What does leading your ambitious accounting firm with purpose actually entail? In this podcast with Steve Price of BWP Inspire, Steve shares how they arrived at their core purpose, as well as how they've rolled it out and how they lead with purpose in their firm. He covers a number of thought-provoking subjects in the podcast, including how they totally revamped their annual accounts meeting system to make sure that they covered purpose-related questions, ensuring that they were really ...

Think about the traditional route most accountants follow before going into practice. In this podcast, I explore the route taken by Caroline Carter, of Carter Clear Accounting. You'll find Caroline's route anything but traditional. From having mental health challenges in the house, to a teenage pregnancy, to running a pub – a busy pub – at age 23, Caroline's background is rich and varied, and all of this has served to inform how she runs her successful accounting firm. In th...

How do you get your clients to take monthly information from you, and not only to take that monthly information, but to sit down with you and go through it so that they can fully understand their numbers? In this podcast with Noel Guilford of Guilford Accounting, Noel talks us through how his onboarding process makes sure that only potential clients who value that type of service get through the net, get over the threshold, and become a client of Guilford Accounting. In this conve...

When you have a background in the big four accounting firms, a background in design thinking and a background with a deep desire to be curious and ask lots of great questions... …how does that all come together when you set up a firm later in life with your son? In this wide-ranging conversation with Alasdair McGill, of Ashton McGill, we cover a lot of ground. We discuss the education system and how it often seems to stifle our natural curiosity and diminish our abilit...

When your background is in the corporate world and in the world of startups, how do you harness that experience when it comes to trying to sell a product to accountants that you know that they want, while sometimes dealing with resistance from the accountants themselves? If all of that sounds a curious mix, please join me and Miranda Kendall of Spotlight Reporting on this podcast, where you'll find out the answer to this question and more. Miranda talks very passionately about why...

How many firms do you know that have a Chief Impact Officer? Yep, me neither. So, you may want to join this podcast with myself and Graeme Tennick, of Tennick Accountants, as Graeme talks about his role and about how and why it came into being. There are a number of standout moments in this podcast, not least when Graeme describes how to have the team really working with purpose, with real meaning in their work, all the time. So please join us on the podcast, either via your usual...

What's it like to start an accounting firm with £200, to grow it quickly over a period of five years, and then to decide to exit? And from the start of that exit conversation to completion, for it to take only 25 days? We'll cover all of that and a lot more in this podcast with Laura Taylor from Bright Flamingo. Laura shares how that journey affected her, and she also reveals some secrets along the way that could help you in your own accounting firm. If you want to hear more, join...

A pressing question that every firm, every leader, every manager, should ask themselves is: how do you build long-standing trust with your clients and with your team? In this podcast with Elinor Perry of Pentlands, you'll hear Elinor unpack 20 years of experience of running her firm – from when she bought in to the business to the garden party with 130 customers on a lawn wishing her every success for the next stage of Pentlands. How do you build that level of trust? Elinor ...

How must it feel to found and to grow, over a period of almost 40 years, a busy, vibrant firm, from humble beginnings to over a hundred people? In this podcast with Alan Farrelly of UHY Farrelly Dawe White, based in Ireland, you'll find out how it felt to contend with all of the advances in technology and the other changes that we've seen over the generations, to the point where Alan is thinking of planning for exit. How does that all feel, that journey? You'll find the answers to...

There is a thing that’s been talked about in the profession for decades, something which has never really got traction in every firm in a leveraged way. It works in some firms in a small way and in a very few firms in a big way. It’s that thing called 'Advisory'. How you move your firm from compliance services to advisory services is an ongoing, almost endless question. And yet, it's normal, it's natural, to have conversations – human being to human being, individual to individual – and...

When you're trying to unlock the potential that you know exists within your team, within your client bank, within your firm as a whole, it can feel frustrating that you just can't seem to get to it, you can't unlock it. In this podcast discussion with Russell Watkins, who's spent 30 years in the lean, process improvement space working with manufacturing and other businesses, we tap into a potential key for you, your team, your firm, to truly get to the levels of performance you believe ...

We know that recruiting great people and keeping them is a huge challenge for your accounting firm, so how do you stand out from the crowd? In this podcast with Sherelyn Cowles, Chief Business Development Officer at Gooding Accounts, we discuss how to build a great culture by identifying and articulating your core purpose and values, and by being very clear about how everyone is expected to behave. We also talk about the importance of ensuring your values, vision, and core purpose...

What does a succession plan look and feel like from the perspective of those that are buying in? And once you’ve got that buy-in, how do you actually manage the expectations of your team and your clients, all while finding out yourself what it's like to be a leader? And when you're up and running, how do you rise above the sea of sameness? You’ll find out the answer to these questions and more in this podcast with Stuart Clark of Russell & Russell Business Advisors in Gl...

If there's a phrase that encapsulates the content of this podcast discussion with Mark Allen, it would be 'applied wisdom'. We tap into Mark's several decades of working within the profession, first as a board director of PLCs, then transitioning into a practice leader, starting up and successfully selling a three-office firm, and finally moving into working with networks for accountants across the UK. Mark is a bit of a hero of mine, overcoming serious health challenges to contin...

In the second part of this 2-part podcast discussion with Stephan Meier, world-renowned author of The Employee Advantage, you'll be able to hear Stephan unpack a large number of insights, ideas and strategies that could ultimately deliver a competitive advantage to you and your firm. So please join Douglas, my colleague, Stephan and I on the second part of this podcast at humanisethenumbers.online.

You'd probably like to get your hands on a competitive advantage that would lead to the future financial success of your firm, one that would enhance, or even transform, the results you're currently achieving. Where do you go looking for that advantage? Once upon a time in the world of work, it was all about a product advantage or, in the accountancy space, a service level advantage. But at the end of the day, an audit service from one firm is not dissimilar to an audit service from another. ...

Chances are that the vast majority of the people in your firm want to do a good job, whatever their role – accounts, bookkeeping, audit, tax or payroll. They get out of bed every morning to do good work. But to be successful as an accountancy firm, it's more than just the accountancy services that matter. As valuable as these are, what also matters is the care with which the work is done and the care with which a firm looks after and serves clients. In this podcast discussio...

It's a unique experience to have someone who is in the digital space in a deep way coming on the podcast to talk about humanising the numbers. Getting Dan Cockerton onto the Humanise the Numbers podcast has been an ambition of mine for the last 12 months or so – and we've finally managed to make it work. And it was a bit of a relief that, when challenged about digital first versus human first, Dan chose human first. On the podcast, he unpacks and shares his insights of working with the ...

It was exciting to welcome Roger Knecht, the president of Universal Accounting, onto the Humanise the Numbers podcast. And I wasn't expecting to have what essentially turned into a 45-minutes sales training session with Roger. That ultimately is where the value in this podcast actually lies. Roger is so open, so structured, in running through how to construct a sales meeting, a client meeting, with the paymaster general of your firm, your clients – and with your prospects. Roger h...

When you come across an accountant who happens to have 900 clients – business clients – and who has a page on his website called The Human Accountant, you can understand why we at the Humanise the Numbers podcast would be interested in having a bit of a chat. It was our great pleasure and privilege to welcome Stephen Paul on this podcast discussion, where we unpacked what really matters to Stephen – running the sort of firm that enables him to live the life that he wants and to earn the livin...