From Accidental Accountant to Thriving Entrepreneur: How Saadi Sabah Scaled an Accounting Firm

Saadi Sabah: this was all on accident. I just do something on the side for some extra income. history started picking up and then like three and a half years into my career, I made more in three months than I do in my annual salary. I think maybe now is the time to take the leap.

Carmen: Hey everyone, this is Carmen Durvat from Behind the Founders and today joining me will be Saadi Sabah. Saadi, welcome. Can you introduce yourself?

Saadi Sabah: Yes, hi. Thank you for having me. my name is Sadi Sabah and I'm the founder of ECA Financial Consultancy. happy to be on this podcast, so thank you for having me.

Carmen: Yeah, thank you so much for joining me as well. So to get us started, can you tell the listeners and audience out there what inspired you to start eCLET's financial consultancy?

Saadi Sabah: Well, to be honest, it kinda happened by accident. like anyone else. I I'm fresh out of college. I just got my first career job as a staff accountant. And you know, like most founders or other people at least I speak to, there's always that goal of escaping that hamster wheel of just running and working for someone. so I I was in college. I started doing t taxes for friends and family. I started I worked at a boutique like tax franchise, it was like H and R Block. I learned a little bit, you know, after one season, I was like, okay, I don't want to do this with them anymore. let me just do it for my friends and family. I did it something on the side. So I was 20 years old and was started off as working with 10 clients that were friends and family, are now over 900 clients across the US. So it's it's been a been a journey

Carmen: Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: since I started. And this was all like I said on accident. I sort of like anyone just do something on the side for some extra income. history started picking up year over year. and then like three and a half years into my career, I remember just I'm sure everyone's familiar, but with for accountants, tax season's really busy. and I remember going through you know, my ledger, I was doing my books and I was like, wow, I made more in three months than I do in my annual salary. I think maybe now is the time to take the leap. So then, you know, I took a leap of faith. I kept trying to quit my job. And every time I quit, I ended up getting delayed only because they offered me more money. to stay. So I was like, okay, I want to quit. So I was like,

Carmen: so you're kinda stuck. Yeah. Okay.

Saadi Sabah: and then after two weeks I I regretted it. And I said, okay, a few months passed, I quit again. I remember I quit three times in fourteen months. And on the third time they were like, okay, this is enough. I can't we have to let them go. and you know that was in twenty twenty three and I haven't looked back since. So it's been a journey.

Carmen: Yeah, I can imagine as well. What must have been really crazy that it was like every time you tried to quit, they were trying to find ways to keep you and to make you stay and so on like that. what kind of things they do to kind of like keep you in your, you know, typical nine to five job?

Saadi Sabah: I just I got a substantial pay raise every time. and I

Carmen: Okay.

Saadi Sabah: had I did get promoted, so I did ad advance in my career and that's something I had to consider that job title because that could go with me anywhere. when they they promoted to something called a controller. but just more money essentially. And then it's the golden handcuff just got harder to break because it's like, now it's like am I gonna walk away from this guaranteed salary versus taking this risk and you know pursuing something of my own. so it kind of made it really hard. but yeah. Pretty much.

Carmen: Okay, and what would you say like you said that you really tried to quit three times within the year? What would you say is like your breaking point where you're like, okay, this is it. I'm I'm done with this nine to five job, life for good.

Saadi Sabah: I lost out on a four thousand dollar project because I wasn't available to have my own office and see a potential client. I remember my phone start ringing nonstop during work hours. I kept having to step outside. and when I lost that client, something broke in me and I was like, okay, this is enough. I'm never gonna let that happen again. and I formally quit and I said there's no amount of money you can pay me that's gonna change this, unfortunately. and That was my that was my breaking point, when I lost that job because I didn't I didn't I wasn't all in. And I realized it's gonna continue to happen until I go all in. So that was the point really.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Well, I mean, yeah, good for you, you know, my respect to you for taking that leap of faith to really do something that that really wasn't by, you know, a coincidence that I just it was kind of like, you know, you're you found and reconnected to your purpose of really starting this like tax you know, consultancy firm, helping out friends and family. And I just wanted to go back to what you mentioned. It's really amazing that, you know, it started off as something like, you know, you do on a side, and then it grew into like numerous amount of clients. So what would you say were the different ingredients or factors that kind of influenced this exponential growth of number of clients? Was it through personal recommendations or what were the strategies you did to get more clients?

