Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / She Spent 10 Years in Law Before Taking a HUGE Pay Cut To Become a Financial Planner | Imogen Winfield

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She Spent 10 Years in Law Before Taking a HUGE Pay Cut To Become a Financial Planner | Imogen Winfield · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: And today on the Financial Planner Life podcast, we welcome Imogen.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: She is at City Gate Financial Planning.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: And she talks about a career change from litigation law, where she took an 84% pay cut to work within financial planning.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we're going to understand why she did that and what the opportunities are in front of her to be delivering advice to the legal profession.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: You're going to love this.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, Imogen, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life Podcast.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good, thank you.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Very well.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Busy day.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Lots of uh lots of guests today with some really interesting stories, I think.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Standout one for me today was Louis Atkins, who I told you about on our pre-podcast chat.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: He really went into detail about LinkedIn, how to best use that in a specific niche.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about law and we talked about a guest that I had in the podcast before that's doubled down on um contacting lawyers through LinkedIn, has built his whole brand around it, and he's done a million a month for the last 12 months.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: So 12 million in AUM through his LinkedIn strategy.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's an episode that's going to be really, really useful for a lot of financial planners because they don't quite know yet how to use LinkedIn efficiently.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's one for you because your background is law, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, true.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, tell us a little bit about your background first, because now you work within financial planning at Citigate Financial Planning, which is with Guy Skinner, who's a really good friend of mine, and he's also been a guest on the podcast.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us a little bit about your background and then your journey into financial planning.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So um so I studied law at university um with the intention of becoming a lawyer, and then I did go on and um yeah, got a training contract at a US law firm.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: It really felt like my dream job at the time, worked really hard to get there, and then worked really hard for a long time.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, basically the whole time I was in law, which was 10 years in total.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then yeah, I eventually decided, um, it wasn't it wasn't a quick decision, but gradually over a long period of time, I sort of decided I was going to to leave the firm I was at and just leave working in a law firm altogether.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't plan on necessarily leaving, well, I didn't plan on leaving law, um, but I just thought I have to get out of here and take a break and just have a bit of time and headspace to figure out actually what's what's next and what do I want to spend my time doing, what I want my life to look like.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, I kind of set myself a deadline really of 10 years.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and once that once that point approached, I handed my notice and took a career break, not really knowing how long it would be, um, but kind of thought around six to twelve months.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it ended up being five months.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it ended with with me joining Citigate as an operations manager initially, then moved into a paraplanner role, and now I'm kind of almost at the point of being signed off as an advisor.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Love it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna get into the detail about what you're doing at the moment at Citigate.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: But what I think would be super interesting is is it's just looking into your career within law.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, a lot of people go into law, um, and statistically, quite a lot of people leave.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I'm very interested to get into your journey really.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what's it like working in law and what did you specialise in?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And what was it like day to day?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: And are there pressures like we see on television, for example?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: People work in pulling all nighters and whatnot.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: So what did you specialise when you worked in law then?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um commercial disputes and investigations with a bit of a focus on financial services.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially um most of our clients were big institutional uh yeah, big institutional investors or um hedge funds, sometimes just really, really ultra high net worth individuals um with all like all variety of disputes um against each other.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and also we did um FCA investigations and things like that.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: So how long you did and you did that for the full 10 years that you were in law?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, pretty much.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the first two years was a training contract, so you sort of move around uh across the different departments and then ultimately I qualified into litigation.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: So most people when they get into law, they have this aspiration or the career pathway leads into becoming a partner.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: The prospect of becoming a partner in litigation, did that uh did that sort of um excite you or did it terrify you?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I wasn't really thinking that far ahead at the time.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was very much like I knew from the beginning it was very much the expect expected route of progression.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's they said, you know, they're looking to recruit people with a view to them becoming partners longer term.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I was just so focused on sort of what I was doing there and then.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't giving it too much thought as to the future, but I did think quite early on where I did quite I did really question whether that was gonna be whether it was gonna be sustainable for me to to stay working within a law firm.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: So when you say sustainable, what was it that made you feel like it wasn't gonna be sustainable to work in law?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um just the commitment and the, you know, there is a kind of you do sort of sign up to being on call 24-7 effectively.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I knew what I was getting myself into and I was really happy to to work as hard as I needed to.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um yeah, I think eventually after a while it starts to take its toll, and you just I just wanted what I wanted to be able to just enjoy like the simple things in life like getting good night's sleep, um, being able to eat dinner at at home, um having weekends to actually do what I wanted to rather than just constantly catching up with work and things.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, I also I think maybe there's a bit of a perception sometimes that you work really hard to get to partner and then you can just take your foot off the gas and relax and enjoy it all.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't, you know, it's not like that at all from what I saw.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's very much like you work really hard to get there and then you work probably even harder once you're there.