Meet An Accountant Who Builds Wealth

Welcome to the very first episode of the My Accounting Advantage podcast.

This episode is all about getting to know the person behind the mic, Mai Harris. 

Mai shares with us her journey, how she ended up Director and Principal Accountant of My Accounting Advantage, and why she’s so passionate about helping people do more with their money than just survive tax time.

You’ll hear about Mai’s approach to accounting, why she believes proactive advice makes such a difference, and what really matters to her when working with clients. This down‑to‑earth introduction sets the tone for the conversations to come – practical, honest, and focused on building long‑term wealth, not just ticking boxes.

In this episode, Mai talks about:

• How she got started in accounting and the experiences that shaped her career
• Why she believes accounting should be about planning ahead, not just looking backwards
• Her approach to working with clients and what she values most in those relationships
• The difference between compliance‑only accounting and proactive, wealth‑focused advice
• How AI can boost efficiency without replacing human judgment – and where it can go so wrong.
• Why education, clarity, and asking the right questions are so important
• What listeners can expect from future episodes of the podcast

Stay tuned for weekly episodes where Mai shares practical insights and real conversations designed to expand your knowledge and help you build long‑term wealth with confidence.

Learn more about My Accounting Advantage

Transcript

Welcome And Podcast Roadmap

Speaker 1 0:02

Hello and welcome to episode one of the podcast My Accounting Advantage featuring Mai Harris. This program has been created for all small, medium, large businesses who need advice. They need tax experts to understand the opportunities that are available in today's marketplace. She joins us, the star of our show, Mai. Welcome aboard.

Speaker 0:28

Thank you, Lee, and welcome to all our audience.

Speaker 1 0:32

Episode one, how exciting. What can our listeners expect from our weekly podcast coming out about business ownership?

Speaker 0:40

Yes, you're going to be learning a lot about, you know, how to grow your business. And what are the tools and structures that are out there that you really should know about in order to enhance your financial position? And also on top of that, you will provide you with the latest, you know, tax updates and also the important topics about accounting, tax, and financials that you should know.

Who Mai Helps And How

Speaker 1 1:10

And we've got some great episodes planned for the future. I was looking at the future sessions today and self-managed super funds, bucket accounts, tax return on investment, absolutely everything that people just don't know about. But right now they don't know about you, Mai. Take us into your business and what your company does.

Speaker 1:31

Yes. So my business, My Accounting Advantage is um all about accounting and taxation. We help small, medium-sized businesses and also provide, you know, structuring advice and also specialist property tax advice. We do compliance, but our strength comes from the detail, tailored financials and taxation planning that we do for our clients. That's what makes us different.

Speaker 1 2:07

Now, Mai, I've got to say, you're not your normal style accountant out there. You live a wonderful and incredible life. You're an entrepreneur, done very well in property and business. To have this big firm that you do. I just want to get into your story. How did you get into accounting?

Speaker 2:26

I got into accounting at a very young age of 18. So, I started off, believe it or not, coming to Australia when I was 13.

Speaker 1 2:38

From where?

Speaker 2:40

Thailand.

Speaker 1 2:41

From Thailand? You ran you landed here in Australia, and what happened?

Speaker 2:45

I came here to live with my mum, and I didn't know English. No, I didn't have very much English at all. And I don't speak any English. Very few words. So I got thrown into Morisset High School.

Speaker 1 3:00

Morisset High School on the Central Coast of New South Wales.

Speaker 3:04

Yeah, it's actually on Lake Macquarie. Back then I was the second Asian person in the school, so you can imagine. It was That was a tough time. It was tough. Yes, it was. But you, yeah, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, as always. So I graduated from high school. I was living in a humble suburb of Dora Creek in a two-bedroom fibro home with my mum. I said to her that, you know what, I think I really want to go to university and study accounting or marketing of some sort. Why accounting? I see that there's a lot of um accounting jobs. And back then on the in the newspaper, you back then there were newspaper, a real newspaper. These days you just go on seek. But yeah, um, there were a lot of accounting jobs that was advertising pages of it. And I thought, wow, that will provide me with stable employment opportunity, and also I might learn something. So that's why I chose to become an accountant.

Speaker 1 4:20

Did you have to move to Sydney? What did you do?

