The Unstoppable Accountant - Grow your Accounting Firm
For all things business, entrepreneurship and finance!
Hi Arun here, in this podcast I will happily share my ideas, successes and failures in growing my businesses, investment ideas, and juggling this all in a rapidly changing world.
If you are looking to grow your business, build a global team, or just need inspiration to make it happen, you have come to the right place for inspiration and action.
If you have enjoyed this podcast, make sure you check out my youtube channel, and also my global accountancy company webpage - https://sameraglobal.com/
My aim is to add value to you, your business, your life. Happy listening!
Arun
The Unstoppable Accountant - Grow your Accounting Firm
London Calling, Delhi Answering - Automating, Innovating, and Offshoring in Modern Accounting
Imagine transforming your accounting practice into a fully automated, paperless powerhouse. Arun shares how he achieved this with tools like Practice Ignition and Zapier, significantly cutting costs and eliminating debtors by requiring upfront payments. Hear about the importance of training both staff and clients to adapt to these changes, and the strategies for broadening services beyond traditional accounting. Learn how cross-selling to existing clients and understanding niche markets can skyrocket client relationships and profitability.
Finally, get a peek into the future of accounting with an in-depth look at AI and offshoring. Arun explains how integrating tech tools such as Calendly, Brightpay, and Typeform can optimize operations and boost efficiency. He also delves into the journey of establishing Samara Global as a premier offshoring solution, detailing the challenges and strategies involved. With parallels drawn to the IT sector’s offshoring trend, Arun forecasts a significant shift of accounting back-office operations to India, providing a compelling vision for the industry's future. Don't miss these actionable insights to revolutionize your accounting practice.
Good morning everybody, arun Mehra. Here and today I'm going to be talking a little bit about how my journey, and so the title of the talk or my presentation today is London Calling Delhi Answering. Now it'll probably last for about half an hour 40 minutes. I'm going live on YouTube. I'm also going live on LinkedIn Live as well, and also through this webinar platform that we're using. So, without further ado, I will crack on and give you a little bit about my story, and I hope you find this useful and please do share this later on, when you have watched it, maybe with your friends or colleagues as well. So, london calling Dailing answering what I learned building my global accounting team. Let's crack on. And this is actually a photo of us recently, in February, when I went to India and took my team to Goa.
Speaker 1:So who am I? To give you a potted history, my name is Aaron. I'm the owner of Samara, which is a UK accounting firm which specialises in the healthcare sector. I'm also the owner and CEO of Samara Global, which is an offshoring firm which is set up in India, which supports not just UK firms and US firms but also my existing Samara firm as well. So we have accountants and other professionals in the team to support that. I also own the neem tree dental practice with my wife, smita, which is a private group based in london, and historically I've been working with dentists for the last 20 odd years and other health care professionals. Um, I trained as a chartered accountant with pwc many years ago, as you can tell by my gray hair and um, I worked in banking for a while but then I decided, you know, I'm going to start off my own firm and that's what I did with Samara and I started off right on my dad's dining table back in 2002.
Speaker 1:My interests I try to keep fit. Getting older it gets harder. I've got a bit of a dodgy back at the moment, but I like to keep running and go to the gym and keep fit. I enjoy skiing, albeit not very well, but I enjoy it a lot, especially with the fresh air. A lot of eating, a lot of travel. I'm involved in a lot of charity work and in the UK, but now increasingly in India, which I will mention later, we're helping a charity called Rhythm of Life and I love my business.
Speaker 1:Okay, I have um. Well, before I go on, I have. I I'm. I'm married to Smita. I have two great kids, one's 19, one's 15. And for the last 20 years, or almost 20 years, they've taken up the bulk of my time, um, but now I guess over the next five to 10 years is my time subject to my health being okay I'm gonna really accelerate and grow the samara business, um, samara global business and, uh, hopefully be able to share my ideas and thoughts to lots of people out there, okay, um, who need help.