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um there's a lot of expectation and pressure to to you know deliver everything that's that you've promised or that's expected of you.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really I think, yeah, that didn't just didn't really pi appeal to me.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: So when people in law, um in a career within law like you were, okay, in the the the destination was becoming a partner, is that becoming a partner underneath the firm that you're part of?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: So you become like a a subsidiary or an AR of that law firm, or is it you become um you go set up your own partnership somewhere else?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: How does that work?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's within the the law firm.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as there's kind of varying models, some some people will be employed partners often to start off with, and then maybe move to sort of self-employed.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, you effectively equity partners will have like a stake in the in the partnership.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you you kind of buy into it and then yeah, you're you're remunerated by taking drawings from the partnership.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's different, it's very different, I guess, from being employed as a as an associate.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it sounds to me like when someone's working towards a covenant partner, it's probably a perfect time to actually look at a financial plan.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I would say it even earlier to be honest, particularly with um salaries being what they are these days.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people, when they are first qualifying, they'll be on six figures already.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it's kind of be ideally a before then that you might um get some advice and you can start, you know, optimizing for tax efficiency and so on, and just putting in place good habits early on um that will compound over time and also being careful not to sort of inflate your lifestyle too much.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you kind of want to enjoy the rewards to some extent, but I think sometimes you can maybe just spend money without necessarily thinking too much about it.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think people get trapped in that lifestyle?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think so, yeah.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's easy to.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Depends what you commit to and what your life looks like.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I think, you know, if you're someone that's taking taking on a massive mortgage and um you've got children in private school and things like that, those are obviously long-term commitments that you you do need to kind of maintain a certain base level of income to satisfy.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: Having things as well in place.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you have children and you work within law or something, you've got to consider if you are working incredibly long hours, you know, what you know, how how are you picking the kids up, how are you taking them to school or you know, feeding their dinner in the evening when you've got a huge amount of pressure on you.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I was thinking to lots of people that have worked in law and and have and have gotten anemies and whatnot, and you know, nothing against that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: But a few that I know, especially with investment banking as well, do regret that a lot, you know, and they look at it and they think, God, you know, I'm a bit of a I'm a I'm a I'm a bit of a hamster on a wheel, you know.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: And once you're once your outgoings are up at that level and you have to maintain it, it's very, very difficult to step off of it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: But you did, you did that really bravely.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: You you you moved away from something that was pretty much in front of you, and you would have financially always been very well off, you know, without you told me what you were earning when you were you were in um in law.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to step away from that, knowing that you don't know what you're gonna go into next, and if it's ever gonna be the level of earnings that you had or could achieve that was just around the corner, that was a big old risk for you, wasn't it?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess so.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I didn't really think of it too much like a risk at the time.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I well, I mean, I knew it was a risk, but I kind of leaned into taking it.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: I really wanted, got to the point where I just really wanted to take a risk and just to kind of force a big change on myself.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just wanted life to look very different from how it did at the time and without without really knowing too much what that looked like.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: So, what was your motivator at that point then?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: What was your motivator for making your life different from what it was like?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Give us an example of the type of you know hours you were working or the commitment that you were putting into that and that you didn't want that anymore.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: What what did it look like?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard, really hard to pin down to one point um in time because it yeah, it's something that I always kind of had in the back of my mind for as long as I can remember thinking back to it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: But um, and you know, no day was the same.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It very much varied in terms of what things look like day to day, week to week, etc.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for me it could really just come down to wanting to swap money for time.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I remember thinking to myself, if I if there was a way I could do this two days a week, that'd be perfect.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't really work like that in those kind of jobs.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um But yeah, I just was getting a bit frustrated.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking around at my friends who were not in law, and they and I was quite envious of what their lives looked like.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just quite simple.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but just they were in control of their time.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's that was the main thing for me in the end.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Give me some example of those things, like you know, when you look at that, your friends, and their life was quite simple.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: What was it about their life that you kind of looked at and thought, God, I want that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: I want that simplicity.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was just silly things.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'd meet up with them maybe on the Saturday, and then you'd be talking about what everyone's doing the next day, and I'd be I'd have like 10 hours of work to do or something.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that would the Saturday will be like my day, day off or whatever.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but and then people would be like, Oh, we're gonna go for a for a roast and walk the dog or you know, a barbecue or whatever it is, which is just simple things, and I thought, oh, that'd be so nice to have a whole weekend off.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, I think some of that was of my own making because I I used to like having evening, like finishing at a reasonable time within the week.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of chose to to to stop earlier in the week and just catch up with whatever I needed to do at the weekend.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas yeah, one of my friends um would do it the other way around.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: But what was normal to stop in the evening when you're in law?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: What's the time?
