How self-employment can improve work-life balance for advisers

Grant Millar, founder and adviser at Inspired Financial Planners, shared with ifa how opening his own advice business has allowed him to be flexible in his work schedule and more present with his children.

Speaking on his decision to start his own business back in 2017, Millar said the choice was primarily due to conflicting priorities with his employer and the desire to spend more time with his family.

“It was primarily driven at the time by a conflict of interest, between myself and my employer, where they were wanting to shift my role to focus more on just producing revenue for the business and less about caring about and looking after clients,” he said.

“It was that as one part and I could have looked for another employed role, but another part was also my kids were still quite young and I wanted to be able to spend more time with them.

“I couldn’t do that when I had fixed hours and fixed obligations for someone else, as opposed to me being able to have the flexibility to choose when I’m having my meetings, when I’m doing my work and that sort of thing. I think it’s a combination of the two of those.”

Being self-employed and functioning almost 100 per cent digitally, Millar said, has allowed him to be more flexible with his schedule and make adjustments when unexpected circumstances arise.

“[Last week] there was the cross country at school and I was able to go and watch my daughter do hers and then I had a work thing after, so I left my wife at the school and I was going to come back and pick her up,” he said.

“As I was driving, the school called and said my son had fallen over and hurt himself, so I had to go back and pick him up.

“If I was working with someone else, it’s highly unlikely that it would be that easy to just go and prioritise family as opposed to work. It wasn’t like a client meeting or anything but just to be able to have that flexibility makes a big difference for me.”

Although he values the time he gets to spend with his children now, Millar said at times, he misses the income stability and security that comes from being employed by someone else.

“Cash flow is a big one. I miss the days when I could just reliably show up to work every day of the week, and then get the exact same amount paid at the end of the week,” he said.

“And not have to worry about business expenses and ASIC levies and all these sorts of things coming up and increasing, and I guess just the predictability of it.

“I love that I get to spend time with kids and all this other stuff, but there are several downsides and risks associated with it as well.”

Speaking on his experience going through the financial services royal commission reforms, Millar said operating under a licensee instead of being self-licensed made it easier.

“I think I would have a much harder time if I was self-licensed, and then had to keep on top of all the regulatory stuff. I think that’s probably an additional challenge with those who have their own licence as opposed to operating under a bigger licence,” he said.

Besides some paraplanning, Millar said he doesn’t utilise any support staff at the moment, making it essential to find ways to improve efficiency where possible.

“I do outsource some paraplanning but if it’s a simple SOA, then I’ll run it myself. But otherwise, all client communication, all the research, all the admin, I’m doing everything at the moment,” he said.

“I am trying to find ways to automate things better, like having online forms and having my calendar online so I don’t have so many manual tasks to get things done, it can kind of just happen. That’s made a big difference.”