Saadi Sabah: Well, I had a philosophy where if you just do a good job, the rest usually takes care of itself. This is a word of mouth business. So when you do something good for somebody, they'll be your biggest advocate and they're gonna want to tell all their friends and family about you. So I started off with like ten to thirty to a hundred, and when you have a hundred people talking about you, it's like a wildfire. Now it just starts spreading astronomically. I started finding myself too is I had a best friend, I guess one of the most pivotable things in the business was I had a best friend that was an entrepreneur. He does he works in the e-commerce space, selling online, direct to consumer, Amazon, eBay, you name it. and then he started a community of other founders and entrepreneurs and he started teaching them on how to start their own business. from there, he actually invited me to his community to offer tax advice and tips for business owners and things of that nature. So then He had a thousand members all across the US from online and I'm just in their channel every other day posting tag tips, deadlines, reminders, strategies to implement. and it really, really took off in terms of spreading my my firm across the states. and like I said just now, as of twenty twenty six we're serving over nine hundred clients every tax season alone. And that's not including bookkeeping, payroll, sales tax, and all those other nuances that come with handling a company. so I'd say that's one of the biggest pivotal moments in the business. just studying that community 'cause now I'm in over thirty communities doing the same thing with dropping that tax advice, those tips, just really establishing myself as a a resource for entrepreneurs.

Carmen: Yeah. You know, like when it comes to like the world of like taxes, right? This is like a need, this is something that we are all that affects all of us, right? But it's also at the same time quite a pain for many of us, right? So I just love to know like what how did you end up in the world of finances, accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes? Like what do you love and enjoy about that?

Saadi Sabah: So I got into this field by accident. you know, fresh out of school, I did not know what I wanted to do for a career or a living. I picked a random major and it was business management. my girlfriend at the time said I'm not gonna have a job once I graduate and like anyone else, you just wanna get a job, make some money and you know, pay your bills. That was the dream. so then I picked accounting because that's usually like a safe bet for the most part in terms of getting employment. and that's how I I got into it. So I picked I changed my major to accounting. and then that's how I lined everything up to kind of go in that career path. But again, it's pretty much what's it seemed like all accidents, but the road just kept paving its way to where I am now. I couldn't I can't explain it, but it

Carmen: Yeah, yeah.

Saadi Sabah: seems like there was something always in front of me to step towards this or gravitate towards it. So

Carmen: Okay, yeah, that's really cool. And along that journey, like what kind of challenges have you faced?

Saadi Sabah: Delegation was the biggest one. You know, in the beginning when yeah, I started my firm, this was my baby, and I couldn't let go of control. So I had to be everything to everyone.

Carmen: Okay.

Saadi Sabah: you know, so I was their accountant, I'm also the sales representative, I'm also the administrative support, I'm the back end. So I was drawing many, many hats. And I guess once I was able to accept hiring someone and you know, actually spend the money because you it's nerve wracking. You go from a career to starting a business to now you're employing people. and they get and you have to they expect to be paid every week, every two weeks. So business goes up, business goes down, they start to get compensated. So that was

Carmen: Yeah. Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: very nerve wracking for me 'cause I wasn't as risk adverse as I am now. so that was the biggest hurdle. But the second I brought on the her name's Jessa, but she's my A player. Everything changed. my business literally we went from I had delegated some tasks to a lot of tasks to now making her a manager. Now she has a team under her. So now I have multiple accounting managers. so really that was the most pivotal moment in the business in terms of delegating and really giving me the chance to scale and grow. Because now I can go out and start talking to people. I can go network and yeah, that that really made a huge impact.

Carmen: Absolutely for sure. It definitely does make a difference, right? To have have like a team behind you, you know, running behind the scenes in order for you to really prioritize, you know, meet other clients, focus a lot on your business output and growth and everything like that. and you know, it's interesting because I I feel like from the conversations that I've been having with other business founders, it seems to be like a common, I would say, challenge to learn to let go and delegate it to someone else because it's like you said, it's like it's your baby. It is what you have been building as well. Why do you think it's so difficult to let it go or delegate part of your responsibilities, whether it's in sales or administration or bookkeeping to someone else? What what do you think makes it so hard?

