Latest / Contributing to Your Life / Building a Firm With Purpose – The Story of KHI Partners | Ep. 01

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Building a Firm With Purpose – The Story of KHI Partners | Ep. 01 · Contributing to Your Life

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: All the eagle says, I'm going to work with my strength.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: What is my strength as an eagle?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to go higher and higher and higher on the altitude.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: I want us to be the eagle, not being the crow, or not to worry about the crow.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_03: This man walked away from his senior position in one of Australia's top accounting firms to start his own business from the ground up.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: He had no plan, already had a family and$100,000 to start with.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: How about I start with an ethical plan, a value plan?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that I still recall that$100,000 was the overall savings that we all had as a family.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you know how in life very often you take things in the same circumstances, but you can look into two different angles.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: But he grew it to a business with over 47 partners and 200 employees.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_04: In this episode, we sit down with Manzarul Khan, the chair of KHI Partners, to unpack how that decision turned into 18 years of growth.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're living in Australia.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're living in the richest generation ever, ever in the history.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Surely we can do a bit more rather than just sort of living our day-to-day sort of a life.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: We go beyond the story and break down the philosophy that drove it, focusing on relationships, contribution, and long-term thinking.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let's have that kindness, and that kindness is not a weakness, right?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_04: And how those ideas apply to anyone's business today.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: How do we become an institute and we still have the family warmth and values?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now that's hard.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Before we get into the episode, please be aware that the discussions in this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial or legal advice.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: It does not take into consideration your personal circumstances.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Consult a qualified professional first before making any investment decisions.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Well Monsaru, we always like a little bit of a origin story, right?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: So I know I've heard a few versions of this story, but I'd like to just ask you, do you want to tell us how did KHI start?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh Frank, thank you, thank you.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh Aaron, thank you.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for uh this sort of our uh I suppose first ever podcast, right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: And uh how did the origin start?
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, uh it's 18 years, Frank, right?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: And 18 years that uh we've been uh we've been waiting for today.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Background from me personally is uh I'm an accountant and I worked in a couple of small practices.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Then I was at BDO for about six and a half years and uh started this practice around 18 years ago.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: The origin of the story is that day one, it was uh there was nothing too glory in day one.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: In day one, when I started, it was uh literally uh myself and uh Purebi, my wife, uh she was there in day one supporting with a whole lot of things.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: But when I started my practice, I said to myself, Aaron, is that uh there are things that I wish that I could always do in in not so much into any practice but all practices.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I could always do many things, right?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because very often we as an accountant, Aaron, is that we sort of say that, well, how do we look after the finances?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: How do we look after in terms of a client business, in terms of the profitability, the cash flow, and and sort of your your sort of the solvency ratio and the break-even and all the rest of it, right?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: But when I started, Frank, is that I said to myself, is that rather than starting with many of those business plans, how about I start with an ethical plan, a value plan?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: And where the basis of that value plan was, is that I still recall that at that time is that I had about uh hundred thousand.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: 100,000 was the overall savings that we all had as a family.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And probably my wife, she was doing uh masters at that stage, and uh we had our first child and and just had our second child.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: So literally two sort of very uh infants that were kids as such, but we had about 100,000, yeah.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: And you know how in life very often you take things in the same circumstances, but you can look into two different angles.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: So all I had was about a hundred thousand dollar savings in day one.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I said to myself that, well, there's two ways I can look into.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: One way I can look into is to say I've got only hundred thousand, and that is all I have, and every day that it sort of goes, hundred becomes ninety-nine and becomes ninety-eight and a half.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I can look into that way, that it is a diminishing your balance.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, another way of looking at it is to say 100,000 was enough for us to maintain our family for one year.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: So rather than taking that as a stress on a daily basis that all I have is 100,000, I gotta make it, I gotta do it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: I've said to myself, why don't I almost take away that bit of that, I suppose take away that bit of that pressure and the load, and to say, let's transform this the other way around, and let's say that 100,000 will keep us going for one year.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: And let's say that the universe has given us, our family, an opportunity that one year we can do things in the way we wish to do things.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: So rather than being a negative, it's a positive.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's a positive in the sense that all on a sudden I've got a one year that which is sort of almost a working holiday.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I sort of said that, well, if it is a working holiday for one year, rather than going into your traditional accounting way with the business plan, why don't I try to do everything which I wish to do?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: So what did I wish to do?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: I wish to do in a way that I wish I could help people quite a bit.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I could genuinely make a connection with people.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: I wish my strangers become my friends and my friends become my good friends, and perhaps some of the good friends will become my best friends in some day.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I wish that I could look back to my life as at that date, in say 30 years' time, in say 40 years' time, and say, you know what, I had fun.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it was an adventure and it was that fun.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I said, okay, so all those sounds pretty good.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: So when we start with all of those, is that rather than having a business plan, let's do this value plan.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: So almost that combining with all of those wishes, all of those ethics, all of those, I suppose the integrity and all of those wish lists, so to speak, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: And believe it or not, is that our entire value plan came in into one line, which is what our podcast today is contribution to your life.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I said to myself that I will work with this one concept of contribution to your life.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then I said, what does that mean, Frank?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: What does contribution to your life mean?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Does it sound like a bit more sort of a motherhood statement?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Well, if I give the meaning to it, then it is not a motherhood statement, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: So what is the meaning of contribution to your life?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I try to go a little bit deeper to it, understand a bit more what is a contribution to your life, right?
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: And sort of after 18 years that we've been in practice, we're still learning and relearning and inventing and reinventing of contribution to your life.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: Contribution to your life, Frank, to us, it's about every single person that we meet.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: How do we help?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Every single person that we meet, we don't see that as a transaction.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: We see that as a relationship.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: We see as every single person is a stranger who is waiting to be a friend over a period of time, is to become embedded on people's journey, embedded on mom and dad and their sort of the life story.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and the excitement of that life story, which is the ups and downs and sort of the challenges that we go through, and the triumph and the joy and the happiness and and frustration, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: And all of the above that we sort of go through, be part of that emotion.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: And how do we listen into each one of those, I suppose, the junction of time, and how do we contribute by listening, understanding what you need, as opposed to just listening to to sort of respond, I suppose, right?
