aynsley damery: adding value is the only way to stay in business

rethink the 80:20 rule, because the 80% are likely stealing from you.

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the disruptors
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间

aynsley damery wants accountants to think more deeply about their work. the ceo for clarity said we need to think about what clients want and deliver it to them, but as simple as that sounds, the problem is he doesn’t “think many accountants truly understand what their clients are looking for.” clients who have started their own businesses are looking for a combination of “money, time and freedom.” however, damery said, we’re selling them dashboards, kpis and cash flow forecasting without explaining why that’s important and what that’s going to do for them. “clients are looking for an advisor who’s going to listen to me, understand my hopes, my fears, my vision, what the challenges are, and be able to be there to support me,” damery said.

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“our clients don’t understand numbers, yet we give them plans with the numbers, and … it doesn’t help,” he said. instead, damery said cpas need to help them understand what they need to do “to make a difference and move their business forward. and that’s not about giving them the answers. that’s about asking the right questions.”

accountants also tend to think of themselves as the heroes who rescue their clients, but aynsley says accountants are “actually the guide. and they’re the people who are helping their clients become the heroes.” by shining the light on our clients, and helping them achieve greatness, “it’s going to shine the light on the firm in the end.”

damery also wants us to think differently about the 80:20 rule. we think that 20% of our clients are generating 80% of our revenue, and the remaining 80% generate the remaining 20%. he thinks the 20% are actually generating 225% of our profits, and the 80% are stealing 125% to bring us down to 100%.

we also tend to think in binary terms of problems and solutions in isolation, ignoring any knock-on effects. this can make it hard for us to change because “it means that we’re always trying to justify why something won’t work.” instead, we should think in terms of the potential: “if we could get it to work, how would we get it to work?”

10 more takeaways from aynsley damery

offshoring and leveraging technology can free up that capacity so our onshore teams can do better work that’s more valuable, more challenging and more exciting. this helps attract and retain great people. giving people challenging work to do gives them a reason to come in in the morning.
what the more successful firms are doing is not rocket science. they’re doing the basics really well: they’re inspiring and engaging their team members and involving them in the decision-making process. these firms are clear about the vision and where they want their firms to go.
getting the culture right in firms is a critical part of the leaders’ job. it’s important to pursue the culture that we want to exist.
delivering higher-value strategic business services is becoming increasingly important, yet most accountants don’t feel they have the skills to do so. upskill team members by giving them the training, support, systems, and processes they will need, which will enhance their careers going forward.
in no other industry do we expect the technical experts to also handle the marketing or the hr. but that’s how many accounting firms are structured, with technical partners also being responsible for non-technical areas.
in the uk, many of the most successful firms are solo practitioners. it may be that they have the correct ratio of partner to team members, or perhaps the “benevolent dictator” effect, which means that decisions are made more easily, and things get done faster.
an important mindset shift for accountants is to be the dumb one in the room and ask more questions and give less advice. we can’t know all the answers in business.
even though we don’t like talking about money and don’t like selling, we need to get better at explaining the value we can deliver and communicating what we can do to make a difference, and we have to charge for that.
if our focus is on getting the work done as quickly as possible, we can’t possibly be thinking about what we can do to improve this business.
management accounts and forecasts are not advisory, despite what we’ve been told. in the past true advisory was bespoke and performed only by the senior members of a firm. the future will be finding ways to provide scalable, repeatable advisory so that more clients benefit and more team members can participate. we need to find ways to provide valuable advice that’s affordable to our clients in a profitable manner.

more about aynsley damery

aynsley damery is a chartered accountant and former founding partner of tayabali tomlin, accounting for entrepreneurs – a multi award-winning accounting firm that specialized in business advisory. he sold that firm to crowe in 2018. he is the founder and ceo of clarity – a complete business advisory platform for accountants, that can help firms introduce and create a profitable, repeatable and scalable business advisory service. damery has advised thousands of businesses around the world and sits as an advisory board member on a number of companies and charities. additionally, damery is considered one of the most influential accountants in the uk on social media and is a regular international keynote speaker. he can be reached at clarity-hq.com.

transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)

liz farr 00:25
well, i’m really excited to have you. and i’m just thrilled that you said yes, when i reached out to you. now, we have a lot to get to cover. so let’s jump in. now accounting talent in the us and around the world has been scarce for years. covid and the great resignation made it all worse. what are some ideas that you have on how to make things better?

