This episode looks at what’s really driving the shift from compliance into advisory.

And it’s not just demand.

It’s what’s changing around us.

With AI and automation taking over more of the technical work, the question isn’t whether advisory matters, it’s how you actually deliver it in a way that works.

Because advisory isn’t something you bolt on.

It’s something you build properly.

We talk about why so many firms struggle with this. Not because they don’t understand advisory, but because everything still depends on them. And when that happens, you don’t have a scalable model, you have more pressure.

The real shift is in building a team that can deliver advisory with you, not through you.

That means thinking differently about how you structure your business, how you bring people in, and what you actually look for when you hire.

Because technical skills alone don’t build advisory relationships.

People do.

This episode breaks down what that looks like in practice, and how to start making that shift in a way that’s sustainable.

Episode Overview

In this episode of Advisory Conversations, with Tim Seymour and Deb Halliday, we talk about the changes happening in the profession, and what they really mean for accounting professionals and financial coaches.

There’s a lot of noise around AI right now.

Some see it as a threat. Some see it as an opportunity.

But either way, it’s changing expectations.

And what it’s doing, more than anything, is pushing the value away from compliance and towards conversations, decisions, and direction.

That’s where advisory sits.

But here’s the challenge.

Most firms are trying to deliver advisory on top of everything else, without changing how the business actually works.

So it ends up relying on one person.

Which means it doesn’t scale.

We talk about why building an advisory team is the real answer, not just learning new skills yourself.

And that leads into recruitment.

Because if you’re building a team, you can’t just hire based on qualifications anymore. You need people who can think, communicate, and build relationships with clients.

That’s where most firms get stuck.

We also share how to start developing those skills within your existing team, so advisory becomes something the whole business moves towards, not just the business owner.

Takeaways

• Advisory isn’t an add-on, it requires a different business model
• AI is accelerating the shift away from compliance and towards higher-value conversations
• If advisory depends on you, it won’t scale
• Strong advisory teams are built on communication and thinking skills, not just technical ability
• Recruitment needs to prioritise people who can engage with clients, not just complete tasks
• Developing your existing team is key to building long-term advisory capability

Links

• advisoryteams.co.uk

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.

Hello and welcome.

Along again.

Hello, Deb, how are you?

I'm good, thanks, Tim, how are you?

Yeah, pretty good, pretty good.

So what are we going to talk about today?

I think we were going to talk about the industry shift and how things are changing for the accounting profession.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

It does seem to be.

But it's been shifting for a while, hasn't it?

But yeah, I think with AI coming along and different innovations happening within the industry, we can all see that something's changing.

Whether we like it or not, something's coming, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

And everybody, for a period of time now, a lot of accountants and bookkeepers have been told, move into advisory, move into advisory, move into advisory.

And we've kind of talked about this ourselves and then we've talked about creating the advisory team as we know.

So there's that kind of question hanging over us now, isn't there?

With, with, okay, so the industry's shifting AI technology, everyone needs to move into advisory.

We can still offer compliance.

We're not saying don't offer compliance because I think compliance is still an integral part of the accounting and bookkeeping world.

But if we're going to build an advisory team, how do we train our teams?

And then that kind of takes us back to how we recruit our team in the first place, doesn't it?

And you know, from your perspective, Deb, how do you see accountants and bookkeepers being recruited within practices at the moment or up until this point that we.

Know of, but it's quite different really.

So my kind of observation is, in the accounting industry, we have a set criteria for each role that we're recruiting for.

And accountants and bookkeepers come with ready made qualifications, don't they?

So we generally recruit based on the qualifications that they come with and maybe some of the experience, whether it's practice or industry experience, but generally it's based on the qualifications that they've attained for specific roles or specific tasks.

And that's how we're used to recruiting our teams.

But when it comes to advisory teams, there is no qualification.

There's no ICB qualification or IAB qualification for advisory.

Maybe there will be in some future evolution, but currently there is none.

So how do we decide which team member or Team members are best fit to evolve or grow or begin an advisory team.

We have to do it internally, we have to train internally and we have to know the skills and the traits that are preferable.

And they're not necessarily technical skills, they're what we used to call, which is a bit of a non descript term, but soft skills, personable skills.

Yeah.

Skills that are not technical skills.

Yeah.

How we get on with people, how we look at things, how we tackle certain situations, et cetera.

So, yeah, so it's quite interesting and I think it's probably a big block on why people haven't started building advisory teams.

Yeah, it stops people from scaling an advisory, doesn't it?

