This episode is all about one of the biggest time drains in practice: answering the same client questions over and over again.

From “How do I pay myself?” to “What does VAT actually mean?” and “How do I read my numbers?” these are the questions that keep business owners stuck and keep accountants trapped in reactive mode.

In this conversation, Tim and Deb break down why client education is one of the most overlooked parts of building an advisory-led practice.

Deb shares how her own experience in practice led to the creation of the Business Course Library, a structured collection of on-demand learning designed to give clients the knowledge they need before they need to ask.

Because advisory is not about becoming the answer to everything.

It is about creating systems that help clients think better, understand more, and make stronger decisions.

The Business Course Library was built to do exactly that.

It gives firms a way to separate education from advisory, reduce repetitive conversations, and free up time for higher-value work. Instead of spending hours explaining the basics, advisors can focus on the conversations that actually move businesses forward.

Inside this episode, we talk about:

• Why repeated client questions create bottlenecks in growing firms

• How education can improve the quality of advisory conversations

• The difference between teaching and advising

• Why clients make better decisions when they understand the numbers

• How giving clients access to structured learning builds trust and authority

• How the Business Course Library can become part of your advisory delivery model

This is a powerful conversation for accountants, bookkeepers and financial coaches who want to move beyond compliance and build a more scalable, proactive advisory practice.

Key takeaway:

If you are still answering the same questions manually, you are not building advisory. You are building dependency.

Real advisory starts when education is systemised.

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.

Hello, and welcome again to another episode of Advisory Conversations.

And I am joined, as always, with my trusty partner, Deb.

Deb, how are you today?

I'm really well, thanks, Tim.

I'm good, I'm good.

Well, Deb, today we're going to talk about a business course library, which I think is one of our most valuable resources and something that you created after you sold your.

Your practice, didn't you?

So I'm going to take you right back, if that's okay, right back in time, right to the very beginning, to when the seeds started to form in your mind about what this ended up being.

Because everything starts somewhere and generally it starts with the seeds of a problem, I would say.

So, yeah, we, I've seen your, you know, APX has got a parrot, for instance, as a logo.

We've talked about before.

The reason why we've got a parrot on our logo.

So do you want to kind of start at the beginning and tell us a little bit about how the business course library formulated in your mind?

Yeah, sure.

It was like a lot of people around the kitchen table, around the kids, part time.

And I, when I first started, like everybody, I was looking for clients and I started realizing that the type of clients that I was speaking to had lots of questions.

They didn't really understand process.

So I had obviously trained as a bookkeeper and I understand all the technical aspects.

But then myself, I had to go on back in the day when it was in person HMRC courses to understand the HMRC processes.

And I've just found that I was repeatedly answering the same questions to the clients because they didn't have any knowledge.

And I thought, well, why are you asking me?

And it was because there was no central point for business owners to go and learn about business processes other than the HMRC website, which.

Who wants to navigate that?

It's absolutely awful.

So, yeah, so I found myself just repeating the same answers.

And the more I repeated them, the more I repeated them in exactly the same way, parrot fashion.

Because I got to understand the questions that were going to be asked, the questions that the answer would lead to, the areas that they didn't understand or maybe had misunderstood.

And I just.

The terminology that would land properly with them, the explanations that you can see when somebody's got it or when somebody glazes over.

So I realized that I was just repeating myself and I started to wish that I had a resource that I could send them to to get the basic education of business processes that they needed and that wasn't widely available.

And I suppose because my previous job had been working for a training company in central London, it naturally fell to training courses because it didn't ever really want just a PDF of the answers to send somebody, because who reads them?

You know, if you can just pick up the phone and ask a question, you'll pick up the phone and ask a question rather than reading a lengthy document to try and find the question that you want answered and the answer on it, you're just not going to do it.

People are busy.

But a short mini course that's interactive lands much better and the knowledge sits much better.

So it would free up my time.

So I never got time to do it.

So, yeah, it was lots of questions, particularly around things like when, what happens when I hit the VAT threshold and I found myself saying, well, explaining what VAT is and that it's not your money, you can't spend it, it's when you hit a certain threshold.

The government make you a tax collector, which is a VAT collector, but they don't pay you for this and they know that there's a certain amount of admin, but what they do instead to compensate you is they allow you to deduct the bat that you have spent and that's their compensation.

So you must collect it but not spend it because the VAT man will be coming to collect it.

And there's that type of answer to the question.

And then I would explain how it worked the seven day after the month end, et cetera, and every quarter.

So it was that kind of question.

It was things like, I don't know how to read a profit and loss or what is a P and L?

So I would answer, it's in three sections, what you've got coming in, what you've got going out and what's left over.

