What were some of the realities of working as a trader?

Is it yeah, what were you the what were the highs in your career, and perhaps what were the most memorable lows?

If you cannot feel the stress, it's a bit like um I don't know F1 car racing, right?

Like you you cannot have that fear of crashing, otherwise, you can't go fast enough.

The same way you cannot have the fear of losing money to be a good trader.

I put on one of the biggest uh short positions on Nokia, which basically means that I was betting on the share price going down, but I kept that position on for another year and a half and made three times as much money as I did in the first year because both those companies effectively went to zero and Apple just uh kept going up exponentially.

I think I think the biggest fear with uh with completely changing my career trajectory was is it gonna work?

I was going from earning a very high income to earning zero.

So suddenly you start to feel, oh, you know what, I can't afford to lose this job because there is more riding on it.

So, Kamesh, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast for this special episode with St.

James's Place Academy.

So, how are you?

Very well.

Thank you for having me.

Really looking forward to it.

Excellent stuff.

Well, listen, we're really excited to hear about your journey within financial planning, your financial planner life essentially, um, and where it all started to where you are now.

You're now running a practice, aren't you, at 70 million under management?

Yeah, it's it's been it's been growing over the years.

So yeah, that's where we are now.

Brilliant.

So what I'm really excited to hear about is your early career.

Okay.

I definitely want to hear about that.

The transition from finance, um, trading into eventually financial planning.

So we're gonna we're gonna learn about that.

Um and I also want to hear a little bit more about your upbringing, because you know, it's not the same as say somebody in London.

It's very different.

So we're gonna learn a little bit about your upbringing, um, what got you into money, okay, whether that's managing it, trading it, or giving financial plans.

Is there some historic story behind it?

And we're gonna find out about that one as well.

So I'll tell you what, let's just kick things off from the very start.

Why don't you just sort of introduce yourself, your company, and um tell us a little bit about your early life?

Yeah, so I'm Kanish Farooop.

Uh we started uh compound wealth planning about nine years back now.

Uh prior to this, as you mentioned, uh I had a career in trading.

Um, I was an equity derivatives trader, worked for a few of the global investment banks, and then transitioned into this life now.

Um if I was to take you back to when I started, I suppose my journey started.

Um I was born and brought up in a small town called Jamnagar.

Um it's in the west coast of Gujarat, which is the west coast of India.

And um, to give you a sense of the place, I mean, it it had it had a couple of English medium schools, um, very limited in terms of opportunity.

Um, but my family was based there, I was growing up there, I was I felt like the uh I was having the best time of my life, uh felt like uh the world is my oyster.

But my parents, I suppose, um had the foresight to feel like okay, you know what, if they if I had to make something of my life, I needed to kind of branch out and go to one of the bigger cities and uh study there to uh to to get and see more opportunities.

Um but I spent 16 years of my initial life there in Jamnagar, and then when I would left Jamnagar eventually and uh tried applying to the bigger schools in the bigger cities like Mumbai and Delhi and Calcutta, what I found was it was very hard to get in.

Um it was quite challenging having come from this place where they didn't quite recognize the school, they didn't quite recognize the the board or what the curriculum, etc.

And it was just a flat out rejection.

Uh so that was quite hard.

Um luckily for me, there happened to be a British school offering British A levels in Calcutta, where uh mostly it was uh it was a very small school where really the children from British Consulate or British nationals who were working in India and their children were kind of studying there, and they were quite open-minded.

They were like, listen, we don't really care where you've come from.

Here's the entrance exam.

If you can clear this, then you can do your A levels here.

And I was like, This is my opportunity.

So I spent at least a few months just preparing for the entrance exam, managed to clear it, and suddenly I found myself doing British A levels, having done no O levels, uh living far away from my family because they were in Jammagar.

So I was living with uh my extended family um as a house guest.

Um, and then I was working, well, to do the schooling for the A levels and then spend time after hours to do my O levels because it wouldn't make sense otherwise.

But long story short, I spent two years doing my A levels there and found that as I was coming towards the end of it, that a lot of my friends were applying to British universities to for their undergraduate studies.

And having come from a very humble background myself, it felt too much of a stretch for my family to support me and to fund me to send me here.

Um, but luckily for me, the application form was very straightforward and in just in jest, I said, listen, let's just apply and see what happens.

And the next thing I know is that I get an offer from London School of Economics to come to London and study maths and economics.

