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Ryan Sullivan, PE - Financial & Business Planner

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Bozeman, MT
Ryan Sullivan, PE - Financial & Business Planner

I Craft Personalized Wealth Blueprints for Architects and Engineers | Engineer Turned Financial Planner

11/03/2026

What's the point of owning a busiess if you never have time for the life you wanted?

You started your firm for a reason.

More freedom.
More flexibility.
More control over your time and income.

And yet somewhere along the way, that turned into:

More stress.
More obligations.
More people depending on you.

You're bringing in work, managing projects, answering questions, and making payroll.

But what is all that work building toward?

A business you can step away from?
Enough wealth to work because you want to?
The ability to take a vacation without checking your email every morning?

I left engineering because I wanted more freedom.

Including the freedom to go skiing when it snows.

Now I help other architects and engineers build businesses that give them more options.

FreedomOS brings that work together.

The strategies, tools, and processes to help you improve profitability, create more predictable revenue, and reduce how much depends on you.

It starts with defining what you want your business to make possible.

Then we work through what needs to change to get there.

Because "more freedom someday" deserves a plan and a place on your calendar.

If your business isn't giving you the freedom you imagined, message me or comment "Freedom".

I'll send you the FreedomOS assessment to help you identify where you stand and what to work on first.

11/02/2026

"I want to pay off my mortgage."

I understand the appeal.

Lower bills.
Less pressure.
One less thing depending on your next paycheck.

But what happens when the decision that makes you feel more secure ultimately leaves you with fewer options?

A client recently asked about using a large portion of their cash to pay down a 4% mortgage.

They were also considering starting a business and potentially building a home for their parents.

Paying down the mortgage would reduce debt.

Keeping the cash would preserve their ability to do those other things.

Both offer a form of security.

So the real question is what is driving the desire to pay off the mortgage?

Concern about their job?
Pressure from monthly expenses?
Or simply feeling uncomfortable with the total amount of interest accumulating?

The answer matters.

If monthly payments are creating real stress, reducing them may be worth giving up some flexibility.

If the goal is freedom to leave a job, start a business, or help family, having cash available might be better.

The emotional benefit belongs in the financial analysis.

Which is why we need to examine if the decision actual delivers the feeling we are looking for.

You might feel better with less debt.
You might feel worse with less cash.

In this case, my recommendation was to preserve flexibility.

There is value in having options.

Having enough cash to pay off your mortgage, and the freedom to choose whether you do, that's a powerful position to be in.

10/26/2026

Hill I will die on.

Mountains always look better with snow on them.

Don't get me wrong, summer is great too.

But there's something about that first fresh coat of snow on the peaks.

The contrast.

The white against the blue sky.

All the potential ski lines.

Every fall, seeing the snow start to accumulate gets me excited for what's coming. ⛷️

Mostly because I know what comes next.

Winter is coming and I couldn't be happier.

Who's ready?

10/20/2026

Money is meant to be spent.

When you get paid, it is because you provided value to someone.

When you spend money, you give someone else to do the same.

A business gets revenue.
An employee gets paid.
A contractor gets work.
A restaurant stays open.

Someone else gets to provide value and earn an income.

Money moves.

That is what is is supposed to do.

Which is why, at a certain point, obsessively pinching pennies can become selfish.

Not because saving is bad.
Not because you should spend recklessly.

But because accumulating money just for the sake of watching the number grow misses the point.

Money is a tool.

It provides security.
It creates opportunities.
It buys back your time.
It funds experiences.

Of course you need the right foundation first.

Cash reserves.
Manageable debt.
Investments.
A plan for the future.

Confidence that the important things are covered.

But once that foundation exists, the goal can change.

At some point, you also need permission to use it.

I see this with successful architects and engineers.

A whole life of saving and delayed gratification.

Sometimes they are so focused on the future that they forget to enjoy the life they worked so hard to build.

The right mindset is not: "how little can I spend?"

It is: "how can I use my money intentionally?"

Sometimes that means investing it.
Sometimes that means saving it.
And sometimes that means spending it without guilt.

Money is not the score.

What it allows you to do with your life is.

10/15/2026

Billing hourly will destroy your business in the age of AI.

Think about the incentive you’re creating.

You invest in AI.
You build better systems.
Your team gets more efficient.

Something that used to take 10 hours now takes 5.

Congratulations.

You just cut your revenue in half.

That’s the fundamental problem with selling hours: you get paid more for taking longer.

For decades, architecture and engineering firms could mostly get away with this because productivity changed slowly.

AI changes that.

We are entering a period where the amount of work one person can produce could increase dramatically.

But if your revenue is still tied to the number of hours it takes to produce that work, you don’t capture the productivity gain.

Your client does.

Imagine a project that historically required 1,000 hours.

At $175/hour, that’s $175,000 of revenue.

Now imagine AI, automation, better BIM workflows, and improved systems allow your team to deliver the exact same, or better, outcome in 700 hours.

Under hourly billing?

Revenue falls to $122,500.

You became 30% more productive and got rewarded with 30% less revenue.

That’s insane.

Now imagine you sold the project for $175,000 based on the value of the outcome.

You still deliver it in 700 hours.

Except now the productivity gain belongs to the firm.

Revenue per employee increases.
Profit per employee increases.
Capacity increases.

Your people can create more value without working more hours.

That is what AI should do for an A/E firm.

The firms that win in the age of AI won’t necessarily be the ones that adopt AI fastest.

They’ll be the ones that figure out how to capture the value AI creates.

If you continue selling hours, every productivity improvement becomes a revenue reduction.

Stop selling time.

Start selling value.

09/22/2026

I had a college roommate who was an architect.

