In this episode of Advisory Conversations, we discuss one of the biggest shifts accountants, bookkeepers, and financial professionals must make when moving from compliance into advisory.

Advisory is not about having all the answers.

It's about leading better conversations.

Many practitioners believe advisory means becoming the expert who solves every problem. In reality, the most effective advisors help clients see their business differently, ask better questions, and make better decisions for themselves.

We explore the idea that true advisory is a leadership role. It's about guiding conversations, challenging assumptions, and helping business owners uncover opportunities they may not have seen on their own.

As accountants and financial professionals, we have access to something incredibly valuable, the numbers. But numbers alone don't create change. The real value comes from translating financial information into meaningful conversations that help clients move forward with confidence.

Throughout the episode, we share practical examples of how small shifts in thinking can create significant results. One example involves a landscaping business owner struggling with seasonal cashflow pressures. Through a series of advisory conversations, we helped uncover pricing issues that were affecting profitability and cashflow. By making strategic adjustments, the client was able to reduce financial pressure, improve margins, and create a more sustainable business model.

The lesson wasn't about providing a magic answer.

It was about helping the client see the problem differently and giving them the confidence to take action.

We also discuss the importance of listening, asking thoughtful questions, and creating accountability. Great advisors don't simply tell clients what to do. They help clients think, decide, and act.

Ultimately, advisory is about leadership.

It's about using your knowledge and experience to guide clients towards better outcomes while helping them become more confident and capable business owners along the way.

Key Takeaways

• Advisory is not about having all the answers. It's about leading better conversations.

• The transition from compliance to advisory requires a shift from technician to leader.

• Financial data becomes valuable when it is translated into meaningful business insight.

• Asking better questions often creates more value than providing quick answers.

• Effective advisory helps clients think differently and make informed decisions with confidence.

• Accountability is a key part of advisory and helps turn ideas into action.

• The best advisors create independent, capable clients rather than clients who become dependent on them.

Resources

Facebook Group: Advisory Teams

facebook.com/advisoryteams

Mentioned in this episode:

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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.

Hi, Deb, how are you today?

I'm good, thanks, Tim.

How are you?

Yeah, pretty good, Pretty good.

So today we're going to talk about some more things in relation to advisory, more about advisory being a leadership role.

Because one thing we want to make clear is advisory is not just about giving answers.

It's about leading conversations, guiding decisions, and helping clients think differently.

Would you agree with that, Deb?

Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah.

We were talking, weren't we, about it being quite different to coaching in our industry?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I think it's a common theme that coaches are very much about goals and working towards goals and defining milestones, et cetera, whereas.

And very good in their own field, of course.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dismissing that.

That's obviously very helpful for people.

But accountants and bookkeepers are in this unique position of having all of the financial information at their fingertips and having the technical knowledge to better interpret that data into some meaningful insights and some meaningful advice on how you can move forward with your business.

So I think for me, it's all about having that knowledge at fingertips, being able to understand what your clients looking to achieve, what their problems are, what they're trying to solve, and give them valuable information that they can take away and implement in their business, which you can hold them accountable for.

And I think that it just becomes this much higher level scenario that you can provide for your clients that sometimes perhaps we're not aware of, we're not aware that we can do these things because we haven't quite achieved that yet.

But becoming a leader and using some leadership skills, you can actually host an advisory session in the right way to take someone through these strategic steps to show the client how they can move, you know, from where they are now to what they want to get to, to what they want to achieve through insightful knowledge from the finance.

And I think you shared a couple of examples previously about, you know, moving people, moving boundaries within their.

Within their own business.

I think you had a client.

Sorry, Deb, I'm throwing this at you and we haven't discussed this before, but I think you mentioned before, and this is about pricing, but it gives a really good insight into different types of advisory that we can offer our Clients.

I think you had a landscape gardener business that was a client.

And he had.

His income was seasonal, so he had dips of earning money and dips of not earning money.

But you found a solution for him that worked really well, didn't you?

Yeah.

So he was charging hourly.

He was garden maintenance, but landscaping as well.

But he was finding that he was charging hourly an hour and a half weekly garden maintenance, something like that.

But he was struggling with capacity in his high season when he wanted to take on much larger projects.

But he was committed to team members being certain amount of time on people's gardening because that's what they were being paid for.

