You can learn the skills of advisory. But becoming an advisor is about more than learning new skills.

In this episode of Advisory Conversations, Tim and Deb are joined by Hetty Verney to explore the often-overlooked shift from technician to advisor: changing the identity you see yourself as.

They talk about the beliefs, self-doubt and subconscious patterns that can keep practice owners stuck in familiar ways of working, even when they know they want something different.

Hetty also shares her own journey with belief coding and how uncovering the patterns holding her back helped her step into a new identity, build a team and move forward.

If you know where you want your practice to go, but something keeps pulling you back, this conversation is worth listening to.

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.

And welcome along to another episode of Advisory Conversations.

So good morning to you, Deb.

Morning, Tim.

Morning, Hetty.

Morning.

There we go.

And as you can tell, we're not only joined with Deb again today, but also Hetty has kindly joined us again for another episode.

So thank you, Hetty, for coming along.

And the reason that we asked you to come along, Hetty, is because we've been talking about this in the background with you.

You know, we.

We help people make those initial steps from moving from technician into delivering advisory.

And we.

And we can give everybody all the skills and all the tactics, teach them about insights, about patterns.

But.

But it's.

It's not quite.

You don't just flick a switch and suddenly become an advisor, do you, Hetty?

No, you absolutely don't.

It's a completely new identity, moving from a technical accountant of all bookkeeper into being an advisor.

It's not just the actual work that we're doing for our clients.

It's the fact that we personally have to step into a completely different identity.

And we do this in life all of the time.

Wherever we're making a change in our life, whatever it happens to be, we are changing who we are and what we're actually in, our particular.

This particular case, what we're actually doing, what we're going to be delivering to our clients, and our subconscious is going to always try and keep us safe, it's always going to pull us back into our little comfort zone, what it thinks is our comfort zone.

And until we can prove to our subconscious that actually moving into this identity is going to be safe, it is going to be okay.

It's going to keep on pulling us back.

It's going to give us excuses all of the time.

For instance, when I'm.

I'm planning on what I'm doing with my business going forward, and my subconscious is continually pulling me back to now.

Just go back to what you did there.

So you've done the accountancy work for 30 years.

You're good at what you do.

You can do it standing on your head.

Just go back to that.

It's much easier.

It's much safer.

And I've been trying to say to myself, God, just.

This is where I want to be.

I've got A vision of exactly where I want to be, who I want to be serving, how I want to be serving them.

My subconscious is still giving me excuses.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Let's just go back.

Let's get back to our little comfort zone and if we don't align that identity, that new identity with where we're wanting to go, our subconscious is never gonna get the evidence and the proof that actually it's okay.

And that's why we work on the beliefs that are stopping us.

I'm not good enough, I'm not confident enough.

I haven't got the right team behind me.

I'm not ready to do this.

It doesn't matter what that belief is or those beliefs that might be holding us back.

Once we've aligned those beliefs with where we're trying to get to, we call it, I call it our North Star because that's what it works out to being.

Basically.

Once we've got that vision of what our North Star is going to be, we start processing in our minds all the time.

That's why people do vision boards, is because they've always.

I've got a picture in my office, I'm not going to show it to you now, but I have got a picture in my office of who I want to be serving, where I want to be not just in the business, but in my personal life as well.

So yeah, who I want to be serving, where I want to be, how I want my business to be running from now onwards.

And so I see that all the time.

And that just programs our subconscious to saying, actually, do you know that looks okay, that's all right, that's not too scary.

And then I work on the beliefs that are underneath that are giving me all of these excuses, all of these excuses which just go on all the time, especially at 3 o' clock in the morning.

By the time I wake up in the morning I'm like, right, no, not doing that, not doing that, don't want to do that.

And then by about 8 o' clock, after I've taken the dog for a walk and I've had a cup of coffee and that's like, actually, no, what I need to work on is aligning where I'm wanting to go.

