Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

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So I’ll be your host, Anders Liu-Lindberg, probably you already know me, but maybe you don’t know today’s guests. So on today’s show, I’m joined by Maura Teitelbaum, COO of Elite Virtual Employment Solutions.

We’ll discuss how to solve the accounting talent crisis through Offshore. So Maura is the COO of EVES, or Elite Virtual Employment Solutions, a US-based firm helping companies solve the accounting shortage through skilled virtual professionals in the Philippines.

She brings deep experience in offshoring, recruiting, and operations, and offers a clear, practical voice on navigating the accounting talent crisis.

So with that, Maura, welcome to the show! I’m pleased to have you here on the relaunch of the podcast. So that’s great that you wanted to participate here.

But let’s start a bit with your journey.

How did your path lead to founding and being part of EVES and focusing on offshore talent?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Thank you, Anders, for having me. I’m excited to be part of a relaunch, that’s exciting.

So I got into the accounting profession, I went to school for accounting. I started studying for my CPA and passed a couple of parts before I graduated college. Right after college, I finished up my CPA exam.

I was recruited into a pretty large, medium size accounting firm based in New York City.

When I started, there was about 20 people in my starting class. So this was in the mid 90s. A lot of people were graduating with accounting degrees, starting classes, whether it was small, medium, or large, you had a lot of, you had large starting classes.

My company that I worked for it asked me if I wanted to start doing a little bit of recruiting in addition to accounting early on, which as somebody right out of college, this sounded like fun.

I got to go back to my old school, talk to old classmates, talk about my firm. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with recruiting.

And then my firm asked me if I wanted to get more involved in that, and that became part of my accounting journey as well.

My company was then taken over by American Express. This was at a time when American Express was taking over firms. They moved me into a pure HR role, which helped expose me to a lot more HR duties and functions.

So there I did a lot of recruiting and I got to see the side of HR and how it works in an accounting firm.

I’ve worked for small businesses, mom and pop shops, and I’ve also worked for large companies like PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is obviously, you know, a mega company.

So I got to the point where I was doing both accounting and HR functions and a good friend of mine who was already working in the Philippines, came to me a couple of years ago and said, “I already have people in the Philippines working for me directly. My clients are looking for some other people as well in the Philippines. Let’s start an offshoring business. Do you want to get involved with me?”

And I just jumped at the chance. I thought it was a great opportunity. It sounded interesting and it mixed my CPA accounting background with my HR functions.

And so here we are today, about three and half years in and we’re doing really well and I have a true passion for it.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s great to hear and how brave of you to kind of jump in with two feet and see how things are going.

How have you, how’s the journey been so far kind of going into this business and maybe stepping a bit outside of doing accounting and HR but actually running a business?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Good question.

I’ve been, I say this a lot to my employees, my team members. I’ve been, I have been an employee for a long time and now I’m a business owner.

So what I notice is, I often look at things from the employee’s perspective, and I think that’s helpful because that helps me see where they’re coming from, and it makes me think, how can I help motivate them?

How can I help be an employer of choice, which makes them want to be loyal to our company and grow with our company and reduce turnover.

So I think my background of being an employee in an accounting firm, working in HR and working for large and small companies allows me to relate to our employees and help them because at the end of the day, they are the lifeblood of our company.

So I think that my background has been very helpful and at the same time, I know when I talk to the clients, I’ve worked in accounting firms that know what their needs are.

When they come to us and say, we need staff accountants, junior accountants, AP, especially with the talent shortage going on now, I understand. I see it.

Working for a large company like PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has been offshoring for easily over a decade, and I worked within that and worked within a model where they were, I was coworking, my coworkers were people who were offshore. I also understand how that works with the time differences and the follow-the-sun method, and realizing that there are cultural differences.

So I think it all has blended nicely.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s definitely great to hear.

