Darren Root: The Simple Firm and the Path to Professional Freedom

Guest: Darren Root, CPA
Host: KC Brothers
Topic: Darrens Book Building The Simple Firm

In this episode of Canopy Practice Success, host KC Brothers sits down with Darren Root, CPA, author, and co-founder of Rootworks and Better Everyday, to explore how firm owners can simplify their practices and reclaim their freedom.

With more than 30 years of experience leading firms and mentoring thousands of accountants, Darren shares the key ideas behind his book The Simple Firm: clarity, intentionality, and designing a business that supports your life instead of consuming it.

Together, they unpack his three guiding questions—What do you do? Who do you serve? How do you deliver it? and discuss how firm leaders can strip away complexity, rethink client relationships, and create a more meaningful way to work. Darren also shares his “Four Freedoms” framework: Time, Money, Relationships, and Purpose, and explains how to protect them as your firm grows.

If you’ve ever felt like your business is running you instead of the other way around, this episode offers a practical path back to focus, simplicity, and freedom.

Key Highlights:

• The origin of The Simple Firm and what inspired Darren to write it
• How to find clarity in what you offer, who you serve, and how you deliver
• The difference between running a business and being run by it
• Darren’s “Four Freedoms” and why they’re critical for every firm owner
• How to clean out your firm’s “messy closet” of services and clients
• Practical steps to align your work with your ideal day and ideal client

Why You’ll Love It:
This episode is for firm leaders who want to move beyond survival mode and start building a business that supports their purpose. Darren’s insights are both inspiring and actionable—helping you create space, systems, and simplicity so you can lead with intention.

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Transcript

KC Brothers (00:05)
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Canopy Practice Success. I am your host, KC Brothers, and I'm the Director of Product Marketing here at Canopy. Today we are in for a very special episode. Our conversation will be centered around a new book by Darren Root, who is here with us today. He is a CPA and nationally recognized thought leader who's been transforming the accounting profession for decades. He's written a book previously called The E-Myth Accountant.

He's helped thousands of firm owners redesign their businesses to serve their lives and not the other way around. I can't tell you how many times I make that point and I'm in good company. Darren, I'm so excited to talk about your new book.

Darren Root (00:45)
I practiced for a long time, KC, and then started a company called Rootworks, which became one of the largest firm improvement organizations in the country.

KC Brothers (00:47)
Yeah.

Well, when you say firm improvement, I feel like you were with Rootworks on the cutting edge of consultants. We have so many consultants in this space now.

Darren Root (01:02)
Yeah.

You know, it slightly before social was a thing. Now everybody that owns, I don't know, anything is a consultant at this point. But yeah, I think we were early in that space. you know, Woodard was early, you know, because Doug Slater was a little bit before Woodard and Boomer was early. So there was, there was just a handful, right? And we grew, you know, my goal was to hit.

KC Brothers (01:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darren Root (01:27)
midsize accounting firms, which are so many of them, small to midsize. And yeah, we grew that quite large. You know, one of the things a lot of people don't know, KC, is that I was executive editor of CPA Practice Advisor Magazine for about seven years. And the reason I think that that is somewhat helpful and important is because I talked to every vendor in this space. So not only was I practicing, but I also knew all the technologies and then was

talking to a lot of accounting firms. So that's what kind of made Rootworks a bit special. And we've reformulated that now sort of into better every day, our new community of firms.

KC Brothers (01:59)
Yeah.

to your point about highlighting your experience at CPA Practice Advisor, just overall highlighting your experience writing with the e-method accountant in that role and now with your new book, The Simple Firm, there is a skill that comes with A, participating in an industry long enough that you have solid good opinions and B, being able to then articulate.

those opinions with stories and evidence or conviction as to why a reader should change. And I just, I think that is so important in this space because again, it's been flooded with consultants who are well-intentioned, right? I think a lot of them too want to get out of the grind. ⁓ But there's something to be said when it's...

Darren Root (02:51)
Yeah.

