Deb shares how her career started in retail before moving into finance and bookkeeping, and how that path led her to build a business designed to deliver more than just compliance. A big part of that was creating a model that doesn’t rely on one person, removing the bottlenecks that often sit with the business owner.

We talk about what it really takes to build a team that can deliver advisory work. Not just in theory, but in practice. Developing people, trusting them to take responsibility, and creating a structure where they can operate independently while still delivering a high standard of service.

There’s also a focus on how this approach strengthens client relationships and supports long-term growth. When the delivery isn’t dependent on one person, the business becomes more consistent and more scalable.

We also explore the role of mentorship and delegation. What it takes to step back, support others, and build capability within the team so the business can grow beyond the owner.

Alongside this, we look at the wider shift from compliance to advisory. Why advisory requires more than technical knowledge, and how systems, team structure, and ongoing learning all play a role in making it work.

This episode is about building a business that works without everything relying on you, while continuing to adapt as client needs and the market evolve.

Takeaways:

• Moving from compliance to advisory requires a different way of working

• Advisory depends on systems that remove reliance on one person

• Building a strong team is key to consistent delivery

• Understanding client needs is essential to delivering real value

• Flexible delivery models support growth and scalability

• Shifting to advisory means focusing on value, not just compliance

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?

Good, thanks, Tim.

How are you?

I'm very good, thank you.

I'm quite excited, actually, because today we're going to hear about your story and we're going to hear about your.

Your career and where you started from, from leaving school up through tonight.

So basically I'm going to say over to you, tell me about your career and your life.

Well, not sure it's exciting, but it's certainly lengthy.

So a bit like you, Tim.

I left school and went straight into work.

So it wasn't.

It was kind of like a little bit of a.

A windy path.

So a bit similar to yourself.

School didn't think I was going to amount to much, I don't think.

I wasn't really an A student, let's put it that way.

I never could see why I needed to memorize everything that they were telling me when I couldn't see a practical implementation of anything that they were teaching me.

So it didn't really hold my interest.

So when it came to work experience, when they send you for a week or two weeks into business, they.

They didn't give me a choice.

Everybody else got a choice and I didn't get a choice.

To be fair, though, I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

So they sent me to a shop and the shop was rhyming the stationers.

So I went there and actually I was like a little sponge.

I just memorized and learned everything that they told me because I could see that I needed to implement it.

So I did that and then I went to college when I finished my CSEs and O levels, but only for a very short time.

And Ryman Station had called me up and offered me a Saturday job.

So I had a Saturday job with them.

And then when they realized I was at college doing, I think I was there for about two months doing retail management.

Funny enough, I decided that was the course.

That was the only thing I found that I was interested in, retail management and marketing.

And they offered me a job full time.

So they actually phoned up my.

My parents and asked if they could offer me a job.

And they said, my dad said something along the lines of if she had been to college for two years and done the course that she's doing or if she had got two years work experience, which one would you prefer to employ?

And they said the work experience.

So they said okay, you can give her a job.

So they gave me a job and I went from senior sales.

I was actually it start all started in Watford and I but I lived by that time in hendon which was two bus journeys, so 45 minutes each bus to get there.

And I was only 16 at the time so that's, that's quite a, a journey for 16 year olds.

I can't say that I was on time every morning but I definitely got there, I definitely went every day.

But yes, they put me through my senior sales exam and when I passed that with 90 odd percent or something they, that meant I was ready for promotion.

But there was already a senior sales at the branch so they relocated me to Hampstead and when I was at Hampstead they trained me to be a supervisor and I became a supervisor at Camden branch and then they trained me to be, while I was there they trained me to be a senior assistant manager.

And then I went back to, and I went to Baker street as an assistant manager and then I went back to Camden as assistant manager because they wanted me back there.

And then I was trained to be a manager and every single promotion I had a training course to go on to be able to do the next role.

And then I got my own branch in Hanover Square.

