The real conversation in this episode is about the shift from compliance work to true advisory.

Because advisory is not about adding more pressure onto the practice owner. It is not about becoming the person every client depends on for every answer. Real advisory is about building a framework, a system, and ultimately a team that can consistently deliver value without everything relying on one individual.

We talk about how the accounting industry has evolved over the years, from manual bookkeeping and spreadsheets through to cloud software and now AI. Technology is changing compliance rapidly, and AI will continue to remove much of the manual processing and data-entry work that once consumed the profession.

But while technology changes the technical side of accounting, it also creates an opportunity.

The firms that thrive moving forward will not simply be the best at producing accounts. They will be the firms that know how to lead conversations, guide decisions, and help business owners think strategically about their businesses.

That requires a different skillset.

We discuss why accountants and financial coaches must develop leadership capabilities, not just technical expertise. Because advisory cannot scale if the practice owner remains the bottleneck. Teams need frameworks, confidence, communication skills, and the ability to support clients consistently.

This episode is really about building a self-sustaining advisory practice, one that gives better support to clients while also giving the practice owner more freedom to step away from the day-to-day operational pressure.

Takeaways

• Advisory is not about doing more work personally, it is about creating systems and teams that deliver value consistently.
• The accounting profession has evolved from manual processes to cloud systems, and now into the AI era.
• AI will increasingly handle compliance and data processing, creating more space for advisory conversations.
• The future of the profession is not just technical expertise, it is leadership, communication, and strategic thinking.
• Great advisory work comes from meaningful conversations that help business owners make better decisions.
• Practices that rely on one person for every advisory conversation eventually hit a bottleneck.
• Sustainable advisory firms build frameworks and develop teams that can deliver advisory consistently.

Links mentioned in this episode

Facebook community: Advisory Teams Facebook Community

Companies mentioned

• Sage
• Xero
• QuickBooks

Mentioned in this episode:

APX Advert

Business Course Library

Welcome to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday.

This podcast is for accounting professionals and financial coaches who are ready to step beyond compliance and into advisory.

Because real advisory isn't about doing more yourself.

It's about building something that works without you being the bottleneck.

Hey, Deb, how are you today?

I'm great, thanks, Tim.

How are you?

Yeah, pretty good, Pretty good.

Always excited when we're about to have one of our advisory conversations.

So we were gonna, we were gonna share today that we have completed our first free training session or presentation that we did to an audience.

So we're going to talk about the things that we spoke about on the training and where did we start, Deb?

We started with the evolution of the accounting industry, didn't we?

Yeah, I thought that was, that was a fascinating.

Especially since we've been in the accounting industry for, well, quite a long time.

And we started off by saying that we learned accountancy and started accountancy with T accounts, didn't we?

Yeah, before.

Before the cloud software.

You can take over from that, Tim, because that just makes me smile.

I mean, the combined ages and everything is just hilarious.

We weren't quite Victorian times, so we're not, we're not talking sort of, you know, Ebenezer Scrooge in his office, that kind of setting, but we weren't, we weren't far off, were we?

The, the traditional high street pinstripe suit kind of accountant was around when we started up in our careers.

And I think everybody.

And then, I think when we then went into the accounting industry ourselves and we did manual accounting, as we've talked about before, but it put us in really good stead for understanding how to put together a set of accounts.

I don't think anyone can, Anyone can kind of take that out of you once you've gone through that process.

It's something you never forget because you're writing it out.

And I think that underpins the knowledge in many ways.

Certainly does for me.

But, yeah, we talked about the evolution of the accounting industry because, you know, if you think in your mind the traditional high street accountant in the pinstripe suit, and a client goes to see them, they charge by the hour, there's stacks of receipts, there's all the paperwork, there's files everywhere.

You know, there's all these people in there, you know, accountants, bookkeepers, all writing up the records or producing, you know, financial data.

And an amazing, an amazing kind of setting when you think about it, but also, as we know, very reactive, very after the event.

