Most accounting practices don’t struggle because they lack knowledge.

They struggle because everything still depends on them.

In this episode, we talk about the shift from compliance to advisory, and why it’s not about adding more services, it’s about changing how your business is designed.

We share the story behind APX, how it started, what we were both seeing in practice, and why we knew there had to be a better way to deliver advisory without the business owner becoming the bottleneck.

This conversation is about building something that works without you being in the middle of everything.

We talk about systems, structure, and what it really takes to move from doing the work yourself to leading a team that can deliver it consistently.

Deb shares her journey from bookkeeping into advisory, and the realisation that clients don’t just need answers, they need understanding. That’s what led to creating training, resources, and ultimately her book, How to Build a Financially Healthy Business.

Tim brings his experience of trying to implement advisory at scale, and where things break when there’s no clear framework behind it.

What this episode comes back to is simple:

Advisory doesn’t scale on effort. It scales on design.

If you’re feeling stretched, if advisory still sits with you, or if you know there’s more potential in your practice but you can’t quite unlock it, this will help you see where the shift needs to happen.

We also share how you can access the Advisory Teams resources, including the book and assessment, if you want to explore this further.

Takeaways

• Advisory isn’t about doing more, it’s about designing your business differently

• If everything depends on you, it’s not scalable

• Systems and structure are what make advisory consistent

• Your team needs to be able to deliver without you

• Clients need education, not just answers

• Growth comes from letting go, not holding on

If you want to explore the Advisory Teams resources, you can start here:

advisoryteams.co.uk

Mentioned in this episode:

Business Course Library

APX Advert

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.

Hey, Deb, how are you today?

I'm good, thanks, Tim.

How are you?

Yeah, pretty good, Pretty good.

Ready for another enjoyable conversation?

Because today we're going to talk about what APX is, why we created apx and why we're sat here in the APX studio, and because the last two or the first two episodes of our podcast series, Advisory Conversations, we've talked about our personal journeys, our careers up to a point.

And so now we want to kind of explain how APX was born, what, what we're trying to achieve and why we're working together.

So I think we need to just go back a little bit further to continue where we left off the last episode there.

Because what we didn't talk.

There was a couple of things we didn't talk about because we stopped deliberately at that point.

But I want to ask you about your book and your program that you created when you were still running the accounts leaders.

So if you want to explain a little bit about that and how that came about and what, what you use that for, and then we can continue the conversation from there into apx.

How do you feel about that?

Yeah, sure, no problem.

So, okay, so my book, how did that come about?

It's called how to Build a Financially Healthy Business.

But when I was running the accounts ladies, I mentioned before that I'd swapped the bookkeeping for really taking on the advisory.

So I had a team.

There was eight of us at the highest level.

Accountants, bookkeepers, business financial coaches.

But I found that before I had reached out to the, to the business financial coach to collaborate, I found that I'd swapped bookkeeping for advisory and it was just all landing in my lap.

But what I really wanted to be doing was still selling marketing on onboarding clients and running the business.

So I reached out to another business financial coach and we agreed that she would take on the, the advisory clients.

So that worked great.

It was fantastic.

But it also taught me that I didn't, didn't have to land with the one person, the business owner.

So I realized though, that also just with the one person handing it over, she's going to reach capacity.

So I needed to have a uniform structure that all the team could follow so that if one of them dropped off or couldn't attend a meeting with a client, somebody else could quickly pick it back up because they knew exactly where in the process they were.

So that's when I started building an online program of the one to one coaching that we'd been delivering.

So, and it, I realized as I was, as I was doing that actually what I would like to do eventually would be to turn it into one to many, which would be to business owners because even at a team level it would still get to capacity at some level.

All right, so, but I was, that was, that was going to be further down the line.

So when I sold my accountancy practice, no longer had a team.

I thought now's the time to turn that program into the program direct to business owners and maybe I could run it as a group program.

But then I had to change all the language because I can't use accountancy jargon with business owners.

So as I was redoing it and redeveloping it into non jargon language and easy to understand frameworks, I realized it was a book.

So I, it was easier for me to brain dump and work on a book.

And then I had it all laid out and then I can actually then turn that from that point into an online program.

So that became how to build a financially healthy business.

And it was while I was developing it into an online program that you and I had a conversation, didn't we, about what I was doing, why I was doing it, and we talked about my previous experience working in a training company.

So you nabbed me to, to create the UK version of the certification program for the membership that we were, that we were in.

And that's when me and you really did work closely together.

Even though we worked together over the previous three years, it was really in the, in the summer of last year that we worked really, really closely on this university.

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

At that stage, I then kind of thought there was something else that I'd always wanted to build and that was a resource for accountants and bookkeepers that they could give directly to their clients as an education resource.