So that was my first branch, Hanover Square just around the back of Oxford Circus.

And then I went to Charing Cross Road, had a branch there and then Hampstead and another branch in Wigmore Street.

But what they realized what I did was because I'd been trained so well by my managers when I became a manager I decided to make sure that all the team were trained.

And the way I did it was the person who is the senior sales would train the sales assistant to be the senior sales.

The supervisor would teach the senior sales to be the supervisor and the assistant manager would teach the supervisor to be the assistant manager.

And I was teaching the assistant manager how to be a manager all right.

But I gave them all an afternoon off so that they, so the person that was being trained could step into that role when the person that was the trainer had the afternoon off so they could gain some experience in that role.

So it ended up with me not having anything to do which was great at the age of 19.

So I'd kind of like freed myself from a role really because my branch was self serving and they were all more than happy because they all had an Extra afternoon off and they were all ready for promotion.

When in any of the other 50 branches across London a promotion came up, my team were always ready.

So we had quite a high turnover of staff because they were all being promoted.

When head office realized that's what I was doing, they actually made me a training, a training branch so that what would happen is HR would recruit for open positions in the branches but they would send them to me for six weeks training before they were then deployed to their, to their branches.

So I ended up being a training branch.

So yeah, so that was, that was a real, that was probably my, my base training for management and leadership and train the trainer and business because it was still running branches.

I mean it's the basic, basic trade really, isn't it, running a shop.

So we did audits and stock taking and payroll and all that kind of stuff at that from a very early age.

So I then decided actually Tenerife, a friend of mine was going to Tenerife and I decided yet like a lot of youngsters, I was 23 at the time.

That sounds nice.

Sun, sunshine and some sea.

So went over there for a little while, six or eight months.

I worked in a restaurant and then came back, worked in a printer's pronto print for about six months.

But I didn't quite, quite like it.

I mean I was the manager but they had no, no systems or processes in place.

It was a franchise so.

And they weren't very keen on me systemizing anything.

They just thought I should have everything in my head and then, you know, run the shop as they taught me.

But that wasn't really my way of doing things.

I like systems, I like things in place so that anybody can step in and you're not, it's not reliant on the one person so it didn't really get on too well there.

So I left after about six months.

I went back to Ryman's and worked for them for another 18 months or so and then decided actually I was now ready to stop working weekends and late nights shopping and I, I wanted to just work Monday to Friday so I thought let's go into business, to business.

So I work for a vending machine company and I started off as reception and office manager and the accountant there.

We had an in house Accountant, there's about 30 staff I think we had an in house accountant and he nabbed me for two mornings a week to do credit control and statement runs.

And I used to have, when the checks came in, when the payments came in, I used to have to check them off against the invoices, etc.

But it was all ledgers and all folders and we used to have one of those.

When we had the receipts.

We had one of those stands, you remember those stands, Tim, that were round with a big spike.

And you used to stash up all your receipts on there.

Yeah, it was there.

So we had these big spikes.

We put them all on.

We had all the red ledger Collins books.

And it's funny actually, because I actually sold those at Ryman's.

So I knew all the codes and everything, but I didn't realize I'd actually be filling them in, you know, one day in the future.

So.

Yeah, and everything was just in files, just in lever arch files and box files.

And we also had a calculator with the, with the roll of paper on there.

So you had to tot it all up, didn't you?

Sort of.

And then the roll of paper and then staple that calculation to the ledger page so that you could actually say that.

Yes.

So somebody else could come along and, and make sure that everything that was written in the ledger was also on the calculator and the totals matched up.

So.

Yeah, so, so was that.

So we also had the printer paper, which is the green and white striped with the perforated edges down the side.

Yes, it was all coming back to me now.

So I did that a couple of mornings a week.

And that was my first intro to bookkeeping.

So.

But I did all sorts of other things for that company.

I ran the service desk.