KC Brothers (02:54)
You've found a way to articulate your opinions in writing that someone can self-serve, I think, that I appeal to. love, reading is just a great way of self-education and I'm such an advocate of reading.

Darren Root (03:07)
just a little more info on that KC. my first book was a co-authorship with Michael Gerber and we co-authored the E-Meth accountant and a lot of firms, a lot of people listening to this have probably read the E-Meth, which was a fantastic book and it was life-changing for me. I mean, it was really a light bulb moment for me. But then after the E-Meth accountant, I wrote the intentional accountant.

KC Brothers (03:15)
Yeah.

I have, yeah.

Mm.

Darren Root (03:33)
a few years later and we sold lots of copies of the intentional accountant and I get a lot of comments still today and that's been 10 years. I get a lot of comments still today from firms that have read that or are reading it and then shortly after that I wrote, I co-authored another book with a friend of mine named Jay Bear. Jay had a company called Convince and Convert and

Being in marketing, maybe you've heard of Jay, he's kind of a national, ⁓ national figure, but he had written a New York times bestseller called utility, Y O U T I L I T Y. And he and I co-authored a book called utility for accountants. And it was really, how do you, how do you put yourself out there in a way that's helpful instead of just marketing? How do, how do, how does content marketing really become a thing? And again, this is back before content marketing was everything.

KC Brothers (04:21)
Hmm.

Darren Root (04:25)
Right. so, then, you know, go forward 10 years and the simple firm really is the culmination of, think everything that I've learned from practicing for 35 years, talking to thousands of accounting firms and, try to simplify and get to the heart of why firms should change. Not, not to bash any other consultants that are out there, but you know, I see so many soundbites on

KC Brothers (04:51)
Yeah.

I mean, that's 2025. Yeah.

Darren Root (04:52)
So it's like, yeah,

so I mean, at the end of the day, how do I really do this thing and have a meaningful impact? And why would I want to do that? I think that's what the simple firm is really going to be, or is all about.

KC Brothers (04:59)
Yeah.

I was actually talking to my girlfriends this week about soundbites and how, ⁓ easy it is to, consume and then think you've gotten the full story. ⁓ and there's again, a reason why you have written a book and not just published and an op-ed somewhere, right? there's a phrase that I love, and lean on a lot, just the

Darren Root (05:15)
Yeah.

All right.

KC Brothers (05:28)
concept of slowing down to speed up. And I think that's, again, like it's worth reading books like yours, The Simple Firm, and some of the other ones you've listed. You mentioned the E-Myth, I read that years ago and I still reference it. Because when you slow down to speed up, particularly in your education, you have more opportunity to, for higher comprehension and then application of those skills.

Darren Root (05:51)
Yeah, you know, I think there's so much noise, you know, whether that is television, social media, you know, just being connected all the time. There's so much noise and I love your idea of slowing down to speed up because most people just get caught up in the echo chamber of whatever it is and it's just noise happening and you never get a chance to sort of step back.

KC Brothers (06:10)
⁓ Yeah.

Darren Root (06:15)
and say, in the heck am I trying to accomplish here? One of my other author heroes was a guy named Stephen Covey. So the 7 Habits was, you know, I spent a fair amount of time in Provo with Stephen and his brother. And I was a facilitator for the 7 Habits for 10 years while was still practicing. Yeah, so I went around the country and taught. That's sort of where I learned to speak and teach and how to put things together.

KC Brothers (06:21)
Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

Darren Root (06:41)
was really through Stephen Covey. so, you know, two books that always come to mind for me are The Seven Habits. ⁓ And, you know, I sort of live that every day still since I was, you facilitator and, and the EMATH. It's, it's, they're, both really fantastic foundational tools that allow you to step back and say, what in the heck am I doing this for?

KC Brothers (06:48)
Mm-hmm.

He's right.

they share common threads and maybe because you experienced those rather early in your career, I'm assuming that they shaped your perspective because they share very common themes as to, as your books, particularly your new one. I mean, even just the title itself, the simple firm. you talk, ⁓ a bit in the beginning about burnout. we see a lot of that in the industry. I think, and, and for me as.