aynsley damery 00:56
well, i think firstly, i think it’s worth mentioning that the problem is only going to get worse. so we have been talking about this in the profession for i don’t know how long, it has certainly exacerbated in the last few years. but i think that is going to get absolutely worse, got fewer and fewer people joining the profession. the big four have just massively hiked salaries and the incentives that they’re providing them with the more complex work that’s happening at the moment, they’re going to take on more and more team to be able to deal with that. so i think the rest of us accountants are going to struggle in that tumble. so i think it’s really vital that we get to grips with offshoring and leveraging technology. we’ve talked about it for a long time now. i think it’s time we got to grips with it. and in the uk, certainly there has been that fear with offshoring that we’re depriving you know, our talent here with work. and maybe our clients may not, you know, except for foreigners who are going to be dealing with their work or doing their work. but i think we’ve seen how actually offering can make a massive difference to accounting firms, it can give that capacity, free up that capacity. and it can enable our onshore team to do better work higher, valuable work more challenging and exciting work. and actually, that’s helpful, i think long term, not only just dealing with the work, but for finding great people and retaining those great people as well. so i think that’s really, really critical. and i think the leveraging technology, we’ve talked about automation and technology for a long time. i think we’re still at the stage of not sure relate majority yet in much of the cloud technology. but i think it’s really important that we understand that we need technology to do that heavy lifting. i think a lot of the failures with technology has been change management. i think we’ve not acknowledged that technology is the silver bullet. it’s not a panacea. it is part of people process and technology. they’re working together. they’re they’re really the right combination. so i think offshoring and leveraging technology are critical for us going forward to be able to deal with the shortage of talent that are out there. definitely.

liz farr 03:05
i agree with you on all of those fronts. and i agree that offshoring probably will help a lot. because it doesn’t make sense to have a very highly paid cpa doing data entry. which is what i was doing the last few years i was in public accounting. and it just didn’t make no. yeah. and what are some things that you’ve seen firms do successfully?

aynsley damery 03:42
well, that’s it’s interesting. actually, before we get onto that, there was a very interesting survey done by the outsourced accountant tila, which is also they operate in the us. so good friends of ours, they surveyed 1100 people recently 1100 accountants, and 75%, were suggesting that they were going to look for a new job in the next 12 months. so that’s quite startling if 75% of our workforce is looking for new jobs at the moment, now the good thing is we have but still. so it’s about retention and retraining, i think which are critical for us going forward. i think the bigger firms or sorry, the the more successful firms, i don’t think they’re doing anything magical is it’s not something there’s no rocket science. there’s no crazy thing they’re doing here. i just think they’re doing the basics really, really well. i think they’re inspiring the team during engaging with them. they’re involving them in part of the decision making process. so rather than just dictating what needs to happen there involving them in the whole process, i also think they’re very, very clear on what the bigger picture is, and why that’s important. so i think they explain the clarity of the vision and where the purpose of the firm and where it’s going and why that’s the way they do a great job of involving the team and and really again, inspiring them to take action. i think it’s about that kind of as this obsession with culture, we think culture is a soft word. and maybe in accounting, we like all cultural culture. but you know that culture is critical and an obsession with culture, getting the right culture is really, you know, the the leaders job in, in, in, in any organization. and i think, for too often, we might do a core value session and accounting and stick them up on the wall. and, you know, maybe revisit them once a year. but that’s it, i think it’s really important that we pursue the culture, we want to exist in the accounting firm. i think culture exists anyway, it’s important that we control how the culture is in our firm. and we were obsessive about creating a continuous improvement culture, and a culture of, of not accepting the status quo or challenging the status quo. and that was really important, and it gave value to the people who are who are part of the accounting firm. i think the challenging work is is critical that we talked about with that offshoring piece, i think, you know, nobody wants to sit there data, entry, nobody, it’s mundane, it’s routine, you just drive you up the wall. so i think it’s really important that we find great team, and we keep them by giving them great work to do and giving them a bigger purpose, rather than just doing accounts and tax or trips. so i think it is a bigger piece, a piece that’s been talked about for quite a while. and i know you’re gonna get on to that a little later. but i think it’s really important that we focus on that, that that challenging, that challenging work that really makes people want to come in in the morning and not go calling, i’ve got to enter whatever i’ve got to do. so i think that upskilling piece, i saw a survey in accountancy age in the uk, and it was a survey of under 41. in the accounting world under 40. ones. i think 73% of them said that delivering strategic business services was going to be critical going forward to really help what’s happening in the world. and 70, i think it was 78% of them said that they didn’t have the skills necessary to be able to deal with that in their future roles. and i think that’s going to be where we can really show how we can help them by upskilling them by giving them the the training, the support the systems and the processes that are going to really enhance their career going forward.