That's it, it's your trading statement, the money you've got coming in, all the money you've got going out and what you've got left over.

And the balance sheet is also three sections, what you own, what you owe and what's left over.

So.

And cash flow.

I used to explain as future bank statements.

So your bank statements tell you what you had and coming in and going out the previous month.

A cash flow tells you what you've got coming in and going out for the next period, whether it's a month, three months, six months, however long.

But that's your cash flow and that's how they understood.

So I mean, I still, still repeat it, still know these things.

So that's like every bookkeeper, every accountant, but after 17 years of repeating the same answers, like when I sold my bookkeeping practice, I. I spent the time to make the resource because even though I no longer needed it, I knew it was desperately needed because it would just take time and time and time to answer these questions over and over again.

Because they'd ask, start with one question, thinking, I'm just going to ask, pick up the phone, ask Deb this one question.

Then it was just leading to another question and another question and another question, and before you know it, you've spent 20 minutes explaining a process and what they need to do.

And they don't want to pay you for it because it was just a quick phone call to ask you a quick question.

Well, if you get two or three of those a day, you know, it eats into hourly pay, doesn't it?

So.

And nobody wants to turn somebody away and not answer their questions.

They need to know they're really valuable questions.

And it's good that they're asking because it's actually worse when they're not asking because they'll just run away and do things as they see fit and then we have to tidy up and clean it up afterwards and correct them.

So, yeah, so I welcome the questions, but I wish I had a resource to utilize my time a bit better, I don't think.

There cannot be one accounting or bookkeeping practice owner listening to this that does not recognize this situation because it's a constant.

You know, I can remember the phone ringing, the question, the phone ringing, the question, the phone ringing, the question.

And it's just like a cycle of answering all these questions from all these different clients and you feel like banging your atticates to wall if we're honest.

Because you think not of this conversation again, but it's with a different client.

So it's not that client's fault that another client's asked this the week before and you're having to repeat yourself.

It's not their fault at all.

And like you said, it's good that they're actually asking the question because they're trying to do the right thing, they're trying to learn, and we're the person they're going to ask because, you know, we're the person they trust, we deliver their statutory accounts, we deliver their, you know, their tax returns.

So they come to us as that trusted person.

But yeah, it's not something that is seen as a chargeable response, is it?

By many of us.

Certainly wasn't by me.

I classed it as customer service.

Now, some people might, might charge for answering questions because they might charge by the, by the time, by timesheets, the old traditional high street accountant way, but a majority of people wouldn't be charging for this.

And like you say, if you have three queries a day, productivity has gone out the window because not just the time you're on the call, it's then getting your mind back to where you were before you answered the call because you've been interrupted partway through trying to perhaps work something out.

And we can't afford to make mistakes in our line of business, so.

So we have to then kind of move away and step into, into what we were doing again and get our heads back into gear.

So, so, so Deb, you kind of, you kind of identified the problem quite early and in your back of your mind you wanted to build a resource, but you didn't really have the time to do that whilst running the business.

No, no, I just didn't have the time.

And to be fair, once the conversation was over, I went straight to back to what I was doing that needed my attention.

And it would be only when I got asked another question that I found myself repeating and I would remind myself that I really need to do that resource so that I could send them, you know, a link or to a webpage where they could see the answers to their, to their questions.

We did actually, did develop what we called a quick query service, so that it was cut down the amount of time and the quick query service was free with all our packages, but it was.

The quick query was anything that we could answer within 10 minutes or less that didn't take any further research or any additional work that was included in their package, but it was done via a WhatsApp message and we would answer within a certain time frame.

So it wasn't a case of phone us and then be on the phone for 20 minutes.

It was 10 minutes or less.

Anything over that was chargeable.

Okay.

So that was my way of trying to reduce the time spent on free education, essentially because it's quite difficult for the client to understand the difference between questions that you answer for free, which are educational, to advisory questions that should be a fee.

So if you're used to answering all the questions for free, doesn't matter how long they take you to try and transition.

To charge a client for advisory work is quite difficult because they don't understand the difference and they think, well, you do this for free, why are you now charging me?

And it causes a bit of resentment.

So.

Because it's unexpected.

So if you set the precedent first, there's 10 minutes free education and then advisory that will take extra work and it's bespoke to your particular business, then that's a fee.

But as I say, one step further is education via this resource is free advisory.

Where I answer is a fee.

Yeah, yeah, makes, makes perfect sense.

And so you got yourself in a position where you were able to sell your practice to your team, mainly because your team had learned to take over all of the duties from you, including deliver an advisory to clients.

Yeah, I've just thought I'd highlight that one again.