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that is the origin of the story that while it sounds in in retrospective, we look back and say, wow, that sounds so glorious, and and and it sounds perhaps romantic to some extent, right?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: But in day one, it was it was an experiment, and it was an experiment with, I suppose, humanity, and it was an experiment with sort of having all the good things in the heart to sort of say Australia is a lucky country, and and that's what I hear.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Let's test it out.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I look back after 18 years and I say, Good Lord, it is a lucky country.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and can you take us through your thought process, right?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: Because if if I'm listening to this, um one of the things I'd be thinking about is you you went from this secure, somewhat secure position at a larger firm.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_04: Was there any particular like um situation that actually drove you to to take this step in the first place?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I mean, uh any of the larger practices that you sort of walked through, um is that any practice, I suppose, is that whether there's some positives and negatives, yeah?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Any of the sort of the bigger practices that the things which I take, if there is one thing that I take from the big practice is the quality.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is that that enormous layer of sort of uncompromising sense of quality, and you maintain it, you learn, nurture it, and you do this, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: That enormous sense of that high performance culture, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: That enormous sense of learning and and sort of having that sort of that enormous inquisitive mind, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: That sort of enormous layer of the competitiveness, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: The level of the clients that you meet, the level of the minds that you sort of see, and the level of the collaboration that you see, all of those things are really, really, really, really, really positive, right?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: But no particular big four or or second-year practice for as such.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: But I suppose one of the things which I missed it in the profession is the personal touch.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I still remember that uh I used to look after uh this very, very, very large Walwend organization, very large, and without giving the name, is that I was the external CFO of this organization, and uh the general manager one day called, and just a standard call, the general manager called, and I picked up the phone naturally.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was sort of saying, Hello Jenny, how's everything?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: How are you doing?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: And Jenny sort of had her uh the teenage daughter at that stage was doing the HSC.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: Jenny, how is the how's your daughter going with the HSC?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: How's your husband?
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Is he all right?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: How's everything going?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: How are you going?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: She listened to me for about a good 30 seconds, and she let me continue with all those questions.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: 30 seconds, right?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: And she sat down and she said, Mansrul, you know what?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I adore you, and I would love to discuss in terms of how's my daughter going.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: I would love to discuss in terms of how's my husband going and all my things and everything else.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what my challenge is, Mansrul?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sorry I'm gonna say it.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: On the back of my mind, I'm thinking you're charging me$750 an hour plus GST.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, I'm sorry.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and I was like, you know, it was it was one of those life moments that I took a step back, and I said, she's right.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because as part of the organization, that I have to charge her.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a timesheet, I've got a productivity, I've got an efficiency, and I've got to meet all of those.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And and it's not a choice.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's been given, and we are the instruction taker, right?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the moment that I took a step back, Frank, and I sort of said to myself, surely life has to be a little bit more that we can just just sort of be in that moment, just that moment, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: And just having that human-to-human touch and set aside all the rest of the finances and set aside everything else.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: They will all look after itself, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: But if we sort of do such a rat race that there is never that moment of opportunity where just a heart-to-heart chat, right, uh, then what are we doing?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a moment that I took it quite a bit of a step back, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: A second moment is that at a point of time is that we went through uh GFC and and that was hard.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the middle of the GFC is that there was a lot of retrenchments, people sort of left, lots of things happened, right?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And and I was a general, uh, I was a group manager at that stage, so it was a difficult role.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: So there were a number of those ingredients that I've sort of said to myself, you know what?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: That I've sort of always sort of said to myself that I would love to give it a go at some point of time.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Let's give it a go.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: The beauty of it is that you sort of almost don't put too much pressure on yourself, right?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: In day one, when I started, is that my overall goal, overall goal, lifelong goal, was to have about 500,000 top line revenue and and maybe just a couple of a staff member, a couple of support members to sort of assist.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that is all I called in day one.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: And now I look back after 18 years and and and we are blessed in many ways, yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, contributing to your life, I think, is uh a key aspect of everything we do, Frank and I.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: We we see that, we understand that's the most important part.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_03: I know there's a a story uh that you have a a client that you've had for 18 years where you actually every year go and visit their house.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I think that just shows you know the the element of contributing to your life.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: Could you share that story a little bit?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think it's quite touching and in line with contributing to your life.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh thank you.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a very, very sort of a large family group that we look after, and then then one day the uh I've got this elderly lady who sort of called this many stories, right?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just share this one story and maybe we'll touch a second story as well.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: So one day is that uh the lady sort of called and said that uh well we need to book in an appointment, and and then my uh EA was saying that month rule is is that this elderly lady wants to book in an appointment and share share that uh the husband has got visual impairment, so the gentleman can see it, and generally they sort of prefer for someone to come over to their home and sort of say to the uh lady that, well, it's it's difficult for month rule to sort of travel around.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now listen to it, and I said, you know what, let me just have a chat to her.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I had a chat and she was sort of explaining that the husband is sort of is sort of uh that can't see it.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know what, I'll come over.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'll come over to your home.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a bit of a drive from our office, so it takes about an hour, hour and a half, hour, fifteen minutes or so, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a drive on sort of the way back.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: The first time I went up there, which sort of, as we do many of our meetings, is that there is this first meeting is an obligation free.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I went up there and I sort of sat down on this at this poor sort of the couple, be most beautiful of the beautiful couple, right?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: Husband and wife, the gentleman sort of can't see it, and the lady is quite elderly as well.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she has got her mom, who's sort of like early 90s.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you sort of almost have three people, they're all sort of in slight dementia and sort of uh in there, right?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: And we sat down and uh sort of very quickly I sort of realized is that they're completely on central link.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: They're completely on central link, so there is no taxable income, so to speak.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: We are accountants, we do people's tax return, right?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: So there's no tax sort of a return as such, means that there is no immediate fee.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's fine.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: I said that aside, I said it's the first meeting, we'll sit down.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: We had a most wonderful, wonderful discussion for an hour and even more than an hour, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it was all about life.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what the beauty of it is that rather than me sort of contributing, is that they were the ones who were contributing to me over and over and over in many different ways.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: How are they contributing?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: They were contributing from their real life.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: They were contributing from all the, I suppose, that first-generation immigrant coming over to Australia and going through all the different layers of challenges, language difficulties, cultural difficulties, right?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: Your sort of a know-how gap and sort of a skill level and sort of going through with all those different challenges.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they were going through 40 years ago, we used to be doing this, you know, three jobs a day, three jobs a day a week, and we used to be doing all of those things.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: I had the most wonderful of the discussion, and then we took away a couple of those central links, sort of a documentation as such, and there's no tax return, right?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Came back in the office.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember that when I was on the car, I said to myself, I want to make a commitment to myself.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the commitment that I want to make to myself, that doesn't matter how busy that I get, this is one client group that I'm going to utilize us as a checkpoint that I want to make sure that every year I physically go and sit down with them at a bare minimum for hour to hour and a half.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: Now the year, and that's hard, why?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's an hour to hour and a half is a drive both ways, and then you sit down for an hour, so you sort of give away about half a day, three-quarter of a day for that one meeting.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: But I said, this is a uh, I suppose a self-checking point is that the year that I find myself, I'm too busy, that's the year that also I would sort of just slow down and I would sort of say, hang on, let's slow it down and let's understand what am I missing.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what was interesting that in the first meeting is that I sort of came out at home and I had some salami in my hand.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I came back home and Purabi was there.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Purebi was like, what are you carrying?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, salami.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Purebi was like, why are you carrying salami?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, There's a salamis of love.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Purebi was like, salamis of love.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yes, I've got this elderly couple, they've given me salamis, and I think they're beautiful.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm carrying salamis.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, no, that's that's quite a commitment because like for for those uh listening, like anytime I want to feel anxious, I just look at Munzer Rules calendar, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_04: So for for you to make that commitment every year, it's it's obviously something that's important.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_04: And what I'm hearing is that you probably use that as a bit of an anchor to keep yourself grounded while uh we're in this rat race.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: But i it's a checkpoint, and it's a checkpoint that you need to do.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'll I'll just share a quick sort of a second story for my ear.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: I've got this elderly couple who sort of came over in our office uh saying that uh we've received your detail from uh from our neighbor, and the neighbor has given the details.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: So uh husband and wife, very elderly, and the lady was probably late 60s, and the husband was probably early two and mid-70s, right?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, what do we need to do?