liz farr 07:23
i really think that you’ve hit on something that it’s the upskilling. that will be crucial, because at the firms that i was at, had these lofty vision goals, but we didn’t have the skills or the tools to put any of that into place. and so these vision statements were something that looked beautiful on the wall, but they really didn’t become part of what we did as a firm. and i think that that is crucial for leadership to pay attention to. not all leaders will do that. but that is something that has to be done. absolutely. now, until recently, the business model for accounting firms really hadn’t changed much. but we’re seeing firms move away from the billable hour, we’re seeing them move away from these strictly hierarchical organizational structures. what are some of the things that you are seeing in the firms that you work with?

aynsley damery 08:43
i think that the uk, we seem to have lost the billable hour, a little bit ahead of the us. but that brought its own challenges, too. you know, firms tried to replace that billable hour with fit well, they had three tiered pricing, so you know, gold, silver, bronze, gold, whatever, are introduced fixed fees effectively, which is what what was happening, i don’t think people truly grasped value pricing. and so it was easier to settle for fixed pricing, fixed fees. and i think that fixed fee came with an element of unlimited. so whether it was unlimited calls or unlimited support, or some thing tended to be in there. and we saw a huge scope creep. so firms were doing, you know, accountants are desperate to please we love pleasing and the team tend to get a little bit too excited over servicing clients sometimes, and clients are can be a little bit cheeky and asking for work without expecting to pay extra for an extra work order. i think we saw profits dip because of the introduction of that fixed fee and the move away from billable hour. i think in the uk, we’ve not really grasped value pricing yet. yes in tax work and yes in corporate finance, but i think in general compliance certainly and i think it’s probably impossible to bring in value pricing for companies as even on the advisory side, we’ve tended to see people do manual pricing, or to do some hybrid combination of that. and i think it’s a bit of a shame. so i think that really hasn’t quite clicked yes. i had an interesting chat with one baker, a couple of months ago on value pricing 2.0 and the subscription model. and i think, you know, that’s something that i think firms are going to have to get to grips with. in the future. i think it’s, it’s important. and i think there’s been some really interesting examples of how people have adapted value pricing and take it on to the next level, outside the accounting industry, particularly. so it’d be interesting to see how we get to grips with that. but i also acknowledged with your points on the organizational structures, again, i’m going to point out another flaw rather than a benefit here. but we tended to move to that corporate structure in the uk. but we still operated in silos. so every partner tended to do things differently, had a different way, and had a different purpose and vision and expectation and anticipation of what was going to happen, another accounting firm, and they didn’t really work together. and i’ve never quite understood this, i don’t understand why an accounting, how we can have a technical partner who can be the marketing partner, or the market, head of marketing, are the head of sales are the head of hr, i just don’t understand why that happens. and i like in no other industry, do our technical team do the sales as well. it just would be unheard of. but yes, in accounting, we do that. now, i’m not saying don’t involve the partners, because obviously it’s the people to people business. but i do find it unusual that we really haven’t grasped that organizational structure. in accounting. yes, in the bigger firms, but not in in the from the materials down. i think we’re operating in silos. so i think it would be nice to see that come into play. and i think the the, you know, the the understanding of how to price better than the billable hour, we still haven’t quite practice. i’m not sure we ever will. i’m not sure pricing is an easy and easy thing to get to grips with.

liz farr 12:04
pricing is really difficult. it’s something that i struggle with in my writing business, as well. and so you know, i try to look at it as well, what? what is the value to the person? how many hours would they have to give up to produce this work if they had to do it themselves? i think that that. and we’ll figure it out. it may not be in our lifetimes, how will we figure it out?

aynsley damery 12:44
do you think that accountants have this impostor syndrome, and maybe don’t feel worthy enough, so therefore, feel awkward about having that pricing conversation about really charging and what they’re truly worth? do you think that’s part of the problem?

liz farr 12:58
i think that’s a big part of the problem. because, you know, i’ve had this conversation with, with many others, with people from audit to tax consulting, to accounting, that, the first thing that, that they do, when a client complains about the price is cut it back down, instead of saying, well, you don’t really recognize the value that we have brought to you. so if you don’t recognize that value, then you are free to take your, your business elsewhere, because we have a line of people waiting to get in. you know, and, and in going back to what you said about the silos, you know, i experienced that firsthand as just a staff person trying to navigate the different partners. you know, i would ask one partner how he wanted something done, and i would get a completely different answer from the one i got from partner b. and it was just incredibly confusing. and this is something that’s rampant. you know, it’s just, it’s just a nightmare. now, what about what about growing? how do firms grow? and are there different strategies for solo practice or a multi partner practice?

