Why Flourix Wealth’s Rachel O’Connor focuses on advising women

It wasn’t until Rachel O’Connor went through her own divorce that she realised how important it is for women to have support during the process, even when things are simple and amicable, as was her experience.

O’Connor was already an experienced financial planner, but it made her realise how other women who work in completely different fields would feel, if she, with all her financial knowledge, found herself so overwhelmed.

“About three years ago I separated. I’m obviously a financial adviser, but even for me, the process of getting divorced was so overwhelming, so confusing, and I was so shocked and blindsided by the whole thing, but particularly by how I thought I would be better prepared because I had all this knowledge,” O’Connor tells Professional Planner.

With roughly half of the population being women, but only one in five financial advisers, Rachel O’Connor decided to take a more deliberate approach to advising women.

“This is a specific point in time that lots of people go through, and you feel so alone, and there’s also a lot of shame around that,” she says.

“So, when an inquiry comes through and someone says, ‘oh I’m getting divorced’ or ‘I’ve just gotten divorced’ and being able to say, ‘ah, me too’ that’s really powerful and I thought I could lean into that a bit more.”

Until then, O’Connor hadn’t consciously focused on working with women as much as it had happened organically through her connection with the Ladies Finance Club and referrals from financial adviser Kate McCallum. She then changed the messaging of her business, Flourix Wealth, to focus on advice for women ranging from from changing jobs, paying down debt to post-divorce and retirement planning, among other services.

With an interest in finance from an early age, O’Connor got a Bachelor of Commerce, but towards the end of her study she still didn’t know what she wanted to do. Her dad was an accountant and suggested she’d become one so “you’ll always have a job”.

A move into financial advice

She did that but soon realised it wasn’t what she wanted to do. She worked for a major SMSF advisory firm, which had an investment and financial advice team, and she moved into the advice side after she completed her degree.

“I would meet those clients and help them, provide advice on how to construct the portfolios, and keep all of those ticking over,” she says.

“And then I started to find that a bit narrow and wanted to do the rest of the financial planning piece. If investments is one slice of the pie, I wanted to do the rest, so I left that firm.”

She moved to a small business which then gave her a real sense of what a small business within financial services looked like.

“Working in this small business, I realised that [starting a small business] was an option,” she says.

That was when O’Connor became a mother and, after maternity leave with her first child, she decided she was going to start her own business and have the flexibility to pace it around her family and babies.

Running a small advice practice

O’Connor says that, as a business owner, she loves to be able to decide how hard she works.

“I’ve always worked harder than I wanted to. It’s always been harder than I thought, and that would be the downside.” But, she says, she does have the ability to make changes when necessary.

“For example, when I got divorced, I needed to increase my income, and so I worked really, really hard for a couple of years and was able to grow the business to a level now where I can support myself and the kids.”

Now that she finds herself in a good position, she is able to make decisions without having to ask permission or negotiate with a boss.

“I don’t have to ask permission to go to a school assembly or to take the kids to swimming lessons on Fridays. That’s just priceless for me as a mum and a single mum,” she says.

O’Connor says she is proud of her work, especially as she is able to see the impact it has on people’s lives.

“In this industry and particularly with my client base and that focus that I’ve had, I really feel proud of the work that I do, and I feel like I’m just so fortunate to be in a position where I can directly see the impact that my work has on other people’s lives.

“I don’t know that everyone gets that, so I get a lot of satisfaction and purpose out of the actual work itself, and then being a small business owner gives me a lot of purpose, for myself personally as well.”

The downside, she says, is that it’s much harder than it looks.

“When I started the business and was like, “Oh, I’ll just start this business and work out of the coffee shop… I always worked much harder than I have felt I had capacity to. It has been, I can’t sugarcoat it, it’s been a grind, and I’m only now feeling like I’m getting my head above water with that.”

Choosing clients

O’Connor has stopped taking on new clients for a few months, as she found herself, once more, working more than she wanted to.

“At the moment, I’ve just paused in taking new clients because we’ve sort of hit capacity, and I’m just taking a waiting list at the moment, putting names on a waiting list if people are prepared to wait until the new year, and then I’ll reach out to people,” she says,

She doesn’t have a minimum requirement around a new client’s income or assets, it is more a matter of then deciding whether Flourix is the right business for them after they are given a full overview of how it all works and what the fees look like.

“The fees are what they are. It’s not cheap to provide financial advice, and I don’t try to provide a cheap service,” she says. “So, I’m really upfront with people when they make a phone call. I say this is how we charge. Some people will opt out at that stage.

“But what I always try to do is if they say, ‘oh, that’s more than I was expecting to pay’, then I try to put them in touch with Ladies Finance Club or other services that are more catered to their end of the budget.”

She also says that she tells people “You’ve got X amount saved. My fees are this. I know I’m not going to put you in a better position. By the time you pay my fees, you’re going to be worse off, not better off. And that that will be a point where I’ll refer them [to other providers]”.