Young Difference Makers S2 E5 - Liam Guthrie: Breaking the Mold and Saying 'Yes' to Opportunity

When Liam Guthrie stepped onto the university campus, he was stepping into uncharted territory for his family. His journey from a numbers enthusiast to a strategic thinker in the accountancy world is nothing short of inspiring. 

On our latest episode, Liam, who shattered the mold of a traditional accountant, shares how his role transcends mere number crunching and evolves into the art of communicating financial intricacies to business leaders. 

This conversation is for anyone who believes that their background might define their future—it doesn't. Liam's work with the ICAS Foundation and his empowering keynote speech at the ICAS admission ceremony illuminate the importance of diversity in thought and experience in the field of accountancy.

Have you ever found yourself saying "no" to opportunities out of habit? It's time to switch that mindset and embrace the power of "yes." This episode is a rallying call to push beyond your comfort zone and seize the chances that can shape not only your career but also the face of an entire profession. 

We discuss how taking on roles that aid social mobility, like those fostered by ICAS, can lead to a more inclusive industry and bring about societal change. If you're looking for a nudge to step up and make a difference while pursuing growth in your professional life, Liam's narrative and our discussion on positive action will give you that push. Join us and be part of the conversation that challenges the norm and champions progress.

Transcript

Liam Guthrie: 0:01

Yeah. So I think a difference maker to me is someone who might challenge this status quo or who might really be questioning things, shaking things up a little bit or just bringing a different perspective to the table. So my name is Liam Goughbray. I'm currently based in Glasgow, so my background is from the environment, originally in Scotland, and I was actually the first person in my family to go to university. So I, whilst I was at school, decided that I liked numbers but I didn't particularly love maths. So I think naturally I wanted to try a Kimpton, which is where I'd found myself in the numbers, but not being technically in the maths area. So I just found that I picked up the theory really good and I really enjoyed it and my teachers were quite impressed by how quickly I did that. So I think once I'd found what I was good at, I just wanted to run with that. So I decided to then study that at university and then, once I'd got through university or midway through, I kind of knew what I wanted to do by that point and that was pursue a career in accountancy Solely from the perspective that I was good at the theory. And then you get into industry and you find that it's not all about the theory and that's a bit of a shock, but yeah, that's how I found myself where I am. So I think there is an element of accountancy that is very numbers driven and you can't really get away from that. You just need to face up to it. But I think I've found, because I did my training in industry there are ways to navigate beyond the numbers. The numbers are very important, but I think it comes down to thinking about strategic perspective. The business you work for accountants can think strategically and they can also add value to a business, be that through communicating numbers or looking beyond the numbers. So I think I found myself in a role where the numbers all come first and what we do is support board members or other executives in the business make informed decisions. So I see myself as adding value beyond the numbers by being a good communicator and having good stakeholder management skills and managing expectations. And sometimes I think as well it's communicating the numbers in a way that isn't typically numbers focused. So people who aren't very numbers focused in those executive groups they like to see a picture or a graph. So I think it's finding ways to incorporate numbers to get your point across differently, I think. So I think a difference maker to me is someone who might challenge this status quo or who might really be questioning things, shaking things up a little bit or just bringing a different perspective to the table. And for me, I was given the opportunity to be the keynote speaker at my ICAS admission ceremony this year. So I did a bit of work whilst I was at university and was supported by a foundation which is called the ICAS Foundation and that is ICAS's social mobility charity, which supports people from typically lower socioeconomic backgrounds get into a career in accountancy.

Liam Guthrie: 3:59

So when I was invited to do the speech at the admission ceremony, I think the main thing for me to capture was sharing with my cohort that there are different ways to get into a career in accountancy, and that's a good thing. So I think that for me, sharing my experience and trying to inspire people who may not have thought that there's things that people like me could offer was a really powerful thing, and I've since had people come up to me at events and say I donated to the foundation because of you raising awareness, or I hadn't even heard of the foundation, but I went away and did a bit of research on it and it's great the work they do and also part of the foundation's work is they offer mentoring support to university students and I've also had feedback that a couple of people have signed up to the mentoring program as a result of hearing my speech. Accumtency was probably did support social mobility in a career in a county and the profession as a whole probably at one point was very accessible. I think we might have gone backwards on that a little bit, but I also know that a lot of employers and there are also charities out there that are looking to to address that issue and so I think for me it's getting out there and sharing my story and saying this is my experience, which is quite different to the experience of a lot of other accountants who might have had people in their family go to university, or who might know an accountant just to even have a conversation with them, or who might have a family member. That that's an accountancy or a career and a professional services firm which lends itself well to accountancy.