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: And she was like, Oh, our pension payment has stopped.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Can you help us out?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Oh, look, I don't I don't know whether I work with the pension payments as such, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I helped up my father about 10 years ago and my mum.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: That was probably the last time I sort of worked with my parents with the uh the pension payment side of it.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, No, let me still look into it, yeah?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I sat down and started looking through, and and then I said, okay, we need to make a phone call to the central link to understand where your pension payments are, right?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: We made a phone call saying, and this is the authorization.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: Can you please tell us why this pension payment is stopped?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: The beautiful lady on the phone was saying that, well, uh, Mr.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Kahn, the pension payment is being stopped because your clients haven't done the tax return for a number of years.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: We've got no information in terms of that income test, so to speak, yeah?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: In terms of the income test side of it, also the asset test, because the tax return hasn't been lodged.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we don't know pension payment has stopped.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, okay.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: So if I do the tax returns, then it would be fine.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: She was like, yes, it'd be fine.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I sort of look back to the lady and I said, You've got a few years of tax return you need to do.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: So I put them in into the system, went back into the office, and I spoke to my manager saying that can you please sit down with this wonderful lady and the gentleman as well and look after all their tax returns on the spot.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: We never ever do tax return on the spot because there's a whole bunch of requirements, safety, and cross-check that we do.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: In this case, I said, okay, let's do this uh on the spot.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: So we sat down, and she, my manager, sort of sat down for about good four or five hours, did last seven, eight years of tax return for him and her both, lodged it everything, and I said, once you finish it, give another phone call to Central Inc., give it a proof that everything is being lodged so that the pension can start.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: She did all of those, right?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Everything is being done, pension will start literally within the next couple of days.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: All good.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: I went up there, I was like, so everything is done.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: You guys should be okay.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: Any concern, give me a call.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the lady says, That Mantraul, um, what's the fee?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: And what's the fee?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Well, uh, there is no fee.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And she says, Well, why is there no fee?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, our first meeting is always obligation free.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: And this is the first time that I'm meeting you.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, But I probably would not be coming back to you anymore because you've done my last seven, eight years of tax return.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: I might come back in seven years' time, but uh I would not be coming back to you, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because the returns are being done.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, No, um, ethics is ethics and integrity is integrity.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: There is no variation to integrity.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: Our protocol is first meeting as an obligation free.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm glad that it helped you, and that's fine.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we spent a few hours.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: All good, no issue.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: She said, We give you the blessing.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, No, thank you, thank you.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: She left and didn't sort of even think it second time because you do what you're supposed to do, right?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Next morning I've got this phone call from this big gentleman saying, Oh, my name is this, and uh my mom asked you to me to call.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, mum asked you to call, uh, who's your mum?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: And uh she was like, Well, my mum asked you to call, uh, I'm a builder.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, Okay, and who's the mum?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: Mum was that lady.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the gentleman was like, My mom was speaking about you last night, all of those, and my mom says that I need to come and see you.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so what do you do?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a builder, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, all right, we'll sit down.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we sat down, and you know, before I know, this is a massive climb.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: It is one of the bigger climb in our practice.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: That was probably about eight, ten years ago.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And then over a period of time, one day I had this other phone call, yeah, and uh, okay, so what do you do?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm a sergeant.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, excellent.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, and and what surgery?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I've got a couple of surgeries, so I need to sit down.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: Then I realized that this lady is the daughter of the mom.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: So the mom that we helped out at that stage, now we look back and I say I've got a sergeant who's got two medical practice, is a massive client, and I've got the son who is a builder, is a massive client, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: And years and years and years.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: They both came in because mom asked them to come in, right?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I sort of look back and I say that, wow, that's how life is, right?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: You don't sort of count for your result, you don't sort of even do the journey for the result.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: You sort of do what you were supposed to do and and leave it to the universe, what the universe.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: To balance it out, and each always does.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think what you said there is really important, and I know you speak that through the organization is unconditionally giving with no strings attached, and gen being as genuine as you possibly can, and not that fake genuine because that gets found out.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's really important.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_03: I know that's a message that goes across.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I guess moving to the practice, you initially started as an accounting firm.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you've now expanded.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: What was the initial thoughts between starting as an accounting and now becoming a multidisciplinary firm?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's amazing because if you ask this question to many uh and and I say it respectfully and with a quite a sense of gratitude and humbleness, is that if you ask with many, many, many sort of a successful group, is that they're sort of so successful learning you sort of say that tell us what was the master plan in day one.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: Is that nine out of ten, if not ten out of ten, they would sort of say there was no master plan.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: There was actually no big master plan in day one.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And we also didn't have any big master plan in day one.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what the trick behind it?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: The trick behind it is is the mind to live the mind as inquisitive and to leave the mind as floating, and the leave the mind to be adventurous, where you sort of say, I'll take the journey.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: The the reward on that journey is is not so much the result, the reward on that journey is the experience of having that journey, right?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: So in day one, when we started, there was no big plan at all.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: There was no master plan, right?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: The plan was around that 500 or thousand, and and that was the ultimate plan.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: And why?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Because we as an accountant, we sort of say rule of one-third, one-third, one-third.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: One third is your overhead cost, and one third is your salaries and wages, and one third would be your proprietors' remuneration.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: So from that basis is that I was sort of saying around that 500,000 is that what I would love to.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then before I knew, is that our practices started to grow quite a bit and it was building, it was growing, it was developing, right?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: We were not doing any advertisement.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: Even now, after 18 years, there's no advertisement.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: We this podcast that we're doing it for today is a podcast we've been planning for 10 years, 15 years, 18 years.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: 18 years to took us to start our first podcast ever, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we never did any of those marketing.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: I remember that we had this really tacky looking website, keshop.com.au, right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: We never, ever, I'm so proud of this website because we never, ever received a single lead out of that website.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, you have a website and not get a single lead over a period of six, seven years, that's hard.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really, really hard.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Never ever received any lead, right?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: But we were always sort of getting a lot of clients from clients because the objective was when we say contributing to your life, right?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: You speak about that genuinity that you you can't fake it.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: Genuinity is also not a being born given.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: Genuinity is a process that you become more and more and more and more genuine on an active basis as time goes on.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you work on yourself saying that how do I become more genuine over a period of time, right?