Ep#11-How he launched the First Crypto Accounting Firm in Dubai | ft. Joe David

In this episode of #Alphapreneurs, host 𝗥𝗮𝘆𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗺  sits down with Joe David, founder of Nephos Group and Nephos Global  among the first crypto-focused accounting firms in the UK and UAE . Joe breaks down how he went from a “photocopier boy” with no clear path, to building a thriving international firm that helps businesses manage crypto, wealth, and compliance all with clarity and ethics.

💡 In this episode, you'll learn how crypto accounting really works (without the hype), what it takes to build trust in a misunderstood industry, and how Joe scaled globally while keeping his family and team grounded. He also shares tips for entrepreneurs eyeing Dubai, thoughts on Web3 regulation, why processes matter more than perfection and how fitness and mentorship keep him sharp through it all.

👉 Follow Joe David on LinkedIn: https://shorturl.at/Qf7Uk
👉 Website: https://www.nephosgroup.com/
                       https://www.mynaaccountants.co/
                       
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗔𝗺 𝗜?

My name is  Rayhan Aleem, Founder and CEO of 𝗧𝗮𝘅 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿 and 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀. At  𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 podcast I sit with top industry leaders for in-depth conversations that dive deep into their success stories, market dynamics, and firsthand tips on entrepreneurship and profitability. Whether you're just starting out or already running your own business, 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 offers something valuable for everyone.

👉 Follow 𝗥𝗮𝘆𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝗲𝗺 on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3U2niHn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
𝗦𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀:

𝟭-𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮 𝗣𝗿𝗼 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀:
  -𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:  https://www.alphapartners.co
  -𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻: https://bit.ly/3Yf4VRZ

𝟮-𝗧𝗮𝘅 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿:
  -𝗪𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲:  https://www.taxstar.app
  -𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗱𝗜𝗻: https://bit.ly/3ZVjzPD

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻:

🔗 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗯𝗲: https://bit.ly/47gaW3F
🔗 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆: https://bit.ly/3ZbtGiR
🔗 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁: https://bit.ly/4dOfS2f
🔗 𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗶: https://bit.ly/3Mutunk
🔗 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲!: https://bit.ly/3XfGYbD

𝗘𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲? 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗔𝗹𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘂𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘂𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀!

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & Intro
• 1:15 From photocopier boy to founding Nephos Group: Joe’s entrepreneurial journey
• 6:15 Embracing digital transformation: moving from desktop to cloud accounting
• 11:00 Launching a crypto accounting division and landing his first crypto client
• 24:38 Why Joe moved his life and business from the UK to Dubai
• 35:52 Scaling remotely: building a leadership team for off-site business growth
• 43:12 Dispelling crypto misconceptions & championing industry maturity
• 52:30 Practical blockchain use cases: NFTs, tokenized assets & DeFi innovations
• 56:49 Crypto regulation in the UAE: VARA licensing, banking & building a crypto hub
• 1:01:31 Nephology Podcast overview & connecting with Joe on LinkedIn