I dated an architect.

I worked at an architecture (and engineering) firm.

I worked alongside architects as an engineer.

A lot of my clients are architects.

But I had never actually been through the architectural process.

Until now.

And going through that process as a client, confirmed something I have been telling my architecture clients for a while.

Architects talk too much about drawings and the standard architectural process.

Before we started, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted.

I had a 6-phase construction plan.
I had sketched an initial floor plan.
I had spent a lot of time thinking through the project and consulted with another architect and a contractor.
I had already paid to have the house 3D laser scanned and an as-built Revit model created.
I was prepared.

Or so I thought.

The architect's greatest value hasn't been in turning my ideas into drawings.

It has been challenging my assumptions.
Pushing me to explain what we actually want.
Pointing out conflicts we hadn't considered.
Helping prioritize competing goals.
And bringing a hundred different decisions together into a space that actually works.

That's the value.

The drawings are just the deliverable that caputures what comes out on the other side.

Yet when I see how so many architecture firms describe what they do, they don't talk about that.

They talk about:
Schematic Design
Design Development
Construction Drawings
Construction Administration

From the client perspective?

Who cares.

I don't want architectural drawings.

I want a house that works incredibly well for the way we want to live.

The architect helps me figure out what that is and how to get there.

That is an incredibly valuable service.

And architects should talk about that more.

P.S. Do you prefer option 1 or 2?

09/21/2026

I thought I was going to stay a solopreneur...

Apparently, I don't have it in me.

All I ever wanted was freedom.

Freedom of time.
Freedom of income.
Freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted.

Having achieved that, it is fantastic.

Highly recommend.

But I have realized that I just can't stop.

I want to see how far I can take this.

And from the beginning, the bigger goal was not about just creating freedom for myself.

It was helping others create their own.

So instead of slowing down, I am doubling down.

With the combination of Off the Beaten Path Financial and Off the Beaten Path Advisors, I believe we are building something special.

A unique way to help AEC firm owners build stronger businesses, more wealth, and ultimately greater freedom in their lives.

I am excited about what we're building and the impact it will have.

And even more excited about who it can help.

09/14/2026

If you're 52 with $2,000,000 invested...

A 30% market drop isn't just a $600,000 loss.

It can mean working another three to five years.

You can recover money, but you can't recover time.

And that's the problem with getting closer to retirement.

You still need growth, but you can't afford to take unnecessary risk.

I don't think the answer is simply moving everything into bonds or cash and becoming overly conservative.

I believe your portfolio should be able to adapt more aggressive when conditions support it, more defensive when they don't.

If you're an architect or engineer approaching retirement, I recorded video explaining how I help my clients make that transition.

Click below to watch.

09/08/2026

🚨ANNOUNCEMENT🚨

I am excited to officially announce the launch of Off the Beaten Path Advisors!

When I started Off the Beaten Path Financial, the goal was clear:

Help architects and engineers build a life of freedom.

What I quickly realized was that for many firm owners, their business was both the vehicle to create that freedom...

and the thing getting in the way of it.

So I started leaning on my own experience building and running an engineering department to help clients improve their biggest asset.

✅ Profitability
✅ Cash Flow
✅ Pricing
✅ Financial Management
✅ Team Structure
✅ Exit Planning

Over time that work became a major part of how I help my clients.

It became clear that it deserved its own home.

So I created, Off the Beaten Path Advisors.

The goal is to help firm owners build a business that:

✅ Is more profitable
✅ Pays you well
✅ Creates predicatable cash flow
✅ Gives you more time and flexibility
✅ Builds value beyond just your own labor
✅ Creates more options for the future

I'm also excited to have Kimberly Galio joining me to provide bookkeeping services and back office support.

Our core focus is on:
✅ Strategic Advisory
✅ Exit Planning
✅ Bookkeeping
✅ Financial Management

As we grow, the goal is to continue systematizing and improving our process so clients can get better results, faster, with less friction.

Off the Beaten Path Financial will continue to focus on personal wealth and investment management.

Off the Beaten Path Advisors will focus on helping firm owners build the engine to create wealth and freedom.

Same mission.

More focused approach.

More ways to help architects and engineers build a life with No Limits.

09/04/2026

Most firms don’t have a marketing problem.

They have a positioning problem.

I was working with an architecture firm owner recently who was struggling to answer a pretty basic question:

“What are you actually best at?”

At first, the answers sounded like what you hear from almost every firm:

• Quality design
• Great service
• Strong relationships
• Construction knowledge
• Fair pricing

All true.

None of it particularly useful.

So we kept digging.

❓What does “quality design” actually mean?
❓What happens because you understand construction better?
❓Where have your projects created more value than someone else’s might have?
❓Which clients care the most about that?

And eventually, the picture became much clearer.

His real advantage wasn’t simply designing homes.

It was combining design, construction knowledge, cost awareness, and development experience to help investors create more value from a property.

That led us to a much more specific target client,

a much more valuable problem to solve,

and a much clearer way to talk about the business.

That’s the part I think a lot of A/E firms miss.

Specialization isn’t about deciding:

“We only design breweries.”

OR

“We only work with healthcare clients.”

The better question is:

Where does our accumulated experience allow us to create disproportionate value?

Then figure out:

❓Who values that the most?
❓What problem are they trying to solve?
❓And how should the business be built around it?

Your specialization is often already hiding inside the work you’re doing.

You just have to uncover it.

Address

Bozeman, MT
59715

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 4pm
Tuesday	9am - 4pm
Wednesday	9am - 4pm
Thursday	9am - 4pm
Friday	9am - 4pm

Website

http://www.obpfinancial.com/

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