Q&A: How Krishan Sharma built a 15-staff practice in 4 years

Q: You worked as an accountant in various companies before establishing your own accounting firm in 2014. What aspects of opening and growing your own practice were challenging?

A: I knew my accounting, but running a business is a completely different game. When you’re working in an accounting firm, you don’t need to worry about chasing invoices, handling administrative work or bringing in new clients. You have a team of people to handle most of those tasks.

But when it’s your business, everything comes to you. It involves a lot of problem solving. If a client or staff member has an issue, you need to be there to resolve it.

Those first few years pushed me to grow but it was more of a side business. It was only in July 2019 that I began working at KNS full-time. In the past four years we’ve gone from just me to 15 people including my business partner.

Q: That business growth over just four years is incredible. How have you achieved it?

COVID-19 actually gave our business a boost. A lot of accountants closed down or pivoted to a different area. Because we had always been a cloud-based and paperless business, the transition to working from home wasn’t too disruptive. Soon after we expanded offshore and now have teams in Fiji and the Philippines.

We have also always charged our clients using value-based billing. We give them set fees so they know from the outset what our service will cost. Unless something major changes, we will stick to that fee. A lot of companies are moving towards value-based billing because clients often prefer knowing the amount upfront.

It’s also great for employees as they don’t feel pressured to stay back to clock a certain number of hours. We measure the productivity of our staff through the number of tasks they complete, rather than their time. We’ve found they feel less pressured this way and it’s been great for building morale.

Q: Throughout your accounting career, what skills and attributes have helped you?

A: Hard work and dedication are the most important traits.

Learning from others in the industry has also been critical to my development. You learn a lot from your peers, managers and other leaders.

One of my first employers told me to never burn your bridges and that’s stuck with me. I’ve always maintained very good relationships with my former employers. I’ll often get client leads from them, particularly from companies that are very paper-based and may find it harder to take on clients who live in a different location. We’re a cloud-based and paperless firm so it doesn’t matter where a client is based. Everything can be done via video conferencing, messaging apps and email.

Relationship building with clients is critical when you’re running a business, and this is something I always try to instill in my team. This isn’t just about having a regular quarterly meeting with them, but taking the time to get to know your clients and understand their unique needs and motivations.

Q: And what about technical skills and knowledge – what’s your approach to staying up to date?

A: Embrace new technology. That means not just learning about it, but actually diving in and trying it yourself. Before my clients started coming to us with questions about the tax implications of cryptocurrency, I had already traded cryptocurrency and understood how it worked.

I figured that even if I were to lose a small amount of money by trading, I would at least have a better understanding of cryptocurrency that I could then bring to my interactions with clients.

There are a lot of training programs on offer that can help people to upskill. In accounting there are so many online webinars and free resources online to learn about cryptocurrency tax or any other topic.

There’s a wealth of information at your fingertips, and accountants always need to be learning and expanding their skill set.