I want to say an outsider because I'm not an accountant. I've referenced in a few other interviews, I'm a daughter of an entrepreneur. So I've seen the entrepreneur ⁓ symptoms of not defining who your buyer is, your customer is, and taking any business. It's something that no matter what industry you're in, you're likely to succumb to just as an entrepreneur. And I think the tricky thing

Darren Root (07:35)
Yeah.

KC Brothers (07:51)
with accountants is because it's a very business centric skill that it's maybe even a lot easier to think that you don't need to define who you're selling to or who you want to accept as a client, which then leads to burnout.

Darren Root (08:07)
You know, there's, there's some history around why I think accounting firms take on whatever wanders in their door in whatever way they want to wander in. Super early in my career. I wouldn't even, I'm not sure what the date is, but let's say that I started practicing in 1983. So it was somewhere around them right before. Accountants couldn't advertise. ⁓ It was illegal for accountants to advertise. So.

KC Brothers (08:14)
Mm.

Yes, it was illegal.

Same with lawyers, right? Yeah.

Darren Root (08:34)
At that point, right, right.

Lawyers have done a better job at advertising. You have to, you have to admit at this point, but you know, so accountants got used to, mean, a lot of us were trained that that was, you know, kind of a bad word. didn't even pay really any attention to it in college. You know, when I was getting my accounting degree, because it was just wasn't a thing. and you know, just, I don't, one of those things, I don't know. I don't know what the purpose was.

KC Brothers (08:51)
Yeah.

Do you know why?

Okay.

Darren Root (09:01)
But on a slightly different note, you you mentioned, I wrote this book, The Simple Firm, but I think the thing that's more interesting than even the title, The Simple Firm is sort of my subheading. I'm pulling one over here, so I'll hold it up for you. yeah, so the subheading is an accountant's path to professional freedom. And that, you know, when you say burnout, KC, I think it's that lack of freedom that burns.

KC Brothers (09:07)
Yeah.

For those of you watching online.

Darren Root (09:29)
people out, you know, because we're so deadline driven and there's, we're so transactional and volume driven, you know, doing oftentimes things that we don't just love doing because of that lack of marketing or not pulling in the right customers. So really this whole book is around how do I, you know, what is my path to freedom and freedom, the way I've defined it in the book,

KC Brothers (09:30)
Mmm.

Darren Root (09:53)
You know, it's freedom of time. So how do I, how do I get my time back so that I get to choose? Right. And then the second part of that is, is freedom of money. You know, how do I generate enough? So I don't have to make bad choices. Like I don't have to take on that client that doesn't fit or I can hire the right people. So how do I generate enough money? So it's freedom of time, freedom of money. And these are actually are progressive and the,

The next one is really freedom of relationships, because if you have the time and you have the money, then you can choose who you want to work with, whether that's clients or team. And ultimately that leads to freedom of purpose. You're getting to do this for the reasons that you want to do it. So that's how I define professional freedom inside the book. And really everything in the book leads you towards

having the freedom to make those choices. Does that make sense?

KC Brothers (10:48)
Yes, a hundred percent. So what do feel like gets in people's way that they can't make those choices or they're there. They feel that they can't. is, what's happening there? Where's the gap?

Darren Root (11:00)
I mean, it starts with bad business models. Right? Let's go back to Gerber. It starts off with you don't really even have a business model. And what I mean by that is you don't know exactly what it is that you want to sell. You might be selling like everything to everyone. So if you're really great at selling, you know, client accounting services and 1040 services, and even more specifically, maybe tax services to

us based citizens or something, you know, versus global citizen, you know, it's, it's getting really focused on what you want to sell, what you're great at doing, what your team is great at doing. And then who do you want to do that for? I was horrible. Well, in the, in the what I was horrible at, at, ⁓ like nonprofits, kind of work. I was horrible at construction accounting. I wasn't good at audits. I wasn't good at that kind of stuff. So.

KC Brothers (11:36)
Yeah.

