Why Your Business Shouldn’t Own You – Lessons from Meryl Johnston (#144) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 144
Meryl Johnston, founder of Bean Ninjas, joins Dustin Serviss to explore building a business that can run without its founder and making room for parenting, health and a life beyond work.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Introducing Meryl Johnston and Bean Ninjas
[00:06:33] A repeatable monthly service model
[00:10:06] Resisting the rush into the next opportunity
[00:13:46] Accounting talent and an approaching retirement wave
[00:17:56] Designing time off before work gives permission
[00:21:41] Choosing the size and shape of a firm
[00:25:43] Recovering from a major health setback
[00:29:22] Prioritizing family adventures while you can
[00:36:26] Hiring and the runway toward delegation
Guest & resources
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Dustin Serviss: Welcome to the Picture of Wealth, or TPAW as we call it. Today's guest is Merrill Johnson, who is the founder of Bean Ninjas, which is an online bookkeeping, accounting, and CFO service, all virtual with staff across the whole globe and, managing clients in the UK, US, and Australia predominantly. The reason that I had Meryl on the show is due to her podcast called the Bean Ninjas podcast, which is for accountants. And she is very passionate about work life balance for accountants and accountants specifically in mid career, where the accounting world is, what we'll just say, has a problem with labor shortage.
[00:00:38] Dustin Serviss: And so, the demands of current accountants in the field is is strenuous. The conversation did take many twists and turns, and we had an extensive conversation about health, wellness, and some of the fitness and nutrition related practices that Meryl takes on to maintain, sort of, some of the balance between having fitness goals, where she's an extreme, you know, surfer and overcoming breast cancer, to doing trail runs through rivers and swimming across, and maintaining this balance of having two small kids under the age of five. I really enjoyed this conversation just from a visit standpoint, and I am excited to share it with you.
[00:01:19] Dustin Serviss: Merrill, I'm excited to have you on the show today. This has been long in the making, but you are in Australia. I'm in Salmon Arm, BC. Again, I just... I've got my favorite Australian hat or the best hat I could find to put on. So thanks a lot for being on the show.
[00:01:35] Meryl Johnston: Yeah. It's great to be here.
[00:01:37] Dustin Serviss: Well, I I wanna hear, first off, we have kids about... Our kids are a little bit... My kids are a little bit older, but the same sort of vintage. So you do... Are doing a very good job of publicly diarizing what's working, what's not on your website. What's going on with the kids these days? What's... As a busy professional in your line of work, what's working with the kids?
[00:01:58] Meryl Johnston: So I've got a five year old and a two year old daughter. So neither of them are at school yet, but my eldest will be starting school next year. And so it is a tricky balance because I'm trying to build wealth for our families through businesses. So I wanna work hard. I'm really into health and fitness and surfing. So I wanna exercise every day. I wanna be a great partner and a great mom. And so it does feel like sometimes there's trade offs, but family is really important to me and probably focus more on doing intentional quality things together with the kids rather than...
[00:02:30] Meryl Johnston: It doesn't have to be five hours that I'm spending with them, but having quality time each day. This week, for example, my five year old just got into playing cards, playing, you know, so she's been waking up early. And so we've been playing that in the morning and having some fun before I have breakfast and get out the door to work. I also try and take each of them... They take turns on alternate years. I'll take one of them on a one on one trip somewhere, and we'll spend maybe two nights, three nights, maybe with one of their cousins, maybe with their grandparents, but we'll go and do something special with just me.
[00:03:03] Meryl Johnston: And I find that's something that creates memories and we'll have that special time together. So there are a couple of examples of how I'm trying to, spend time and do fun things with kids while trying to balance everything else.
[00:03:15] Dustin Serviss: Well, yeah, you're very vocal on your website and sharing the journey that you're on with business, life, health, kids. And so I think the update that I had seen on there, it wasn't as of yesterday. So thank you for bringing us up to speed because that wasn't your original, like, the twenty year old Meryl. And for context, you're forty one now. Right?
[00:03:35] Meryl Johnston: Hang on. Just forty.
[00:03:37] Dustin Serviss: Okay. So forty... At forty, the twenty year old Merrill would have said from a business lens, like, business first, family second, or was it not that drawn out in the sand?