And then, you know, we are talking about the accounting talent crisis or shortage today, and it’s interesting because already back in 2018, I wrote a blog post at that time called the “Accounting Profession Paradox” about automation being on the rise, and that certainly hasn’t gone back burner for sure, but demand for accountants were also on the rise, at least it was above the general average of professions.

And now, fast forward six years, and we’re in a full blown talent crisis.

I mean, the CPAs are retiring in large bunches, and of course, it may be different in the US compared to other parts of the world, but I think it’s something we all feel.

And there’s just not, if you said you were like 20 people starting their batch back then, maybe it’s 10 or five people even starting now to become their CPAs and accountants.

So there’s just not a lot of talent coming in.

So what’s your take on why this paradox hasn’t been resolved that automation is coming one more, we’re still missing talent, we’re still missing accountants.

What’s your take on it?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Anders, you’re one of the few people that can actually say you have a crystal ball because you saw it in 2018. So I give you credit. I’m going to ask you for a lot of numbers later.

Yes, so it is indeed a talent crisis.

Talking from a US standpoint, Bloomberg pointed out last year that US firms are in need of about 340,000 more accountants than we currently have.

About retirement.

That’s exasperated by the fact that 75% of CPAs are going to be retiring in the next 15 years, and far fewer candidates are taking the CPA exam than the AICPA predicted.

So the bottom line is we do have fewer and fewer people entering the profession.

Look, I just don’t think that, and I’m gonna talk from an American perspective here, I just don’t think accounting is one glamorous enough anymore.

I don’t think young people wanna go into accounting.

I think when they hear about things like tax season and the long hours, it turns them off.

And we’re not talking about an industry that says, hey, you can start off with immediate six figures. You gotta work your way up.

So Americans are just not jumping into this.

And you said I started with 20 people in my class. That’s no longer on the path. So you were totally right about the shortage, and that’s why offshoring is it’s a need. It’s a need in America.

As for automation, it is able to do more and more, but it’s never going to replace people.

So the paradox and why business are are increasingly looking for overseas for the for the problem, the solution to the problem. I think what we’re seeing here now is that larger businesses have been going overseas for decades, but now the technology is making it more feasible for small businesses to do that as well.

So I think it’s just it was a time situation.

I always say that with small and medium businesses, they don’t have the resources.

They’re dealing with so much on a day-to-day basis of what’s in front of them that they don’t necessarily have the resources to think, well, what’s going to happen in two to five years? How can we fix two to five years?

They’re so busy with what’s happening in that moment or that month or that year, whereas companies like PWC or Ernst & Young have unlimited resources where they can plan 10 years ahead.

So I think the paradox hasn’t been resolved because of a time issue and technology, but now we’re seeing it that it’s a lot more feasible for SMBs to be able to embrace this.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Thanks a lot for sharing that, Maura.

I completely agree with the brand of the profession.

So we work with lots of different finance teams and certainly also here in Europe where we are based, and one of the questions we always ask them is, “What’s the brand of the finance team in your organization?”

And often you hear like, bean counter, number cruncher, the compliance person, the naysayer, the police person, all these things, right?

Where if you’re a young person today, unless you want to be a police person, then it’s just not some nice adjectives that you put in the profession.

So I can clearly relate to why would I want to go into that profession?

And it’s funny because you said, although you work in HR, I did have a short spin in HR myself back when I was a student. So I think I worked like 14 or 16 months in an HR department, and this was kind of like an engineering company.

And I remember I played bowling. So I was playing on the company bowling team with these engineers.

And sometimes they would talk about HR like, “These HR people, can’t they just stay out of my face?” and “I know what I need, so they just need to run a process and I’ll find my own people.”

And I was like, that’s not a profession I want to work in.

So I said, okay, go to HR. Let me go back into finance, which I also worked a little bit in. And of course, fast forward, I found the exact same thing in finance that they don’t want to work with these finance people.

So, you know, you kind of keep running forever. So I took a stand there and then I spent, you know…close to 20 years, trying to improve the brand of the finance function, trying to make the jobs more interesting and value creating and feeling that you’re making that impact that young people want to make today, right?