Transcript

0:00

I am a little bit like I like doing things that other people say you can't do Yeah Because, and not from an illegal perspective, but from a perspective of why can't we do it? Why can't crypto be this new or blockchain, be this kind of new technology that can revolutionize the world Welcome to the Alphaprenuers Podcast I'm your host Rayhan Aleem, founder of Tax Star and Alpha Pro Partners Join me on each episode as we talk to inspiring Dubai based entrepreneurs who share their stories, challenges, and secrets on building world-class businesses I'm excited to have Joe David on the show today Joe is a founder of Nephos Group, which offers accounting, wealth management, and corporate services, but his big focus is on crypto He's a passionate advocate of cryptocurrency and spends a lot of time educating entrepreneurs and business owners on how to use it effectively Joe also hosts a nephrology podcast where he talks about finance, crypto, and business strategies with like-minded professionals Joe, welcome to the show Thanks for having me Thank you for having me in your podcast So I really enjoyed it This is a kind of different setting, but it's in the same studio Yeah I wanna get into it I want to talk about your journey as a entrepreneur you also run an accounting firm, but your accounting firm's more cool You are into crypto Yeah I'm a traditional accounting firm or traditional bookkeeper And you've obviously moved to Dubai, so I wanna speak about, talk about your journey to, Dubai as well But you obviously, transitioned from an employee to a entrepreneur and we focused a lot on that, on this podcast You wanna tell us about why you decided to set your own business? I know you moved into other things like wealth management as well But tell us about that journey and what was the things that you learned and some of the, if you're happy to share some of the mistakes that you made Yeah, a hundred percent And again, thanks, for having me I, think, for me as well, the key to all these stories is people say, I was all born an entrepreneur from three years old I was selling sweets the chances of that are pretty similar I wasn't born an entrepreneur I didn't know I was gonna be an entrepreneur, didn't know I wanted to be an entrepreneur, to be honest When I was 18, I didn't know what I wanted, the only thing I wanted right at that moment was to lie on the sofa and play on a PlayStation like that, that, that's what I was doing at 18 And, I think a lot of these stories of, I was born an entrepreneur, a lot of the time How true is that? yeah, look, for me, I didn't enjoy school I, I wasn't stupid at all, but I didn't apply myself, so I, scraped by, I got basic grades and I went to a levels, didn't enjoy it, didn't do it properly So failed that left school, no university and then I was what do I do here? Where, does my life go? And it was just that, my auntie had a job going at a place she worked, and my dad was get off the sofa and get some money coming in so I went and worked for this, bathroom manufacturer, and I didn't, have any accounting experience In fact, the job wasn't even accounting It was just kind of office, t boy really, if for, for one of a term So my first job was photocopier boy Yeah Yeah So don't worry, we've all been there No judgment We've all been there and it was very much just help out around the office And it just happened that the f it was a very small company It was a big group, but a small, UK arm of, this bigger group, like eight of us in the office And it was just at the financial controller was like, look, you clearly got a keen eye for numbers and, you keep like doing the invoice processing because I was doing a little bit of that Do you want to take it further? and that's where it developed Did a t did a c, CA, move jobs up until, within the, accounting finance industry, but in industry, not in a practice at all working in manufacturing businesses and technology businesses, et cetera and then it was I say I was never born an entrepreneur I think I grew into one, if that makes sense and I feel like in my mid kind of twenties, I was I There's something more about this I actually enjoy what I do I actually, in a weird way, enjoy going to work Yeah and did I enjoy the job specifically? Maybe not, but I knew that I enjoyed work and I knew that I enjoyed trying to achieve something at that point So that's when I just thought, I've gotta do this myself, because I'm never gonna get full kind of satisfaction out of working for somebody else and, putting money in, in, in somebody else's pocket yeah, so I left the job and started the, business I can't remember when it was now, 11 years ago Oh, wow Yeah it was very much a, at the time people were saying, I was still quite young I'm 37 now, 26, still quite young to, yeah To go do you know what? I'm just gonna quit my job and, start this business Had, I didn't have kids at the time, I had a mortgage so it was, quite a big decision, but I just felt that I had more to offer to the world than just sitting In an office behind a desk doing, doing the accounts for, a company But I'd also like to remind you that you, wasn't, it's not like you were setting up in a, in London or Birmingham or Manchester You were setting up in a, one of this kind of medium sized towns in Yeah In, in, in England Yeah and so I'm sure it's like the equivalent of Setting up in, coin, for example, right? yeah, So how did you find that experience? Being in a small community, but being able to grow your business as well? I think you get both sides of that, right? If you're in London, there's a huge amount of competition Yeah Huge firms there that you've gotta compete with It's very difficult to really get in the communities that you need to get into It's probably similar here, if you're in Dubai trying to find the right community to get into I know I've moved here, I'm sure you do as well whereas if you went to a Quain or, Auer or somewhere like that, you'd probably find those communities are few and far between, and therefore easy to get into so that was very helpful, in that sense that the communities were, there was less of them I, could build some relationships A lot of people, 10 years ago it really was the move from the start of the move from like traditional accounting into kind of cloud I Technology Yeah, accounting we were one of the earlier zero adopters in the uk DExT, which was Receipt Bank, et cetera So that was another opportunity where I was going to these events, financial advisors, even sometimes other accounting firms, all these lawyers, all these professionals And they were going, actually, we haven't really heard this story before because we've only heard the traditional story So actually they had a lot of newer clients, tech clients, younger clients that were actually like, this is the way I wanna do it, not this way If that makes sense so traditional, just to be clear, traditional is basically pen and paper accounting Yeah Using the kind of Windows 95 type Yeah Desktop based software, not cloud based software you can only No files Yeah You can only access it in the office Yeah You can't, the only way we could access, because obviously we had some clients that were still on desktop software, like when I was working in, industry We had a, an IT team One of the jobs of the person in the IT team was to download data from Sage into Excel, because it couldn't do it It was Sage 1000 I think at the time And it couldn't get the data directly from Sage into Excel So he would be building, it was his job, basically It was to build these queries out of Sage, to get it into Excel so we can manipulate the data and understand what was going on, et cetera So it was like that, like you say, that type of, when, we then started saying to entrepreneurs, actually you can see it anytime, anywhere Yeah if you are a, even a small business, you're a plumber, you're on a job, you can raise an invoice on your phone on zero there and there Like now to most accountants, now that's of course you can But back then that I say back then, it was only 10 years ago, but it wasn't, that way Do you know what I mean? So for us to come in with that fresh approach, there was a lot of the younger generation that then went, actually this is, we'd much rather this approach than the kind of the suited and booted, old school kind of accountant Yeah And, So you obviously helped businesses digitize, you helped, you, you was able to grow your business off the back of that did you find that when you first started your business, did you already have your networks in place or did you have to work to build those networks and grow? Yeah, you got, again, I worked in, in an, industry It was a boring, they actually had an office in Dubai Funnily enough, when I left, there was a conversation around me moving rather than leaving They were like, why don't you go to Dubai and go to our Dubai office? And at the time, I think my mum, because my mum lived here before I moved here Yeah I think my mum lived here at the time So it was question, but I had no idea that I was actually then gonna kind of 10 years later be here myself But, it was very much a, it was in a, a small village basically the business