[00:03:52] Meryl Johnston: So I wasn't even considering family as a twenty year old. I was thinking about lifestyle, though. My dad ran what I define as a lifestyle business. So he was an engineer and had a very small engineering firm. It was just him and my mom, who's an accountant, and he would work really hard and then he'd have time off. So if the snow was good in winter, kids out of school were going skiing, he was at every tennis match. He was there. And so I saw that, that he had so much flexibility running a business and he didn't try and scale it. He didn't have employees. He just worked with subcontractors.
[00:04:26] Meryl Johnston: So I saw that and thought, okay, I want to surf lots. I want to travel. I want to be free. I'm going to leverage business to do that. As a twenty year old, I knew, in fact, I had a business when I was twenty as a tennis coach. It was the only skill that I had to sell. And so I employed other university students to work as coaches for me. And we coached the lecturers, we coached their children and other students who could afford the fees. So I always knew that I wanted to go into business. So twenty year old Merrill was about how do I build wealth and how do I have fun and be free and not have someone else telling me,
[00:04:58] Meryl Johnston: when I have to work or, no. You can't take holidays at this particular time.
[00:05:02] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That's... So at that time, push forward till thirty. Is it setting in yet? Because you were... You have built a number of things, which I'd love to get into. If maybe you wanna do from twenty to now in four minutes of what sort of the business journey and what the businesses you've built and who they're serving. Give us that backdrop.
[00:05:24] Meryl Johnston: Yeah. So I'll give you the quick version. So I had the tennis coaching business at twenty while I was studying an accounting degree, and I wanted to study accounting. I've a writer at accounting and I enjoy it, but I love business. And that's why I studied it because as an accountant, you get exposure to hundreds of different businesses. You get a peek inside what they're paying people, where they're making money, what's working, what's not. And so that's why I wanted to get into accounting. So I worked at BDO, which is an international firm. So there's BDO offices in America. So I was there for three years, but I actually had about a ten
[00:05:56] Meryl Johnston: year career working at firms and working for other people in accounting, and then felt like I had enough of a skillset to start a business of my own. Ran a consulting business briefly doing accounting software implementations, and they're quite complex projects. It was quite hard to scale a team around that. Every project was different. And so I had six months in, I was thinking, hang on. Maybe there's a better way to do this. And so it had come across the term of a productized service. Some of your audience may be familiar with that, but it's basically thinking instead of consulting, which is going to talk to a customer or a client and
[00:06:33] Meryl Johnston: understand their problem and come up with a custom solution, it's thinking about a subset of customers who have the same problem and building one repeatable solution. And so the example that I came across was WordPress. So if I pay a fixed monthly fee for WordPress support. That business was called WP curve. Then Design Pickle, another example of that, fixed monthly fee for unlimited design services. I thought I'm gonna try that for accounting. That's my background. So bookkeeping services for a fixed monthly fee. It's a repeatable SOP systemized type service you can offer. I can build a team around that.
[00:07:13] Meryl Johnston: It's not based on my expertise, and I love recurring revenue. This is something that needs to happen every month. So I can charge someone on direct debit first of the month, and it makes sense that they'll pay every month for that kind of service. So that business is nine years old as of couple of days ago. So I grew that business that started in Australia. We're in the US and UK now, and I've got business partners in those countries, team of almost thirty with that business. And my goal, as I mentioned earlier, was freedom. So I always built that business with the idea of being able to step out.
[00:07:51] Meryl Johnston: So I'm about one day a week in that business now, and I'm doing some other things. So that's probably the quick version, and I'll throw it back to you.
[00:08:01] Dustin Serviss: Again, you mentioned you had some health things that I'm sure we'll talk about is part of the journey, but maybe two years ago. And so you had this goal of twenty twenty three was... What was the term that you called it?
[00:08:16] Meryl Johnston: A sabbatical.
[00:08:17] Dustin Serviss: So you had to leave, and then you came back. And so you were gonna
[00:08:20] Meryl Johnston: it. Yep.
[00:08:20] Dustin Serviss: Run it up or you were gonna ramp it up. That's what you
[00:08:23] Meryl Johnston: did. It up. Yeah. So that's right. So I had my health issues in twenty twenty two. Right? I was supposed to be taking a sabbatical, taking some time off. And then after that, I said, alright. I'm ready to go again. I'm ready to go hard at business.
