Humanise The Numbers - for ambitious accountants in practice

It's not every day you get to interview an accountant who's also a retailer and a podcaster, and in this discussion with Andrew Van De Beek from Australia – Andrew runs a twenty-person accountancy business in Victoria – the discussion turns almost into a philosophical debate, but with real, practical outcomes.

Andrew is committed to the concept of the business of relationships, with a core focus, a core purpose, around building businesses and helping owner-managed business leaders build organisations that stand the test of time. 

We spent time talking about process and people. We spent a bit of time talking about purpose and profitability as well. But it was the depth of the conversation, the detail of the insight, that stood out for me. 

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking to Andrew. I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I did. 

Go to your favourite podcast platform or go to humanisethenumbers.online and seek out the podcast with Andrew Van de Beek.

Please scroll down the podcast’s episode page for the contact information for Andrew and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in the podcast.

When someone says to me that the numbers are the outputs, and it's the team, it's the humans, that are the inputs, you can imagine I'm all ears. 

In this podcast discussion with Nicky Clough of Insight Training, you'll hear Nicky unpack and expand on those thoughts. Yes, accountants are obsessed with the numbers, quite rightly so, because that's their area of expertise, but maybe we should also be obsessed with the humans in our firms, the people, and what we do to build their knowledge and skills. 

Nicky talks about the importance of building self-awareness as, when there's a higher degree of self-awareness, there's the willingness, the motivation, the ability, even, to build knowledge and skill.

I hope you get something of real value from this discussion with Nicky Clough – I certainly did. And you can get the full podcast at humanisethenumbers.online or you can go to your favourite podcast platform and seek out Humanise The Numbers and Nicky Clough.

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Nicky and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

If your firm is making good use of technology, and embracing new technology as well, if you are building the knowledge and skill of your team and building deeper relationships with your clients, you'll know that you’re on track for the ambitious future you have in mind for your firm, your team and your clients. 

In this podcast with Nicki Savill of Moore Kingston Smith, Nicki spends a good deal of time talking about how to build deeper relationships with clients and how to build a stronger sense of human connection across the team as, ultimately, it is the team's knowledge and skills that deliver for your clients. 

It's a powerful discussion. Nicki's very open and candid about what they do and how they do it, as well as about the metrics they use around face-to-face meetings, face-to-face interactions with the team – these are far more human than when using Teams or Zoom.

You'll hear Nicki describe how important, how impactful, those handshake, face-to-face discussions are with both team and clients. I hope you enjoy this discussion with Nicki as much as I did. The time absolutely flew by and I think you'll get something of significant value from the insights that Nicki shares. 

You can get the full podcast at humanisethenumbers.online, or you can go to your favourite podcast platform and seek out Humanise The Numbers and Nicki Savill.

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Nicki and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

Sometimes the work we do is a real privilege, especially when we are able to have a deep discussion about what it means to humanise the numbers with someone who's qualified as a chartered accountant, has loved his time in practice, put his hands up for everything he could possibly put his hand up for, but who moved on (because he didn't like the geography) into Sage to do a tech support role, then into sales with Wolters Kluwer, ending up as Managing Director of UK and Ireland.

That person is Neil Parsons.

In this podcast, we discuss the relevance of the right numbers for the right person in the context of the strategic key results of the business. And building those bridges and ensuring that there's a metronomic cadence to communicating the right numbers to the right people in the right way is as relevant to clients as it is to team members. 

And that's what struck me in this podcast – everything we talked about was as relevant to clients as it was to team members. I hope you find this podcast discussion with Neil as valuable, informative and insightful as I did. 

Please scroll down the episode page for this humanise the numbers podcast for the contact information for Neil and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in the podcast.

You’d probably agree that, if you get to a place where you have a strong collaborative relationship with a client and you're doing what you can to educate them and to protect the best interests of their business, you're going to be building a deep relationship, a loyal, long-standing relationship, with that particular client.

And it was those three factors – collaboration, education and protection – that stood out as the valuable elements of this discussion with Mike Dean of Whisper Claims, as he talks about R&D Tax, something I wasn’t expecting would show up on the Humanise the Numbers podcast. 

But Mike talks a lot of sense with regard to collaboration, protection and education in the R&D Tax space, a sector in which there is a high degree of uncertainty and, maybe, a sense of wariness, because of what's taken place in recent times. 

If you’ve got clients who are wondering about or who are interested in R&D Tax, but you’re nervous about it, why not check out this humanisethenumbers.online podcast.

Go to your favourite podcast platform and seek out Humanise The Numbers and Mike Dean, and I’m sure you'll get some valuable insights from the discussion. 

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Mike and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

Have you ever wondered how you can build greater capacity into your firm so that you free up your people to do more of the higher-value work? 

