about the business like really long term and how long term should we even be thinking about our businesses? 

Ryan [00:24:30] Yeah, So I mean, that’s kind of the unique aspect of planning is because we are not just evaluating your finances today, we’re evaluating it 20, 30 years down the line, right? We’re evaluating it for when if you are not here, like what’s going to happen to the money and whatnot. And so we see the full picture. And also because of what I do, I talk to people who are in an early-stage business, but I also talk to people who are late-stage. And therapy is kind of unique in that I talk to people who want to retire by 55 and I talk to people who never want to retire as long as they can move. And because of that, what I see is two issues. One, the lack of retirement planning, as we kind of discussed already. And then the second one is a lack of succession plan. And I think this is because there’s a lot of, you know, private practices. One person, private practice groups are practices out there and they can’t imagine the practice working without them. And that’s fine. There are certain people who could never work with an individual. And so you have to counter that in the planning process. But I also encourage therapists to kind of think about their business long term. And in terms of what- if there was someone to buy that because let’s say there’s someone willing to buy your practice for $200,000, you know, ten years from now, that could be the difference between you having a comfortable retirement and you having a very uncomfortable retirement. And so that $200,000 can be gigantic, but it’s not like a short-term thing, right? You have to build the business to be sold. You can’t just be Linzy Bonham, LLC, as you know. It has to be a name and it has to be some marketing behind it. Maybe there’s a partner, maybe there’s not, but you just have to have something. And I also encourage people to think like this because, you know, they’re just like demographically in the United States. I think Canada as well. There is a massive shift in terms of like workers right now where there’s like an older workforce that is moving out and a very young workforce, huge workforce, moving in. And so you have a mix of sellers and mix of buyers. And so it’s a really good time to kind of think about that because you need to treat your asset like an asset, the one that you’ve been building for 20, 30, 40 years, let’s say, by the time you’re ready to sell. And there is a group of young, eager therapists who you can mentor and guide and help them kind of work with patients like you work with your clients and therefore your sort of like skills and knowledge kind of move on that way. 

Linzy [00:27:17] And do you see that mostly being something that makes sense for folks who have group practices, like where you’re also, you know, you’re selling a business where there’s other service providing? Or do you also see that as being possible for solo practitioners? 

Ryan [00:27:28] Yeah, So I think it’s possible. Like again, I’m not a lawyer and I just see the long-term impact of people and I can guide them and sort of how I view a business sell. But I believe that a lot of solo practitioners could position their business to be sold. Take it, take it this way. Say you are ten, 15 years from wanting to retire and you realize you’re ten, 15 years away and you’ve worked by yourself through this entire time, but you have built a brand. It’s not just your name attached to some letters and you have been marketing that brand. And so what you’re doing is building a system to create like new clients. Okay, so now that you’re ten, 15 years out, if things are going well, let’s say you will. You hire someone, like one person, just one person. And you don’t look at this person. You look at them as an employee at first, but you also look at this person who could potentially replace you down the line. Yeah. 

Linzy [00:28:27] Yeah, exactly. 

Ryan [00:28:28] And there are ways to build partnerships in a sense that like there are there are buy sell agreements where you can set up the the sale agreement long before you’re ready to sell. So you are selling the business at a time where you’re not being rushed to the hospital or no longer there.  

Linzy [00:28:48] Yes. 

Ryan [00:28:49] And meanwhile, you can structure the payment where the business is being used for the new partner to pay you for the business. And so because of that, like, there’s some great ways where even if you’re willing to, like, create some marketing around it and really build a brand and add that little mentorship aspect, you could it is very, very possible. And if you need a coach for marketing, you know, there are plenty of coaches out there as well. 

Linzy [00:29:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly. That’s such an interesting idea and such a, I think, an untapped financial opportunity. Right. And like, and what I’m hearing with that is that’s not something you can just decide to do because you’re 70 and you’re like, whoa. I’m like, beyond done, right? This is something you start to think about 15 years out, ten years out, and that’s where you could, if you are working under your own name, you can shift to a company name and start and start marketing the brand instead of yourself. Bring in a partner. Like this is like long a long term strategy. But what I’m hearing is it could be a very, very fruitful strategy, which could have a huge impact on your retirement. 