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: So we found that our clients were bringing in clients, they were bringing in more clients, they were bringing in more clients.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: We had so many clients, and we still have so many clients, right?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: That we struggle to provide the services.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this is where my very good mate Trevor Howe, and Trevor is uh our founding partner as well.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: So Trevor is the first partner who joined uh probably about 16 years ago now, about 15, 16 years ago, Trevor joined.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor and I, we've got last 25 years that we know each other, if not more.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: We used to be working at BDO, and prior to that we used to know each other a bit as well.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor gave us the first five clients in our practice.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot of affection with Trevor in many, many different ways, and gratitude and gratefulness, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: So Trevor joined us as the first accounting partner.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: To give us a helping hand and to take away some of the loads because it was like, doesn't matter how hard I was doing, how long I was doing, there's always more to do and more to do and more to do.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: So Trevor joined us in there, and before we knew, it helped, and before we knew, we're both working very long hours.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Then we started to go a little bit deeper into it.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: We started to have more practices coming in.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then as time went on, uh Aaron, is that it expanded, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Accounting has as become, we uh Max Pegnin is one of our wealth advisors.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: We used to call financial planning years ago, right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: So wealth advisor, so Max joined us after Trevor in our financial planning side of it.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: We needed someone to do live TPDs, all the rest of the uh income protection at the as the insurance side of it, ETF investments.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: So Max joined.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: There was a time that we were looking through saying, good Lord, we've got so much internal accounting.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Would it not be lovely to have an internal accounting partner?
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: Gary joined us, and then before you know it started to sort of build and build and build.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if we look into our plan now, we've got a very defined five years plan, 10 years plan.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_02: But this plan was derived only about four years ago.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: And we've been in practice 18 years, so that means the first 14 years we were sort of running around.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sure that's taught at every business school out there.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_04: So um you started to expand on uh other services.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_04: So how did they come about?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: And like was there a particular need that you were trying to meet?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you know, uh Max sort of joined first, right?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: And Max sort of joined because uh the need sort of came in.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's remembering that how we say that contributing to your life is a different element to it.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's about listening, listening to understand the client, listening to the client's need, not try to give a solution, but listening to what you need is as a client and try to find a solution.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: So we're finding that many of our clients they're sort of constantly saying that, well, we would love to have uh someone that who does our life insurance, income protection.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so many of our clients used to and they still go into various layers of investments, property investment shares, managements, and so particularly property investment, very heavy.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: And property investment means that they go into a layer of the debt, right?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: And if you go into a layer of the debt, your life insurance becomes quite as a safety, uh, I suppose, precaution as such, right?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then your income prediction becomes almost a quite strongly uh necessited.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and whether the TPD comes in.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: So we were getting more and more and more questioning there.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: This is what Trevor sort of says that Montreal knows this wonderful man, uh Max Bagnin, I do want to sit down and see whether we can work with him.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we sat down with Max, and Max says, Well, that's what I do for years and years and years.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: So any new partner joined us, Frank, years and years and years, and still now is that when we look into any colleague join us, the first question that we always ask in our mind is that are we aligned in terms of our ethics, integrity, values, and culture?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, very, very, very important to us.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if you and I we don't align on the ethics and integrity and the values and the culture and more, that's fine.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that you are wrong or I'm wrong.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: It just means that perhaps we are not as aligned.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: And we give the uh blessing, we sort of say, uh, Frank, we give you all the different blessings, we just have a little bit of a different path as such, right?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: But Max as an example, we connect it.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: We connected on that real human ground.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, even now is that you and Aaron and I, we have our group, uh, the internal communication, the WhatsApp, and very often we get bombarded from Max.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, stop doing it, right?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: Bombarded from Max with all those homeless uh people, right?
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and Max helps out with the homeless individual in Australia.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I know how passionate he is.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: I know how much work that he does on his own.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: I know the level of the risk that he takes on his own of going out on Friday night, on Saturday night at three o'clock in the morning and going into some other street that you should not be walking on your own.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Max not necessarily is a big guy, right?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: And walking on your own.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: And someone who does that with sort of some support group, that man has a lot of respect for me.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: That man to us is the right man in many, many different ways.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's how Max came in, right?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Gary was our uh first internal record keeping.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Gary is lovely, right?
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Our first experience with Gary, we had a meeting being organized.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Gary's beautiful, right?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: All of our partners they've got their own idiosyncrasies, same as me.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Gary was sort of our first partner.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: The first time our meeting was with Gary, Trevor had the first meeting.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor went up there, and Trevor found this uh gentlemen who's sort of coming around with a kebab in his hand, and he's trying to get all the sort of documentation and he's running around, right?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And Trevor's like, oh good lord, this is our future partner, right?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like taking a kebab in his hand, and Trevor looked at it.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Trev, he's busy, right?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why he has kebab and he likes his kebab, and that's okay, right?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay to like his kebab, right?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: So Gary came in as our internal record keeping, and Gary leads that team of internal record keeping.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's where Gary came in, and then we roll forward, right?
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the mortgage side of it, as an example, that you were the first partner in there, right?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: Years and years and years.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't go into mortgage because our best mate, one of our really best mates, is a gentleman named Ross Lequens.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: And Ross was a uh mortgage broker in Aussie Homeland.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I made a commitment to Ross at Gelman's handshake, saying that you are in mortgage broking, and you and I we're best mates, and I don't need to go into mortgage broking because I used to provide him quite a bit of leads.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: And and I said to Ross that that's your home, I don't need to take away your home.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_02: I can have lots of investment properties in the open world, i.e., I can have different areas that I would do, but mortgage is something I would not start because that's your main business, and and we will continue giving you support, and you give us a lot of leads as well, which he does, right?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: But there was a point of time that Ross sold his business.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Ross, to his full credit, is that Ross said, Mansru, let's sit down and have a chat.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: We sat down, Ross says, I'm probably gonna sell my business, Mike.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I know you've never opened the mortgage breaking side of it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now is the time for you to open the mortgage breaking.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Go do it, stop it, tell me selling, go and do win the world, open the mortgage broken, do what you need to do, and either way I'm gonna sell this, right?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I sort of look back to it, and and I think you were with us about five years, six years, right?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_04: I think this is sixty years, yeah.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Six years, right?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: So six years that we opened the mortgage working, and now we look back uh and we sort of say, good Lord, we are doing well.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: Our finance solution team, which is the mortgage working team, is an absolute strong and the strongest of the element of KHR partners.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: We always knew this.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: We always knew that that funding is so fundamental to everything which we do, right?