So I can clearly relate to that part about the brand.

And then about the technology making things more available. I think the whole cloud movement, of course, has meant that it’s much easier also for SMBs in the US, for instance, to utilize talents in the Philippines.

Whereas before, if you had to have it installed on your computer, it just created a big barrier, right? So the cloud has been a big driver of this as well.

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

You know, this is a little anecdotal, Anders, and by no means am I saying this is statistically what’s going on, but I had a conversation with a recent college graduate about six months ago, and I asked them, you know, what they’re going into.

And they said they’re going into Instagram, social media.

And I said, what are you talking about?

And they said, all I have to do is build up a certain following and I can get sponsors and I can make about $30,000 a year right out of college.

It’s something that sort of blew my mind because I grew up in a very practical time.

I had practical parents, practical family. You went to school, you got a job, you got a profession.

To hear somebody actually look at social media and building up an Instagram profile, but then I looked into it a little bit and I realized how they were able to do it.

They build up a profile, they get involved every day, they post stuff, sponsors come to them, and that $30,000 for a first year out of college, which is far more exciting and glamorous than showing up every day and being that bean counter. How do you compete with that?

It’s tough.

And again, that’s anecdotal. I’m not saying that’s everybody, but I think that that’s where a lot of minds are in young people.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Yeah, I mean, my son, he wants to be a YouTuber, right?

And I can completely relate to it, you know, because I have a big following on LinkedIn and I do work with sponsors as well, right?

So while LinkedIn is a bit different game compared to Instagram where you need not that many followers actually to start making a business out of it, it’s certainly a much more popular way to see yourself.

Then of course, can everyone be an Instagram influencer, of course not, but it’s actually, It’s actually quite feasible for most people if they’re just persistent and doing well.

And so I completely agree it’s difficult to compete with that if you are an accounting firm and you’re looking for talent.

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

I will say this, just in relation to your son.

I have a six-year-old little boy and when I asked him what do you want to be when you grow up, he already told me a YouTuber.

He’s six. You have to indoctrinate him into something different.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Yeah i mean that’s that’s that’s what we’re competing with so how exactly does uh EVES help companies address this talent shortage? Can you talk us a bit through your model? How does it work?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Talk about the EVES model. Yeah, I’m very proud of what we’re doing.

EVES provides the HR and operational support needed to make offshoring accounting talent friction-free experience for SMBs. That’s our goal.

We like to see ourselves as a white glove firm, customer service, premium services.

We have a simple 8-step process that streamlines our recruiting, our screening, our onboarding to get the exact talent that you need to support your success, your company’s success.

We locate them in Western facilities with Western standards.

So this isn’t like Upwork where you’re just getting somebody freelancing, you don’t know where they are or what kind of software or hardware they have.

Our business and our model is we give them all the hardware and the software that they need to do their job.

They’re in an office with redundant high-speed networks. We also have backup power, as you know, you may not know this, your listeners may not know this, but Philippines has typhoon season.

I live in Florida, we have hurricane season.

So in order to feel that there’s consistency, we have backup generator, backup power.

So if you’re a US company, and you’ve embraced the idea of having remote employees, there’s effectively no difference between having them in Philadelphia and having them in the Philippines if you’re with EVES.

So you got to look at it like that.

You got to be saying, okay, if I’m willing to have somebody remote off in Philadelphia, better see what’s going on in the Philippines.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Yeah, and that’s, it is actually interesting, just as a follow up question to that, right, because obviously, during COVID, you know everyone kind of started to work from home and then people got the taste of it and now a lot want to work remotely.

And just like you’re saying, you know, if you’re a company based in Kansas and your employees don’t want to come to the office, then you can just as well get them in the Philippines, right?

It sounds complex and challenging, but it’s actually, it is quite simple.

So you also got to be wondering, you know, talent pool globally suddenly becomes a lot larger, right, compared to if you have to locate someone in your local town, right, for a company.