that, the manufacturing business was the village They all work there it was, a real close community You drive there, you go to the office, you do your days' work, you leave So you don't really build a network You don't You don't really have opportunities to build outside of 'cause then you go home, you do your home thing, and then you go back to work the next day it wasn't like I was a, an accounting in PR accountant in practice or a lawyer or a financial advisor that was constantly networking as part of my job Yeah So yeah, it was turn up at breakfast meetings at six o'clock in the morning and, freezing cold, raining uk, and trying to, build those businesses and, sorry, those connections for me, I am I'm massively introvert Like I hate going out to people and talking to them I'm really comfortable in these sorts of situations, but I hate if you said to me, there's 50 people downstairs going network I'd be like, I don't wanna do that That's not, so I'm the same too Yeah So that was a, that's probably an accountant thing, right? so that was a real challenge on at first you have to, and, but I do think it gives you, then, the more you do stuff you don't wanna do Yeah The more you become more resilient, you, start to actually go, do you know what, I didn't wanna do that I didn't wanna get up at six o'clock in the morning I didn't wanna go and speak to those people I did it, I came away with it with some business cards and some nice conversations and now feel good, now what's the next challenge? Let's go Do you know what I mean? So I do, as much as I hated it definitely helped, a lot And obviously, you've started your journey, revolutionizing the, your local area and in the UK by offering cloud You moved to Dubai and you now do crypto accounting Which you're probably the first accounting firm to do that in Dubai, by the way, or the UAE, maybe even the g ccc, right? Yeah Yeah Because I've been there for quite some time I haven't seen anyone else do that Now you obviously was doing that in your UK firm, crypto accounting and I think that's an amazing, the riches are in the niches, right? So I think that's a, really good area to focus on How did you go about, looking into crypto as like your, one of your specialisms as a service offering? and, accountants are not usually good at, you tell accountants to do a process That's it They'll do the process They won't think outside the box Yeah They're not supposed to think outside the box No'cause then you get into like creative accounting, right? Exactly yeah, But you obviously, We're able to build a company, able to build a division that works in crypto Tell us about that journey and, is that something that you enjoyed doing? I know you, you were in a, We both were in a conference like a year ago and you, was on a panel and you mentioned that all your staff have a crypto account as well Yeah, so tell us about that journey Yeah, so it was, yeah, it was definitely, a, an interesting path to, to start on And, I mentioned at the start that I wasn't born an entrepreneur and that, and I wasn't, I didn't start the business either really as this massive entrepreneur, but then a couple of kind of years, two, three years into it, I started to go, do you know what? I am ambitious here I wanna make something here Let's, what can, how can I make something big? And, COVID came along, in 2020, which obviously also changed the game for a lot of accountants And, in my head I was like, there's got to be an industry here that we can go into that will break you could be an expert in hospitality, COVID comes along, your business is shot tomorrow you can be an, expert in all these different areas and someone could come along What area can I find I might even enjoy being part of that That really I think could, break that, that, that barrier if you like, of going to the next level so, crypto was that, so in 2018 it was, initially we got our first crypto client and it was just pure We had a client, she was, if she listened to it, she would know who she was But, she was a locum vet in London She went round She, we, paid us a, a modest fee just to do the accounts and, prep for her whatnot and her partner at the time, was in a crypto exchange and, he was leaving and was setting up on his own So she said, look, you should speak to my accountant He's modern tech focused, all those sorts of things She just said to me, he's got a tech company, probably don't wanna scare me off went to meet him in London and yeah, it was crypto and at the time I was like, I knew what Bitcoin was I just about knew what Ethereum was This was 2018, so Ethereum had only been around for kind of a year, 18 months And it was very much like What do we do here? Do, if we turn this away, what are we saying to ourselves as individuals? But if we take it on, are we really able to deliver on this work? And so I was just very honest with 'em and I just went, look, I want to do this I But we are not an expert and they went, nobody would even open the door to us and have a conversation So the fact you're even willing to have this conversation means that you are somebody we wanna work with And that's where it started So we learned very much on the job, 20 18, 20 19 before covid, it was very much this is just another one of our X amount of clients Yeah There was no, at that time, there was no kind of plan to build this huge division There was no Yeah thought process on it And then when, Covid came, gym's, shirt, all these different things, I was like, you couldn't go out and, go coffee or, go to the purple or whatever it may be I was actually like, I've got time on my hands So I just started looking into crypto So I started watching YouTube videos, started reading articles, all those sorts of things and just started going, there is something about this thing that I quite and I am a little bit anti-authoritarian, so I, I am a little bit like I like doing things that other people say you can't do Yeah Because, and not from an illegal perspective, but from a perspective of why can't we do it? Why can't crypto be this new or blockchain be this kind of new technology that can revolutionize the world so for me that was then an opportunity to go, this kind of fits with my mantra of let's try and do something different It fits in my mantra of a niche area that nobody else is in and therefore we could grow Yeah Quite significantly Let's give it a go So yeah, just spent a significant amount of time researching it And then the core as well, without getting too nitty gritty, was going, okay, now I understand the concepts Now I need to invest in it now Annoyingly at the time the crypto was going up Yeah Which wasn't annoying if you were in it Annoyingly for me was, I only had a few hundred dollars here and there'cause I was an accountant that was trying to understand the accounting, not trying to make money So I invested in a few of these things just to then be able to go I've invested in it now, what accounting transactions will I need to post in order to Yeah, deliver the accounts for that investment if And when you've done it yourself, you know what you've invested in, you know why you did it, the kind of transactions you did in order to generate it, you can then start to go, actually, I know the steps I took I know the accounting kind of rules and stuff If I can marry those two together, surely I can come to a place where we've got, accounting rules for, crypto So that's how it started And there was no a CCA guidance There was no even real HMRC guidance at the time Yeah, it was very much a case of We do what we can, we apply the rules as best we can and we not hope for the best, but we we're, erring on the side of, look, nobody, there's no rules out there So what, can we do apart from go for our best? So that's how it started It was very much a kind of random interaction through to me really getting into it and then becoming a little bit obsessed with the industry and then going, do you know what? There's a business here Let's launch a business And with crypto, what are your thoughts? we don't need to have a, yeah Eight, a idiot guide to crypto Yeah But, crypto's come a long way now Yeah Yeah Yeah And you obviously, you have quite a number of clients who are, within the Web3 web, Web3 oh, crypto space what, are your kind of, views of the future of crypto? I recently set up a wallet Only reason why is because I went to a, I went to a, an event and there was a Stanford professor speaking there Okay And he was saying, 2% of your wealth should be in something you don't normally invest in, and you just put it in there and you just leave it Okay Nice Yeah So I put some money in crypto, not 2% of my wealth, probably less Yeah and I've just left it there and I'm, yeah Not even looking at it Yeah what's your view of, the crypto market? how do you see things going? you've got some really good insights in terms of your clients We don't need to go into specifics, but No And, look, we're in a unique position, right? Because we are, not some marketing agency that all they see is Crypto influencers trying to pump the latest coin, or, we're not a project that has been building this blockchain project for so long that they're blinkered by blockchain