And Then with the.

So, so the evolution of the accounting industry kind of comes with, with the, the next stage from there is when computer software started to come in, isn't it?

And I can remember, you know, working in some small businesses at the time and everyone ended up with these different bespoke accounting packages, didn't necessarily work fantastically well and you'd run off a trial balance and it wouldn't balance, which we all know is impossible.

The manual accounting knowledge in the background was great because we were able to find out why that didn't balance.

But then, so once once the, the software came in and then Sage became the number one kind of accounting software.

The go to software that everybody use.

Sage 950 kind of is the, is what sticks in my mind.

I know it developed from there onwards and everybody used Sage.

It became a bit easier because everybody was using the same software.

So for accountants and taking on new employees, they could move in and they'd have knowledge of Sage.

And one of the things that you needed on your CV was that you knew Sage.

It was almost like you know, do you have Microsoft Office skills?

You know, it's did you have Sage skills?

And then from that kind of system that went on for quite a number of years.

Obviously then the cloud accounting came in which was when as we know, probably the two main, main people we know in that area is Xero and QuickBooks.

I know there's always an argument are you Xero Zero, are you QuickBooks?

You know, personally I was zero.

That was my preference.

And that of course enabled us to, to start to automate things a lot more easier added things in.

So we were able to scan receipts, et cetera, et cetera.

So all of a sudden we were going from all these masses of paperwork and data entry towards not so much paperwork and more digital accounting and bringing, feeding everything through.

And of course the next stage from that is AI.

And as we know AI is here.

We don't say AI is coming anymore because it's already here.

And AI is going to help us massively take care of the compliance aspects of accounting and bookkeeping.

A data entry, all that stuff I think is going to be wonderful.

It might feel scary to some people, but I actually say embrace it because it's going to come and it's going to do what it's going to do.

So you might as well get on top of it right now before you leave it too late.

The advantage of that is it frees you up, it's going to free time up for yourself.

It's going to free time up for your team.

And the team is the key aspect here because that means the team are going to be able to have the opportunity to deliver advisory.

So that was the kind of evolution of the accounting industry that we sort of talked about and then we went into the evolution of the business owner then.

So I'm going to ask you to talk about that one, if that's okay.

Yeah, sure.

So yeah, so we talked about the evolution of the business owner.

I always looked at it from the beginning.

When a business owner starts his business, the last thing he's thinking about is hiring an accountant because he's first floor thinking about how he's going to deliver, how he's going to market, how he's going to get his clients, what service he's going to offer, and he starts bringing in sales.

And choosing an accountant is really like an afterthought.

So they realize at some point they're going to have to sending in a tax return to keep compliant.

So they ask their not their neighbors, but their friends, their family, their colleagues who they use for an accountant and then they'll generally choose the cheapest accountant.

And they do that because resources are limited, because they're just starting out.

They don't really see huge importance in it because it's just something they've got to do to keep the government happy.

So they choose the cheapest accountant.

But what they don't realize is that accountancy is just like any other business.

It's the cheaper that you sell for, the more you have to sell to get the same kind of turnover or profits.

By choosing the cheapest accountant for your tax return, you've basically chosen a high volume tax return submitter.

So that's all they've got capacity for.

Because they're making such little money on the tax return that they do for you that they literally are thinking about the next one as soon as they finish the first.

They're not, they haven't got any bandwidth or any capacity to look at your business and see the patterns and maybe give you some advice, see where you're going wrong, see if your pricing is not working and basically give any additional help to the business owner.

So the business owner at some point realizes that they need a little bit more information.

Rather than just being told how much their tax bill is, they need to know how much to save for tax the next year, how much they can take out of their business, maybe have a look at their pricing, is their pricing correct, what's their break even point, etc.

And they get a little bit frustrated.

They start thinking that their accountant that they, they've got is rubbish because they're not getting any of that kind of support from their, from their accountant.