Once that aligns with our subconscious, we can do anything, literally anything that we want.

Because once our self conscious feels safe, it will give us everything that we need in order to be able to reach that goal, whatever that goal happens to be.

So that's my take on it.

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it?

Because.

And this affects not only the practice owners that might want to go into advisory, but also when they want to create a team and also then for the team to step up and start delivering as well.

Doesn't that.

Absolutely, yeah.

I mean, for many years I said, I don't need a team.

I can do it all on my own and do it fine.

Until I was working 60 odd hours a week and I was thinking, what the heck am I doing?

As soon as I had a team and they were working really well, it was just like, why the heck didn't I do this before?

Because I wasn't ready.

There was no way that I was ready.

I hadn't made that decision that that's what I needed.

Everything kept on pulling me back again and again and again.

Na na na na na.

Just go back to where you're safe, where you're comfortable, where you're happy, just doing it.

Just get on and doing it.

Stop complaining, just get on and do it.

Find other ways to cut down the hours in a different way.

And then actually in my case, something happened in my personal life which meant that I had to step back.

I had no choice.

And it was like, I don't want a team, I really don't want a team.

I don't want to have to deal with people, I don't want to have to do any of that.

I just don't want to have to manage people.

And.

And then as I say, this thing happened in my personal life that meant that I really had to.

Otherwise the business was going to collapse and I was going to lose the clients and I was going to let the clients down.

And that was my biggest issue, was that I didn't want to let anybody down.

And so therefore I then started working on the beliefs that I needed to change in order to be able to be able to take on that team to help me so that I could actually service the clients how I wanted to service them.

They weren't client facing at that point at all.

They were just in the background.

Clients knew that I had a team.

They were absolutely happy with that because they still had me doing the work, which was brilliant.

When I moved into the advisory and the team started taking over a lot more of the work, again, I had to deal with those beliefs.

I'm not an advisor, that'd be silly.

I've been an accountant for 30 years.

I'm not.

I didn't advise people, I just do their accounts for them.

And then I started realizing that Actually, what the clients needed was more of me, more of what I was able to give them the insights into their business, what I believe of the strategy that, that they needed.

But again, moving into that identity, I had to deal with the beliefs again.

And it was like, God, haven't I dealt with these enough?

How many times have I dealt with this one?

That's particularly, I'm not good enough.

I can't do this, whatever it is, over and over again.

But the new identity brings up even more beliefs that are holding us back.

And so every time we move into that new identity or try to move into that new identity, we have to deal with all beliefs.

And it's what we have to do in order to make our subconscious feel safe.

So when you say, I want to build an advisory practice and have five team members running the advisory and I'm just going to step back and look at it and see what it's like.

If that doesn't feel safe in your body, if you get that sort of slightly sick feeling, that slightly uncomfortable clenchy sort of.

No, it's not right.

That's not aligning with you.

That is not aligning with you yet.

But once you start to uncover what patterns are those beliefs are that are holding you back from being able to say, consciously say and feel.

Yeah, actually, that is where I want to be.

That is what I want to do, then your subconscious starts to get the evidence that it's.

It's okay.

It's okay.

Okay.

Right, let's move then.

Let's do this.

How are we going to do it?

And then it starts, all these ideas start pouring into your head because your subconscious is giving you a sort of free rein.

Yeah, actually, you're safe.

You can do this.

And once you feel that, whether you're the advisor, whether you're the team leader, whether you're the team, doesn't make any difference.

Everybody, everybody in the world has to move into a new identity in their lives.

At least.

At least a few times.

Probably quite a lot more than that.

If you're running a business.

I mean, if you run your.

It's like, it's like having a piece of software.

Sorry, I'm talking a lot.

It's like having a piece of software that's five years old.

It's going to glitch.

It's going to try and pull you back into how it used to be.

You run your business like you did five years ago.

It's not going to align with how you are now, how you want your business to be.

So you have to upgrade your software.