[00:08:36] Dustin Serviss: And then... And so what was the recap of the end of that... You mentioned in your write up the finish line of your... Goals are a funny thing, and we often are working with people in their financial goals or their... A lot of our practices leaks into lifestyle and lifestyle design and maybe never retire. But a goal set at the start of the year and then look at it at the end of the year, that's a hard thing to do sometimes because you either hit it or you don't, and the whole year just went by. So what happened in the wrap it up year?
[00:09:06] Meryl Johnston: I guess my challenge was that I've been working towards a goal for so long. With Beanages, my goal was to build a business that could run without me, and it took me about seven years to achieve that. So every day for seven years, I had the North Star. I was marching towards that and I knew I was on the right track. And so then as things wound back, I was starting to explore different ideas, different business opportunities, dabble with investing. It was uncomfortable for me because I was in the experimentation phase again, and I knew that, yes, I wanted to do other things, but I didn't really know what. So I didn't have a clear North Star.
[00:09:41] Meryl Johnston: What am I marching towards every day? So I didn't know. It felt like sometimes I was wasting time. I'm experimenting. I'm learning. A couple of years ago, I was dabbling in crypto and web three businesses. And so I was trying all these different things, which was fun, but it also made me feel uncomfortable not having a clear goal. And
[00:09:58] Dustin Serviss: You've always had goals since twenty, and then all of a sudden you've reached some of them, and now you don't know what you really want. So was it scary
[00:10:06] Meryl Johnston: or uncomfortable. Describe it as uncomfortable because I kept wanting to commit to something, to rush into the next thing. I was ready to go again. I felt like I've got my energy back. I'm really ready to do the next thing. But that was one of my lessons as a more experienced business owner is that it's really about the right idea at the right time. And I knew don't just rush into anything. There's lots of opportunities out there, really try and take my time to find the next thing. So I'm probably still dabbling with different things. So I invested in a recruitment business that recruits accountants in the Philippines. So that's really fun.
[00:10:44] Meryl Johnston: I was running a deal for the Australian part of our business to merge our strategic partnership with Australian accounting firms. I've been working on that, doing some coaching for accounting firm owners. So So I guess I'm still trying out different things, seeing how they go, I guess, still in that experimentation phase, but at least I've got a few clearer paths. I tried angel investing and then realized that wasn't for me.
[00:11:06] Dustin Serviss: So... Why not?
[00:11:07] Meryl Johnston: Well, Well, I think with anything, you wanna feel like you've got some kind of edge. And so when I did angel investing, which I typically did in tech startups, I thought, okay, I'll carve out my niche by investing in tech startups that solve problems for accountants. Because I understand that particular niche pretty well. But then I realized, hang on. Angel investing, really, it's about... Or any kind of investing. It's about the price that you buy in at and then the kind of return that you're gonna get. And I really did not have experience at valuations for pre pre revenue companies.
[00:11:40] Meryl Johnston: I realized it's not that interesting being an angel investor where you're not that involved. I actually like being a bit more involved in a business than getting just a report every month. And I also realized if I was going into the business of angel investing, I I probably needed to vet sixty deals a year, make ten investments a year, and continue doing that. And, yes, I'm an accountant, but I don't really like due diligence and vetting businesses. I liked thinking if it was a good problem to solve. So I made a couple of investments and I'd go and do customer calls and try and validate problem that they were solving and try and validate the
[00:12:14] Meryl Johnston: market size. And that kind of, I guess, business thinking was fun, but realized I don't think I've got any special skill set in this space, and I don't enjoy it. So tried it. I'm gonna do something different.
[00:12:27] Dustin Serviss: You're doing something different. So what do you see with accountants mid career, early career, late career, but the aggregate of the people that seem to have the biggest smile on your face when they hear your podcast episodes or about giving a busy, successful accountant work life balance or that switch that makes them flip. Before you give us some of the tidbits that you might help someone make the switch or the spark, the transformation, whatever the catalyst is, but back us up to what in talking to lots of accounting professionals across the world who are accounting professionals across the world who are successful, who are running
[00:13:06] Dustin Serviss: their own shop, what is the biggest problem? What's going on in the industry?
