Carl Wiekart · Operations Manager at Circulus, former financial adviser

Why I built Circulus

Like a lot of Kiwis, I gave Australia a go

I was working in the holiday industry when a company I'd worked for before offered me a job in Wellington. I moved down, and seven weeks later they closed the doors on the Wellington office.

They offered me a job on the Gold Coast instead. So, like plenty of Kiwis, I decided to give Australia a go.

That led me to a financial advisory firm, starting in their call centre. They paid for my Diploma in Financial Planning, and I found something I loved: helping people work out how to get where they wanted to go.

A ring fit for a Queen

I came back to New Zealand to work as a financial adviser for a large company's clients. While I was there, someone I'd worked with years earlier moved home too, with his new wife. He had an idea: set up our own business, independent of a big corporate, where we could get to know our clients properly and give more personal advice.

Neither of us had much money. But his wife's family had an heirloom with a story. When a jeweller was commissioned to make a diamond ring for Queen Elizabeth, he made two. One was presented to the Queen. The other he kept as an example of his work, and it became a treasure in her family, passed down from one generation to the next.

That ring became the security for a line of credit, and the line of credit started our business in 2002. It grew to three offices: Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Built on the home phone

In 2002, everyone had a home phone, so we built the whole business around it. We had two call centres, in Auckland and Christchurch, and three teams: one doing ongoing research with people about retirement, one running simple calculations with them over the phone to see if we could help, and one booking appointments with our advisers. Our phone bill alone was around $20,000 a month.

Then the home phone started to change. Mobiles became affordable. People started calling over the internet. And with so many sales calls in the evenings, people simply stopped answering.

By 2007, we weren't seeing enough new clients to keep the business going. We worked out that if we closed on a set date, every creditor could be paid, every staff member could receive their entitlements, and no client would be left worse off. So that's what we did. It was a hard call.

The idea I parked

After that I started a mentoring business, teaching people how to pay off their mortgage faster and change their relationship with money. It ran into the same problem: reaching people by phone just wasn't working any more. So I parked it. I'm only now bringing it back to life.

Why Circulus

The moment I decided to build Circulus was when I realised I still loved helping people learn that funding the lifestyle they want after work is just as important as it was 24 years ago.

What's changed is how people want to learn. They don't answer the home phone. They want to look at their own numbers, in their own time, and talk to someone when they're ready.

I don't give financial advice any more. My job now is building the tools, the courses and the network of licensed advisers who do.

So that's what we built: a free way to see the lifestyle you want and where you're heading, a short course that shows how people in your position close the gap, and licensed advisers to help you put it in place.

Some of my clients from those early years kept in touch for a long time afterwards. Years later, when I was volunteering at an animal rescue zoo, I even sold one of them a pair of lovebirds. Most of them are in their 70s now. Helping people get there is still the best part of the job.