So.

And he had consequence.

He had high seasons and low seasons.

So he had summers super busy, where he's trying to fit all these landscaping jobs in which were really high revenue.

But he was also trying to maintain his regular maintenance work, but it was all hourly based.

And I was like, well, you know, that doesn't give your clients incentive, your team incentive to be efficient.

You know, if they, if they can finish a job faster, they've got to stay there anyway, so they're just finding stuff to do.

Your client probably doesn't care how long they're there, as long as they'd left their garden looking immaculate and the envy of all their neighbors.

So if you change your pricing to maybe packages that would free up capacity because you could put maybe more than one person on a maintenance job to get it done a lot quicker.

And then you can then free them up from the time restraint of having to be there for two or three hours or whatever to then going on to a landscaping job where you can have all your team.

So he thought that was a great idea.

I was setting the task of going on the Internet and having a look at other landscaping businesses that maybe were doing their pricing in a similar way and get an idea of what he could do for packages.

And so we changed his is business pricing model completely to three packages, but also add ons.

So you could have seasonal add ons, might be hanging baskets throughout the year.

So might have spring, you know, hanging basket, autumn hanging basket, winter hanging basket.

Those type of things might have just complete maintenance year round.

So leaf clearing and except moss treatment, all that kind of stuff.

Um, but he did it on a subscription model.

So he got rid of his low season and high season and we could.

He could charge his clients the same amount, which was within their budget, and upgrade them at certain points, downgrade them at certain points.

And it worked.

Treat.

Yeah.

Stopped him having.

What do they call it feast or famine, really stopped him living off his credit card in the winter months and going through stressful periods when he's, you know, just waiting for his high season.

So, yeah, it worked fantastically.

But that was, that was kind of like just out of conversation of how his business was going, why he was using his credit card so much, et cetera, that we built that into the advisory service, keeping him accountable and checking what he was doing.

Yeah, I think that's clear from what you did for him, is that you clearly led the conversation at the beginning.

You gave him some insights, you gave him some ideas of what he could do, you listened to the problems first and foremost, obviously, and then you gave him some ideas of what he could do and you helped him think about it from a different perspective.

And I think that is.

That's.

That's the leadership in the conversation, isn't it?

Is that you.

You've kind of broken it down and given him some options and he's gone away, thought about it, then he's gone and looked at, you know, his, you know, we say competitors, but it's not really competitors.

Other people in the same line of business, probably different areas of the country that are using that model and then he's implemented it and you've held him accountable to taking those actions along the way.

And I think that highlights fantastically well the difference that can be made when you have the knowledge of the numbers, when you have all this information at your fingertips and then you have the conversation and you lead the conversation.

Because it's very important that you lead the conversation, actually, isn't it?

Because I've been in these situations in my past where the client's quite dominant person and they can be quite outspoken and, and they come and they.

And they.

And they start asking all these questions and actually you have to pull them back in and say, do you know what?

We're actually going to talk about this today.

This is what we had on our agenda.

This is what we agree going to talk about.

If we've got time at the end, I'll try and answer those questions.

If we haven't, we'll put that into the next strategy session.

Because from our last conversation, what's on the agenda was the highest priority.

And quite often or not, they'll actually sit back and say, yeah, good point.

Because they've got everything running around in their minds, haven't they?

They've got all these.

They're 101 things going on and they're not necessarily thinking clearly about what they need to discuss.

Whereas we're sat back, we're looking in it from our perspective and we can see and so we can guide them into the right.

Into the right place.

So I think that I just wanted.

That example just came in my mind as we started the podcast.

So I knew I threw a bit of a curveball at you there, but.

But I just thought it was a.

It is a really good example of leading an advisory conversation, which is so important.

And also, Deb, I think it's also about the questions you ask, isn't it?

What type of questions you ask in these situations?

The questions are.

Yeah, I mean, there's always a structure.

You could see a pattern.

We could see that he was living on his credit card.

We could see that he was stressed.

We could see that he wasn't taking any money out of his own business.

So what on earth was he living on?

And yeah, he was living on personal credit cards as well.

So it's just asking the questions, why is this happening?

What's.

What's going on?

And from the answers, you've got more questions.

Well, why is that happening?

How are you pricing?

