Brent Szalay, Founder & Strategic Advisor, reflects on building structured advisory inside an accounting firm — and why the profession needs it.
Advisory Is My Purpose
When we started SEIVA (accounting & advisory firm), advisory wasn’t something we planned to add later.
It was built into the firm as a proper department from day one.
Not ad-hoc advice.
Not something reserved for accountants with decades of experience.
Something the firm could deliver consistently.
Compliance is necessary — and we do it well — but it was never the part that lit me up.
We didn’t start SEIVA to build a better compliance factory. We wanted to build a firm that helped business owners move forward, not just report on where they’d been.
Advisory isn’t just another service line to me.
It’s the reason I’m in this profession.
Team Engagement Was the Real KPI
SEIVA was built around one core belief:
Happy team → happy clients → repeat work.
In that order.
Young accountants are thirsty for knowledge and variety. They want to grow. They want to be challenged. They want to feel like what they’re doing matters.
If all we give them is compliance work, we cap their development.
Strategic advisory gave our team something different:
- More meaningful conversations with clients
- Greater responsibility and ownership
- A broader commercial skill set
- Clearer visibility of how their work influences a client’s future
When accountants feel they are helping shape outcomes — not just record history — their confidence grows. And confident advisors have stronger conversations, build deeper relationships and generate more valuable work.
It gave SEIVA a culture that felt progressive instead of traditional.
We Wanted More from Client Relationships
Personally, I wanted more out of my client relationships than a quarterly meeting about what had already happened in their business.
I wanted to get to know them.
Understand why they were in business.
What their goals were.
What they were building for their families.
What was keeping them up at night.
There are parts of accounting that are necessary — and parts that aren’t — but the parts I love most are where the real stuff lives.
The struggles.
The ambition.
The uncertainty.
The possibility.
Call me selfish, but uncovering that with a client and helping them build a path forward — that’s the best part of this job.
That’s advisory.
And that’s where the profession becomes meaningful.
We Built It the Hard Way
When we introduced structured advisory into SEIVA, it wasn’t trending.
There was no framework handed to us.
We knew it mattered — but turning it into something sustainable, repeatable and scalable took close to a decade.
It’s one thing to be good at advisory yourself.
It’s another thing to build a method the whole team can deliver confidently.
We had to figure out:
- How to structure conversations
- How to scope engagements
- How to price advisory confidently
- How to train capability across the team
- How to embed it into the rhythm of the firm
Advisory isn’t scalable without structure.
That structure took time, innovation, multiple changes and investment.
Why Leaders in Business Exists
At some point it became obvious.
We’d spent years refining advisory inside SEIVA — testing it, breaking it and rebuilding it — until it became something the firm could deliver consistently.
And the question became:
Why should every other firm have to do it the hard way?
If a firm wants to build proper advisory capability, why not give them the structure from the start?
That’s why Leaders in Business was created.
I’ll be honest — there was a moment where we questioned it.
Would building Leaders in Business take work away from SEIVA?
But the more we thought about it, the clearer it became.
I believe there is enough work for everyone in this space.
98% per cent of Australian businesses are small businesses — around 2.6 million of them. The demand for better strategic guidance is enormous.
Helping more firms deliver structured advisory doesn’t shrink the pie.
It raises expectations. It lifts capability. It strengthens the role advisors play in the future of business.
When more advisors are confident and capable, business owners get better support.
And when business owners win, the profession becomes stronger and more relevant.
Leaders in Business doesn’t compete with SEIVA.
It sharpens it.
It keeps us accountable.
It keeps us refining.
It lifts the standard.
And it gives firms who want to build advisory properly a way to get there faster — without spending ten years figuring it out themselves.
If advisory capability is part of your firm’s future, start by understanding where you stand today.
Take our Advisor Readiness Quiz 👇
