Practice Pulse

In this episode hosted by Carl Reader, Alistair Barlow of Ascendant shares his journey from corporate life at PwC to co-founding and then exiting Flindr — a modern accounting firm built on data, insight, and innovation. Starting with just £500 each and a blank canvas, Alistair and his co-founder reimagined what an accounting practice could look like. Rather than defaulting to traditional models, they built a business focused on niche sectors, client feedback, and meaningful data-led insights. We explore the realities of scaling from startup to exit, the emotional complexity of stepping away from something you’ve built, and how AI is reshaping the accounting profession. At the heart of the conversation is one powerful idea: finance data tells us what happened but accountants can use operational data to tell clients why it happened. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In this episode, our host Carl Reader of the dt group sits down with Liam Wilson, founder of Elevate, to unpack how he scaled his accountancy practice to £700,000 in just two and a half years without spending a single penny on marketing. Liam shares his personal journey into accountancy, shaped in part by watching his father navigate business struggles. That early exposure instilled a deep understanding of the real challenges business owners face and ultimately shaped the client-first ethos behind Elevate. The conversation explores how storytelling on LinkedIn became Liam’s growth engine, how authentic human connections outperform polished marketing campaigns, and why real-world, face-to-face relationships still matter in a digital-first world. Plus… there’s a lively debate about hosting the ultimate Man United dinner party. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In this episode, Yogesh Patel talks to host Carl Reader of the dt group about his journey from practitioner to owner of Telic and the emotional, strategic, and cultural shifts that came with it. Taking over a business you once worked in is no small transition. Yogesh reflects on stepping out from being the bottleneck, putting his own stamp on the brand, and redefining the firm’s identity around quality, purpose, and impact. From pursuing B Corp status to introducing structured learning and development through Lunch & Learns, Yogesh is building a boutique firm known for excellence and integrity. This conversation explores leadership, resilience, culture, and the realities of scaling without compromising standards. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In this episode, Eriona Bajrakurtaj shares her inspiring journey from growing up in a family business to becoming a respected leader in the accounting industry. Drawing from her experience at Majors Accounts, Eriona discusses the challenges of navigating family dynamics, embracing digital transformation, and harnessing the power of community support with host Carl Reader of the dt group. The conversation goes beyond technology focusing on human behaviour, leadership lessons, and the personal determination required to drive change. Eriona reflects on handling resistance, learning from conflict, and communicating a compelling vision to gain buy-in. For anyone navigating change, leadership, or complex team dynamics in their firm, this episode offers practical insights and heartfelt reflections from a leader who’s lived it. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In this episode, host Carl Reader of the dt group sits down with Soaring Falcon’s Alex Falcon Huerta — accountant, entrepreneur, tech advocate, and digital nomad — to explore her unconventional journey through the profession. Alex shares how she carved her own path in accounting, blending practical experience with a passion for technology and innovation. From speaking on global stages about fintech and AI to building and leading offshore teams, she challenges traditional views of what an accountant — and an accounting firm — can look like. The conversation dives into the rapid evolution of AI, the realities of outsourcing and offshoring, and why open-mindedness is the most important trait accountants can develop right now. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In this episode hosted by Carl Reader of the dt group, Nikki and Nigel Adams dive into the journey of Ad Valorem, exploring how a lifestyle choice grew into a thriving, values-driven accounting practice. Nikki and Nigel share their experiences building the business, navigating challenges, and creating a culture that balances client focus, team cohesion, and long-term vision. The conversation touches on the power of complementary skills in partnerships, the strategic use of personality profiling for team alignment, and handling difficult conversations with honesty and empathy. They also reflect on future aspirations to champion small businesses at a higher level. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to grow their practice with purpose, build strong partnerships, and develop a culture that aligns people, values, and vision. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In the first episode of our podcast series about taking your practice to the next level, Phil Ellerby shares the remarkable journey of building Northern Accountants from a garden shed startup in 2008 to a thriving £3.5 million turnover practice with host Carl Reader of the dt group. What began as a move driven by necessity rather than passion evolved into a masterclass in systemisation, leadership, and intentional growth. Phil opens up about the challenges of transitioning from industry into practice, the lessons learned along the way, and how clarity of vision - combined with operational discipline - transformed his firm. Working closely with his Operations Director, Phil developed a bespoke CRM and refined the firm’s operating system to create efficiency, accountability, and scalability. The result? A business built not just for today, but with options for the future. Phil also shares candid insights into the brave leadership decisions that shaped the firm including hiring senior team members, fostering a culture of openness, and embedding accountability at every level. Want to watch the vodcast instead? You can find the vodcast series playlist here. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