Speaker 4:23

I've moved from the Lake I'm I moved from Lake Macquarie to Gosford because I couldn't afford to actually move to Sydney. And I was lucky enough to obtain a trainee accountant position in Circular Quay. So I was commuting every day to Circular Quy whilst studying at night, University of Newcastle, Ourimbah. That was tricky because that's a big day. Yeah, it was very big day because I get on the train at 6.45. If I have to go to uni that night, I'll leave work at about four o'clock, rush back for a 6.30 uni session, and then yeah, I don't get home until after 10.

Building A 12-Person Firm

Speaker 1 5:16

That's a big day, but it worked out well for you. Where are you today with your own firm?

Speaker 5:22

With my firm today, we have a team of 12 and um we are very strong team. I dare say I have the A team because we can do anything for you from end-to-end accounting like and bookkeeping. And we have strong managers that are advising all of our clients. I oversees the whole operation myself and also provide regular advice to our clients. My main job is to provide clients with tax strategies, also wealth creation plan and how different structures can actually grow your business and minimize your taxes.

Why Small Business Feels Tougher

Speaker 1 6:10

Thank you for your background. And it's very important for people to know who's appearing on the program. Separate into your accountancy firm, you've also invested well in property, commercial real estate, and built quite a portfolio there from your knowledge of structures, tax, finances, and you see all these business owners. And just for the record, I'm one of your clients as well. You are actually my accountant. What's your observation of small business today, of where they are, what they're not even paying attention to? There's so much going on in the business world. Hence, we'll be covering all these topics within our podcast. But what's your first observation of what's going on out there in the business world?

Speaker 6:51

Well, business are getting tougher and tougher because, you know, you have more options out there. Um, back in my days when I first started as a young accountant, you know, we didn't have the technology that we have now. We don't have online businesses. So business was very good, very strong. People don't have to work that hard to gain more clients because they're restricted to the logistic of things. Now these days, they can go overseas and they can talk to anyone overseas for half the price. And that's where I'm seeing, you know, that the trend of business. If you don't pivot and you don't look at implementing new technology and get with the program, well then you're gonna be left behind.

Speaker 1 7:46

Couldn't agree more. And one of the challenges of business is people don't keep up to date with things that are available and they're quite shocked when they see how other people are operating. The challenge is the business fixes problems with labor rather than I don't want to jump into AI just for the sake of AI, but AI used correctly is allowing the people we've got to be more effective. Now, there's a big thing out there at the moment that AI is replacing everyone's jobs and so forth. It's actually not quite correct. AI is allowing us the humans to get more done so we don't have to hire four people who we can't afford to do the jobs that we can't get done. So the there is this point of human context that makes business work, but also human capacity. There's only so many things a person can remember before they're overwhelmed, whereas AI doesn't get overwhelmed, but it only reads words and numbers. It can't do what we do as humans.

Speaker 8:48

No, it cannot. So that's why to me it's very important to have good relationships with my clients and understand their needs. Everyone's different. Everyone needs and wants are not the same. So having that human element and un understanding helps. Whilst AI can't do that for you, and also AI can't replace people entirely. I mean, repeatable functions, repeatable tasks, yes. To me, it helps a lot of businesses to become more efficient, save a lot of time, and unnecessary things can be done repeatedly by AI.

Speaker 1 9:33

Give me some examples where even in the accountancy world, you're looking at AI now to better improve your business.

Speaker 9:40

Wow, that's a really ongoing thing for us at the moment. So we're looking at developing AI CEO for a lot of businesses where we have our own framework and also not just AI CEO. It's basically your partner to that you can talk to and you can discuss your investment strategies and your financial goals, your investment goals with. It's stemming from our own framework and also my experience and knowledge and which can be quite tailored to personal personality and personal circumstances.

Speaker 1 10:32

This is so important, and I just want to make sure our listener understands with clarity what you just said. When AI first came out, I I was cranky because I'm an author, I've written books, and people can just access and do these things themselves. However, it wasn't till I learned AI can read my own work that I got excited. So, for example, I was doing an assignment and I I was doing this for a company and thought, I've done this before. And I'd already done this big, massive document somewhere else. So I loaded the document into AI and said, could you break this into the key learnings and frameworks to do the workbook? So it's searching my own work, creating the content to actually then deliver to the client versus the hallucination of AI. Explain that to us.