Darren Root (11:49)
I started by narrowing my practice into the things that I knew that I was really good at. And then the next question was, who is it that fits those services? And for me, I wanted service-based businesses, because that's what I was good at. And as time went on, I even narrowed that further into physicians and optometry practices and churches and things like that, things that I was really good at and had a knowledge base on. And then so it's what, who, and then

How do you want to deliver that? What tools do you want to use to make this as easy and seamless and as beautiful experience as possible? So that's kind of becomes your business model, your what, your who, and your how. once you understand that most firms don't understand that they haven't spent the time to think about that, then you can start thinking about, who's the right kind of clients to fall into this business model or to be a part of this business model?

KC Brothers (12:38)
you said the what, the who, and the how, but you left one out that I feel like is a pretty big deal and that a leader in, I think he's a pretty influential voice in the entrepreneur space, Simon Sinek, leading with why. So where does why come in? Do you establish a why before a business plan?

Darren Root (13:01)
why is not necessarily your business model. I love start with why in Simon's book. But I mean, why are you getting into this business is a whole other thing. mean, it is, and it ends up being, you know, the biggest and the highest purpose or freedom was purpose. You know, which

KC Brothers (13:05)
Okay.

It's the motivation to build the business model. Yeah.

Yeah.

Darren Root (13:25)
which plugs into your why. mean, are you getting into this to impact yourself, your family, your team, your clients? mean, what is your why? And I think firms have to really answer that really early on.

KC Brothers (13:28)
Yeah.

I agree. I agree because I do feel like it can lead you honestly down the wrong

Is it the what or the how? I think more the how because when you don't understand why you're in business, think, or like your motivation there before you've established your business plan, it's easy to get hairs crossed. And then to your point about finding an ideal client and all sorts of things that cascade from there.

I think what can end up happening, and you tell me, you've talked to way more accountant business owners than I have. They end up selling themselves as the service, which then makes it hard, which is an entrepreneurial thing to do, then makes it hard for them to remove themselves from the service offering to the client and scale their business.

Darren Root (14:29)
You know, that was Gerber's story with Sarah's bake shop in ⁓ the E-Myth, right? So she thought she was in the business of selling pies, and so she did everything, right? But I think with accountants, what I have found, is that they're usually discontent with some situation that they were in. That could have been they were working for a big four CPA firm, or they were in corporate accounting, and they decided they would...

KC Brothers (14:32)
Yes, the pies. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Darren Root (14:56)
you know, had a few clients on the side and they could start an accounting firm. The challenge with that is most of these people that I've talked to over the years, their first and biggest why at that point in time is eating. Right? So they need to put food on the table. And so they're in it for the money to start with. You know, I got to get my business off the ground. The challenge that I see with firms is that there's not like that.

KC Brothers (15:13)
Yeah. Yeah.

Darren Root (15:20)
defining moment or that that point in time where you click from okay. I've been like generating income To now I want to run my business with a bigger why? ⁓ And so most firm owners that I see They get so deep into what they started and that they might have started further

KC Brothers (15:30)
Yeah.

Darren Root (15:40)
you know, a smaller reason, not going to say the wrong reason, but a smaller reason. and there's no obvious time when that switch flips and they're like, I'm going to step back and, think about why I'm in this business and my business model. And, you know, how do I do this? You know, in a sustainable sort of way, that actually gives me purpose, but they get so caught up in deadlines and, it just, it just wears.

Where's them out? And what I have found is if it's wearing the owner out and they're not loving what they have, it's probably wearing their team out as well. And they're not loving it either. And we're seeing a lot of that right now.

KC Brothers (16:16)
Yeah.

would you say the main audience who wrote the book for isn't for people who are starting a firm, but rather people who are in the thick of it? And maybe whenever this happens, it's probably different for every firm owner that switch flips.

Darren Root (16:32)
I, yes, I think that's true. Because that's most of the people I talk to. Somebody is feeling a little bit of pain. Wherever that pain's coming from, you know, I mean, most of time it's lack of freedom. And most of the time it's a lack of freedom of time ⁓ is what they're really struggling with. And then, know, staffing.

