Balancing Act

Accounting partner certifiably in love with life at home and work

Excerpted from the Rocky Mountain News.

By Linda Black, Special to the Rocky Mountain News, March 4, 2004

James Lyons gives lie to the notion that you can't successfully navigate a high-powered career and a committed family life at the same time.

Lyons is a certified public accountant and partner with Gordon, Hughes & Banks. The family photos that fill most surfaces in his Denver Tech Center office are a testament that it's possible to have a balanced life that is enormously successful on both fronts.

Not that the balances comes easily.

"You just make time for it," says Lyons. "It's my passion."

Ask about his kids and he'll proudly point to sports photos on a cabinet across from his desk of his 15-year-old son, Jordan, and 12-year-old daughter, Taylor. Jordan plays football and lacrosse; Taylor is involved in soccer and basketball.

Lyons says he never misses a game or any other significant event in their lives.

"I adapt. I make sure I'm there to see everything that's important to them, and I make sure I'm there in the evenings," he says.

He admits it can get tough during tax season when he works everyday. But the family has learned to adjust. Slipped under the glass on his desktop are family snapshots of special moments - the kids on the family tractor, with their first horse, Jordan's first football team, trips to Disneyland and Lake Powell. "Every one of those pictures has meaning," says Lyons.

He says he's amazed at his children's successes, not only as athletes but also as honor students, and at how they juggle their time and various interests. He admits he didn't have that kind of discipline and focus until he was in college.

"So far it's been amazing," Lyons says. "Every step of their lives I've thought, 'If I could just stop them here.' But then it just keeps getting better."

More family photos, including his wife, Karmen, and his late parents and are crowded onto just about every piece of furniture in the office.

There also are photos of Lyons playing golf with clients as well as mementos given to him by many of the businesses he works with, including a wine collection from vineyard clients. "My other passion is my clients," he says.

For Lyons, accounting is about more than just numbers. It's about people - their hopes, their dreams, their successes and, sometimes, their failures.

"My clients are also my close friends," says Lyons, who specializes in taxes and small-business consulting.

"These things (in my office) help keep my life in balance," he says. "You look at these things, and it reminds you why you're doing what you're doing. In my office everything has significance, everything has meaning. I try to surround myself with things that put me in focus."

But his career path wasn't always clear. While at the University of New Mexico, he didn't know whether he wanted to follow his father into uranium geology or become a biologist. So he left college and went to work in the uranium industry. He and a friend wanted to start a drilling business, but they needed to buy a drilling rig.

They went to a CPA for advice. "I was so impressed," he says of the accountant's knowledge, adding that in that moment he knew he wanted to be one, too. "It was the first time in my life I knew what I wanted to do."

He enrolled at Mesa State College and earned an accounting degree.

In 1983, he signed on with Gordon, Hughes & Banks, growing with the company over the years and climbing the ranks to partner.

"I joined a firm that was like family."