So therefore it becomes a bottleneck and it just gets stuck with the business owner.

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

Because traditionally accountants, they, they recruit for a junior bookkeeper, a senior bookkeeper, a junior accountant, senior accountant, you know, tax specialists, all these kind of things that perhaps now aren't necessarily all required because of AI and because of automation.

So communication skills has got to be 1, 1 high on the list, I would suggest.

So.

Yeah.

How do we determine what makes a good team?

Well, a good team has to have different skill sets within it, different attributes, different traits, and they all come together to make the team.

Skill set doesn't sit with just the one person, the leader, the team leader has to have an understanding of all the skills available within the team and the experience that's within the team.

But yeah, each person would play a slightly different role, but they all learn from each other and they all work and collaborate together as one.

I love your analogy, Tim.

What's your analogy of when they come together to diagnose issues?

Yeah.

Am I allowed to talk about football now?

Am I?

You can, yeah, yeah.

Don't start me off.

This could be a long podcast.

So, yeah, as, as I expect people know and maybe people who don't know me won't know outside of, outside of the accounting industry.

I'm a long standing football manager, a football coach, coach.

I think when you're talking about what makes a great team, you think about all of the different skill sets and all of the different personalities you've got within the team.

So in a football environment, which is a different environment, of course, I mean, you, you wouldn't put, you wouldn't bring apprentice trainee accountants into the football changing room environment because it's a completely different world, let's be honest.

But there's lots of different aspects of managing a team that are so relevant within sport to within business.

For me, you just talked about a leader.

A good leader is who you make your captain on the football pitch.

It's someone that is disciplined, that can control their temper for a start, that can communicate well with the referee, communicate well with teammates, communicate well with the manager, the management.

So they're, they're in that their person, they are the link between everybody.

They hold everything together in many ways.

So they're an integral part of the team.

And when they're not available and you make someone else captain, it's always very difficult to choose who that person is that stands in.

But you look for someone who's got as many of the similar qualities as the main captain has, that can then stand in as vice captain and be the one that steps up when they're not around.

Because I think you mentioned this before in your.

When you worked at Ryman's and you trained your team, you always wanted people to be trained to step up to the next job.

And I think that's very relevant within this building the team, creating the environment and allowing people the opportunity to step up when that other person's not around.

So I think yeah, from being a captain on a football pitch, they also understand everybody else's roles and responsibilities and they're able to lead the team with the right values and the right way that the management team want the captain and the players to behave on the pitch as well.

And of course, within a football team there's some specialist positions.

There's only one goalkeeper in a team and that's the only person that can catch the ball.

So it's a completely different way of playing the game compared to all the other players on the pitch.

There's always going to be specialist people within your business accounting team as well that can offer different skills and a different skill set.

Whether they're the right person to communicate to the clients is not always the same thing.

But they might be able to bring that knowledge into a meeting that the team that are then looking after the client can understand and then they can be the ones to portray the message over and offer the advisory, high level advisory.

Because I will be honest, most goalkeepers that I've coached, I wouldn't put them into a business meeting because they're all crazy.

Goalkeepers are crazy.

They're crazy personalities and they've got to be.

They died at people's feet.

They throw their body in the way all the time.

They generally get injured every game they play.

So in the changing rooms they're normally the most vocal with quite often the most choice language.

It's just nature, I think, of, of that particular position.

But it, but it's also about, you know, if I talk about the change room before we go back to the business, in the changing room, you've got 11 players and probably three or four substitutes.

So you might have, say, 14, 15, and I'm talking about men's football as well here.

So 14 or 15 different, very different personalities.

Some very loud, some very quiet.

Some want the music on loud, they want to sing at the top of their voices, others just want to sit down quietly, you know, tie their, tie their boot laces up, get their shin pads in quietly, go about things, wait for the, wait for the conversation with the manager who gives them the tactics and instructions before they go out and warm up.

And, and, and being able to, I wouldn't say control.

Control is not the right word, but being able to deliver messages to a group of grown men, being able to get them to be quiet and to listen and to have the respect of all of them collectively, to be able to deliver the messaging to them is, is a, is a skill in itself.

And I think that is very important when it comes to running an advisory team.

And we've talked about this before, that doesn't always have to be the business owner.

It probably will be initially, as they're starting to empower their team to deliver advisory.

But it might be at some point they choose the captain and the captain is going to be their team leader of the advisory.

And then they might choose a vice captain, that's the next person that can step up as well and join in with that captain or replace that captain when that captain's on holiday.