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Because if your clients sit down and say that, well, we want to buy these investments, we want to go into this retirement goals, uh, but you can have all the theory in the world and you can have all the best of the properties and all the rest of it, right?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: But if the funding isn't there, then you don't have it, right?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: So we always knew that, the absolute necessity to it.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: But again, that sort of that friendship and that integrity and that word was important to us, and we stayed with it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I look back now and I sort of say, yeah, and I'm I'm sort of proud with it.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you know how the universe that we sort of say it always makes it up and it sort of always over gives it back to you and over-contributes and and and the destiny how it is.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Roll for all that that many years.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: Ross is one of our uh very strong partner, and he sold that business and then he did a couple of things, and now he joined us as our bias advocacy.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: And he's the head of the bias advocacy.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: So Ross and I, where we were in that working relationship and he was a mortgage worker, and now he's our partner in the bias advocacy, right?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: To us is again, that's an example and a gift of doing the right thing in the right way.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Being a multidisciplinary firm, going from an accounting firm, what has been the biggest changes or value you've seen to your client uh compared to just being a pure accounting firm?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: Such a good question, uh Aaron.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: And see, the reason I say Aaron it's such a good question, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because the uh challenge with any one discipline by itself is that in the modern world it's so much harder because your client's advice or your client's resources, client support is not just a one vertical line.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_02: They're all interconnected layer of services, right?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that old analogy of the teamwork, as we say, right?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to have that expertise of that sort of a teamwork.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: And and the definition of that expertise of that teamwork is that you need to have the right level of the skills within that team, you need to have the right level of the ethics within that team, you need to have the right level of vision within that team as well, and I suppose the right level of risk uh appetite within that team as well, uh, and and the aptitude of the right level, right?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: So all of those being needed to.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_02: So if we were only an accounting practice, is that we could go as deep dive as we could with the accounting services and so forth, but we would have to rely on an external finance solution partner to get the mortgage.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to rely on an external lawyer to get the legal side of it.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to rely on an external Gary as an example of doing that internal accounting, right?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: We need insurances, we need to get someone to do the insurance.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people go into retirement, they need their retirement planning.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, all of those that we needed to get a whole bunch of different groups of people.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: We look forward now, after 18 years, that we blessed.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Our practice has got seven service lines.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: So we are accountant, we are financial planner, which is the wealth, we mortgage broker, which is the uh finance solution.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we are internal accounting, which is our bookkeeping.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we do law quite significantly.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: We also do insurances, and and this is not only just the life and TPD, we do the general insurance, right?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And we also do the property services, and property services includes your residential, your commercial bias agency, as well as uh we have uh Ben Lynch through our construction arm.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you get this whole facade of various different layer of services.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: So very often what we do, Aaron, is that with a really good client, is that uh we've done that uh uh last week for two clients, and the week before, two weeks ago, we've done one client as well.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: Very large client.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: Let's give one example, this big doctor's client group, yeah?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: And and uh doctor's client group that we sat down, and the gentleman was sort of saying, We need this, this, and we were like, okay, rather than me coming in as an accountant, someone else coming in, why don't we have all of us coming in?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got the gentleman and the lady, uh, they were sort of sitting in there, so you've got this whole doctor client who's sort of sitting in there, right?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: This doctor family who's sitting in there.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: So the as an accountant, it was uh I was there, and at the same time, is that Nafiz was there as the accountant client, so that's number one.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: In the same meeting, we had uh your sister, Janine, was there, who is the finance solution, yeah?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: So finance solution, Janine was there, and then uh in the same conversation we had uh Stephen James who was sitting, who is our wealth, yeah.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: And in the same conversation is that we had Ross who was sitting, who is our bias agent.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: So Ross sitting as a bias agent, and uh we have also spoken some additional services.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: We said that, okay, we've got Tyrone in here for the state planning.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: He was not on the meeting, but we said Tyrone is from our state planning side of it, yeah.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: We sort of said, okay, so we've got in here the insurance.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: Rochelle sort of does our insurance side of it.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: She was not on the meeting, but we discussed this, yeah.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we also sort of say that, okay, so we've got this legal arm, which is Sandy, and and Tyrone, who's sort of our legal arm, who was sitting in there, right?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you can see that this one client who's sitting in there, the client is being surrounded by accountant, yeah.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: The client is being surrounded by uh mortgage broker, the client is being surrounded by financial planner, the client is being surrounded by property services.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got one, two, three, four line, yeah?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then you've got your legal partner who is sort of on there, you've got your insurance who's got in there, you've got your estate planning in there as well, and in here is that you also have your bookkeeping side of it, yeah.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: So the beauty of it is that when we sat down with that one client in that one meeting, we sort of say that uh dear uh Mr.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: and Mrs.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: Klein, we said, tell us what are your goals and objectives and what do you wish to do?
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: I, as an accountant, as an example, I can't give the financial planning advice, right?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: But Stephen James can.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: He's the financial planner, he's the wealth, right?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we've got six financial planning partners within our team, right?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: Stephen was there on that meeting because this was the Stevens client.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Stephen can provide this, Stephen can give that sort of the goals and objectives.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: So Stephen worked through with the clients with the goals and objectives.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Once we know the goals and objectives, then my role as an accountant is to say, okay, how do we achieve it?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_02: What are the funding needs?