So definitely, I could imagine that was also a big driver, maybe, of starting a business like this.

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Definitely.

I mean, it got to the point where people just could not, they’re spending so much time looking for the accountants, and they’re not there.

And the differences in the Philippines, they are.

So how much time do you want to ask HR or pay external recruiters to look for a talent pool that is just shrinking?

And then the other thing is retention.

Even if they go into it, how many years do these young people want to stay in it when they realize I’m going to work 60 to 70 hours a week for four months during tax season?

And then my salary is going to be, you know, a basic starting salary and I’ve got to constantly go for updated credits and get CPEs.

It takes a lot to be an accountant and then to be a CPA, to be credentialed.

I mean, I see why, I do understand why Americans are looking to other roles, but I also understand why American firms are saying we’ve got to look other places because we can’t fill our needs.

And you can’t run a business if you don’t have talent.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Makes good sense.

So I used to work for Verse, which also had offshore a large part of their finance team.

And they had offshore too, India, for instance.

So you have chosen Philippines as your location. So why Philippines?

Why is that such a standout location for accounting and finance talents?

And what sets it apart from other regions or just India as one example where there’s a lot of offshoring going on as well?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Yeah, great question.

I’ll preface this by saying my business partner who I worked with, he tested out a couple of other areas before he decided to land on the Philippines.

So he actually had some real practical hands on good and bad experiences that set him there.

The Philippines produces tens of thousands of accounting graduates annually.

The Philippines is almost what we were in the 1990s.

They’ve got a lot of people coming out now.

They’re at a generation, saying we want to embrace these professional these professional roles in society and have these type of jobs.

Their CPA exam is one of the most rigorous in Asia, so it aligns with US GAAP and IFRS.

So if you’re worried about is the talent pool similar, it’s very similar.

They have some great universities that are globally recognized for their business and finance programs.

You can’t ignore that.

So there’s just a highly educated pool of talent familiar with international standards.

On top of that, what we did find was the Filipinos have an amazing work ethic. And we recently had a client who did a case study, and if people go on my website, they can read it firsthand, where the client flat out said they were shocked at how productive, motivated, enthusiastic, and wanting to help that the Filipino talent was and how excited they were to have these jobs.

And they just fell in love with it. And so they hired more from us.

The excellent English skills that makes them highly desirable in the U.S. workforce. I mean, the English skills are phenomenal.

So, and many large companies have already gone to the Philippines. Like I said, my old employer, PWC, is there, IBM, JP Morgan.

They’ve been tapping into the Filipino talent pool for decades with outstanding results.

And then there’s just the cost savings.

What I really like about the cost savings is you’re talking about 70% up to about 70% on labor costs.

And then using EVES specifically because of the overhead that we handle, that’s another 50% in savings on overhead costs.

There’s cultural similarities. The talent pool is great. Again, another anecdotal little quick story.

When I go out there to visit and we do our team dinners, they’re putting on playlists of Taylor Swift and they’re talking about American celebrities. And we just did a Name That Tune game when I was over there and it was all Michael Jackson songs.

So the cultural similarities are there.

So you got a great talent pool, you got cultural similarities, communication is excellent.

For us, it was just a thumbs up all around.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s great to hear.

And it probably also feeds into my next question here because some CFOs or financial leaders, they might hesitate on offshoring because of maybe perhaps quality concerns or security or culture.

So how do you guide your clients through that mindset shift?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Okay, so this question is so on point.

Most of the businesses that I speak to are SMBsm and they haven’t done offshoring before.

And this is exactly what CFOs will start off with. “I’m a little nervous. I’ve heard about this. this before, I’ve thought about it.”

They’re definitely apprehensive.

I always start off with telling them right off the bat, because cost savings is a great way to open up a conversation. I tell them many companies are missing out on savings anywhere from a couple of hundred thousand a year to seven figures a year before this apprehension. So let’s put that on the side.

They’ll often tell me that they’re nervous about data security.