Speaker 1:So let's crack on. So what? What are the three things that? What are the what's what? What makes up a successful accounting firm? So over the last 20 years, I've made pretty much most mistakes out there. I've made mistakes with my team, mistakes with technology, mistakes with clients, but if it all boils down to it, these are the three areas that we really have to get right when we're running a firm. It's getting the right team, getting the right people who can support you, who can help you build your firm and help you grow your firm, and I'll come on to that in a little bit more detail further down the line.
Speaker 1:Technology is the other area. You have to move with the times, you have to understand what technology is important and in a world where there's so much technology, you've got to be able to make some harsh decisions and say you know what's important and what you're going to use and neglect or get rid of the things that you don't need to use. And then, obviously, as dealing with money, dealing with accounting, dealing with numbers, trust is really important, and it's not just with your client which is really important, but also to be able to trust your suppliers, your team. All of these come together. These are the three T's in my mind that make a very successful accounting firm. So what am I going to talk about today? Well, I've got my coffee in hand, so, just getting ready to soften my dulcet tones, I'll talk about things I wish I knew before I started my own accountancy firm back in 2002, things I've learned, the many, many, many mistakes that I've made, and really an honest account of what you should be doing in your firm to make it more profitable going forward, and what you need to do to grow, and also how to have a global team and how can that transform your practice. So, as I said earlier, um, that's the very dining table. I've still got it up somewhere in the garage, I think. Um, this is the dining table I started on my dad's uh, on my dad's house.
Speaker 1:Now my story is I worked in. I trained as pwc um in london, worked in audit, went into management consulting, decided you know what not for, but I'm going to go into investment banking. So I joined investment banking. I came in equity analyst in the city, particularly focusing on the telecom sector, because that was kind of my specialist era and it was good for a few years. But I realized it really wasn't what I was interested in. Financially it was very attractive, but apart from that, was it fulfilling what I wanted to achieve in life? Certainly no.
Speaker 1:So back in 2001 I married a dentist meter, my wife, and she was wanting to have her own clinic, wanting to have her own practice, and I saw her lack of business acumen, because dentists weren't really taught anything about how to run a business. They're taught to be dentists, okay, and that was really my opportunity to begin an accountancy firm in 2002, which was actually focused on dentists helping them, helping with their finances, helping with their accounting, helping with all their taxes, and I suppose my wife was my inspiration for all of this. So let's crack on. So let's crack on, um. But I started off this firm and I'd worked in a big four and I then worked in investment banking the whole corporate kind of life and I had next to nothing next to next to zero experience of actually preparing accounts for a small business. Okay. So I was very kind of green, not really knowing what to do, and I very learned very quickly that things were very different.
Speaker 1:So my key job was to find good people, smart people, who I could hire promptly to help me with my firm and help me grow my firm. Key learning points I had were I started from scratch and did not even consider a purchase. So I've actually started the firm from scratch. I didn't buy an accounting firm. My argument, or thought that was I didn't really want to get a loan and I thought I could learn how to market clients. Getting clients did take some time, but it was a great learning experience and that, really that marketing experience I gained in those early days really stood me in great stead as I grew the firm over the years.
Speaker 1:And but in this today's market, I think if you're looking to start, it's definitely a more competitive marketplace and you need to really know your digital marketing skills and be hot on that. That's really important know your digital marketing skills and be hot on that. That's really important. Um, if you're deciding to buy, you've got to find a certain practice with a quality list of clients and then, um, hopefully, who who you can work with and who you can develop over time and build those relationships with yourself or your team. So those are my key learning fronts when I started out, but what I really did, as I mentioned earlier, I really chose to focus on the dental sector.
Speaker 1:So what did I do? I started to talk, I started to write, I started to get myself out there, going to different events and slowly and very slowly, we started to build a reputation within the industry. My first year I kind of had one client and that one client I was hoping would turn into two quickly, but it didn't. The reality was that one client was one client. Now everyone was telling me well, why are you just focusing on dentists? You should do it for every business. And I was determined that I wanted to immerse myself into a sector because if I immersed myself, I'd become really knowledgeable and people would see me as an expert in this particular sector.
