How Did Paraplanner.com.au Start?

How This All Started

[By Rich Peterson] 

The short version of the Paraplanner story is that I started in 2004 working as a contract paraplanner out of a small home office in the Northern Beaches of Sydney. I had one contract paying $30 per hour when I started and eventually took on another contract through one of only three contract paraplanning businesses running at the time.

One day, by accident, I was sent an invoice that was meant to be sent to the adviser we were working for. I saw that the outsourced company was taking 75% of the total fee and only paying their contractors 25% of the SoA fees. It was from this point that I was determined to offer paraplanners the best rates I could for establishing contract paraplanning contracts.

Over the next five years, I continued to work for myself and took on other paraplanners for larger projects as required. For the last few years, I've pulled back on completing SoAs myself as I concentrate on obtaining new contracts, travelling to meetings, follow-up sales calls, juggling contractors schedules and pushing for faster payments.

My main mission is:

To provide paraplanners with the lifestyle and flexibility that I would have loved when I had started out paraplanning from home.

I hope you see my mission in the way I manage our projects.