or, crypto, whatever we are very much a provider to like the whole industry So we see retail investors in the UK more than here, but retail investors investing probably more than 2% of, their net worth we, I tell the story We had a young guy, he was, an Amazon kind of, like shelf stacker Yeah Or not shelf stacker, like a picker, if you like up in a northern UK town So not, not very well off town, earning kind of 15,000 pounds a year he then invested in crypto and made a quarter of a million Wow and, for someone like that That's life changing Yeah it's an opportunity for them to do something else It might be that they want to carry on in Amazon, but they can buy a property with it Or might they go, do you know what, I've now got a few months where I can go I don't wanna work in Amazon anymore You could Buy Street for that much Yeah, you probably could Yeah Yeah, you probably could but like he had these opportunities now and you see that And then you see these like huge corporates that are like, investing in crypto on a, big scale So it's such a unique like industry where you really do get like a corporate, it's like a David and Goliath You, can get, David competing with Goliath in terms of some of the gains and the profits that these people are making So, we've got this unique experience that we've got the retail investors, and then we've also got the businesses, the infrastructure projects, the, we've got some stable core issuers on our books So for me, I see a huge future for blockchain and crypto is one, use case, if you like, of blockchain technology Yeah So there's things such as, I mentioned on, on, on one video I did that, AI and blockchain coming together, smart contracts, which basically means that, for example, an insurance claim, if someone drives into you, you take a picture of the claim Upload it AI is able to determine like who, your car, their car Determine who is at fault effectively And I'm really dumbing it down here Determine who is at fault and the smart contract can automatically pay out No insurance company needed to do checks and you don't have to take a car here to get it checked by this You can literally just get, AI to check it and smart contracts to pay it out So blockchain technology, I think has huge use cases Crypto itself, very speculatory So you're very much a case of you're buying it, hoping that it goes up in value Yeah There are occasions where you might say, I really believe in that project I'm gonna buy their token a little bit Like I might buy shares in a company But in the main, you are buying and I'm the same, you are buying a crypto token in order to go It was, 50 pounds Today it's all dollars, ems, whatever Today is a hundred, 150, 200 in, in, in two weeks stock So for me Like I say, there's, huge opportunity here to change the way the financial system works Decentralized finance Yeah peer-to-peer borrowing and lending all on the blockchain even where you've got assets, if you tokenize an asset, for example, a laptop Yeah And you say, I on a loan, Joe, the laptop, we've got a smart contract system that could say that if I don't give you the laptop back, the money that I've put down as collateral, whatever I've put down as collateral is automatically paid out to me There's no way for you to stop it Do you know what I mean? Yeah So it's, there's all these different bits and pieces that I think where use cases can really revolutionize the way we're doing things At the moment We've got a client that's, looking to, and one of our podcast episodes is gonna be with this guy when he is ready to launch But, it's, he's tokenizing the private debt market So if you are a business at the moment and you wanna raise money in the private markets, it's quite expensive Yeah It's quite slow If you go to a bank, they're probably gonna say no like a, if you go to a loan shark, they'll take your knee cap Yeah, exactly yeah So it's a very fragmented market where you've got high street banks and like you say, dodgy loan sharks that will take your knee caps out and, it's very expensive It's very slow It, it, just doesn't work for businesses So he's tokenizing that opportunity So he's saying, look, we're gonna have a marketplace of lenders, if you like, or, what have you We're gonna have a marketplace of businesses and we're gonna match the two together cheaper, quicker Like he can make more money in his own business doing it that way, and cut the cost by 60% to the end business, right? So if you can cut your, if you can cut your business, your, customer's cost by 60% and still make more money than the traditional way, like it's a no brainer, right? Yeah, yeah so that's where I think a lot of these use cases are gonna start coming around the real world opportunities of utilizing this, technology And then the other side is, obviously this is not gonna go out today, but for anyone that has looked at the industry, Trump launched a meat point at the weekend and it went from basically nothing to 50, $60 billion in market capitalization Wow Yeah, it was, it became bigger than some US corporations in, in, in less than kind of 48 hours today it's still, still pretty high as well and, that kind of gives you like the sense of like hype and, what's the word? like Market, not market sentiment, but speculation Public perception Yeah, speculation where everyone's gone Oh my god, Donald Trump has released a meme coin We have to buy that because he's about to be the president of the us And in what world are we now living in that the president or incoming president of the US is buying is setting up a meme coin Like it's an insane, position And people were made millionaires from that over the weekend unfortunately not me I'd have been ringing you this morning Sorry man I'm not coming in it came over for me now but yeah, like it's, that's, the world And, yet then you've got this huge kind of proper, kind of real world use case over here It's just, it transcends so much So Joel, you've moved to Dubai when you moved, you came back about two years ago, correct? Yeah July 23 Yeah, July 23 and, I Obviously it's a big move for you you've born and raised in the uk, moved yourself to Dubai You've, set up an office out here you've moved your family as well so I, I had amen here in our, I think episode number two or three Okay And we spoke about his, yeah, similar time as well Similar time as well Yeah he made the move as well I made the move back in 2016 Okay and I did something similar as well with, I actually set up main business here and moved the family as well Okay things were very different back then to how it is right now, but what made you decide to come to Dubai? what kind of tips can you give to other fellow entrepreneurs who are making the move as well? Did, is Dubai what you expected it to be? Or, were you able to, how were you able to navigate your, business businesses decision on coming here and, growing it? For sure So look for me, yeah, the main reason was I didn't wanna be in the uk the UK for me is just because someone said to me a few, probably a couple months ago now, but they said it's basically the UK was a five star hotel that hasn't been worked on for God knows how many years has been left to be run down The people in charge of the, and that's just, we're not talking any particular political party here Just in general, the people in charge of the hotel don't really know what they're doing They've got no real ambition in the grand scheme of things to fix it They're riddled with debt, the hotel So actually what can it do? how much can it invest in reality and the only way out of this situation in reality for them right now? Is to raise the price of the product Yeah Despite the fact the product being massively inferior to what it was before And also as a hotel, thinking to yourself, actually we are still a five star hotel here We should be able to charge these prices Yeah Why not? And actually in reality, everyone else is looking at that you're at three star at best, maybe even a two And, I thought that was a really good analogy of like where the UK kind of has got to, and the uk same for you the UK is my home country I, don't want to put it down Yeah But at the same time, you've gotta tell people what it is in real life, right? Yeah You've gotta talk about what is in front of you And for me, I didn't see Huge prospects for me I didn't see huge prospects for my children so I wanted to move somewhere and just get some, I didn't go to uni, like I said earlier So I didn't really get that I lived in Charlton, which is the small kind of town Yeah My whole life So I was like, I really want an opportunity to go somewhere different And because my mom lived here for eight years, we'd been here quite a lot Yeah and, when I decided to move, it was like, I want to live somewhere where I can grow a business I don't want to just go and sit on the beach somewhere or, work from, a small little coffee shop in a little French village that there's nothing else going on around me As lovely as that is that wasn't where it was I have lovely bakery though They do Yeah It was tempting It was tempting so I wanted to go somewhere where there was a, and, I joke about it, that I say to people that it was easier for me to