Lovaii Navlakhi, International Money Matters
I started my business in 2002 when financial planning was still in its infancy. So asking fee for our services was really impossible. But the advice which I got took me by surprise. One of my new clients asked the reason for not charging fees. I told him that I receive commissions from manufacturers and charging fees was not a necessity. He told me that you provide services to your clients and charging a fee is no sin. I was amazed to see the willingness of a client to pay fee! He also told me to not allow clients to take your services for granted. Thanks to his advice, I started charging fees to my clients within six months of starting my business.
I got another very useful advice from one of my clients whom I consult regularly for advice. For the first 15 months, I was working as an individual adviser. Though I had thought of hiring people and renting an office, I never had the courage to execute it. I was reluctant and didn’t want to take risk in the initial phase of the business. So when I discussed this with my client, he asked me, “What is the current state of the industry and do you see scope of any growth?” I said that there is immense potential for growth in the markets and the advisory business would eventually grow. He advised me that if the industry is growing then I should not hesitate to recruit new talent. He told me to change my viewpoint and see it as investment rather than as a cost.
Monish Mehta, COO, Finapple Ideas
The most important piece of advice we got from one of our well-wishers was to build an online advisory platform. He made us understand why it is important to upgrade our practice to be at par with competitors. This advice gave us the much required wings to scale up across geographies and demographics. We were successful in reaching out to thousands of investors and got 700 clients onboard from 40 cities, which could not have been possible in a traditional advisory model. The benefits of this model resulted in:
- Improved client service
- Cost savings & faster delivery of products
- Opportunity to manage our business from anywhere in the world. (Our model does not require me to go to office every day.)