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: This is where your sister Janine, who is there, Janine says, well, you know what, guys, we can do it this way, this way, this way, we can organize the funding.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: And this is where Nafis and I, as being the accountant, we said, well, if you want to do this bit of the funding, these are the structure we need, and this is the right way.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: The client says, I want to buy this.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: We went back in the same meeting with the bias agent saying, Well, this is what the client wants to buy.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now, if the client wants to buy this, you as a bias agent, you tell us where to buy, how to buy, what to do it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: Ross was sort of saying, Well, you know what, this market is this, this market is this, this is where it is.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: And we sort of said, Well, we've got to get the legal done.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: So that's fine.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: I can send you out to Sandy to get that legal done, we've got to get that insurance.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the beauty of that one exercise when we have done it is the client coming in, having four or five different professionals sitting with that one client in that one meeting, and the client left it saying that, good Lord, this is what I want.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_02: That layer of enormous layer of holistic services where you've got four or five different very specialized professionals, they're all sitting, right?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, see the world of finance as an example.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: I as an accountant, I would have a secondhand knowledge, but I would not be expertise.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: Legal, I would not be an expertise.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_02: Wealth, I would not be an expertise.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: I stay as an expert as an accountant, but bringing in all of those members in one client in one meeting, it was about two, two and a half hours of meeting, and the client sort of came back saying, wow, this is what we want.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now that layer of, when I use the word, I suppose power, let's use the word privilege.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_02: That layer of privilege that we have as a group, that we can contribute on a collective manner, on a collaborative manner with our collective collaborative intelligence.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: That is an enormous gift, enormous gift, but that can only be done when you have a multiple level of services as such.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, you go into the meeting as an accountant, you say, sorry guys, I gotta go back to a financial planner.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: I need financial planner to give you an SOA, and that might take another two months to get a statement of advice.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Then you instead of say, okay, let's take another month to go to the mortgage broker to see whether we can get all this lending.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: But we cut through all of this jargle and we do everything into one meeting.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know Frank and I see it, you know, dealing with say external accountants is we want some information and we might send an email or talk to them on the phone, and it takes two weeks.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, for us, we can literally walk down the road and say, you know, Manzuru, what's happening with the accounts uh for this client, and it just provides so much more value.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: Otherwise, the client, like you said, has to have six meetings separately, pushed out time frames, different advice, and this just brings that alignment uh for that client and that value for that client.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: And see, even in terms of our colleagues' point of view, right?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: In our group, as you know, is that we don't call anyone as a staff.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: We don't we say we've got no staffs, but we've got many colleagues.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: So everyone is our colleague, right?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's part of our cultural uh uh element.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: And even from a colleague's point of view, like each offices, the way we aim to do, we haven't really got there as a perfection, but we're getting there, getting there, getting there, right?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: Our parameter office, as an example, is that you've got the accountants.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: So if I look back around all of those, is that you would have our estate planner who is sitting, one of the estate planners is sitting in our parameter office.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, wealth manager sitting in our parameter office, legal sitting in parent office, uh, bias agency is not in our parameter office, finance solution partner in parameter office, accountant in parameter office, insurance is not in our parameter office, and you've got our internal accountant, they're all in parent office.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: So even from a colleague's point of view, their benefit is when they're sitting in there and they're listening from an accountant listening on the background of a lawyer, an accountant listening from a mortgage broker side of it, an accountant listening from a wealth, their learning is also holistic, which goes through the client.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Even at a partner's level, right?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: When you set up, say, I knock at Mansrill's door, like I come over to your door, I come over to Frank's door, and I say, Frank, I've got this particular client who wants to do this, this.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and can we do the funding side of it?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you give me the basic level of tip saying that, yeah, you know, this particular bank, I understand that your client is a uh foreign employee, foreign resident, but there are a couple of banks who actually take the foreign residence in terms of the funding.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I as an accountant I would not know this, right?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: But I knock into your door and you give me the name of who does the funding.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: I go back to the client, pretend that I really had that knowledge, and I say that you know that you actually can do this.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the client said, Wow, you know this.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yes, I can give it to the expert, right?
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's that collaboration that we do at every level.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and look, I've experienced that in client meetings as well because we overhear legal advice all day long, accounting, and I have clients talking to me and I'm understanding, I'm like, oh my god, I'm learning.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_04: I'm actually learning as a byproduct.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I've actually got one of my team members, I think you know him, he likes to stay back quite late.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, and you know what he said to me last.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: Week was that you know, Frank, every time I stay back, it's like I'm getting free advice.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_04: Just over overhearing meetings, overhearing meetings and things.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a pretty good environment.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: All of us, yes, thank you.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: And and just I guess with all this and multidisciplinary, can you just give us a highlight of of where we are, where our offices are, uh, and perhaps you know what are the goals for KHI moving forward as well?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like Dave One has always said that we didn't start with a lot of goals, right?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh just it was sort of like I wanted to stay small.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: That was my goal.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: Really small.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: That didn't work, right?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: So so we've been very, very blessed.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: We really blessed.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Frank, uh I can't express that.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: How much is that?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: I feel gratitude and sort of so many ways.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: Where are we at the moment?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: Is that as of now, is that we have uh 210 colleagues, we have five offices in New South Wales, we've got four offices in Queensland, uh, we have 40 partners in Australia, we've got seven partners in UK, uh, we've got four offices in UK, we've got a back office in Philippine, uh, 60 members in Philippine as well.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: So overall is about 215 colleagues, 47 partners, include 40 partners in Australia, include seven partners in UK, seven different service lines as we do.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we are heavy in accounting, we are heavy in debt, we we're becoming very strong now in terms of our wealth.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh our legal side is also becoming very strong as well.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our insurance is pretty good, our bias agency is pretty good.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: So every one of our fields, there's a really sort of building in sort of a real sort of a uh I suppose strong as a teamwork as such, right?
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: So this is where we are.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: We are a growing organization because remembering that where this has come in, is yes, it has come in within 18 years, but it has come in progressively over a period of time.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we do have a very strong goal.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: Our goal is is that we wish to be uh multi, we wish to continue to be multidisciplinary, we wish to be multinational or continue to be multinational, and and most importantly is that we want to be multi-generational.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so multidisciplinary service is what we have.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: Multinational means that we wish to expand ourselves into Australia, UK, New Zealand, maybe uh either US or Canada, maybe either China or Dubai.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_02: So five countries that we wish to do with our 10-year plan, 30th of June 2032.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that's what we wish to do.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now, saying this is that Aaron is that all practices go through their challenges, yeah?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that challenge is very often it's a learning challenge.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: So our one fundamental learning challenge, and I think we overcome that to a great extent.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: Now we've got a second challenge that we are desperately trying to overcome.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, first challenge that we overcome is that day one, as being the founder that I establish this, naturally, what it does is that all leads come in from the founders.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I sort of say, look, I can't fall into the founder syndrome, so to speak, i.e., you can't have an organization which is being based on one individual.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: Your intention, all we have spoken today to a great extent, is our intention, which is great.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: But intention without action is is warm and nice, but it doesn't sort of bring in the bacon at home, right?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you gotta have the intention, that's given.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: But you gotta have the action, right?
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: And challenge with that action is that when more and more and more and more clients come in, you can have all the best of the intention in the world, but how do you still service all of those clients?
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, ongoing basis.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: And what your strength was in day one, which is to absolutely service every single client to the sort of the most sort of the personal level, can can become your uh weakness.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_02: And why it can become your weakness?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because with all of your intention, is that if you still can't service your client to the level that you wish to service your client, then doesn't matter what your intention was, the end result is that you haven't, right?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: So this is where our first challenge, which we went through, is that how do I change it from an individual brand to a corporate brand?
