The Counterpoint Meaning

This article was originally published April 2016

After 10 years working in a partnership, 2016 saw me establishing my own practice. As the plan was to maintain a “business as usual” approach, there were not many changes in terms of how to run the business, but logistically there were two very big decisions — a new office and a new brand.

Fortunately, the office decision was pretty easy as there was a clear favourite space to take given the lack of available options for the office size I needed. And two months in, it has certainly turned out to be the perfect choice.

The branding of the business however, was more challenging. Considering that the new brand will hopefully be what I use for the rest of my career, I needed to get it right not only from a practical sense, but also having the brand representing something.

Firstly, the brand name needed to be available. In an industry that has been around for a long time, just about every word has been used in naming financial planning and investment management businesses. And because of this, most new businesses just make up words that sound interesting or combine parts of two words to make a new one.

I didn’t want to do this, as I wanted the name to be easy to remember and spell, simple to search for on the web, and subsequently simple to type the email address.

After a few false starts and many “damn…that name is taken” moments, while looking through a list of musical terms, I came across counterpoint which means:

• the technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality
• two or more tunes that are played together to sound like one tune

In a general sense, a counterpoint is something that produces a different effect from something else, especially in an interesting or attractive way.

I could quickly see meaning in this term for my business. Successful financial planning is all about making many different elements work in with each other to ensure the end result is harmonious with achieving the set goals. Things like:

• making sure liabilities are kept under control while assets accumulate
• ensuring your expenses don’t exceed your income for any extended period of time
• putting in place insurances which provide adequate protection for the events more likely to happen while not wasting money on the “what if” scenarios
• balancing saving for the long term (which for some people unfortunately doesn’t happen) against the joy of just living your life

When advising clients, my job is to balance all of these different elements against each other to make sure the financial “tune” sounds coherent, as opposed to it sounding like many random notes played without consideration of the others.

I look forward to continuing finding this balance for those needing their financial position fine-tuned.

This article is the opinion of the writer and does not consider the circumstances of any individual. This document has been prepared by Peter Keogh (Authorised Representative No. 253538 of Paragem Pty Ltd AFSL 297276) and is intended to be a general overview of the subject matter. The document is not intended to be comprehensive and should not be relied upon as such. We have not taken into account the individual objectives or circumstances of any person. Legal, financial and other professional advice should be sought prior to applying the information contained in this document. No responsibility is accepted by Peter Keogh, Paragem or its officers.