The Unstoppable Accountant - Grow your Accounting Firm

Mastering Accounting Offshoring: Strategies for Success with Arun Mehra

• Arun Mehra

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Unlock the secrets to transforming your accounting practice through offshoring and outsourcing with Arun Mehra! As the CEO of Samara Global and a seasoned chartered accountant, Arun shares his inspiring journey from PwC trainee to leading an offshoring powerhouse. Discover how Indian firms are stepping up to meet the Western world's growing need for qualified accountants and the untapped potential in the financial outsourcing market. Learn why India is poised to dominate this sector just as it has with the IT industry.

Building a stellar team is crucial for any successful firm, and Arun walks us through the essentials of creating a reliable, communicative workforce. We'll explore the importance of hiring not just for technical skills but also for trust and cultural awareness. Hear insights on why prioritizing value and quality over cost is paramount and how Western companies can benefit from this approach. Arun also discusses the emerging gap in the Western accounting workforce and how India can bridge this divide, potentially leading the global market.

In a competitive offshoring landscape, differentiation is key. Arun dives into strategies for setting your firm apart by focusing on superior service and leveraging cutting-edge technology. Understand the importance of a secure tech infrastructure, continuous team training, and a positive workplace culture. To cap it off, we explore how Indian CA firms can position themselves for global success, including practical tips for attracting top talent and quality clients. Don't miss Arun's invaluable advice on positioning your firm to thrive in the evolving world of accounting and finance outsourcing.

Speaker 1:

Well, hello and good afternoon everybody. Arun Mehra here and a pleasure to be talking to you today. Now, this is the first set of a webinar series called Arun's Autumn Webinar Series, and it's all about outsourcing, offshoring your accountancy needs and growing your outsourcing and offshoring firm, and so today I'm going to be talking to people all about the opportunities in the outsourcing and offshoring world. So, welcome everybody. Thank you for the messages here from JD, from Bharat Okay, nice to hear from you. We've got quite a few people registered and I know quite a few people on LinkedIn Live will probably join us as well. So I'll kick off in a moment. This is, of course, being recorded and I will be sharing elements of this as we go along. You'll be ready to download at your free leisure when you need to watch it as well. So thank you for attending.

Speaker 1:

So let me start off with a little bit of information about myself. My name is Aaron I can put these slides on and I'm a chartered accountant here in the UK. I trained here in the UK, born and brought up here in the UK, of Indian origin, but I was born and brought up here in London. I trained with PwC in London many years ago. It was called Coopers and Live around then and it turned into PwC when I was part of that process and so I trained as an accountant there, chartered accountant, and then I moved into investment banking or I went into becoming an equity analyst for a number of years and then I decided you know what, I'm going to start up my own firm and I started off my firm called Samara and that's still running. So Samara is a firm of accountants particularly focused on dentists, doctors, pharmacies, those types of areas healthcare here in the UK and that's grown very nicely over the last 20 odd years. More recently, I've started up Samara Global, which is the format of what I'm talking about today, and it's where we support other accounting firms, other businesses, indian CEO firms and a whole range of things, and so I'm the CEO of Samara Global and separately to that, I also own and run the Neem Tree Dental Group, which is a business which is run by my wife, but I'm a co-owner in that and hence why I've focused on the dental market.

Speaker 1:

So my story is that I won't go into too much detail today because it's more about what are the opportunities, but my story is all about how I've started off when I started off in my career, I started in a very corporate life. If I look at my career, I left corporate life relatively early about 28, 29, and started off with nothing, not having an idea, and my background, my parents' background it wasn't business, it was always about working in service, working jobs. So at that time I remember my father telling me no, don't leave your job, don't leave your investment banking job. You're earning a lot of money, stay there, make sure you continue doing that. But I knew in my heart that wasn't the thing for me and I started off Samara.

Speaker 1:

And over the last 20 years we've had some ups, we've had some downs, we've had some struggles, we've had some challenges. We've had everything. When you run a business, you experience everything, but I challenges, we've had everything. When you run a business, you experience everything, but I wouldn't change it for the world. And if you look at the cohort of my class, that when I trained at pwc, of my group of people so about 25, 30 people in my particular group, um, I think if I look at the most of them have stayed in corporate life. They either went into banking, they went in to become partners at pwc or other firms, they went into become finance directors, pwc or other firms. They went into become finance directors of other firms. So I suppose I'm the bit of the outlier. I'm the outlier here, I believe, where I've started up my own business, running my own business and been an entrepreneur for the last 20 odd years Learning, making mistakes, learning, making more mistakes, learning, and that's kind of constantly what I do, which I love, which I enjoy and I relish doing. But today I'm not going to be talking much about myself. I'll be talking about that on another webinar, I guess, at some point.

