Recommendations are good

Heather Anne Hubbell, an experienced strategy consultant to businesses and on transactions, was introduced to me by contacts on LinkedIn because they thought we were similar!

One similarity is that we both like looking for light bulb moments. Better ways to do things and then to share these with others.

Heather Anne says in her podcast that she spent years working on multi-jurisdictional transactions with many counterparties. Managing the process and keeping track of the documents, she says, could be a mess. However, rather than seeing this as a necessary burden of doing deals, she saw it as an opportunity to create a central place to manage and track the process. Her new business is PhunDex, but it is more than a central source of information relevant to the transaction. It is not just a data room. It is also designed to help entities meet their regulatory requirements.

The platform is ideal for start-ups, professional services, trust funds, management and administration, wealth and asset management, venture capital and family office businesses.

Another similarity is that we both started our careers in fashion. Heather Anne studied and worked in Toronto in Fashion Merchandising. My foray into fashion was less glamorous. I worked for a dress manufacturer, and my job was to order the buttons and zips for their new season’s collection. It was not a job I was good at because I was bored.

I left to become a lawyer; meanwhile, Heather Anne set up a fashion consultancy business. Another similarity is that she then left fashion to become a lawyer to assist her husband in his real estate development business and to give them both the flexibility they needed to build a business and bring up a family. Not content with doing legal work, she then started looking at ways to streamline the process and develop template documents and a global central database so that decisions could be made quickly with everyone up to date with what was happening.

Like Heather Anne when I took over as head of the private client department at Simmons & Simmons, I listened to the concerns of my clients and wanted to come up with solutions.

Wealthy clients wanted control of their wealth so not only did I set up Family Offices but included good governance for which I coined the phrase Family Governance. It was based on corporate governance principles set out in the Cadbury and Greenbury reports which were later consolidated into the Combined Code. This led to my working for some of the wealthiest people on the planet.

I also devised and drafted the Executive Entity Act in the Bahamas to assist in setting up Good Governance structures. However, this was largely superseded through the use of Foundations in jurisdictions such as Guernsey. Nevertheless, it positioned me as a specialist in this field.

She and I are also similar in that we both like sharing our experiences and knowledge with others. Heather Anne provides director and governance training to regulated fund administration, trust companies, and global corporate services businesses. I started writing as a trust and tax contributor for the Financial Times and wrote ten articles yearly for twelve years. This gave way to speaking at international conferences about Family Governance and succession.

I would most like to be thought of as similar to Heather Anne in her attitude towards the people she works with, whether within or outside her organisation. She cares for people, whether they are having a good day or if something is troubling them.

Like me, we have managed to juggle work with raising a family - which for me, like Heather Anne, has been a joy and a blessing. And despite not being at the school gate to pick up my brood from school, they have turned out to be none the worse for it - and probably better.

Heather Anne says her experience in the Fashion Industry has been an incredible foundation for everything she’s done. I cannot say that ordering buttons and zips affected my later career, but my psychology education has assisted me greatly in dealing with succession in families. However, it has proved to be of even more value when exploring how the private client industry can build trust with their clients and win business - whether from their network or colleagues in cross-selling.

I set out my research, tips and tricks in my CPCP program of excellence, which I have now built into a platform for our CPCP members to learn what other professionals will be taught so that like-minded professionals are on the same page and can get down to business straight away. We also give them the tools they need to win business efficiently.

Precisely what benefits CPCP Member’s can expect can be found by clicking on the Preview button below.

I look forward to your comments.

Next week, I will interview Michael Farrant, founder of PR company Farrant Group. He also has a degree in psychology but unlike my skill which is a word smith, his is how to shape public and private perceptions.