Now, when I shared this with my family, they were very excited, but equally they were very sad that you know this is going to be a big stretch for them.

So we applied for financial aid, and LSE kind of changed my life when they offered me financial aid to take care of uh a big portion of the tuition fees, and uh which allowed me to kind of get on a one-way ticket and come to London.

Wow.

What a story.

So it it was uh that was a big break.

Because suddenly I've never seen never for never set foot in this country, came on a one-way ticket, landed uh and had to take one of the black cabs uh to my to my dome because I had I knew knew nothing.

And at that time, obviously we didn't have touchphones and smartphones, etc.

This is 2020.

That I could I remember vividly rem the the the the taxi meter going from 30p, 50p, 70p, and my heart racing high faster and faster, just thinking about how expensive it is to just get to my dorm.

Yeah.

Wow, what an interesting story.

So that's kind of how you almost can write that, could you?

The sense that they through all that process from a humble background, and all of a sudden sat in the cab, off you go to the LST.

And it's being backed by them as well, right?

So they're funding this and helping you with that.

Did they support how did they support you with it?

Did they pay for your dorms?

Did they pay for your education?

Did you have to um did you have to work on the side?

How did you actually manage that process in that period?

Because it was obviously coming from India to England, massively different costs, right?

Massively different costs and massively different culture as well.

So I got a complete shock to my system to set foot here.

Um luckily for me, my parents were never made me feel um.

They basically said that they trusted in me.

They said, you tell us what you need and we will fund you and we'll find figure it out.

But I guess uh I knew what the situation was.

So for me, it was very much about how can I how can I ask for the least amount from my parents.

So in that sense, I started working straight away.

I in fact, I remember even before the I I arrived like four days before the university started.

And I remember uh this was um one of these websites which were offering lastminute.com or something, and they were advertising half-price deals, and they needed people to stand at Victoria Stations, shave off half their hair, and just uh distribute leaflets, and they were giving 50 pounds for doing that for the day.

And at the end of the day, they said, Well, we if you want, we can take off the other half of your hair as well.

And I got really excited.

I was like, you know what, I have to do this.

50 pounds is a lot of money.

And I remember calling my parents and saying, I'm doing this, and they talked me out of it.

They said, Listen, you haven't even started university, you'll get enough opportunities to earn money, just settle in.

Um, so I did take up a job uh in my school dorm canteen.

Uh so we had so I was working in the kitchen a couple of days a week.

Um, I basically worked throughout my university days.

So I worked part-time, we were allowed 20 hours a week, worked in the library, worked all sorts of odd jobs to take care of my living expenses as much as possible whilst the university was obviously funding most of the tuition fees.

Fantastic.

So tell me a little about how important was that LSE LSE experience?

Did it set you up for a future within financial services in the UK?

100%.

Um I think LSE is so business and career oriented.

Uh for me, more than the academic side of things.

The very first week at LSE during the induction week, I remember the students were talking about, hey, listen, I but how are we gonna get work experience to get apply for internships in year two?

So to get an internship in year two, we had to get work experience in year one, and my peers were already making their CVs and distributing it in shops, etc.

So I found myself at the career center in the first week, trying to say, listen, I don't have work X, how do I make a CV?

So that I guess gives you an idea that how focused LSE was in terms of getting a job at the end of the uh the program, which worked really well for me because that was my focus as well.

That how can I repay the investments my parents have made to land a good job?

Um, I was always fascinated by finance, and so it felt natural for me to go all in towards focusing on it.

Well do you think that stems from that fascination of finance?

What was your earliest memory of money then?

I remember like from a very early age, uh, money was almost part of our daily conversation with uh with my parents, or uh, we used to live in a joint family to so to give you an idea.

My brother, my dad and his brother and my grandparents, we all lived in one home.

So between my uncle and my dad, and my grandfather, they had their own small business.

So we would always talk about it openly at mealtimes, and even between me and my dad, it was always just part of normal conversation.

Uh, so that's kind of where it started.

Um, my grandfather used to invest in equities, so he probably passed that on to my dad.

And I got fascinated by the world of stock markets and what stock is and how it works very early on.

Very interesting.

So, what about this trading route then?

So you left LSE, you went into trading.

So, tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, so it was very clear to me that I had to stay back in UK and work.

And as I mentioned, finance uh and equities was something I was really interested in.

The trading fascination came uh, I think it started very early again.