move my family halfway around the world Yeah Than to move them to say London Yeah Because, They didn't want to go to London They had no interest in that What whatsoever? Yeah I'm, from London, obviously Okay Yeah I think you probably have a better lifestyle in Ham than you'd have in La London Yeah But you don't, from a business perspective Yeah You don't have the same opportunities Yeah going back to the earlier point around, what was it like starting in Ham? this is the thing when you've been in c Chatham them for say, seven years in business or whatever, you start to saturate a little bit the opportunities Yeah they don't, they're not quite as, yeah, they're not quite as, there's not many of them around and they're not quite as good So then you start to go, I need to spend more time in London Okay So then you end up getting the train there every day Driving there every day, whatever it may be So actually it was like, why don't we move to a different city and, somewhere that, you get amazing weather Yeah business opportunities and you do get Every opportunity you want You can spend your weekend at the beach, in the city, at a club, like a beach club or you could spend it in the desert where there's nothing else around you Yeah it's, you don't, there aren't many places in the world in the size of what the UA and Dubai is, that you can get all those different things Yeah In one place Yeah Yeah yeah, so for me it was about opportunity, me, children, business, interesting with the wife Like she already knew obviously about Dubai, 'cause she'd been here a lot Yeah Loved it as a holiday destination Was is very much a home person, only child in her, with her parents So she's very close to them So it was quite a big decision And she, they're still in, they're still back home Her parents yeah, and they're not really, her dad's not really well enough to travel and, her mum probably wouldn't leave her dad for that long, if So they've never been out, which is a shame Maybe one day but, but she was my barometer, right? Because when we first came, she was like, we'll do it for a year Like she wanted the opportunity as well Yeah Like she wanted to go try something different We'll do it for a year And in my head I'm like, A year's not enough to do anything Go to business Yeah Yeah You gotta you gotta do more than that But I was during that year thinking, what if she wants to go back? Then what do I do? How do I manage the fact that I don't want to go back? Yeah I wanna build my business here Yeah How do I then manage that? Am I gonna have to say, you guys go back I'll come back, I don't know, once every six, eight weeks or, and then it becomes this whole cost and blah, blah, blah after six months she was like, I've never gone back to UK ever again So you made a great move for you Yeah, Now she'd, if she was listening, she'd very much be like, yeah, this is the place that, like we're looking at buying a property to live in now Yeah this is the place we want to be You can buy property with crypto now, by the way You can Yeah Yeah, You can You can yeah, so for me it was like, I want an opportunity I want to go somewhere where I think there's huge growth potential and, I love this part of the world Yeah I love the, vision they have I love the plan that they, they want to do from a crypto perspective, absolutely incredible the opportunities that businesses, entrepreneurs, individuals get Yeah Here So that was like the kind of, if you like the, reason I in terms of like my top tip, do it sooner because I delayed, not necessarily Dubai, I wish that I had made the move to Dubai Probably when you did or, yeah maybe a little bit after that because, I feel like there's opportunities that if you are sat there thinking, eh, maybe don't miss the opportunity Yeah, take it, obviously there's personal circumstances and, all those sorts, of things But if you get the opportunity to live somewhere like this, I would say jump at it immediately And in terms of you building your business And you've setting up operations, what kind of tactical tips can you give to, there may be plenty of entrepreneurs from, from the UK or wherever else, and they wanna move they may not, they may still think it's a five star hotel Yeah You're not gonna dis the uk UK's home I am But, what kind of advice would you give those types of entrepreneurs who it's quite a daunting thing to move your family, set a business, come out here it's a completely different environment Yeah It in many ways Yeah but there's lots of opportunities when, you're used to a certain environment So what kind of tips would you give based on what, how, you've, made your move? Yeah So I think, for me the most important thing from a perspective of it being successful moving here was that the wife and the kids were happy And, so when we moved out here, so my, wife's a teacher She was at a private school in Chatham, really good school for 10 years And then she left a couple years before we came here I said she didn't really do much That's obviously unfair She did quite a lot in terms of work, like there wasn't, and then she did a bit of social media for us and we moved out here and she didn't have a job and she was like, I won't work 'cause I don't want to, and blah, blah blah Which was fine Like you was a Dubai lifestyle Exactly Yeah Yeah which was fine Like we had, she worked with me, so we would go to work together most days, then she'd be home for the kids and all those sorts of things But then after a while you start to realize that actually I'm building a network Yeah I'm building connections I'm, making friends if you like, in, in, business She's stuck at home with the kids and doesn't really have that same interaction So one thing I would say is they've gotta be really happy And two sides to that She got a job, in teaching, and for her, now she's got her own friends She's got her own, group of people that she, like this Friday, she's going out and, I'll have the kids, and she'll be able to go out that hair down, do whatever she wants, type thing so that's the first thing You've gotta make sure that, and I don't just mean that in a, happy wife, happy life type thing I genuinely mean that in a happy life, happy wife Yeah Whichever way he, I, believe that but you gotta, you've gotta think about it It's, is, it can't be a selfish decision It's gotta be, right? Yeah And then the kids is the second piece, right? If you've got children, yeah finding a school that's, that they like and that you feel is right for them we found a British school that we really liked Really close to home so I think that's also really important is making sure that you find the right kind of education and stuff for your children because they've gotta be also happy, right? Yeah You think that they just come along on the ride and do what they're told, which in the main they do, but if they're not happy, what are you actually doing to them? What if it's not what in their life, what is gonna help them? Like actually you, them being selfish by not giving them what they should have to, right? Yeah So, they were the two most important factors if you are in the UK and you've got either of those parties in your life, whether that's wife, husband, or children, you've gotta think about where, how can I place them in the best possible Best possible way The other side to that then is as a business, whatcha gonna do? Yeah So obviously tax is a huge piece, the UK in the main it is a fairly high tax jurisdiction Yeah It's not massive in some instances when you look at other personal taxes is higher, I think the most, but business tax isn't actually too bad compared to Europe and America Yeah If you can get in, some of the lower rates, it's, not too bad But tax is always gonna be a defining factor in a lot of people's decisions Yeah if I go here, can I save some money on tax? Which you could potentially do Yeah and then the other piece is how do, how are you able to run your business? I actually spoke to an entrepreneur who ran a kind of manufacturing company, and he was like, at least once a week, I like doing a sweep of the factory I like go and talk to people Yeah I like understanding the business, what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah someone told me once it was called like management by walking around, where you just walk around and you just chat to people How you getting on? what's, and then as a manager or as a business owner, you get to really see what's going on Yeah You can't do that if you live in Dubai and the factories in the uk, right? Yeah Yeah So then you've gotta think, can I run my business? yeah, I could run most of it, but I couldn't run this bit and this bit What sets us apart from the rest And if you are like me, where you had a service business where you don't have that, you, for me, it was all about getting the right people at the top Yeah To be able to manage the business in my absence, as it were and they all know that I'm available whenever they need me Yeah I'm on the end of a team call, I'm on the end of a phone call and I, we had a really big situation happen about 18 months ago in the business And I said to Julie, who heads up our operations if say it's like right now, right?