And once you've done that, yeah, you had some free time on your hands, obviously.

Um, I know you were helping me with another project in the background, so what did you do?

What did you do with this free time once you, once you had it?

I built what I now call the business course library, which is a resource to answer all the, all the questions.

It started off with 20 and the courses are, they range from two lessons to six, but they don't take very long.

They are interactive, not video led because the idea is that the accountant or bookkeeper remains the trusted advisor.

You don't want to give your clients a resource with my face plaster over it, answering questions because they don't know me.

They should know the accountant or bookkeeper or any of the team.

And they're interactive.

So with videoled tutorials, you can quite easily walk away and listen to it like a podcast.

And you're not absorbing the information and you'll miss a lot of what's going on because not very many people sit and just watch a presentation.

They always are doing something else or they get distracted.

So I wanted to do it so based in adult learning as well.

And that's something that I, I learned with my previous career, adult learning.

They have to have it relatable to themselves, scenario based, specific to them to what.

And it needs to be interactive, so they need to do something to move on to the next part.

So for instance, if you click on something, it might turn around and give you the answer, or it might drop down a menu that gives you the answer.

You might have to answer a couple of questions to get to the next stage.

But it's, it was all based around the questions that we get asked and it be VAT or CIS responsibilities.

What happens when you employ somebody?

So it's all the P, A, Y E and I did it in categories and the categories we have are starting a business.

And three that I can remember off the top of my head are trade or limited company, which is a question we get asked all the time.

And within that course it goes through the differences between a sole trader and a limited company and the benefits and pitfalls of both so that the client can make an informed decision of which one is best for them.

We've got first 90 days of starting a business, what to do in the last 90 days with a plan that they download at the end so they can have like a mini roadmap for the first 90 days of everything that they've got to get sorted.

And then there's a shorter one which is just starting a business in the uk.

So if they just want to know the regulations of who to inform, which taxes apply to them and how to have a government gateway, et cetera.

So there's three in there, that's the starting a business.

We've got best practice which more things like efficient cash flows, eliminating debt, difference between good debt and bad debt, all different processes, how to read zero reports or reports in QuickBooks.

We've got an end of year processes section.

We've got HMRC and all the different taxes and regulations for HMRC and who apply to which ones apply to different types of businesses.

So it started off with 20, but there's one a month drip fed.

I think we're up to 27 now.

So yeah, things like salary sacrifice or what causes financial stress and how to eliminate it.

So there's a whole range of different subjects in there, but yeah, they're drip fed.

There's also a section within there.

So if you, if you're getting asked a question regularly that isn't currently in the, in the business course library, you can request it and it will be, it will be considered and if it's a relevant question for a lot of people, then we'll, we'll create it.

But we do1 for UK and currently Ireland as well because we had the request for, for Ireland.

So yeah, yeah, it's, it's a phenomenal resource and I want to highlight to the listeners that it's aimed to the client, so it's aimed to the business owners be able to learn and understand and get the answers to their questions.

But in a way it is simple to learn.

And that's what I like about it.

The whole concept is broken down into small steps so that they can just follow the process through.

As you said, it's interactive.

And it is interactive in different ways in different parts, isn't it?

So it's not all following the same pattern so it doesn't become, you know, familiar in a way.

It's kind of like, you know, different things for them to do so that they can learn.

And the beauty of that is the time it's going to save for the accountant or bookkeeping practice owner that allows their client to access, you know, this library of huge resource.

It's also easy for them to navigate around, which is key.

So it's simplicity is probably the key word for this, isn't it?

Because the clients of accounting and bookkeeping practice owners or practices are non financial people in the main, they're specialists in the field of what they deliver to their customers and everything they do, they're the experts in.

But when it comes to the financial side, as we know, they need support, they need help, they have questions.

And so imagine being able to say to a customer that has a question, have a look at this resource, search for that.

You'll be able to find the answers to what you're looking for.

Let me know if you've got any more questions.

And they can just go straight into there, you know, and they can find the answer, learn.

And then potentially they can revisit it again at a later date if they need to reinforce their education or remind themselves of what they learned, because we're not expecting them to.

It's not exam tested, so they have to remember everything they've learned.

But they've got access to go back to it, haven't they?

Which allows them, the practice owner, to step back and not have their time sucked away and consumed by answering all these questions repetitively.

So I think it's a phenomenal resource for people to use and that was the intention, wasn't it, Dan?

Yeah, and there's a couple of ways that you can use it.

So the way it's housed, because it's interactive, it's not an MP4 or an MP3, so you're unable to download it.

But they're housed on a developer website, so we give, you can give individual courses to your clients via a link, via an URL.

URL.

Or we've housed them on a webpage so you can give them access to the full web page.