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't there was never any, it was not like anybody was kind of expecting you to sign off at a particular time.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: It really just depends on what you were doing and when it needed to be done.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: But also um you'd have like billable hours that you had to to meet, and I think it was roughly 40 a week if you were gonna kind of average out over the whole year taking into account holidays and things, you'd need to bill maybe 40 hours a week, but there'd also be a whole load of other stuff that was part of your job that wasn't billable um outside of all that that you needed to to factor in.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes you'd have a week or two, maybe there wasn't a lot of work going around, and so you couldn't get to 40 hours, and then the the number that you needed to hit would be creeping up.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, very much it depended on all sorts of things.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I remember once um towards the end, I think it was looking quite difficult um after a quiet summer, and I was thinking, oh, I need I'm gonna am I gonna have enough hours to get the bonus?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I'd calculated if I if I did something like I think it was 15 hours a day for three for three and a half months, I could do it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, I did manage to do it, it was fine.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, there was a lot of calculations required along the way.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you've got to do 40 hours billable, but there's actually work on top of that is it's it's it's really pushing, pushing to the limit and and and fair play for doing that and maintaining that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: And you obviously had a lot of success.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes like it's worth noting, isn't it, that you can do that as a human being and you can apply yourself and be flat out and be structured.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: But as you rightly pointed out earlier, you're exchanging your time, aren't you?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right, you're exchanging your time for money.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: Why why financial planning?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: How did that come about then?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're obviously litigation, you're working with some of the investment houses, etc.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: But where did financial planning come from?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how how did you end up in it?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so I didn't really, I'd never really heard about financial planning until I took this career black career break.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I lined up a few things to do with my time when I was off just to make sure that I was using it well.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um I saw I saw uh an advert or something for a career change course, and I thought, I'm not actually planning on properly changing career, but um at that time when I left law, I was thinking I would work, I'd look at working within law still but flexibly as a consultant, so maybe work um three months on a project and then have a month off or something kind of thing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, anyway, I signed up to do a career change course.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: I thought maybe long longer term that would be something that would be useful.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, really just threw myself into it because I had all the all the time.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did all of the kind of exercises and tasks that they uh set for us to do.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of them was just to line up as many kind of one-on-one informational chats with people in all sorts of different roles and industries, um, just as different as possible from what you were doing before.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you had to kind of pick people that were, it was a mix of people that you knew already, people who you didn't know at all, and then people who you knew of through someone else.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so um one of the people that I knew of through someone else was was Guy.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um he'd delivered a webinar um on a previous coaching course I'd done, which was for lawyers, um, and it was just aimed at kind of helping people to think about what they wanted to be, what they want their lives to look like.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he was giving examples of how he'd um helped, I think he said something along the lines of um, you know, a lot of our a lot of a lot of our clients um, you know, are lawyers at US firms and they're earning huge amounts of money, but they're frustrated about not have like not having the time and that they're like they're not enjoying their life as much as they should, or something along those lines.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time that really spoke to me.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um kind of felt like it described me.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but yeah, he was talking about the he was talking about financial planning as um as a tool to work out, you know, what's your number when like what's enough for you to live the life that you want to live, rather than just sort of making as much money as you can for the sake of it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and also not just about you know running out of money.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was the first time I'd heard anyone talk about financial advice in that way.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'd previously had um uh an interaction with a financial advisor that felt very sales-y, um where they'd kind of pitched to me and um yeah, this was really refreshing.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I need to find find out more about that.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I thought I'll speak to him at some point when I figured out my next steps.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I yeah, I ended up having an informational chat with him, and then a guy was giving me lots of examples about how financial planning can really impact on the lives of everyday people.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, things like some like a parent has died, and the children are actually financially going to be okay because they had the right protection in place, um, or examples of clients that had gone in there asking, you know, how many more years do I need to work before I can retire?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And actually we were able to, or I was able to say you can retire next week, or um, you can work part-time, you don't actually need to earn this amount of money, and I found that just really refreshing.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, after that I kind of just went away and tried to find out as much as I could about financial planning because it really felt like a career where you could really make a difference to people and something with a bit more purpose, I think, than I had been feeling in in law.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, what you said about certain people within law perhaps earning decent levels of money but not feeling fulfilled in life.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: And it touched a nerve with you.