Speaker 1:At the same time and I suppose this was a futurist thing with my wife we actually opened up dental clinics called the Neem Tree, based in London, and we opened these clinics up and that was kind of my test ground to actually test ideas, test out business ideas, marketing ideas, financial management ideas, all of them in these clinics, so that we can then repeat those and share these concepts and ideas to other clients. And that's exactly what we did over the last 20 years. So now we've kind of developed from that niche. We're still dentistry in. The Samaracouk UK accounting firm is by far the largest sector, but we also deal with gps, vets, pharmacies, everything within the healthcare sector we kind of do now.
Speaker 1:But we started off with immersing ourselves in one particular sector, getting that to know, to know that well, and the other, the other healthcare sectors, have kind of spun off from what we've done thus far, um. So, as I said, um anisha is an excellent idea because you become an expert in the sector um, but but it can be slow. As I mentioned, um, you've got to build relationships, build trust among key people and this will step and but it will stand you in good stead. You've got to work hard to forge those relationships and, as I said earlier, trust is at the heart of all of this, clients will slowly, or potential clients will slowly, start thinking OK, it's him again, maybe I should work with him, maybe I should see him and trust, trust, trust, trust. Can't stress how important that is. Now you may want to choose a wider niche, but when you choose a niche, I'd always ensure you choose a sector that has good professional clients, people who will pay your bills, a sector that's growing, a sector that won't disobey overnight and, ultimately, a sector you can earn trust in. So I think you've got to be patient, and I've seen other kind of accountants enter the dental sector over the years but they never really got it right because they didn't immerse themselves into it. They might have a few dental clients, maybe half a dozen, a dozen or something, but when we deal with hundreds, we stand out. And how do we deal with hundreds? Because we understand the business model, we understand their needs and that's really stood us in really really good stead.
Speaker 1:Next area I wanted to talk about is automation. So now I kind of when we started out back on, back in those days, um, we weren't, we were very heavily dependent on paper. Clients were sending papers, boxes of papers, um, clients were sending folders. It was a mess, okay. So we had to think about how are we going to um do that. So we decided to actually kind of get them to send the papers in. We would scan these documents in and then those documents would then be accounted for and we'd return the papers to the client.
Speaker 1:But going now, going forward, in this current world, we want to eliminate paper as much as possible. So we don't take clients with any papers. So any clients who's sending paper documents in, we don't take them on. We don't deal with those types of clients anymore. It's way too consuming and too costly for us to do and we automate the whole sign-up process with clients through a digital engagement system such as Practice Ignition, and we also get payment in advance. This then ultimately triggers a whole host of activities, such as AML, getting records from the clients and then ultimately allocating work and completing the work. So that's kind of very loosely what we do, but it's so important to have a vision, to say how we're going to automate the business, and I think in this world now, in a world where we're accountancy firms, where costs are tight but at the same time you need end but yet compliance is rising, you need to have such systems in place. So what did we learn through this whole process of when we automated or what we've done? In automated, We've really eliminated debtors. Now within our firm, as I said, we only get clients to pay up front with Ignition. If they don't, we probably won't take them on and they sign the engagement letter at that point.
Speaker 1:One of the mistakes I made was that I love trying technologies and perhaps I love it, but my team doesn't necessarily. So I think you've got to be very careful and choose the right technology early on and then don't change it, because if you change it, you have to train the team again and get them to choose what to do, and people won't like it. So it's a complex thing. So it's important that you get this right. I think also make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and make sure that they carry them out. One of the other areas is really to train the clients to do what you want them to do. Ie note paper records so they scan in or send things in various ways to us, but we don't want paper, and then we always automate as much as possible. We utilize workflow automation such as Zapier to link up different systems and again, this saves up time. And we have someone in our team who's a technology person in the team and their job is to try and automate as much as possible and make sure the systems work well.