Uh, one of the things that my dad did with me was we used to play this uh trading game uh between us, whereby we uh at that at back in the at that time the stock prices used to be published once a week in a local newspaper.

And effectively it used to be where I would pick, we would have an imaginary pot of let's say 100,000 rupees, and we had to split that into companies that we liked.

And my dad would pick some companies, and I would pick some companies, which was like, for example, I remember Cadbury's really well, it was listed at the time, Coca-Cola, and I would pick those companies that I liked or at least I understood, and that would go into this mock portfolio effectively, and we would track it.

You would track it on a week-to-week basis to see how we were doing and compare, and that got me really interested in following how companies work, how do stocks work, how does market events impact it, and the conversations that stemmed from it were very interesting.

Um, my mom got looped in as well because she had no interest in the stock market.

So we basically made her the benchmark.

So she uh by default was invested in the index, the local India stock market index.

So we had three of us, and you would see uh who is doing what and how we are comparing to each other.

Nice, I love it.

Nice early memory there.

Yeah.

So how did that compare to actually being a trader?

Yeah, so I guess that that got me really interested uh from a very early age into stocks and stock markets.

So when I was applying for graduate roles, that was my big focus area.

Uh joined the, as I mentioned, uh did an internship with Credit Suisse, then got offered a full-time role.

So I joined them in 2005 uh as an equity derivatives trader.

Suddenly found myself on this big trading floor with eight screens in front of me, and it's quite daunting and overwhelming to begin with.

Um, but luckily always had a fascination for numbers and was lucky enough to have some really good bosses who taught me the ropes of it and how to navigate it.

So, yeah, there were some amazing memories, uh, some uh great periods of time when I made a lot of money, and equally there were some uh nightmares, uh especially the financial crisis, uh, where I remember as as if it was as if it was yesterday, trading through it, where uh everybody suffered, including us.

Uh, but it was I I loved it.

I loved every every bit of it.

So that financial crisis, you managed to keep your job at that period and trade through, did you?

Yeah, luckily I managed to keep my job.

I did well out of the financial crisis, um, got promoted.

Uh, then um that led me to getting a good role at JP Morgan, which was a much bigger mandate, uh much bigger bank.

Um so again, that area of responsibility only grew with time.

I think the one thing you learn in in this job, uh at least as a job as a trader, is to how to not get stressed about these the volatility in the markets.

Right.

Uh so I think it really gave me a very good grounding to my now my new role now as an advisor, because a lot of it is just navigating the turbulence in the markets and guiding your clients.

And I think I got a proper tenure, solid uh day-in, day out experience in doing that.

Aaron Powell Yeah.

So when people think about trading, they think of those different films, don't they?

You know, and you know, it's very romanticized and it seems very exciting.

Um what are some of the realities of working as a trader?

Is it you know what you're the high what were the highs in your career and perhaps what were the most memorable lows?

I think the way I describe it is if and again it's a big if if you cannot feel the stress and if you cannot take it personally and worry too much about it's a bit like um I don't know F1 car racing, right?

Like you you cannot have that fear of crashing, otherwise you can't go fast enough.

So, same way you cannot have the fear of losing money to be a good trader.

You almost need to have that level of confidence in yourself that you will figure it out, and if there is something that goes wrong, then you will correct it and you will learn from it.

And that's taking risk is your job description, so you can't be scared of taking risk, I suppose.

As long as you can do that, I think it's the best job in the world.

I totally agree with it.

But if you can't, and there are in my experience, I would say most of us can't, right?

And it's hard.

Um, it was then it said the the worst job.

I mean, the worst can be something, the best way to describe it is imagine that you're going into an exam for 12 hours a day, and that's the level of stress and anxiety and concentration you need to have, and you do that day in, day out for 365 days a year.

Uh so it can burn, and that's where burnouts happen, right?

Because it can be extremely intense because at any given point of time you're doing four or five things, you're looking at the markets, there's your colleagues telling you something, your clients want something else, um, and you're doing your own thinking about something else.

So, all of this is happening at the same time, which can be very intense and stressful.

For me personally, the first five years were amazing because I was single, I had no and having come from such a humble background, everything was a positive, everything was an upside.

So for me, I had nothing to lose, and I think that probably made me uh do my job really well as a trader, if I can reflect back.

But in the second half of my trading career, I got married, we wanted to buy a home, we wanted to have children, and suddenly you start to get a bit defensive, you suddenly you start to feel, oh, you know what, I can't afford to lose this job because there is more riding on it.