Ryan [00:29:50] And now, you know, there are more buyers out there as well because there’s tech companies getting into the space and they may want your practice just for the clients. And so it does create opportunity, but it is a long term thing. And I think honestly, when someone gets 25 years in, I think it’s an invigorating thing because you need a change. Yeah, you need to kind of spice it up. And then- my wife had a therapist who passed away and it took her three years to find the other- her next therapist. And this is a way to help your clients as you are thinking of moving away as well. 

Linzy [00:30:28] I love that. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. 

Ryan [00:30:34] Any time. Always willing to talk about money. 

Linzy [00:30:35] Me too. Me too. For folks who are listening, if they would like to find you, get further into your world. Where can they find you? 

Ryan [00:30:42] Sure. So I work for United Financial Planning Group. I’m a planner there, but I actually have a personal site called Thinking Cap Financial dot com. And if you want to go to thinkingcapfinancial.com/checklist, I’m sure we put it in the show notes. Hopefully, you know, just leave an email and I will send you a checklist of things that a therapy owner should know should do from a financial standpoint. And by doing this, I mean it’ll put you 90% ahead of the game. 

Linzy [00:31:11] Yeah. And Ryan, are you personally able to work with folks anywhere in the United States? Is there a certain state? Like who can you work with? 

Ryan [00:31:20] I can work with anyone in the United States. If there is a state that I am not able to work with, I will file the one form to then work in that state.  

Linzy [00:31:28] You’ll do the one piece of paperwork. Cool cool. 

Ryan [00:31:29] There’s like three or four states out there, otherwise I can work anywhere. 

Linzy [00:31:33] Awesome, Great. So we’re going to put that link in the show notes. So if you want that checklist from Ryan, you can go over to the show notes and we’ll have the link there. Thank you so much for joining me today, Ryan, Thanks again. My conversation with Ryan really brings me back to once again reminding myself, reconnecting with how important strategy is when it comes to money. It’s so easy for us to be in that again day to day, week to week, month to month. This was a good week. This was a bad week. This is a good month. But money builds up over time. And the decisions that we make when we find the right strategic decisions for ourselves, whether it’s a sustainable amount that we can set aside every month for retirement, putting it into the right kind of account that makes sense for our financial situation, whether it’s like some of the little strategies we talked about, like actually paying your kid who already is actually helping you in your business to do work for you. Paying them in a way that’s going to save your money, your family taxes, or having the right tax structure that’s going to save your family money and then putting those things into investment towards the future, like those moves that you make on really like a monthly basis is how I think about those add up over not just like tens or, you know, dozens of weeks, but hundreds of weeks that you’re going to be working and thousands of weeks actually, and will eventually turn into a big financial result at the end of your career. But this suggestion that he had to around succession planning like kind of blew my mind a little bit in terms of private practice and like, yeah, you have built a valuable asset. So how can you, ten or 15 years before you’re ready to stop working, set yourself up to actually get some money back from all of the work that you’ve done, building a reputation, building a way of serving clients that people love. How can you actually turn that into something that can benefit you financially, help you create more financial stability at the end of your life, but also ensure some continuity for your clients when you’re coming into your retirement years and set up a new practitioner, a young practitioner, to thrive from the beginning of their career by letting them buy your business and do work in the great way that you do work. Take on a style that’s like your style so that your clients have that continuity of care. A young clinician gets a thriving practice from the start and you have more money to have stability and comfort in retirement. Very smart, very strategic. I really enjoyed my conversation with Ryan today. You can follow me on Instagram at @moneynutsandbolts. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, I would so appreciate if you would take 2 minutes, 2 minutes to head over to Apple podcast and leave a review. It is the best way for other therapists and health practitioners to find us and be part of these conversations. Thanks for listening today.