It's pretty simple.

Upgrading your software is the same as uncovering and dealing with those beliefs that are holding you back.

It's the only way that I can really explain it in the best possible way.

Yeah, that's really interesting.

As you were talking I was thinking similar to being in flow, isn't it?

It's like when you feel flow or when you feel tense and you, you'll procrastinate because you don't want to do something or you'll self sabotage this when you're in flow and you'll know you are aligned and you're doing the right thing, you can't stop, can you?

You just keep going and keep going.

It feels right in your body and when it feels right in your body, it's because your subconscious is saying, yeah, you're safe, it's okay, you can do this.

And then as you say, you just get into flow and it don't stop.

So how did you build the skills to allow people to become aligned?

I trained as a belief coding facilitator.

Initially, actually, initially I did it purely for myself because there were a lot of things, a lot of patterns that I was running over and over again in my private life that were really sabotaging so much in my life.

And I just kept on doing it over and over and over again and I came across this belief coding thing and I thought, do you know what?

I've tried so many other things.

I've been to therapists, I've been to counsellors and they've all said yes, you've got these beliefs about something that happened in your childhood or whatever it happened to be.

And they've worked for a short while.

And then I came across the belief coding and I thought, do you know what, I'm just going to try it and see what it happens.

And I was told that once you have the belief coding session on whatever the discomfort is that's holding you back, that it goes forever.

And I thought, ooh, sounds quite exciting.

What do I do?

How do I learn it?

So I went on, went on a couple of in person courses and had some unbelievable breakthroughs.

I mean absolutely spectacular breakthroughs which meant that I, in, in my particular case I was dealing with people in a very, very different way.

I was talking in a very, very different way.

I used to be very.

Well, my ex husband's always said that I was very hard at times and it was very difficult to get through to the real me.

And I'm going to be Completely vulnerable here.

But that was because of the way that my father had treated me when I was younger.

And the expectations that he had put on me had been incredibly high.

Incredibly high.

I used to come back from school and he would say, why did you only get 85% in your maths?

Why didn't you get a hundred?

Maths is maths.

You either get it right, you get it wrong.

You're getting it wrong.

What are you doing?

And I would literally have to stand in his study and I was terrifying, Absolutely petrified.

So I would never.

I would never let my real self out because I was afraid that I was going to be pushed back down again.

And that happened again and again and again.

The negative emotion that was connected with that particular memory, and it had a domino effect throughout the rest of my life.

So if I mention my father was really hard on me, now I'm like, and it's okay.

Or I would have got really cross, really, really fast.

And after I had this breakthrough, I. I didn't do that anymore.

And I don't do that anymore.

I don't get reactive about things anymore.

And it was purely because of the way that things had happened in my childhood.

And because of that, it meant that I could start working on myself to start with.

And then we had a whole course on money blocks and things that were holding us back in our business.

And I was like, I don't have any money blocks.

I'm an accountant.

What are you talking about?

Oh, yes, I did.

I had some massive ones, really, really massive ones which were cleared, and they were fine.

And then I suddenly started thinking, hang on a second.

I'm starting to recognize.

And when my clients are talking to me, I'm starting to recognize these patterns that they've got running.

Their avoidance of looking at their debts, their.

Oh, hate spreadsheets.

Just don't give me a spreadsheet.

If we're gonna work together.

Just don't give me a spreadsheet, whatever you do.

And I started recognizing all of these patterns that were holding people back.

They weren't being able to reach their potential in their business with whatever it is they wanted to do because these things were just pulling them back.

I can't do that.

Oh, I've got Discalculus.

I Can't do the thing with money.

I'll never be able to work out what a budget is because I can't do anything with money.

All of these, the language that people was using over and over and over again, that's when I started realizing that actually belief coding could not just help me, but actually it could help business owners.

What?

It can help everybody, but it can help business owners hugely.

And because I have the financial skills and the accounting skills, I could combine those two together to help people really reach the potential that they want to in their business.

