Adviser 3.0 The Podcast - Episode 133

What does it really take to go from apprentice to partner? In this episode, Kate is joined by Tara Maynard, Partner and Chartered Financial Adviser at PM+M, for an honest conversation about building a career entirely on your own terms. Tara's story begins not in a lecture hall but in an accountancy apprenticeship at 18, taken for financial reasons and shaped by circumstance. What followed was two decades of quiet, determined progress: exams studied for in half-hour windows around two young children, a move into financial planning through a chance secondment, and a gradual journey to the top of a firm she is proud to help lead.

The Apprenticeship Path

Tara's route into financial services was shaped early by practicality. At 16, she told her dad she wanted to do something with numbers. With university ruled out on financial grounds, she took an accountancy apprenticeship at 18, earning as she learned and coming away with a head start she still values today. The debt-free path, combined with real workplace experience from day one, gave her a foundation that a degree might not have matched.

Her move into financial planning came not through grand planning but through a quiet Friday afternoon request. When the paraplanning team was overwhelmed one January, Tara was asked to help out. She did more than pitch in. She started collecting the handwritten amendments made to client reports by the adviser, taking them home, and reading through them in her own time, trying to understand not just what had been changed but why. That habit of curiosity proved decisive.

Studying With Young Children

Once Tara committed to becoming an adviser, she set about gaining her qualifications while raising two young boys. Her youngest was one year old when she sat her final diploma exam. The studying happened in whatever gaps the day allowed: half an hour here, half an hour there, squeezed in after the boys were in bed or before they woke up. She was clear-eyed about the motivation required.

As her children got older she could explain what she was doing and why, which helped. They understood why mum had her head in the books again. That openness with her family, she reflects, made the whole process more sustainable. The support at home, combined with a firm belief in where she wanted to get to, carried her through the harder evenings.

Finding the Right Culture

When Tara first approached PM+M for a paraplanning role, she was told she was too good for the job. A frustrating response at the time. But a few months later, one of the partners called with a different proposition: would she consider becoming an adviser now, rather than waiting? The firm was independently owned, which meant decisions like that could be made quickly and without layers of approval. That independence mattered.

She asked one question in that conversation: she had two young children. Would that be a problem? The answer was immediate. One of the partners was currently on maternity leave. That single fact was all Tara needed to know. She accepted.

The culture at PM+M, Tara explains, is built on the idea that clients belong to the firm, not to individual advisers. That model allows newer advisers to build genuine client relationships and gives the business a natural succession structure. There is no internal competition, no jostling for books. Everyone pulls in the same direction.

Imposter Syndrome and Making Partner

Tara's journey to partnership was not without self-doubt. As she progressed through a director role she had grown confident, but the prospect of becoming a partner brought a fresh wave of imposter syndrome. She had made the transition sound bigger in her own head than it needed to be. The reality, she came to understand, was a gradual shift, not a dramatic leap.

By nature an introvert, Tara has had to actively work on distinguishing internal confidence from external performance. She does not need to be the loudest in the room to know her own worth. The two, she has learned, are completely separate. Quiet does not mean uncertain. Considered does not mean unsure.

Navigating a partnership of 13 people, all with different backgrounds and life experiences, has required trust above all else. PM+M's partners trust each other to have difficult conversations and to challenge each other's thinking. That foundation, Tara believes, is what makes the partnership function.

Independence, Community and What Comes Next

Tara is clear about the threat she sees to the kind of advice she values. As firms are bought out and client banks change hands, the local, relationship-driven model risks being lost. She has seen clients arrive at PM+M feeling disconnected from whoever inherited their relationship when their previous adviser retired and sold on. That loss of continuity troubles her.

Alongside her client work, Tara leads PM+M's Positive Impact team, a structured internal initiative supporting local grassroots charities through funding, volunteering, and awareness. Now in its third year, the programme has moved from exploratory to deliberate, with a focus on reaching a range of demographics and causes. Tara rarely talks about financial planning when networking. She talks about this instead.

Looking ahead, she is drawn to the intersection of investment and social impact, and wants to develop her knowledge and qualifications in that area. She sees connections forming between clients, community, and conscience. Where that takes her, she does not yet know. But she is, as always, interested in finding out.