We've got some users that are include small selection for people that are just starting a business and they have them within an email.

So the links go out in an email funnel.

We've got others that include them in their tiered packages.

So they might get access to a certain amount within the lower tier and then full access in the top tier.

And then we've got people that just want them on the web page.

So they have.

And you can actually link that web page to your own web page.

They're all password protected, so you can either charge for them or you can include it in your packages.

So if you increased your packages for instance by 10 pound or whatever, that would cover the cost of the business course library.

But yeah, we wanted to make it as flexible as possible and also it means that we can withdraw some when regulations change.

So you're not.

Because they can't download them just due to the files type, there's no danger of them having an old out of date course available.

So yeah, we've got a regular schedule where we keep up to date and we update them and exchange the link for updated version when the budget happens, et cetera.

And you've had some practice owners already use the business course library and, and share some of the content with their, with their customers and, and what sort of feedback.

It's been amazing.

Yeah, it's been incredible.

It, yeah, I'm delighted that it's, it's been received so well, but it's.

Everybody's, everybody has the same issue, everybody has the same problem.

I knew that I wouldn't be the only person that's being asked all these questions.

So yeah, I mean it's, it's been fantastic to the point where one of the.

When I gave a demo of the UK version, somebody asked me to specifically create a version for Ireland, which we did.

But yeah, it's been amazing.

Some people are using it within business clubs, some people are using it as a resource for a free resource with webinars, et cetera.

So it's being used and it's been really well received, which is great.

It's interesting because it's actually when you explain it like that it's being used in a reactive manner to be able to answer questions that the clients have.

But it's also being used in a very proactive manner with people setting up business clubs that they're inviting their clients to come along to and discussing the topics before the questions come, which I think is a fantastic way to use.

You know, we're all for proactiveness, aren't we?

The way that we are with everything we do.

So I think that's a great way.

And delivering webinars as well.

You're providing education and it gives you all the topics you need to be able to hook new customers into your business as well.

So it's kind of like all these different ways and methods that it can be used.

So even though it was set up originally as a resource to solve the problem being asked all the repetitive questions, it's interesting that it's actually developed into something that's become a proactive model for people to use as well.

Yeah, it's a step into advisory because it's building your authority, it's answering the questions that are so common questions.

But if you can do that in a structured way, in a proactive way, then that opens the door to.

We do more than just bookkeeping, you know, we do more than just your VAT return.

So yeah, we do education as well as.

And advisory, you know, so it puts you as the trusted advisor, but without you offering your time and answering educational questions for free.

And for a practice owner, you know, if you were to charge your clients a small amount a month to be able to access the library and to be able to answer these questions and learn and have this education, it would more than cover the costs of being able to access and provide the business course library to your, to your clients.

Why shouldn't they pay to have access to that education?

But we're talking a few pounds a month and suddenly you're covering all of your costs.

So to me, it's a no brainer.

If someone's interested in finding out more about the business course library dev, what can they do?

Well, I would suggest that they first of all join our Facebook group, which is advisory teams and you can get there by facebook.com groups advisoryteams.

But we are actually combining the business course library within our advisory teams program.

So you have access to that resource within our advisory teams program, which is our advisory training program, essentially taking you from technician to advisor, through the leadership to building your advisory team and then us training your advisory team members.

So yeah, it's part of that resource.

It's the first step to separating education, which is free, to advisory, which is a fee.

And yeah, it's part of our offering.

Isn't certainly is.

It certainly is.

And I was thrilled when we came into our partnership and set up APX that you were so willing to bring the business course library in.

Absolutely.

As part of our offer.

So yeah, it's an amazing resource.

And as Deb says it links in so beautifully with all of our training programs that we've, that we've put together again through elearning platforms, but also through delivering workshops ourselves.

So yeah, anyone wants to find out more advisory teams on Facebook, come and join our community on there.

Find out more about us.

Once you're in there, you can jump on some of our courses and coffee sessions, which we hold on Tuesday mornings at 9 o' clock and Thursday evenings at 7 o'.

Clock.

And you're all very welcome to come and join as long as you're a practice owner and you're looking to move into the world of advisory.

And in the future, perhaps think about, you know, building a team that delivers advisory with you or for you.

So thanks for joining us.

Deb.

Amazing to hear the whole story about the business course library, where the ideas formed so long ago and how they've now come to fruition and with people using them with their clients.

It's become an amazing resource and it's just going to grow and grow and grow.

I think more and more practice owners are going to want this result.

So thanks for sharing.

Deb.

Yeah, you're welcome.

Thanks for listening to Advisory Conversations with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday.

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

We'll see you next time.

Sam.