Entrepreneurship Uncovered: My Unfiltered Journey into Accountancy

Picture this: You're an ambitious professional, ready to trade your banking job for the dream of building your own accountancy firm. But what does it really take to walk this path? Join me, Arun, as I spill the beans on my twenty-year journey of entrepreneurship.

This isn't just another business start-up story, this is the raw, unfiltered account of my triumphs, trials, and the hard decisions that led to building my own niche business. From the challenge of attracting clients to dealing with a team member's betrayal, I'll take you through it all.

Now let's turn the page and explore the personal side of business. What does it mean to balance the scales between success and a fulfilling family life? Listen as I share how I navigated through long-term temptations, made strategic decisions, and realized the importance of reaching out for help. I'll also reveal my future plans and how I managed to keep the dream alive without sacrificing precious family time. This is not just about the money, it's about the journey and the relationships we build along the way. So, buckle up for an inspiring ride through my entrepreneurial life.

Chapters

• 0:12 Building an Accountancy Firm Challenges
• 9:15 Long-Term Temptation and Future Plans

Transcript

Arun: 0:13

Hello, Arun, here again. Now today I thought I'd talk about the difficulties I've faced in building my accountancy firm. Now I've been going about 20 years and boy have I had every experience and made every mistake. So I thought I'd kind of go through some of the real mistakes and issues that I've faced and it's an honest account and you'll hear what's and all about my background and my history. So I trained as an accountant with one of the big four PwC in London in the mid to late 90s and I'd always had a desire to go into banking, become an investment banker and earn the big bucks. And I did. I went and I hated it, absolutely hated it. The money was the only one attraction. Everything else was pretty, pretty crap, if I have to be honest with you awful the environment, the culture, the way they treated each other. I thought you know what I have to get out of here. So I decided well, with my wife's meter at the time, I'm going to quit and we'd only just got married a few months earlier and she was very supportive of me and she was kind of going to be the main breadwinner for a while. She was working dentists and I decided you know what I'm out of here. So I think on February the 22nd I handed in my notice to my boss and my boss said to me which bank you're going to, and I said I'm not going to any bank, I've had enough of banking and I decided to start my own. So that was the impetus, that was the starting point and I then decided right, what am I going to do? And I didn't really know what I was going to do. I'd obviously had an accountancy qualification and I never really thought I'd have my own practice at that time. But before I knew it and started talking to people, I kind of started. I had my own practice. My first client was my wife, a dentist, and she was just an associate, someone who doesn't own a practice but just worked in practices. But she had other friends who were dentists, who own practices. So I started talking to them and before I knew it I had my first handful of clients come in my way as an accountancy practice owner.

Arun: 2:14

Now, it wasn't glamorous certainly it wasn't. It was hard work and it proved to be much, much more difficult getting clients than I thought. And I managed to get this first client, one of my first clients, and I remember turning up at their place in Essex and they gave me this massive box of papers of receipts and bank statements and everything, and I looked at it and I thought, oh my god, what am I going to do? I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with this information. I trained at one of the big four but they never really taught us how to prepare a set of accounts from a box of records. My knowledge was like auditing and ticking and bashing, or bashing and ticking as they said in the days on auditing. So preparing a set of accounts was completely new to me. Anyway, fast forward. I thought right, I am not going to do this.

Arun: 2:58

I found online, or went online, and I decided I need to hire someone. So the person I hired was my first team member. His name was Mahen and he joined my business in the busy environments of my wonderful office, which was my dad's dining table in his house in Wimbledon, and it all started from there. Really. Now, over the years, we got more clients, we built the book up, we got all shapes and sizes practice owners, associates, dental groups and but our focus was predominantly dentistry. It was the real sector that we wanted to double down on. But it was hard. Building a niche firm was difficult getting dentists to buy in and of course there was lots of competition out there as well. But over the years we built up a great team and great business.

Arun: 3:53

But is there anything in life things that you think are going great? At some point they don't go so great. And a few kind of double whammies hit me. Mahen decided to leave and some other team members decided to leave, and I had to kind of start from scratch again, thinking you know what I have to build a team again. And I did again, making mistakes, learning along the way. And I built the team up. We got good clients. We opened up another office in Manchester, but what I've realized over the time was that kind of I suppose my interest levels were waning.

Arun: 4:23

Okay, what I enjoyed was getting the client. What I enjoyed was meeting new people. What I enjoyed was helping clients improve their services and profits. But quite often or not, I didn't necessarily have the right people in place to support the clients with their accounting, with their compliance work, because it was so difficult to hire people.