Because I'd always joked every time I got asked a repeated question, like what happens if I hit the rat threshold?

Or I'm about to employ somebody?

What are my responsibilities?

Or how do I read these financial statements?

Etc, I used to joke that I needed a parrot in my shoulder to answer the questions.

So because the, the answer just came out exactly the same over and over and over, I mean 17 years in total of answering the same questions.

So I thought I'd could have done with a resource to separate our education from advisory because education we do for free.

But it's very difficult then to charge a fee for advisory because your clients don't really understand the difference and they're used to just you being the service desk, if you like, of when they've got a question, they pick up the phone or they send you an email, you answer for free.

But then when you want to transition into bespoke and advisory services, it's quite difficult for them to separate that in their own mind.

So I built the business course library.

So the business course library is a non video led.

So it's not a video LED with my face over the screen.

It's an interactive series of courses, very short courses.

So that leaves the accountant and bookkeeper or practice owner still as the advisor and as the port, you know, the person of the face, you know, the face of the product.

But they can send links or the landing page, the website to the clients where it's got a whole library of answers to their questions really.

And that then will allow them to separate out the education, which is free to the one to one answering questions or giving advisory services as a fee.

So, so yeah, so that's, that's what I was working on.

So that kind of brings us a little bit up to date but not really explains what happened next.

Tim?

Yeah, it's not quite the whole story but it's, it's interesting and I love the, you know, we, if you can see on the, on the screen there, we've got the logo for APX in the top left hand corner there and there's a parrot sat boldly across the X.

Because it really resonated with me as soon as you started talking about the parrot on your shoulder and why you bought the business course library.

It, it was such a, it took me back to my, especially my early days in the accountancy practice where yeah, every client used to ask the same question, you know, and it would be a repetitive answer constantly and it'd be a phone call or it'd be a, someone would pop into the office.

Because a lot of my clients were local when I first started up.

And yeah, so it really resonated as soon as you came up with that concept and you, you, you showed me what you've done, it was just like, oh yeah, wow, this is amazing because it will help so many accounting professionals with their business if they choose to because it takes away that time, it frees your time up if, if your clients have got somewhere they can access and find out the relevant answers and learn, you know, learn from a really valuable resource that provides education in simple terms that non financial people can understand.

And I think that's the, a really key element.

I think it helps massively.

So, so yeah, I, I love that.

And obviously, you know, we've known each other for a long time now, Deb.

I think we, we worked together for three years and when you became the first member from the previous membership that I ran and own the license to, up until, you know, a year ago, like you said, the last year we've worked together because you helped build, or you were actually the person who built the online training platform that we developed in there, which was a, a really, really proud piece of work because we made that specific to the UK market, didn't we?

And obviously then when that, when that license came to an end after four years, it was kind of like what, what, you know, what we do now, what's next?

And so we, we sort of, because we've been working together, we just kept having conversations, didn't we?

And you know, we were always, you know, you're always joining me on, on different calls etc and we stay on after and hold conversations and discuss different things, ideas.

And then, and then as we developed sort of deeper conversations about how, how the industry needs help and support with all the changes that come in, you know, with AI, with automation making the, the compliance aspect of the accounting rewards easier to, to, to provide, I would suggest in fact much easier if, if you use the tools in the right way.

We're thinking, well, everyone's got, should have freer time.

But then we, we came back to the same old problem that, that I had uncovered over the last four years of running this membership.

The number of accountants and bookkeepers I spoke to that were either nervous of delivering or setting up an advisory offer or had started to do it, but then quickly found that they were then creating their own problem because everything was back on their, onto them.

It was all landing in their lap again.

And, and so we were kind of identifying that there's this problem that the professionals have got because they got the capability, they got knowledge, they got the experience to deliver advisories to their clients.

You Know, at a great, a great offer, but they didn't have the time.

And so it was like, so how do we solve this problem?

And that, that leads me back to.

So we go back to you again, Naida, because that leads me back to what you did in your business with your team.

Because that is a key element of, of the structure of a business being key to be able to free up the business owner, isn't it?

And I think that's.

That, that's a major factor in the thinking of, of how we sort of coordinated our ideas.

And it just came together so naturally because we were already having the conversations about what you've done in your business and, and what was happening, you know, in the world that we were in at that time and to where we can develop that and move forward from.

So, so, yeah, but we, but we didn't just, we didn't just jump in and say, right, we're going to do this, this, and this.

We actually strategically thought about whether we were the right fit to work together, even though we had that relationship of working together previously.

And so we went down quite a few strategies, didn't we, to work out if we're the right fit.

And.

Yeah.

Would you want to share some of those strategies we went through?

Yeah, sure.

So first of all, we started off with values, didn't we?

To make sure that we had the same values.