Winning an accountancy award isn’t just about the trophy—it’s about credibility, industry recognition, and growing your client base. But is it worth the time and the effort? PJCO Chartered Certified Accountants has been nominated for and won multiple awards. In this podcast, its Managing Partner Peter Jarman talks about the process that he and his team go through when deciding whether to enter an award. Winning awards has directly resulted in sizeable revenue for the practice from new clients, but the process of determining whether to enter an award can be just as important as entering. For more support on entering awards, have a look at our hub at https://bit.ly/enteringawards This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This podcast has been created from the session that Alastair Barlow (founder and former CEO of flindr) and Bhimal Hira (partner at Prysm Financial) presented at the 2025 Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping in Birmingham, UK about their experiences exiting their practices. In it, they talk through the essential components of exploring exit options, assessing your company’s financial health, and understanding the due diligence process. This podcast complements our hub - Shaping Your Practice Exit – which provides food for thought on how to transition from being a practice owner and considers some of the possible routes, as well as offering insights from both buyers and sellers of practices. For more information about exiting your practice, have a look at our hub at bit.ly/sype. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In the final episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about their experiences at Accountex 2024 and their key takeaways - the advent of AI but how it can never replace accountants, and how you shouldn’t get sucked into any software without doing your research first. They also mop up all the areas they promised to re-visit in earlier episodes such as their hourly operational costs, re-visiting business plans, certain pieces of software, and planned recruitment – as well as new developments like re-branding. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub at https://bit.ly/startyourpracticejourney.

In the penultimate episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about collaborating with staff, clients and other accountants. A support network of other accountants is important for referring work you don’t have capacity or expertise for, but also so that you can have assurance that every practice has similar pain points. Then there’s networking with other industries and with other accountants. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub at https://bit.ly/startyourpracticejourney. You’ll find information about building your practice community on the hub at https://bit.ly/networkingandcommunity

Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about what productivity means to them, how staff are key to your productivity, and the different KPIs you can use. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our https://bit.ly/startyourpracticejourney.

In this episode, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about taking on staff – at what point it becomes necessary, whether to recruit an admin role or an accountant role first, how outsourcing can help, using HR consultants, and planning for future recruitment. Who’d have thought that Pilates classes are a great place to recruit…. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub.

Amy & James look at the risk of pricing too low when you first start up, different pricing models, pricing strategy, proposal software, price increases, and the advent of value pricing. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub. You’ll find a great video by Carl Reader of d&t about pricing models and unbilled work on the hub, as well as videos by the team at Gravitate Accounting about fee quotations, and Calvin Cooper of CRC Accountancy about valuing what you’re delivering to clients.

What’s the best way to get your new accountancy practice out there? Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about marketing your practice using social media as well as more traditional routes to market their practices, the importance of SEO for your website, and how it isn’t a case of one size fits all. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub You’ll find our marketing podcast series with PracticeWeb in the hub alongside two videos by Ashley Leeds - the 15-Minute Guy - about how practice owners can make the most of their LinkedIn profiles to attract clients.

In this episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about the add-ons to bookkeeping software that they use, debate CRM versus Excel, and talk about how you manage anti-money laundering requirements. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub You can find ACCA’s AML resources on our technical advisory website

In the first of two episodes about software, Amy and James look at whether you get the clients or the software first, the different types of bookkeeping, accounts & tax production and proposal software, CRM, and how the software needs of your practice will evolve over time. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub

In the second episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about practice structure, practice names, the ideal client and deciding on the services you’ll offer when you’re first setting up. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub

In the opening episode of our new series, ACCA members Amy Hancock of Hancock & Hastings Ltd, and James Goulsbra of Garrett Adam Accountants Ltd talk about how they came to start their practices. Find out about the services they offer, the use of specialists, and where they expect to be in five years’ time.This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub

It’s no secret that the macroeconomic environment has an impact on small businesses. Supply chain disruptions, staff shortages and rising overheads all come as a result from the global events of the last 3 years.And whilst we all hear the global news and economic updates, it can be easy to forget this has a very real-life impact locally as well as globally. With 61% of the UK’s employees from small businesses, these challenges will affect the majority of the population directly.Join this discussion with Paul Surtees, CEO and Co-Founder of Capitalise as we delve into what current challenges are being faced, how you can spot risks ahead and indeed learn the lessons that previous recessions have taught us.If more small businesses not only survive this economic period but thrive and end up stronger, this can only be a good thing for the wider business economy – see how you can support small businesses.

In this series, we explore the big issues impacting business and the accountancy profession as we navigate economic downturn. This time we are focusing on the role of advisory. With the increase in the complexity of the world in which businesses are operating, coupled with client’s ever-changing needs, forecasting has become increasingly challenging. This challenge is amplified by the significant and swift changes brought on by the socio-political unrest in Ukraine and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing accounting and financial reporting advice, scenario planning, and storytelling offers a unique relationship between client and adviser; to become their trusted go-to person. But how do you start the process of offering advisory services? In this podcast we chat with Cheryl Sharp of Pink Pig Financials as we explore her journey into advisory. From her motivations to ensure her clients are fully educated on their businesses performance to how she practically implemented the service. For a service that is needed more than ever to help businesses survive and thrive during a recession, we look at the practical steps for you to take to add this to your suite of services. Covering how to get started, how to price the offering and how it has changed Cheryl’s practice forever!