aynsley damery 14:41
interesting. i think that let’s go to that second bit. first. i think in the uk, i know some of the most successful firms are solo practitioners, because whilst their sole practitioners, they have a decent team and potentially they don’t have the wrong combination or the ratio of team to par or maybe maybe being that benevolent dictator might actually mean things getting done faster and quicker and decisions are made potentially? i don’t know. but i think in reality, i don’t think there are different tactics and tools that are necessary for growth. i think it’s truly understanding what your clients are looking for. and delivering it to them. that sounds easy. and everybody goes accordingly. that’s that’s just makes common sense understanding what they want and delivering? well, i don’t think many accountants truly understand what their clients are looking for. i think we sell them, you know, accounts and tax returns, yes, we sell them that. but if we move up the scale, we flog them cash flow, forecasting, kpis and dashboards, management, reporting reporting packs, i think we’re missing the point about what those do to help small business owners. and i think, you know, if we go back to why people go into business in the first place, it’s generally because they’ve left corporate life, they want to have more freedom, they want more control over their working environments, they want to make more money. and they probably want to cut down the hours that they’re working. so it’s a, it’s a combination of money, time and freedom, i guess, that most people are looking for. and we’re not selling that. and we’re talking about management, proposing and cash flow forecasting, and not really engaging with our clients on why that’s important, what that’s going to do for them, then i think we’re struggling to grow our accounting firm. now, it’s been interesting actually seeing some organic growth that’s happened post the pandemic. so those firms that were there to support their clients that were open there were abducting technology that were being there, 100%. and i know that sounds like the logical thing, of course, accountants were there. well, yes, a large chunk of them were, but there was a lot that weren’t. and i think we’re seeing that there’s a lot of just organic acquisition of clients that is happening at the moment. so those business owners have got a little bit fed up and have decided, okay, now’s the time to change. and i really want to go to a firm, that’s going to give me truly what i want, because it counts and tax returns, i have to have them. they’re not adding any value, i resent paying for them. and i want somebody who’s going to listen to me understand my hopes, my fears, my vision, my what the challenges are, and be able to be there to support me, i’m not looking for all the answers, but i’m looking for the support, that intelligent friends that trusted advisor to be able to sit with me and help me navigate my way going for it. so i think the services and the added value services that we offer, i think making sure that the pricing for those is rights, avoiding as much scope creep as possible, not over engineering, the compliance function. so those accounts and tax returns, which we seem to over engineer to death, stop doing that. and i think growth will come. so i think that’s, that’s, i think, important that that client centric, focused purpose and vision for your firm. and if you’re not adding value for your clients, then i don’t really know. why your business.

liz farr 18:04
i think i think that that’s really crucial. and i think that, you know, accountants fear that approach, because they’re often afraid that they don’t have the answers. and they don’t like to ask questions that they don’t know the answers to.

aynsley damery 18:25
well, isn’t this absolute 100%? i think it’s more about asking more questions and giving less advice. i think that’s the critical skill switch that we need to get involved with when we’re talking to business owners, because we can all argue black and blue in advance, we can all theorize we can all have ideas about what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. but ultimately, in business, if you don’t try something, put in place a plan and measure and monitors, and then quickly understand whether that works are not before you double down on this. i think that’s, that’s, you know, nobody knows what’s right or wrong in business, or nobody knows the answers we might get. we don’t know. and i think that’s really important mindset shift for accountants, you know, we need to know the tax legislation, we need to know the double entry treatments. but when we get to that business side, we can’t know all the answers. and it is about being the dumb person in the room. it’s about asking the why why why asking questions and asking more questions when you give advice, i think.

liz farr 19:24
yeah, and i really think it’s trying to understand why this business owner is doing what they are doing. and all too often we neglect to ask, well, what is your long term goal for this business? do you want to sell it in five years? do you want to work it for another 20 and then pass it to your children? what do you want? because if we don’t know what they are doing trying to do we certainly can’t help them get there.

aynsley damery 20:04
yep. 100% we’re in total agreement is to become us agreeing with each other all the way through, i think.

liz farr 20:13
yes. well, i generally agree with most of my guests. and because i’ve picked the people who, whose ideas i resonate with. i have not chosen the people that i used to work with. no, it used to be that to be really good. as an accountant, you had to keep the tax code in your head and the accounting regulations. and you also have to be really good with the 10 key. but technology’s changed a lot of that. so what are the skills that accountants need to be successful in the future?