And I thought, I did think that he would be pricing per job.

I didn't realize it was going to be hourly.

I mean, hourly is just crazy for his line of work.

Yeah.

So it's trying to understand their business and where they want to go with their business, what their priorities were.

If I hadn't have asked the right questions, I would not have known that he actually wants to have the capacity to do landscaping work.

But he was struggling because he had the maintenance, the routine, that he didn't want to lose his regular customers.

So, yeah, so it's all about being curious, understanding why they built the business, why they built the business the way they have, and why it's not delivering the results that they want it to, essentially, really.

But it's conversation.

You don't have to have a script.

It's a conversation, but also recording the answers.

And a lot of the time it's cross referencing other industries that your experience with other conversations that you've had or how other business.

Other industries work that may actually work better in.

For some other business owners as well.

Yeah, it's all about questions.

I think that perfectly encaptures the difference between sending a set of management accounts off at the end of the month, thinking you've done your bit, and actually looking at the patterns of numbers.

That was the phrase you used.

You could see the pattern that he was using his credit card.

He wasn't paying himself, etc.

So you can see that pattern.

But the powerful bit is when you have the conversation so you use all the knowledge you've got from the numbers and then the power of the conversation, of asking the right questions, of listening, of taking the information in and then coming up with some ideas that they could perhaps take away and make their own decisions on whether they implement the course.

But the idea is do this, go and find out, is it a good idea?

Yes, let's implement it and hold them accountable to actually taking that implementation to the next step stage.

I think that encaptures how you lead a conversation to better get that type of result at the end of it.

But we know for a fact there are many accountants and bookkeepers out there that hesitate to lead conversations with clients.

And they do.

Like I indicated earlier about that dominant client, they do let clients kind of ask all the questions.

And do you think that then becomes that education versus versus advisory kind of scenario?

Because you're just answering questions, you're not actually delivering them insightful advice to take their business forward, are you?

Yeah, I mean, it's funny, isn't it?

Because we're dealing with business owners, so they're used to leading, they're used to being dominant.

They have, they generally have a team and a business to be dominant over.

I mean, who else is going to lead if they, if, if they don't?

So yeah, and they bring that into the conversation quite often.

They bring that into, into your business room where actually you're meant to be the, the trusted advisor, the expert.

But again, that comes down to questions, you know, because they're sitting in the room with you because they don't have all the answers.

So it's just highlighting sometimes areas that they haven't thought of with questions.

And it quickly brings the dynamics back into equal play.

But it's having the confidence to be quiet and think of the questions that really need answering.

And then once you've got the answer to that, then the ball's back in your court and you can bring it back to the topic that you're meant to be talking about it.

But this all comes with experience.

It comes with watching other people lead conversations and turn it around and then the training that goes behind doors of how you turn people around without creating animosity or friction or difficult atmosphere.

There's lots of strategies to do that, but it's all easily, easily taught.

Easily.

Practice.

Yeah.

It's great to hear you talking about it because it's real world experience with business owners.

And you know, and we all, and we know already that you also had your team that delivered advisory as well.

And so we know that you've kind of lived through this experience of building your high performing advisory team.

But it starts from that leadership point of view and it starts from you taking ownership and saying, well, this is what we're going to do.

I'm going to lead it.

But this is.

Then the next stage is going to filter down, but then we have to find someone in our team that is capable of leading the conversation with the client as well.

And that is a skill that it does take time to evolve.

It's not something that you just start doing.

And it does need a little bit of encouragement, some empowerment, some enablement, and to be honest, a process where the team members allowed to perhaps make the odd mistake because no one's perfect.

And we learn, we learn by perhaps not handling the conversation in the right way, first of all.

But the answer to that is to sit back and reflect at the end on what could have gone better.

How did I handle that?

Should I have asked that question at that point?

Because actually the client was giving me some really useful information and I kind of, we went into a slightly different topic there when perhaps I should have, you know, developed that conversation more to understand those pain points.

So I think those kind of, those kind of skills take a little bit of time to learn.

Yeah, yeah, they do.

I always started off small, so I didn't send them into a conversation that required exploration.

If you like.

I would start off with the exploration, find out all the goals and the pain points and then work out strategies that for instance, if they had debt, so we want to implement the debt snowball.