Liam Guthrie: 6:01

So it's really just getting out there and saying to people that you're more than capable of achieving a career in accountancy, even if that's not what you think yourself of yourself doing or you've not really given yourself or allowed yourself a chance to think that you might be able to pursue a career in accountancy. Yeah, I think there's probably partnerships that could be made earlier in someone's career and especially at those key points where someone is trying to make a decision and it might not be an informed decision, but I think we could make it an informed decision. I think I've heard several stories where people say I was good at numbers at school so my career's employability officer said I should go study accountancy. Or also I've had experiences myself where at school you're kind of told the next natural progression is to go to university. So I think if there's people like myself and other individuals who can get into those conversations and say that you know there are other routes that you could explore, I know that if you want to to get into accountancy you can go down the apprenticeship route. There's also college, university. You don't have to go down one path to become an accountant and I've found that myself and I think, even as someone who did go to university and got into the career I wanted to, I'm very keen to share with people that there's other ways you can can do that Several of our institutes actually push this kind of. It's a passport for allowing you to travel or it allows you to work in various different industries and you kind of think that's maybe a little bit cheesy that they say that. But once you're fully immersed in the profession and you see that and you hear people's perspectives and there's people who have traveled all over the world or they've been in various different industries so I think getting your, your qualification, you might think that once you've got it you're not going to do anything with it, but I think it just gets you a seat at the table a lot of the time and people are willing to hear you out. When they see those letters at the end of your name and they think, okay, this person might actually have something to add and you can go places with that. I think yeah.

Liam Guthrie: 8:45

So I think the the challenges for me probably begin right at the start of my career when, as I was saying earlier, I found what I was good at, but I didn't really know what routes were available to me and I didn't really have anyone to speak to about that. So I knew I wanted to then go to university to study accountancy, but I didn't really know what my options were afterwards. I didn't know how I was gonna get into that kind of line of work and I think, whilst you're at university as well. Another challenge I faced is I worked part-time to supplement my income because I moved away from home whilst at university, so I kind of had to have a part-time job to be able to live. And then it comes to the time where you're thinking, okay, maybe you want to get an internship because that'll make then getting into a career in accountancy after easier. But for me I didn't have the option of doing an unpaid internship because then I would have to sacrifice work for that.

Liam Guthrie: 9:47

Yeah, I think financially it was difficult for me, but also I didn't really have anyone to speak to, and that's where the ICAST Foundation came in for me. So they addressed those gaps because they recognised that people who are from the lower socioeconomic backgrounds might have to work a little bit more to support themselves or they don't have anyone to speak to or guide them throughout their time at university. So they provide financial support via bursary every year and that helped me reduce the amount of time that I would spend working so that I could focus more on my studies and also address a work-life balance whilst at university, because that is a big thing, and also they provide you with a mentor throughout the four years whilst you're at university as well. So in the beginning it's just kind of getting the individual comfortable with university life. But as you go through your university experience it's really starting to think about building a CV and developing those soft personal skills communicating and also then thinking about what you want to do after you graduate. So my mentor helped me think about graduate roles the kind of things that I would really need to reflect on and think about the questions that I'd be asked at interviews, and that was really beneficial for me. I built my CV with my mentor and I've still had feedback to this day when I've gone to job interviews that say your CV looked really good and that's something that I got locked down over five years ago now. So, yeah, that's really been great for me.

Liam Guthrie: 11:31

When you put your mind to something, if you really want to make it happen, you just kind of have to take the good and the bad, and I heard someone say recently you don't know the good until you've experienced the bad as well. So I think that's a lesson that you can then learn early in your career but then take through life with you as well. I think the fact I'm sat here just now is really exciting and it shows people who are perhaps listening don't think they're capable of doing something that they are in fact capable of it. And for me, something I've learned is, if you're presented with an opportunity, you should take it up. So when I was asked to do the keynote address at the admissions ceremony, it was very daunting and I knew there'd be hundreds of people there and I've never done anything like that.

Liam Guthrie: 12:16

But I kind of came to the conclusion that if I've not got a good, solid reason to say no to things, I should just then, by default, say yes. I think that's where I've got to when I'm invited to things and put myself out there. It's difficult, but I just kind of need to do it. And another thing I'd really like to stress is, if you're a member of an institute, find out what they're doing for social mobility, because ICAS are doing, they have the charity, but there's probably something your own institute would be doing as well. So find out how you can get involved in that, because I think it's really important that in the profession we have people who can offer different perspectives and challenge things and shake things up a little bit.