Speaker 1:

But I wanted to talk about the opportunities in offshoring and the accountancy market as a whole, particularly for people who aren't in the UK, but for people in India, particularly who want to grow an offshoring or grow an accounting firm focusing on a global market. So, in a nutshell excuse me, have a sip of my coffee but the accounts outsourcing, offshoring opportunity in my mind is huge okay, in a nutshell, massive, and I think we've just scratched the surface. To be honest with you. There are people obviously doing it and companies large, small all doing some form of offshoring, outsourcing, but really it's still a very tiny percentage of the global market that's actually happening across the world, um, in india, and that's why I think the opportunity is massive and I think the world is only just starting to wake up to the fact. Certainly, the Western world is starting to wake up to the fact that they don't have staff, they don't have people, they can't find people to do the job and somewhere like India is perfectly positioned to assist and help with that. So, in essence, in my mind, every firm or business ultimately will need financial and accounting help. Now we've seen in the IT industry, indian firms really dominate that space for the last 20 odd years TCS, infosys, wipro, all of these firms and now we're starting those types, seeing those types of even doing more financial related things. I think one of the big firms does all the work for Blackstone, I believe, based out of India.

Speaker 1:

I was talking to Amex earlier, someone on Amex, american Express earlier, and who was I talking to? I was talking to someone in Gurgaon about supporting things here in the UK for their Amex business. So, but who is best to support these types of people? Well, in my mind, it's accountants, accountants. So we think businesses are everywhere, um, and in my mind, ultimately, the indian cas can certainly support accounting firms here in the uk, us, canada, australia, wherever alternatively get correct clients, and therefore I think the scope is absolutely massive, absolutely massive.

Speaker 1:

But you might be wondering what? What about AI? Is there an issue there? Am I going to lose jobs or is it all going to be taken away by technology? Well, I personally think AI will take away some of the jobs, okay, but people will still be required. People still want human interaction. People want that trust that a human brings, and I personally think it will be an AI-enabled team or AI-enabled people within your team. That will be the killer combination for most successful firms. So, if you're going down that route, my advice would be to think how do I build an AI-enabled accounting team and what skills do I need to do and what skills do I need to look at and we'll look at that a little bit more later.

Speaker 1:

So we've talked about, we're talking about the global market. I mentioned a few countries there which are English-speaking, but it's not just English-speaking countries. There's all types of countries all over the place Spanish, french, german, italian, you name it, okay, or Japanese, you name it. There's opportunities everywhere that you could tap into. Obviously, language is a barrier, but, again, technology can help with much of this.

Speaker 1:

But before we go on to that, we have to start thinking what are the challenges facing international firms? What are they? So if I look at my own accounting firm in the UK, I have people working in kind of a firm where the clients are more demanding. I have an issue where compliance is more demanding. I have where costs are rising here and certainly in the West, but a big factor is the age of the local team members. The age is certainly much higher than somewhere like India. There's more regulation, there's more competition, there's more confusion, more technology and, of course, ai. So these are the challenges that are faced by most firms here in the UK, us, but if I had to look at one, that in particular is the biggest challenge.

Speaker 1:

I personally think it's finding team people, finding people. You can't grow your firm AI or not without good people, and that's the challenge that so many firms face here in the UK. So that's going to take time to fill and that's where the opportunity sits as well, but big. But firms here in the West aren't just looking for people. They're looking for people that are a team ultimately, that understand technology, to know that you can trust them and that you're going to do a good job. You're going to say what you do and do what you say, and that's such an important aspect here in this thing. So, international firms, whatever they are maybe it's an accounting firm or it's just a direct client they want to know have you got the team, do you understand the technology and do you have? Can I trust you? So, kind of going on what I've just said, what are they seeking? As I said, they keep seeking people they can relate to and trust. They want a long-term relationship, um, not a short term where they have to keep changing people and, as I said earlier, they want to. They want people who do as they say and say what they do. So important and and if you don't do what you're going to say, you're going to do, then that trust goes.

