Bespoke Training Solutions’ (BTS) Natalie Dawes tells PP editor Rob Kingsbury about how she overcame her lack of confidence to now happily standing up in front of people, to talk at conferences and deliver webinars and workshops to support learners through their CII exams.
When Natalie Dawes presents at the Professional Paraplanner Technical Insight Seminars and webinars, or any other events, you would never guess that a few short years ago her then boss at a local IFA firm suggested she go out and ‘do something’ to gain in confidence if she wanted to be a financial adviser.
After working in a bank and then as an individual-needs teaching assistant in a school, Natalie had experience of engaging with people but she didn’t come across as a confident person.
Natalie explains: “I had worked for a small financial advice firm as an administrator and then as a paraplanner for nearly six years and I was lined up to become a financial adviser. But I would never instigate conversations and eventually, my boss at the time said to me: ‘You’ve really got to do something about your confidence because if you’re going to talk to clients, you need to be able to talk to them confidently, and you’re struggling to talk to me, let alone a client’.
“I enjoyed learning and had taken and passed most of the exams but I was spending nearly every day in the back office, not really having much in the way of face-to-face conversations with people other than the two directors. That said, they were offering me opportunities to chat with clients but I was super nervous so a lot of the time, I left it to them. Limiting myself in this way, meant I wasn’t training the skills I needed if I wanted to be an adviser.”
When her boss gave her the nudge, she says, “at the time we both thought I’d go out and join a book club or something like that. What happened was that I stumbled across a local public speaking group – Worthing Speakers club – and joined it. She is still a member. “The club is group of like-minded people who want to help people to develop their speaking skills because they have been there and know what it’s like when you’re trying to develop confidence as a speaker.”
Describing her first time attending the club, she says: “I was a complete nervous wreck. If I take myself back there, I can still to this day feel the jelly legs. But it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.” Since then, she hasn’t looked back. “It was a huge piece of my development.As with any skill that you pick up, you can lose it if you don’t consistently practise it, which is why I am still a member some six years later.”
Around the same time, having passed all her exams she had an epiphany. “I was on holiday having taken and passed my last RO exam, with my head finally out of the books and with the time and space to think.
“For me, the thing I loved most about working in financial services, had always been about the service and the individual. When I was with the advice firm I did more and more for the business and learnt more and more about what they were doing. I went out and saw clients with them and I really got to know their clients well. And I loved that. But, I realised I didn’t want to be an adviser. And although it wasn’t for me, I also knew that our profession has a real need for more advisers, and paraplanners.”
So what to do and where to go next? Call it fate maybe, Natalie saw there was a role going at BTS. “I really liked working for the IFA firm and I will always be grateful for the opportunities that they gave me and the brilliant way they supported me – they were a fantastic firm to work with. It was a hard decision to leave, particularly because my career prospects there were really good. It took me several months to be sure it was the right thing to do to move to BTS, but in the end, I took the leap of faith and it was 100% the right decision for me. It has allowed me to bring together my experience in financial services and education. My role with Team BTS has brought an abundance of opportunity my way, something again, I am so incredibly grateful for.
Beyond the comfort zone
Since joining BTS in 2022, Natalie has become a well-known face of the company. Her role as Candidate Support, Trainer and Business Development Adviser, with listed skills of coaching, training, training delivery, blended learning and mentoring, certainly belies her earlier lack of confidence.
“The opportunities mean I’ve had to step outside of my comfort zone. I feel far more confident in my own abilities now and perhaps more importantly, in helping others develop – which is the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning. Although the opportunities I had ahread of me were brilliant in my previous firm, I think I lacked confidence because I was in too small of a bubble, and a comfortable one at that. I wasn’t getting enough experience, even though I was the one limiting that, so I wasn’t developing the skills I needed. Joining the BTS family has helped me elevate things and now, I’m doing so much more than I could have imagined and hopefully, making a difference to others too. That’s what’s really important here.”
The same message around building confidence applies to the learners that BTS helps to achieve success in their exams, she says.
“That’s why our sessions for Professional Paraplanner’s Technical Insight Seminars often focus on how paraplanners can develop their soft skills and learning skills. We’re not about just supplying materials to work from and leaving learners to their own devices, it’s about giving them all of the tools and skills they need to succeed in their learning, and their careers.
“The exams are one side of the paraplanning role, but there’s a whole other skill set that people need. In fact, whether you are in admin, paraplanning, mortgage advising, or a financial adviser, whatever your role is, softer skills are a necessity when it comes success. And for me, it was these skills that I have really developed which in turn, has enabled me to do what I do now – and thoroughly enjoy it.”
