CEO Denny Schleper spends time with long-time principal Dudley Ryan who is transitioning to retirement after over 20 years with CLA. He shares his experiences and advice on working with clients and living the CLA Promise.

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Announcer: Welcome to “Own the Promise,” a CLA podcast created to share what guides every decision we make in every relationship we cultivate.

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Denny: Hello, CLA family. This is Denny Schleper. I had an opportunity to be in the Minneapolis office this week, and I ran into Dudley Ryan, one of our long-time partners within the firm, and I thought it was a great opportunity as we were sitting down and discussing where he’s at, not only in his life, but his career with CLA, to maybe share some of the thoughts that he’s had over his career and most recently, as he’s actually going to be retiring at the end of 2018, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to pick his brain.

What has he learned over the years that might help all of us who are still here at CLA, and really those of us that might be close to the transition stage that Dudley is at as well as, perhaps, those of you that are in the beginning stages of building your careers, hopefully, here at CLA as you continue? So, Dudley, welcome. What I’d like to do, Dudley, just to give a opportunity for our people to know a little bit more about you, if you would just briefly give a little bit of your history with the firm just so that they could have that perspective as we carry forward.

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Dudley: Thanks, Denny. So I started with the firm in 1985. At the time, I was practicing law, and the firm came to me and said, “We need somebody to head the firm’s tax practice. We have three partners that don’t want to do the administrative part of the practice.” So my first job was a manager with three partners and ten other people reporting to me at CLA. I did that for about 15 years, and what happened is is our firm expanded.

Just as a sidenote, we had about 100 people in the firm at the time, but as a sidenote, I did that for about 15 years and went to the firm administration and said, “Gee, you know, this really is getting big. It’s becoming an administrative job, and I’m not really suited that way, technically, as a talent set.” And the firm said, “Great, why don’t you go and practice full time,” which I kept a book the whole time I was doing this anyway, and let me go back and serve clients, and that’s what I’ve done ever since.

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Denny: You know, Dudley, before we get into kind of the transition part that you are currently experiencing, you obviously have had a lot of experiences over that period of time. Is there one or two just major lessons you learned in your career, or maybe major hurdles that you were able to get through and beyond that really changed your perspective maybe on life, but as well as your career at CLA?

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Dudley: Well, we would have to go on for about four hours on all those things and maybe two days, but I think the big thing is that we are a client service firm, and we have to serve clients the way they want to be served and not the way we want to serve them all the time, and so we have to keep that in mind all the time, and it’s constantly a battle when I get busy or, you know, I just don’t think about clients all the time sometimes, and the reality is that when somebody calls and they want something, we should present it and give that in the way they want to do it, and also, when we have major opportunities, we’re in the service business, and we have to serve clients the best we can. We’re problem solvers, and we have to serve clients the best we can, and that means understanding what we do here at CLA that can help clients reach their financial needs,