And as soon as you do that, you start to fear losing money, and then it starts to unravel very quickly.

So I found myself feeling far more stressed and burnt out over the last few years of my trading career as compared to the first end.

Yeah, very interesting.

You mentioned the word burnout quite a few times.

Is it something that you and you personally have experienced burnout?

Only in my last couple of years, I think, right?

I think in terms of you asked me what were my best trades, like for example, uh the financial crisis is a great example where uh obviously everything was hell was breaking loose around us.

Uh, I think at the time, um, one of my best trades was that um Apple had launched the iPhone, and I was my mandated to trade the European technology sector, and Nokia was one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and I put on one of the biggest uh short positions on Nokia, which basically means that I was betting on the share price going down, and by extension, I put on a short position on Blackberry because I had thought that Apple would completely decimate them, and um made a lot of money in that on that position in 2009, but I kept that position on for another year and a half and made three times as much money as I did in the first year, because both those companies effectively went to zero and Apple just uh kept going up exponentially.

So I think the the reason I think I got a lot of credit for it within the bank as well is it was an obvious trade because everybody could see the technology difference between Apple and these companies, but the fact that I did not settle by making a little bit of money and I kept that conviction and maxed out the amount of PL I could make on that trade uh really paid off.

Wow.

Um that's kind of cool.

So, how does that make you feel afterwards?

Do you feel like you've got you've set the bar really high?

And was there an expectation upon yourself to be able to deliver results like that every week?

I think I think in any any role, the expectations always keep going up, right?

So I think that there was it this was no different.

Uh suddenly the the perception of the managers change uh towards you.

They expect a lot more, they expect you to keep coming up with these blockbuster uh trade ideas all the time.

And of course, you start to put on a lot of pressure on yourself, right?

Because you want to keep improving and better yourself.

And I think all of these things start to uh take a toll.

So, yeah, over the last couple of years, especially uh it felt like you know what, my career or my growth is at the mercy of the stock markets, and I felt at the age of 30 that this is too early a time for I don't want to spend the rest of my career being whether success or failure is somewhat in my control, but not entirely in my control.

Uh, and hence the reason why I started to look at what else could I be doing with all the knowledge and experience that I have accumulated over the years.

Okay, which leads us on to financial planning in the St.

James's in St.

James's place.

How did that happen?

So, a couple of things happened in the run-up to me making this decision, right?

I think first of all, I guess I learned the value of money very early on in my life with all the things that I shared with you.

Um, to give you another example, like I remember uh in school we would do these high side hustles, which my parents always encouraged me to do.

Where um, for example, I was selling uh greeting cards in my school and I was charging them two rupees for every card that I would make.

Uh, did really well, suddenly collected like 200 rupees, and I thought this is the best business in the world, till the time my mom barged in one day, extremely upset, saying, you know what, we have to pay 500 rupees to buy a new color printer or the cartridge run out, who's been using the printer?

And suddenly I realized that my business was bankrupt before it started.

So those incidents really made me uh learn the value of money very early on.

Uh, having come from this background, when I started earning in my banking career, my colleagues were thinking about putting down, buying a flashy car, going on big holidays.

And I used to be the opposite end where I used to take a week out of my holidays just to sit at home and just figuring out, you know, how can I use this tax to my advantage?

How can I reduce my tax bill?

What exemptions and allowances are available to me, and basically started investing my savings from day one.

So all my bonus would get invested, and that started to really compound over time.

And by the time I was towards the end of my trading career, I could see the big positive impact my savings were having, where they were compounding quite quickly.

And that really gave me the uh made me realize the value of compounding.

Um, and then by this time, my colleagues realized what I was doing, and they started coming to me.

And when we would get our bonus, they would say, Hey Kanish, uh, you seem to know what you're doing.

Can I get 30 minutes of your time?

Let's grab a coffee, just want to get some ideas from you.

And that's when I guess the light bulb moment happened where I felt like these are really successful people, but due to lack of interest or lack of time, they are not able to dedicate the amount of time they should do, in my opinion, to their finances.

So maybe I could be doing this.

Um, and that's when I started to look for uh a role as an advisor or as a financial planner, and I started to talk to people and reached out to my mentors and asked them that hey, listen, you you you know me really well.

What else?

How do I get into this space?

Um, and that's when I came across St.

James's Place.

One of my ex-colleagues uh is a senior partner at St.