Speaker 1:

Communication I think that's an area that is so missed by so many firms in this space, but communication is paramount and it's not just speaking English, but it's more about understanding, talking, relate and building those bridges through communication, because there are different cultures in different places, and overcoming those cultures and making sure that both cultures sit comfortably together. Um, they ultimately want people who have a vested interest to help their clients, people who are friendly and helpful, um, people who have respect for them, but also their team, um, people who support their team even when things don't go to plan. People who admit their mistakes and learn from them and, ultimately, people who are human. And this human is so important here. Whilst we live in an AI-driven world, an increasingly AI-driven world, it'll be that human touch which will make all the difference, not AI, it'll be the humans and therefore the team you hire. Hire the people that you hire you yourself. You need to show that human side of you to your customers, to your potential clients.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of the things that I've seen over the while now is I've realized that many indian firms, or cf firms, are trying to get into this space, but but they're trying to position themselves as cheap okay, as cheap. No doubt there's a cost arbitrage here and no doubt there's savings to be had for international firms, but the danger is that you're going to price yourself to a point for many firms that they just price themselves too low, and as there's this phrase I always live by cheap is rarely good and good is rarely cheap, and that's the same in accounting. That's the same in accounting offshoring as well, you have to price yourself at a point where you can hire good people who are good talent, who don't give you the headaches, who then can look after your clients. That's what you want and therefore you want to pay your team the best that you can do in the marketplace. Therefore they'll stay with you and then, at the same time, your clients will be happy because you've got a stable team and your team are delivering less headaches for everybody, mostly yourself as the owner.

Speaker 1:

So don't focus on trying to be cheap. Focus on trying to be good, that's the thing, or great, even better. So that's what they want and that's, I think. If you look at overseas firms uk firms, us firms being the cheapest doesn't get you the client. Okay, being being good at what you do gets you the client. And when it's perceived and it's seen, when it's seen as too cheap, people wonder well, you know, if it's so cheap, it's not going to be very good, and that's so common in so many things I've seen in life that it's so important to focus on delivering great value to your potential client or your clients. Okay. So don't focus on cost. Obviously, be competitive, but don't focus on price. You've got to be competitive but, most importantly, focus on the value that you can offer to your clients or potential clients.

Speaker 1:

So where is the offshoring opportunity exactly? I briefly touched on it a moment ago, but there's a lack of accountants here in the UK. Less people are entering the profession in the UK and US, therefore, than more people than the people who are retiring. So therefore, there's this gap and this gap is getting bigger and bigger. Now we've seen improvements in technology, with AI and all these types of things, but in my mind and this is the opportunity for India, and this is, if there's one thing that you take away from this presentation today is this I personally believe that India will become the accounting and finance back office, middle office and even front office over the next year for the financial and accounting side of things for many, many companies and many, many firms. And just to reiterate that, I think India has the capacity and the opportunity to do that. You've got the manpower, you've got the workforce. It's now that's a fantastic asset to have, but there are certain things that need to be done to be able to win that client base, to become that dominant power in this space over the next 10 odd years.

Speaker 1:

Now, as we know, there is an ocean of offshoring players. They're small, big, medium size, all shapes in india, and then on top of india, there's all these other places, like the philippines, south africa, sri lanka, mexico, bangladesh, pak, argentina, you name it and many of these places are even cheaper. Something like Bangladesh is much cheaper than India, or Pakistan is even cheaper. So if you're going to compete on price, you'll never be able to be as cheap as Bangladesh, for instance, or unlikely, in this environment. And they all speak English. But it's not the English that matters, it's the communication that matters, and that's not the spame of speaking English. The communication is all about building those relationships, the emotional intelligence, the rapport, the understanding, the cultural bridges, all of that. That's the thing that matters and that's going to be the differentiator if you're going to be successful in an offshoring and outsourcing business, in an offshoring and outsourcing business. So how are you going to do it? What are you going to do? Well, you've got to really seek out a competitive advantage and you've got to be different. That's the bottom line. So this is from Harvard Business School. It's a reference I always use and I think it's so important and I'll just read it out to you. It says it's possible to compete on low cost and be differentiated at the same time.

Speaker 1:

But companies that try to be all things to all customers can wind up getting stuck in the middle A strategic mistake that Michael Porter, the very famous Harvard Business School professor, calls the kiss of death. And that's the bottom line. You can't be everything to everyone, because you're trying to be cheap and then you're trying to deliver value and you're trying to offer good quality, you're going to struggle. And you're trying to deliver value and you're trying to offer good quality, you're going to struggle and you're going to have problems. So you've really got to think how am I going to address this? How am I going to manage this? And you've got to make some choices and differentiation. May be that you focus on a particular sector or you focus on a particular type of service and your prices may be high, but you do it damn well, you do it really well. And your prices may be high, but you do it damn well, you do it really well. So, as I go into a bit more detail here, so differentiation driving up your prices, is one way to increase profitability.