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a commu is that is that a conversation that happens within the legal profession?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Do they talk to each other about burnout or um time for money or overworking?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_02: Is there is there a conversation within legal or is there a stiff upper lip and we don't talk about that type of thing?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I'm not sure.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't really remember talking to people about it.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um it kind of just sucked it up and got on with it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I knew, like I say, I knew what I was signing up for when I went into went into law, um, but just went with it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean, there's definitely awareness around burnout and things like that.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: But it I then you identified with what you were saying and it kind of emotionally connected you to the proposition that he was talking about around what is enough.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um okay, excellent.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so that drew you into I'm always interested in how people get into financial planning.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I do think there's a lot of people that work in law, um in other professional services such as accountancy, that would probably step across into financial planning and absolutely smash it.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because it it's definitely an amazing training ground to understand the psychology of people, but also I think it also builds um a huge amount of resilience and process and structure, which is also needed within financial planning to be a success.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Was there anything about financial planning when you learnt about it that gave you a feeling that that it was more of a creative industry as opposed to something as rigid as law where um you know everything's quite specific?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Or am I getting that completely wrong?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is is law rigid or is it quite creative?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, did financial planning offer some form of I don't know, um Yeah, I suppose the word is creativity, like an environment that you could evolve in and try different things.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it probably varies um in within law, but definitely there's innovation and like you can be creative sometimes in the solutions you're delivering.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: But um Yeah, I mean, I haven't really thought about it too much in terms of creativity.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe from a marketing and business development angle, you can be quite creative.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um but also yeah, with the planning, I think every every client's plan looks completely different because their life and aspirations look different.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's yeah, maybe creative in that sense.
• 19:39
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• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: James's Place, Quilter, PLC, Hascot Lloyd, Foster Lenovo, and DeVere trust Redmill to keep their advisors and wider teams competent, compliant, and at the top of their game.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: So to book a free demo, get yourself to redmilladvance.com and they'll do the rest.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel like as well when you work in uh in the law side, litigation with quite wealthy individuals, that you're just uh helping very wealthy organizations?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: There was no, I don't know, intrinsic uh reward perhaps, or purpose driven towards making richer people richer or protecting, you know, big companies to I know there's there's a kind of I don't know, is it I don't think I would emotionally connect with that.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I don't know.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Was there an emotional connection to the work you were doing in law?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: And when you had it articulated to you in the sense of, well, actually I could take someone who's miserable over here, for instance, if you were looking at that market, and I could talk to them about what a plan could look like for them to live the version of the life that they actually want to live.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: Which comes back to that, what's enough?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think I was really thinking about it um back then in terms of you know, noticing whether there was an emotional connection.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: But no, I mean I I didn't think that there was.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: We did also do um pro bono work alongside all the billable stuff, and so maybe that fulfilled a bit of a bit of that from time to time where you're kind of helping the person, like the uh the day to day person, um, that can't afford legal advice and so on.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: But um but yeah, essentially they were like institutions with deep pockets and um people.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did I did feel like we were sometimes just helping rich people get richer and maybe it didn't make that much difference to them at the end of the day.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, you know, treating it like it was life and death.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And often these people didn't seem that fast.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: How many other how many other industries or professions or careers did you look at before you actually decided, yes, I'm going to go for financial planning?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, um, that's a good question.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I basically had I don't know how many of these informational chats, I felt like a lot, um, probably 30-ish.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, I'd kind of come up with a few different career themes while I was doing that course.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I spoke with somebody about psychology.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that was something that when I was at school, I was thinking about, did it for A-level, quite enjoyed it.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I spoke with all sorts of people in different industries and things.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, when I chose to go down the financial planning route, maybe I hadn't quite finished my analysis and I felt like I was uh taking a bit of a leap of faith, but I was happy to based on what I'd kind of heard about it so far, and also felt like the various different ideas that I'd identified as being of interest to me were all kind of slightly could slightly be wrapped up within financial planning because there's obviously a lot of behavioural psychology involved, um uh other things like one of one of my themes was around adventure and travel.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we're ultimately trying to help people do those kind of things in life, and yeah, I felt like um there was a lot of variety and just it seemed like a really meaningful career where you can can make a nice difference kind of from the get-go, really.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the whole psychology psychology of money is a very interesting thing.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Why we feel that we need money.