In this series, we explore the big issues impacting business and the accountancy profession as we navigate economic downturn. This time we are focusing on the role of advisory. With the increase in the complexity of the world in which businesses are operating, coupled with client’s ever-changing needs, forecasting has become increasingly challenging. This challenge is amplified by the significant and swift changes brought on by the socio-political unrest in Ukraine and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing accounting and financial reporting advice, scenario planning, and storytelling offers a unique relationship between client and adviser; to become their trusted go-to person. As you offer them advice in your advisory services you will be engaging in conversations with them more often, and these topics are likely to be more impactful too!In this podcast we explore why advisory services are needed more than ever in order to help businesses survive and thrive during a recession, how you could go about adding advisory to your suite of services and how accountants really are best placed to fulfil this role.

At the time of the recording of this podcast, there was less than 500 working days until Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment (or MTD for ITSA as it's better known) was due to come into effect. Accountants may be wondering how much work is going to be required to prepare for it and operate under it. In this podcast, Jordan Smith and Andrew Smith of A G Smith & Co share their thoughts on how MTD for ITSA provides opportunities for a practice, and they suggest the first steps to take in preparing for MTD for ITSA if your practice hasn’t yet started on the digital journey.

This new podcast series in partnership with PracticeWeb will look at how to grow your practice through data driven marketing. In the final episode of the series, Mike Crook and Zoe Sweet of PracticeWeb discuss how you can market your firm on a budget. They’ll cover why marketing is important, the marketing options available for different budgets, the marketing tactics that work for the firms they work with, and the low-cost or free marketing tools that are available.

This new podcast series in partnership with PracticeWeb will look at how to grow your practice through data driven marketing. In episode 5, Mike Crook and Zoe Sweet of PracticeWeb discuss how marketing can help overcome the price objection. They’ll cover the role that marketing plays in removing price objections, how to communicate your value to reduce those price objections, and practical tips on how to handle the objections through marketing.

This new podcast series in partnership with PracticeWeb will look at how to grow your practice through data driven marketing. In episode 4, Mike Crook and Ray Newman of PracticeWeb discuss how you create a marketing strategy and plan for your practice. They’ll cover what makes a strong marketing strategy, how you create a strategy, how you create a marketing plan, how you measure return on investment, and what good performance looks like.

This new podcast series in partnership with PracticeWeb will look at how to grow your practice through data driven marketing. In episode 3, Mike Crook and Ray Newman of PracticeWeb discuss whether you should become a specialist firm with a niche focus. They’ll cover the pros and cons of being a specialist firm, what the benefits of being niche are, whether niche just means a single sector, how you can turn your practice into a niche firm, and what business owners look for in an accountant.

This podcast series in partnership with PracticeWeb will look at how to grow your practice through data driven marketing. In episode 2, Mike Crook and Ray Newman of PracticeWeb discuss how you can use marketing to win the business you want. They’ll cover what the objective of marketing is, how you attract the clients you want, what marketing tactics work best for firms, how to create a marketing lead generation machine, and what good marketing performance looks like.

This new podcast series in partnership with PracticeWeb will look at how to grow your practice through data driven marketing. After an introductory podcast, we'll dive into five further podcasts on how to use marketing to win the business you want, whether you should become a specialist firm with a niche focus, how to create a marketing strategy and plan for your practice, how marketing can help overcome the price objection, and how to market your firm on a budget. In this introductory podcast, Mike Crook (Managing Director of PracticeWeb) introduces himself and his colleagues Zoe Sweet (Commercial Director) and Ray Newman (Head of Content and Insight) before explaining the series, highlighting the reasons to listen, and introducing PracticeWeb.

ACCA members Gavin Spencer of Beach Accountants and Emily Inman of Zynct Ltd talk about why you need to have your practice on the cloud and discuss practical aspects - such as whether you have to have every client on the cloud, and whether there any cheaper options for small clients.

If you're moving your practice on to the cloud and are wondering about all the apps out there, then listen to this podcast in which ACCA members talk about the apps they use and how it helps their practices. From expense management apps to receiving payment apps to cashflow forecasting apps - hear how these apps can help from your fellow practitioners.

ACCA member Graeme Tennick of Graeme Tennick & Co tells us why he uses Capitalise, and takes us through some case studies to illustrate the benefits to his practice and his clients.

ACCA member Gillian French of DNA Accountants talks about how she moved her practice on to the cloud earlier this year just as the pandemic hit.

ACCA member Eriona Bajrakurtaj of Major's Accounts & Co Ltd talks about the obstacles she encountered moving her family's traditional practice onto the cloud, and how being able to collaborate with other practitioners at the time would have made a huge difference.

ACCA member Peter Jarman of PJCO Accountants Ltd talks about how he moved his practice on to the cloud and the importance of an in-house champion. His current in-house champion - ACCA trainee Tom Belton - joins the podcast to provide some insight into the role.

ACCA member Graeme Tennick of Graeme Tennick & Co talks about why he moved his practice on to the cloud, and the mistakes he made along the way that you can learn from.

Following on from episode 1, ACCA members Carl Reader and Alastair Barlow talk about how they now have the time and headspace to think about their practices and what they want to achieve. Topics covered include benchmarking, nicheing and next level software.

ACCA members Carl Reader and Alastair Barlow discuss how the accountancy profession has always been driven by external forces of which COVID-19 is the latest.