11: 36:52

00 AM or whatever on a Monday, our time I was like, by the time you wake up tomorrow morning, I could be with you that's how close yet, we're here now today, you are panicking, going, oh my God, you're halfway around the world Actually, I'm probably a few hours away if I jump on a plane and, get to you very quickly So you're far, but you're never too far having those good people in the business Making sure that the business can run and tick along was like essential Yep and then it is, the cliche, having good people, having, not just the management, but then underneath that, having staff that really care Yep That wanna deliver, good stuff Yep And, we've been really lucky in that sense that we've got some really good people that, that really want to do well and they all I think, aspire to the opportunity of what they can do Yeah maybe they can move out here and, work for the entity out here maybe they don't wanna do that, but it's an opportunity there yeah I've talked around the point a little bit there, but I think you get the picture it's about Yeah, no, A hundred percent family and then business Yeah I think what the, some of the things that you mentioned is, as an entrepreneur, as an individual, we are doing, a lot of Things, people that norm, normal people don't do and we are constantly working late Sometimes we're taking emergency calls, we're relaxing for a week, but then we go into all of the things that we need to do we have to manage cash flow We've gotta pay salaries at the end of the month We have to collect the, make sure the business is collecting the, fees from the clients And as an entrepreneur, as you rightly said, you need to have a good base you need to make sure that you, you, internally have stability you touched upon the family and that's very important as well business wise, you touched upon another point, and that is the fact that as a business, it doesn't matter if you move around the world or if you have 10 businesses, or if you have one business and you wanna work, one hour per day I think what you mentioned, you didn't mention culture, but it sounds like you got really good culture but you gotta have the right people in the right place, which you mentioned, and you gotta have good management team to manage the business I also believe adding to that, no business is perfect If you strive for perfection, you're never gonna get it so you have to be comfortable with chaos To a certain extent and you have to be comfortable with the 20% unknowns and so long as the 80% is all running smoothly, yeah The 20% will look after itself it will fix in its own So I think you've given an, a great, appraisal on how to, if you are an existing business owner from the uk, for example, and you wanna make the move to Dubai, be it tax reasons, be it opportunity, be it you wanna live, have a better lifestyle, you do need to, make sure you do Have these fundamentals in place before you make the move Like for example, if you're going through a divorce, for example, yeah You probably want to sort that out yeah Or if you are, if you have a business in the UK and you know you're having internal strife, then you probably wanna fix it before you come here Yeah so yeah, no great insights Although I would say, there's two points to add to that So I would say, we had, we had an issue with a senior staff member when I left and there was a conversation before I left around, do I stick around for a bit? Because this could go south and it did go south I moved out in the July By the September it had gone very south and yeah and the person exited the business That And, again, I had those conversations with, again, Julie, she's been a kind of right hand person to me for five, nearly five and a half years probably now Yeah do I need to come back? Do I need to come and fix this? And she was like, if there, if, whenever there's a fire, you come with the hose How are we ever gonna know how to put it out ourselves? Yeah We've gotta be able to run this bit If you want this business to be an international business that has people all over the world, we've gotta be able to put those fires out without you running back every time and fixing, and that's great leadership advice A hundred percent It's, and so I, but for me it was about, I didn't want to go back Obviously part of it for me was making sure that she was aware that I was there and if she needed me, I would jump on a plane and come back But the other side to that was, so for me it was so empowering to see that she was able to go No not that we don't need you, because it wasn't that at all Like absolutely They would've probably loved it if I'd come back and, done what I needed to do But they were like, no, we need to show you as well you show us leadership, we now need to show it to you Yeah And I think that's super, important and where we are today as a business compared to then is amazing And I didn't, I obviously have been back a couple of times, but I didn't go back and fix it Yeah I probably did a few bits in the background to help fix it Yep But I didn't just jump back in and, fix it So I think that was, super important and I think so, so that was on the don't do it if there's chaos Actually sometimes you can, if you think it's the right thing for the business, you've gotta go ahead with it I think the other thing is It opens up your business to huge opportunity Yeah Not just in Dubai, but we now have people in South Africa We have some people in India, we have someone in Spain, we have people all around the uk so for us as a business, if we were just a cheltham centric office, you only hire people from Cheltham, no offense to Cheltham, but you only get a certain caliber of people potentially it'd be very, it'd be needling A haystack to get, the top of the top Yeah Because you're in a small town, small talent pool You then start to go, okay, we'll take all people in England Oh, now our talent pool's bigger Then you say, we can take anyone anywhere in the world All of a sudden that talent pool, that opportunity is huge Yeah So I think that's the other piece is if you're looking at your business and going, not sure, yeah Tax maybe, or blah blah, blah, blah the opportunity, your business has to hire people from anywhere in the world Insane when you move outside of the kind of bubble Yeah If you like of the uk Yeah No, great advice So Joe, we spoke about, we touched upon, your, your company being the pioneers of, supporting businesses with crypto from an accounting and finance point of view As as I know there are plenty of crypto skeptics out there yeah I guess the crypto bros don't help Yeah Those, the mind Absolutely Yeah Yeah, a lot of it is, as you mentioned, a lot of people who do invest in crypto it is a very speculative at the moment Yeah people just do it just to see if they can make a bit of money if you take a step back, you've got things like the mining part where it takes up a lot of energy And, we're trying to be carbon neutral, but the mining element makes you go the other way and then you've got blockchain, lots of, I Doubts and negativity on blockchain Is it worth it? Is it not worth it? then you've got, the the, the images that you have on a blockchain that you can then sell Okay What the NFTs? That's it NFTs, yeah So you have NFTs as well? Yeah conceptually it's a great idea Yeah Especially for artists yeah but then you have bad players taking over that space and trying to do scams And then you've got obviously a lot of scammers and, hackers and they use crypto as a means to yeah Blackmail you and I've just literally gone through, created a really bad hole for you to dig out of crypto, right? Yeah, of course yeah, but if there's any, anyone who could do that's you, right? A lot of negativity Yeah In crypto I'm a believer in it I think, I think it's the future I think there's definitely a place in the world for crypto and blockchain NFTs as well how have you been able to take this and being able to provide services around it, but at the same time, providing great services, which you obviously do, being ethical, which, your, firm is ethical and, you've gone through the fact that you've got a great, culture within your organization, which means they will look after your clients as well Yeah do you wanna tell us more about that, that, that, kind of journey and how you've been able to dispel a lot of these negative vibes? Yeah, absolutely look, I'm not gonna sit here and say that there's no scams in crypto I'm not gonna sit here and say that there aren't people out there that are trying to steal your money and things like that there Absolutely there are in the traditional finance world as well crypto Has a lot of bad press, but a lot of that is just press, if A lot of it is, let's take a story here, and I've got an example, right? So FTX was an exchange that 2019, I think it was 20, 2022, sorry, I think it was 2022 went down long story short, Sam Bank McCreed, who ran the exchange, was effectively taking customer deposits, leveraging that He had a hedge fund as well Yeah Leveraging those funds and effectively got to a point where there was a bank run and that meant that he didn't have enough money to pay back the investors or the retail users because he had positions out that he couldn't necessarily close Perpetual cycle ends up in everything going to zero not a Ponzi scheme specifically, but that sort of