From Adviser To Restaurateur And Back

“One of our proudest claims to fame is the way our clients came out unscathed by the global financial crisis,” he says.

Mark Milner remembers clearly the day he snapped.

He was running a successful Brisbane restaurant, working long hours seven days a week, and was desperate for some time off.

“I decided to take the weekend off to spend with my family, and I told the staff to manage it for me,” he says. “I got a phone call about three hours after the café opened and the staff were all sitting outside because they couldn’t find the key and hadn’t thought to contact me to ask me where the key was and we lost all of that morning’s takings.

“That was it for me. I knew that even though I was running a successful business, I needed to make a change.”

That change involved returning to his former life as a planner – a profession where most workers, Milner reasoned, were at least in it for the long haul.

“I think the main problem I had with hospitality was that a lot of the staff didn’t see it as a career and it was much more fly-by-night,” he says. “You were also over the barrel with the chefs, and managing staff interactions, and ensuring customers were happy.

“Everything everyone tells you about running your own restaurant is entirely true: it’s much harder than it looks. And while it was successful financially, I found out I didn’t have a passion for it. After three years, I was ready to be an employee again.”

Milner ended up joining Tupicoffs, an independent financial planning firm whose values aligned perfectly with his own.

“It was about putting the clients first and that was what I was always about,” he says. “Clients know that they pay a flat fee and I don’t get any more money for recommending a certain product.”