Hi, I'm Mary Benton.

I've loved numbers since I was tiny. Where other people light up at colour, or music, or have a lovely way with words, for me it was always numbers — they made sense, they had answers, and they told me the truth.

At school I assumed I'd become a maths teacher. What I really loved wasn't standing at the front of the class so much as helping the people around me understand — listening, quietly rearranging an idea in my own head until it clicked, then asking the question that made it land for someone else too. (For the record, I wasn't the class geek — somehow I was one of the cool kids.)

Then, at sixteen, a careers counsellor asked what I wanted to do. “A maths teacher,” I said. “You could,” he replied, “but why not become an accountant? Same numbers, twice the pay.” “What's one of those?” I asked. And that was that.

I qualified as a Chartered Accountant in England, where I worked with Grant Thornton, and loved every minute — accounting is a door into almost any business or industry there is. Then, keeping a childhood promise to my best friend, I emigrated to Australia, took a job with PwC, and re-sat my exams so I'd be qualified here too. I'm now a Chartered Accountant in both countries — qualifications that were hard-won, which is why I still hold them dear, even though I've never worked in my own accounting practice. What that background really gave me was an eye for what's actually going on inside a set of numbers, and a love of the detective work of finding the solution.

The turning point came almost by accident. As a high earner, my bank offered me a complimentary “financial planning” meeting — twice — and both times it was simply someone trying to sell me a product. I came away thinking, surely that isn't what financial planning is meant to be. Around the same time I was studying applied finance and investment, and I picked up a financial planning elective almost on a whim. Reading it, a rocket went off in my head. This was it: working out exactly where a person is today, where they want to get to, how long we have and what we've got to work with — and then the simplest, surest way to get them there. And, just as importantly, being honest when the destination needs to change.

I completed all my financial planning studies in my own time, on top of a very demanding job, then left a secure but stifling role in local government — where I had no real autonomy to make a difference — to do this properly. I opened my own practice with a simple idea: change the world one person at a time.

In the early days, advisers were trained to look only at superannuation. But over time I saw who was being left out: retirees. People who'd worked hard their whole lives, finally reached retirement, and had no-one to help them navigate it. Australia is only now waking up to that gap. They became my life's work.

I adore what I do, because it changes lives and gives confidence back to people who deserve it. I treat every client as if they were my own family. Some stay with me for the rest of their lives; occasionally the right thing is to point someone in a completely different direction — but no-one who picks up the phone to me ever leaves without knowing their next step. No two people are ever the same, and honestly, it feeds my soul. I intend to keep doing it until the day I close the doors — which, all being well, will be a very long time from now.