June marks our third birthday at Stephen Eve Financial Planning and what a three years it has been.
Highlights over the past year have been:
In the spirit of looking back to keep improving, we thought we’d reminisce on our learnings over the last few years. What will we take forward to grow Stephen Eve?
Everything you do comes back to the client, they are the backbone of the business, after all. From the obvious like marketing – will it appeal to the client? To the less obvious like finances – are you investing in things that will benefit the client? The more you can make your clients happy, the more the business will thrive. Something we’ve stuck by from the start but has been proven to be true.
We started as a team of one and a half in 2022 (with Ben working on the business full time and Danielle part time amongst another role). In 2023, we welcomed Rav and in 2024, Danielle joined Stephen Eve full time and we also welcomed Mandy.
To cut a long story short, we couldn’t do it without Rav or Mandy! They have enabled us to grow as a business whilst still upholding our strong client service standards. The aim is to look after Rav and Mandy as much as possible because we don’t want to lose them! A motivated team means a healthy business.
We understand we are smaller than many financial advice firms out there. We are bigger than a one-man band, but we still pride ourselves on being a succinct team that provides a personal service.
Our marketing strategy has revolved around promoting this as a benefit to clients and the characteristics of being a small firm that makes us stand out for the better. With our client bank growing, this has worked to our advantage as people resonate with the family values we hold and close relationships we have with our clients.
It’s no secret that the financial world can be full of jargon. For many, it often feels like information is gate-kept or at least sounds overly complicated.
Our philosophy is: Investing doesn’t have to be complex. We keep things simple, aligned to our evidence-based, proven, diversified investment principles which can be understood by those outside of the industry. After all, you should know where and how your money is invested.
Our chosen fund managers, Dimensional, do a lot of hard work investing in the most fruitful assets to create fund portfolios that have a proven track-record of performing positively overall. We trust their highly knowledgeable team to invest in the right areas of the stock market, using years’ worth of theory and research to fuel their thinking. That means we can a) spend more time with clients talking about their life goals rather than sat behind a screen picking stocks and b) lower the cost for the client since we don’t need to actively buy and sell stocks on their behalf.
You can find out more about Dimensional here and in our blogs below:
The Basics of Market Returns & Volatility
Market Downturns Can Lead to Up Years – A Positive Story
Why you might think twice about chasing the biggest stocks
So, three years in, they are our key takeaways! And points we aim to stick by as the business develops. If you have worked with us over the past three years, we’d love to hear how you found it. We always seek to improve, and feedback is key to elevating the experience for our clients, connections and team.
