From Qantas to Chrysalis: Phil’s Journey

After 15 great years flying as a Qantas long haul flight attendant, I wanted to move on to a new career where I could make a genuine difference to people’s lives using my qualifications, talents and experience. So in 1996, after further tertiary study, I took the opportunity to begin a financial planning business. 

Having studied, worked long hours and established a business, I took a Qantas voluntary redundancy package myself in 2004 and have been helping Qantas staff members with their redundancies ever since. Having been through it myself, I’d say I am uniquely positioned to fully understand the scope of emotions and questions that Qantas staff facing redundancy, go through. We have literally helped dozens of Qantas Staff with their redundancies over the years. On top of that we have a pretty solid understanding of the various divisions of Qantas Super and Qantas payslips which has also been a great help to Qantas staff.

I’ve always thought that financial info is confusing and complicated for most people. If people don’t understand things how can they ever get peace of mind around their important decisions? So at Chrysalis I went about training my team to communicate to clients like they would with their friends and cut through the complexity and jargon to simplify things for them and help them make good decisions.

In 2008, I was granted my own Australian Financial Services License from ASIC which was quite a process! That license has enabled Chrysalis to develop its own ‘feel’ and customised services which in turn has led to it becoming one of the more highly regarded financial advice firms in the industry.

Today I head a team of 11 staff plus a number of expert external consultants who are all committed to providing top notch financial advice services to our clients. The Chrysalis team and I have now been providing award winning financial advice services to clients for almost 25 years.

It never ceases to amaze me how valuable the financial planning process is for people if done well. Before I became an adviser I didn’t really give Financial Planning any real thought. I didn’t know what I didn’t know! Now all these years later and literally hundreds of lives changed for the better, I am so grateful for the opportunity given to me back in the beginning.

It has truely been both a privilege and honour for myself and my team to have been able to navigate so many Qantas clients successfully through their redundancy and set them up for a successful financial future.