And what I remind them is that EVES addresses this by having our offshore staff VPN and directly into their US infrastructure. So none of their information is stored on our computers.

It’s not stored locally, and we discourage them from having their employees store stuff on the local computers.

Before anybody gets hired, we also alert them that we do some pretty tough background checks, which means they’re vetted by the National Bureau of Investigation, which is the Philippines equivalent of the FBI.

So they’re not going to be able to work unless they get clearance with an employee certificate as well. If we don’t get that specific certificate of hire, which is second to the NBI, so there’s two certificates, they don’t get to hire them. We don’t get to hire them, we don’t bring them in.

EVES also has supervisors on duty monitoring employees and making sure that all our clients’ standard operating procedures are adhered to 100%.

Again, this isn’t like Upwork.

They’re walking into an office building. We have an on-site HR person. That HR person is making sure they’re working on time, not staring at their phone.

If they don’t show up, we alert them that morning.

If they want to take vacation, we alert them.

So we almost help them manage their calendars with their employees as well.

We make sure that they get their breaks, return from dinner on time.

Let’s talk about the recruiting process.

When it comes to quality, we screen, just like an American recruiter, we screen and we try to show them top tier talent. We don’t push people on them.

If they tell us they’re looking for a staff accountant, unlike some other offshore companies, we’re not going to say, well, we have four in the pool and we’ll just assign you to them.

You get to meet your people. You get to interview them and decide, okay, we think these people have good communication skills they’ve been working on projects that are similar to what we’re doing.

So they’re involved in the recruiting process and they can come to us and say, “No, we don’t like that person. Go find us more.”

So when we talk about the issue of mindset, probably where we feel EVES is somewhat of an outlier is that we’ll tell them, take one person.

We’re not hard selling.

We’re not looking like, oh, start with five or six people. Have a team. Let’s build a team for you.

Take one person.

Try a junior level person. Let’s see how it works.

And in fact, we make it risk-free because we have 100% guarantee, and so there’s no risk.

I’m proud to say that virtually every client that has started with one person, within three months to 12 months, they’ve either hired one or two more people to add to the team.

We have a couple of clients that their teams have risen anywhere from about five, and we have one client with us that’s about 30 people now, and they started with just a handful.

So that’s how we try to shift the mindset, giving them comfort, letting them know about the security, letting them know about the recruiting process, letting them know about the shift supervisors.

They’re not just off in the middle of nowhere.

There is uniformity and control.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

I really like the rigorousness of that process, because I’m sure it’s more rigorous than their own recruitment process if they had to hire locally.

And secondly, because you’re not just giving them six FTE’s, but you actually, this is the person.

Of course, if they like the person, you can find someone else, but that also makes it more easy for that person to, in some way, become part of the team.

So it’s not just somewhere that sits somewhere in the Philippines.

No, this is part of my finance team, and I think that makes a big difference as well.

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Right.

And so one thing I just want to add about that is the way the structure with EVES works is we handle all the HR and operations. We take everything off their plate.

When that person walks into the office in the morning, they report directly to that client.

So that’s why we think that recruiting process is so important.

We want the client to meet these candidates and say, I can see how they’ll fit culturally, technically. I can see that they would be able to handle this type of work.

So we feel that that’s important that the client has that say.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Makes great sense.

So if I’m a CFO and I’m just starting to kind of explore the offshoring potential, what’s the first step I should take or first few steps?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Visit the EVES blog.

No, in all seriousness, we have tons of articles and infographics.

We put a lot of information on our journey of starting offshoring.

Specifically, we answer questions that CFOs, and not just CFOs, we particularly learned about CFOs, but also talent managers that are coming to us.

It’s not always CFOs, it’s the recruiters sometimes that are coming to us and having these conversations.

So we have tons of articles and infographics explaining the offshoring process.

So one of them we have is 8 Easy Steps to Offshoring and How To Write Effective Job Descriptions That Will Attract The Right Talent In The Philippines.