Speaker 11:24

Yes. So a lot of clients actually have reached out to me in the past few months and said, Oh, I've chat with ChatGPT, it gave me advice on my capital gains tax and also um it told me this. Can you just review this for me so that it's correct? And I can't help it but laugh at that request because I don't really check AI's work. But when I do, I look at it and AI didn't even consider that person's personal circumstances. It doesn't ask the right question to, you know, what happened? Did you actually make capital improvement on the property? It's just assume at whatever with the information that you provided. So it's still limited. It's not going to think for you. It's just using the information that you feed it. So if you're not actually feeding it with the right information because you don't know if that's right or not, the answer may not be completely correct. And you're just following something from someone's perspective.

Speaker 1 12:52

Yeah, and where did that information come from? That's the outside world, the cover band routine, versus if you are the artist, so in your company, you've done all the documents, you've got everything there, you've got everything how you want it to be done. So they'll be going to an app and saying, Hey my, I I've just had Lee Woodward call in, he's asked this question, what's a good way of handling that? An answer will come back, or it'll say, escalate up to you. That's incredible use of your knowledge across your own company.

Speaker 13:24

Yeah, definitely. It's a game changer because it's will provide you with the knowledge base that we have, and it's leveraging on the advice that I've been providing to clients for, you know, over seven years. So what it does is really provide you with real-world knowledge base, real-world experience, and also the right legislation and reference of the law that will be most accurate rather than, you know, you don't even know where the where the information came from.

Speaker 1 14:03

This is so exciting. Even us recording today. So we're doing this weekly podcast into the future. We've got all these wonderful topics we'll be covering, but we're capturing your knowledge at this time, and you'll load that back into your knowledge base to say, this was the answer on capital gains tax. This is what a bucket company is. These topics are so exciting. Will your end customer have access to that information or just your team at this point?

Speaker 14:30

At this point, we actually just building the knowledge base and building the AI agent at the um at the minute. So it will be released to our customer base in the next few months. So it's very exciting. Very exciting, exciting technology and very intelligent one, that is. But yes, good things don't come straight away. You can't build Rome in one day. So that is coming.

Teaching Financial Literacy In Schools

Speaker 1 14:59

Absolutely amazing. Now, my we're going to discuss some of the topics coming up in the next few weeks because today's day one, episode one. We're meeting you, understanding that this business help is available for small, medium, and large businesses, and having that opportunity to get your knowledge on that, people will profit from that knowledge. However, just before I jump into those sexy topics, there is another end game for you in doing this podcast and doing this work. What is it you want to bring into the high schools? What's the work you want to do there?

Speaker 15:33

Lee, that is my passion. So when I speak to many clients in the past few years and solving lots of financial problems, you know, I always think, what if we have a program in high school to teach proper financial literacy? And I'm not quite sure why we don't have that now. Or maybe we have, but it's not on a larger scale that every high school has offered that program to their young students. Because many high school students after they graduated, when they come out of school, they don't really understand what's happening financially in the real world. And if their parents are in the same boat where they're not savvy with money and they don't understand how importance of budgeting is or having savings for rainy day, well, they're not gonna know any better. So knowledge is power, especially for young people, teenagers, young adults to understand and have that firm base as soon as you know they get into workforce, as soon as they turn 18, preparing to enter the workforce in order to manage their own money, to be self-sufficient and not relying on, you know, our social security and have work ethics. So my passion project in the future, I'm hoping to start a not-for-profit organization in the next five years to provide the financial literacy program to, you know, high schools and provide that base for our young young adults.

Speaker 1 17:38

How powerful the kids are watching repeated behavior from their parents who maybe didn't invest, didn't know what to do, don't know what a bucket company is, or a self-managed super fund, or all the things we'll be speaking about, but you're a good example of breaking the chain yourself. Like you weren't in a position to do what you've done today, but you got yourself into a position through education, graduation, and doing what you've done. So to give back that way is pretty powerful.