But what they don't realize is they've chosen the cheapest tax return, high volume tax return submitter.

So they start, the frustration sets in and they start looking about for another accountant that can give them the support that they need.

So we kind of looked at what accountant did.

Do we want to be what kind of bookkeeper?

What accountant do we want to be?

Do we want to be the one that only serves the startup and just be churning out tax returns?

Or do we want to be further up the scale where we're actually able to give the client support and have the more interesting work and better relationships with their client and retain their clients for longer?

So, yeah, so we looked at that and then we looked at the opportunity, didn't we?

The opportunity of how many clients actually require that level of support that we've just been talking about.

That's where we went on to our next diagram, didn't we, Tim?

Yeah, yeah, we did, we did.

So it's quite common knowledge really, isn't it, that I think the, the graph was telling us that about 80% of businesses are either breaking even or are running at a loss.

I think it was about 60% breaking even and about 20 were running at a loss, which kind of fits in with the data we had from where we were previously that 83% of businesses run basically check to check, which basically means they're breaking even.

And just as the money comes in, then they're making the payments.

And it's quite a worrying statistic, I think.

I can't remember exactly the next level up.

I do remember the very top 1% is the elite, like Richard Branson, kind of elite people.

And then I think there was about 4 or 5% then just below that, that are still pretty elite, let's be honest.

And then the ones just in between, we're making the profits and at least making, you know, making money, making it work.

But if 80 of people or 80% of business owners are breaking even as a, as a maximum, that's a massive opportunity.

But it, but what it also tells us, Deb, is that something's wrong, isn't it?

If that's the case, then the system isn't working and the business owners aren't being served.

So here's the opportunity.

If the business owners aren't being served properly, who can serve them in the right way to help them become profitable instead of breaking even or running at a loss.

Well, the accountant and bookkeeping practices are in the pole position to be those advisors to help them.

And this is where we moved into the technician to advisor and how you can start to make those steps happen.

So of course, you know, a lot of people talk about moving from technician to advisor.

We are aware of that.

And our pathway develops much further than technician to adviser.

But we have to start at the beginning.

And so to move from technician to advisor, it's all about learning to have the right conversations with your clients, to be able to understand what your client's looking to achieve and then to be able to deliver some strategic advice based on what you're looking at from the numbers, but also based on what you're hearing from the client.

And listening to someone in the conversation is actually a very high level skill.

And not everybody can do it because you can listen to what someone's saying, but inwardly digesting it and then relating it to how you can then use that information alongside the numbers that you've got in front of you and the patterns that you're seeing to deliver not only insights but information that that client can use moving forward.

And that kind of is where we sort of touch on moving into advisory from being that technician.

But also there's an element of, at the moment, there's a reactive feel.

And you know where I'm going with this, Deb, I'm sure.

But there's a reactive feel to advisory because we're answering questions that the client's asking.

And that's where the difference between education and advisory kind of sits, isn't it, Deb?

And you've created a massive, wonderful solution for this that we've bought into our, into our programs as well.

So I'm going to ask you to share about that.

Yeah.

So, yep, there's a huge difference between answering educational questions and advisory questions or giving insights.

And a lot of our time is spent giving educational answers.

How do I start a business?

What happens when I hit the threshold?

How does PAYE work?

I can't read those financial statements.

What do they mean?

That is something.

We repeat the same answers over and over and over again.

And any accountant or bookkeeper that's been in this game even a short amount of time will understand that you just repeat this and it comes out exactly the same because it's a pattern that you, that you just repeat just the same answers.

So I used to joke, and I've said this many times now.

I used to Joke that I needed a parrot on my shoulder so I, to repeat these answers.

And what I actually meant was I needed a resource.

I needed something that could repeat the answers for me so that I didn't have to keep repeating myself.

So.

And it would, it would cut down my time, it would free up my time, it would free up my head space, it would give the clients the ground level baseline education that they just needed.