Saadi Sabah: You know it it's a trust factor, right? It's you wanna trust in the fact that this person's gonna take care of the clients as you would. especially w and at least my business model, word of mouth is everything and it's always reputation. So it takes years and years to build one day to ruin it,

Carmen: absolutely. Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: let it collapse. whether that's from planning, advisory serving the client. So it it they hold a lot of responsibility once you do delegate, but I think just having controls being really clear on expectations. and that's something you learn as you go. right? Because no one's gonna be perfect, no hire is gonna be perfect, but they can grow into being this wonderful asset to your your business. And that's what I learned. don't give up on people, give them the chance to grow and actually communicate what you what you want. That's the biggest thing communication, right? so if you're not doing that, of course there's gonna be gaps, you're not gonna be happy. but I really learned and dialed down on What to expect from my team and how how to get them there and really encourage them and empower them to do it. So I think that that's like I'm more of a hype man nowadays, speaking to my team every day. this is where we're gonna go, team's gonna get this much, we're gonna have bonuses, holidays. so that's really what I found myself doing the day-to-day, other than talking to clients and new prospects.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. It's also really exciting as well, right? Because you it's like you have a little bit of like more interaction with people besides the clients, which is like you're not really so much of like an island as well. so it's like it's always really nice to be able to like gather sit together and, you know, have different sets of eyes and ideas and everything like that. so you talked a lot about the it takes years, right, to build trust so that they're able to stand, you know, hand in hand with you to maintain or improve the reputation, the image of your business. do you think there's any other important things when it comes to building rapport or trust in relationships within your team members?

Saadi Sabah: Yeah, so what I learned from other accounting firms and I see it what their mistakes are, when you when you get a client, it's also important to keep them, right? So this is a something I saw with other accountants. They churned a lot or clients would roll over. And then the biggest thing was communication, getting in touch, being able to reach them or questions when you have a big life or financial decision, purchasing a house, business needs a building, and no one's there to answer and support you in navigating this. From at least a tax perspective. So what I learned is just maintaining that same quality as you grow. Hyperscaling doesn't always make the most sense if you're growing sustainably at five, ten percent, building the systems and keeping the clients, right?

Carmen: Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: making sure they're happy. Because at least for me, I have the same clients I've had since 2017 when I started this. The only time I I from what I learned is when a client leaves is if God for does something with a partner, business fails, something of that nature. But I can count the number of clients on one hand that has left for not being pleased with the service. so it's not new client acquisition, it's important, but it's also important to keep your clients, at least for my model, because this is a

Carmen: Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: recurring thing. They have to file every year, financials are delivered every month. it's an ongoing c you know relationship. So it's not only getting new clients, but it's also taking care of the ones you have and not forgetting that. And that's why I see a lot of business owners lack. They're so focused on new plan acquisitions, but not

Carmen: Mm-hmm.

Saadi Sabah: knowing that they could serve their current base even better. And they would be happy to even pay more for more services. So it it it's a balance. I see people like focused on hyperscaling growth, but not having the systems to handle that. And then it goes poof bust it.

Carmen: Yeah, absolutely for sure. I think what you mentioned, right, about long term retention, it is often overlooked as well. You know, people often think, the higher the numbers, the better. The more clients, the more successful your business would be. But at the same time, it's also about the importance of making sure that your existing clients are still happy, right? And it's quite similar actually in our Where we are at Cherry Assistant, we do something really similar as well. And actually, yeah, I was having a chat with one of the hires that I had yesterday, and she was saying that, yeah, it is quite different than other staffing agencies because oftentimes when you think of the staffing agencies really similar, right? You bring in the people, job is done, you check it off the list, onto the next one as well. But like what we try to do is we really have like a a check-in. you know, like a really proactive check-in for the first month. It'll be like daily check-ins, then every other day. And then afterwards it'll be like a bi-weekly one as well to ensure this, you know, long term retention piece as well. And that's often really important because so much can happen and you also want to be their advocate, be on their behalf, making sure that everything's happy before it's too late. And what you mentioned about the communication is, yeah, it is really crucial as well because that can obviously go a long way in ensuring the alignment expectations for those client partnerships as well. Yeah, yeah. Definitely for sure. Okay, well, Sadi, let's talk a little bit more about your team and your, you know, operational setup. You know, you talked about that, you know, you started to delegate task, handover and have different people with serving different functions. how many of you are there in the team and what are the typical functions that are operating within ECLAT financial consultancy?