[00:13:11] Meryl Johnston: Earn out. There's a skill shortage, so it's really hard for firms to hire quality accountants. That's why I've had that challenge myself. That's a challenge for a lot of accounting firm owners. And so that means they're normally working more hours than they wanna be working. I'd say that a lot of people in the industry, they're stressed out, they're working too much. They might be making good money, but they've found it difficult to build a team around themselves so that they can reduce their hours. So I'd say that's a general trend and that problem is getting worse because there's less students studying accounting in university.
[00:13:46] Meryl Johnston: There's less CPAs that people that are becoming qualified as CPAs. If they do study accounting or finance, there's better opportunities in investment banking, in tech, in terms of salary. So there's a competition for talent at the moment, and then there's a big cohort of retiring accountants and CPAs that's happening already. But, again, it's predicted to get worse from our perspective in the next ten, fifteen years. So I'd say that's the biggest challenge for us.
[00:14:15] Dustin Serviss: And that would be, again, to the heavy big corporates and nationals across the world, that's a problem for them. But for a hard charging or sort of someone who believes they could maybe do it more efficient or work their own business is gonna leapfrog out of corporate accounting and get into maybe being their own account or using some of these tools that you use. Is that an easy transition, or is there tools out there that someone could start up a virtual accounting firm from scratch and still deliver the same results? Is that possible?
[00:14:50] Meryl Johnston: It is, and it's much easier. So I started that nine years ago. I had to do a lot of learning around how do you operate firm where you're not meeting with clients in person, where your team is working remotely. But now, almost ten years later, it is much easier. So since COVID, remote work is common. Science are used to working remotely, and all of the tech that supports that has improved. And there's also playbooks now. Partway through my journey, I joined a community called FutureFirm run by a guy called Ryan Lazadas, and he's got playbooks about how do you build a modern firm. What should your marketing and business development look like?
[00:15:28] Meryl Johnston: What should your org chart look like at five hundred thousand in revenue, at one million in revenue, at three million in revenue? So it's like a step by step playbook of what should you focus on first and how do you build to get there? So I think it's definitely easier. And to come back to your question around who has a smile on their face, I'd say there's in terms of accountants in the industry, I'd say there's three different profiles don't have a smile on their face at the moment, but the ones that I see that do look happy and relaxed and are enjoying life, one, they're a firm owner that's scaled.
[00:16:00] Meryl Johnston: So they've got more than twenty staff, and they've got people that are taking care of fine fine interactions, work delivery, and they've got time to think, they're acting like a CEO, not a technician. They've got a smile on their face if they've built that, but they've had some bumps and some hard years to get to that point. So that's one profile. There's another profile of... That I'm seeing that is getting more popular, and that's the solo founder. So that's the single operator CFO managing a portfolio of ten, maybe fifteen clients, working twenty to thirty hours a week and earning one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty thousand.
[00:16:39] Meryl Johnston: So they're not... They often would have a partner that's working full time, but that's decent low stress income. They're not managing a team. They've got flexibility. They might not work Fridays. So I'm seeing that as a path to where they've just got a little portfolio. They're not trying to scale anything and they're pretty happy in their life. And probably the third is an accountant that is working within a company. So it's not an accounting firm. They're within a company like a controller, CFO, and they're hiring a company....
[00:17:11] Dustin Serviss: Company. Not a...
[00:17:12] Meryl Johnston: In a private company?
[00:17:13] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Okay.
[00:17:14] Meryl Johnston: Yes. Private company. And they're senior enough that they can influence their schedule. They've got control. So they've got the respect of the CEO, the founders that they're working with, and they can say, hey. Yep. Leave it three PM twice a week for my kids' soccer practice. I don't do this, but I deliver on my work. And so they've built that lifestyle where they have control because I see a lot of accountants who aren't great at setting boundaries. They feel like they've gotta be available in case this urgent thing pops up. So they're just in the office till six or seven PM just because someone might need them.
[00:17:49] Meryl Johnston: They know that do a better job of setting boundaries around what you will and won't do and how your results are measured.
[00:17:56] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That helps us gain context to sort of these people. For the people you've seen successfully transition or create a new life, the line that we always use with people is there's never gonna be an email that comes in and says you're approved to start taking Fridays off. It starts with someone designing it from the opposite end when most people think, if I just get my ducks in a row, then I'll be able to do it. But the wiring just doesn't work. So what would you say to someone who has made that leap or has made it... Like, how did they do it, or what is a catalyst that gets that person to at least explore the idea and
[00:18:36] Dustin Serviss: have the belief in themselves that as an accountant, they can do it? Because from an income standpoint or the... There's all the excuses that you've heard. But what is a main one?