James's Place.

I went to see him, uh attended one of his seminars, and it just felt like yeah, I I I could see myself doing this.

I love it.

It's another really great example of working in a space where you would assume that people that trade, that deal with investments and money large sums would know or would have an interest in their own financial planning.

And it just shows you that these individuals are easily within a space that takes up a lot of time and energy and do they have the time to look at their own finances?

And is financial planning even a thing to trade it?

You know, is it even on their radar?

And it just shows you the disciplines, the multiple disciplines that are within financial services.

And just because you work within it, and just because you might earn some great money and you might be really successful in the area and the discipline that you're in, doesn't mean that you know how to build a financial plan, right?

And manage it.

Sam, I could not agree more with you.

I think this is when I realize that if these people who are in finance and so successful, if they have not even done the basics of financial planning and haven't thought about uh which trajectory are they on, are they on track to achieve the retirement that they want at the time that they want, then surely this is uh this is a side effect or or a byproduct of you being super successful.

Because the more successful you get, the biggest wealth creation or income that you can earn is by doing more of it.

So people overinvest and spend more time on their careers and completely end up having close to zero time for their finances.

Um, and I think that's when I think this whole delegation and outsourcing of responsibility can make sure that not only are your career income growing and your savings increasing, but the money that you have saved is also growing at an equally fast pace or is working as hard.

Am I right to assume it's a bit like a footballer, right?

Like a footballer will earn quite large sums of money if they're a pro-footballer at a certain level.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Sure.

But that's But the risk to their career ending sooner is a lot higher.

And a lot of them don't really have any idea about managing their finances.

They're exposed to levels of income that they're probably never never thought would ever come.

Some come from very humble backgrounds.

Um just because they've got money doesn't mean that they know how to manage that money, right?

And there's a lot of factors at play that will that will create a risk of opportunity if you'd be bankrupt, which a lot of them end up actually doing as being bankrupt.

I suppose in a way it's similar.

You you like you went back to like Formula One race driver and comparing somebody who works as a trader, it's like they could be earning some serious cash.

I mean, what was the most you earn in a year as a trader?

Aaron Powell So for me, my biggest bonus was about$500,000 in a year.

Yeah, then we can just was back when I was in 20s.

In your 20s, yeah, right?

And did do you ever think at that point to go and see a financial planner?

Or did uh they ever turn around and say, look, you know, you're earning good money, maybe you should look after your money, maybe you speak to a financial planner.

What were you exposed to that or not?

I wasn't exposed to it.

And I think even now, I think there's a lack of awareness in general about what financial planners do and what financial planners can do for you.

I think uh there's a long way to go.

I think everybody realizes, for example, that if you fall ill, you need to go to a doctor, or if you're not fit, you need to see uh you get a coach for yourself.

But I think for finances, it almost seems like a still feels to me like a nice to have, or something which is only for the ultra-wealthy people, which is not the case.

Um, so this is this is like 15 years after when I was in that position.

So back then, I think even less so was this awareness around the idea of financial planners.

And unfortunately, whoever did exist at the time, let's say with when I would reach out to my bank, for example, and ask them if they could help, they were unfortunately, if I may say so, with all due respect, glorified salespeople, where they were kind of only focusing on their agenda rather than giving me a holistic uh guidance on what I should be doing.

So you saw an opportunity.

And again, it's leaning into your background, it's leaning into what you know.

You've done the job, you've gone through the emotions of being that person, you've earned that the big levels of income.

I mean, like one of the things you shared with me a couple of weeks ago, like I think it was your 30th birthday, bawling into the office with a cake.

Yeah, that was uh they sacked you on the day, didn't they?

You said things it's it's quite it can be up and down environment.

This is this is it, right?

Like it can be uh you just don't know what's around the corner.

So this this as I as I shared with you, um, I had no inkling of this.

On my 30th birthday, walk into my office with cupcakes, um, and I'm flying out for a holiday at the end of the day.

8:30, I get a call on my we have these big dealer boards, and you could see HR.

And and I mean, because you've seen this to happen to your colleagues so many times, um, especially during the financial crisis, you know that's not a good sign.

You know that's something's gone wrong.

Anyways, you walk up, you go to the meeting room, they you get invited to a meeting room, you walk, walk into this meeting room, your boss is sitting there, the HR person sitting there, and you're like, we need to let you go.

