The accounting profession is undergoing one of its biggest transformations in decades. As AI automates more compliance work and clients demand greater strategic value, firms can no longer rely on traditional business models to remain competitive. The future belongs to accountants who embrace advisory services, recurring revenue, and strategic partnerships.
In this episode, The Connected Accountant producer Anthony Pearl is joined by Wayne Findlay of The Back Room, Talila Croy of Emple, and Ian Aldridge of Progressive Legal to discuss how accounting firms can adapt to this new reality. The conversation explores the shift from hourly billing to subscription pricing, the growing importance of advisory services, and why accountants should position themselves as trusted advisers in AI, not simply users of the technology.
The panel also shares practical ideas for building a structured partner ecosystem, selecting the right referral partners, and leveraging AI to create stronger client relationships rather than replacing them. Whether you're preparing your firm for the future or looking to evolve your service offering, this episode provides a practical roadmap for staying ahead of change.
ANTHONY: Adapting your accounting business model, subscriptions, advisory, and strategic partnerships. Welcome to the connected accountant, the podcast where we explore how strategic partnerships can transform your accounting practice. I'm your co-host, Anthony Perl, and today we're exploring the fundamental shifts that accountants need to make. Moving from hourly billing to subscriptions, from compliance to advisory and building the partnerships that make it all possible.
TALILA: The best way to deal with AI is to get ahead of it. And the same with Partnership.
IAN: If you don't get ahead of this now, you're going to get left behind and it's happening really rapidly. It's Fast.
WAYNE: If you want to become the trusted adviser, the hourly rate charging for everything isn't the way to go.
ANTHONY: Joining me today are our three regular panelists who bring incredible expertise to the connected accountant. Talila Kroy from Emple, Wayne Findley from the backroom, and Ian Aldridge from Progressive Legal. Let's get into what will make you the connected accountant. With people getting armed with more and more information from AI and other sources, you have to become an expert in a particular area and then have other experts that you can refer to along the way. And that's the change that's happening and needs to happen in accounting firms, isn't it?
WAYNE: Yeah, I think so. Like you know, our niche like we mentioned was tradies and in my current business as accountants and it all revolves around partnerships is how we market today. If you can imagine trying to do a business plan back in, you know, in 2000s, you know, that was a huge job. It would take, you know, hours of work today with the where AI is your tool, it's a lot easier. And so I think you can niche and you can make sure that you tell your partners about that.
IAN: It's different for us as lawyers, as accountants where I've often said that if I came back in another life, I'd come back as an accountant. Um because I've seen how sticky you can be to a business. We're still in this very transactional scenario, unfortunately, with our clients. Australian businesses at least are just not ready for a subscription model that's fair and reasonable. There are others that are now offering that but we receive endless complaints about those and I think you know they're just not doing it in the right way and we find that you know many clients still want us to just let's just do this one thing earn the trust right let's just do this one thing first then we'll do the next thing and then the next thing next thing and do things in order of priority whereas good or bad you know accountants have been forced really into providing monthly subscription but obviously the work that accountants do lends itself so well to that you know monthly wreck quarterly bass half yearly reports reports behave
WAYNE: but but then a lot of that could go like with AI and that's why you just can't rely on that and I think that's why the accountants need to look at advisory to have on top of the compliance the compliance is probably the easiest bit that AI can solve
IAN: but still you can have monthly meetings as part of that subscription
WAYNE: and you mentioned subscription I think that's important too is if you want to become the trusted advisor, the hourly rate charging for everything isn't the way to go. You're not going to get client trust every time they ring up or pick up the phone to talk to you. You're going to get charged for it. So, you need to create an environment with your clients that a subscription is how we used to work. And that encompassed ad phone calls and you know having a meeting, a quick meeting. But what would happen from those where you would normally charge in the old days, you would get additional work from that. There would be a project that would come out of it. So I think setting yourself up so you can get additional advice is the way to do it.
IAN: Yeah. And this is something that I've been very envious of accountants is that, you know, I'd sort of worked out that it you kind of need to get to those that 300 clients that are paying you the monthly subscription and then every month is a similar month even in January, which is horrible for us lawyers and February sort of break even, but January being a half month, you know, that's really that's really tough on every law firm. But it just means as well too that you'll need less referral partners as an accountant than you would do as a lawyer. So I have to go really hard. I'm going to need to get, you know, 3 to 500 referral partners. Whereas, you're going to get fast traction as an accountant if you're doing this partner suitcase because, you know, you'll get 20 referrals from people from your referral partners and and it won't that that doesn't take long to get to 300 clients or if you want 300 more clients, I think you'll get a lot of traction really quickly from it.