[00:18:47] Meryl Johnston: So there's a great framework I like called the stair step method to entrepreneurship, and that's the pathway to working your way into owning businesses. And it's measuring what's the best type of business to own. And so you might say software company because ninety percent margins, rate valuations upon exit, but that's also a very difficult business to run. So saying you don't need to start with a complicated business. Let's go right back to the beginning of how could you build a skill set? How could you get started and then work your way up to something more complicated? So in the case of an accountant, if you've got a full time job,
[00:19:22] Meryl Johnston: you could still start something on the side. So you could be working towards qualifications so that you can work directly with clients or licenses, but depending on what state or country you're in, you could build up a little portfolio of clients on the side just to test out getting comfortable, having sales conversations, figuring out how much to charge someone. I also recommend trying to cut living costs. So see if you can live on less, see if you can save up money. That was something that helped me in that transition from full time job to business is I had, I can't remember exactly, but something like six to twelve
[00:19:55] Meryl Johnston: months of living costs covered. So I didn't have to immediately make the business a success. And that that might not be possible if you have a family, but, yes, side hustle, try and cut living costs if you can, and and then at some point, do make that transition from side hustle to making it your full time thing, but that could take a couple of years. And then at that point, you'll probably try and grow the business so that you can replace what you were previously earning. But I like to think about what's the long term goal. Are you trying to... Of those two paths that I've mentioned, are you trying to build a business
[00:20:33] Meryl Johnston: to scale and build a team, or are you gonna go more the solo, highly profitable route? And you don't wanna build something big because in the middle of that, it's no man's land. If you've got seven people and they're all reporting to you, you don't have enough revenue to hire a really good manager, then you might just be creating more work for yourself. At that kind of stage, if you can't get through it, and you might actually be be... In terms of take home pay or profit might be making less than if you just kept it small and super profitable.
[00:21:04] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. That's... And, again, we're about the same age, so I feel like we're probably living the kind of parallel thought confliction of when you wanna build something and you wanna build it big and you are scaling versus when you look at it and you say, like, when we work with a client and say, okay. Right now you're saving four hundred thousand or five hundred thousand a year, and you're stressed out, you're working six days a week. What if you hired somebody or two people for fifty grand a year and only saved three hundred? Like, you're still saving. So what Yeah. This sort of the bigger purpose, the bigger...
[00:21:41] Dustin Serviss: And and trust me, money serves a lot of purposes, so I'm not against, like, the whole money thing, but I am forced. This is a moment. And, again, I... Maybe I didn't read up enough about it in my thirties, and I recognize it now where is... Where are we going? And growth and the size of things for people. Is there a way for an accountant to figure out who they are as an identity of figuring out, do they wanna grow a huge firm or just do... You know, similar to your father where it's, I'm gonna make good money, but I'm not gonna be too stressed out about things?
[00:22:14] Meryl Johnston: I think there are two different mindsets. So one is the mindset of a business owner. It matters less what your accounting skills are like, but you need to enjoy sales, marketing, HR, hiring people, managing people. It's more about that piece. Do you enjoy that, Or do you actually really like the accounting work? And do you enjoy building out a cash flow forecast and having a conversation with a client around, if you take this choice, these are the options. This is what cash flow would look like. This is a different scenario and helping people in that way. So I think it's about understanding what your own strengths, weaknesses, and
[00:22:50] Meryl Johnston: interest areas are because one is about being a great accountant and the other is about being a great business owner. And I see a lot of accountants who go down the business owner path, but they would have been much happy being a great, highly paid, skilled accountant. They don't enjoy managing the team. They find it stressful giving people feedback or dealing with a performance management issue. So I think it comes down to your personal strengths and weaknesses and preferences.
[00:23:18] Dustin Serviss: So they're identifying that and trying to establish some sort of form of confidence and give them the bravery to go over the edge, and we see that in health and in wealth or finance. Whereas if you can get a little bit of a handle on, like, the more things that you own, the more things that own you. As the adage, you're trying to put back, do you need all this stuff? We call it BAM, which is your b a m, bare ass minimum. And that's the minimum expenses for you to exist. And so most people don't understand what that is at... They're at a success level because no one wants a budget.