KC Brothers (16:46)
Yeah.

Darren Root (16:51)
because the business owner doesn't love their business, know, in the way that they would like to. Staff's getting a bit infected by that and they're having more turnover than they would like to and that's causing even a bigger crisis because the volume, there's plenty of volume still coming in to firms and they don't have staff. it creates a whole, it's just a hamster wheel that it's hard to get off of.

KC Brothers (17:17)
okay. A, how do you get off of it? And B, can it be done anytime before April 15th or like,

Darren Root (17:25)
you

KC Brothers (17:25)
You know, is that, or can you say to someone like, no, if you're feeling it now, you can do it now. It doesn't matter if it's end of month. It doesn't matter if it's, tax season, extension season, whatever the busy season is relative to the services you're offering. But it's gotta be done. Like it's not sustainable to your point.

Darren Root (17:40)
⁓

Yeah. I mean, if you do nothing, so you're feeling this pain. If you do nothing, you're going to end up getting the same thing. So it's not going to get better on its own. So then how do you go about doing this? And my experience has been that it takes time, right? And it takes a lot of mental work. The nice thing is typically the number one issue that the business owner is solving for is, is not money, which is nice.

Because that can be, like I said, a lot of firm owners start with that as the only driver. You know, I got to pay my bills. I left a job and now I have this and I've just got to, I got to generate enough income. So now we, we have cashflow. So, you know, it really starts with, with stepping back. And I think you're, you're probably right. I think there's, there's a, am I in this? You know, am I in this business to support the life?

that I want to live and the kind of company I want to create or am I in this as somebody who is consumed by this? chances are it's not the latter. So it's usually somebody wanting to have a business that supports the kind of life they want to live and have an impact on society in a broader way, their clients.

And so just stepping back and asking yourself that question is a fantastic first step. But once you do that, then we have to figure out what's not working. Oftentimes it's you have a lack of time. So how do we start creating a buffer of time? Sometimes it's, you know, it's a lot of times this goes back to the 80 20 rule, which is like, you know, 80 % of your revenue come from 20 % of your good clients and stuff. So

Sometimes it's like starting to look at your client list and figuring out what's not great fits. What's the kind of work you want to do? It goes back to that what, who and how and really figuring that out.

my story KC is I would go to Longboat Key, which is a little island off the coast of Sarasota in Florida with my wife and three kids each year. And I would spend a day on the beach just writing and asking myself, because, know, again, I was a Covey facilitator at the time. So this was kind of the way I thought. And, you know, I had created a business that I didn't love.

That's why I ended up reading the E-Myth and that's why I ended up, you know, being in the seven habits. I just, I was capable of growing a business, but I was so young at the time. I was in my twenties that, I mean, I grew this thing and next thing I know it was consuming me. And I was like, wait a minute, this isn't what I was, this isn't what I signed up for. So I would go off, you know, essentially and spend a day writing, asking myself questions and trying to answer those questions, you know, in my head.

And I think that's a great place to start. You got to do the hard work of figuring out what the heck it is that you want.

KC Brothers (20:24)
this.

Man, talk about slowing down to speed up. You really do need to, yeah, you need to dedicate time to work on the business and not just work in the business, especially as a firm owner, as the leader, and to your point about even if you're feeling like things are hectic and chaotic, it's going to trickle down to your team.

Darren Root (20:29)
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

mean, it's Covey's, know, beginning with the end in mind. So what the heck is it that I want out of this thing? And once you can answer that, then there's a roadmap to getting there wherever there is. Right. So there is a roadmap and there's people that have done this before who've wanted similar things. figure out what it is that you want and how badly you want that. Are you going to commit to it?

KC Brothers (20:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

The way you said that, it's 2025. We don't have to operate an accounting firm the way we did in the eighties. I often, I'm a mother of three little girls. And anytime I see someone who's about to have their first, one of the first things I feel like I want to offer to them is like, it's 2025. You do not have to have sleepless nights for the first five years of that baby's life. You can get them sleeping in 12 to 15 weeks.

