In 2015, Mark St. Pierre and I sat down and began the process of developing our partnership. We have been working together for many years. We knew we each brought a different skill set to the table and that we had a different approach to almost everything we do in our professional careers. The first cornerstone of this unique partnership is diversity. The second cornerstone is to bring together a team of advisors and administrative staff that have the same drive and determination as us. Those people who believed the vision of our cooperative business plan. The third cornerstone is to reach out and ask for support from our corporate partner, Freedom 55 Financial, to explore this different business structure. Once we have worked through those details, and we knew we had support from all the right people, all that matters from this point forward is to focus on our fourth cornerstone. This is by far the most important cornerstone of our foundation. This is trust and integrity. When you can look at your partners in the eye, and everyone understands that the path we are about to take is not going be an easy one as there will be challenges, and we know that we will all bring our unique diversity of each other’s strength together and overcome.
By 2016, we have six team members which include Mark, Pierre Deb, Brandon, Leslie and Karin alongside with two full-time assistants, Patti and Michele. Patti and Michele are the heart and soul of our operation. Without them, we could not achieve our goals. We worked hard throughout 2016, pushing to meet expectations and running for a purpose, not with purpose. We celebrated at the end of 2016 because we hit our numbers. However, we felt we needed more. By January 2017, we all decided that while we understand that the numbers are important, our vision together was equally important. In the first quarter, we thought we gained some footing on both grounds. Building a team is a process and turning a group of individuals into a cohesive team working together interdependently and cooperatively to meet our customer’s needs was an important goal in 2017. Overcoming adversity is a hard thing. Helping eight people overcome adversity is equally as hard. But by the end of our first quarter, we all knew we needed to make the hard decision to leave the comfort and safety we all felt working from the Freedom 55 office.
The saying that ‘the bigger the challenge, the better the reward’ is very true in this case.
We were all working from a small 600 sq. ft. space. Things happened, and one night I searched online for “office space available in North Bay.”
The first space that popped up was a space on the 2nd floor at 1850 Bond St. above the Collin Barrows’ accounting office.
The space needed some work, and we needed Collin Barrows to believe in us. They did, and the opportunity provided us with the perfect synergy.
On the 1st of May, we began working on our new space. Relevant Life Financial Group finally found its home. More importantly, we had the support of family and friends.
We have also added to our team a new partnership with Dawn and began mentoring new advisors, Kevin and Zach.
The word “Trust” pops up later in our Relevant Life Group and my husband, Bill Deering had the skills and experience to make this dream come to reality.
There is a quote by Vince Lombardi that is one of my favourites. In this case, it is just the perfect quote that explains our last five months.
“The price of success is hard work and dedication to the job at hand, and drive the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”
So, here we are on the 22nd of September celebrating the grand opening of our new 4200 sq. ft. professional office space. With the same group of leading financial advisors and amazing executive assistants.
All of which believed in our vision, trust each other, and amazingly, we now begin the next chapter of Relevant Life Financial Group.
We do not stop here, we are also expanding our office and brand in Sault St. Marie and Pierre and now our newest partner, Dianne.
As we grow to serve our clients better, we are confident that it’s because of our solid foundation of Diversity, Team, Support, and Trust.
We cannot imagine what the next five years will bring to us all.