What drew her to BTS Natalie says, was first, her own experience of using the services of the company when taking R06. “The way they treated me as a learner really stood out; I really felt like an individual even though there were lots of others working towards that sitting and in a group environment during the workshop. It was never a case of ‘here’s the resources get on with it’. I never felt like I’d just been left to myself. It was very much about the quality of the service. And I was super, super impressed with that.
“Second, I really liked the idea of working with someone like Luiza Todd, because she is highly knowledgeable, highly experienced and very well considered within the industry. I thought I could learn a lot from someone like that considering where I wanted to take things. So it was a bit of a no brainer in the end.”
She was also impressed that all the trainers retake exams every year. Something she now wholeheartedly participates in herself. “I think if you don’t put yourself through the things that you’re talking about on a daily basis, how can you possibly be talking from experience? The exams change, the ways they test things change, the words they use change, the areas that they are testing change… We have to make sure that our materials are on point and the best way to do that is to go through the process ourselves.”
Access to more resources and support
Recently, BTS was acquired by the Davies Group, a larger training company specialising in the insurance side of the industry, particularly via apprenticeships. There’s always a fear that when a larger company takes over a smaller one that the ethos of the smaller firm can become diluted or lost. So how has Natalie found the process?
“It’s been nine months now and I can honestly say it has been such a good move for BTS. The Davies Group has similar values to BTS which meant we were well aligned from the get-go. Nothing has changed for any of our individual learners or corporate clients, it’s very much business as usual. Due to our highly positive reputation within the industry, we’re also keeping our familiar branding – you’ll see the addition of ‘A Davies Company’ but in my mind, that’s a really good thing because actually, what this acquisition really means is that we have a whole lot more in our armoury to support our learners with – exciting times are ahead!”
Back in 2022, When Natalie joined BTS the exams covered were largely for the CII Level 4 Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning, R01 to R06. Since then, the BTS team has grown and so has their offering. Now they offer study for CF1, CF6, CF8, ER1, FA2; J02, J05, J10 and J12; AF1, AF4, AF5 and AF7 (as well as an AF8 e-learning module).
“We offer a well-rounded service, from deciding what route to take with your exams – we’ll talk to you about which exams to take first – to how to go about it with the RIGHT resources. We are a full replacement study service to that of the CII. So if you study with BTS, you won’t need to have any of the CII materials. When you enrol with the CII you can select what’s called the ‘assessment only’ route, meaning that you pay for your exam sitting only.
“Our study guide is very different to that of the CII study guide – a lot less block text, much more colour on the pages, simple things like. It’s also the language that we use when we’re designing the materials. It’s what we like to call plain English or ‘adults in conversation’. You will probably feel like one of us is talking to you at some point when you’re reading the study guide because we add a little bit of humour, we bring analogies in, we put some real world stuff in there to bring things to life. And lots and lots of images, as well as lots of tables to really break down the learning.
“What we are not is a service that condenses the learning. That’s one of the questions we get an awful lot: ‘Is your study guide shorter and a lot less thick?’ I would say that in the main, our study guides are slightly thicker, but that’s partly because we use things like images which take up more space on a page. But we feel all of this makes our guides much more accessible, whatever your preferred style of learning”
As well as the guides, BTS runs workshops and webinars (see below) and e-Learning
modules. “The e-learning modules are something an individual can work through and self-study at their own pace. In the workshop we condense that into one or two days. And of course, you have the facilitator there, someone who has sat the exam a good few times and has lots of knowledge and experience in that particular subject matter.
“We also have what we call our ‘Study Buddy’ app (also available on desktop), which is for exam standard question practice. It’s a really important piece of the puzzle because that’s going to help paraplanners to get ready for the exam.”
Asked if there was one piece of advice that she would give to any learner taking any exam, she says it relates to the area where BTS sees most learners struggling, and that is study technique.
“Choose how you go about your studies and think about your style of learning. Understanding your learning style is key because otherwise you’re likely to just pick up a study guide and…off you go…winging it! Just because Dave in the office did it that way, doesn’t mean you have to. And if you’re not sure on your own style or technique, BTS can help with that too.”
The next BTS webinar
Natalie presented a live webinar this week for Professional Paraplanner on R06. The webinar concentrate dsolely on the R06 Financial Planning Practice exam and look firstly at generic aspects of this exam, followed by a closer look at the actual case studies, their keys facts and possible areas of examiner focus. The webinar will be available on demand on Wednesday 18 June under the Development Zone tab on the Professional Paraplanner website.