aynsley damery 21:01
yeah, i think it’s the softer skills. i think that’s that’s what we need to get. right. so it’s that emotional intelligence rather than intellection. so that eq versus iq, i think it’s really important. so i think we can sometimes, because we’re in the numbers all the time, we can sometimes, as you said earlier, forget to step back and understand what is the purpose of these numbers in the first place? what what is the business owner looking for? what motivates them? what gets them up? in the morning? what are they looking for out of their business? so i think it is that emotional intelligence versus intellectual intelligence. i think, also, i think the sounds is probably gonna maybe upset a few people. but i think accountants, there’s a lot of ego. and i think this desire to be the hero. now, i know, we all want to be a hero. but i think accountants need to understand that they’re not the heroes in this story, but they’re actually the guide. and they’re the people who are helping their clients become the heroes and shining, the light on them is going to have the exact effect that they’re looking for, it’s going to shine the light on the firm in the end. but i think it’s it’s understanding that we need to get out of our ways sometimes that we need to be the ones who’s asking the questions and helping our clients understand the right answers, rather than always giving them the advice. and i know that goes against the grain, because obviously, in a tax perspective, that’s not the case. but we’re talking business advisor here, i suppose, more than anything else, i think the communication skills are going to become critical, because i think we’re going to lose a lot of that communication, skill exchange that happens when we were all in the office. and when we’re all going to three, three people going to a meeting all the time. and that inherent skill exchange that happens from a communication perspective. so i think we’re going to have to work really hard going forward. because we’ve all been on zoom or bluejeans, or whatever it is, for the last two years. it’s important that we upskill, again, this upskilling that we upskill, our team in how to communicate really, really well. they’re possibly missing out on some of the things that we got to experience and got to learn about communication. so i think that’s going to be critical. and i think that’s, that’s selling skill. sales is a dirty word in accounting, we don’t like to, we don’t like to talk about money, and we don’t like certainly selling, i think we’re going to have to get better at being able to explain the value we’re able to deliver and about being able to communicate clearly what we can do to make a difference. and what we’re going to charge for that.

liz farr 23:35
absolutely. yeah, i was fortunate in a firm that i spent 11 years at that the founder was still there. and he did very little hands on work. he really he didn’t even review tax returns. but what he did was meet with the clients and he had that golden touch of communicating with them, talking to them, and really trying to be an advocate for them. and i think that is something that the next generation of accountants kind of forgot how to do because they were focused on the billable hour. and they were focused on minimizing those billable hours to keep the clients happy. and i think the pendulum is now swing the other way that we understand that it really is those long conversations, those in depth questions that really are the magic that we can bring to the relationship.

aynsley damery 24:54
yeah, i mean, iagree. i think it’s interesting. i suppose old school again. and how we got so far away from that. and you’re right. it’s definitely where we need to get to. and i do think that the billable hour has a lot to blame for it that you’re you are correct. it’s going to be due last year, but to a quicker is effectively, and i worked at kpmg. and i mean, that was that was the file, i’ve lost yours. do it faster, do it. you know? i shouldn’t probably say that. but that’s that’s what you’re encouraged to do. you know, you’ve got you’ve got budgets, recover recoverability targets to his, i think by forcing that down on people, then of course, we’re, you know, you’re not going to get your knowledge workers were going to sit there thinking about how they can improve this business, you’re going to get them thinking, well, how can i get this done as quickly as possible? i’m out the door so that we’re not going to get into trouble? we have agreed?

liz farr 25:47
yeah, yeah, you’re not thinking well, can i use this technology tool that will slow me down initially, until i learn to use it, but will give me greater insights in the long run. they’re just thinking about, well, there’s the workpaper from last year, let me find the documents from this year that look like that, and then put them together and get the numbers, right. and that’s not very intellectually challenging. now, accountants have a lot on their plates these days, they’ve got to deal with compliance, they’ve got to do a lot of hand holding. but along the way, they’ve picked up some rather bad habits. now, what should accountants stop doing immediately?

aynsley damery 26:48
i think wellness i can i have two things that they should stop doing immediately.

liz farr 26:52
you can, as many as you want.