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: What part does money play in our lives?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Our behaviours based on how we grew up with money.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's just so many factors that can kind of keep us a slave to money.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the interesting part as well, isn't it?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's the bit that I like about financial planning is that it doesn't matter how successful you are or how much money you've got, you can still have an anxiety or a trauma within you that's associated to money, right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: A fear, essentially.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the ability to sit someone down and actually get them to pause and say, What's enough for you, or what would you do if you had that money?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: Or where would you go?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: And actually start to ask those questions where it's like you probably could do that right now.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: So what would you do, or when would you like to do it by?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Opens people up to a whole new perspective on the next stage of their life.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: But it doesn't always have to be work and the dream that they might have could become a reality a lot quicker than they actually think.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, if we don't put it down into paper and into a plan, it's in our heads and we can create our own crazy world of where we think we're going.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think the worst thing um is the idea of the missed opportunities along the way where actually people didn't do all the things that they had dreamed of doing because either they didn't realise they had enough to do it or they didn't stop to think, do I actually need to be working this hard?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: So Guy Skinet did an exceptional job of selling the uh the the the courier within financial planning.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um you then decided to join the City Gate, and I've got to say, you took an 84% pay cut, and we're not gonna say how much you were earning, but I know it.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it's the biggest pay cut I think I've ever come across anybody joining the financial planning profession.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it must have been something you thought, this is what I want to do.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a good sign, which also brings in the psychology of money, right?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: The fact that you were willing to take such a large pay cut for the role.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's quite awesome.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um you went into financial planning then at Citigate Financial Planning.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: What was your first role?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: What were you doing?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I started as operations manager just because um I I think I went back to Guy um after that first conversation.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I went back a few weeks later with another question I had around exams and how you'd go about sort of getting qualified um as a financial advisor.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um he mentioned that they were recruiting for an operations manager um and that you know, if I was interested, I could interview for that and um with a view to becoming a uh financial planner later on.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really know what uh what that would involve day to day, so I did a bit of research, came across your podcast, listened to a couple of those episodes, it was very helpful.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I ended up um joining Citigate as an operations manager, and it was quite good because it gave me um a good grounding into like what the whole business looks like, what does the industry look like, um, and also what the process is, like um in terms of the advice process, how all the different roles within the business feeds into that.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it was quite a good one, I think.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good uh role for a career changer to come into because you're not necessarily having to s to start at the admin stage, which I think is often the kind of first entry role.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is the opportunity to bring whatever transferable skills you have into operations.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: I like it.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: And what were the transferable skills that you think were perfect for an operations role within financial planning that you had?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think the obvious one for me, um, coming from litigation background was project management, which I felt like that kind of sums up a lot of what I was doing before.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're just figuring out, you know, how to make things happen and then and then getting them done.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there were other things as well, like um I think when I put my CV together, um obviously it was fully law focused, but I was able to kind of distill it down into um things like marketing, human resources, recruitment, um tech, just various things that I'd got involved with along the way outside of the day-to-day in law.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, yeah, when you actually do that exercise, you probably don't realise until until then how many um skills you have that can be used elsewhere.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Was there a process you went through with that?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: When you did the Career Changes course, what did they teach you like a process?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was something called a skills audit tool.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um it had a whole list of all the skills you could imagine, really.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of had to rank your set your ability with that skill and then also the extent to which you enjoy using it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: The idea was try and find um things that you're good at that also that you enjoy that people will pay for.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_02: And how long did that take you to do something like that?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think I did it within 45 minutes.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: 45 minutes.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: When you did that within 45 minutes and you inventoried those skills, did it wake you up a little bit to the value that you had within you and that you'd learned within your career?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was obviously going in.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think at the point I did that, I can't even remember I wouldn't have known that it was before the Cityscape thing came up.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but yeah, I did that for um with a view to like the operations manager role and then um down the line as an advisor.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, certainly a lot of skills that you'd have um as a lawyer that'll be useful as a financial advisor as well.