Speaker 1:

To command a premium price, a company must deliver distinctive value to customers. This is differentiation. At the same time, there's cost leadership, and now you could drive down costs, and that's another way to increase profitability. To compete on cost, customers or companies must balance price with acceptable quality, and this is cost leadership. Now, what I've seen from my own experience is that when people try and focus on cost leadership, particularly in india, the quality of delivery reduces because you can't attract the right talent. And if you can't attract the right talent, you can't attract the right talent. And if you can't attract the right talent, you can't deliver the good value. And this is all about a talent game. Offshoring is all about talent, finding the best talent, finding the best people. And now they might cost you more money, but if they cost you more money, you can then charge higher because they're delivering a good job to potential customers. So it's so important to really focus on doing that correctly.

Speaker 1:

Next slide so, bottom line focus on value, not price, and that's the bottom line I'm trying to get across here today Focus on value, not price. What value can you add to your clients or clients' lives, to the clients' businesses? So, as I said earlier, we remember team, technology, trust, the three Ts that's what I look at them as the three Ts. You've got to have a great team, you've got to understand and know the right technology on the latest technology and ultimately build trust. Now trust I was having a conversation with some team members earlier is something that takes time to build. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes weeks, months, even years to build trust and that's the thing that makes the difference and it's so important to really get that into to your head, into your mind, because if you get that trust, that's going to help you grow your firm. So these are the three things. If I was in the office, if I was going to advise you very briefly today I'm not at this half the webinar is only about half an hour long but really to focus on these three areas as you grow your offshoring and outsourcing firm.

Speaker 1:

So you need to focus on your team, you need to build a world class team and focus on the culture you're trying to create. Now we have all heard the news, and terribly sad news, of many big CA firms in India and the long hours that people work and not getting remunerated and, sadly, people, even people, passing away. That's not culture. The culture is terrible and it sounds like in those organizations. If you're a smaller firm, you have the opportunity to really create wonderful culture in your team, to create a wonderful place for people to work, because if you create a wonderful place for people to work in, they want to get involved, they want to help help you, they want to grow, they want to develop, because if the firm develops, they do better.

Speaker 1:

So you want to build a team and you want to find people who are experienced in the roles that you require, and if they're not, you can train and skill them up with the right attitude. They need to have wonderful communication skills, a great driven attitude and be flexible. And, as I said earlier, I think it's about paying them above the market race. That's how you're going to attract a really good talent. And then, ultimately, it's not about them being stagnant. It's about developing the team, um. They're the foundation of your growth. You want to have a team, but you want to keep develop them, get them better, better, um, and don't focus on the money, okay, it's about ultimately building something much more important for your firm, um, and make your team feel like they're the most important team member in the world and because ultimately, they'll then grow, they'll develop and they'll help you grow your firm. And that's so important.

Speaker 1:

Firms focus on the client. Maybe I'm an outlier here, I guess, and I'm an outlier in many ways in life, but my belief is focus on the team. Okay, because the team are the people who are going to meet with your client, support your client, do the work for your client and therefore, if they're happy, if your team are happy, they'll do great work. And you can use an analogy to sport really, okay, if you've got like the indian cricket team, the great cricket team, the team work together, they have a great culture, they work together, they um trust each other. Now, if that that enables them to go out into the wider world and win all their cricket matches, think of it like that. It's exactly the same thing for your um, for your team, for your firm, for your, for your organization.

Speaker 1:

So how do I do? What do I do in my firm? Just to give you a kind of a summary, I hire ultimately on attitude, not experience. I don't, experience isn't that important to me. I want to find people who've got the right attitude, who are hungry, who are keen, who want to develop, who want to do things differently. I pay above market rates for sure. I focus on the person, not the job they need to do. I want to find the right person because we can train the people to do the job they need to do. I want to find the right person because we can train the people to do the job they need to do and ultimately, I have to communicate my vision to them. I want them to feel part of something special and there's mutual respect between every team member, whether it's the person right at the bottom starting out to me at the top. There's no hierarchy in that respect. It's about respecting them as individuals and respecting them as people. There's no hierarchy in that respect. It's about respecting them as individuals and respecting them as people and ultimately, even if they're junior, bottom, bottom, it's about treating them as you want to be treated, not the hierarchy in this whole.

Speaker 1:

Nonsense is what you're seeing in many of these large firms. I've seen not only in india. Across the world, where people think they have power goes to head. The power shouldn't go to your head. Power is about respecting, and a good leader will ultimately be a person who supports their team and grows their team and develops their team.

Speaker 1:

Will mistakes happen in your team? Will they do things wrong. Of course they will. Okay, but we all make mistakes. I've made millions of mistakes. Okay. It's not a matter of blaming or pointing or saying, oh, he did this wrong or she did that wrong. We all have to learn from them, them we have to develop and hopefully those mistakes won't happen again and ultimately build a team that supports each other, not one that creates a negative atmosphere. If you don't support each other, then then you've got the wrong team member and you need to get people out of the team who are creating that negative culture, negative atmosphere. Um, in addition, build a culture that is welcoming and strong. The team will really want to leave. That's, that's the bottom line, and that's what I'm trying to do. Do I have it perfect? Of course I don't, but I want to build a culture that the team really want to be there.