aynsley damery 26:56
i think we need to stop treating all clients as equal. so i think that’s crucial. i think, unfortunately, this, this, this wanting to please, mentality has meant that we are doing the wrong stuff with the wrong clients, often. and when we’re overwhelmed, and when we haven’t got the time. and when we say, oh, that’s lovely. but i don’t have the time or my goal. this is a nightmare. it’s generally because we’ve got a lot of ds and e clients that are actually sucking the resources from us, not allowing us to spend the time that we should be doing on our great clients. and i think those that shout the loudest, loudest and complain the most and those people that are always aggressive, we tend to over focus on to deliver too much. i think it’s important that we realize that not all clients are equal, that we accept that fact. and actually, we get rid of our these knees as fast as he can. we know it’s the right thing to do. you know, i think i think the problem is that we have this 8020 mentality with our client base, i think. so we think, oh, well, 20% of our clients generate 80% of our revenue, and the other 80%, or at least generating 20%. but i don’t think that’s true, i actually think that 80% are sucking and actually are stealing profits. and i think if we focused on those 20%, we’d find that potentially our 20%, regenerating 225% of our revenue, as studies show that remaining 80% are stealing 125%, to bring us back down to our 100% profit. so i think if we go in with that mentality, and we realize that the ds and e’s are actually stealing money not contributing just a little bit, then i think we might take bigger action. so i think by freeing up our time, it will mean the team will be happier, it will mean the firm will become more profitable. and it means that we are actually doing better work with our better clients. and, you know, i know it’s a big, i suppose, challenge change to get rid of a large tranche of your clients. but i think by packaging them up, you know, what, what are your ds and e’s might be somebody else’s a’s and b’s. so i think there’s, there’s ways that we can do this, and ways that we can do it in that you don’t feel like you’re going to lose a lot of revenue really, really fast. i think those that can can make that decision and take action quickly, we’ll probably see a very fast return. you can of course, do it slower, like mike mccalla, which is the pumpkin plan where you can, you know, just recycle and recycling go up and up. and so for what i used to say to to to friends that worked in accounting firms, i would say, well, if you get rid of 10,000, if you sorry, if you take on a $10,000 client, then get rid of $10,000 worth of your t’s and a’s so that at least you’re staying at the same point. and it’s amazing how that if that’s constantly done, how much of a difference you’ll make to the firm. i think the challenge for a lot of firms is they have those ds and e’s and they take on more ds and e’s when they don’t have a clear client selection policy and they end up just doing more and more and more getting stuck in a rut. so i think stop treating all clients as equal as equal is critical. i’m getting rid of those ds and e’s i think the other thing is to stop saying yes. i think the default answer needs to be no. and then think about why it might be a yes. no, but i think needs to be the response that we, we default to not. yes, i’ll do that. so i think critical that we get that no, but then think about it, don’t always say yes.

liz farr 30:25
wow. that no, but that that could be fighting words, for a lot of clients, a lot of accounting firm owners know that we’ve been raised to think that the client is always and always, always right. and so saying no, is going to be a very hard thing to do for many accountants.

aynsley damery 30:56
well, this is this is a beauty, we can test it with a few and see what happens, we don’t have to say no to all of our clients. and this is the interesting thing we were talking about earlier as well. when i was working in accounting, if we put a price increase, my team would panic if one client came back and had a complaint, and we needed to take stock. and so that was one client out of you know, whatever the sample size was, a sample size of one is not a good sample size. so we can’t make decisions based on that one, we need to take a bigger view of what’s happening in the sample, before we take our decision. i think that no button is a good way to go. so with your decent knees, who probably aren’t doing great for you anyway, start the no buts with them. and in fact, they’re probably the best people to start saying no, but to so i think, try it with your ds and e’s and see. but it’s not just your clients, either. it’s in everything else. we get distracted, we get lots of opportunities, we need to be selective in what we do. so i think learning this, no, but gives you time to think about it. and not always say yes.

liz farr 32:03
yeah, and i would say that my life and accounting would have been much more pleasant if the partners had said, no, we can’t take on this work, because we don’t have the expertise to do it. for there, yeah, there were a number of projects i worked on that i just said, you know, i don’t understand how to do this industry. this is very different from anything i’ve seen before. i’m not sure i’m going to get it right. isn’t that a little bit risky? maybe the partner should have said no. instead, yes.

aynsley damery 32:58
no, but i know somebody who’s great at doing that would have been a very good answer.

liz farr 33:05
yes, that would have been a great answer. now, what do you think keeps accountants from changing? now you’ve already talked a little bit on the ego part. but are there other things that keep accounts from changing?

