Accountability is the reason Sacha Burchgart applied to become FAAA’s inaugural Adviser of the Year last year. Not only does she have an accountability to her clients, but she is also part of an accountability circle who keeps her on track.
Sacha’s accountability circle is a formal group of women who keep each other on track through regular meetings and discussions of the highs and lows of business revenue and profitability.
“I was never interested in being part of a girl gang, but this is my private cheer squad,” she says.
One of my clients started the group, which comprises businesswomen from different fields, she says.
After whinging about her software to the group, Sacha says the group kept her accountable to doing something about it. She swapped software providers, and it changed the way all her business processes worked.
Last year was the first time Sacha had entered the ring for a financial planner of the year awards contest. Her goal last year was to become one of the Financial Standard’s Power 50 advisers then discovered a colleague had nominated her for the FAAA Awards. After fulfilling her personal goal, although she never intended to enter the awards, she decided since she had already done most of the work she would enter.
“Winning validated all the hard work I’d done in the past,” she says.
“It was a tremendous opportunity to sit back and reflect on what we do for clients and family. My 15-year-old (daughter) is now looking at this and thinking Mum’s kicking it.”
Sacha believes it was her advice document that set her apart – she provides easy to understand complex advice.
It was a tough process, she said. “With the FAAA, I had to put my best foot forward and do an SOA.
It was quite confronting to be in a position that peers would be judging whether I was giving good advice”, she says. “Many of us have imposter syndrome.”
Sacha’s been in demand since winning the award – she’s been invited to speak at Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Salesforce and has just returned from a study tour of the US (LA and New York) with EmpowerHer and to Capetown with Allan Gray where she will spoke to South African advisers. Meanwhile, she has a dozen new clients to meet.
Her financial planning business Burcheart celebrates its 10th birthday this year. Sacha started in the industry as an SMSF specialist, and it was her husband who convinced her to stop making money for others and start her own business as an adviser.
“Our business is on a rapid growth trajectory. Our wealth level of clients has increased. It was always HNW, but when clients see trophies etc, and I can speak on lots of podcasts – it gets me more clients,” she says.
Sacha spends an average of a day per month on the business. “My brain never stops in this business. Once a quarter we have an offsite and look at what’s working and what’s not working. We then agree a solution and fix it. Business planning is done on another day at the end of financial year.”
She is currently looking to obtain more business metrics. “The time to serve is blowing out, the cost to serve is increasing; we have a fabulous Australian team to write documents but it’s expensive. We can only charge a client so much.”