Speaker 1:

I offer flexibility, work from home, hybrid. I offer all that. We all provide great technology. I offer flexible hours as long as the job gets done. I hire an attitude, as, as I said, and remember, the good caliber cadets always have a choice to move on elsewhere if they desire. So my job is to retain them If I'm spending all that time and money on training people. I want to make sure I keep them and therefore they need to be happy. I have strong review processes in place and I want to ultimately help them improve their lives. If I can help them improve their lives, get qualifications better, them improve their lives. If I can help them improve their lives, get qualification, better communication skills, I'm only helping. If I can help them, that's only going to help my firm, and I want to give new experiences to them, perhaps encourage travel in india or abroad, or that's the culture, that's the, that's the thing that matters.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and the culture, culture, culture. There's a phrase that I've heard is culture beats strategy for breakfast every time. Okay, and that's such an important thing. Culture beats strategy for breakfast every time. So focus on the culture of your organization, because that's the team is going to pick other people who are going to do the accounting, do the auditing, do the backoffs, do do all the work that you need them to do, and you want them to feel hungry, inspired and excited about it, and that's your job as a leader to get them to do it. So focus on the team. You have the best team. They will always win the match, just like sport, as I mentioned earlier, the team will work together to resolve issues and work with the client. That then takes away your headaches for you to then build a bigger team and add other good people to grow your business.

Speaker 1:

So in my side of things, for me personally, um, I focus my personal time is really all focused about my leadership skills. Um, as I've got older, I think they've got better. Are they perfect? No, um. But question you could ask yourself is how can you become a better leader? That's the bottom line. Well, how could you become a better leader? And I always think a great leader is someone who's a great listener.

Speaker 1:

And there are many books to read and just a few books I've suggested Good to Great by Jim Collins. Start with a why by Simon Sinek. Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. These are great books as a starting point if you haven't heard or read these before. And so, to run a successful offshoring firm or business, we all need to improve our leadership skills. And remember you're dealing with people across the world your team in India, clients overseas. You need to be seen as the go to leader and who can make things happen, but who can also help make decisive decisions, but also be a great listener and support your team support. So, therefore, you play the most important part in your team as the leader.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is a photo of the team I took earlier in the year. We went to go up great time, great time. So remember, your team will follow your leadership. Poor leadership usually is down to poor, poor results is usually down to poor leadership and rich results is usually as a result of rich leadership. So your team will follow what you do. If you behave badly, they will behave badly. If you behave well, they will hopefully behave well.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I have a dog here Bear with me. I have a dog barking. One second. That's my. This is a live show, as you can tell. So, um, that happens when the postman arrives and the postman's just arrived, so the dog goes crazy. So, um, apologies like that.

Speaker 1:

What about technology? Um, train your team. That's the bottom line. I think the first thing in your doing your business is to invest in secure infrastructure, provide quality equipment to your team, ensure you have a well-equipped team who understand the latest technology and ultimately, embrace the changes that AI brings, and I think that's really important. Technology is changing so fast. Therefore, you need a team who is willing to learn, willing to adapt, willing to invest time in it and willing to become leaders in this, okay, and whether it's cloud technology, off bookkeeping, ai, train them, train them, develop them.

Speaker 1:

What we do, we train all our team in the key packages of bookkeeping, like Xero, quickbooks, sage. We also train them in certain apps that link into some of these programs. We use microsoft copilot and we also do ai training with our team. So there's a whole range of things that we do. And is there more we can do? Of course there is, and it's just trying to find the right amount of time in the day. But if you have a skilled team that takes away jobs from you and they can do more and you can delegate, and that's leadership delegation. If you lead, you're delegating jobs to other people in your team. So it's so, so, so powerful, important. So then, lastly, the last t is how do you build trust?

Speaker 1:

Now, as I said, accountancy is a trust business, trust-based business. It's relationship driven um. You're not selling a physical product, you're selling a relationship and a service, and this is a big mistake many firms make. I've seen they're trying to win new clients and so they spam emails, spam calls spam DMs on LinkedIn. Arun, can I do that? I get messages literally daily. Can you help me? Can I get a client? Do you want me? Or they try and call me and cold call me and no one here in the UK. No one here in the uk, no one in the. When the us really is interested in spam. People buy, don't buy from spammy messages. Um, they might buy if you're the cheapest, but then if you are the cheapest, you probably don't want that client because they're going to be a headache. And then you're looking for cheap, the cheap, cheap rubbish, to be honest with you. So how do you build trust? How do you do that? How do you build it?

