It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that Minchin Moore partner and financial adviser Cathryn Gross can see that the seeds of running her own practice were planted as a child watching her father run a legal practice in a country town.
But it was a very circuitous route that brought her to financial advice.
First, she left her home in the Victorian Alps and headed to Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra.
Not quite knowing what she wanted to do, she completed an Economics Degree and Science Degree with a double major in psychology.
“I did a lot of social psychology and cognitive psychology, but I also loved economics,” Cathryn said.
“And when I finished university, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. You know, I was so young, but I’d done very well.”
Cathryn went to the university’s career office looking at graduate programs and eventually applied for a bank teller role.
“Because I had good marks, they asked me to come in and interview for a job in their institutional banking cadetship,” she said.
“I didn’t even know those sorts of things existed. I’d never heard of an investment bank. My parents weren’t wealthy people.”
Cathryn was promoted quickly through the ranks, and enjoyed global travel, though she worked long hours.
Winds of change
“I was ready for a change and I’d started to realised that I probably wanted to help people rather than help banks get richer,” she said.
From there she moved to Credit X, which was trying to get brokers to trade credit derivatives online.
Not long after this move, 9/11 happened which put an end to this career.
Next came working at UBS on the fixed income sales desk.
“For a number of years, I absolutely loved it. I’m a morning person, so I loved the early starts. I loved the learning, I loved that every day was different. I loved that I was creating my own business effectively because no one had ever sold structured product or credit derivatives in that role in Australia before,” Cathryn said.
Money isn’t everything
Cathryn became pregnant with her first child which made her question her career again.
While her job was lucrative, she felt it lacked purpose for her. Although grateful it enabled her to buy a house and set her up, it was no longer enough.
That was almost 20 years ago.
It took another two children, an ailing mother, an eventual divorce, a real estate qualification, and working as an executive coach before Cathryn made her move into financial advice.
“I could see the coaching job, which I loved, overlaid with my knowledge of investment markets could be really valuable,” Cathryn said.
“I actually stopped coaching and started my DFP, working in jobs where I could learn more about financial advice while I did the job.”
After working with hundreds of advisers through her previous roles, Cathryn knew what she wanted in her own business.
Having gone through a divorce and seeing what she wanted as a client, Cathryn created 12 Wealth, based on the 12 inches between head and heart.
“It was quite a feminine message, but that was what I was looking to do. The message I put out to the world was that I was really there to help women going through separation and divorce,” she said.
“My first ever referral came from my GP, and the second came from my hairdresser.
“They weren’t highly wealthy people, they just needed help to be confident about what their next step was. And so that’s what I did for about four years. I had about 60-70 clients.”
Partnering with like minds
Cathryn said she was very idealistic about how she set up her practise up. She did a lot of cash flow modelling with everything off platform.
“There was a lot that I was doing that was right, but it was not scalable,” she said.
While she was doing right by her clients, she wasn’t making enough for herself.
She was approached by Minchin Moore to become a partner in that practice and could see it made sense.
“The first two years was huge because I had 60 or 70 clients that I had to transition from being off platform to on platform to pay: from paying no portfolio management fees to paying portfolio management fees.
“I had to increase all their fees to make them profitable.
“There were numerous clients that over the last six or seven years have exited but the time was right for them to exit as well.”
Cathryn now has a full book of clients.
“My job now is to help all of the advisers who work with me to build their books, to become partners at Minchin Moore.
“So I’m constantly now ensuring that my support team has really deep relationships with these wonderful women clients.”
We love hearing about the diverse backgrounds of our members. If you have a career story that is a little bit different, we would love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected].
