When Glen James was a teenager, 16 to be exact, he was hell bent on learning all he could about shares.
“I spent my weekends at the local community classes learning about planning and investing,” he says. “I had a small CommSec account of shares as soon as I was legally able to.”
Despite his flair for all things financial, James was never a fan of school.
“I hated other people telling me what to do,” he notes. “I think probably I have always been hardwired to run my own business. My grandfather and my father were both small-business owners.”
James left school after Year 11 and did a telecommunications apprenticeship, but an ankle injury forced him to reevaluate his life.
“I was out of action for three months,” he says. “The time off work made me realize that I didn’t want to work in telecommunications for the rest of my life. I wanted to do something I was passionate about.”
It was also during this time that James read the financial self-help tome, Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which taught him that “there are no boundaries or barriers, you can do anything you want”.
“I was brought up in that working-class belief system that you have to settle for what you get,” he says. “But this book taught me there are no rules and I found that very motivating.”
Once his ankle recovered, James found a job with a boutique planning firm in North Sydney, where he started at the bottom – collecting mail, doing admin – and gradually worked his way up to planning.
“I did an unofficial apprenticeship,” he says.
While he was at the firm, he befriended an older planner who became an important mentor.
“He was like the ‘rich dad’ in the book who told me that I could do anything,” James says. “I was living on the Central Coast of NSW at that stage and commuting to work and it was killing me.
“It was my mentor who suggested that I set up my own business on the Central Coast.”
And that is exactly what James did.
In 2010, he set up Fortify Financial, which he built from the ground up.
He started with zero clients and now has 180 on his books, all of whom he has met.
“You start off small and now clients are seeking me out, which is what I wanted to happen,” he says. “It takes the three Ps: patience, perseverance and persistence.”
His advice to others thinking of leaping into the unknown? First of all: make sure you listen to the right people.
“There are some people who I knew would not be as supportive, who don’t take risks, and so I didn’t tell them until after I did it,” James says. “It’s important to seek advice only from people you know will be encouraging.”
The other thing to remember when you go out alone is that you stop being a financial adviser and you become a business owner.
“The advice side is the easy part of it,” James notes. “When you’re running your own business, you’re looking after the business side of things and you’re having to deal with things like cash flow.”
He thinks the future of planning will ape what is happening in consumer culture more broadly: a hollowing out of the middle ground as customers head for either the cheap or the luxury end.
“On one end, you will get the cheap, dial-it-in-yourself advice and at the other end there will be the premium service,” he says. “I think the industry is moving away from the middle ground.”
| Glen James
Name of firm: Fortify Financial Name of licensee (if not self-licensed): Apogee Financial Planning Time in the industry (previous jobs?): 12 years. Prior to running own practice, worked for a boutique financial planning business in North Sydney for four years. Academic qualifications: Advanced Diploma of Financial Planning Accreditations: Fellow Chartered Financial Practitioner Professional association memberships: AFA, AICD Other memberships: Most Trusted Adviser Network |