Speaker 1:So key learning points on that automation side of things as we grew over the years it wasn't just accounting that we were offering, it kind of came quite evident because we had immersed ourselves in the sector it came quite evident there were other things that we could sell our clients. So we realized that we we, we thought well, we understand dentists, we understand their problems, what do they need? So and we always and we realized it was always going to be easier to cross sell to an existing client. Ultimately the lifetime value of a client is much higher if you can sell other things, other services, to them. So what have we added over the years? We added commercial finance and now that makes up a nice large chunk of our business. So when I say commercial finance, we're a broker, we're regulated by the FCA and the NACFB and let's say a client wants to borrow a million pounds to buy another practice, or they want to refinance, or they want to buy a dental chair or whatever it may be, we can sort that finance out for them as we act as a broker so we get the best deal that's available to them.
Speaker 1:Over the years we've also done practice sales. We've helped people buy and sell dental practices, something we don't do as much now, to be honest with you, mainly because I think that the market is slowed significantly. So we haven't really pushed that, but the converse to that, because the market did slow significantly, so we haven't really pushed that, but the converse to that because the market did slow. We're so busy in helping startups. So all those dental startups you might be seeing dotted around the country, we're actually probably the people financing those. So we're very active in that space. In addition, we've started a buying group a few years back and that's been very, very successful helping clients. Since we have such relations, such good relationships with so many suppliers in the sector, we've negotiated good terms for our clients.
Speaker 1:So, again, just a different way of doing things. So commercial finance alone is transactional, but we found it as a high margin business and it brings well, it's almost similar or not quite almost the same amount now as what our compliance work brings in. But what it brings, well, it's almost similar or not quite almost the same amount now as what our compliance work brings in. But what it also does, it enables um clients to, I guess, um get the finance. And then they think, well, maybe I'll get an accountant change the accountants, I'm not too happy with xyz firm so they come on board for that as well. So we deal with a number of areas there. So key learning points here the money is in the relationship.
Speaker 1:Dig deep and sell more yields an even more profitable client, and we've learned over the years we don't need that many clients. You just need clients willing to purchase more of what you offer. And I kind of mentioned it earlier. It's about understanding your niches issues and see what others are offering. Ask your question can you do it better? If so, start small and start offering what you deem as a cross-sell opportunity and, as I said, the cross, the commercial finance one, is a really good one. That's really um yielded positive results for us.
Speaker 1:Then another area that we focus on in our firm is pricing for profitability. Now, you've probably heard the phrase if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. So, and that's a phrase that has been the back of my mind for many years, but I think it's so important to be to think that if you're going to price low and then the idea of raising them later is a good idea, don't be fooled by that. I think you attract the wrong type of client at that point and then trying to raise the fees with those types of people, they'll only try and keep it low and it'll just cause more headaches. So it's so important to know your worth and value the service that you're offering okay, and ultimately value yourself.
Speaker 1:Um, don't offer discounts. Know your worth and, of course, work out your overheads and add a suitable profit margin and apply this to your business so you can ensure that each client is profitable for you. And if you have got an unprofitable client, you can probably let go of them. Or, alternatively, talk to them and say I'd like to raise my fees. Um, these are the reasons why. And if they're not amenable, let them walk. Let them walk. So key learning points Clients who try and nitpick over fees are not the clients you want. Raise the fees until they leave or until they are. Are they happy with what they're paying Regularly? Raise your fees Again. Have an automated solution like Ignition that helps greatly raise your fees regularly. With the great thing about Ignition, we found that they enter their card details once and we start collecting their payments automated solution like ignition, that helps greatly raise your fees regularly. Um, with, the great thing about ignition we found is that they enter their card details once and we start collecting their payments. Um, as I said, it's been a real, real kind of benefit to our firm. Um.