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: And now for those that don't know what an operations role is within financial planning, could you sort of just describe what you were doing and day-to-day duties?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: So if someone's got that coming up and they have the opportunity to walk into something like you did and perhaps start as operations, you could give them a bit of an insight.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: So some of the things you'd have loved to have known about it.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: And someone might be listening to this episode now and think, okay, perfect.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't wanted to know that.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: So would you give us a breakdown?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I felt like you could maybe sum it up by saying you're kind of almost man like managing slash running the day-to-day operations of the business, um, so that the the business owner can kind of get on and do what they need to do and what they're good at.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it is taking away all the things they don't want to be doing, like maybe um uh HR.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, obviously I came from legal background, I was doing uh uh handling employment contracts and things like that at the beginning.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, organized in interviews, um shortlisting candidates.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I organized a client event at one point.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was doing LinkedIn posts from the CityGate um LinkedIn page for a bit.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really get a lot of it was getting to grips with processes and IT.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we were we had an app, a client portal that we'd recently kind of um signed up to, but we weren't really utilising it and was trying to work out how we could increase client engagement and um yeah, build out the portal to be really um helpful to clients.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then internally also creating workflows and efficiencies.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, like I said, I worked with everyone in the team to figure out what the processes look like, and and then we were also refining, you know, how can we optimize these to deliver the best client service?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then I was running, we do level 10 meetings, um, which is kind of like an operational meeting to see what's working well in the business and are we on top of our um our goals for the for the quarter and the year and so on, um, and dealing with any issues that come up.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I was um kind of leading those with the rest of the team.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and even just like compliance bits and pieces as well, um the whole spectrum, really.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, brilliant.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's an interesting, it's an interesting area because it gives you a complete understanding of how to run a financial advice business.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's being a financial planner and sitting down with people and delivering advice, and a lot of financial planners accidentally become business owners, you know, and um, or they're manage owners, you know, they're they're you have to manage people, be a financial advisor and run the business.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: But I think they're all completely different skill sets.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, describing your skills and your background, if you walked into my business, I'd be like, oh my god, thank you.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, because you'd come in and you'd run everything for me, right?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: I have an idea, you say, Yeah, we can do that, we can't do that, or we need extra support.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I'll look into that, Sam, and we'll get it set up.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um you need like a kind of almost an executioner, somebody will get shit done.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think that's super important in a business, isn't it?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: Especially when someone's got great ideas and they want to chuck an idea at somebody or maybe start it and then pass on to somebody else.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it's quite a great place to actually start in financial planning.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Better, I personally think, than administration.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm starting to believe that administration is the wrong route for someone to start in, is my personal opinion.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: As AI becomes um more prevalent, I think admin is pretty much going to be the first one that's gonna go.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's power planning that will go or compliance at this point in time.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but like nothing's off the table, right?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I think when it comes into an operational side, you you you are literally running the business.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: You understand the model of the business.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a great starting point for anybody going into it.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, the traditional admin to power planner to financial planner, I don't think I personally don't think it's the right route.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because that seems to be the most common route by far, doesn't it?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's the one that people tell people to do.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've got a lot of people sitting in administration and power planning roles at the moment that are um really fitting of uh becoming financial planners because a lot of them go that route to become financial planners.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think as AI comes in and streamlined processes, save time, firms now should be looking directly at those people and saying, right, you're our next financial planners.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Or you're our um relationship managers.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: Start to move them into relationships where they're work, they're working with the clients, they're phoning the clients, they're speaking to clients, product providers, service providers.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: But any of that kind of administration should be put to one side.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: I also think sometimes the admin role can get mixed up because a lot of the time you are on the phone to product providers, service providers, you might be chasing clients up for information and all of that kind of stuff.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're sitting there just feeling it, you know, typing away.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but yeah, like maybe into like um more of a client experience role.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: So somebody's keeping hold of the client journey and everything.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um concierge type vibe.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: I quite like that.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, so operations, you stayed in that position for how long?