[00:23:51] Dustin Serviss: But at the same time, knowing what that is is a very good common ground for couples, especially, where you can say, hey. Is the money going out to where we actually want it to be going? But where I was going with that is is segmenting or heading off in the health direction. Now, again, share as much as you want, but at the same time, you have had an incredible health journey. And what... Get us to the point where you're doing now where it's like you've seen little wins in the health and that... What that impact is doing on your life because, again, there's a lot of great things that come out of small wins in health to making big decisions
[00:24:28] Dustin Serviss: in life.
[00:24:29] Meryl Johnston: Yeah. So I'm happy to talk about that. So in twenty twenty two, my business partner, Tracy, was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she's made a full recovery. And so that's all right. But that was a trigger for me to think, okay. I'm not forty years old yet, which is when screening for breast cancer starts in Australia, but I feel really fit and healthy. I'm gonna go and get checked as well because it was unusual for her to be diagnosed. And so what happened was I actually had the same diagnosis as my business partner, Tracy, about two months apart or two months after she did. So I was diagnosed with DCIS, which is early stage breast cancer.
[00:25:04] Meryl Johnston: So it means it hasn't spread through the rest of your body. It's contained within the duct. So if you're gonna get anything, that's the best type to get. Right. And so it meant that I didn't need chemo or radiation, luckily, which has a whole lot of other health impacts, but I did need to have a mastectomy. And so that's quite major surgery. I needed two surgeries within kind of three months. And then because of my physique, I'm quite small, fifty five kilos that I had, the procedure they had to do for a reconstruction meant that my chest muscle was really stretched. And so my recovery was quite slow from that to walk
[00:25:43] Meryl Johnston: around the block was difficult for me for a couple of weeks. And that was difficult as a former athlete, as a tennis player, triathlete surfer. That was very difficult for me to go back to being so slow. And then it was months and months of physical therapy of just doing very small movements to try and get mobility back into my arm and chest. So I couldn't lift anything more than two kilos. So I couldn't, I had a daughter who was a baby at the time. I couldn't lift her because she was heavier than I was allowed to lift. So it was a big adjustment for me going through that. But I had a goal with the physio of I wanna get back surfing
[00:26:23] Meryl Johnston: as soon as I can. So first of all, I had to get to be able to move my arm properly again, and then gradually, little baby zero point five kilo weights, trying to build back up, get my mobility back to the point that I could surf again. For those that know or don't know surfing, it's a lot of chest and back to paddle a surfboard and also some strength required. If you get hit by a wave, I needed to be able to handle that too. So now a lot of times are side back surfing, mountain biking. I've got a swim race, swim run race coming up in a couple of months, but it's been quite a challenge for me as someone that's always been active.
[00:27:04] Meryl Johnston: One of the challenges was that was how I would clear my mind. So being able to exercise and have endorphins and particularly surf, that's where I go to just clear my mind. You can't think about anything else. You're forced to think about the waves and what's happening out there. And so I found that challenging of... I didn't really have a replacement for that of... If there was a lot of things going on in my head, how do I make myself feel calm? And so that was one of the challenges.
[00:27:32] Dustin Serviss: So, again, you're setting the intention of where you're going to be or want to be. Was there anything specific, like, practices that you were doing while recovering that you believe led to a speedy recovery?
[00:27:46] Meryl Johnston: By, like, not pushing myself. So I'm used to pre this health experience. I was used to pushing harder, work harder. That's how you'll get stronger. That's how you'll get faster. And actually the opposite was needed. In this case, I had to be very patient, very slow. It's not about pushing through the pain or pushing your body. I just had to... It was about rest, patience, and going very slowly. So that probably forced me to learn more patients in other areas. Cause that's not my personality is how can we get this done fast? Let's go. So it was probably a good exercise for me to learn more patients. I also meditated more.
[00:28:26] Meryl Johnston: I know the benefits of meditation, but I've never really built great practice. I've I've on and off. Sometimes I'd do it at lunchtime in my office. I did do more of that during that period. I've dropped off again. So this is a reminder to get back into it because it did help me.
[00:28:42] Dustin Serviss: The things that work, we seem to forget. But... So you were doing that. Do you think that life event changes the trajectory or your perception lens, whatever you wanna call it, to invincibility, but life's pretty simple when nothing's really happened and you've got business, family. Okay. I'll concentrate on those two things and just do real awesome at those. But when you have something like that happen, is there a different set of thoughts on... Oh, I need to experience more. I need to... There's none about the company or his building is big. Did that ever happen for you?