In this podcast discussion with Dave and Andy from FD Intelligence, we unpack the value, the power, the simplicity, arguably, of introducing robot process automation into your firm in a deeper way. If you're not already working with it, you should take this deadly seriously. 

I think this is a profoundly valuable discussion with both Dave and Andy because of the time freedom that it can potentially bring to every accountancy firm – time freedom that enables people to think, enables people to deliver greater customer care and, as a result, builds a greater, more valuable firm. I hope you enjoy and value this discussion as much as I did. 

Please go to www.humanisethenumbers.online or go to your favourite podcast platform and look out for the podcast with Dave Clough and Andy Guy. 

Scroll down this podcast’s episode page for the contact information for Dave and Andy and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

Do you know that feeling you get when you meet someone who's excited about, and who clearly loves, what they're doing, someone who is completely engaged as a leader in running their accounting firm? That joy and enthusiasm is infectious! 

In this podcast discussion with Jessica Pillow of Pillow May Accountancy, you'll hopefully experience what I did when talking with Jessica – a sense that she loves what she's doing and loves how her firm works, delivering exactly what she wants from leading and running an accountancy business. 

Now don't get me wrong – Jessica shares some really powerful insights around KPIs, around core purpose and around how that core purpose works for her clients, her team and herself in a deep way. 

There's something of real value in this podcast discussion. But as much as anything, I hope you get what I got, which was a sense of joy and excitement in talking with someone who loves what they're doing, on a daily basis. 

I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I certainly did. You can find it at humanisethenumbers.online, or you can go to your favourite podcast platform and look out for Jessica Pillow. 

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Jessica and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

How do you take the customer’s viewpoint of your accounting firm’s service offering from a 'would-like' to a 'must-have' perspective, as when you get to 'must-have' they're more likely to buy more and to pay more because the perceived value is potentially higher? 

We welcome on this podcast discussion Vangelis Kyriazis, the co-founder and CEO of Syft, builders of a KPI reporting product, now with 150,000 business customers worldwide and working through 3,000 accountancy firms. 

Vangelis is a chartered accountant who's unpacked what it takes to hold essentially two conversations, the operational conversation about the operations of your client's business and the financial services conversation. Not operations OR finance, but both, because when you do, you build a deeper relationship. Build a deeper relationship and your clients stay loyal for longer, they buy more from you, they recommend you more and are probably more open to higher prices as well. 

Please join me on this podcast discussion at humanisethenumbers.online or at your favourite podcast platform and see how Vangelis can influence your thinking the way he's influenced mine when it comes to deep operational conversations and financial conversations that build those deeper relationships. 

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Vangelis and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

The key question – how do you and your firm make a difference? – makes a difference in the conversations you have with your current team members when it comes to connecting them up with the real meaning behind what you're doing. 

Making a difference and communicating that will also help you connect with potential future employees so that they're more likely to join your firm rather than another, ultimately making a difference to the business owner clients that you currently work with, as well as to future prospective clients. 

If these future prospective clients are able to see that you can really make a difference to them and their business, they’re more likely, obviously, to want to work with you and your firm. 

In this podcast with Mark Walker of VFD Pro, Mark unpacks his experience as a senior financial professional, including his time as a board-level finance officer at Carnival Cruises and his work with The Co-Op, as well as with a number of SMEs.  He has built a product, a tool, that's shown him, his client accountancy firms and their clients how they can make a difference by better connecting. Yes, there is a conversation around the future of their business, and yes, around the finances, but also around the whole business, so that there's a stronger relationship. 

That's why I think this podcast discussion is so important. I hope you'll take time out to go to humanisethenumbers.online or to your favourite podcast platform to find this podcast with Mark Walker. I’m sure you’ll find it really valuable. 

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Mark and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.

If you or a loved one is unfortunate enough to need a medical or surgical procedure, chances are you'd prefer, for example, to have a kidney transplant specialist, if you needed a kidney transplant, rather than consulting with a general practitioner or even a general surgeon. 

On this podcast, Reza Hooda talks about the fact that your business clients would prefer to work with a specialist in their field, their market, their sector, rather than with a generalist. But Reza also makes the point that, ultimately, your business owner clients would much prefer to work with someone who knows them personally in a deep way. The marketers would call it Segment Size One – there's only one person, one business owner, in that segment. 

As Reza points out, your job as an accountant in a meeting with your clients is to help them see their business in a light that removes some of their concerns, worries and fears about its future, which is why I think this wide-ranging discussion with Reza is such a valuable podcast. 

I hope you'll take time out to go to humanisethenumbers.online or to your favourite podcast platform and check out this discussion with Reza Hooda. 

Please scroll down this episode page for the contact information for Reza and for the additional, downloadable resources mentioned in this podcast.