Geoff Dyckes RLP®, GAME Plan Accredited
Life-Centred Financial Planner
Peer Practice Sharing — Learn What’s Really Working
Most advisers don’t need more theory.
They need to see how real people are actually building real practices — in the messy middle.
That’s exactly what the Practice Management Circle (PMC) is for.
PMC is the Academy’s peer learning space for values-led planners who want to:
- Learn from what’s actually working in other practices
- Hear honest stories about what’s been messy, slow, or didn’t work
- Share experiments, pivots, and real-world lessons
- Accelerate growth without selling their soul or copying broken models
- Build practices that fit their life — not the other way round
Each month, we host a Member Showcase where one practitioner opens up their journey:
the wins, the failures, the doubts, the turning points, and the commercial realities.
No hype.
No funnels.
No “seven-figure blueprint” nonsense.
Just grounded, human, practice-level truth.
PMC Member Showcase
Geoff Dyckes — A Values-Led Pivot from Adviser to Steward
This week’s Member Showcase is one I’m genuinely pleased to share, because it represents something many people here will recognise:
That moment when experience, values, and reality collide —
and the old way of working no longer feels fully aligned.
I’d like to introduce you to Geoff Dyckes.
Geoff has been an Academy member since June 2024 and became an accredited GAME Plan Practitioner in September 2024. He spent nearly four decades in the financial profession and qualified as an Independent Financial Adviser back in 1998. He’s also one of around 180 Registered Life Planners in the UK.
But Geoff’s journey isn’t really about longevity or qualifications.
It’s about what happens when things go wrong —
and what it means to take responsibility when there is no easy option.
The Moment That Changed Everything
The deeper roots of Geoff’s pivot go back to 2010.
Under compliance supervision, his business was instructed to write to all clients holding investments that would later be classified by the FCA as unregulated for retail clients. That exercise was completed — with around 80% of clients choosing to exit and the remainder choosing to stay invested.
In 2011, Geoff discovered something deeply troubling.
A group of 24 clients had never been written to.
They had never been given the opportunity to exit investments that were now closed.
At that point, Geoff felt there were two choices:
- Close the business, allow those clients to lose their money, see staff lose their jobs, and leave unaffected clients needing to find new advisers.
- Face the issue and resolve it personally.
Geoff chose the second.
He reached agreements with all 24 clients that resulted in every one of them being fully repaid — a staggering total of £1.65 million.
That was only made possible with the support of friends, family, and even some clients who helped with business cashflow at the time. All of those supporters were later repaid in full, with commercial rates of return.
Twelve years later, despite those clients having been made whole, the new owners of the compliance support unit took a different view of how the situation had been handled.
After a prolonged legal process, Geoff reached a point where continuing to fight was no longer aligned with the life he wanted to live or the work he wanted to do.
So he made a conscious decision to exit the regulated profession with his head held high
and continue serving clients in a way that was fully aligned with his values.
From Adviser to Steward
By that point, Geoff’s work had already shifted.
In the final five years of his regulated career, investment performance — good or bad — typically took no more than five minutes at the end of meetings.
The rest of the time — often 90 minutes to two hours — was spent talking about:
- clients’ lives
- their decisions and trade-offs
- fears and uncertainties
- values and priorities
- what really mattered to them
In early 2023, Geoff returned from holiday to find a client’s death certificate on his desk.
The client was just 52.
That moment, combined with:
- a deeply reflective five-week honeymoon exploring the Canadian wilderness
- the ongoing legal battle
- and the growing sense that “life is short — and it isn’t fair”
brought everything into sharp focus.
Out of that clarity, Geoff Dyckes Financial Consultancy was born:
A life-centred, advice-only practice.
Today, Geoff sees his role less as an adviser and more as a steward and thinking partner — helping people regain a sense of control by bringing clarity to complex decisions, and acting as a trusted sounding board as they choose the path that’s right for their life.
He now works as a Lifestyle Financial Consultant and Life-Centred Financial Planner, using:
- his ALIGNS framework
- alongside the GAME Plan
to help people design life on purpose, beginning not with products or portfolios, but with the human being in front of him and the question:
“Is this really how I want my life to look?”
Outside of work, Geoff lives the philosophy he teaches.
He’s a keen golfer and former Golf Club Captain.
A long-distance charity cyclist for Macmillan.
He has aspirations to hike Mount Kilimanjaro with his wife and friends.
And he co-owns an independent coffee and cocktail bar called Altitude, inspired by the mountains, lakes, and landscapes that form part of his deeper “why”.
What Geoff Will Share in the PMC Showcase
This session isn’t about a polished case study or a perfect business model.
It’s about:
- a real transition
- a values-led pivot
- an honest example of what it looks like to move from selling products to stewarding human lives
Geoff will share:
- what’s worked
- what’s been messy
- what he’s learned since becoming a GAME Plan Practitioner
- how he’s shaping a life-centred practice that truly fits who he is
Why This Matters
Most advisers are quietly standing at the same crossroads Geoff stood at.
They feel:
- misaligned with the product-led model
- tired of compliance fear
- uncomfortable with sales pressure
- hungry for deeper, more human work
- uncertain how to pivot without blowing up their income or identity
PMC exists to make that transition visible, safer, and faster.
Not through theory.
Through lived examples.
Join the Practice Management Circle
If you want to:
- Learn from real practitioners, not gurus
- See what values-led practice actually looks like
- Avoid expensive mistakes others have already made
- Build a business that fits your life, not consumes it
- Stay connected to a community walking the same bridge
Then PMC is for you.
Upgrade your Academy membership to include PMC
and join our monthly peer practice sharing sessions.
This is not about becoming someone else’s version of success.
It’s about building a practice that finally feels like yours.
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