Clever generals win wars

…and clever financial planners achieve success for clients. Wars are won and lost by clever generals. Irrespective of the external factors that actually caused the war, they never just wander into it and start fighting. Instead they carefully consider all of the external factors that will impact their success – the strength and condition of […]

Videos – Vanity or Value?

In this latest post in our series of “12 StepChanges to a better business”, we briefly set out our thinking on the benefits of video marketing. Financial advisers often raise the question of the effectiveness of video marketing. Some see it as a vanity project, as an expensive activity that yields very poor results. And […]

How many hats do you wear?

Do you remember the “old days”, when a financial adviser was someone who simply found the best financial product for clients? Do you yearn for those days again? My bet is that most of you don’t…. I know from conversations that you don’t miss those days of second guessing yourself all the time with regard […]

Dealing with dementia in clients

We hear and read a lot of commentary about the challenges that Ireland’s ageing population is posing to the state old-age pension scheme and indeed to pension policymakers. The statistics are indeed quite frightening as we see the scale of the growing population of elderly people being dependent on a smaller workforce. There was a […]

8 years on – what has changed?

I recently passed the 8th anniversary of leaving corporate life and setting up StepChange, with the aim of helping financial advisers to grow their businesses and to build durable, long-term value in them. So what’s changed in the last eight years?   The market is fundamentally different today Eight years ago, the term financial planner […]

Turbo charge your business in 2020

What am I doing, talking about 2020 already? Well I’m not asking you to wish your life away, but quite a number of financial advisers have observed that July and August are quieter times for them. And this quiet time offers an opportunity to do some planning for your business. You should always be thinking […]