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we've achieved that.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: It took us years, but we achieved it.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look around to us.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: We've got some so wonderful people.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: We got Nafiz who specializes on just the doctors, right?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: And he knows more than I know about the doctors.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've got Jackie as an example who specializes on the supernation fund.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: She knows more than I know about the superanation fund.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we've got Trevor as an example who specializes on the pharmaceuticals and pharmacists.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor knows more than I know about the pharmacies as such.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Trevor knows more than I know in terms of the FT side of it.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: And we got the same thing.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: We've got James, we've got Shari, we've got Luke, we've got Emma, we've got David, we've got Jason, we've got all those different accounting partners, and they're all very, very senior partners, yeah.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: And many of those partners in one particular field, they know more than I know, right?
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: On that field.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I take that as a lot of pride that they know more than I know, right?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_02: Then we look into the mortgage working team and all the rest of it team as such, right?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that challenge of converting from an individual brand in a corporate brand, I think we've really done okay.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's a progressive journey, we've done okay.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: Our next challenge, which we are working through, and if I say that we have completely achieved it, uh, I would probably be oversaying it.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: But we definitely identified it and we definitely want to continue.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_02: That challenge is that how do we become an institute and we still have the family warmth and values.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now that's hard.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's even harder.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, converting from an individual brand to a corporate brand was hard.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: It took four years.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: But to sort of have that institutional brand, but you still have that family office so that I one of my partners doesn't go through the same experience, which I went through into a large organization, right?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_02: That when the client calls and says, I want to have a chat with you, but you're charging me$750 an hour, that I don't want us to fall into.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_02: That's hard.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: That is really hard.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Have I resolved it?
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um not yet, probably.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but the fact that we have identified it and we've started that journey, that is the wish list.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: The wish list is that we can have all the success in the world, and that's okay, but I must make sure that I still go to that elderly couple's home once in a year, and the year that I do not have time to go into that elderly couple and have the salami uh in my hand, that's the day we'll sort of say we're missing things.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: And how do you and that's a really good point, and that was a question I was gonna ask around building and 40 partners, 210 colleagues, is is how do you maintain that family office?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_03: Because you know, we go on an annual partners retreat, and there's you know 47 of us.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it genuinely feels like we're 47 friends right now, you know, and as we build and as we get bigger, how have you maintained that?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: Because exactly what you said there, it's hard to maintain that identity.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, how have you so far been able to do that?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Such an important question and such a good question, such a difficult question, right?
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think very often in the most difficult things in life, we sort of make it difficult because we don't know how to simplify it.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and what that means is that you almost sort of say that there are things that I can't control, and I would not be too worried or stressed about it of things that I can't control.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to live daily saying that I'm gonna die one day.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: I understand I'll die in one day, but let's not die every day.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: So when that death happens, it happens, right?
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to live every day saying that I'm living today, right now, I'm in here.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, I'm going to leave it on my mind that there is always a sunset clause to everything which we do, irrespective of how extended that sunset clause is, there is always a sunset clause.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: So your culture is what you live, you breathe, you show by example, you sort of work on yourself to become better and better and better.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: I start with myself, saying that how do I ask someone else to do something if I don't do it by myself?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: So on a personal basis, one exercise which I do very often is that probably at a bare minimum, say three, four days, I'll get up in the morning, and and even Prabhupada doesn't know this, I'll get up in the morning, and in my sort of that half sleep, half awake sort of that moment in the morning in the bed, is that I'll just spend about five to ten minutes of a gratitude test.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'll actually go through in my mind saying that, God, I'm so gratified, I'm still alive.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: I just got up.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: I could have been in the middle of the sleep not being awake.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: I got up, I've got this most beautiful wife sitting sleeping beside me.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_02: I've got the most beautiful my family, my son and my daughter.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: Our son is on KPMG, our daughter is doing a double degree in Macquarie University in law and business, and our son KPMG in the tag.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: So he's doing CTA.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so proud of those two kids.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've got four parents.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're sort of elderly, they're still with us.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm living in Australia, you know.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: I exercise, I say to myself, I had no power where I was born.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: I could have been born in any other country.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: I could have been born with all due respect.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_02: I could have been born in Ethiopia.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: I could have been born in the middle of war in Iran.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I was being born in Bangladesh and my parents brought us back into Australia.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: We are so gratified, and I had no say on where I was being born, right?
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that gratitude test, what it does, that exercise of that gratitude, it sort of brings that humbleness to you.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: Second exercise which I do is to remind that to myself is that you can have all the success in the world.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but if you do not continue doing the right things, there is always that risk, you will collapse.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: And do you know why that risk is?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's almost a timing difference between right work and the results coming in.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: So the results that we're getting today with all of our success is because some of the right things we did three years ago, five years ago, seven years ago.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's very important to sort of remind that to ourselves.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: So what we're doing today will decide where we would be in three years' time and five years' time.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: So while we celebrate our success today, but we don't run away too much with the success saying we still need to continue doing the right thing, because we're celebrating for yesterday's hard work.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: Am I doing hard work of today?
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: For me to have the result of the future, right?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_02: So this sort of the the uh uh uh I suppose the uh exercise that you do, then you pass it around.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: So whenever there is a new partner comes in in our office, right?
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_02: So this wonderful young lady who sort of became our partner, and I still remember, and she's sort of as straight as an arrow, right?
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I still remember on the first day, and I said, okay, so you are becoming a partner.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_02: You and I, we partner in this one practice.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_02: So tell me whose responsibility is to look after you?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Me.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: My responsibility is to look after me.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, oh dumb.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, no.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, what do you mean?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do, right?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: We all look after our ourselves.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, no.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: The day you feel you have to look after yourself is the day I failed you.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: My role as the chair of the group is to look after you.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: My role is to look after every single person, unconditionally, uncompromising, without any layer of the expectation.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I leave it to the universe saying that if I can look after every single person, I'll get looked after by myself.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: I look back to this young, wonderful lady now, and she's a lot more mature and she's very ish.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: She has a wonderful partner, right?
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: So I think these values and integrities and the gratitude and that sort of selflessness is that you live, you breathe, you pass it around to everyone.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: And you sort of remind and keep reminding is that we are only here for a period of time.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need to make it harder and difficult for many of us, right?
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes we get quite stressed in terms of someone else is sort of acting in a sort of a manner and we sort of become quite defensive.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: But these are the moments, Aaron, we take a step back and we say, Let me try to put myself into your shoes.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: And let me really try to sort of visualize what your circumstances are.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: And when you do, very often you sort of say, Why are you doing this, right?
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, Let's have that sympathy, let's have that kindness, and that kindness is not a weakness, right?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: That kindness is for strong men and ladies.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_02: Kindness is a strength, right?