As opposed to, yeah, I'm going to earn a million pounds this year, or I'm going to pay off all my debts this year, but actually, still don't actually want to look at my debts because it's really, really scary to look at them because something is holding them back.

And if I can help them in their business and in this personal life, because, as I say, it has this domino effect throughout your life that it means that you can clear so many of these limitations that hold us back.

So.

So many of them.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing all of that, Hetty, and for sharing your vulnerability.

We really appreciate that.

So do.

Do you believe that everybody.

I mean, do you think that everybody has something holding the bat from.

Does it always come from childhood, or could it just be throughout their life at some point?

Yeah, absolutely.

It could be anything.

I think everybody has got something holding us back, whether it's in our businesses or in our personal lives.

It doesn't really make any difference.

And no, it doesn't always come from childhood at all.

When you work on through belief coding, what you do is you go, you ask your subconscious various questions, and one of the questions is, did this happen in this lifetime?

Did this happen in first 0 to 30 years, 30 to 60 years?

Whatever it happens to be.

And it comes up, your subconscious tells you how old you were when this particular memory comes up, so that you know what you're actually working on, that particular memory.

So, I mean, I've often had memories of when I was 40, 45, 50, all sorts of ones, 25.

Anything depends on what your subconscious wants to work on at that particular time, connected with whatever the discomfort is that's holding you back.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's definitely not always childhood.

Absolutely.

Definitely not.

Because a lot of people say, well, I had a really happy childhood, not that I didn't have anything going wrong in my childhood, but if something did happen that your subconscious is pulling you back to again and again, but you don't necessarily Understand it.

You don't necessarily believe that that's been something that holds you back.

Something could have happened at any age, at any age at all.

And for some reason, our subconscious has interpreted that as something that's really not good for whatever reason it is.

Someone might have said something to you.

I don't know.

I had one once where the client, she.

She'd met somebody in a pub.

She was going through relationship issues.

She'd met somebody in a publisher, and the first thing that he'd said to her was, it was fine.

Most people would have found it absolutely fine.

But what he said to her, to her pulled her back to something that happened in her teens.

And immediately she was just like, God, no, please don't say that to me.

And he was like, but I didn't say anything wrong.

And her subconscious, Something happened in her teens that meant that her subconscious was saying, ah, that's wrong.

You don't, you don't like that.

So we're going to keep that as a, as a belief for you, a limitation for you.

So anybody who else who says that in the future your brain's going to go straight back to when you were a teenager, and they said it to you at that point, and you interpreted it at that point to mean something different to you than it might have meant to Joe Dogs down the road.

Yeah.

And so belief coding, or in effect, the work that you do with people, does it break down all the barriers?

Does it mean that you can move forward and achieve what you want to achieve?

Because some people will convince themselves that building their accounting business, for instance, creating a big team and having people deliver the advisory for them is the way forward for themselves.

But for some reason, they don't take that step to actually make us.

The biggest word that you just used in there is convince themselves.

Yeah, yeah.

Completely and utterly, they feel that they need to convince themselves that that's where they're wanting to go.

But whether it's because I know somebody's told them that this is what they need to do in order to build their business, or a marketing person said, you need to start posting on social media every single day.

I want you to do video, I want you to do reels, I want you to do this, that, and the other.

And so you are convincing yourself that that person is right, that that's what you should be doing.

If your subconscious doesn't feel it's safe to do it, it won't let you do it.

It will never let you do it.

So in answer to your question, yes, but it totally depends on what it is that the beliefs that are holding you back.

If they're what we call the big ones, like, I'm not good enough.

That's not just gonna be one belief.

There's gonna be a lot of beliefs.

There's probably gonna be quite a lot of memories throughout your life.

And also depends on how old you are as well.

If you're as old as me, then there's gonna be a lot of memories in there.

If you're only sort of 20, 25, something like that, then there's not gonna be quite so many memories, basically.