Speaker 1:Other areas we focus on heavily within my firm is digital marketing. Um, there's so much out there now. Um, what we're doing now this webinar is a form of digital marketing, since it's on LinkedIn, live, youtube, you name it. But where do you start? But if you're going to run your own firm, start your own firm, buy your own firm. This is so important and you've got to focus on so many areas your website, seo, dominating Google, somehow, content production, written and video and so I spend a large amount of my time on this whole area written, writing stuff, doing videos, doing social media, particularly on LinkedIn. Historically, we've done a lot of pay-per-click and we've had to develop our own marketing team who help us deliver, and it's not just me. I have a whole team of people to support me to do this um, digital marketing experts, video experts, developers, everything, um, but that really really pays its dividends, pays the dividends.
Speaker 1:So what would you do? What would I do? Suggest you do, I think, learn digital marketing yourself. Obviously, you can't become an expert in every area, but dip your toe into everything, um, so you have an appreciation of what that involves. Um, and then choose an area that you really want to focus on. Um, it could be you want to focus on seo and ppc, uh, and dominate google. Or you could be saying right, I want to do webinars, um, I want to, and put those on youtube. Um, as I said, you can start on your own, no doubt about it, but as you grow and as you have to deal with clients and all these other responsibilities within your firm, you'll need to have a team that can support you as well.
Speaker 1:Ai that's the other area that people are talking about and kind of everyone's talking about in the accountancy space, and we've had so many different variations just in a matter of months. We use it to help clients, help our team, write emails, respond to emails, write content you name it. We use it in different ways. Okay, I'm pretty sure it will evolve in the accountancy space in terms of helping with bookkeeping, in helping with analyzing data space in terms of helping with bookkeeping, in helping with analysing data, in terms of producing reports. It's evident that's going to happen.
Speaker 1:But my big issue here is that I think AI will be very powerful in the hands of good humans who know what they're doing with it, and therefore team members will need to be trained on this and therefore people will still need to be involved. But I think people probably can do more, they can be more efficient with the power of AI, and if they do that, then I think that will be much, much, much better for firms. So, rather than resist, embrace it. So I've kind of said that there Embrace it, don't resist it. It's coming, it's here and it's not going away. We've got we do so much AI to aim, the aim AI tools. You can create your own custom GPTs.
Speaker 1:Now is this that's for another lecture, for another day, I guess. Okay, but we do so much there in terms of the tech. Well, where do we start? Um, these are just some of the tech that we use in our firm, so you'll probably see in there that I don't even talk about the actual accounting software. Well, I do, maybe at tax calc and maybe at zero, but pretty much everything else is technology related Calendly for calendar bookings, brightpay for payroll, bigin for CRM, wordpress for website development, typeforms for capturing data, zapier, ahrefs for analyzing, for SEO purposes, brevo for sending bulk email, you name it. We do it, and this is not the definitive list. This is a list that we use. This is tools that we use. Um.
Speaker 1:Other people will have different forms or different technologies that they will use, but this works very well for us, um, but ultimately, it's well. How well it's used and how well people are trained to use this technology makes the massive difference. So it's so important to kind of define your stack and then, from that stack, develop your team and train your team and implement it over the over weeks, months and years. So, as I said here, invest time in what you need, be willing to test each tool with your team, make sure you have adequate training and once a decision has been made, don't make it been made. Don't make it, don't make it, don't change it quickly, um else, unless it's not very good, um, because your team will kind of moan at you, as it happened with me, okay, so so important to get these things right. Um.
Speaker 1:Then the other area that we're very much happening and involved in now is for many years we used to um, outsource and offshore work to India using other firms. And then then what happened was prior, just prior to COVID. I was realizing the quality we were getting from India was its cost was too high and the quality was poor. So I decided you know what, I'm going to bring it back. So I brought back all my work from India to the UK, thinking that was a good idea. Lo and behold, covid happened. Happened, and after COVID and during COVID we just could not find any staff at all here in the UK. So we went full circle we went back to India, but this time, rather than using any third parties, we decided you know what, we're going to create our own offshoring firm. We'd learned everything about what not to do and we'd seen that with partners that we'd used in the past um and therefore we'd set up samara global um and that that's kind of now.