And then I would have the team member implement and have the conversations around that particular debt snowball meeting.

And then they could see the end date where the date was that the debt was going to be eradicated.

And it was a great meeting because as long as the client would stick to the payment schedule, then each meeting it was a case of, well, how much percentage have we got down to now?

And it was a feel good meeting.

Anything that came up in conversation that did a few things that did.

It started the client having a trusted relationship with one of the team members.

But we may have another team member doing maybe cash management system with them.

So they were building up relationships with each team member.

The team member was gaining confidence and the client was gaining confidence in each of the team members.

But we would always have team meetings and discuss those clients together so that if any Questions came up.

Every team member was, was aware of that ongoing conversation and if they didn't have the answer it would be put in a response to them in the email by the end of the day.

So it was, you know, we always had this cross reference, I'll chat to so and so and as long as this is my suggestion is the best suggestion, then well, we'll pop it in an email to you by the end of the day.

And that, that builds up the trust, that builds up the relationship.

It doesn't plunge a team member into the deep end straight away.

They can start building up these strategies and the confidence of having taken clients through all these different strategies and that's where your confidence grows.

So with experience and then once you've started getting a rounded experience of all these strategies, that's when you can start having your own ideas and your own suggestions that are very valuable.

Yeah.

So this, this, this training is also always the way and do it in small bites, small, small pieces.

Don't ever throw somebody in the deep end.

Right.

You know, right at the start, they won't want to go back in again.

No, no, it's true.

Yeah.

Like you've said before, you don't suddenly produce a year end statutory set of accounts.

You start off with perhaps processing the sales ledger, the sales invoices, the, you know, the matching the receipts from the customers.

I know we don't necessarily have to do that now so much with, with, with Xero and QuickBooks, et cetera.

But the idea, you start at the beginning, it's the same with advisory, isn't it?

You don't, you don't just suddenly dive in and expect it to be this, this wonderful expert that knows everything even though the knowledge is in there.

It's about having the confidence to unlock that knowledge and to feel confident to share your thoughts and your insights and the steps that perhaps the client could take.

And then in time you do find that you're comfortable leading the conversation.

In fact, by the way, leading the conversation doesn't mean you do all the talking.

Leading the conversation means you follow the process that the meeting is going to set out, but you're encouraging your, your client, the business owner to do all the talking really, because a lot of the time they will self solve problems or they actually need to understand that it's okay for them to make the decision that they're thinking about in the back of their mind, but they don't really want to, they're not really sure if they should make that decision.

So they just want that kind of reassurance from you that it's okay for them to make that decision and in time, and I think you shared this before one of your other clients.

In time, what you want is your client in, you know, the business owner to be able to make informed decisions without necessarily having to rely on anyone.

Because they've learned and they've been, they've found that they can understand and interpret what they're looking at.

They've had the conversations and now they can make their decisions.

And that's kind of the journey we want to take our clients onto because that way they can build a better business and the better their business is, the better job you've done.

And that, that then gives you that overwhelming feeling of pride and joy that if you've supported someone and they've, they're achieving the goals they wanted to achieve when they started working with you.

Isn't that all we want for people to be successful?

Absolutely.

And on their own as well.

We don't want to be positioned where we are.

I mean, we will be for a certain amount of time while they transition and make that journey to be able to be confident in making their own decisions.

But yeah, we don't want to be the go to person where they, you know, they're picking up the phone every five minutes to ask our permission.

That's not, that's not what we want.

We want to teach them the, the best practices and the elements that go into making better financial decisions for their business.

Yeah, absolutely.

Fantastic, Deb.

Thank you very much again.

Now, how can people find out more about us and get to know us a little bit more?

Our Facebook group advisory teams.

Yep.

That's where we hang out, isn't it?

That's where we discuss all these things.

So if you pop onto Facebook and you type in advisory teams, you'll be able to find us there.

Answer a couple of questions and we will let you in the group and then you can have access to lots more of our conversations and knowledge that we like to share with you so that you can learn how to remove yourself from being the bottleneck in advisory within your practice and start to learn those leadership skills and then build your high performing advisory team so not everything relies on you.

Thanks for joining us once again on advisory Conversations.

Enjoy the rest of your days.

Thanks, Deb.

Enjoy your day as well.

You too, Tim.

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.