Financial Planner Life Podcast

This week Sam is joined by Keith Boyes, Managing Director at Spentwell. Keith has an extensive career in the financial profession, starting from Paraplanning and working his way up to a financial planner and now he’s running his own business. At one point his career took him over to Hong Kong working on expat financial advice and it was during this time in Hong Kong that he really learnt a lot abo...

This week Sam is joined by Nick Adamthwaite, Director of Masterplan Lending Advisers. This is an interesting conversation because Nick is under 30 years old and running his own business. With his youth comes ideas on how to do things differently within the profession and today he tells us what that means for his staff and clients. Nick thinks that age doesn’t matter as long as you can build trust,...

This week Sam is joined by Paul Bradley, Founder of Chiltern Hills Financial Planning. The focus of the conversation today is an interesting one, does money make you happy? According to Paul it’s not enough to be rich, it’s having a purpose that gets us all out of bed in the morning. Paul also dives into positive psychology and the way that we should be setting goals. Once a goal is achieved, then...

This week Elena is joined by Claire Barker, Marketing and Communications Director for Brooks Mcdonald. Claire is here to talk about Brooks Mcdonald’s exciting project called Female Folio, a network to support high net worth and affluent women on their investment journey. Women have more financial power than ever before, with more than 60% of the UK’s wealth expected to be in their hands by 2025. F...

This week Sam is joined by Natasha Percy Baxter from Percy Baxter Wealth Management. 18 months ago, Natasha reached out to the Financial Planner Life Podcast asking how she could get into the financial planning profession. Now she’s running her own Partner Practice for St. James’s Place, what a fantastic story! This self-employed route into the profession has worked really well for her and today N...

This week Sam is joined by Michelle Hoskin from Standards International Ltd, AKA Little Miss Woww! Michelle is dedicated to raising the international standards of the financial planning profession. She’s already responsible for the Paraplanner Standard certification, pioneering best practice among personal financial planners in the UK and overseas. Today the conversation is focusing on Michelle’s...

This week Elena is joined by Laura Dean, Operations and Marketing Director of Balance Wealth Planning. Laura shares her career journey with us and gives us some great advice on how you can navigate different career paths within the financial profession. In particular she focuses on marketing and operational roles. Laura gives us an insight into what these roles entail, who would be a good fit for...

This week Elena is joined by Dan Martin, Director and Chartered Independent Financial Planner at MDM Wealth LTD. Dan talks us through his impressive (and quick!) career journey from a semi-professional rugby player, pulling pints in a pub, to company director. Dan is certainly in the younger demographic of financial professionals but he tells us how this hasn’t held him back, in fact, he tells us...

This week Sam is joined by Danielle Arnold, head of Paraplanning for Bespoke Wealth Limited. Danielle disproves the myth that Paraplanners are introverts. She is most certainly not an introvert, in fact, before she started her career in financial planning, she was training to be a helicopter pilot! Danielle shares with us why it’s important for a Paraplanner to work alongside a good financial advi...

This week Sam is joined by Tom Skinner, co-founder and financial planning director for Barnaby Cecil. Today Tom shares his career journey and tells us why being employed didn’t work for him at all. He has now set up his own firm which allows him to put family time first. What is interesting is the way he went about building his business, surrounding himself with people who can do things better tha...

This week Sam is joined by Susie Laws, co-owner and director of Fiducia Wealth Management. Susie is a Chartered Financial Planner, a fellow of the PFS and she is also a 2 x Financial Adviser of The Year winner (East Anglia and the Midlands) in the Women in Financial Advice Awards, wow! Today we talk about her career journey, from Paraplanner to Co-Owner of her own firm. Susie also shares the bigge...

This week Sam is joined by financial protection adviser Adrian Benjamin. He helps property investors protect themselves and their families financially, allowing them to pass on generational wealth. We talk about why this protection is often overlooked, why it’s so important, the role of a financial protection adviser and how it can be a stepping stone into other areas of the financial profession....

This week Ali is joined by Dan Knott from Dan Does Mortgages. We chat about Dan’s mortgage broker career and how social media has played a key role. In the early days Dan realised that the business leads he was being provided with were of low quality so he decided to take matters into his own hands. ‘Dan Does Mortgages’ on social media was born and now this is where he sources 100% of his business...

This week Sam is joined by superhero Kate Jayden. Kate is running a marathon a day for 100 days straight! This incredible challenge is all in aid of UK food & hygiene poverty as well as encouraging people to support refugees. In fact, the distance of her 100 marathons is 2600 miles, the same distance that a Syrian refugee must travel between Aleppo and Dover. When Kate isn't saving the wo...

This week Elena is joined by Sam Robinson, Director of Almond Financial Ltd. Sam proves that you don’t need to be a high performer at school in order to be a successful financial planner. If you have the gift of people skills then the sky’s the limit in this profession. In this episode Sam shares his unusual but fascinating career journey, from chef to financial planning firm director. Sam & E...

This week we have a new podcast host! Charlie Scott is joining the team and today she is speaking with Yan Swiderski, Executive Trustee & Co Founder of the Global Returns Project. We all understand that wealth management needs to adapt to the climate and nature crisis. Sustainable investing has offered a powerful first step in that process. Now it's time for a true breakthrough. Symbiotic...

This week Sam is joined by Natalie Cooke, a Paraplanner from Iron Market, to chat about her career journey from an administration role to Paraplanning. More importantly we talk about self-confidence and self-belief. How much of that do you need to get ahead in the financial planning profession? Do you have confidence in your employer to support you on your career journey and do they have a persona...

This week Sam is joined by Chris Burke, Partner at The Spectrum IFA Group, based in their Barcelona office. Before making the brave decision to head to Spain Chris had no experience in financial planning or speaking Spanish! The odds were against him and he was in for a tough start to his new life abroad. Chris is very honest with us today, he shares his career journey, the highs and lows of his l...

This week Sam is joined by Robert Boland, Chartered Financial Planner for Cotswold Independent Financial Services. Robert is also an education outreach ambassador at the Personal Finance Society (PFS) and he shares some of the fantastic work that he is doing to champion the profession and educate the next generation. Robert talks about the highs and lows of his 16-year career in financial services...

This week Sam is joined by Shannon Fox, education and training coordinator at Lowes Financial Management. Whilst going through her own financial planning exams it dawned on Shannon that there should be more support for candidates. In 2020 Shannon co-led the launch of the Lowes Financial Academy who have an impressive 85% pass rate on getting candidates through the R0 exams at the first time of ask...

Happy New Year from all of us here at the Financial Planner Life podcast. This week Sam is joined by Lisa Tipton, director of financial planning at New World Financial Group. Lisa shares her career path with us, from Paraplanning, to compliance, to now running her own firm. This is an interesting one because both Lisa and her business partner have a compliance background rather than a client-facin...

This week Sam is joined by Nick Elston to talk about mental health engagement. Nick is a high-profile inspirational speaker on mental health and personal development in the corporate space. He works with the world's leading organisations such as AMEX & The BBC, supporting mental health strategies within the workforce. It’s fine for big organisations to have mental health initiatives but w...

This week Sam is joined by Anthony Villis, MD of First Wealth, a Chartered Financial Planning Firm of the year 2021/22. Anthony tells us why he invests so heavily in the wellbeing of his staff and why he chose to make his firm a B Corporation certified business. He explains how this has helped his staff, local community and the environment. Anthony also knows his tech; he shares some interesting v...

This week Elena is joined by Leigh Dunkley, Financial Wellbeing lead at Schroders Personal Wealth. Did you know that 47% of UK adults are regularly stressed about their finances, that’s almost half of the population and that’s why Leigh is here to talk about the ‘taboo’ topic of money! Leigh explains why we should consider our financial wellbeing in the same way as we do our physical and mental he...

This week Sam is joined by Will Rainey who runs a financial education website called BlueTreeSavings.com. Will is taking a break from his corporate investment career and enjoying an adventure in Vietnam with his young family. Whilst in Vietnam he has written a fun financial education book for children, Grandpa’s Fortune Fables. It’s not just kids who will benefit from this book, parents may also l...