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it was only about four months in the end.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was meant to be in it for a year, but the opportunity to move into the power planner role came up quicker because um one of my colleagues went on paternity leave.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of jumped into that a few months later and um yeah, immediately started joining the guy and client meetings.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that was great.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, tell us a little bit about that then.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what did that uh teach you?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um I learned how to I learned like the whole process really in terms of um how to uh kind of construct a financial plan from scratch when we're um meeting somebody for the first time, um, hearing about their goals and aspirations, etc.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, going through the the fat find and working out what other information we need, making sense of it all.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then yeah, obviously just watching Guy deliver the advice and present the plans.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's been really invaluable.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of power planners don't necessarily get to sit in on the meetings, um, certainly from day one.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been great, actually.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there was obviously all the uh suitability report writing, which was uh less, less interesting but necessary.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's where I met you, wasn't it?
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: Because Guy was my guy's my financial planner and you were sat on the call with Guy as well.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um fantastic.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: So being involved in those client meetings, um, that's opened you up to the types of individuals that the the guy was working with in City Gate financial planning.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: Was a lot of the were a lot of the people that he worked with, works with um as clients.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: Are they from legal background?
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, quite a chunk of them are.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's tends to be mainly lawyers, business owners, and just what we call city professionals.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: So do you feel like from observing those client meetings that you are positioned to be, say, a key person of influence within that space as a financial planner?
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see yourself as a financial planner to the legal profession because you have that background and experience?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um you mean in law or Yeah.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: I could definitely relate to um to lawyers.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think that's something that you want to do in the future?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is that your niche, for example?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think about clients that you want to work with and or do you just want to work with everybody?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_02: Or is it actually no, I'm done with law a little bit.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: I want my No, no.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I would quite like to work with people that were in, or people that are in a similar position to where I kind of found myself when I was looking to get out from what I was doing.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: So not necessarily people looking to leave law altogether.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it doesn't necessarily need to be as dramatic a change as as what I did.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe just people who are they're working in law um and they're feeling like they're sort of trapped because they're earning whatever they're earning.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um maybe they think they need to carry on earning that, but they don't really know what um what to do instead.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily have, like I said before, I think you don't really have the the time and the headspace to properly think about it.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think I think for me, if I look back, um I think if I had had the benefit of what we do for our clients, I could have had a lot of peace of mind around it, we'll all be fine.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, don't need to earn anywhere near what I'm earning now.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I could have just enjoyed life a bit more, even you know, even if I was still still there for a few years, just knowing I'll be fine one day I can leave and do something else.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's kind of what I want to be able to deliver to people, I think just take away some of the anxiety.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: So when you were working in law, you didn't have a financial plan at the point where you thought you needed it.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: Did you have it at the end?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: And you even interesting.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, I was always always felt like I was quite good at um dealing with personal finance and things like that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, definitely I look back and there's things I could have done differently to to really optimise things better.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I I saved all of my bonuses and things like that, and I was in that privileged position that I could take a career break and I knew that I could um I'd be fine for a while.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um there wasn't like a rush to to find something new.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: But um no, I never actually had a pl a plan.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just had money set aside.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um but again, I didn't even have much of a plan for like how long I'm gonna make it last.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of like a savings um mindset as opposed to an investing mindset that what you invest is going to accumulate uh interest and potentially set you up in the future when you want to retire, right?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_02: And build a plan around that.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: So did you not uh so nobody okay, so I'm interested in this because now you're on the other side of the fence.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: If you could go if you could give financial planning advice to you back then, when would you how would you do it?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: How would you forget the plan then forget the financial advice, how would you approach someone like you back then to uh educate them on what a financial planner can actually do?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think I think the main thing is like it's gonna be different for everybody depending on what they you know what what their aspirations and circumstances look like.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I'd be seeking to kind of understand what what that is for for each person on an individual basis and then yeah, looking specifically at what we could deliver because I think that was the conversation I'd had with a financial advisor that had approached me was very it felt like it was very like out of the box and it was something that they probably thought would work for all lawyers and probably would work for a lot of them.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, I had always kind of seen um I always felt like my income was about to peak and then it was gonna go down for the like for the rest of my career.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not hopefully no completely um downwards line, but it was you know peaking.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas people talk about they show you, and this person actually showed me, you know, it's your income's gonna carry on going up and up and up and up, and I was just like, well, it's not.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: So actually that doesn't work for me.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I think it it really varies.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: So 53% of I think people who work in law or legal or or um lawyers, I think, of were women.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel like you'd have related, do you feel like if if a if a if a female financial planner came and saw you that had a background in law themselves and introduced themselves and their services, was there a high chance that you might have bought from them at that point?