WAYNE: I think all accountants need to market because out with the old and you want to get new one. So, you need to continually turn your clients over because we all know you do have bad clients or you have clients that they're just there for price or they're not really It's that 8020 rule, isn't it? You just got to continually get the good and tune out the bad or the old. So, I think even if you're successful now as an accounting firm, you need to get good leads coming through all the time so you can have a bit of client picking on who you're dealing with.
IAN: there's and there's naturally clients that fall out of the bucket that you've got to you put back in. I see the opportunities for accountants being like this is a really really good opportunity for accountants to leverage off these partners and partnerships and you can do these presentations via Zoom or Teams or whatever you want to use. We just had one the other day with someone in Perth who I've been hunting for a while now to softly to try and get because I did have a relationship with another law firm before and I saw that starting to fall apart and so I sort of got um got our BD to reach out to her and and and organize a meeting. We gave and we did the presentation and her feedback was there's only two people that have done this for me before. the first one who was a business adviser and they've been working together for 10 years and they refer work to each other, you know, all the time. And so she said, "This is really impressive. You're clearly putting a lot of effort into this, you know, relationship before it even starts." And so I think we've now got a we've capitalized on that referral punch. I mean, they're based in Perth. We're we're over the other east coast of Australia. And she's happy to send clients, you know, our way. Yeah.
ANTHONY: I think it's interesting here that this is the changing nature of accounting firms in changing name of businesses but accounting firms have to be on the back of it right I mean Talila it's a good opportunity to bring you in here in terms of thinking about the way they go about business needs to be different and partnerships needs to be a central focus of that otherwise they risk falling behind everyone else.
TALILA: Exactly. And I think accountants are very, shall we say, conservative people by nature, majority wise. I don't want to be broad brush here, but they're known. There's not that many fast adopters compared to maybe some other areas of business. But fortunately, this isn't an area where you have to change so much. All accountants understand about the power of referrals and the power of working as a trusted adviser with a surrounded by a network of excellence. So, it's really about not doing that ad hoc, but systemizing is the key. And that's like what Ian said when he brought up his deck. We created that deck. So, I know that deck has every single thing that people need to know about progressive legals to be their good partner. And therefore, that partner was not only impressed but educated and will bring him the right people. And for accountants, it's really, particularly when they're moving more focused on the advisory space, it's really quite straightforward to take from their existing relationships and existing network to elevate them from ad hoc to more proactive and then to find those other ones that they need and surround themselves with it. And there you have a winning formula. All our focus will be on the accounting advisory partner suitcase that kicks off in January. And yeah, we're very, very excited about that. And both Wayne and Ian will feature in that in different places as well. Yeah. So, it's going to be I know that it's going to be transformative for every single accountant that's participating.
ANTHONY: Wayne, I just want to unpack a little bit further as well about what Talila was just speaking about and and what you were talking about earlier in terms of this changing face of the way accountants need to think about themselves and to start looking at partnerships as being an intrinsical part of their business. You know, are there some obvious ways to start for them in terms of that rethinking the way the business should work?
WAYNE: Yeah, I was just thinking there when was talking about having your partners and how you would especially with AI and being a trusted advisor. If I was an accountant today, I'd front foot that and become the trusted advisor on AI as far as that and build some partners around you that know AI. For example, I would run some workshops with clients cuz if you think you've got issues with AI in the accounting industry, your clients have the same issues as well and they're all thinking about it. So, I would run some workshops or some events, bring some partners in around AI and off that build out some advice that would help, you know, help those clients. So become the expert in AI for your clients so they go to you. That would be an example of something I would look at doing right now.
ANTHONY: And Ian, I bring you in here because that's the interesting thing about the legal profession is that it's become known as being niched in different areas but still at a reasonably high level. You know, criminal law, people think about that and family law. But what Wayne's talking about here is kind of bringing that even further down. And in order to be bring that further down, as you've talked to in previous episodes, you need to be the trusted adviser that can recognize this is your niche, even within a niche, and then be able to have those other partners that you can bring in to be able to do those other things. And that's the lesson that accountants need to learn as well.
IAN: Yeah, just had a whole bunch of ideas when Wayne just spoke then I guess we actually need to we actually need to do that as a as the as a law firm and and specialize in AI and give our clients training in AI and we've just recently implemented AI into the business in the last 2 weeks was waiting for the right solution to come along for small business. There's a whole bunch of enterprise solutions right now. I'm guessing that's probably the same in in the in the accounting financial space. But yeah, there's a huge opportunity for accountants, I think, because I know that there's a few AI businesses that are targeting small firm accountants, you know, not enterprise accountants, Right?
