As a female founder in finance, I’m often asked: what’s the career trajectory from paraplanner to CEO? I’m approached regularly by women with insightful inquiries and recently I was even invited to speak at PIMFA Women’s Symposium about my personal journey, where the questions came thick and fast.
It hasn’t been a straight line and I got here with some tough lessons learned - but I love to share. I care deeply about diversity and the importance of dismantling barriers, especially for women, who are still hugely underrepresented in the industry.
Let’s consider some stats;
Really disappointing level of change since I started in the industry 20 years ago! So, in the spirit of lifting others as we rise, here are the three lessons I’ve learned on the journey from paraplanner to female founder and CEO:
Below, I’m sharing the details. For regular news, sign up for the Verve newsletter, and don’t forget to connect with me on Linkedin - I share regular insights over there too.
1. If you feel the fire in your belly, do the thing.
I was a paraplanner. At the firm all the advisers were men, and all the support staff women. We had to make the men their teas and coffees at 10am and 3pm and organise the annual golf event. It was very traditional. The advisers had huge sales targets – that and the culture really put me off wanting to progress into a financial adviser role. Instead, I thrived in creating the research, analysis and creating reports. In hindsight, I wonder what might have happened had I worked with a senior female person at that firm? Would that have changed my entire trajectory?
I loved paraplanning but wanted more control over my future, and eventually struck out on my own as a freelance paraplanner, aged 26. Those early years were just the same: a lot of patronising comments and a fair amount of inappropriate comments at conferences. But I kept on with my work and my studies, and built up the kind of knowledge and experience that couldn’t easily be dismissed.
It wasn’t easy at the start, but I started Para-Sols and never looked back.
As the business grew, I eventually moved into growing my family and in 2016 I had a baby - a career defining moment for any woman. I was fortunate; I had a team around me by then and so could flex to do what I needed. Apparently, what I needed was a fresh challenge as I came up with a new idea!
The idea was a new compliance company, underpinned with tech. The joke (which wasn’t really a joke) was that I knew little about compliance and nothing about tech – but that didn’t stop me.
And that’s lesson number one. If you know you want to go for something, if you feel that fire in your belly, don’t let stats or numbers or naysayers put you off. Someone has to be the outlier. Someone has to be the unexpected statistic. Why not you?
I figured ‘a bit of tech’ would only take a few months and a couple of grand to build. I was very, very wrong. I outsourced the build and learned lesson number two: know your blind spots and figure out the best way to cover them.
Tech was a blind spot. To this day, I can’t write a line of code. And so outsourcing to build a tech platform without fully appreciating the process meant we ended up with something that was fine, but almost impossible to iterate.
These days, we take care of all our bespoke tech in-house, with a dedicated – and most importantly, trusted – team. People can tell you anything and if you know the stuff inside out, you can call bullshit. But if you don’t, you can’t. And when you go down the hiring route, it’s possible (and necessary) to spend time getting to know talent and building up a deep level of trust. Anyway, we persevered. And we are where we are now. Breaking the mould in compliance - with proprietary tech (Dextera, here’s looking at you!) - and thriving as a predominantly female-led business in the world of finance.
Could we be doing more? Absolutely. I know I’m still missing out on lots of deals as I’m not on the golf course or available to attend all the awards and conferences in London on a Thursday. It’s usually because I’m on a schedule that allows me to get back to my little boy. There are probably hundreds of moments passing me by because I’m not there in the thick of it. But, neither would I want to be.
And that’s my third lesson.
Once a quarter, take a day out to step back and think about what it is you want from your life. Not what you think you should get. Not the new shiny thing.
I’m terrible for it – chasing stuff all the time, always being able to see the potential and wanting to go after that – but I keep pulling myself back. What if I had 5 years left to live? What would I regret? For me, it’s if I didn’t have enough time with my son. For you it might be hobbies or your fitness or just having time to potter around your house and it not feel like yet another thing squeezed in the middle of a thousand things.
I think that’s the challenge. When you’re a woman breaking through glass ceilings or being the odd one out or pushing boundaries, it can be easy to get swept up in playing the game and thinking you have to go for more, more, more – but it’s good to remember that you’re not playing people at their own game.
The game is rigged anyway. So just build your own playground. Build a place that you enjoy being in, and your success will find you that way.
So, that’s my journey, and those were my lessons.
What do you think? What are you doing differently? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what success looks like.
