Becoming an adviser at the most difficult time for the industry has only reinforced Stellar Wealth founder Nicole Gardner’s belief in maintaining high professional standards.
Gardner worked in banking for 10 years then decided she wanted to become a financial adviser, doing undergraduate study, a master’s degree and completing the certified financial planner (CFP) designation.
“I guess I became an adviser at the point where it was most difficult to become one,” Gardner tells Professional Planner.
“Things are getting easier now, they’re relaxing the university degree requirements and they’re making the exam easier.”
Gardner is referring to adviser exam changes from earlier this year that converted the exam to multiple choice, along with draft legislation that promotes greater flexibility for tertiary education requirements, and the experience pathway.
Gardner is a big believer in the education standard and “loves” that financial advice is becoming a fully fledged profession.
“The thing that’s missing is we need the public to see it as a profession as well,” Gardner says.
“If you ask any clients who’ve actually dealt with a financial adviser, they’ll rave about their adviser and the results they’ve gotten, their trustworthiness.”
Gardner says the reputation of advisers has improved because of the steps the industry has taken to professionalise, citing the education standard and Code of Ethics.
“The minimum requirement is the [bachelor’s] degree, and I chose to do the master’s and the CFP because I want to give my clients the absolute best advice possible,” Gardner says.
“I don’t want them to miss out on any strategy or opportunity because I didn’t know about it through lack of education.”
Gardner started Stellar Wealth in October 2023 after previously working as an employed adviser.
While her office is based in Brisbane, she serves clients across Australia “thanks to Teams, thanks to Zoom”.
Gardner says that although it was “scary” starting her own business, she realised she had reached a point where it felt too risky not to do it.
“I wanted the flexibility to choose the clients I wanted to work with, whereas when you’re an employee you try to convert every single client [or] you take every client for your employer,” Gardner says.
“But as a business owner you can be a bit more niche, to help the client you want to help.”
Gardner says she has two types of ideal client: retirees and “ambitious” people.
“Helping retirees have a great retirement is definitely what I love, there’s so much you can do for them as well,” she says.
“I also really like helping ambitious people, people who want to get ahead, people are happy to learn and do the work and take advice.”
Because the business is only six months in, she is still onboarding clients and is hoping to add a support staff member towards the end of this year or early next year.
“In terms of growing the business, I’m not looking for total world domination, I’m happy to keep it small and local,” Gardner says. “Ideally I don’t really see Stellar Wealth having more than 100 clients.”
To help grow that client list, she has turned to social media with a focus on Tik Tok and Instagram.
“Like everyone, I want my business to rank number one on Google when people search – I want Stellar Wealth to come out on top but what I’ve realised is that it’s a really competitive space and there are some much bigger firms paying really big bucks to get those rankings,” Gardner says.
“I can’t compete there, so I’ve decided to go where they’re not and that’s Tik Tok and Instagram. Surprisingly, I’ve had a lot of leads and a lot of good enquiries coming through from that and it’s kept me really busy.”