WAYNE: The automation's the buzzword at the moment, which isn't really AI, but it's automation. And there's a lot of people out there saying they're the experts in automation. That's where accountants should become involved in helping out with that. Yeah,
IAN: I think there's a few businesses now that are specifically targeting the small to medium SMP’s for AI for accounting space and yeah, if I was an accountant, I reckon I'd be contacting every single one of them and working out what can they do and what can how can it help my clients and stress testing every single one of them if there are mult if there are multiple ones out there and then helping you know finding a solution that you can potentially work with one or more of those referral partners and then you're at least seen like, oh, I'm ahead of this curve. I think like Anthony, you were saying before that, you know, that the council got to back this. I think professional services generally now need to realize they need to get in front of this now. Like you need to be keeping up as much as possible with this. As annoying as it is and as scary and potentially business threatening as some of the news is saying, if you don't get ahead of this now, you're going to get left behind. and it's happening really rapidly. It's fast. It's fast moving. There's stuff coming out every single day. But if you're but but if you're in touch with the people in the know and they're telling you, hey, what's coming, then at least you you're going to be at the forefront of it. And telling your clients as well, too, that hey, we are we are adopting this technology. We are using this technology. There are even some larger businesses in the last six months that I've heard are insisting on their big firms using AI. Like they it's a part of the panel like they got a panel of big firms and they're saying to those big firms if you don't use AI you will not be on this panel. so it's even coming from the clients now where there's this top down approach where obviously they're going after the big clients first for AI and and finding those solutions because they're bigger fish they're whales but there's also this bottom up I think that's happening as well too where you know they're realizing they can make an even bigger difference percentage-wise for profitability for SMP’s by implementing AI into their business and we want to make ourselves really really sticky so we're their first port and that we're in front of this and we're talking about AI. We're talking about how that's going to change the way we deliver our services. I think clients will now realize, oh wow, they're talking about this. They're in front of it. They're not avoiding it like the plague or co. They haven't got their head in their sand. They're actually making strategic moves to make this a better service for us in the future. And I think those that adopt it and those that talk about it are going to get the lion share of the work because everyone else will be like, "Oh, they don't just like what happened with my QuickBooks and and the Zero Crowd."
ANTHONY: Talila I want to bring you in here because I think what's really important about some of these things that we're talking about is is if you're going to niche and you're going to become, for example, the specialist in AI for accountants, you need to be able to map out who your partners are going to be. And some of them are going to be obvious and some of them not so much. So talk to me about that process of how you actually go about doing that.
TALILA: This is an interesting one because we were talking before about he how every accountant has a bunch of specific advisers that they all should have like estate planner lawyer finance broker etc. This is a new category for them and they will have to go out and find the right partner. And I think it's such a topical one and what way said was so smart because people are panicking. Everyone is panicking. It's such a great to get on the front foot and say let's make this work for you because AI and automation are as much a friend as they are an enemy. They're Friend of me and you just got to you got to work with them the right way. And so one of the things we do absolutely in the partner suitcase is map out who do you need and this is about okay your clients are tradies for example what are the AI or automation options in the trady industry and what what problems do they solve what levels of trust are they what are they going to offer to my clients what can I offer to them where would I bring them in on the client journey and then having that chat and making sure that we build enough trust with each one we've got a very specific process when it comes to bringing a partner on for the first time because trust is the fuel of partnerships. You cannot risk your reputation. You cannot risk your client's experience. So, we are always starting some kind of a small engagement. And it was kind of like what we were all saying before, the partner knows that you're watching them. And actually, if you look at it, like Ian was referred to me by a partner, Wayne was referred to me. Like the people that refer to you, they're looking at you to make sure you're doing a good job. So it's about scouting out who are the right ones to talk to. Ideally getting introduced to them and then building trust and making sure that there's a complete values alignment before you start recommending those to anybody. Once that trust is created then you can open the doors more and more and more and like quite a big flow. And if we don't do that and I have like early on in the day I created some partnerships quickly that I shouldn't have and I got burned. So I know how important this is. So important. Like at the core of everything is the client experience and your own reputation and trust. You cannot do anything to damage or make that risk
IAN: in our lines of work. Right. Reputation is everything.
TALILA: Everything.
WAYNE: That's right.
IAN: And it takes a long time sometimes to earn trust and it takes a moment to lose it.
TALILA: Exactly.
WAYNE: That's why I think you have those rules in Talila. It's part of your partnership. lay that out the front. So, you've got these rules that you abide by and that way, you know, the referrals and the partners you have, you know, you have your dos and don'ts. I think that's important.
