<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
">


























</figure>

Greg talks to Tim Bennett, now Head of Education at Killik & Co, a Wealth Management company. Tim is one of the few people we know in Finance who is fulfilled in his work: he loves what he does, he is using and developing a wide range of skills and finally his work is useful to clients, his company and beyond. 

It did not start out this way. Listen to this story where Tim shares his iterations to finding his own sweetspot. In this episode you will learn about the importance of knowing yourself, being honest with your current experiences to guide your way forward. Being clear about what you don’t want and using projections to clarify what you want. He talks about seeing the few important opportunities that arise in one’s career and having the courage to seize them. Learn on his career path matrix, a useful way to frame your professional journey. Learn how he convinced himself first to then confront other people’s perceptions when he changed career and took a massive pay cut to pursue what he really wanted to do. 

Listen to the full story here or on your usual podcast player or read the story below.

You can find more about Tim Bennett on LinkedIn. Find his current employer videos on Killik Explains and the older YouTube videos on Moneyweekvideos.

<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
">


























</figure>





























































<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
">


























</figure>





























































<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
">


























</figure>





























































<figure class="
sqs-block-image-figure
intrinsic
">


























</figure>

After graduating with a History degree from Cambridge University, Tim decided to take the easy path by becoming a Chartered Accountant. Little did he know that he would struggle to pass the exam! After 4 years of training he decided to leave for a career as a training consultant. His father, himself a chartered accountant, was “baffled”. 

At first he loved what he was doing and was not very good at it. After ten years, practising in diverse companies, his experience had flipped: he was very good at it, but he did not enjoy it much anymore. That’s when he made the decision to change career - again - by becoming a senior writer for an up and coming finance weekly magazine, the Money Week. He made the jump and took a massive pay cut. 

He loved what he was doing, finally using skills he valued. That’s where he became famous by chance on Youtube, creating and posting training videos for the sales people of the magazine. His posts (public without knowing) went viral. Finally the founder of Killik & Co, a wealth manager, called him to ask him to co-design a role as Head of Education there. 

Below are some of the key learnings with quotes from Tim.

Seek guidance and help from mentors.

• “[My history teacher] said, you've got that ability to turn it into something concise and interesting. It's instinctive with you, even though you don't know it, you can't see it.”

• “Fortunately this guy took it upon himself to do a lot of extra coaching outside of hours, my parents didn't pay for any of it. He was very inspiring. He was not just about learning facts. History can be for some people the worst subject in the world, because the way it's taught sometimes is very linear. it's all date, it's all this happened. Whereas he was much more thematic in his approach. and I liked that. So he would come at it the way that, someone older would come at a subject, which is, where am I trying to get to? And therefore, what facts do I need to make my case?”

Know thyself - be honest about your circumstances, what you want and don’t want.

• “Getting through those [chartered accountancy exams], unlike my history degree, was a triumph of application over ability. I got there in the end, but it took four years, three years [being] the conventional number. And so what happened after the four years then? I left.”

• Tim: “Keep your eyes open because the opportunities are there. But you've got to see them and grab them. There may only be three or four good ones.” Greg: “How do you know it's a good one?” Tim: “It's about knowing yourself. And it's about being honest about where you are at that particular point and what will fit both your skillset and what you want to do next. What's a good opportunity for me at any one point in time, other people would have said is a career graveyard. So knowing yourself is a key ingredient, in knowing which opportunities you take and then you've got to take it, which requires a little bit of courage.”

• “I had a conversation in the pub with a partner: ”What are you going to do next?” “I don't really know”. “So well, you're a qualified chartered accountant. So I'm telling you that the two obvious options are you become a partner here or you go and be a finance director.” I thought actually that's a shame because neither of those two things appealed to me very much.”

• “Someone said to me, frankly, Tim, you could have a much easier life and a better paid life, just staying here. Why this move to Money Week? But it wasn't enough for me. I couldn't just go in day in, day out, not delivering, not achieving, not visibly using my energy to help other people in one way or another. The biggest satisfaction I still get from what I do now is the response it engenders in other peopl