So I think it's really important to understand the different types of people you have to communicate with.

Because your clients are like the football players in the changing room, aren't they?

Because you're going to have, you're going to have a carpenter, maybe you might have a builder, you might have someone who delivers IT training, you might have a recruitment consultant, you might have, I don't know, an estate agent.

You could have a chartered surveyor.

And then you could have.

There's just a.

Well, any type of business, isn't there, you know, construction workers.

And everyone's got a different way of talking, of understanding, of, of receiving communication, of interpreting what you'll say, what you're telling them.

And so I think if you think of the football changer and different personalities with the different trades and different jobs, and I think of your clients and the different industries, different jobs, different backgrounds, they've all got.

There's a different way of talking to different people.

And having those communication skills can be really important, I think.

And that's probably my best analogy I can provide from the football, my world of football, which I could go on and on and on about.

But I'm not going to go about it, though, because.

Because you'll be, you'll be cussing me and saying, that's enough, man.

So, yeah, the other analogy I would use with anyone who, and I think I've shared this before, but anyone who's had some health issues, and they'll know they've gone for a scan and it might not be yourselves, it might be parents, it might, you know, whoever, but you'll know they've gone for scans, they've waited for results, and quite often you're told, yeah, we've had the results, but when we have our MDT meeting on Wednesday morning, you'll be one of the people, one of the patients we're discussing, and we'll be coming back to you Thursday or Friday with our plan of action, of treatment or what the next steps are.

And that, to me is also a great example of a team that collaborate and get together all of their wisdom and all the knowledge of the different consultants from the different areas, and they bring all their knowledge together and they discuss that one patient.

So if you look at that from a team of advisors working for an accountancy practice that have a meeting and they talk about the different clients that they're serving, they, they can then create a plan of how best to serve that client moving forward and the areas that they need the most support in.

Of course, that comes from talking with the clients.

The same as with the MDT team.

They would have spoken to the patient before to find out what the symptoms are, to find out what the issues are, what's hurting, where the pain is, and then they're then trying to solve the problem.

Well, isn't that exactly the same situation we're doing, but within the business environment?

You know, why is this?

The business owners come to us, our clients come to us, and they're, they're, they, they don't understand why they're leaking money.

They don't understand where it's disappearing to.

They don't understand why, you know, why they can't bring enough money in to be able to cover the bills.

And it's probably, it could be a pricing issue, it could be the fact that they're spending money they, they don't need.

To be spending.

There's lots of different areas that you would be looking at to solve that problem.

That's the same as someone who perhaps has an issue with their heart that they're all discussing how best to solve that problem.

Does it, does it involve surgery?

Does it involve, you know, a stent being put in or.

I'm trying to, trying to come up with medical knowledge now that I don't have.

But you kind of get, get the point I'm trying to make.

I just think if you look at it from those perspectives, it's very helpful to them.

Think you can see how that then relates to what you can create within your accounting business to create a fantastic advisory offer to put out to your clients.

And I think, yeah, it is about building a team.

It is about creating an environment where the team can collaborate and they can go away and provide a fantastic service to your clients.

Which is at the end of the day, isn't that what we want?

We want our clients to be successful.

The more successful our clients are, the more successful and long term sustainable our accountancy and advisory businesses are.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree.

Something else came to mind as well.

As you were saying about the team dynamics and collaborating, it's a shared knowledge as well.

So it's exposure to other people's experiences and strategies and suggestions.

So it has a growth aspect to the knowledge of the team collectively.

Yeah.

So you may have a junior member or maybe a bookkeeper that will learn more from the accountant and the accountant will learn what the bookkeepers come across.

So because it generally would be the bookkeeper that has a knowledge of when exactly in the month cash flow might be thin or if the client is paying debt payments or living off credit cards or not paying themselves enough each month.

But yeah, so it's a feed through of all the different insights into one pot where then it helps the client, the team grow in experience collectively.

So they grow and just get better and better.

So yeah, that's a huge advantage of having mixed skill set in a team.

Yeah, without doubt, without doubt.

And every element that your team can bring to the table is a skill.

And it's a very important element to the whole conversation that each member brings in.

And everyone.

Many people look at things from completely different angles, don't they?

But it doesn't mean they're wrong because they look at it from a different angle that perhaps I would look at it, but it actually means you're getting more, more out of the conversation because let's turn it on its back a little bit then.

And if any one person is delivering advisory to your clients, you're only getting one person's perspective.

So they're only seeing what they see.

It might be very valid, what they're seeing.

It probably is and it might be very helpful for the client.

