As a business we’re currently growing.  We’ve been lucky enough to be given a number of opportunities which provide us the chance to do so.

We’re in a position where we building our support team and looking to recruit a couple of additional financial planners by the end of the year.

Business Growth can bring ‘growth challenges’ in any business.  For us it’s been firmly about ensuring the business grows in the right way.  However fundamentally, and this is something I’ve had to learn along the way..

A business like ours is only as good as one thing.  It’s people.

I’m a firm believer in admitting when I make mistakes and when it comes to engineering growth in the early days of the business I made some fundamental mistakes when it came to attempting to build and scale the business.

I built a small team who were all really nice, but didn’t share the values, vision, motivation and enthusiasm I have for building a different kind of financial planning business.

A business where service and the relationship with our clients come first.  

A business that cares.  

A business where individuals understand the fundamental difference they can make to both their private and corporate clients lives.

Although I’ve made mistakes over the last couple years I’ve learned a massive amount from these experiences.  These experiences have and will continue to inform our decisions moving forward.  We’ve also been lucky enough to be able to grow and develop as a business despite mistakes being made.

However the individuals who were involved in the business in the early days are now not. They have gone on to opportunities better suited to them and I wish them all the luck in the world.  It was the right decision for all of them and for us as a business.

Although I would have liked to avoid the pain I’ve gone through (both personally and as a business) during this period maybe I needed an experience to highlight an important lesson I needed to learn as a business owner…

If you run a service business, robust systems and processes are fundamentally important but without the right people your business isn’t right.  Your people ARE your business.

I’m incredibly passionate (if you asked Cassie, my wife, she might say obsessed!) about ensuring our business continues to grow, develop and continue to develop on our early successes.

I understand now, more than ever, that that’s more about building the right team (and not just a team) to help me do this.

Therefore when it comes to the support team we build, the advisers we choose to work with and any external partners we build relationships with we’re now try incredibly hard to ensure that the ‘fit’ is as right as can be.

Also, we are in this for the long term.  This allows us to make decisions not designed to be ‘quick wins’ but decisions which mean that we’re building a sustainable business for the ages.

Not a ‘flash in the pan’.  A brand which our clients and our partners know stands for high standards, approachability and expertise.  We’re on track to achieve this but the business is in it’s early years and there’s plenty more work to do.  However that’s fine…

…I know the journey’s going to be a lot of fun.