Um and it wasn't due to my performance, or it wasn't due to otherwise I would have known if it was to do with my uh that I had I made a big loss or anything like that.

It was basically banking, is like that, it's just volatile, and they were reducing headcount, and um unfortunately they were told to reduce the the trading desk.

And uh I was one of the last people to have joined uh JP Morgan um since before this happened, and last in, first out, and unfortunately it was me.

So that that just shows you how volatile it can be, and even and this probably stresses the importance that nobody knows what's around the corner, irrespective of the role you're in, and you almost need the two pillars of your finances to go hand in hand.

On one hand, it is the income that you're earning, what you're spending, and what you're saving, but equally important is what you're doing with those savings.

And if you don't pay attention to this second pillar, then guess what?

You'll have to keep working till perpetuity.

The earlier you can give, make the second pillar as strong as possible, at some point, the second pillar, which is your finances, will take over most of the weight, and you can then relax and best case scenario, completely let go or for having to work for money and earn a passive income through your savings and through your investments.

So you Started helping people within the business because you showed an interest within your own financial planning.

You then externally looked around and St.

James's Place came out.

What was your entry point into St.

James's Place?

So I had a very pleasant experience meeting the people at St.

James's Place.

As I mentioned, my one of my senior ex-colleagues is a senior partner there.

And I also, because I had worked for Credit Suisse, I met with the Credit Suisse Private Wealth, some of the other peers and other wealth management companies.

And I just loved the idea that I could build a business within St.

James's Place, which I could call my own.

I could do the things I want to do for my clients.

And yet they were there to provide the guardrails to keep me safe, to keep my clients safe.

And that middle ground between being just a salaried employee, uh trying to meet sales targets, and being completely left on my own without any guidance in this heavily regulated industry was the perfect fit for me.

So I joined the ASJP uh the Academy, as they call it, um, uh when I it's going back 10 years now.

And uh yeah, that's how I got started.

Fantastic.

So, what was the biggest fear for you leaving trading, uh leaving banking, and then going into St.

James's place?

So, was there a fear associated to it?

How did you overcome that fear?

And then I want to tell I want you to tell me what the first couple of years were like.

Yeah, I think I think the biggest fear with uh with completely changing my career trajectory was is it gonna work?

Um I was going from earning a very high income to earning zero.

Um so that was a big, big decision that uh me, I think my wife was super has always been extremely supportive.

My parents, they were all like, listen, if you think it's the right thing for you to do, then just do it.

And I did check with a lot of my friends to see whether this was this was going to be a good idea, and the collective feedback I got was I think it's a risk or an investment worth making, and that's how I kind of jumped into it.

But that was by far the biggest risk.

In terms of um how the first few years went, uh it was tough.

Uh definitely people I thought would automatically and naturally become clients did not.

Uh, people I had no expectations would ever become a client became a client.

Um, so I think I would just call it an a complete emotional roller coaster where you would go from one week to feeling like, yes, there's proof of concept, people trust me, they're happy to give me uh a chance to what am I doing?

Why did I make this uh turnaround?

Why did I make this change?

Um, so I would question it.

I would I was probably questioning it every couple of days in the first six months, probably every week in the first year.

Second year got a bit better, I was probably questioning it once a month.

And yeah, I think it probably took me three plus years to feel like yes, you know what, this is gonna work out.

Yeah.

It's very, very common that I hear that.

Year one, year two, really tough.

Year three, you start to feel a little bit more comfortable.

And I think it's reassuring when people listening to this, if they are struggling within that first couple of years, it's normal.

Um, it's tough, it's hard, and you probably question yourself a lot.

And it's usually within those periods that people pull away and they just got to push through that pain barrier and that the rewards will start to come.

I mean, you've built now a business in that nine-year period, it's got 70 million and under management.

So you must be doing something something right.

So let's just talk a little bit about what what what you are doing that you feel is right, that we could just sort of help educate others who are maybe on the same path as to maybe they should have a go at that angle to be able to either help them attract clients, retain clients, introducers, and help push the business forward.

So, what's what are some of the things that you do that you feel that really move the needle?

If I may say, I think it's just focusing on the basics and doing them extremely well.

Um, I think in today's day and age, uh knowledge is uh literally free, right?

Like with AI, yeah, there is an insane amount of information about everything.

And one can feel very overwhelmed about what I am supposed to concentrate on.

So, what I mean by that is what we do really well is ultimately we want to become, or I every single interaction I have with a client or a prospective client is how can I become that one person or a partner in their lives where they can come to me for any money matters?