We looked at the outcomes that we wanted to deliver for our clients.

We looked at our own personal end game for the business and how we wanted to work and how maybe responsibilities would work within that.

We looked at the style of delivery that we wanted to our clients to experience with us.

We looked at a good, fun exercise, was looking back at our journeys and doing a skills analysis.

Do you remember that one where we actually looked.

Started from day one and looked at what skills we'd picked up from.

Yeah, wasn't it?

Yeah.

Do you want me to share how many years work experience we worked out we have collectively?

It was 81 years.

I don't know if that scares me or not.

It sounds such a big number, but it's also a wealth of experience, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I particularly enjoyed that one because everybody gets imposter syndrome at any level.

But that is a critical exercise to do.

When you look back, you start from day one in your career and what skills.

What your, your Responsibilities were the training that you picked up, the skills that you, that you honed and the promotions that you took on, the team members that you, that, that you enabled.

And once you look back and you start cataloguing these, imposter syndrome is.

It gets defeated because you realize, actually you are very well placed to be in the position that you're in and help others.

And everybody's got a unique story.

So I found it absolutely fascinating to listen to your story, Tim.

And we went through that in our first episode, didn't we?

Sort of like 1.9 billion.

Yeah.

Budget.

That still blows my mind.

Yeah, that's.

There's a lot of naughts.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I wouldn't like to do the bookkeeping for that one.

So.

Yeah, so I thought that was a, that was a really good exercise.

But yeah, we, we had all these strategies that we went through.

Took us about two weeks, I think, in the end, didn't it, to go through, to make sure that this is, this is what we want to do long term, you know, because we're in it for the long haul.

It's not just a case of, you know, you'll do a course for a number of months and then we let you go.

It's.

It's an ongoing, ongoing support network and subscription to everything that I've built.

All my catalog of courses, lots of things that we've developed together.

So, you know.

Yeah.

And yeah, I'm really looking forward to the future.

Really.

Yeah.

It's exciting times, isn't it?

And this being able to provide a solution to an ongoing problem within the industry that we have seen, that we, that we have.

Well, I, for one, was definitely a bottleneck in my own business, hence why I took the option to sell the compliance side when I did so that I could focus on advisory.

Because I, like I've shared before, my energy levels were so much higher doing and so low doing the compliance that it made sense for me to make that decision for other people.

It would, it would make sense to have the compliance taken care of and be able to free yourself up to deliver advisory.

But then that only takes you so far.

And this is why we've, we've staged what we do within the, the training that we offer.

Because the key part, the key aspect of this is that the people in your team can be trained up and anybody can be trained, can't they?

We had this conversation before and I think you, you, you reminded me that we came from.

We keep talking about our ages on this but you reminded me that we came from a different era, didn't you?

You know, in that era where you were trained to be promoted down the line.

Yeah.

I mean, in the companies that we worked for, they didn't recruit from outside.

Everybody was.

You had a progression, you had a career ladder within the company you joined and you were trained for the next level up.

So we both come from that, from that era, from that environment.

So we know that it.

You can be trained.

And it's an, it's a combination of the training and then given the experience, exposure to experience, and then the doing that gives you the confidence.

So, I mean, a prime example of this was my team and the accounts ladies delivered advisory.

And the youngest was 23.

And probably lots of people know Nick Lonsdale.

She joined the accounts ladies and she was a fantastic member of our team.

I trained her on the strategies that I needed her to take the clients through, and she delivered the advisory and the strategies she's now.

So she took on some of our clients when I sold the client, when I sell the client base to the team.

And she has her own firm, gingerbox, and she won AAT Practice of the year.

And she's delivering advisory services at the age.

I think she's 24, 25 now, but very, very successfully.

She's going from strength to strength.

But that starts with experience or starts with training, exposure to experience and then doing yourself.

And then the confidence comes.

Yeah, and anyone.

It's the same with anything you do.

You only gain experience by doing.

And if, and if you're not prepared to allow someone to, to, to.

To make mistakes.

Because let's be honest, you know, people will make mistakes.

It's natural.

And that's how we learn.

We might be in a conversation with a client and we don't perhaps give the full answer that we've thought about after, you know, we've gone away, reflected on it and thought, I could have answered that so much better.

Probably the easiest way to explain it is when you have an argument with someone and you think about the point you should have made during the argument, but because emotions are running high, you don't necessarily say the right things and, you know, but you think about it later.

It's probably the best way to explain it, isn't it?

Yeah, but obviously we don't, we don't recommend you argue with your clients.

You know, that's not what we're saying.

But evaluation.

Yeah,.

But, but you, you understand, the point I'm trying to make is, is unless we're able to express ourselves, we are unable to grow and develop.