thing And you look at someone like Bernie Madoff, traditional finance Complete Ponzi had an office below his office where he ran a Ponzi and had an office above that where he ran a legit business And he sied money between the two Which one got the most press in reality? Maybe in the us, in, in Wall Street, maybe Madoff did because of it being in Wall Street But in the mainstream press, I only really heard about FTX Yeah a lot of people I know have never heard of Bernie Madoff, for example or they have now because there was a Netflix documentary about it, not because they knew about it at the time Yeah and that's my point, is that crypto will always get bad press Crypto is something that is easy to target It's easy to say crypto is bad because FTX went down, which has nothing to do with crypto, by the way It was just to do with somebody that did wrong, which could have happened in any walk of life There are accountants out there that do wrong There are lawyers out there that do wrong, right? It doesn't mean the whole of the accounting profession is full of scammers So I think that's the first thing is look at it from a perspective of Is the industry itself a problem, or are certain people within that industry a problem? How do we fix that? Yeah So that's, the first piece so for me, getting, looking past that and actually getting deeper, peeling off those layers and then getting deeper and going, actually when I've peeled away, I can see, yeah, these guys are scammers and how do I avoid that? Okay, great I, know how to avoid that But these guys are really good people and for us, the, kind of journey, if you like at the start was we wanna make this space more mature We believe in this space We believe there's opportunities we've peeled off those bad layers and, we found the good underneath that, how do we help that Good come to the top Yep And as a professional services business, accounting business, we are, we've got the best opportunity to help make those businesses successful Most people don't start a business to scam other people Or like even samba, McCreed, I don't think he set out on day one To scam every single person I think he got himself into a hole that he couldn't get out of Yeah Am I saying an accountant could have fixed that? I'm not, no I'm, saying that if he had good people around him that may be advising him better early on, maybe it could have stopped Some people absolutely set out from day one to be a scammer There's nothing you can do about that But if we can help the other part, the ones that go well, I didn't mean to scam people I didn't mean to set up a project, raise a load of money and then it fail That's not what I planned Yeah I ran a really bad business and I apologize for that type thing maybe we can go well next time Don't run a bad business Get somebody that can help you run a good business Yeah And we are not the only people There are a lot of good people out there, in terms of lawyers and advisors and all these different things that can help you build a good business But having a good accountant and making sure the numbers are there and, all those sorts of things is, super important So that was our kind of mantra on day one It still is our mantra today, like we still want to help the space mature, but from, 3, 4, 5 years ago The space has matured like incredibly Yeah Since then So it's still our mantra today to help it be more mature, but I also would like to think that we've also helped it get to the more mature space that it's at today So I think, look, if you're a retail investor looking to get into crypto, you need to know what you're doing And, for me that means going on a regulated exchange, Coinbase, something like that, which is, very heavily regulated the UK and in the us they're listed in the us they've got those requirements as well and you want to buy some crypto, go on Coinbase and buy a bit of Bitcoin Not financial advice and all that jazz, but that is your safest route If you are somebody that likes to take a punt, then yeah, there's huge opportunity for you to make bigger multiples and opportunities That could go to zero Yeah And you've gotta be aware of that So I think making sure that users are educated, so that's retail investors as, as well as businesses we have a lot of businesses that say, should I add crypto to my balance sheet? and our, view is we need to have a conversation with you about it It's not a yes you should, or no, you shouldn't, if you haven't got any money to pay wages at the end of the month, probably shouldn't be putting money in Bitcoin Yeah Somebody said to me over the weekend, I wanna buy a house, but I'm probably not gonna buy one for six to eight weeks, or I'm probably not gonna start, the process for six to eight weeks Should I stick it in Bitcoin for six to eight weeks and see what happens? make some money while I'm, and I'm like, if you need it in six to eight weeks, I wouldn't do that Yeah and then their question is, do you not think it's gonna go up? I do Yeah But if I needed say, 200 grand in, in six to eight weeks, I, probably wouldn't be putting it in crypto because you never know what might happen So I think some of this is around being sensible Yep The opportunities to financial markets from crypto has become much more open, if you like Yeah The opportunity to leverage has become much more open I know people that do 50 x leverage on, on trades, right? In crypto Yeah In crypto Yeah Yeah, But if you were in traditional finance getting 50 x leverage on anything Yeah Would like you're talking to the top level institutional players, right? Yeah You're not talking Joe who goes and online and logs into an account on say, buy bit or something and sets up an account and can trade leverage Like it's a very, so that opens up to more risk Yeah So it is around education, supporting the, the business community most of these businesses, like I say, they aren't out to, pump and dump They aren't out to, to scam people They're here to build good businesses Yep If we can help them to educate other people to be better To understand more, then I think those businesses will grow even further, if that makes sense And just on the NFT piece as well, NFTs are, transcended by digital art that was worth loads and now isn't worth very much Yeah that's how the space is now painted For me, NFTs has nothing to do with digital art, Yes There's a huge opportunity for artists to, tokenize their art and put it, their IP on the blockchain forever and all that sort of stuff But actually it's a utility So if you have an NFT for example, you might say that the only way that you can access this branch of my services is, through an NFT Yeah So now you know who owns the, access your services That person then doesn't need your services anymore They can transfer that to somebody else Yeah There's no, issue around that It's very legitimate You can see who they've transferred it to or take ticketing I, for my sins wasn't at the time, but it is now I had a man United season ticket, and there was a lot of games I couldn't go to I lived in Chano It was three and a half hours to get there Like it was a lot of games I couldn't go to The only way for me to sell them was via these third party sites that charged a hell of a lot of money If you gave it to somebody else, it was a physical card You had to trust that person would give you back Yeah so if that was on the blockchain, if my season ticket was on the blockchain, I didn't know you and you were like, I want to go, I could transfer you that one game ticket on the blockchain Yeah Yeah And then if something happens while you're there, if you are, I don't know, you abuse somebody or attack somebody or whatever, we know exactly who it was because I've transferred it on the blockchain Yeah And there's no hiding from that Yeah so I think there's huge use cases for things like NFTs The issue is they get, once again, get transcended by the media, which is they were worth loads They're pictures that are Wow Worth nothing Why would you bother going anywhere near it? Yeah When actually the opportunity is actually quite big If you can find the, the right business use case Yeah No, for me, the, most basic, use cases, you've done, you an artist and you've done a picture, for example, and Digital picture, you wanna put it on your phone But then there's thousands of people out there who want that picture On their phone How do you monetize from that? And I think, NFTs is the best way to monetize from that and rightly because you spent time, that's your skill, right? So you need to be compensated for your skill We, also had to just jump in as well We also had another business unfortunately they didn't raise enough capital to continue, but it was a really good idea, I thought, where they were tokenizing watches So let's say you've got a hundred thousand dollars watch, right? And it's not something you wear, it's something you store for an investment purposes or things like whiskey, Yeah People invest in whiskey that they sit on for 20, 30 years, they quite a lot of the time these might sit in vaults, they'll sit in somewhere which is locked, secured Nobody can get access to it in order If I wanna sell that, and you offer me 150 k for that watch In order for me to sell it, we've then gotta go through this whole process of accessing the vault, getting it out, you taking it, to wherever you want it