Simple.

Now, either I will be able to help them directly with my own knowledge, expertise, and my advice, or I should be able to guide them in the right direction and win their trust that they feel comfortable enough to share anything with me.

So I think when you start with that single point agenda, then you are almost free to just selflessly or 100% only focus on how can I add value to that person in front of me.

And that can happen in many different ways.

Obviously, financial planning, um, cash flow modeling, there is uh products, etc., that we talk to our clients about.

But it can go beyond that as well, right?

There's a whole emotional piece to it where you become that first point of contact for big life events when a client wants to, uh when a client of mine wants to buy a house, or when something is happening in their personal lives, which is disturbing, um, career transitions, you become that one person where okay, okay, let's take stock of things.

And my job is to kind of take their thoughts, their concerns, their questions, and demystify them.

Make it easy for them to understand or give them a structure on how they should be thinking about those things.

So, a lot of my job is also coaching, it's not just financial advice or very prescriptive that hey, listen, thank you for coming to me.

Here's a list of seven things you need to do, off you go.

It's very much around let me give you a framework on how to think about these things so that you can come to the right answers yourself.

And that becomes very valuable to the clients that I work with, where you are guiding them and just making things easy to understand, um, giving them a structure, giving them a list of things that they can work one by one so that they don't feel overwhelmed about whatever is happening.

So when it comes to talent, when it comes to sorry, client attraction what do you think worked best for you?

When did you start to notice some patterns?

Because you said in the beginning it was quite difficult because you thought the people that would come over and see you and use you didn't.

So what what did you do to start to really change the way you approached client attraction?

What started working and when and how?

I think and this goes back to your earlier question as well about what is key is when you're starting off as you have don't have any money coming in and you're really anxious.

Is you need to have a long-term vision.

Yeah.

Uh as a as a founder, as starting a new business, you cannot go in expecting that in six months suddenly everything will be great.

You need to kind of mentally, emotionally, financially, within your family, give yourself that three-year-plus runway to make this work so that you're not questioning whether this is going to work or not in the early days or in the early months.

And the same approach applies with clients, where we like I take a lifelong vision when I take on a client.

When I take on a client, my idea is how can I be, I see myself working, hopefully working together for the rest of our lives.

And when you take a long-term approach, then it makes it very easy for you to, as I said, just focus on adding value because everything else kind of takes care of itself.

Uh, and for me, I think the pattern I started to see was these clients starting to trust me and then introducing me to their friends and family.

So, to answer your question, I think introductions and referrals is what I rely on for finding new like-minded people to work with.

Um, but that takes you takes a lot of time to build that trust and confidence to be able to get that.

What about giving back?

Has that ever been part of your strategy?

Sort of leaning into helping others without financial gain?

It does.

It it plays a big part actually.

Um, when I was in university, there was a charity which used to, it's called SEO.

It it it it helps children and students from ethnic minorities get into roles and industries like banking and law, etc.

And they help polish, uh help me with some of the interviewing skills and things like that to help me secure an internship when I was a student.

So, what I what we do now uh for them is in the spirit of giving back, we hold webinars and workshops for them where we go in and talk about money matters.

Uh so for example, recently we did something where we were talking to first-year graduates.

So they are working for the first time in a high-paying role.

And as you mentioned, you they have not seen this kind of money.

And it's very easy in those early years to get distracted and start to really amp up your lifestyle without thinking about the future.

So it's a lot about uh educating them that you know how how to value money because it's so easy to increase your lifestyle.

I mean, a simple example could be once you start traveling business class, you can never dial back to economy.

Um, and in my own family, I uh I can give you an example where three years back we went for uh we got a really good deal.

We thought, okay, you know what, it's costing us the same.

Let's go to this seven-star resort.

Had a great time.

Come next year, we go to a normal resort, still amazing, but not at that seven-star level.

And my five, six-year-old daughter at the time was like, Dad, this is amazing, but you know what, it's it's not as good as the last one.

And you can see this, right?

Like and we were feeling the same thing, but we didn't say it.

But now everything is benchmarked to that resort.

So it's very I mean, I mean if I could share this, like you know, it's you'd be super careful about increasing a lifestyle.

Lifestyle creep.

If you can sustain it for the rest of your life, then do it.

If not, think twice.

Lifestyle creep.

You see, that I'm in Dubai.

Yeah.