We give explanations on how to scale their accounting staff through offshoring.

We talk about mistakes to avoid when offshoring and so on.

So it’s really a great reference for CFOs and talent managers or accounting managers to see how the offshoring journey starts.

So, and then after that, give me a call. Give me a call, talk directly to me, e-mail me, call me up and say, I saw the blog, I have more questions.

“Explain to me how this is going to help me?”

That’s what I’m here for, And that’s what I love about our business, EVES, is we’re very hands-on.

I love that white glove service that we give. I love that premium service.

But our blog definitely has a lot of information.

We invested a lot of time and money into making sure that we were answering the questions that CFOs were bringing to us as well as talent managers.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s definitely great to hear.

So we talked a little bit about it in the beginning, but how do you see the whole automation topic working together with offshoring?

Because transactional work is becoming more and more automated.

So how are you dealing with that whole space?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

There’s a lot of talk about automation, right?

There’s a lot of talk about AI, there’s a lot of talk. There’s a lot of speculation about what it’s gonna be.

Some people have decided that humans will be able to kind of just sit around and do nothing, and other people feel that the pendulum will eventually swing the other way.

But there’s no question that automation is gonna take on more and more of the work that humans are currently doing.

Automation is never gonna completely replace people.

You’ll always need to keep a human in the loop, at least to some extent.

Humans remaining in that loop, automation will be a force multiplier, enabling them to do things much more faster.

So the automation I think is going to enhance the human interaction.

But having said that, I do believe the savings from automation will be augmented by the savings and labor costs through offshoring like the Philippines.

So you’re going to have a double, especially in accounting with the accounting shortage, that in turn will free up US-based staff to spend more time with clients face to face and actually increase the human interaction with them.

So if you’re in an accounting firm, that personal touch will likely go a long way with your clients and fostering loyalty and retention.

And one thing I want to add here, and I’ve seen this and I think everybody in the accounting profession, I think just everybody who’s ever dealt with automation.

How many times have you called up a 1-800 number and said, “Representative! Representative! Representative!”

No matter how much you can get through the automation of that 1-800 number, we always feel a little bit better talking to someone and confirming it.

And I think when clients and accounting firms and finance firms are talking about their money, they only want so much automation from the small business all the way up to what I saw at PWC, people want to be able to get on the phone with the person and say, “OK, let me just reconfirm.” or “Just explain this to me again.”

When you’re talking about your money and your business, I don’t think you can completely outsource everything to automation.

A CEO, a CFO wants to talk to their accountant and say, “Can you just go over these numbers with me? Are you sure these are good decisions?” Or whatever it might be.

I don’t think in the world of finance and accounting, just like in the medical field, there are certain places where automation is not going to 100% be able to take over because as humans, we want that extra layer of protection.

The Philippines is gonna help with this. My business will help with this because we’ll be able to augment the cost savings, as I said, but we need humans.

It makes me feel good to get that extra.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

I fully agree that the humans will probably, at least for any foreseeable future that the two of us can look into, will definitely be a part of the process.

I think that makes good sense.

You’re talking about the benefits that SMBs can get from offshoring. And you talk about, maybe they start with one accountant and then they get one more and so on, but how scalable is this regardless of company size?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Any company can do this.

Every accounting firm should be looking into this.

It’s right in your faces right now.

This is a conversation every small and medium business accounting firm should be having.

They should be looking into this.

It’s extremely scalable.

Like I said, if you’re thinking about hiring someone in Philadelphia, you should just as easily be thinking about hiring someone in the Philippines.

Tapping into the resource channel of offshoring accountants and scaling up or down without any friction, it’s so possible, the cost savings are phenomenal.

If you hire one person, a junior accountant, you could easily save $50,000 a year right there.

Not to mention the cost of HR searching.

You just can’t find that talent stateside.

So it’s not even as though you’re saying, “Well, I’m going to trade off one for the other.”

You just can’t find it.