TALILA: So important. And even people think that, well, we're both good people. No, no confusion will arise. But two people can easily have two different ideas of what a conversation meant. And if you don't go through and granularly specify, let's make sure the client's protected in these ways. let's make sure that flow referrals flow in this way. The other party will have a partial understanding of what's going on and that could lead to a problem that nobody needs to have and it's easily avoided. The best way to deal with any problem is to get ahead of it. Like Wayne said, the best way to deal with AI is to get ahead of it. Like and and the same with partnerships. Get ahead of any potential problems in your partnership by being super clear. And I mean that's what the Ian is in the business of. He's in the business of making sure that when people are doing business together, they're aligned on their terms. It's the same principle like don't just leave it to chance. Be very specific and have rules. That way you can't get burned and neither can the partner. No one gets upset, right?
IAN: And it doesn't have to be scary either. It's just really just putting in black and white what's going to happen and then stepping out that process going back to your partner suitcase. So we were kind of doing things really ad hoc and it wasn't structured, you know, wasn't really considered. We didn't educate the partners on what we did and vice versa. Like no one is doing this right now. Um like this is a really really big opportunity for professional services to like and I think maybe if we all sort of think back at the times when we had someone pitch for our work, right? And it's in a really nice presentation. It's really professional. It's structured. It's organized. It's well thought out. The wording is really clear and unambiguous. And it gives you that confidence to speak strongly about what you do and what type of clients you help and what type of work you are really good at and love. Just that alone has been really powerful for our business. And I don't know whether I would probably say most lawyers and most accountants are fairly sort of bashful. They don't like tooting their own horn. They don't like singing their own praises. And we kind of like our clients to do that for us and be those advocates. And I'm sure most accountants and lawyers normally dread networking events, dread going to show trade shows and this that and the other and and talking to people being also like taken away from their business as well too. And you got to think at all times, right? As a business owner, where is your time best spent? Where's your highest and best value in the business? Right? And after a while, especially when you start to get a team around you, it becomes more about spending time on the business, not so much in the business or or 50/50, you know, or 75% is doing the supervising, the technical work, and maybe 25% is trying to go out there and get new business, whatever that might be, spending time on marketing and and all the rest. But I think definitely spending the time that we have spent on creating the partnerships has been far more valuable in terms because we obviously always thinking about our time and how much it our time is valuable. But spending time on that structured approach to a partnership instead of just sort of conversations here and there that you might have from time to time. And how many times have you had a client a client referred to you from a referral partner that you hadn't spoken to in a year or two or three? Like that's an indication that like, hey, this person really likes you. They obviously remember you from 3 years ago to come back and refer you some work. Maybe you want to give them some love, you know, like, you know, reach out and and and organize a coffee if you can face to face or or, you know, a Zoom just to to catch up and then, you know, foster that relationship because chances are they've probably got, you know, a lot of clients to send to send to you if they're if they're remembering you after all this time. They obviously trust you. They remember you. So, nurturing that relationship as well too, I think, is is really important. Like obviously nurture the relationship with your clients as well too, but nurturing your relationship with your business with the partners that send you work is probably more important because ultimately they can bring you more work and more qualified and great clients. That's what we found really helpful with a suitcase. Like that's the real big benefit.
TALILA: Yes. And I agree and I think it comes down to time. Like we don't want to just have unstructured coffee chats. We want to have really like we're having a great time as Wayne said and I'd say Wayne is an accountant who quite enjoys going out and meeting people. Not all of them are introverts but doing it in a structured way so that it's both enjoyable and in and it leads to something because those random coffee chats don't necessarily lead to anything. And I've seen a lot of people waste as much time in in networking as they do in marketing. They're not even talking to the right people and they're not saying the right things. So do everything with intention and with strategy and it start that's why partner suitcase starts with strategy. That's why all partnerships that anyone who's listening to this is building be very very clear. What is it that the client needs? What is it that you want out of this? What is it that you can offer your partner? That is the conversation. And then how do we get this going? And how do we build trust together? And then how do we roll it out with metrics like it should be solid. It should be real. That's where partnerships become amazing.
IAN: Like how many referral partners would accountant, you know, realistically need the sort of continually referring work? Like how many how many of them are there?
WAYNE: Well, I think there's a few key ones like you need a bank manager, you need a lawyer, you need some real estate agents, mortgage brokers, it is good. So, someone in that IT industry and then you have your other professional type relationships like cuz we're tradies. We like tradies. It's your plumbing worlds, your your industries, you know, your place makers, all those sort of they're New Zealand brands or Bunnings, those type of people that head them up that you can get referrals through from those type of So, pick your industries.
