Daniel Irving is a well-respected Financial Advisor who, with his business partner, launched the Bridges Lake Macquarie franchise in 2016, which has already seen tremendous success.

Daniel’s key point of difference is that he views his role as much more than just figures. His passion is providing advice that is realistic, sensible and ongoing in order to help his clients achieve the best financial outcomes. He believes it’s a journey, not a one-off exercise.

He specialises in working with busy professionals, SME business owners and medical professionals, and thrives on complex financial requirements.

• What makes a good leader?

I think the first thing that is really important in making a great leader is actually having a purpose. If you’re looking to inspire a team and if you want people to actually follow you, you need to have direction. You’ve got to know where you’re going and people need to be able to clearly understand your why. They need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing and about what you’re doing. So what I’ve found out after many years of leading people, is that people are very happy to follow you up the mountain, but they need to understand why they’re doing it in the first place, what happens when they get to the top of the mountain and what does your future look after that. If you can clearly articulate your direction and purpose, you’ll get followers from your staff, from your team and from your partners every time.

• What has shaped your leadership style?

I’ve probably been the beneficiary of working in the service industry now for nearly 20 years. I’ve worked in very large companies that have employed tens of thousands of people, the large companies that have employed thousands and the small with the family-owned business. I guess in that time I’ve had the ability to work with some really great leaders, and also had the chance to work with some very poor leaders or very poor managers.

I think a lot of leadership skills I’ve learned through observation and lots I’ve learned through trial and error. If you’re working with a good leader, you can see how they inspire people, how they motivate people, how they articulate what they’re doing and why, and they get their followers. If you’re working with or for bad leaders, and you see their communication, you see the way they try and lead all of the time, you see what works well and what doesn’t; it’s been really good for me.

When leading my team now, I take a lot of the learnings from the past 20 years and apply them to what I do, and it has worked really well.

• What motivates and drives you?

That’s an easy question! That really goes back to why I do what I do every day. I’m very focused, very passionate about actually helping people in their lives to actually live better lives and make better decisions. It gets me out of bed every morning, it gets me to my office and I can’t wait to see my first client each day.

What I really like about seeing people every day and helping them on their journey is that when someone comes into my office, they’re sitting in that chair and they come in and they’re tense and they’re stressed. They don’t know what the future is going to look like and they don’t know how to get there. They’ve got complexity in their lives, they’ve got aspirations that they

can’t actually meet, they don’t know where to start. I guess with the process of working and unravelling all their complexities and giving them direction that leads to that “aha! Moment, they realise that the future isn’t so bad and they know what to do.

I get a major kick out of that and I really enjoy doing that every day.

• What is one action or task you ensure you incorporate into your diary each week?

I make time for myself to continue to learn and grow, and I do that through a number of different ways. I read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts, watch a lot of videos and a lot of vlogs that are often not even relevant to what I do day in and day out. I think it’s really important for your learning to keep spending time on other areas outside of your day-to-day business and make that part of your overall personal development. I find something to learn every day religiously; I love it.

• Which local businessperson do you find inspiring?

Who I find inspiring is probably a local legend most people know; a gentleman called Brian McGuigan. He’s been retired for quite a few years now, albeit he’s still popped his head into the local community on a regular basis.

What I find most inspiring about Brian is that he is a very humbling man, and he is a very unpretentious man. He built a business over many years from a lot of hard work and leading a very good team in very tough markets. It’s a very tough business, but the contribution that he has also made to the industry in the local market and in the local tourism market in terms of exports; he has employed thousands of people and I think he inspired many.

Even today he’s still giving back to the community on a regular basis. And he’s still a humble man, still very unpretentious and a really great guy, so I certainly get a lot of inspiration from Brian.