to go There's a risk in transit, all these different problems that come with it, right? Cost all the things If that watch was tokenized, so that a hundred k watch, I had a, digital representation of it, if you like, and then you wanted to buy that from me Yeah, okay You might wanna inspect the watch and all those things Totally understand that But actually, rather than physically moving it, I just transfer the ownership through blockchain Yep Quicker, easier, more secure Like how much of a better kind of business model? So from a luxury asset perspective, can we tokenize luxury assets? Yeah To make the use, the opportunity to transfer it to other people Much simpler, much cheaper, much safer all those different business pieces So another kind of use case, if you like, for tokenization, which is all an NFT really, when it's used properly Should be, yeah So yeah Loads of opportunities Yeah No, a hundred percent completely agree Do you guys get involved in like white papers as well for companies, or No, we don't really do anything In terms of the development of the white paper, typically that's done by a marketing Yeah b like kind of the business journey or whatever But also then the to economic side, which is more an economic, if we release this amount of tokens and we give this many to these people, what does that do to the supply? all these different bits and pieces yeah, we don't really get involved in that I, read quite a few, but it's not something that we do as a business And how do you see the regulatory landscape catching up with crypto? Obviously, in Dubai you've now got, as a DMC crypto center, I'm not sure if there's any bank accounts that allow you to set up as a business Yeah, I know individually you can, have an exchange and transfer the money, but There's been some change, I think, I feel as if it's been slow change since you've been in Dubai, how, has that transition been for you and what kind of advice can you give to the businesses and individuals who are buying and selling? yeah, absolutely so again, that's another reason for choosing Dubai as, where I wanted to move to because they are innovative They want new technology to grow And look, the US are now talking about it Let's see what Trump does he's talking like I was hearing from kind of Dubai and that we wanted to be a herb and we want it the UK said that three years ago and did nothing Richie Sak said that when he was chancellor, okay, maybe not as much opportunity, then he became pm Still didn't do anything, don't get me wrong, probably have bigger problems, but It is all very well talking about it, delivering on it And that's what this place does is they deliver So there hasn't been that much progress in the, UK with No, There's been a little bit over the last few months But in reality, in the nice box way, we went back to that five star rundown Five star hotel if you're a rundown five star hotel that's struggling to make ends meet, the first thing you don't then do is go, let's accept crypto payments as Yeah as a different way of doing you, you, go, I've gotta fix all these other things But, so look, I don't blame them for that, but it will mean that they fall behind But that's because they've fallen behind on other stuff that they now need to focus on the UA e's got an opportunity and, this part of the world, the G C's got an opportunity to go We don't have any of those historic problems Yeah So why don't we now go, do you know what, we can be the leader, the industry leader in this space because we don't have other crap to, to deal with so that's what they've done They built Dubai, built the first ever crypto specific reor in Vara, the virtual asset regulator authority Yeah As with all regulators, it, starts very slow It's very difficult to get licensed It's quite expensive because, they've got not many people working there and they need to deliver a lot of stuff But there are a lot of companies now, I think maybe 30, that have been licensed specifically by Vara If you're licensed by Vara, there are banks that will accept you Okay Because you've been licensed by Vara I know two, I won't name them, but I know two specifically that If you have a viral li obviously there's other conditions as well It's not just a viral license, but if you have a viral license, they will look at your application and they will then look at banking you so yeah So I think, the opportunity here is great DMCC free zone, like you say Yeah They announced a few weeks ago that there's gonna be a crypto tower Yeah solely for crypto business You wanna an office in there? Yeah, I hope so Yeah Yeah, That's the plan I, went to, Bitcoin mena, which was a Bitcoin event in Abu Dhabi just before Christmas Yeah And, they, there was, I can't remember what the name of the city it was like Fibo City or something like that Yeah And they're basically, they've got approval from the, Abu Dhabi government to build what they're calling like a crypto city So there's gonna be three towers, I think One's a business world and one's a residential one, one's a hotel with residential maybe as well And the whole, but the whole, it's kind be like a closed economy in a way They're gonna have their own token Where you buy things at the coffee shops and obviously we're quite a few years away from that, but What an opportunity, yeah Somewhere like El Salvador So El Salvador, South Africa Oh, they, they, their whole currency was, yeah they, so they, I mean they obviously, they're in a wor in a part of the world where their currency is worth not a great deal anyway Yeah So they rely heavily on the US dollar The issue with relying heavily on the US dollar is you then rely heavily on the us Yeah You then have to do what you're told'cause otherwise there's issues, right? If you then say, actually we'll accept Bitcoin Bitcoin can now be a legal tender here So El Salvador said Bitcoin is now a legal tender Now the answer to nobody, obviously US dollar is still big So it's not, completely like that But in principle, they now don't answer to anybody because the currency isn't reliant on this other, country tether, which is one of the biggest stable coins recently said that they were gonna move their operations to El Salvador Oh, wow'cause it's a crypto city It's a crypto country It's a, so my point is there are other, I'm not saying that's the right solution, and I'm not saying that, our Salvador is the greatest space in the world and all those sort of things All I'm saying is By embracing things like this, if you're a country that is outside of the norm You're able to generate opportunities that you may not be able to generate if you just sat on the same old stuff Yeah, yeah So I just think there's a huge opportunity, and I think this place is with everything is, going a hundred percent at it and will succeed And I'm excited for that future and what it becomes Yeah No, I'm excited as well so you have your own podcast Yeah you talk about crypto and your podcast as well Yeah So you wanna just give us a bit introduction about your podcast? it's called Nephology so our main business is called nes And so it was like the, a play on that and yeah, we, we do try and vary it, a lot of my guests are crypto, as you can imagine, but we do try and vary it We had a fantastic episode with yourself, on, on UAE and the tax kind of regime here yeah, we try and do business, general entrepreneurial journeys, but there is a big heavy crypto, crypto angle as well And, tell us about your business you obviously serve crypto businesses, but everyone else as well, so you have an office in the uk So anyone coming from the uk, they can, obviously, you can look after the books in the UK as well as uua e So do you want to just give us a, plug? Yeah, for sure Yeah if we separate the two, so the non crypto side, we do a lot of work with UK businesses and their international operations Normally that's a smaller UK business that then wants to expand internationally Yep Rather than a huge international, already expanded business And we help 'em them with all the kind of planning and stuff around that We do a lot of personal tax planning as well, with people making good money and, they maybe one use So you have crypto browsers clients? Yeah, we do Yeah Yeah, We absolutely do and and then we've got the crypto side where we work with businesses globally a lot of crypto businesses are set up all over the world Yeah yeah So we work with, crypto businesses globally, so yeah Either side of the fence If you are a non crypto business and you want a modern forward thinking, international focused accounting firm, great If you're a crypto business, there aren't many other options to be honest So come and have a conversation you are a good option Yeah and how's the best way for our guests to get in contact with you? Yeah, LinkedIn is a good spot for me yes, that's probably on our website we've got nephosgroup.co, and mynaaccountants.co but yeah, Joe David, on LinkedIn Cool Thank you very much for coming today Thank having, really enjoyed it Yeah, likewise yeah Thank you Thank you Thank you for joining us on the Entrepreneurs Podcast I hope you enjoyed the show Please subscribe and give us a five star rating and a review Your feedback is appreciated For show notes and more, check out the link in the description and connect to me directly on LinkedIn and search for Rayhan Aleem See you in the next episode