[00:29:22] Meryl Johnston: It did a bit. So I had been building the company for different businesses for lifestyle, so that was my goal. But it did make me realize I can't put things on hold. So I do a annual adventure trip with my dad and my brother once a year, go on some kind of adventure without spouses, without kids, and do something fun like that. And it's never convenient to do that because it was always busy with work, with family. But it made me realize these kinds of things are really important to prioritize, even if it's difficult to make it happen for all of us. So it made me reflect on that. Think I'm forty.
[00:29:57] Meryl Johnston: I feel like I've got years of life to live, but actually you don't know what could happen. So it made me on one hand wanna build the business faster, but it also made me think, oh, actually, I'm gonna really put boundaries around how much time I spend on it, and I wanna experience some of these other things now. So we took our kids overseas this year for their first overseas trip, doing things like that. Or I know that I like, I'd like to do pre kids. I used to go on surf trips and that's a difficult thing to do with kids, but I've taught with my partner and we're going to make that a priority.
[00:30:33] Meryl Johnston: So next year I might go on a surf trip on my own or with some friends because some of the breaks that I surf in Indonesia, you don't see any women over fifty surfing those. So I've got to surf that. I need to do it while I'm still fit and strong. I mean, in the next ten years, prioritizing some of those life things.
[00:30:50] Dustin Serviss: You mentioned it on your website, or I don't know, I saw it somewhere about when kids are young trips aren't relaxing. And you had an old memory of, oh, when I go on trips, pre kids, it was quite relaxing, and that's what you're supposed to do on the trip. And, man, I almost burst out laughing. So I was driving, and I had Siri reading me, like, your website, that one section of whatever I was on. And I burst out laughing because it would... It's so true. In Canada, lots of clients, accounts, people around us, camping is a thing. And so get an RV and take the kids. Is this gonna be so great? Your kids are two, and we gotta get them experience.
[00:31:28] Dustin Serviss: And the first camping trip, oh, you're just going... You're booking your partner going, is... Was that fun? Kids reading dirt and falling off the stairs. And so, again, I just wanted to mention that. So thank you for, putting it... That in context. But is there any sort of comments on how you view traveling with children now?
[00:31:47] Meryl Johnston: Yeah. We do it differently. So it's... Yeah. As you said, it's not about relaxing. It's more about activities and fun. So we take our kids camping too. We... I've got an annual trip we do with friends, with five other families, kids of a similar age, but our kids are the youngest. So with a two year old, you're constantly watching about that they're about to be hit by a car, whereas I'm about to jump in the river. So it was just an attitude change, but it took me a little while to think, oh, these are great experiences. It's about being present and it's not about sitting by the pool and reading a book. That's not gonna happen.
[00:32:20] Meryl Johnston: So enjoy what it is about, which is having fun being outside with the kids and getting them to experience something different.
[00:32:28] Dustin Serviss: What would you say to someone that says the end all be all is like spending all your time with your kids? And that's like a real identifier status symbol, whatever you wanna call it, of success is like... Because it seems like in work life balance space... I wrote a book on it. You talked a lot about it. I talk about it all the time. That that that is... If someone interprets that or takes it very literally, help us understand your view on that.
[00:32:54] Meryl Johnston: That's not my personal view, but that might be right for some people. So I think that could be a good path for some people, but I think it's okay to not have that attitude, and I don't. So I'd like to... Definitely like to spend time with my kids, but for me to be happy in myself, I need to fit in exercise every day. I wanna be successful at business. And so I need to put time into that, but also to create the life and the experiences that I want my kids to have. We need to have a certain level of financial security. But But I think it's good for them to see me as an example of prioritising health, eating well, spending time with our
[00:33:31] Meryl Johnston: adult friends and working hard. And they're some of the behaviours that I want to instill in my kids around discipline, working towards something. Oh, I know my older one's pretty social, so she likes hanging out with us, but she loves hanging out with her friends already. So I don't know that she'd wanna spend twenty four seven with me.
[00:33:50] Dustin Serviss: Along the same lines of sifting information, you're very good at the health side of things. How do you filter with today's day and age, like, all the social media and scrolling? How do you process that information to know what you should take or shouldn't take? Or someone says, oh, you gotta do cold plunge and post it online ten times a day. Like, how do you get through all the health information that's right for you?