We had two engineers, we had eight vending machine operators used to go around and fill up all the machines.

So I was like the, the repairs desk.

If there was a fault, they used to, they used to call and I used to send out the, the engineers used to take all the orders for the, for the vending machines.

So there was a. I learned a lot about business because I worked in pretty much every department for that company.

So I learned a lot about the business side rather than just retail.

So.

So I left there.

I went to work for Office International for, for a short while.

And that was knocking on doors, selling stationery.

And that's because we had some chap come in to sell a stationary, the vending machine company and had this brand new company car outside.

And he was telling me about his job.

He had like an area, a patch.

I thought that sounds quite good.

So you know, he's, he's out doing his, his own thing.

He's driving around in his car.

I can sell stationary because I Did that for seven years.

So I went and applied for Office International and I had a week long internal sales course.

You know when they used to send you for training, sort of like some hotel or something.

So seminars and training in house.

So I had that.

So I had official, yeah, sales training, cold calling, really knocking on doors.

So I did that for a short while but I didn't really like it.

I was on my own and I like working with within a team.

I used to.

My highlight of the day was driving all the way to Central Tesco's where all the other reps used to wheels, used to go and have lunch together.

But it was probably about 45 minute drive to be honest.

It was not really a good use of my time but it was because I needed the human connection.

I wanted to work with, with people.

So I went back to the vending machine company and went and had a cup of coffee with the, with the owner and told him that I wasn't very happy and so he promptly offered me a job as a sales consultant for the vending machine company again.

So I went back to them and worked as sales consultant and sold their vending machines and their contracts to their two hospitals, schools, government offices, factories, anywhere really that you, you know, have vending machines.

That was, that was my, that was my role.

So, so I did that and then kind of missed working in central London because I was, it was well still London.

It was Dollis Hill.

I worked in the vending machine company and I had a company car but I quite, I liked working in London so I, and I fancied a bit of a change so I went to work for a training company in central London and we had a team of 10 business development managers and I was a senior business development manager team leader where we sold management and leadership training as well as software training as well.

So software and technical training to councils, government offices, retail companies, banks.

They were mainly all in all the companies that are in central London.

So yeah, so that's, that's what I did.

So I just kind of thought what, what do I do?

Kind of I'd like to do something that I can do myself so self employment so I can choose my own hours, something that I can do from home.

And like a lot of people I decide bookkeeping would be the thing I knew that I. I'd done it a bit at the vending machine company.

So I also my partner at the time, the kid's dad, he had, he had a builder, he was a builder, so a roofer.

So he had me doing all his quotes invoices and tax returns.

So.

And then he told people that that's what I was doing.

All these mates down the pub type thing.

And so the request started coming in and I thought, well, if I'm going to do this, I better do it properly.

So I went to night school and did my bookkeeping exams for the IAB at college, at night school and I got a stars in my accountancy exam.

So shows what school thinks, isn't it?

I mean, it's like they didn't think I was going to amount to anything or could do it.

None of my family could believe that I got a stars because I hadn't really done very well in my school exams.

But it was because I could see that if I learned this I could implement it and it was going to be valuable to me.

So yeah, so that's what I did.

Did it part time around the children and then 20, 18, 19, decided to take my daughter out of school and homeschooler through her GCSEs.

And then obviously Covid happened anyway, so everybody was doing that.

So I worked out that I had enough money to last me about 18 months, which would take me right up to the when she'd finished her GCSEs.

But why didn't do was forecast how long it would take me to build up my business after those gcse.

And I could see that the deadline approaching, I could see that the money was going down and I had no Runway past that point.

So what do I do?

So I had to.

Had to make a decision really on if I was going to go and get a corporate job or if I was doing a really make a go of this bookkeeping business.

But I knew I had to do it, would have to do it differently because I couldn't take on clients and deliver the work and quickly get to the income level that I needed.

So I thought, well, the only way I'm going to be able to do it is basically by running a team, right?