Yes, they can get it, they can get it from the HMRC website, but who on earth wants to try and navigate that?

It's just a minefield and it's, I mean, it's just awful.

So I built the business course library, which is series of courses to answer the questions.

And they're short courses, they're in between two and six lessons, depending on the topic.

But it's not me repeating myself.

I didn't sit there and video myself answering all these questions because who wants to listen to that?

Anyway, I've done that.

I built them in interactive professional mini courses, so by using learning management software, which we'll talk a little bit more about later, but they're, they're housed and they're, they're on a link.

So it means that accountants and bookkeepers can just send the link to the client and the client has a mini course on covering all the aspects around that subject of the book, the question that they've asked.

And it does a number of things, it makes sure that the answers are consistent, doesn't matter who's delivering it.

So if you've got somebody that's in your team, that's very junior, for instance, and maybe won't cover all of the answers or all of the areas that relate to that particular client, they send the same link as a senior person.

So with, and the person with more experience.

So it's standard, it's, it's correct information, it's, it covers everything that you need it to, you don't have to have.

In the, in the back of your mind, did my team member deliver that answer correctly?

Did they cover all the aspects?

Because it's there, you know, it's there and it's accessible to the client whenever they want.

So you no longer have like the, the early evening or very early morning questions when the, the client's got time because they can access it 24 7.

So, yeah, so, so that's the business course library that I, that I built and we've brought it into the program.

So we did a little demo of that, didn't we, in our presentation.

So, yeah, which, yeah, went down.

I mean, the feedback's always been great anyway and we've got some fantastic reviews on it.

It's a much needed resource.

I was in practice for 17 years and I certainly wished I had it 17 years ago when I started.

So, yeah, I'm glad I built it.

I'm glad you built it when.

Well, I wish it was built 25 years ago, Deb.

But anyway, we can't go back in time, can we?

But when, when we scroll down on the training session, people in the room that I could see were clapping and I think that's testament to what they thought when they saw it.

It was a bit of a wide moment for people and that's, that's because the fact that it's a resource your clients can use, I think makes it so fantastic because that's going to stop so many phone calls, so many emails, so many WhatsApp messages late in the evening, so many text messages.

We know, we know it all goes on.

We know this is what happens.

We know clients do these things asking those same questions.

Imagine them just being able to go, hang on a minute, I've got access to find out the answer to this and to go in and watch the learning on it and take away the information they required from you without you having to be involved, but recognizing that you as the accounting practice owner are the person who has supplied them with this.

I think it's an amazing resource and again, it helps, it helps with that opportunity that we've talked about for the business owners that are 80% of them, you know, breaking even or worse.

So why would they not want access to that, to help them have access to that information, to be able to answer these questions.

So that is the, that's the business course library.

And that, that's kind of, it's kind of a way as well for accounting and bookkeeping practice owners to offer up advisory as a, as an initial step whilst perhaps training and learning how to deliver advisory, you know, on a one to one basis initially.

Because that's the starting point of the program that we offer, isn't it?

Yes.

So education in my mind is free and it's a service that we all, we need our clients to understand the answers to their questions.

They're really important questions, but we give those free and it's very difficult then if you're used to delivering those questions or those answers to those questions in person on a one to one basis to then for advisory, because the clients don't really understand the difference.

They just think, well, when I Have a question, you answer it.

So why now, if I've got a question, are you wanting to charge me for.

For the answer?

So it's, it's a really easy way to differentiate between education is free, but bespoke support for your business is free.

That is a fee.

So it separates, breaks that out.

And it's easy for the clients to understand.

If it's covered, your answer is covered in the business course library.

That's your business course library.

If it's not, come to me and we can have a call and we can discuss how we can further support your business.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so we talked about that.

We talked about technician to advisor.

Then we moved into the second step that we shared, and that was all about leadership.

And this is where we start to, you know, differentiate ourselves as well, because now we're talking about how the business owner, how the practice owner can start to think of themselves as a leader rather than the person who has to deal with the clients all the time.

