New Paraplanner marketplace

Firstly, a big thanks to all the people who have helped turn Paraplanner in the thriving community of Australian paraplanners that it is today. To have over 370 paraplanners in our network is a gift that we hope we treat well.

I wanted to share with you some of the philosophy behind working hard to make Paraplanner a marketplace where advisers get more choice and paraplanners get more flexibility.

Over the past two weeks, I have been contacted by four companies that run outsourced paraplanning businesses in India and the Philippines. They spoke of having hundreds of paraplanners working on specific parts of Statement of Advice documents to ensure the most tailored document for advisers. Apart from the ethics of outsourcing jobs overseas, it seemed like they had an efficient operation that would drive down the pricing of preparing financial planning documents. After an hour of conversation, we talked about the cost to advisers of using an offshore paraplanner as I was interested to know how low a price they could get (which I've always wanted for advisers). I was shocked to find out that one service was twice the cost of our service and had the same turnaround time. The rational? The completed documents had less reworks. All I could say was that our rework average is about 15 minutes and doesn't require additional cost from the adviser...plus we have a completely different culture.

---

No trust vs trust
Single task vs varied tasks
Limited communication vs full communication
Workers paid 30% of revenue vs workers paid 85% of revenue

---

I thought that having these conversations would bring out the competitive side of me in running my business but it only bought sadness that there are more people working in soul-destroying, single-task jobs when workers have the option (unfortunately, not the right) to interesting work that shows them respect and trust.
If nothing else, I hope Paraplanner becomes an open, trusting, fun [as fun as the work can be] community that appreciates the work freedom and skills they have.
Thanks for listening...