Darren Root (21:32)
Yeah.

KC Brothers (21:34)
I feel like that just reminded me of how I say that in that case of like, it's 2025. There are so many tools and resources to support you, not just as a business owner, generically, right? Again, we can talk about generic tools. We can talk about the cloud. We can talk about great books like the simple firm. But also then we take that into the accounting space and oh my goodness, there is...

Darren Root (21:47)
Yeah.

KC Brothers (22:01)
a plethora of efficiency driving things, whether it's best practices, whether it's tools itself, whether it's even things maybe agnostic to accounting again back to seven habits or how to influence, my goodness. There we go, got a little tongue tied there. Or the E-Myth, right, of things that will just help you be more efficient. You're not trying to...

Darren Root (22:16)
when friends and influence people.

KC Brothers (22:26)
run a marathon with five pound weights on your feet, right? There's no need.

Darren Root (22:31)
There was a time when I had what they called an audit bag. You won't know what that is, but it's a giant briefcase that folds into like a square. And each night, I would have to take a pile of tax returns in that bag home so I could work on them at home in the evening. That's not the world we live in in 2025. One of the things I say in the book is I believe that 85 % of tax work

KC Brothers (22:50)
No.

Darren Root (22:59)
payroll work, client accounting work should be done leveraging technology before a human ever has to get involved with that. So you just think about doing a 1040, you know, at this point, there's technologies coming out, you know, that are going to impact the way that's done where that return is going to be virtually complete before a human has to really inject themselves into that process.

And man, that's no black bags, no log and tax returns home, you know, and no exchange in documents, you know, through hard copies or fax machines and stuff. The right tools. mean, a shout out to Canopy, you know, the right, I like to think of it as the first mile, the way you collect and interface with account or with your clients. And then the last mile, the way you deliver all that stuff. mean, Canopy's made that super simple.

And then there's tools in the middle that will take 85 % of the process out of doing the manual work that we used to do, all the transactional work and allows us to step back. So I don't think there's ever been a more important time, KC, to sort of step back and say, what the heck do I really want out of this company? What kind of clients do I want to serve? What kind of impact do I want to have? And do that. There's never been a better time.

KC Brothers (23:56)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think, and this might be a hot take, so tell me if you think differently. ⁓ because I think there's a lot of natural human behavior going on here too, where these manual tasks are your comfort blanket. It's, it's hard skills. Hard skills are easier to master than soft skills. And, and if, if we truly are, cause I agree with you that 85 % will be able to be managed or can be managed even currently.

Darren Root (24:27)
Absolutely.

KC Brothers (24:42)
by technology, that means, mean, let's say, keeping it simple, 85 % of the stuff, right, that means like maybe 20 % of your time is taken up by that 85 % now instead of 85 % of your time, leaving you with 80 % of your time. And that's gonna be your soft skills, that's gonna be communication, that's gonna be strategic thinking and getting into advisory.

And, doing that in a way that you're not tempted to revert back to these old models of, just extending time and overcomplicating things. again, maybe another hot take here. I don't know if accountants over glorify their hours spent. I feel like at least in tech, ⁓ luckily I'd entered my career at a time where I felt like it's

kind of fading or maybe it's also cause I've never been in Silicon Valley. I've only been in Utah and the Silicon slopes. ⁓ and I've been shielded from this badge of honor of I only slept four hours, but I feel like you get some of that with accountants with busy season. I'm like, how can I be proud if I didn't do as much work in terms of time? And it's like, it's not time that matters. It's the output. Like let's reorient.

Darren Root (25:33)
Yeah.

You should be on the show shrinking because you just came up with some really, some really good stuff, right? One of them is I think accountants get their value from producing something, whether that is producing and billing a tax return or, you know, an hour or getting a payroll out the door. So I think a lot of their self-worth from a

a work perspective comes from that production piece. I've done thousands and thousands, reviewed thousands of tax returns in my career. And as Rootworks had really taken off and I was writing the intentional accountant, it was during busy season. So I was used to reviewing tax returns, but I couldn't get the book done.

during busy season and I wanted to get it out before May and continue to review tax returns. And it was just such a hard thing for me to let go because so much of my worth was tied to reviewing tax returns instead of working on this book that could impact, you know, tens of thousands of people. And that, I, so I think you're spot on with that. And then I think the second point, you know, and my dad was a

KC Brothers (26:45)
Yeah.