But how long can that continue for when you're only seeing it through one particular lens?

Whereas if you've got a team of three or four or five or six, however many that team becomes over time, all those different ideas and different thoughts and picking up on different things and listening to what the client said, listening to what your team members saying and being able to say, actually, I don't see a corner like that.

I see it like this.

Why don't we put this to the.

You know, and then you'll get in all these different ideas and then you become a lot more creative with the advisory that you're providing for the clients.

And I think that, to me is.

Is.

Is really important because then the client is getting the best of everybody, not just the best of one person, you know.

And what happens when that one person goes on holiday?

What would you do?

Not.

Not serve that client this month because they're on holiday, They've.

They've got married, they're going on honeymoon, so they're going away for three weeks.

Great.

Great for them.

Fantastic.

No one's.

No one's ever going to knock anyone doing that, by the way.

But from the perspective of the business, what do we do now?

There's no one to deliver advisory because that's the.

That's the person who does the advisory, which is quite often a business owner.

So.

So we don't want that.

We.

We want the team.

We want the team to better deliver and the dynamics of the team are really key to that being successful.

So.

So it's.

Yeah, interesting, Interesting topic.

I have to be careful.

I don't run away and go back towards football because it's always on my mind, Deb.

You know, I can even see particular characters and players that I've worked with over the years in my mind, as I'm talking about some of these things, because they've obviously got the characteristics that are coming to mind.

Probably strong characters as well.

Yeah, well, isn't that funny, though, because that would happen in a team.

So as you're talking about one client in one particular industry, people would be thinking within that team, maybe about other instances in other industries where they'd come across a similar problem or it reminded them of an incident or an example.

And that's where you have a collective input of different industries, different experiences, different best practices.

So you can then help clients improve their best practice, maybe by borrowing a strategy that.

Not really prevalent in their own industry, but giving them a competitive advantage because you've picked it from somebody else that has experience in a different experience, past experience of helping clients in particular businesses.

So, yeah, so it works both ways, doesn't it?

So that's great analogy too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think the point of that as well is to get the best out of that.

Is the team leader of how they facilitate the collaborative meeting, if that's what we're calling it, where they're discussing the different clients that they're offering advisory to in a MDT meeting kind of environment is how I'm envisaging it, is how they facilitate that.

So that when there are the people in the group that are the kind of outspoken or forward, forward, more confident or seemingly more confident, will.

Will push their opinion quite strongly, is then getting the.

The quieter people in the room and.

And enabling them to feel confident enough to speak up.

Because I think that's a underestimated skill as well.

You know what?

Going back to football, which I knew I was going to end up doing, there are people that you would tell straight.

Look them in the eye and tell them straight.

I don't want you to do that again.

I want you to do this, this and this.

Because that's the way they will take the message on board.

They don't have any grudges if you shout at them because they just.

That's how they are.

It's no problem.

After the game, you all have a drink.

There's other people where you can't do that with.

And you actually perhaps take them to the side, put your arm around them, give them a bit of a cuddle and tell them, tell them how.

How well they're doing and what you think they could be doing better.

So there's a different way of delivering the message, but the end result, hopefully is the same because you're understanding the personalities.

So facilitating that advisory session for me, the collaborative team advisory sessions I'm talking about, I think that's key.

And of course it goes into them when you are discussing things with your clients, because your client might not just be one person, it might be three or four people that run the business.

And again, you're.

And so you're up against the same dynamic sometimes.

And trying to include everyone is.

Is an important skill.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

I knew I'd get back to football.

Somehow.

Anyway, I'll stop talking about it.

So.

So, Dev, is there anything else we need to add to that?

No, I think we've pretty much covered.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a good episode, a good chat.

Yeah, there's a, there's a lot to unpack in that.

There's a lot to unpack.

We do touch on some of this in our book and we do go deeper on some of those topics about the team, certainly a collaborative team.

So if you want to learn more and you want to go deeper in these topics, just go to advisoryteams.co.uk and request your free download of our book, Advisory Teams.

So we would welcome you to do that.

And then as we, as we come to the end of this episode, I just want to end it with a question to the accounting and bookkeeping practice owners out there.

You know, when you do think about recruiting next, ask yourself, are you building an advisory team or a compliance team?

Before you even think about putting out your, you know, your, what's the word when you want to, to hire someone?

I can't think what it's called now when you put an advert out to hire someone, just think about, you know, are you recruiting for building an advisory team or compliance team?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thanks for joining us once again.

See you soon.

See you next time.

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.