aynsley damery 33:23
indeed, i won’t. i won’t go through jargon culture. so if anybody’s interested in change management, i think john carter is a great writer on change and change management and his hbr. his harvard business review paper is quite small. but it’s a very interesting read. actually, he has a book called our iceberg is melting as well, which tells and talks about the age, a transformation steps in a parable form about penguins on an iceberg. and it’s a very quick read and great for the team, actually, to get involved. so without going through those eight, i think from an accounting perspective, for me, the biggest, i suppose challenge that i see. and the blocker of change is binary thinking. so it’s a couple of things actually, it’s not just binary thinking. but they’re, they’re related. so binary thinking, problem, solution mentality, and also not challenging the status quo, i think, accepting the status quo all the time. so i think those are the three biggest things that i see in in accountants, particularly, if you think about it, nature doesn’t look at problems, it always looks to potential. and when we have a problem solution mentality, we tend to be forced into binary thinking. so i’ve got this problem, and i’m going to solve this problem in isolation. and then i’ve got this problem, i’m going to solve this problem. the fact that they can be completely related or things that you’re going to do to solve one problem has a bigger, an unanticipated, you know, knock on effects somewhere else. i think that’s that’s that big challenge. so if we looked at the potential rather than always looking at problems solution, i think that’s a great way to start thinking about changing and, and making change change better. i think the problem solution also leads to a different way of thinking. so i think if we’ve always got this problem mentality, rather than a potential mentality in our accounting firm, it means that we’re always trying to justify why something won’t work. so well, this is the problem, it’s not going to work for us because of this, this, this and this, and this. and these are the reasons why we shouldn’t make any change, because that’s the problem, we’re not going to be able to solve that. so i think, getting people to think about okay, so if we could get it to work, how would we get it to work? and i think that’s an important change in the question not will this work? if it could, if we did get it working? how would we get it to work, i think get a very different set of answers. so i think like nature, i think we need to look to potential rather than look to problems. i think the binary thinking again, though, stops us moving at a decent speed. so i think, you know, i’ve come across this all the time with accountants, oh, yeah, i’m going to, i’d love to do that. but what i need to do is for this first, and i don’t think we should be doing that it’s not. it’s, for example, it’s not compliance or advisory. it’s compliance and advisory. so we need to start thinking animals. so if i could do this, and this, what would the impact be? not? i’m just going to do this on its own. so i think that binary thinking that that problem solution mentality needs to stop. and i think we need to switch to a potential mindset rather than a proper mindset. i think also, that whole thing about the status quo. like, i don’t know if this crab crab theory is real, i don’t know if crabs actually pull each other down in the buckets. i don’t know, i don’t know if you’ve heard that story. but crabs don’t like letting one escape. and they always pull one person down. and i think, i think from an accounting perspective, that tends to be a little bit the case as well. so we keep ourselves comfortable in our comfort zone, and nobody goes outside the comfort zone, because, god, what would happen? so no, no, don’t do that. don’t do that. we don’t want to rock the boat, we don’t want to change things. so i think changing that mindset, too, i think is really, really important. so again, this continuous improvement, i think, we need to stop thinking about here, and going oh, my god, that’s too far, that’s too big. that’s too whatever, i think we need to break it down and look at taking baby steps. and that continuous improvement 1% each and every day, rather than having to take big leaps, which make breaking through that status quo look really scary. so i think it’s, it’s about pushing boundaries, it’s accepting that we need to make a change. and i think it’s doing it in a multi dimensional way, rather than just one one piece of the puzzle at a time. is that a bit wishy washy?

liz farr 37:50
well, will it it’s a difficult thing for accountants to do. but i do like the idea of aspiring for a 1% improvement. because we know how compounding interest works. so if you make that 1% improvement each day, then at the end of the year, you will have more than 365% improvement, you’ll have much more, much more. now, these days, client accounting services client advisory services is really big. that’s what’s really big in the us these days. i believe that in the uk and other parts of the world, you’re a little bit ahead of the game. but what do you think will be the next big thing and accounting?

aynsley damery 38:52
well, it depends on what our definition of client accounting services is, i suppose, which might help me answer the question a bit better. i think, unfortunately, despite what most people say, i think the advisory elements of that is not done very, very well or done at all. and so it’s not client accounting, advisory services, its clients accounting services. and i think too many people think that doing management accounts or sending out reports are setting up dashboards is business advisory. and i think we, as a profession, we’ve been told these things are advisory. and if we do this, it’s going to help we can charge more from our clients. i think that definitely hasn’t worked. so i don’t think management reporting is advisory. i don’t think doing forecasts is advisory. i pretty much see those as complaints plus, personally. so i do think that we are almost on the cusp of cracking the true advisory nut. and i think it’s a realization that’s come which is which probably brought by the lack of talent or the problems with recruitment, in the past advisory has always been bespoke. so it’s tended to rely on the more senior people in the firm those with more experience. because it’s bespoke, it’s been, you know, it’s, it costs more money inherently. and there’s no system to follow for the rest of us to follow underneath. so it’s like, oh, my god, how do i do that sort of stuff? i don’t know, what would be the first step to take. and i also think, you know, because of that, and, and, you know, partners can only work with so many clients from that perspective. so it’s very selective, the clients that they could work with. and of course, the cost makes that selection process easy for them to maintain. i saw studies done by zero in canada, which found that firms that did repeatable scalable advisory had a higher average fee per client than those firms that did bespoke advisory. so that’s quite interesting. i mean, it makes sense. but it’s interesting to see that actually play out. so you’re giving business advisory to more of your clients who are paying you more, but that actually will generate higher revenue for you than if you were doing bespoke advisory. so i think it is democratizing advisory. i think it is getting more of the team involved in delivering business advisory, i think it’s giving them the skills, the confidence, the systems and processes to be able to deliver business advisory in that repeatable scalable way. and i think that’s going to be a massive breakthrough for a lot of accounting firms. i see so many small business owners go to coaches, or join entrepreneurial organizations. i mean, we you know, you have them in the us. i mean, tony robbins has a money making machine for a lot of small business owners. i think accountants are missing out here, because business owners are desperately looking for help. and it’s not just our top 10 20%, there is probably 80% of our, our small business clients are looking for help. and it’s about delivering it affordably, to them valuably, but affordably, but it’s about how do we do that profitably, for us, too. and i think we’re almost at the cusp with the technology, leveraging the right systems and processes to be able to get more of our team doing business advisory. and i think that will be a breakthrough, that will solve a lot of challenges for accounting firms. i mean, it will make a massive difference to small business too. so i think the knock on effects of this could be quite dramatic if we can get our heads around it. but i do think true advisory democratizing advisory is probably, and that we’re about to almost crack. and i think that will make a massive difference to small businesses that into the profession. i hope. so.

