Partner’s Speech during Anniversary Celebrations
The Partners, Associates, Staff and colleagues, clients, customers, Ladies and Gentlemen. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this auspicious occasion of 10 years’ anniversary of the work done by Maritimes Associates over the years. Today marks exactly 10 years when I resigned into full time business in audit, tax, accountancy and advisory. I left employment on my own choice to found Maritimes a venture which I was not sure would amount to any meaningful success.
Thankfully, when I left one employment I over the years have created many and given opportunities to many to find a source of income through employment and to some an infrasture to earn an income. I remember in the first few months we would work for one client in the month collect payment and pay our bills and sometimes there was no work for a whole month. How did we survive, we used profits of the previous months. However, soon after we then got adequate work to do and soon we reported some good surpluses and gained confidence in what we were doing.
Years went by business increased and we needed to increase our staff numbers and working space. We then took bigger office space and employed more staff to handle our clients. These staff went through my personal training and couching and soon they became very good. Of course when they learned a lot they were pouched out of Maritimes or went into industry. We bid them good bye and gave others an opportunity to work with us and that’s why most of us are here today.
Further we adopted a strategy of developing good skills in a pool of outside consultants who came to work with us on a need basis and when we have overwhelming piece of work. Most of our former staff fell within this category.
Achievements
We have been able to steer clear of the challenges inherent in business including loss of very good quality clients not by a mistake of anyone but due to the requirement to shift service providers.
We have consistently been able to meet all our monthly obligations as they fell due and are glad that even in the recent years we do not have any pending bills.
We have survived and gone beyond the three-year period where startups are doomed to fail. We are grateful that we did not became part of the statistics.
Personally I have been trained and credited as a trainer with ICPAK as a resource person in their workshops and seminars. Some of you have attended workshops where I have presented and you are a witness to this.
We have documented key lessons and skills leant in our book which I have personally authored based on working and consulting with the SMEs for ten years.
Challenges
Our greatest challenge is our staff turnover and inconsistent associates and partners. Sometimes we even engage staff who upon being deployed do not demonstrate the competencies we require in the industry. In some cases, we have had people whose focus has not been in sync with the industry, clients and Maritimes vision and culture.
You are all aware of the pandemic which has affected business and there seems to be uncertainties all over. We have been hit most. Our client businesses have either shut down or are struggling. As a result, they have significantly reduced their operations and hence fee income.
Way forward
In the next phase of our business we intend to be more intentional and focus more than before. We have rotated our focus to become more keen on details and value addition to our clients. Through our tagline of “Helping you see beyond the numbers…” we want to support our people and industry at large to gain meaningful appreciation of the financial part of their business.
Vote of thanks
In conclusion, I want to take this opportunity to thank:
1. My family for the support and trust they gave me when Maritimes did not look like anything to rely on and make an income to support a family. Initially my family would do the office cleaning on a number of weekends. My wife paid my initial rent deposit for our first office.
2. Our consultants in the industry for coming in handy when work is overwhelming to us and dealing ethically with our clients, assets and culture.
3. Our staff both current and past for bearing with me and the Maritimes work culture. I normally tell them that though Maritimes is small its training them for industry and that’s why some of them have succeeded wherever they have gone. Let alone the fact that some have come back.
4. Our Partners both current and past for supporting the business, sharing cross cutting and peer review knowledge and understanding our vision.
5. Our associates and business referees for bringing work to us and collaborating to serve clients better.
6. Our landlord for the understanding when we have had delayed monthly rent payments.
7. Most of all our clients and customers both current and potential for trusting us to work for you. Some have stayed with us for more than the ten years and are represented here. We look forward to being with you for many years to come and we hope you too will refer more businesses to us going forward.
8. Finally, I thank God for the life, strength and health he has given us to be able to do all these.
Thank you and may God bless you all
I now declare this party officially started.