[00:34:15] Meryl Johnston: That's funny. I don't actually... I'm not on Instagram, and I don't read much about health stuff. So my general view is that the supplements, ice spas, I feel like they're the one percenters. And so if you're an athlete trying to optimise for a race, maybe that stuff matters, but I don't think it matters that much. And it's more about moving your body every day, lifting some heavy things, running or some kind of hard cardio where you're getting your heart and lungs working, eating unprocessed food. That's the kind of stuff I try and focus on. I think what you eat and just everything in moderation. So I drink a little bit of coffee.
[00:34:52] Meryl Johnston: I drink a little bit of alcohol. I eat a little bit of sugar, but it's all this nothing too extreme, just moderation. I don't really think about it too much. It's just I've got some habits that I follow to feel good. And I look at my parents who are in their seventies, and my dad's never followed any health philosophies, but he's exercised every day. He lifts heavy things, doing work, and he can still run, play singles on a tennis court, eat someone that's in their fifties. He can hike multi day hikes with a heavy pack. So I look at the way my parents have lived, which is always just moderation and health is just part of everyday life.
[00:35:31] Meryl Johnston: I could probably improve around supplements and some other things, but I just do, I guess, like the eighty twenty rule. I haven't been convinced to do ice baths or some other things. My new gym actually has a cold plunge, so maybe I will get persuaded.
[00:35:49] Dustin Serviss: Just maybe as an experiment. I'll try this once just to say that I did it, but I still wanna come back to something that I haven't... It's been just bugging me in my mind for the last twenty minutes. On the business side of things, I think this is super important to readdress this because you do have quite an impressive, you know, business sort of track record, resume, whatever you wanna call it. For someone thinking, holy, wow, to have international workers to be building this business, like, how do you view the business building? Did you build and grow from people bringing on clients themselves, or did you grow literally by... Okay.
[00:36:26] Dustin Serviss: I'm making an x amount. Now I'm gonna hire somebody, and then you bring someone on, ramp them up, and everything's gone, like, smooth? Or how... Like, how is that runway looked?
[00:36:35] Meryl Johnston: It definitely wasn't smooth. I didn't pay myself much in the early days. So I was paying other people more than me because I was investing in building a team, but I had very low expenses back then. I was in my was just over thirty. I lived in a share house, Airbnb out another room to make money. And so I was just investing everything into building a business and hiring really good people to help me scale. So it took a couple of years, probably three years until I could earn what I would have been earning at a corporate job, maybe even longer because I was continuing to reinvest. So there was a lot of long hours.
[00:37:12] Meryl Johnston: I do Australian sales calls during the day. I do US in the evening, UK in the... But I do chips because I was doing sales in those time zones as well. I was working pretty hard in the early years, just hustling, trying to get everything going. And then as I built the team, I was able to scale things back and then reduce hours. And I try to be pretty disciplined about how I spend my time. So thinking about normally people might schedule an hour meeting. Let's try and make that... Let's schedule twenty five minutes and try and fit it into that. Or just, do we really need all these marketing option... You know, tactics?
[00:37:52] Meryl Johnston: Let's just focus on the one or two that are working and cut everything else. Let's just simplify.
[00:37:57] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Meryl, thank you very much for coming on the show. I... There's lots of stuff to talk about. We're at time, and I know you're just starting your day, so I I won't keep it going too much longer. So where can people find you? And is there an offering that is a pretty standard offer, or is it there a website that people should go to and learn about all the services that you provide?
[00:38:17] Meryl Johnston: So our accounting firm website is bean ninjas dot com. So b e a n. Yeah. And then the recruitment business, which might be more relevant for the audience, is hire team up dot com. So the business name is is TeamUp, and that's a headhunting business. So recruiting top accountants in the Philippines for accounting firms or also for in house finance teams. So they do a great job of hiring talent in the Philippines. So that's an option, or I'm happy to connect on LinkedIn too, which is just Merrill Johnston. So if anyone wants to ask a question or send me a message, I'm happy to connect that way too.
[00:38:58] Dustin Serviss: Merrill, thanks a lot for being on the show.
[00:39:01] Meryl Johnston: Yeah. It's been great. Thanks.