The person who the client contacts initially, the person who the client wants a meeting with, the person who answers all the questions that the client wants to know.

Because the practice owner is the person who's built the business up.

And the clients know that person.

They trust that person.

They always want to talk to that person.

And that's what then creates this bottleneck for delivering advisory, because the practice owner is the person all the clients want to talk to.

So the first step into building an advisory team is to learn the leadership skills you require to be able to start to train your team in what needs to be done so that they can deliver advisory for you.

So leadership is a really interesting topic.

And, and it, I think it provides thoughts that perhaps as accountants and bookkeepers, we wouldn't naturally have, because traditionally accountants and bookkeepers are quite comfortable delivering accounts, doing the compliance aspects, because technically that's what we've been trained to do.

And we're now saying with AI come in, that can be taken care of.

You've got a team, therefore you can make the most of that team if you start to deliver advisories using the team.

And the team will enjoy it more, I'm sure, because it's more interesting work, that higher level of energy delivering that type of work.

So leadership, we're not going to give too much away on what we talk about in there, but what we do talk about is how to empower your team looking at the skills that are required.

And also, you know, there's an element of recruitment that we're going to Talk about in another episode at a later time.

So that's kind of the leadership issues that we help people solve.

And then the third step in the training program is, and in the free training session that we talked about is the advisory team learning the skills that they need to deliver advisory.

And Deb, there's a reason why the practice owner has to go through the technician to adviser stage at the beginning, isn't it?

So anybody who joins us, they have to start at the technician to adviser skills because their team are going to follow the same pattern.

Yeah, it's vital.

Anybody that's done any kind of training or had a team know it's quite difficult if you don't know what level your team's at or what they've covered in any particular training program.

You're always second guessing whether they understand or whether what they're delivering or what their capabilities currently are.

So it's really important for the leader, in this case the business owner, to go through the same training that their client, that their team member and team members will be going through so they can understand what's covered when and the process that they're following.

That way they're not underestimating or overestimating their current capability as they're going through the program.

It allows them to then have empathy with their team because they know what they're currently covering and also allow them to have real time experience for that particular module that they're covering.

It will allow them not to plunge them into the deep end if they haven't already covered something in the program.

And they're also, it gives them peace of mind because they know they will cover something at some stage because they've already done the process themselves.

So it's really key for any, any person that's in charge or overseeing the training of somebody else to have gone through the same training.

So.

Yeah, so that, that's why it's vitally important.

Yeah.

And I think the other, the other thing I want to highlight, you know, we talk about, let's go back to the client evolution.

You know, 80% of businesses are breaking even or running at a loss.

So even if you are serving someone in that bracket, most likely most of your clients are going to be in that bracket.

You, you have one brain, you have all this knowledge.

Your team also have all this knowledge inside of their brains and they've also got access to all the numbers and all of the information about the clients like you do too.

So at the moment there's just one brain serving the client.

Imagine Having four or five brains, serving the client, how much more powerful is that?

And I think that's the point that needs highlighting when we talk about why, you know, advisory teams are more powerful because all that wealth of knowledge collectively, together really becomes a powerful service that you could provide to your clients.

And what it also does, it removes you as a practice owner from having to deliver, which allows you freedom to then decide what to do, you know, next, where your time is best spent, or what you want to do at your time.

So that's kind of like the advisory team.

So we take people through that program, they come out of it with a way to collaborate with each other, to be able to work together and to be able to deliver high value to their clients.

The objective of course, at the end is for us to create a self sustaining accounting and bookkeeping practice that the owner is able to choose what they do next.

I think in the training I joked about sailing the yacht around the South Pacific.

I think the time, but, but, but of course it might actually be that they want to do something business related and continue in the business in a different way.

The point is having freedom to choose what you do.

And I think that's, you know, rather than feel like you have to turn up to work every day because you're a slave to the, to the business you've created.