So I could do the sales and marketing on board the clients and the team can deliver the work.

That means that I'm free from doing the delivery, but I can still sell, you know, sell and market and onboard clients.

So it could.

And then I could build the team up.

As we grew Up.

So instead of having self employed, sorry, employed team, I went down the subcontractor route.

And that way I didn't have the commitment of having to find them work.

It was a case of as work came in, I could then distribute the work.

And the great thing was that they were business owners already so in their own right, so they understand all the ups and downs and the stresses of running a business so they could relate to our clients a lot more.

And the other thing I didn't want to do as well is just do compliance because I'd done it for 10 years and I realized it didn't really help the client.

All it does is survey hmrc.

And so the client doesn't really want to pay you very much for doing it because it's really of no benefit to them.

So when I worked at the ven, when I worked at the training company, our strap line, if you was just maximizing your potential.

So I changed that to maximizing your profit potential because I wanted to make sure that these our clients were profitable and because Also I spent 10 years doing the books and could see the stress, you know, and it's not very nice working for people that are stressed or you can see how hard they're working.

But on paper they're not actually making very much money, they're not taking out their own business or they don't understand the numbers.

So they don't really understand best practice either.

So that was the, the model that I adopted.

Subcontractors allowed me to just do sales, marketing and onboarding and client relationships.

When we decided to give an advisory offering, I took on the advisory myself.

But I quickly realized that I'd actually swapped it for bookkeeping, bookkeeping for advisory.

And all of a sudden it was still landing in my lap.

So it was, it was restricting me running the business, running the team and onboarding more clients.

So I reached out to another business financial coach that I knew and we came to an arrangement that she would actually do the advisory.

So, so that's kind of like release me again to be able to be the business owner and not the technician or not the business advisor.

And that's when I realized actually even putting the advisory over to another person, they would still get to capacity.

So I thought, let's train the team.

Okay, so let's train the team.

Let's get the team delivering advisory.

But in the back of my head I was also thinking, that's also going to get to capacity.

So I developed an online e learning program that could go to business Owners, However, I say we still had the team delivering advisory and it was.

The team were delivering certain strategies to clients and I taught them how to do that and then I gave them the experience of doing that.

So when a client enrolled in a particular service, I would allow the team member to gain that experience, but I'd done the training with them beforehand and then they would record the meetings and we would have feedback and we would see how the meetings went.

But it wasn't an all in advisory service.

It was particular strategies.

So it was structured.

But yeah, so it's, it, it's been a long journey.

I mean, I eventually sold the, the compliance practice just to concentrate on training, well, designing learning programs for accountants and bookkeepers.

And that's what I've been doing for the last, well, just over 12 months now.

Isn't it, Tim?

So, so yeah.

So that's kind of like my, my pit stop journey.

But it's funny because I haven't always been in the accountancy world.

I've been in retail.

I've been in business.

To business.

And it's, it's really only the last 18 years that I've been in the accountancy industry.

And I say only 18 years, but it is only 18 years in the scope of my long career.

18 Years does actually sound like quite a long time, doesn't it?

I think 18 years is still a long time.

Yeah, it's.

That's, that's amazing, Deb, honestly.

And it is very interesting.

You said at the beginning is not very interesting, but it is.

It's like a winding path we travel on, isn't it?

To.

To what gets us to where we are.

And we're still traveling the path, of course.

But it's really interesting that at 19 years old, you're a manager of a Ryman store and you've created this innovative way of training your team so that your team can all step up into each other's shoes so that you were then relieved of your duties in a way.

Not really.

You were able to just sit at the top and oversee everything and you weren't having to do everything.

So you took yourself at the age of 19.

Well, between 19 and 23, I guess.

19, 23, Yeah.

You'd learn already to remove yourself from being a bottleneck within the business and for everybody to have a pathway, your whole team to have a pathway that was structured for them to go through.