Darren Root (27:03)
practicing accountant before me. He loved going down to, know, social clubs back then were called the Elks Club and stuff, you know. So he, he loved going down there on Friday night and telling people that he got up at 4 a.m. and he was still at it at eight o'clock that night. You know, like that was a part of the badge of honor that I didn't want to have when I got into the profession. ⁓ But I think there's still a lot of that. ⁓ But I think the tide's turning on that.

KC Brothers (27:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I sure hope so. As a working mom, I hear that and my heart aches because I am like, I love being a mom, but I also love being a working mom. And I see my fellow colleagues who are working fathers. We don't talk about that often, but like I want my colleagues in end industry to...

Darren Root (27:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

KC Brothers (27:54)
to be able to unplug and go do their second job of their family. Or that honestly is their first job.

Darren Root (28:00)
Yeah.

KC Brothers (28:02)
result, I put my blinders on a lot at work. I time block. I make decisions before decisions have to be made because I've found that indecision prevents me from getting to the task at hand as quickly and being more efficient with my time. because both things are important to me and I want to perform well in...

Darren Root (28:14)
Yeah.

KC Brothers (28:23)
both of those roles and I'll throw in a third role of just ⁓ a wife too. I want to be able to perform well in all of these areas of life, I saw this ages ago, but it has stuck with me, a pie graph that one of my favorite authors posted, Greg McEwen, he's the author of Essentialism. And it was a juxtaposition of two pie graphs of like what we think of as success and it had different areas. Salary was a big one, job title.

And what if we thought of successes this way? it was salary was still on there, title still on there, but then time with kids or exercise or healthy sleep, you know? And I think that was for me kind of what 7 Habits was for you.

Darren Root (29:02)
That seven habits stuff is like, you know, what is it that you want to be as a, you know, as a father, as a business leader, you know, all these different things, right? And so you take the time to figure that out. It doesn't just naturally happen. You got to figure it out. And that's kind of beginning with the end in mind. So yeah, I just think that, you know, it's time for the profession. I thought that it was time for the profession to have, you know, I would almost call it a manual.

⁓ For doing this because it's not just like I in the book. I don't just talk about wouldn't it be nice if Here here step by step and it's chapter by chapter How to do this and then I keep coming back to why you would want to do this Right and and it's and it really boils back to that freedom that professional freedom so you can do those other things that are more important

KC Brothers (29:30)
Okay.

Yeah.

Okay, Darren, we're going to try something new here at the end of the episode. I'm going to do a rapid fire of a few questions. I know, you're on the spot. What's a workday ritual you never skipped?

Darren Root (29:59)
that's stressful.

coffee with my wife in the morning in front of fireplace.

KC Brothers (30:10)
Yes, love it. What's one service you'll never offer again?

Darren Root (30:14)
Accounting services. I'm doing other things. You know, I've owned, yeah, it's not that simple. mean, I love this profession, but I get more out of helping accounting firms than operating anymore.

KC Brothers (30:17)
being an accountant.

It's not that simple.

than by operating a firm.

Okay, fill in the blank. A great client is someone who...

Darren Root (30:34)
totally agree.

is a good fit for you and does the things that you want them to do.

KC Brothers (30:43)
Great. Darren, thank you. The Simple Firm by Darren Rue is out. Go grab a copy

Darren Root (30:48)
you can order off Amazon now and I'd say the audio book will be out in a couple of days. So by the time this is out, the audio book will be out there too. And I sat and read for that for three days, KC. So that was a lot. I was hydrating a lot.

KC Brothers (31:00)
So you were hydrating a lot. ⁓

Well, Darren, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Darren Root (31:07)
Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thanks, KC.