Buying A First Home Young

Speaker 18:07

Yeah, no, thanks, Lee. I think, yeah, it's funny is they they don't know bucket companies or a self-managed super fund. Yeah, they probably don't need to know all of that yet. But yeah, um, I think at the minimum they should be able to just manage the monthly budget and their weekly budgets and know what to do um, you know, with the money that they've earned. And usually it's not that much to start off with. Any knowledge would help them manage that money well. That would be good. And understand that you don't need to have a lot of money to make a lot of money in the future. You just gotta start somewhere. I learned that when I was 19 and I was paying rent. I could only afford, you know, like back then it was $150 a week, and I was living in the back of Gosford in Gertrude Street. If you don't know Gertrude Street, it's a very interesting place. Oh, it's uh it was back then, you know, there's no high rises, and you get a little bit scared um walking through the street at night, especially, you know, getting off the train in the dark and walking along that road. But anyway, I got through it, but I didn't want to live there for very long. So I left home and rented the apartment in Gertrude Street at the age of 18, lived there for a year and said to my boyfriend now husband, that no, that's it. I really want to buy a house. You should see his face. He looked at me and went, How? And um, because at that point we managed to save $10,000, which was like huge money for us because we didn't earn a lot of money. And he said, We only have $10,000. And I said, No, I think I can I can work this. So I went out and looked for a mortgage broker that would get us a loan with um 5% deposit. And back then you can as a first home buyer as well. And and yeah, there's no first home buyer exemptions or anything back then. This was in, you know, the year 2000. Um, yeah, we got an approval for $150,000. And that we bought our first home in Wyoming for $155,000, and I was all of 19, and my husband was 21.

Speaker 1 20:48

Wow. And then in the beautiful part of real estate, God bless it, it goes up in value, that one sells, and then the empire starts.

Speaker 20:57

Yes, so we spent every waking moment renovating that house. It had no driveway. And you walk in, if you can imagine, we go towards the kitchen. And um what I did, I gently push on this kitchen and the whole thing just went collapse.

Speaker 1 21:20

Wow.

Speaker 21:21

Yeah. And well, it was very cheap. Walk into the bedrooms, there were no carpets in the bedroom, just concrete, and there were no tiles in the bathroom. There were no hot water. So it was fun trying to renovate that house. So and we did what we could and finally put driveway in, you know, with you know, what were money that we could save. And at one point, you know, we when we first bought the house, we only had six hundred dollars left in our bank account, and that has to last. For like two weeks.

Upcoming Topics And Farewell

Speaker 1 22:02

But what a great accountancy moment. It's force saving. Yes. There's no cost of labour because you're putting your love, sweat, and tears into it. And I hope all young people listening to this realise that's where it starts. Yeah. And unfortunately today we've got people saying, Oh, but I don't want to buy an apartment. I don't want to buy this. I want that. And there's a very big I want that moment, but you've got to start and get into the market somewhere. That's right. Mike, this podcast is going to be so exciting. When this first came about, as a possibly being producer with you to get your knowledge out to the marketplace, it just suddenly hit me of Craig the Concreter and Liam the Gyprocker and all these people I know who are great people trying to run their small little business, but they don't have access to the knowledge. And just the one trigger could get them to reach out and get the right advice. What's some of our topics we'll be covering in the next few weeks?

Speaker 22:55

Wow, we've got a lot of interesting topics coming up. So it's the second topic is about tax planning and how important it is to understand how to minimize your tax and plan because it can really make a difference. And then we also will be talking about payday super, which is the new superannuation form.

Speaker 1 23:20

That's scary , payday super. Everyone needs to know about that one.

Speaker 23:24

Definitely. That one you need to be well prepared for and we'll tell you how. And we also will be talking about structures. What are the trading structures out there that can help you grow your business, save tax, and also build up your wealth? And fifth one is about return on investment and how you can measure uh return on investment on the cash that you spend. That's right. The cash that you spend should have return on investment attached to it.

Speaker 1 24:02

Absolutely amazing. Well, episode one of the podcast is out. This was it. We got to understand who you are, what you've done, and where we're going. And then throughout these weeks, we're going to bring excellent short, sharp snack knowledge per topic that people can profit from that knowledge and stay out of the potholes that happen in business today. Everyone needs help. Mai Harris, thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you next week.

Speaker 24:30

Thank you, Lee. See you next podcast.