IAN: Maybe like 20.
WAYNE: Yeah, I would say 20. Yep. Yep. And then out of those 20, I would finetune it and have your your 80 20 have your five or six that you work really close with and then have your maybe 12, 13, 14 that you're a bit more of a loose affiliation with. You'll find that yeah, your top five you'll get you'll get a lot of referrals from.
TALILA: we actually have a download, don't we, Wayne, of the the top seven account partners that every accountant should have. So there's kind of the inner ring and ring and that would be worth picking up from this episode, I think. Great idea.
ANTHONY: Absolutely. And just to wrap up this episode because I want to bring it back to the beginning just for you to wrap it up a little bit. Wayne is that the start of this we talked about sort of the changing model that accountants can look at and subscriptions was one thing you talked about. AI is another thing you talked about and I think picking up from what Taliila was saying, you have to be deliberate in what you're doing. Don't let this be all on a whim. You need to be deliberate in choosing where you're going to go and creating that structure.
WAYNE: Yeah, I can't emphasize enough, you know, what Tila is doing with her partner suitcase, I think, is just such a good for accountants that you can be specific. you go out and you could interview and fine-tune who you want as a candidates in specific industries and knowing I think so what do how do you call it like if if someone knows that you're interviewing for that spot they're going to send you leads otherwise if they know they're not if they don't send you leads then someone else is going to fill that spot so it's it's making sure you find the right partners and then making sure there's an agreement I I wouldn't do a big legal agreement. It would be like an understanding that this is what we're going to do. I'm going to send you leads in this area. You send me leads in this area and we'll help each other. And I think that's that's the crux of what Talila is trying to do. And I think but you got to have structure overlapping it. If you don't, it's just not going to happen. Yeah.
IAN: you're effective you're effectively seeing the referral partners as a target market, right? And basically they're the client that refers you clients, right? So, but going through this process with talila working out there's something magical that happens right when you when and when you start to focus on a particular area. It's kind of like in any area of business, right? Wherever your focus goes, the revenue flows. And what we found was just going through that process of identifying the language that we use, the unique selling proposition, how do we talk to them, who is and identifying who are the top people to go and approach and doing that in a really structured way, then giving them a structured presentation with dedicated follow-ups after that to make sure all that hard work doesn't just up and vanish in the wind. And you know, how many coffees, how many telephone conversations have you had with potential referral partners that just didn't go anywhere afterwards because you got too busy? Yeah.
TALILA: Or it wasn't done right. That's exactly exactly right. And if you look at our business, Emple, 69% of our leads come from partnerships, but they're also the best ones we have. It doesn't take a lot of really great partners. We've got five or six really strong, what I'd call embedded partners that always send us work. And that's all it takes to to give us everything we need to the point where we've become lazy and haven't even done our own marketing because the word of mouth is so strong. By the way, I don't recommend that. I think you should do your marketing like get your basics in order, but instead of pouring money into lead generation and all that, put it into strategic partnerships and you'll get more clients, better clients, everything that you need. Yeah.
IAN: Forget about paying so much to Google.
TALILA: Exactly.
IAN: For for randoms. You then have to like very heavily before you let them in the door.
WAYNE: Exactly.
TALILA: Exactly. I mean, that's why 75% of your referral leads convert because someone else already warmed them up. Someone else already qualified them. They're handed to you on a platter. Whereas these ones that just come off a Google search, they're price shopping. They don't know you from a bar, so they'll just do whatever. It's not the same quality. And leads ain't leads. And time is money. So the more time we can save on both marketing and sales, the more we can invest in our clients, which is I always think of it growing an orchard, get those partners and really focus on those partners and then give you so many fruit. It's like you have your own little orchard of partners instead of going fishing and getting one client at a time [music] at a time through marketing. Create an orchard and let the apples fall into your lap. And that's the difference.
WAYNE: Yeah. I like that term. Yes.
ANTHONY: Well, that's all we have time for in this conversation. Next time, we're tackling the profit squeeze, the pressure to do more for less, and how partnerships help you deliver premium value without racing to the bottom on price. It's one you definitely do not want to miss. A reminder also about some of our exclusive round events for accountants. Visit the show notes for dates and registration details. You'll also find all the contact information for Taliila, Wayne, and Ian there as well. This has been a partner alchemy podcast for thought leaders, a joint venture between Emple and my team at podcastdoneforyou.com.au. I'm Anthony Perl, your co-host, reminding you to like, share, comment, and subscribe so you never miss an episode. We'll see you next time on the connected accountant.
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