So you can imagine how that's it must be much harder there.

It's it creeps up.

Lifestyle creep, they call it.

And before you know it, you're spending ridiculous money on things that you didn't have when you were in the UK.

And you become used to it, and people end up with outgoings that are astronomical.

Yeah.

I've had to really work on that being in Dubai.

It's not something that I've fallen into, really, lifestyle creep.

I think I don't have the maid, I don't have all the things that a lot of people do have.

Um, I chose not to really, yeah, because I didn't really want to fall into that trap.

I haven't rushed out and bought like a really expensive car.

I didn't buy a load of furniture and all of that.

I know people have gone out there and kitted up their houses and spent loads of money and like bought property, whatever, and they're back again in the UK in in 12 months' time.

So you never quite quite know.

And I've seen the lifestyle creep happen with people, and you know, you're going out to clubs, you're going out to beach clubs, you're paying 150 quid to get in, it's 15 quid a drink, and people start doing that all the time on a regular.

And you extrapolate your income that is going to last forever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're always like, Yeah, that's fine.

In three years I can afford it.

And it's even more dangerous because it's kind of like it's like holiday mode as well, isn't it?

Correct.

People think it's a holiday.

So yeah, it was a weird one.

It kind of but I I battled it really hard.

Yeah.

Um I'm kind of glad in a way that I didn't I haven't fallen into that trap as as much.

But it definitely creaked up.

There are areas where it definitely crept up for a period of time.

It happens subconsciously, isn't it?

Exactly.

Right.

So when we look at the um success you've had, obviously, of uh at St.

James's place, like let's just talk just and finish up on where do you think the partnership has supported you in your journey and in your development and running your business?

I think when I started compound wealth planning, I felt like I had the the market experience.

Uh we spoke about that.

I felt like I knew how to make a financial plan for my clients.

But what I didn't know is um how to speak with clients.

I had never been in a client-facing role or where I was in a relationship role.

Um, I was just used to being in front of eight computer screens.

So I felt that the that St.

James's Place has a very, very holistic training program or a coaching program where it was a lot of focus was on soft skills as well, about how to ask the right questions, how to go beyond just the script to get a full understanding of the client's position to be able to guide them.

And of course, the extent of support that is available within a large organization like that is hugely valuable.

The fact that, irrespective of whether I have personally dealt with a particular scenario before, there are experts in every area of financial planning.

It could be trusts, it could be inheritance, it could be long-term care.

And the ability to just pick up the phone and have that level of expertise and experience available on tap.

To me, my practice is hugely valuable because I know that when uh when I'm giving an advice to a client, they're not just dependent on my knowledge and experience, they are benefiting from the collective experience of St.

James's Place over 30 years, over 5,000 practices, which is uh insanely valuable.

Nice.

Great stuff.

And what about scaling your business and building it?

Have you employed anybody?

Are you ambitious to grow the partner practice into a business that will hire uh advisors or power planners or administrators?

Are you part of that?

Yeah, I think I want to scale.

I want to grow my practice uh because I feel they are I want to help more people.

And I think uh it is such an um underutilized area of where I feel there is so much more I can give.

Um, and obviously due to constraints of time, I think the only way to do it is if I have more advisors who share the same philosophy and approach things the same way to be able to help as many people.

So our practice has grown.

My practice now has got uh two other advisors.

Um, we've got um an operations manager, we've we use a company for outsourcing a lot of the paraplanning and the admin support.

And yeah, the dream is to uh keep growing, uh, but not measure ourselves just in terms of funds under management or number of advisors or number of clients.

I think what is really important to me is how we measure what value we are adding to our clients.

So, whether it is through a year-end survey or through the satisfaction score, we want to be able to make a difference.

We want to be able to be seen where clients come back and say, you know what, having you in our life has made a positive impact.

To us, that's the that's the holy grail.

I love it.

Well, Kenish, look, thanks so much for sharing your career journey today.

I think it's really inspiring to hear somebody that's worked in the high pressure environment of trading and being able to come out of it in a way that they have transitioned into a role that adds a value to themselves, but also to those that you used to work with as well.

I think anybody that's working within trading and thinking about life after trading, right?

Because it sounds like it does have a bit of a shelf life.

100%.

That financial planning is something to definitely consider as a career.

So thanks for sharing that journey.

It sounds like it's worked out for you.

And um obviously we wish you all the best.

Thank you very much, Sam.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you.