Why “loving your job” marketing needs a reality check Blue Monday: a perfect moment to sell a dream Every January, we’re told it’s Blue Monday — the most depressing day of the year.Whether or not the science stacks up, the emotional truth often does. People are tired.Burned out.Disillusioned with work that feels meaningless, insecure, or … Continue reading The Hidden Career Risk Nobody Mentions in Financial Adviser Recruitment
Month: January 2026
Why Money Precision Is Not the Point in Later-Life Planning
And Why Total Wealth Planners Must Think Bigger Than Cashflow Models For decades, the financial planning profession has trained itself to believe one thing above all else: “Accuracy is everything.” The closer a spreadsheet can predict a person’s financial future, the more “professional” the plan is assumed to be. But here is the uncomfortable truth: … Continue reading Why Money Precision Is Not the Point in Later-Life Planning
AI, Ethics, and the Advice Line: How Total Wealth Planners Stay on the Right Side of Regulation
AI, Ethics, and the Advice Line How Total Wealth Planners Stay on the Right Side of Both FCA and CMA Regulation Using AI as a client-empowerment tool — without drifting into regulated advice or consumer law risk Artificial intelligence is fast becoming one of the most powerful tools in the Total Wealth Planner’s toolkit. Used … Continue reading AI, Ethics, and the Advice Line: How Total Wealth Planners Stay on the Right Side of Regulation
The Significant S.T.O.R.I.E.S. System™
Hi Steve, I asked your GPT tool this: Can you give me some text that introduces the 8 steps to your Plan B, also known as the Significant S.T.O.R.I.E.S. system, explain the outcome for the user, and the power of it in someone’s life? But the answer it gave me wasn’t quite right. It leaned … Continue reading The Significant S.T.O.R.I.E.S. System™
Life on the Other Side of Financial Planning
Why Human Capital Strategies Mastery Is Becoming the Bridge to the Profession’s Future There’s a quiet moment many financial planners reach. Nothing has gone wrong.Clients are still engaging.The rules are still being followed.The numbers still add up. And yet something feels incomplete. Not because financial planning has failed —but because the world it serves has … Continue reading Life on the Other Side of Financial Planning
The Bridge: Who you are on the other side
Where you are now (Before the Bridge) People arrive at the bridge carrying some combination of: exhaustion from systems that take more than they give a sense of having been used, overlooked, or misled skills and experience that no longer fit the roles available a quiet knowing that this chapter is over They often describe … Continue reading The Bridge: Who you are on the other side
Most of a Person’s Wealth Is Not on a Balance Sheet — It Walks Into Work Every Day
A practitioner insight for Total Wealth Planners Traditional financial planning has taught generations of advisers to look down—at balance sheets, portfolios, wrappers, and projections.Total Wealth Planning asks us to look up—at the living, breathing human being who generates, sustains, and renews all of that capital. A growing body of academic research confirms what many of … Continue reading Most of a Person’s Wealth Is Not on a Balance Sheet — It Walks Into Work Every Day
Case Study: When “Building Your Own Book” Isn’t What It Seems
This case study is drawn from multiple adviser experiences. Details have been anonymised, but the structure and outcomes are real. The starting point: an attractive opportunity An adviser joins a well-known advice practice operating within a large network. They are offered a Business Support Package (BSP), described verbally as: help getting started, an investment in … Continue reading Case Study: When “Building Your Own Book” Isn’t What It Seems
The BSP Trap: What SJP Advisers Are Rarely Told — and How to Get Free If You’re Already In
Business Support Packages (BSPs) are often presented as a helping hand. A bridge.A vote of confidence.A way to “get established quickly”. For many advisers entering or operating within large networks such as St James’s Place, BSPs can feel like the only viable route forward. But what looks like support on the way in can feel … Continue reading The BSP Trap: What SJP Advisers Are Rarely Told — and How to Get Free If You’re Already In
The Planner’s Tension:
Why “Complexity” Doesn’t Increase With Age — It Shifts As more traditional planners explore Total Wealth Planning, a recurring tension often surfaces: “Planning becomes more complex as clients get older.” It’s a reasonable assumption.It’s also incomplete. What actually changes over a lifetime is not the level of complexity, but the composition of wealth — and … Continue reading The Planner’s Tension:
Academy of Life Planning 