Paul Shrimpling
176 episodes listed below
Accounting firm growth, with the human factors included.
Humanise The Numbers is a business podcast about the operating reality behind future-facing accounting firms. Its conversations move from AI tax tools and client advisory work to culture, recruitment, trust, governance, and the personal shocks that force owners to redesign their firms.
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Humanise The Numbers is a specialist business podcast for accountancy practices that want to become more intentional, more resilient, and more valuable to the people they serve. The focus is narrow in the useful sense. Each conversation stays close to the lived mechanics of running a firm: clients, teams, systems, leadership, growth, and the awkward transition from doing the work to building an organization that can carry more of it. The show often starts from a practical management problem. A meeting needs a better question. A manager needs to stop absorbing every micro problem. A founder needs to protect time for clients. A growing practice needs to trust its team and get out of the way. Those themes give the series its shape. Technology matters here, but it is treated as a business-model force rather than a shiny upgrade. Episodes with Derek Granger and Phil Hobden, for example, put AI, tax-specific tools, and practice software into the broader context of how accountants work with clients and where value may shift next. The show is also comfortable with personal context. Paul Miller's episode links serious illness to a rethink of client numbers and business management, while other conversations examine confidence, staff support, recruitment, training, and the emotional work of leadership. It is not a loose founder chat. The conversations are geared toward usable insight for accountants in practice, especially owners and managers trying to make better choices under pressure. Guests describe what changed inside their firms, why it mattered, and what tradeoffs came with it. That gives the podcast a grounded, case-study feel. It returns repeatedly to the difference between being merely compliant and being genuinely useful. It also returns to trust: between accountant and client, owner and team, leader and manager. The tone is direct, reflective, and commercially serious. There is room for personality, but the show is not built around banter. It is built around lessons from people close to the work. For listeners in accounting, that makes it a practical window into how peers are reshaping firms around better questions, better relationships, and better use of technology.
Made for: This show is for accounting practice owners, managers, and ambitious practitioners who want to improve client relationships, team culture, technology adoption, and firm performance. It especially suits listeners looking for peer examples from inside the profession.
What sets it apart: The series connects accounting technology and firm strategy to the human conditions that make change succeed: trust, access, confidence, leadership habits, and client relationships. It favors real firm stories over generic transformation talk.
Welcome to the 'Humanise The Numbers' podcast series. Here you'll find a whole series of interviews with the leaders of accounting firms who are building (or have already built) a firm of the future now! You'll hear key insights, key skills and key habits that underpin the success of these firms. Insights, skills and habits that can underpin your firm's future success too. It seems that when an accountancy firm connects their team and their clients to the numbers that really matter to them they transform the results for everyone. This is accelerated when the humanity of the way they...
Accounting firm growth meets the awkward question: will your children still want your time later?
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Sharper questions can give managers back time and room to think.
Dominic Ashley-Timms makes a simple case with real practical bite: meetings work better when managers begin by asking what question needs answering, instead of restating the objective. The point lands because it stays close to day to day behavior.
Bookkeeping firms, built with clearer systems.
Accounting tech, firm growth, practical change.
Dominic Ashley-Tims, CEO of Notion, says managers often define their value by solving problems, but that habit can create burnout and limit team growth.
Derek Granger discusses how generative AI and specialized technology tools will transform accounting firms and their business models over the next five years.
Phil Hobden, Head of Business Development at Sage in the UK, argues that accountants can replace much of the personalised business support lost as banks withdraw from smaller companies.
Paul Miller of Cornish Accounting Solutions describes 42 years in accounting, including his move from KPMG to building a relationship-led practice in Bodmin, Cornwall.
Jonathan Gaunt, founder of FD Works and Socket, explains how accounting-firm leaders can build cultures where talented people excel and where growth decisions remain financially disciplined.
Donna Field, founder and director of Autumn HR, describes how the collapse of her previous consultancy in 2023 led her to establish a new HR business on 1 September 2023.
An interview with Steve Price discussing how his accounting firm BWP Inspire focuses on value-added client relationships and firm transformation.
Eleanor Perry discusses building a high-trust accounting firm and celebrating 20 years of ownership.
Interview with Alan Farley about growing an accounting firm from scratch to over 100 employees, focusing on leadership, team trust, and staff support.
An interview with Roger Knecht discussing strategies for accounting firms to grow fees and client value.
An accounting firm leader shares how being vulnerable and human with clients builds deeper connections and transforms business results.
Billy McLaughlin discusses measuring team capacity and KPIs for accounting firms, including offshore team structures.
An accounting firm owner shares how proactive communication and quick responses build client loyalty and firm growth.