I spoke this week to a business coach whom I have known for over a year and speak to occasionally. I found myself talking about how in the past I have steered conversations away from the dreaded ‘what do you do for a living?’ question.

Being a financial planner, I entered the industry when it was much ‘murkier’ than it is today. I am not saying the industry is as clean as it should be, but I certainly believe it is in better shape than was the case in the early 2000’s. Back in my early days I was regularly told that people in my line of work were very much thought of as commission hungry and far from transparent in what they were actually charging clients.

For those people who I did tell, the inevitable question of ‘How big a pension do I need?’ was generally the first question. I used to mutter a few figures and try and back out of the conversation as quick as possible. It’s not all about numbers and making such things up on the fly is clearly not ideal!

When talking about this topic this week I wished I could go back to those days and use the experience I have now to try and turn the conversations around and ask the ‘Tell me about what a perfect retirement encompasses for you?. I think turning this round would have opened up some much more interesting debates than were the case.

I also admitted this week that I was now proud of what I do. Not only advising some truly inspirational people but also running a business, employing someone and generally contributing to society.

Our industry has come a long way since those early days I mention above but there is still plenty of work to do in the future to keep improving things. I therefore agreed this week to join with some other like minded business leaders in my industry to talk about exactly this over the coming months and see if we can come up with more ideas to do this.

It would be interesting to know if other people are proud of their job?

Thanks for reading.