Speaker 1:

First is I said stop the spamming. Um, don't cold call, don't cold emails. We're in a professional services setting. It's so important to maintain that professional standards. People have expectations if they're offshoring and outsourcing partner. If you're spamming people, they're not interested, they're not interested.

Speaker 1:

So what can make you stand out in a sea of other firms? What? What are they? What is it? Well, if I go back to it in my mind, it's putting out great information out there, good content, developing um knowledge base. So for I'll give a good example, you might be, uh, in india. You might be running a co firm and you want to do some offshoring, outsourcing, you might have expertise in a particular sector in india. Therefore, my view would be say, well, if you know the sector in india, build some knowledge about the sector in the another country, the uk, us. Then start building knowledge, reaching out to people and then putting out good content out there. Write articles, write blog posts, blog posts, write newsletters or do some videos on YouTube that type of thing. Put all this information out there. That's going to make you stand out because ultimately, people will start seeing that, people will start liking it, people will start building a relationship. Oh, he knows a lot, or she knows a lot. Oh, that's quite interesting, I'd like to know more.

Speaker 1:

Now, trust is earned. Trust takes time, um, but once they trust you and they see what you're doing and how you're trying to help people, they'll think, wow, okay, he knows this or she knows this really well, I'm ready, I'm going to give them a call. I'm going to give such and such a call. I'm going to call them and have a chat to see can they help me with my services that I need, and that's the bottom line. You've got to put yourself out there and but not in a way that's going to offend people or spam people or upset people, but in a way that you're pushing out or interesting, relevant knowledge and content and your expertise, and then they'll find you and at some point they'll think you know what. Yeah, I quite like that. I'd like to know more, I'd like to know more. So, really, really important that you've got to stand out in the sea of other firms, because there's lots of people wanting to do this in this space. There's so many people in india I know who want to get into offshoring and outsourcing. I speak to so many every week. Um, so it's an exciting time.

Speaker 1:

But you're going to have to differentiate and you have to be different. So how are you going to do that? So, as I said earlier, you need to develop your own USP, your unique selling point, what makes you different to everyone else? You could brainstorm some ideas. It could be a sector, it could be a particular service, such as CFO services. Then you need to think about who is your kind of target client. Then you need to think how do I analyze the competition? What are your strengths, what are your weaknesses? And then what, what makes you unique, unique compared to others in the sector and then translate that into words and then make sure you get your usp, your unique selling point, across uniquely to your client base through a variety of media, as I said earlier, through.

Speaker 1:

You can do it through linkedin, youtube, instagram, you name it. There's so many methods and methodologies out there, but you have to do that. Um, that builds trust. They see you, we're in a world of social media. Whether we like it or not, people are checking these things out, um. And again, if you're writing articles and you put it on your website, google is going to reward you for that and that will go up and be ranked and people will see it through SEO.

Speaker 1:

So there's a whole range of things to consider, but the message here I have to give you, as I kind of come to the end of this presentation there are no shortcuts to get any place worth going. It's going to take effort, it's going to take time. It's not a straight line. It never is. It's never linear. Effort is going to take time, um, it's not a straight line. It never is. It's never linear. It'll take many ups and downs, ins and outs, um.

Speaker 1:

But if you've got the hunger and you've got the tenacity and you've got to determine enough, you can definitely do it. You can definitely do it. So you know. You might be wondering well, aaron, why are you sharing these ideas? Why are you doing this? Well, my, in my view, the market is vast and, as I said earlier, is there is considerable opportunity for many. Okay, there's enough for everyone.

Speaker 1:

Um, but, as I said earlier, doing much of what I've just discussed today, just debate even the basics of it. Okay, I haven't talked into great detail about marketing stuff and I'll do that next time. It takes time and patience, money and but and it's hard, to be honest, it's not easy. So those willing to step up, evolve, try, fail, and that's the bottom line to fail will ultimately be the winners of the future. And I can guarantee there'll be setbacks, there'll be failures, but if you're determined, you'll make it and create something absolutely extraordinary.

Speaker 1:

Now I know, as accountants and I'm an accountant we're trained to be risk averse, we're trained to be oh no, we shouldn't do this, we shouldn't venture into new markets, we shouldn't do that. And but if you're going to be serious about offshoring and outsourcing, you need to become an entrepreneur, who happens to be an accountant, because you need to put yourself out there. People need to see you, people need to trust you, people need to trust you, people need to understand you and then they might buy your services. Now there's many ways of doing that and I'll be talking about these over the coming weeks in the following webinars, follow-up webinars. But it's so important to think how can I put myself out there? And, and I think for me, I think the market is vast. Um, if I can support you to go do better, that's only going to support me further, because I think the market is so vast, it'll just get bigger and bigger and we can all have a nice little share of the pie.