Saadi Sabah: You know, so our team size is we're about twenty-seven staff. I have five accounting managers, each leading a division. meaning I have accounting the tax division, I have a sales tax division, bookkeeping, advisory, and payroll. so it kind of each one leads the functions for those services of the firm and they all report to me. We have a daily check-in. and then under them they have about a few staff for each team, depending on how many clients I have. allocated to them. So i it it took a long time to get there. but that's kind of the flow. So I'll have a daily check in with the managers to let you know for me of any team updates, client updates. and really if I have any bookings or there's an like for example I need I need to check in with this client. There's a big concern. So I'll book a one on one consultation with them or things like that. But ideally that's I just have a daily check in with my team and then I structure my days pretty nicely where Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays will be just for new client meetings. Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays are for current clients. and then I have dedicated slots of my day for deep work where I block everything off and just get the most important stuff hammered out.

Carmen: Okay, and where are they all based? Is it remote? Are they on site?

Saadi Sabah: Yeah, so we have five here in the US, like three other CPAs, an enrolled agent, actually six here, I'm sorry, and I have a project manager. and then I have some overseas support spread out in Pakistan, the Philippines, and even Egypt as well. Yes. Yeah.

Carmen: international, yeah, yeah. And where did you find the overseas offshore staff?

Saadi Sabah: So I found them online for one of my managers and I hired an accounting professor at a university overseas and then what she started doing was hiring her best students for employment. So

Carmen: snowball effect.

Saadi Sabah: I kind of got it in. So now just been I kinda have a good base because the top students they they get job offers. so we have a good talent pipeline now. that that was one of the biggest things now. So I get and s n nothing's better than that because you vet them, at least my prof my staff vets them during the semester. So it's it's been good. And then Egypt, I'm I'm Syrian, have a you Middle Eastern background, so I have friends and family that connected me in Egypt. and India,

Carmen: Okay.

Saadi Sabah: Pakistan, they found me actually on LinkedIn. and

Carmen: Okay.

Saadi Sabah: I interviewed some people and we went from there.

Carmen: Yeah, yeah. that's really cool. That's really awesome. I think it just goes to show, you know, a lot of it is also through like word of mouth and you know, recommendations. And that also builds like this really sustainable, trusting relationships between team members as well. Okay. and looking at your current team setup now, would you say, is there anything where you're still like, okay, I would still feel like it would help me scale. my business if I were to delegate a certain set of tasks. Is there any operational challenges you're currently facing at the moment?

Saadi Sabah: I'd say the biggest thing I'm doing now it would be to probably get like a CEO, chief operating officer, someone that the managers report to, and I could just oversee the vision scaling and networking and growing the firm because every time I go outside or even to an event, it has an astronomical change for my business. And if I could just focus on that, the I could scale this firm to a hundred million dollars a year. and that's for an accounting firm, that's a very bold vision. but I do see the pathway there. so I guess that'll be probably the biggest lever I can pull in the near future. And it's not just finding, you know, a a random person, it's actually either gonna develop them internally. and I have some means for that too, where I'm developing some staff to eventually get to my role. and then I could just step out of the day to day completely and just focus on You know, scaling this thing as far as I can.

Carmen: okay, so you're basically looking for somebody to currently fill in your shoes as like the CEO while you're able to focus on other day-to-day activities and so on. okay, okay, all right.

Saadi Sabah: Correct. There are other things I know I can be doing that can really take me to the next level. and one of those things would be like creating content, which is why I'm on this interview. so

Carmen: Okay. Yeah. Nice. Okay. And in terms of like content creation, do you have somebody as well that will be supporting you with that in terms of social media, content creation and so on?

Saadi Sabah: y so I have two full time stabs just for social media. and then I hired a video team just forty five days ago. They're actually one of my current clients, so it's nice. I've worked with them before. and they've been coming to my office and making scripts and we started recording now.

Carmen: Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: and hopefully I know that'll generate a positive ROI in the future and help me build in this brand. So I'm I'm

Carmen: Yeah. Okay.

Saadi Sabah: just starting to dabble. I was really against it. unfortunately, I know that's the only way to get me To the next level.