Speaker 1:Kind of a large part of my time and effort is on this whole business, because we're not just supporting my firm, we're supporting other accountancy firms here in the uk um with their accounting team needs, because the biggest issue I see at the moment is recruitment, facing so many firms and you want to hire a good team, because the only way you're going to grow your firm or grow your business is if you have a good team who can do the work. So what are the options for you? You can try and find team members here in the UK and you may well find some good people, but my experience was pretty, pretty, pretty poor and pretty weak um. So I decided, as I said, to set up my own offshore and outsourcing team overseas. So I learned that if you keep doing the same thing, you're going to get the same results. So I had to change this um and it was just so difficult. So eventually we came around. A few years back we set up our own fully owned Indian operation, which is owned by my UK company. To do it took time, it took effort, took patience and and it also took an element of how to get things done in India to get it in the right manner. But we're there and now it's working brilliantly. We have a great team out there and that team is supporting my firm but also other accountancy firms in the UK space and actually about to start on the US space as well.
Speaker 1:So two options when you're trying to build an offshore or you're using an offshore team. One is that you outsource individual jobs. So let's say you have a set of accounts you know say, oh, I'm going to send that over to India, please prepare these sets of accounts within 30 days and we'll pay you a fee. That's an option Very transactional. The other option is to build an offshore team with someone like ourselves, and this is what we focus on. If you're looking for a team member who does the bookkeeping or a team member who does year-end accounts, whatever it may be, we will find the right person and then, effectively, you would hire them through us. We pay them and you pay us a fee each month, but they're part of your team, they sit on your servers, they have your email domain and they're liaising with your team on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 1:What I found is there are excellent people available, great willingness to work, great attitude, speak great English, young, driven, capable and all they want is a great opportunity, and what we do is provide them a great opportunity with our wonderful clients clients, but also with our wonderful team as well. So a typical structure that we use for helping other clients is and this is actually in my own team as well. We have a team manager. They do have quite a lot of experience in the UK and they're the ones who will be liaising quite often to the clients here in the UK, or the team here in the UK, and then underneath them there'd be a year end accountant, a bookkeeper and a tax return accountant. That's a typical structure. It's not the definitive structure, but that's a structure that we've used quite successfully over the last few years and we rinse and repeat this for other clients as well.
Speaker 1:This is some of the team. As I said, you sure saw earlier in goa. This is not just another shot. Um recently. Um, great to see them and do that bonding with the team so important, that is so important. Um again here in goa, um, what I learned from this experience is that I should have started my own facility long ago and not waited so long, rather than using third parties. You've got to be patient. You have strong systems in place, but the most important thing is to make those remote team members part of your global team. They are your team. They're not some people sitting overseas. They are your team and my job is to make sure we look after them and make sure they're successful and so they have a career path. So it's so important to make team culture the heart of your firm, not just here in your own country, in the UK, the US, wherever, but offshore, so they all feel part of something and they all feel they can contribute to the success of the business.
Speaker 1:I think in leading your team, it's really important to build that kind of culture of family. I think it's, as I said earlier, it's so important to make them. I take my team, so I feel so responsible to my team. They have families, they have mortgages, they have all these rents to pay. They have families, they have mortgages, they have all these rents to pay. So it's important to be that leader to help them go the extra mile. For me to go the extra mile to help them all. And this, as I said, goes not just for my local team but my remote team as well.
Speaker 1:There is the cliche, as I said, there is no I in team and ultimately I'm my firm. Ok, I may own it, but it's irrelevant if I don't have a team. Okay, so help them out. Kindness, I've found, always goes a long way in helping people. I can't stress how important that is. So I think some key points I've learned about managing and growing a team.
