Hetty Verney is The Conscious Accountant - a financial mentor who has spent nearly 30 years helping business owners understand their numbers and make them work properly. She began her career as a single mum building a practice around 3 children, determined to provide for them without missing the nativity plays and the football matches. That early pressure shaped how she works today: practical, honest, and focused on building a business that actually pays you.
What makes Hetty different is that she doesn't stop at the spreadsheet. Alongside her accountancy work, she uses cognitive rewiring to get underneath the patterns that quietly shape financial decisions - the undercharging, the avoidance, the confidence to change our identities, the overworking, the second-guessing. Her view is simple: the numbers tell a story, but your patterns shape the outcome. So she brings the two together, helping established entrepreneurs read what their numbers are really saying while clearing the hidden blocks affecting how they earn, price, lead, and grow.
Over the years she's helped business owners go from start-up to seven and eight figures, supported some through selling their businesses, and mentored young entrepreneurs through The King's Trust. Above all, she's passionate about helping people become consistently profitable - so they can build the life they want, on their terms, and sleep better at night knowing their figures are under control but by clearing those underlying patterns that hold us all back.
In this episode of Advisory Conversations, we explore one of the biggest shifts accountants and bookkeepers face when moving from compliance into advisory, the shift in identity.
Because becoming an advisor is not just about learning new skills. It’s about thinking differently, showing up differently, and often challenging the beliefs that have kept you playing small.
We’re joined by Hetty Verney, an accountant with over 30 years of experience and founder of the belief coding approach at hvassociates.co.uk. Hetty shares her journey from traditional practice work into helping business owners and accountants uncover the subconscious beliefs that shape their decisions, behaviours, and confidence.
Together, we unpack how those hidden beliefs can affect everything from pricing and client conversations to leadership and growth.
This conversation goes deeper than strategy.
We talk about why so many accountants struggle to fully step into advisory, not because they lack the knowledge, but because their internal beliefs still keep them tied to old roles, old habits, and old ways of thinking.
Hetty explains how belief coding can help identify and remove those blocks, creating more confidence, clarity, and momentum — both for accountants and for the clients they support.
Because the move from technician to advisor isn’t just operational.
It’s personal.
And if you want to build an advisory practice that grows beyond you, it starts with changing the way you see yourself first.
In this episode we cover:
• Why the move from compliance to advisory is an identity shift
• How limiting beliefs can affect pricing, confidence, and client relationships
• What belief coding is and how it works
• Why accountants often know what to do but still don’t do it
• How to create stronger advisory conversations by understanding behaviour first
• The role self-awareness plays in leadership and team growth
Links mentioned in this episode:
hvassociates.co.uk
apxtraining.co.uk
Mentioned in this episode:
APX Advert
Business Course Library