Carmen: Mmm, okay, all right. so let's talk about another topic that I typically like to ask. for all the guests coming on to the podcast, it's it's about the topic of AI, right? It is become quite a hot topic. It's like surrounding us, you know, people have different opinions about it, but I think it's always interesting to learn a little bit about different perspectives. So what are your thoughts on AI?

Saadi Sabah: I think AI's a tool and like anything else, it's only as good as the holder. So a lot of people have some negative thoughts about it. It's gonna take jobs and do all this other stuff. When I think on the contrary, I'm an optimist. I'm not a pessimist. I think this is gonna really help businesses scale. I'm putting in my some day to day processes, even just the simple, simple workflows and automations. When I have to do tax research, what would take me three days is not taking me thirty minutes to really pinpoint. so I think like anything else, it's a tool, and I'm sure people thought the same thing with the dot com bubble. People thought the same thing in prior with any big major change, where there are a few people that looked at it differently and said, Okay, this is gonna be a once in a lifetime opportunity in my face, where early adoption really gonna set the difference w of your future. I've seen some cli I have some clients, it's a one-person business and they scaled all the way to a hundred thousand a month with just AI, no team, just an agency. and I've heard

Carmen: Okay.

Saadi Sabah: stories of a billion dollar companies start with just AI with no team. So you really have this opportunity here and there's such a huge gap in who's using it and who's not using it. what do I mean by that? I'm working with thousands of clients that are over the age of 50 that still can't turn on their laptop. so

Carmen: yeah, true.

Saadi Sabah: there's a huge there's still a huge market share and opportunity for people that are willing to come into this business. there are businesses that we have websites up, yeah, and all these other things, meaning that's opportunity for someone with AI to come in and say, Hey, get your business live, I'll do this. So I'm all for it. And I'm trying to get the most out of it as I can. I really went down the rabbit hole with trying to automate everything and that's not possible. But you go you start small, you go with the most simplest task that you can automate and you go from there. Like, you know, just a few weeks ago I implemented an automatic review follow up, right? So once the engagement's complete, you send automation goes out, collects a five star review. Simple tweaks like that, where it's just you start small and next thing you know, you know, you're saving hours and hours of time, labor costs go down, and

Carmen: Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: your it your output increases. My output has increased drastically with my even my team. a team of five can handle nine hundred clients. So in retrospect, that was not possible twelve years ago. I'd probably have to have twenty

Carmen: Yeah, yeah.

Saadi Sabah: people on site and it would be a nightmare to deal with that many. So like like anything in life, AI is a tool. not anything in life, but it i ideally it's a tool. And it's as good as the person holding it. So

Carmen: Yeah.

Saadi Sabah: I th that's my thoughts on it.

Carmen: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I mean I th I do believe that like you said, it is a tool. It can be is really cost efficient as well. And also it depends how you use it as well, right? I think a lot of people sometimes they treat AI like it's another Google, you know, you just type in the search engine, but it's really like a skill that you have to use in terms of how you use the prompts, how you also train the AI as well, right? rather than having full dependency on that as well. So yeah, I think what you mentioned there is definitely really spot on as well. Okay, well. Saudi, just a final question that I like to ask to every guest joining on this podcast If there was one advice, or maybe you might have multiple, that you would like to pass on to the listeners or someone considering the entrepreneurship journey, what would it be?

Saadi Sabah: Take that step forward because you will never have it figured out. You will never be ready. Just jump in. I I have like a poster on my wall. It sounds you know, pretty cliche, but be the main in the arena. head first, you will never figure it out, the time will never be right, the stars will not be aligned. When you go is when it happens. And then you figure it out along the way. you know, I I didn't grow up, I didn't work for a big firm, I didn't have like a Someone giving me this blueprint on this is how you scale to this firm at this price. no. It's day by day. Take this step forward and you will never have it figured out. Just you figure it out as you go. I'll leave it at

Carmen: All

Saadi Sabah: that.

Carmen: right. Figure out as you go. Great. Thank you. Well, Saudi,

Saadi Sabah: Yes.

Carmen: thank you so much again for joining us on Behind the Founders. Be sure to stay tuned for the next episode and see you again.

Saadi Sabah: Thanks for having me. Thank you, Commerce.