Arun: 4:42

Anyway, I got a team, I had a team, they were pretty good, but then again one of the team members left and then they decided to try and pinch a whole bunch of clients. How did they do that? By waiting a certain period of time and then obviously undercutting the prices that we were charging. Clients decided to follow not all, but some clients decided to follow and that was a really left a really dirty taste in my mouth, thinking well, who can I trust in business? But you know what you learn from this and these types of things just make you stronger and make you better, and it didn't really give me any. I didn't really resent the person at all. I said well, you know what they're doing, that they're doing that. That's their choice. Was it professional? No, was it the right thing for them to do? In my opinion, no. But you know what they had to feed their mouths as well, I guess, and I look, always, look forward, I never look back.

Arun: 5:34

However, one of the big things that had made a big decision when I started off my firm all those years ago was one of the reasons I wanted to leave banking was I didn't really want to work stupid hours, I wanted to have a family, I wanted to bring up my children, and running my own firm has really, really afforded me that luxury to being flexible. I used to drop my kids at school. I managed to go to all their sports matches or drama rehearsals or ballet dances or whatever it may be. I was always the dad at the gate picking up. I was quite often the dad dropping in the morning as well, and I enjoyed it and nothing would change that. That was the real pleasure of running my own firm.

Arun: 6:12

I'm pretty sure if I'd worked in banking or worked, stayed in the city, there was no chance that was ever gonna happen. But by being my own boss I had that pleasure, I had that luxury. Of course it meant sacrifices, of course it meant earnings were lower, but you know what money comes and money goes, and I felt so, so happy that I could actually spend the time with my children, the ones who were growing up One who's just literally left recently to go to university and one who's just got another few years left at school. So, before you know it, an empty house and I'll have even more time to try and build my business up again and again. But those last 20 years have really given me a real understanding of business.

Arun: 6:53

As I said, I made many mistakes, I learned a lot, but I think over the next three or four years I'm pretty confident that we're gonna grow at such an exponential level because I've got the experience, I've made the mistakes, I know who to trust, I've built a team, I've built a massive network, not just in the UK but overseas as well. But the most important thing, as I said too earlier, is that I've managed to have a really, really important, balanced life, having that time with my family, having that time with my wife being able to go on the holidays. I've wanted to go to travel the world with my backpack camper, vanning around Europe and other places around the world, and that's been so, so special. So if you're in that point where you're thinking, well why am I running my accountancy firm, or you've gotta lost your mojo to some extent. You're not the only one. Everyone goes through that. I've made zillions of mistakes along the way. I've had millions of problems along the way, but that sort of makes it more interesting.

Arun: 7:51

Okay, it's never gonna be smooth running. I've learned in life business equals problems, if you look to it very simply, for business equals problems, and you've gotta accept that there will be problems in life, in problems in business, but just embrace them, move forward, learn from them and then hopefully, those problems won't arise in the future. I'm certain other ones will. I'm absolutely certain other problems will arise, but the key is enjoy the process and build the team of people that you like that surround you. That means not just your team internally, but also the clients. Don't choose the dodgy clients. Don't choose the clients who are just gonna be a headache and just demanding and who don't want them to pay. You Get the right people. It's ultimately a people business being an accountant running your own firm, and if you have the wrong people around you or you're surrounded by the wrong people, it's just going to be a painful exercise as well. So, in summary, I've had a brilliant 20 years. Okay, absolutely brilliant 20 years.

Arun: 8:45

I didn't really necessarily create the largest firm in the world um, that I had anticipated when I started out with the arrogance of an ex-investment banker. But you know what I've created? Something that I'm really proud of and I really really enjoy doing, and I think what I've learned also is that you think that things are going to take six weeks or six months. Sometimes they take six years or it may even take longer. Um, that's life and um, I've learned also that you've got to be in the game and then you've got to stay in the game for the long term, and building a business is a long term game.

Arun: 9:16

I've always had intro. I've always had people come approach me or would you like us to buy your firm? Not only my, my accounting firm, but we have also, in dental clinics, private equity getting involved, and we've always been tempted them. The checkbook's always there, but it's you. You think you know what. Well, no, this is a long term game. This is something I enjoy doing, and when I sell up, what else am I going to do so for? On that note, I will leave you there. Um, I hope you enjoyed this podcast today. I hope you gave you some insight, some inspiration, some motivation and, uh, if you need any help, just give me a shout. Thank you.