So whether it’s a payroll accountant or a junior accountant or an AP supervisor, offshoring will save them tremendous amounts on labor costs.

It mitigates HR headaches, compliance with regulatory regimes. The attitudes of the generation of workers are more, they’re more interested in the Philippines in these roles than what we talked about in America.

I also just want to talk about compliance really simply and why this approach is very scalable.

If you look at a state like California, and we’re getting a little specific, but I do want to be specific here because I think it’s important.

California has a tremendous amount of regulation and compliance costs that goes into HR and legal costs and having that compliance, the amount of money that you have to put into that, if you’re located in a state like that in America where compliance is a major headache. It is extremely scalable to come to the Philippines and say, “I just want to out, I just want to offshore this position because I want to not only save money on that one junior accountant, but I also want to save money on the on the compliance issue.”

So you’re going to save money.

And then, like I said before, you’re gonna, you’re not gonna sacrifice talent.

The talent is there.

You’re gonna meet them person to person. You’re gonna have these in-person interviews, well, in-person virtually over Zoom. You’re gonna meet them and you’re gonna be able to hear what they say.

So you’ll have newly freed up capital, which maybe you’ll be able to invest in new software, new buildings, new infrastructure, whatever.

So the scalability is, it’s seamless.

I’m gonna go back to the phrase “friction free”.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s great to hear.

So obviously, there’s a lot of benefits for SMBs of doing this today, but where do you see offshore finance teams heading in the next few years?

We’ll start to see maybe more strategic or analytical roles also moving offshore?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

Okay, love this question because I think a lot of people who went into accounting and who are thinking about going into accounting, don’t realize that accounting is a stepping stone into a lot of other areas.

I started off as an accountant, I got my CPA and look at me now. I’m an entrepreneur with an international business. It’s a stepping stone.

What you learn in accounting in the first couple of years can move you into many different types of roles.

When I worked, that first firm that I worked for was heavy into hedge funds.

Many of my classmates in that first firm that I worked for went into strategic roles and analytical roles in hedge funds. What an amazing opportunity, right?

But that accounting background was what they were looking for.

So I think from speaking from experience, I think that companies that grow their accounting staff with us through offshoring are going to see that they’re going to find seasoned professionals that will be able to do strategic and analytical financial talent overseas as well.

They’re finding that the talent levels there are commensurate with what are available in the US and at lower cost.

We don’t have that talent pool growing into these seasoned professionals anymore and branching out into the financial roles. But it’s happening in the Philippines.

And again, at a much lower cost basis when it comes to labor.

So I think you will, I think it’s a fertile field for strategic and analytical roles.

In fact, we specifically right now have clients that are saying to us, “I think I can promote this person that’s been working for three years now into a more strategic role.”

We have a client that had somebody who was working with, they were just doing accounting and they moved them into a strategic financial role and an analytical role after about three years.

So again, I’m going to use the word fertile here. It’s a fertile field for them to be able to go into that. These people that are starting out with us right now that are junior, senior accountants, they’re now becoming the 10 plus years in time that we’ll be able to do that.

So finance firms are going to start picking at them and saying, okay, you’ve got that accounting background. You’ve been working on these firms. Now you’re going to be able to be analytical for my field. I’m really excited about it.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s great to hear.

Yeah, I know, especially because a lot of this work is not perhaps even being done in SMBs today, yes, in the big companies for sure, but not in small and mid-sized businesses, because that’s just, they don’t have the resources for it, but now, because of the cost of it, maybe they can actually get the resource to do this as well.

So I think it’s a very exciting, that you said it yourself, exciting development for the field and for these companies utilizing these services.

So great to hear that.

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

I think you just made a really important point there, and you kind of hit the nail on the head.

They didn’t have the money before to do it, so they would then have to hire consultants, which were even at a premium.

So you brought up a great point.

All that money that they’re now saving on top of that, they’re training these people internally.

So I completely agree with what you just said there, Anders.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Super stuff.

So we just have one final question left here.