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: So when you have that culture and you continue with that goodness, the goodness extends more goodness.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: That extends even more goodness.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah?
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was listening to this podcast of Dario of a CEO the other day, and I would not give the name of the lady who's saying, but Darioffer CEO, and she was sort of saying, you know, it's like an eagle, and and uh you've got this crow.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: The eagle is big, right?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it's sort of really, really big, and the crow comes in.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: And what does the crow?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is not my story, I'm sort of sharing from someone else, right?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: Crow comes in and crow goes at the back of the eagle and sort of picks and picks and picks and becks, right?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: But eagle is very big.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_02: Eagle can't just turn around and take the crow out, right?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: He can sort of shackle it down a bit, but it can't take the crow out.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_02: So what the eagle does is that rather than worrying about the crow to be keep becking, all the eagle says, I'm gonna work with my strength.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: What is my strength as an eagle?
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go higher and higher and higher on the altitude.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: So all the eagle does, eagle tries to go higher and higher and higher and higher on the altitude.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_02: And the crow is still becking.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: Eagle is doing nothing.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: He said, You can beck as much as you wish to.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna go higher and higher and higher.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: And the crow goes, eagle goes higher and higher and higher.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: At one stage, eagle says, I can't stay into that altitude.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: Because I, as a crow, I can't stay, and the crow sort of drops off.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: So eagle goes already at that high level, and eagle looks back and says, crow being dropped, and I'm sort of really high.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_02: I can see a lot of things at a high level.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: I want us to be the eagle, not being the crow, or not to worry about the crow.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_03: There's some priceless wisdom there, my so I think, you know, and you've that shareholder story.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think you asked me that same thing, and I think I answered the same thing.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_03: Me, look after me.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I think, you know, the most important thing that always sits with me personally that you've said to me is yeah, success, hard to hit, very hard to maintain.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_03: And exactly what you're saying there is that ability, and as you get busier, it's even harder to focus on that client and be where you are.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: I think beyond all this, you have other passions.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um charity.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: Can you maybe elaborate a little bit about the charity and what's happening there?
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: Charity is very close to our heart.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: Charity is our heart.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: There are two charities that we do it as part of the group, and there is a third charity that we uh work and help quite a bit as well.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: So two charities, what we do is that we have uh Hope TK and we have TKF.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: So Hope TK is a charity that's been established by uh Purebi, my wife.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_02: So Pruebi established the Hope TK.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_02: Her passion is being on animal welfare quite quite a bit in terms of the uh the supporting to the animal, uh, in terms of the rescuing of the animal, uh, in terms of the uh the graceful life of the animal, and in terms of the graceful departure of the uh animal.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's sort of her passion for many, many years.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: So she established, Burobi established this charity, Hope TKF, to bring in the skill, to bring in the institution, and to bring in the real impact as opposed to, I suppose, an impact of emotion.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: So she she sort of utilizes her own funding in terms of uh this charity.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a DGRS status, ACNC charity, and it's an international charity.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, she's got a big shelter back in Bangladesh, uh, number of shelters in Bangladesh in terms of rescuing animals with uh cats and dogs, and she's going into bigger animals, which is uh uh which is your um horses and which is your elephants that she's sort of going through.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I know in Africa, as an example, she's looking through, but in Bangladesh, in Eshia Bangladesh, that she's very deep.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that charity is very close to our heart.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_02: A second charity is uh TKF uh Khan Foundation, is that this is a charity we established about three, four years ago now.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: Again, a DGRS status ACNC International Charity as such.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: We've done a whole lot of things.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_02: We um build a hospital in Kenya.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we bought a land to build a uh school in Bangladesh.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we build a very large refugee center, which is also a refugee and a cafe and education center in uh Thailand.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we work with young ladies in terms of their sanitary products and things which we take granted in Australia doesn't exist in many of the African countries.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_02: We work with this wonderful gentleman with a uh with a service called Water Gift, and you do a search in Water Gift and you would find wonders into the water gift as such.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right now we're doing 600 cataract operations in Bangladesh, as such.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_02: We are expanding ourselves into Malawi, and Malawi, there's many things that we sort of looking through.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_02: So all of those charities we do.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_02: There is a third charity that I worked as a as as the chair of the board, a charity called Danaeshia, on the name of Professor Yunus, on the spirit of Professor Yunus.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Danaeshia is all about vocational education and how to assist, yeah.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_02: So our two family charities, the TKF and the Hype TKF, is all about uh the health and all about the education.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: And the HOPE TKF, of course, is the animal welfare.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: What's important to us, Aaron, is that when we speak about charity, while we sort of say it is from our heart, we sort of equally say, uh, Frank, that charity should never be a marketing tool.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: This is very important to us.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_02: When we started the charity, we said charity should never be a marketing tool.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_02: We would never do charity just to sort of say, look at us, how good we are.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, none of this.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_02: We should never do saying that, well, can I meet someone through the charity and see whether I can do some business?
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_02: Charity needs to be unconditional.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_02: However, one traditional thing that we challenge with the charity is that I remember that when I was a child, my grandma used to say is that whenever you donate with your right hand, your left hand should never know.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, wow, how noble that is.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I still think it's novel, but I think that time has changed.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_02: I want my right hand, left hand, and all my hands to know that yes, charity is there.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: Not so much because that communication is a marketing tool, but the communication is a tool to create the awareness that we're living in Australia.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's one of the richest OSCD countries.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're living in the richest generation ever, ever, in the history.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_02: Surely we can do a bit more rather than just sort of living our day-to-day sort of a life.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, we're not asking anyone to do it.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: All we're doing is that we're doing our role, we're giving our as an example, and we're just communicating to everyone, and then we're sort of leaving it to the wider community saying that you take your inspiration in sort of the way that you wish to out of those stories.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_02: There's no sell, we're not selling anything.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: We're just communicating and you take your inspiration.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the last comment which I want to say is that why we emphasize quite a bit with in terms of that charity, we say, you know, challenge all the traditional thinking.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_02: You don't need to do charity by purely giving cash.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: Charity could be many ways.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: Frank, you as an example that I know, you went to Africa in your sort of a very young age, right?
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you donated a lot of money, but you set aside that donation of the money.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you physically went up there, your time and the value of your time, that is a charity.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_02: That where you're contributing your time, your networking, your skills, your experiences, and all of those, yeah.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_02: So charity very close to our heart and uh something that Purebi and I, we see we will continue doing it for the rest of our life.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, this is no sense of any layer of uh non intrusive uh requ uh I suppose the inspiration.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is all about God has given us a lot of things, and surely we can do a couple of things to help out.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_04: And look, on that note, Manzerul, I would like to thank you very much for your time coming in today.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's been a pleasure.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Frank.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Aaron.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you very much.