Ivan Ang

I began my career as a financial planner and went on to build my own boutique practice, which I sold in 2010 to focus on executive coaching and leadership development. I was a Founding Member of the Maxwell Leadership Team and later developed the Leadership Signature Coach program.

Running my businesses on my own taught me something I now see in many of the owners I meet: a business can look healthy while one person quietly carries the decisions, the hand-offs and the context. In my case, the long hours came at a cost to my family and, in 2015, to my health.

I was then approached by the Commonwealth Bank to bring my planning and coaching experience together, coaching the bank’s financial planners. Over five years, including leading its national team of Advice Professional Coaches across Australia, I saw how much pressure sits on both sides of the advice table.

For much of the last decade I coached executives and business owners on leadership, productivity and wellbeing, and wrote regularly about focus, the four-day work week and healthier ways of working. I still coach and run leadership masterclasses today.

My clients ranged from finance directors and national operations managers to owners running their own businesses. Training as a coach also changed the questions I asked. As a financial planner, I’d often hear the same reasons for building wealth: to retire comfortably, or to make sure the family was taken care of. Coaching taught me to ask what sat underneath. That’s when people opened up about freedom, about having choices not limited by money, and about wealth that could still look after future generations.

More and more, the leaders I coached were small business owners, carrying the business, the family and their advisers all at once. Those years taught me how to ask the questions people tend to put off, and how to help a room reach agreement. It’s the same skill I now bring to family council meetings.

That writing is still here, in the Leadership & Productivity archive.

Today I work in two rooms. At the family table, I facilitate family council meetings that build alignment around vision, values and legacy. In the adviser boardroom, I project manage your accountant, lawyer, planner and broker so their work stays in sync with your family’s direction.

I’m also co-founder of myPath Wealth, alongside Michael Youssef.

The work is calm and confidential, and it starts with a conversation.