Speaker 1:

So some of you may take action, may do this, but most of you won't, because, I said earlier, it's not easy, it's hard, it's a difficult thing to do. But for those of you who want to said earlier, it's not easy, it's hard, it's a difficult thing to do, but for those of you who want to do it, it's very achievable. It's achievable but with hard work. So what does the account offshoring firm of tomorrow look like? In my mind, the basic principles remain the same. Trust is at the heart of it.

Speaker 1:

But how we manage and develop our firms is change. Fundamentally. Underpinning a success form has to be quality people, not just your team members, but also attracting the right clients. Now I've seen it so often that I've done it myself I made a mistake, I've attracted wrong clients, which caused more headaches, costly. So you need to make sure you have quality team members who are trained, who are motivated, who are skilled, who are hungry and who are driven, and then they'll help you attract the quality clients as well.

Speaker 1:

Now, in my view, as I said earlier, india's and CA firms in my view can compete on a global stage. Being global is key for a successful accounting firm of tomorrow in my view, absolutely key. So an Indian CA firm in my mind technically can support other accounting firms, say here in the UK. At some point in the future you probably could go directly to clients here in the UK or US and do bookkeeping, accounts, production, tax returns and everything, and I think that's going to be a going place. That's where the market is heading, heading. It's an exciting time.

Speaker 1:

But you have to get these other things right. You have to think okay, how do I stand out? How do I, how do I differ? What's my communication skills like? What's my team skills like? How do I position myself in the marketplace? If you can get those right, you will be in a much, much stronger position, say, compared to your competitors and peers.

Speaker 1:

So what's the summary? A summary, brief summary, after this half an hour webinars position yourself for accounts offshoring success um, so important. Focus on your team and culture um, that, to me, is the most important thing. Clarify your goals and visions. Get clear about what you want to achieve, okay, and then communicate this to your team, your great team that you're hired. You've hired and you're developing and motivating with your team. Work out what's want to achieve, okay, and then communicate this to your team, your great team that you've hired and you're developing and motivating With your team. Work out what's unique to yourselves, what's unique to your business, and then, once you've got that figured out, build a marketing engine and we'll talk about marketing in a lot more detail in the follow-up webinars, about content, different strategies.

Speaker 1:

Now, you will fail, I can guarantee it. You will fail. But step eight, as I said, try again and you might fail again, and you try and try again. This is an iterative process and you'll get better and better and better. So it's so important to really understand that you've got to really position yourself in a way that helps yourself to grow, and this isn't going to be a one-hit wonder. You're going to get clients straight away. You won't. You won't. It'll take time, it'll take patience and it'll take tenacity, but it's achievable, trust me. If I can do it, so can you. So many things I've covered in 36 minutes. I'm just going to share some links with you. Hopefully I can get these across to you.

Speaker 1:

So we have a whole bunch of webinars coming up um, let me make sure I've got this just my autumn webinars there. I'd urge you to to book onto the subsequent webinars that are coming out. There's a whole range of. There's 11 or 10 webinars after this one. We've also got um and that's. They're all free, okay, totally free. You can also watch on LinkedIn live or YouTube, um, but also they're all there. But make sure you register and, if not, please tell your friends. I've also got um, our school community, and this is something that I'm growing. Okay, and this is something I think certainly indian cas can benefit from if you're not a member of it already. Again, it's totally free. You just need to sign up and you effectively become a member of a community and we share ideas.

Speaker 1:

I share content, all this type of stuff, and it's gated content. Not everyone can access to it. It's not all the stuff that's free on linkedin or youtube. There's other stuff that we add on there. So I'd certainly do that, um.

Speaker 1:

And then finally, the other free big area to look at. If I can find it. Where's it gone? That doesn't work. Sorry, bear with me a second. I'll say I will share after. There's a whatsapp link. I can't actually get the link at the moment, um, I'm not sure why, but I'll share that whatsapp. There's definitely something to do. And again, on that free WhatsApp community, maybe I can copy it this way. No, that's not right. Bear with me a second. I've got it somewhere else. So, yeah, you can join this free whatsapp community. Again, we share information, um, for everybody on that community and I'd urge you to join all of these things. Join the webinar, join the school community, um, join the free whatsapp community.

Speaker 1:

They're all free, all free resources, and I'm putting out a lot of free content. Obviously, check our YouTube channel out. We've got a YouTube channel. We're adding more videos and more videos, more content, so I'd ask you to subscribe to that as well. Actually, I will do that now. Let's see if I can find it again. That's the youtube channel. If you please subscribe to it again. Free content for everybody, okay, um, we put a lot and we're putting a lot of effort into videos. We've got a whole team where we'll be sharing videos and ideas to everybody, so please do join that again. My linkedin is my another area as well.