And I think that's really relevant.

That's obviously stuck with you all this time to what we're doing now.

So I just wanted to highlight that point because I think that's a real innovative thinking from you to create that situation and that environment to then become the training store for the whole of the business.

Yeah.

So I think that's really, really needs to be recognized that.

I think that's fantastic.

And you mentioned Prontoprint, which, which drew my attention.

I know you were only there a short time.

My sister worked for Pronto Print in Gloucester Road in Bristol.

So yeah, that was why it stood out to me.

So, yeah, interesting fact.

It means absolutely no relevance whatsoever to this story, but just thought I'd mention it.

She was a graphic designer and that was the first job that she got from leaving college.

So yeah, it was just interesting you mentioned them.

But there's also a story I want you to tell that you have shared with me previously.

I think when you're in the Hampstead branch, you had quite a few celebrities came in and out of the store.

But there's one particular moment that lives with you.

I know.

Would you like to share that?

Yeah, sure.

So, yeah, so you mentioned we had a few celebrities.

We had a Dame Judi Dench visit the store.

We had Nicholas Parsons.

For anybody that remembers Nicholas Parsons, he visited the store.

We had Robert Powell and Tom Conti.

But the one that you're.

You want me to talk about.

Oh yeah, it's a funny story.

I was going out for lunch and at our store, which was at the top of the high street, it had two pillars.

So you had the windows, the shop front windows, two pillars and the front door, which was a single door and two steps down onto the pavement.

And as I was going out the door to go to lunch, I could see a person stood on the right hand side and they.

There was a dog on the left hand side.

What I didn't see was the lead in between.

So I tripped over the lead, fell flat on the pavement to cry.

Oh my goodness, are you okay?

With her hand put pointed down, I grabbed the hand, he pulled me up and it was Boy George.

So I kind of like he said, oh, you okay?

I said, yeah, I'm fine, thank you.

But I was so flustered and shocked that I was talking to Boy George that I turned back around, went into the shop and said to all the stuff, I've just tripped over Boy George's dog's lead.

So yeah, so that, that was quite funny.

The good news is he didn't really want to hurt you.

Yeah, very good.

Oh yeah, that's amazing.

That's fantastic.

It's, it's Just funny, isn't it, when you look back over all these jobs and all these things that happen and there's some funny stories to tell, isn't there?

But yeah, that's, that's amazing.

Yeah.

To meet these people and to be able to, to have them come into your store as well, which is, which is amazing.

So.

Yeah, Deb, I, I like.

What I also like is, you know, we talk about, we've talked about this before and we talk about this a lot amongst ourselves, but you, you, you sold your bookkeeping practice a year or two ago.

A year.

A year ago.

Year or two.

And.

But I love the way you built your team up.

I love the way that you, you, you know, you'd worked it out early on that you couldn't be the bottleneck.

And so you structured your team in a way that your clients had someone to take care of everything they needed to be taken care of without having to be involved in it.

You could be involved if you needed to be, you could step in if you needed to be.

If someone was away, you could step in, but you didn't have to be involved all the time.

And it's really apt to what we're doing moving forward, isn't it, that not having to be involved in the day to day running all the time, that everything that a client needs should not always be around the owner of the business, should it?

So that's, I just wanted to highlight that as well because there's some fantastic elements to your career and your story of your path that you've gone along that it needs highlighting because there's so many important messages in there for us to pass on to people.

So.

So yeah, that was it.

Thank you very much for sharing with us.

Oh, you're welcome.

Yeah.

Took me back.

Trip down memory lane.

I should have done Eamon and Andrews with a red book.

Oh, yeah.

This is your life.

It'd have to be a red ledger book.

It would have to be a red letter.

Collins.

Yeah.

If I remember rightly.

Yes, there we are.

There we are.

Brilliant.

Thanks, Deb.

Right, we'll see you very soon.

See you next time.

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

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Sa.