And it’s a question I’m going to ask all guests in this relaunch of the podcast here.

So on the #FinanceMaster show, we define a finance master as someone who helps build world-class finance function or world-class finance teams.

So, Maura, how does your work contribute to that issue?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

How does my work contribute to being a finance master?

I want to tell you, I’m going to make my mom watch this podcast because she’s going to be so proud that her daughter is being called a master at something.

This is hang-on-the-fridge material in my family.

I’m so proud of this company.

As you can see, I’m overjoyed to be able to talk about it and explain it.

Why do I think that we’re building a world-class finance function?

I’m going to go back to the SMBs that I worked with, not so much the big companies like PriceWaterhouse and Ernst & Young and IBM and JP Morgan. They’ve got a plethora of resources.

But I’ve worked with the small business owners. I’ve worked with a couple of mom and pop companies.

Bottom line is everything to them.

And the fact that I can bring them an opportunity to save money, to have that ability to have great talent, to not struggle to find that talent.

Our company works on a 24-hour model, so they can be asleep or going to their kids’ recital at night or freeing up time. And they have people in the Philippines working those hours.

So they come into work in the morning and a bunch of stuff is done. So it’s doubling their productivity.

The idea that I can help small and medium businesses specifically, just that alone makes me happy.

I love that.

We are taking headaches off their plate. We’re giving them space to grow their business, to add to their success.

EVES does the heavy lifting of building the offshore infrastructure, of being the employee of record.

They just, we send them an invoice at the end of the month and they pay for it.

They don’t have to worry about how do we keep employee retention.

We work on being an employer of choice. We worry about the benefits. We worry about how do we make sure we hold on to these employees.

So our contribution of building these world-class finance functions is helping them save on talent without compromising service of quality.

We become an ally, you know, and a fierce battle for that higher performing talent pool at affordable rates. We help them scale up.

It’s amazing when the client can come to us and say, I’m going to build my bench and hire three people with you so I have backup and I can build this department and take on more clients because you have the talent pool available and I can afford this.

So, you know I just can’t say it enough – between the money and the infrastructure and the talent pool that’s available, that’s not available in the US, we’re contributing to world-class profit margins

And I’m excited about that.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

Yeah, that’s also a great tagline, I would say, Maura.

It’s great to hear there are people like you out there and companies like EVES out there that are really making a difference in terms of solving this talent shortage that we are definitely seeing, not just in the US, but also in other markets.

So Maura, thank you so much for coming on today’s episode of the #FinanceMaster Show.

Sharing your views and ideas on how we can solve this accounting talent crisis.

If anyone wants to reach out to you to connect, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Maura Teitelbaum, COO

I would like people to get in touch.

If you’re listening to this podcast, I would like you to get in touch with me directly.

So, that being said, my phone number is (747) 300-3234. It’s a US phone number.

I’m going to give you my personal e-mail address, which is my first name, Maura, M-A-U-R-A, at evesolutions.net. That’s E-V-E-S-O-L-U-T-I-O-N-S.net. (maura@evesolutions.net).

You can also visit our website, evesolutions.net.

I’m not gonna put you through an info ad or any of other of those things.

Get in touch with me directly. I’m excited about talking with this about you.

Even if you feel that you’re a couple of months off from doing this, have a conversation with me directly.

Anders, I also gave you the information if you want to post it as well.

But please get in touch with me directly. I’m excited to talk about EVES and I’m glad that you had me on today, I appreciate it.

Anders Liu-Lindberg, Host

That’s definitely also my pleasure.

And also big thank you to all the listeners out there.

We may not be live anymore.

We used to do these shows live, as you may know, if you have listened to the show before, but we still have lots of great insights and Maura definitely shared a lot today in terms of how to tackle the accounting talent crisis.

Feel free to share feedback on the podcast with me on LinkedIn or in the comments on YouTube.

And I’d certainly also appreciate if you would leave a rating on the podcast.

Other than that, all there’s left to say is see you next time and bye for now.