Speaker 1:Move on people in your team that ultimately have a negative impact on the rest of the team. There really is no place for them. You've got to make a decision quickly and move them on. You don't want it to be a toxic environment. Build a culture of fun, inclusivity, diversity. I think this point here is so important. Put people first. Get the people right. If you get that right, the profits will follow. Because the right people who are motivated, the profits will come anyway. And ultimately, lead from the front and encourage your team to build their experience and knowledge and help them achieve their goals. Um, I I'm a big believer in um, encouraging them and pushing people to to the to grow okay, and getting them out of their comfort zone, because you you push them out of their comfort zones, they'll grow, they'll feel better, they'll feel they've achieved something, and they've got to see me do that as well. So I have to lead from the front and therefore I should be willing to get my hands dirty and be willing to take risks as well. That encourages them to take risks for their respective lives. So, in summary, kind of on this today's slide London Calling Delhi, answering I think I've built a great team.
Speaker 1:I did it and when I started out, I looked at buying or setting up. I decided to set up. I built a niche practice in the healthcare sector. We automated a lot to set up. I built a niche practice in the healthcare sector. We automated a lot. We cross-sell services. Now we price our services profitably and we don't go for dirt cheap. We go for dirt cheap. We get dirt cheap headaches. Digital marketing is really important and a real focus of the firm. We're going to be embracing and we are embracing AI. We have a great tech stack in place. I'm sure we'll evolve that over the coming weeks and months.
Speaker 1:We have an offshore team that really supports us and we focus on them and making sure that they are developing their skills and they're developing their careers and not just a team here in the UK, but the offshore team as well and make them part of the family culture and ultimately, my job is to become the leader, okay, and my job is to develop my team. My job is to help my team. My job is to make the tough decisions sometimes as well, when some things aren't going right, to change things in the team as well. However, in doing all of this, I love what I do. I have the privilege of working with some wonderful people here in the UK and overseas, in India. We can help. We help our own clients, we can help other UK and US accounting firms with all the offshore needs of payroll, bookkeeping, accounts, production, tax returns, you name it. And ultimately, the job for us with Samara Global is to help hire you the resource that you need for your firm, because if you've got a stable team, if you've got a committed team, you'll be able to focus on the higher ticket items, such as business development, such as marketing, such as other areas for you to grow the other value-added services, so that you know the compliance is taken away, that's been done well and therefore you can grow your firm and ultimately help you grow your firm's profits. So we are very active in this space.
Speaker 1:I am going to india in june, late june. If anyone wants to join me, we can certainly kind of share ideas, see how we can help you with your plans for offshoring your accountancy firm's needs and services. We'll be going to Delhi around those dates there, so I'd be delighted to meet you there. Alternatively, if you want to have a chat with me here in the UK. Just drop me or DM me on LinkedIn or send me an email and I'll be delighted to help. Linkedin or send me an email and I'll be delighted to help. You can book a call with me on samaraglobalcom and you can find a lot of more information I've talked about here on this video today, on this webinar today, and if you've got any questions, I would be delighted to help to. To help um and uh. We can then go from there, okay, so thank you, I hope. I hope you found this kind of useful um, I personally.
Speaker 1:In summary, I personally think the way the world is going, I think the whole accounting and finance back office will be shifting to india. Um, it's already happening. It's happened in the IT space. I think the financial accounting space is maybe 10 to 15 years behind the IT sector. Many kind of firms are already using some form of offshoring and outsourcing to India out there, but that's still a minority and I think there's a larger, larger pool of people that will be doing this over the coming years. So if you need any help, I want to discuss the the pros and cons, get in touch and I will be delighted to help you, okay, thank you, thanks very much. Okay, if there's any questions, I'm willing to take them now. You can just do a comment on this stream. If not, drop me a message later on and we can have a chat. Thanks very much.