It's simply brilliant when you can spend some time with a chartered accountant, one who spent 17 years with EY down in Australia before becoming an owner-managed business buying accountancy services.

Craig believes that an accountant does a brilliant job, a better job, if they're 80% human and 20% accountant when working with their owner-managed business clients.

This podcast discussion is with Craig McKell, from our very good friend AdvanceTrack. Craig is working in the profession again and is now the General Manager of Asia Pacific for AdvanceTrack.

He's amazed at the challenges the profession faces from a talent-shortage perspective. He shares a brilliant insight around the fact that you don't have to fall far from the corporate world of accountancy to make a real difference with real people – owner-managed businesses.

It's worth going to this podcast to understand what you do, for example, with three names. What could you do with three names so that you're more human than you are an accountant (80% human, 20% accountant)?

You’ll find great value in this podcast as we discuss the 80/20 rule according to Craig McKell.

I hope you enjoy this practical, passionate podcast with Craig McKell of AdvanceTrack.

All you need to do is go to your favourite podcast platform or join us at humanisethenumbers.online and seek out the podcast with Craig McKell.

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

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.