And that's the differentiation bit for us.

So after we, we delivered some of the information about building high performing advisory teams, we then shared our pathway.

So the pathway that we've created, which is the steps that we take you on, and that pathway starts from technician, takes you to being an advisor, then teaches you how to be a leader, then trains your team on how to build and how to have an advisory team.

So we train your team how to do the advisory, but we're also still training on you on how to lead that team.

And then finally we train you on how to identify a new leader, leader within your team that can lead the team, which is the clever bit.

And that's the bit that then frees you from the business.

So we didn't share that aspect in detail in the free training, but that is part of our pathway that we did share on the training session.

We've mentioned before that I always said that I needed a parrot on my shoulder.

Well, that's evolved, hasn't it Tim?

Because we realize actually we also could do with a parrot because we've got an extensive amount of knowledge between ourselves.

So how do we not be the bottleneck ourselves?

How do we not be the only go to two people that can answer all your questions about the training program.

So we have created our AI Polly and AI Polly is our own parrot who we personally train on everything that we know about advisory teams building advisory services and the teams that deliver those services so that you as the business owner can step away or as Tim, you said have the freedom to choose what you do, not be a slave to your business.

So yeah, so we've got AI Polly.

It'll be available 247 which is a great addition.

Love Aipoly already and maybe we'll demo that in the future.

But currently only available to view that in the, in the, in our Facebook group.

Yeah, we share, we have shared a bit more about Polly in our Facebook group.

So that's our free community.

So it would be nice if anyone listening that wants to learn a little bit more about what we offer and how they can create their own advisory team to, to job, you know, jump onto Facebook, search advisory teams in groups and you will find us.

You can just click to join, answer a couple of questions and we will allow you in.

So assuming you're, you're running an accountancy or bookkeeping practice that is of course, so if you want to do that, just go to Facebook search advisory teams and answer a couple of questions and we'll let you in.

So the last thing I think we need to share is that the programs that we've built are very interactive and we've based them on storytelling to a certain degree.

Obviously there's information in there that you need to work through but there's, there's drop down menus that you click on.

There's, there's boxes that you click on and it spins it around and you get the information behind it.

So what it does, it keeps you engaged, it keeps you engaged in there.

And we, we've also got a storytelling aspect where we follow someone through every part of the program which again makes it more interesting and relatable to you if you're a learner.

We're not going to share any more information than that because again, we're going to keep that within our community at the moment.

So again, if you want to find out more about what I'm talking about, go to Facebook, hit advisory teams and come and join our free community.

So that's that.

Also Deb, the, the training programs, they're on LMS platform, aren't they?

Yeah, a learning management software program.

Professionally, it's a professional program so they're not video led where you've got Somebody just talking to you on a screen.

Those, those are great for short bits of information and sharing information, but they're not ideal for learning and cementing that information into, into your brain.

They're very much easily forgotten as soon as you step away.

Also, if you've got a video that you're watching, you can quite easily be doing something else and just using your ears to listen to the video.

Whereas a learning management software is interactive, it means you cannot move on to the next stage until you interact with it, whether that's clicking on a button or moving a slide, as Tim said.

So, yeah, it's all built on a professional learning management software.

Fantastic.

Well, there we go.

That's our.

That's our summary of our free training that we offered.

There will be more training sessions that we'll be announcing very soon, so look out for those.

Come along and join us.

Have a look and see what we're doing.

And just by turning up to the session, you're going to gain some valuable knowledge and insights in how you can move your accounting and bookkeeping practice forward from an advisory point of view.

And don't forget, don't just move from technician to advisor and then start to create your own bottleneck in your own business.

We've seen this so many times and we're still seeing it now with many people running their practices.

So don't stop there.

Build your advisory team and we're the right people to come and help you with that.

So just reach out to us and we will start to get you involved.

So thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.

Thanks for listening to advisory conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halladay.

If you found this useful, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next episode.

We'll see you next time.

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