Speaker 1:

And then, finally, um, uh, today, um, we also have our hosting event in delhi, in gurgaon in, on the 14th and 15th of december. Very excited to, to to be hosting this. And actually that picture of me is actually in rishikesh. Okay, just a little while back, um, but the event is this time is in the lily ambience hotel and gorgal. It's a two-day immersion event. That's okay. It's immersing. It's a two-day full-on event.

Speaker 1:

If you're expecting to um come for an easy ride, it won't be. It's going to be very detailed and we're going to provide a step-by-step kind of detail of what we will share, how you need to go global. I'll be leading this event, but I've got some other speakers coming along um to the event as well, and I've got, for instance, my colleague chris, who's the head of uk marketing digital marketing for samara, is coming all the way from the uk. Price is 50 000 rupees. There's an early bird price of 30 000 40 000 sorry if you book before the end of September. So there's certainly some value to be had there as well. I will just share that link as well to you there. That's there as well.

Speaker 1:

So, in essence, there's a lot of content. Now, there's no excuse. If you want help, there is help available. You can get all the free stuff. If you want to go really into deep into the information, then we've obviously got this event coming up in delhi as well, I mean in december, in a few months time so and this event's being sponsored by zoho, um, so that'd be really good, okay, okay, um, okay.

Speaker 1:

So question have you got any questions here? So, thank you, any questions, okay, so what? We got any questions? I'm trying to see. Okay, so I've got one question. Could you please share how samara global is helping indians here for them to get bookkeeping, audit or other assignments in the uk? So good question, um, we are started. We've just started off our partner program. You'll find it on our website, okay, um, we it's just starting out where we're aligning ourselves with certain partners across india and it's those partners that we meet. If they're appropriate and they meet our minimum standards and there's a whole application process, then we will potentially provide certain work to client to two firms in india.

Speaker 1:

More of that, more of that information, will be revealed at an event in december in in delhi. Anyone who's interested in that will need to come to the event in delhi. We're only working with people that we actually physically meet and see. That's a real large part of it. So that's the one of the incentives to come to the event in Delhi, because we appreciate that you want business, you want to get customers, but we don't know who anyone is and we've had so many approaches. So therefore, we're inviting people to come to this event in Delhi, make sure that you come and then we build the relationship. As we said, it's a relationship thing as trust. Okay, who do I trust in India to do the work to a good standard, and that's kind of what we're doing. So I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 1:

Any other last questions whilst before I end today, I'll wait a moment because sometimes it's a delay. I appreciate various questions because sometimes it's a delay I appreciate on various questions. No, okay, well, wonderful. Thank you so much for your time today. I hope you found it of insight and useful. Please make sure you attend next week's webinar again next Thursday.

Speaker 1:

There is actually a special webinar I'm doing on the second Wednesday, the 2nd of October, which I haven't announced yet, which will be coming out, which is a special event I'm doing with a colleague of mine called Hardik Chabada. Hardik runs a firm called TalentAdid and that's an exciting webinar where he's based out of Mumbai but he's set up an offshoring firm based on auditing and he's doing stuff here in the uk and the us, um, so it's very, very exciting. So that's. More details will be emerging the next day or so on that. So sign up for that separate webinar as well. There's a couple of other.

Speaker 1:

One more question here okay, um, is partnering limited to uk business? No, so the part, the partnering is not just for uk. We get, well, hopefully we're going to be getting us, canada, other countries business as well, um, but we're trying to partner with indian firms who can develop and who can provide work. Um, will you be supporting to start a firm for us? Yes, we are. So us, we're doing. We're all one other also.

Speaker 1:

One other thing we're adding is, um, if that's appropriate for some firms, it may be they may be looking to acquire a firm in the UK or US, and that's something we can do as well. So we are dealing with that side of things. If you're looking to acquire a firm, we can position and help people potentially to do that as well. So there's much we can do and it's an exciting time where you know that the Indian accountancy industry or the CA industry there's a lot of demand for offshoring and outsourcing, but our job is to figure out who are the right people that we can work with. So if you want to know more about that side of things and the whole partner program and then the acquisition side of things, say of foreign firms, I'll be going into a lot more detail at the event in delhi, okay.

Speaker 1:

So thank you so much for your time. I hope this was of use and, uh, I will see you at the next webinar, okay, any comments? Please do reach out to me on linkedin. It's probably the easiest way, um, and we will go from there. Have a lovely evening.