And so I think a key part of running a business, running an accounting professional business, a bookkeeping business, a coaching business, consultancy business, is, is that you, if you have a team, you enable them to learn.

You.

You allow them to grow, you allow them the opportunity to make mistakes, because they will learn from those mistakes.

And if you're there for them to come to as a mentor, as a leader should be, then they can come to you and say, do you know what?

I had this conversation.

I got asked this question.

I wasn't quite sure.

I don't think I answered it in the right way.

Then you can give them your advice because you're the one with probably the higher experience.

So you help them, you give them advice, and then next time they go.

Or they can go back to that client and say, can we revisit that question?

You know, I've gone away, thought about it, and I've got a better answer for you now, and there's no harm in that.

And I think the client in itself would probably love that approach because they're actually gone away thinking, oh, I didn't really get an answer to that.

I'm not sure whether I should ask again.

And then you're going back and saying, I've had to think about it, but that only happens from being allowed to grow.

And I think it's, you know, Deb, you know me, I'm a. I'm a. I'm a football coach outside of this, a football manager of teams and stuff.

And, and it's the same.

You allow players to go out on the pitch and express themselves and make mistakes so that they learn.

It's a similar approach to business, isn't it?

So I love thinking about things in that way.

So we got together, we've put our heads together.

We decided that we were aligned to work together, even though we thought we were.

We went through the process, the right process to follow.

And then since then, we've.

We've kind of made, well, quite fast progress, really, haven't we, on what we've done?

But we've built out.

We've built out, like you've alluded to, training programs, which we're going to share more of more about in our next episode.

And, and this kind of theme that we followed and the process that we've chosen.

But between all that, we also put our heads together to write the book, didn't we?

Advisory teams, which is really exciting.

You've.

You've already written, written financially healthy business and you've written a couple of other books as well.

So for me, this is, this is my first book.

I'm very proud to be a co author with you and it's exciting times because it is, it's allowed us to take our knowledge and our experience and put it into words to hopefully help, you know, people running their accountancy and bookkeeping businesses, to help them move their business forward and remove themselves from being that bottleneck.

Because when you're the bottleneck in a business, it's a very stressful place to be.

It really, it really can be quite painful because you're, you feel like everything is on you.

You feel like every decision that has to be made has to be made by you.

And unless you can start to empower and enable your team to, to be able to make decisions, but I have conversations with clients, unfortunately, you're never going to be able to move away from that as you take home, if you, especially if you're growing or taking on more businesses, you can only scale so far and then you hit that ceiling and, you know, there's only one way to break through the ceiling and that's to give yourself the freedom to break through the ceiling by allowing your team to take on more responsibility.

And, you know, and, you know, reading the book is a good first step into that.

So, yeah, should we share where you can read that book too?

So, yeah, it's a free download.

So, yeah, head over to www.advisoryteams.co.uk download your free copy.

There's an assessment on there as well, isn't there, Tim, that you can take?

It'll give you some insights into the stage that you're at.

Maybe.

And there's also a waiting list to find out more about our upcoming programs.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, fantastic.

So, yeah, grab yourself the book.

You know, it's on Amazon.

You, you can go to Amazon and buy it.

But why would you do that when you can get a free download through us directly?

So, so, yeah, we would definitely encourage you to go to the website advisoryteams.co.uk and download.

It's a free download.

You get a nice PDF download, you can read it in your own time and if it resonates with you, then, yeah, by all means, take the assessment.

I think it's 10 questions to answer.

It's not rocket science.

You can, you can go through that probably two, two, three minutes and you would have answered everything you need to answer and you'll get a nice detailed report at the end giving you some advice on what next steps you can take.

And then coming up soon, we will be doing some.

We will be doing a webinar that we would love to invite you all along to to come and see, you know, more about what we're about, what APX is going to be providing and how we're going to help solve the problem that is you know, of not being a bottleneck in your own business offering advisory.

So yeah, excellent.

Thanks very much for joining us again today.

Great.

Look forward to the next episode.

Should we tell people to stay to the end after the credits?

We could do.

Yeah, just a hint there.

Up to you.

We'll leave it up to you.

Hope we keep curiosity.

You might just see how we have fun when we're working in the background.

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.

Okay, ready?

Hi, welcome to our website.

I'm Deb.

And I'm Tim.

And if you're still offering, if you're advisory, Maybe you should, you should do it all.

And I, I'll say at the bottom you're finally.

I got.

I can't even say the topic I'm getting.

My teeth aren't here.

If you offer advisor in you still be like.

Exactly.

If you offer advisor and it's just relies on you.

Oh dear.

You could do it, Deb.

You could do it.

Go on then.

Right, ready?

Let's go.

Hi, welcome to our website.

I'm Deb.

And I'm Tim.