But there are still gonna be beliefs that are holding us back, whatever they are.

But there may be multiple.

Multiple beliefs.

So we never or very rarely have just the one belief coding session.

We usually have a session of six sessions.

Because you'll uncover one belief, you'll deal with that one, then there'll be another one below it.

It's like peeling an onion.

It keeps on going.

It keeps on, keeps on going.

That's why I say I keep on working.

Oh, hang on.

I've worked on this one since so many times, but I obviously haven't got to the bottom of it yet.

Once you get to the bottom of it, then, you know, then you feel safe.

Then you're in flow and it all starts.

You don't have to convince yourself.

You just.

You have that knowing.

And I think that's.

That's one of the biggest things when you feel that knowing that it's the right thing for you to do.

You know that you're in alignment and you're in flow.

You're in the right place to be doing whatever it is.

Until you have that knowing, you are always going to feel not quite sure.

Bit jittery, bit sick, not quite right.

Nothing's like any of that.

And.

But once you've got that knowing feeling in your body, it's a totally somatic thing.

You have that feeling in your body.

Okay, yeah, this is right.

This is right for me.

I hope that helps.

But yeah, of course.

No, of course it does, Deb.

This is.

This is exactly why we.

Hetty was the first person we asked to partner up with us at APX training, wasn't she?

Yeah, without a doubt.

And just listen to Hetty.

I just.

Everything just sits, you know, it just.

You recognize it, don't you?

You just recognize the tension.

You recognize the.

The alignment.

You think it's all part of growing, stepping up, fulfilling your potential.

But so many of us don't reach that level.

And it's understanding why.

And you've explained it so beautifully that, yeah, I think it's so grateful and that we, we have you in our team.

Ap.

This is going to help our mentees massively, I think.

It really is.

Even the ones who don't think that they have limitations holding them back.

And there will be lots of them because they'll think, I don't need it.

Nothing holding me back.

My life's fine, everything's fine.

Yeah.

Ned's top.

There is always something holding you back.

Somewhere in there, there is always something holding you back.

It may not be huge, it may be tiny, but it may be enough to remove that negative emotion that's connected with it in order to be able to move forward.

And once you get that knowing feeling of being able to move forward, then you're on your way.

Thank you.

And you can find out more about what Hetty does via our website.

Hetty's got her own page on our [email protected] it's called Belief Code.

Here, if you look for, you know, the mentorship and then you can see Belief Coder, you'll be able to learn more about what Hetty does.

And, yeah, everything else on the website will explain to you about our new live implementation cohorts that are starting next Tuesday.

Deb, which we're really excited about, aren't we?

We've got.

Got people signed up already.

We've only got a few spaces left available for people on those workshops.

So what would you say to these people that are pondering whether to join or not?

Deb, go to the website, have a look.

If you don't feel ready, as we say, a decision is not a readiness, is not a feeling, it's a decision.

And Hetty will be able to help you feel ready after you've made that decision.

So, yeah.

So come to apxtraining.co.uk, we start on the 29th of September, which is next Tuesday for us.

If you're listening today when it goes live.

Yeah, you can sign up there and we'd welcome you into APX Community.

Fantastic.

Thank you so much for joining us again, Hetty.

I really appreciate.

I love listening to you.

I love listening to everything you teach us about belief coding and how it can help us all.

And I'm a massive believer in it all.

And I'm actually quite a skeptic with things like this, if I'm honest with you.

But you, you have converted me very easily without even needing to try, so.

So thank you very much.

Well, anyone who's having a bit of a wobble about whether to join the cohort or not, one have a look at the website, Without a doubt.

But then, if you wanted to reach out to me, I'm more than happy to offer a session for you to help you move on to that new identity before you even sign up and start.

That's very, very generous.

Thank you very much, Hetty.

That's okay.

Thank you, Hetty.

Thanks for joining us.

Appreciate it.

See you all soon.

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.