liz farr 42:37
i think you’re onto something there. and i do think that democratizing those skills will be the key, you know, bringing it down so that the staff person doesn’t have to start from zero from sea level to climb mount everest, but maybe they can use tools and ideas and processes within the firm to bring them up to basecamp. and so then from basecamp, they can reach everest for each client.

aynsley damery 43:13
yeah, i mean, i think we’ve overcomplicated the a lot of the advisory process. and i think we’ve done that to justify fees maybe or to justify why we are the ones that are there to help. and i think we don’t understand that the business is complex, the world is complex, what we need to be doing and simplifying is, you know, as davinci said, simplification, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. so if we could strip back some of that complexity, it means more of the team could get involved. but also, it would be done more affordably and more clients could understand what we’re up to. and what we’re doing, because a lot of reasons i hear from from from accounting firms is that, oh, clients just don’t get it. they don’t want to pay for it. well, if we aren’t able to explain what we’re doing and why, and how it’s going to help them, of course, they’re not going to be interested, and they will get it and they will want to pay for it. this is about involving them, understanding what they’re looking for and delivering us. and i think what they’re asking for is for help, they won’t help understanding their numbers because they don’t get numbers. and you know, too many of us as accountants give them plans with the numbers, and they don’t get numbers. and so plan with numbers, it doesn’t help. we need to help them understand what actions they need to take to make a difference and to move their business forward. and that’s not about giving them the answers. that’s about asking the right questions to be able to get them to understand what they need to do in their business to drive their business forward. i think we’re great at keeping score. and i think the numbers never lie. so that skill is vitally important. so we can’t underestimate that skill. and we shouldn’t underestimate the power and the magic we have with being able to keep score and understanding the score. i think that’s valuable in itself. but i think probably the biggest piece is that accountability. it’s in our name holding our clients accountable to the actions that they’ve agreed is critical for success. i think too many coaches, their, you know, an athlete doesn’t have a coach to help them, kick it or throw the ball better, normally, yes, minute plus 1% improvements, they generally have a coach, i think, to keep them focused, to hold them to account. and to get them to take the next step and the plan, the plan that they’ve created together so that they are moving forward towards that goal. i think it’s exactly the same for accountants, we can read that accountability buddy, that person who is able to understand the score, see what’s working and what’s not working, and just ask the right questions and say, this isn’t where it needs to be. why is that? have you done something you shouldn’t have? have? have you done not done something you should have done? how can we help you move your business forward? how can we show you why it was important that you did that so that those numbers move? so i think it’s a it’s a interesting skill set. but i think it’s a skill set that will really excite a lot of the newbies that are coming along and give them a real desire to get back into the accounting profession. if we can see that actually, we can have a massive difference. we can play a massive part and driving small businesses and and prince charles in the uk so that accountants we’re going to save the world and everybody laughed at him. i think it’s a bit dramatic, but we can certainly make a big dent.

liz farr 46:29
that i agree with completely. and i think that that’s a perfect note to end this conversation on that accountants can save the world. i want to thank you so much ainsley for joining me for contributing your intellectual capital to me and to all the listeners. now, if listeners want to connect with you, where’s the best place to find you?

aynsley damery 46:58
and i’m pretty active on social media. so it’s pretty easy to find me on twitter. i’m maybe not so active on instagram anymore. but you can certainly connect with me on instagram or facebook. i have a lot of american accountants connect with me on facebook. i think that’s through our time at qb connects. i’m not sure, liz. but certainly facebook seems to be a favorite of a lot of accountants who can actually i’m happy to chat to accountants on any form. of course, they can contact me by email as well. but i think a lot of people find it more fun to contact on social media. so twitter, facebook, linkedin, instagram, go for it, pick your weapon of choice and get in touch.