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh maybe, maybe.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I think they would have I would have just needed to be needed to feel like they'd listened to what I'd said, they understood what I was yeah, what I wanted from life.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that whatever they were proposing was really tailored to me and not just something that they thought was good for most people.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: So where are we now then?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: So power planning?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing now?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um so now I'm kind of doing what we call internally, we call it the role of the shadow advisor.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm still very much um joining Guy in all of the all the meetings, but um we've split things out um in terms of how we operate now.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we have one team that deals with servicing and they do all the annual reviews and all the um client queries that come up in between that.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we have New Business, which is the side that I sit on with with Guy.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I'm or Guy normally does the very first meeting with the client.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then once they send back their fat find, I get involved and I start um building the financial plan, working out where you know where the gaps are.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I join it, join him for the what we call the discovery meeting, and then all the other meetings essentially.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I think Guy often explains it as I do all the work in the background, but he he presents the advice and it's it's obviously Guy's name on all the um suitability reports and so on.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then make sure that I basically make sure that um everything's kind of progressing smoothly um and we've got everything we need so that we can kind of get it all implemented.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then once that's done, I'll hand and the client over to the servicing team essentially.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, love it.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: And enjoying this journey are you going, are you going through the competent advisor sign-off process?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm very close to um I think I've got one more meeting to do that I'm doing tomorrow.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then hopefully I can be added onto the FCA register.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's a bunch more that I need to have um observed along the way.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, I have been doing that as well.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: You seem a very organized person, maybe.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_02: Have you got a plan for the next stage?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Are you a guy working on what that looks like?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: So once you get competent advisor, are you going out and winning your own clients?
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: Are you working with a 16 client bank?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: What's what's the plan?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: To be fair, we haven't really nailed down exactly what that looks like yet, but that's that's definitely going to be an element of of my role going forward.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I've got lots of ideas and things, and it's just been a case so far of getting all the work done and um getting this CAS thing sorted, and then I'll have much more of a focus on it going forward, definitely.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, love it.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to ask you, so you've become a mother in the last two years.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um becoming a mother as a financial within financial planning or becoming a mother-in-law, which one do you have for you?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I'm I'm very happy with my choice of career now, actually.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's um it's definitely very flexible, which massively helps.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just small things like, like I said, I've got the evenings and weekends free, which is great, but also um I can I can use like at the moment I'm using my annual leave to take Mondays off for a couple of months.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: I can spend like the day with my son.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then we we often finish early on a Friday, and we have what we call City Gate days, where we have one Friday off a month to do whatever, whatever it is we want to do, but quite often I'll use that for um revision or coursework, those kind of things.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but no, it's very it has been very flexible, particularly when when you know you suddenly have to drop things and go and p do the nursery pickup because there's a bug going around or something.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: Did you feel like that you know that might not have existed in law, for example?
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh people obviously do make it work.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've got lots of friends still in law and um all of them have got different sort of childcare arrangements.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah, I don't I don't know how I would have made it work for me.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I when I was younger, I felt like I could have had a bit more time with my dad.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: He had his own business and worked um kind of all the time.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew that that wasn't really gonna work for me when I when I had a child.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that was the driving force behind it then.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: Subconscious.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, possibly on a yeah, subconscious level.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_02: Look, thank you for sharing your journey.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of people that are moving, well considering moving from law into financial planning.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: And it's great to hear that you made that leap.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you did take a pay cut to do it.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna have to a lot of people because you're never gonna get the level of income straight away that you're used to getting if you're at the top of your game within the legal profession.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: However, what you do gain is your time, as we put it, you know, and well-being improves, hopefully.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's wonderful that you're working with Guy.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a big advocate and fan of Guy, uh, and he cares very deeply about people who work for him and um people getting good quality training, development, and mentorship as well.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it sounds like you've landed on your feet.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: My advice to you is niche down on what you're good at, which is your great understanding of law, great understanding of the career within that, different stages of it, and um double down and become a key person of influence, become the go-to financial planner for the legal profession.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's the way I would look at it.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: But listen, thank you so much for your journey today.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Really, really appreciate it and thanks for showing on the financial plan life.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, have me on.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers.