“Conducting orchestras and choirs taught me to keep a calm manner and provide clarity so that the performers can focus on their part while a lot is happening around them.”
Most evenings, you’ll find me in front of an orchestra or a choir somewhere in the North West. I’m a conductor and violinist, and I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. There’s something about standing in front of a group of people, controlling the tempo when a piece is constantly changing, and keeping everyone together that I genuinely love.
It turns out it’s not a bad description of what I do for a living, either.
I started my career as a secondary school teacher. I’d always wanted to help people, and teaching felt like the most direct way to do it. But after a few years, I realised it wasn’t quite right for me. At 30, I made the leap, retrained, sat new qualifications, and changed careers entirely. That was 20 years ago. I’ve not looked back.
It helped, in hindsight, that I started in financial advice not long before the 2008 crisis. You learn fast in a market like that. You learn that when clients want to hide is exactly when you can’t, and that holding someone steady through a difficult conversation – rather than disappearing from it – is half the job. I’ve been through several crashes since. Each one teaches you that emotion is the real enemy of good decisions, and a lot of what I do is take that emotion out of the room and replace it with a plan.
I’ve worked since the age of 12 – paper round, behind a bar, the lot – and built what I have myself. That gives me a real understanding of how hard it is to earn money, and why getting good value out of it matters. My personal philosophy is simple: you get what you pay for. Cheap is rarely cheap in the long run.
What I want from a client relationship is honesty and trust on both sides. I’ll be straight with you. I’ll be a friend, but I’ll also tell you what you need to hear rather than what you want to hear. One client I’ve now had for 18 years sold a successful business and I ensured they enjoyed the early years of retirement. Now we’re navigating dementia with his family. Being part of someone’s story across that kind of arc is what makes this job worthwhile.
One thing I’m always working on is simplicity. The world is getting more complex, and clients don’t need to swim in technical detail. Keeping advice in plain English, especially around pensions and Inheritance Tax (IHT), is where real clarity sits.
Outside of work, my life revolves around music, golf at Wigan Golf Club, and family – 25 years married this year, two grown-up kids. Like most of my clients, I’m balancing protection, saving, and actually enjoying life now. Same balancing act, just on a different scale.
