Empowering Entrepreneurs Shawn Parikh - An Entrepreneur in Two Countries
Shawn Parikh is the Founder-Chairman of Entigrity Offshore Staffing. A Chartered Accountant by qualification, he has over 15 years of experience of being a problem solver for small to mid-size firms and over time he has given consultation to thousands of CPAs, accountants and tax pros.
What does he feel is his role is in the entrepreneurs' journey?
What I've realized is accountants are big enablers in the journey of entrepreneurs. I am a big, big believer in small businesses and entrepreneurship. And accountants play a very big role there. And I'm happy that in some small way I'm helping that community, although I'm not an accountant myself. But I consider myself fortunate that I have been an accountant where I have enabled those entrepreneurs who have been either starting the business or wanted to grow the business.
What are the challenges in being an entrepreneur with businesses in two countries?
I think it's tough to leave sometimes family back and travel for months together. I used to stay in the US. I stayed there for about 5 to 6 years. But, you know, leaving family behind and traveling without them is the tough part personally.
When did it become evident you had the entrepreneurial spirit?
So my journey is a little reverse. So it's not coming from corporates and Big Four and getting into public accounting. It was first public accounting and then I thought that I would, I imagine myself building a corporate going forward. So that let me get the big exposure of how large teams are managed. So being in entrepreneurship was never something from the very beginning.
How quickly were you able to figure out that it wasn't about you? It was about your team and what you were able to build and aspire around you.
About two years. I went to a housewarming party for one of our team members. And I saw the happiness on the face of the parents of that child. And I realized that in some small way we are trying to contribute to the social upliftment of people around us. So that's where I realized that this is not this journey, is now not just economic prosperity. It's about making a larger impact we are making.
What impact did your mentor have on you?
He had a tremendous amount of impact on my life. My professional learnings and the way I approach and the way I deal with people. Let me tell you, I never had the vision of building this kind of company. You know, my thinking was small. My exposure was small. I would have not built this company unless I would have gotten that exposure that I had.
After losing 50% of his savings after one of his early businesses didn't work out, you couldn't look at it as a "failure." You had to come back stronger, right? Was there a choice?
I think a lot of things have happened to me because of destiny. I mean, I went to another country, started all over again. All of this is took some good decisions, got some great people by my side. I met some great people in the U.S. who supported me through all of this. So people often ask would you like to live life the same way that has come to you? Well, I always think that it has to I made a lot of mistakes, but if I wouldn't have made that, this wouldn't have come through. But I was not the guy who took that pressure that much. I live in a joint family in India. So the culture is a little different there and I would have been easily tagged as a failure.
As we like to ask all of our guests, "If I just knew that, that would have been key, what would that have been?"
So I thought initially when we started working with and started Entegrity, I needed to have to visit every accounting firm and close them. So I used to travel a lot, go to all conferences for year. But then I met Michael Dell, another CPA. He proposed that I let him sell for me for x% commission. I said why not? It was a big mindset shift. So if I would have known that three or four years back, probably we would have been probably 2x what we are right now.
Just another example of getting out of your own way.
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