"I went along with it particularly because Alfie was doing the same and he is just a much more competent person than me, and because we have been pushing each other this whole time it felt like a natural next step, that I didn't want to be left behind," she says.
By the age of 27 Little was a chartered financial planner and fellow of the PFS. But she soon discovered that there is more to financial planning than you can learn at school.
"I kind of assumed [financial planning] was like accountancy. It's like all spreadsheets and numbers and it's not personalised, and I was really surprised at how much it was about relationships and people."
She adds: "I think we forget money is actually a really emotional subject. It's tied to so much, it's tied to what [clients] can and can't do in life, what their dreams are, what some of their regrets might be.
"And when you see clients every year, for essentially like decades, you do just get to know them and their family and things happen that are important to them. So yeah, I was really surprised at how emotional clients can get."
She says she was battling with nerves when it came to client meetings but found some comfort in her chartered designation.
"You just get the sweats and nervousness before meeting a client when you're not as experienced. And so I definitely relied more on my technical ability and like being chartered because I just didn't have the confidence and I didn't think anyone would take me seriously being a young financial planner without being chartered.
"And I don't know that that's necessarily true on reflection, but it was really important for my confidence."
The turnaround came when she absolved a registered life planner course with the Kinder Institute, which, she says, opened her eyes to the impact life planning can have as part of the financial planning process.
"You have to go through it yourself because I think the best way to really buy into it is to feel the impact. And after that, I was like, oh, actually, it's the personal emotional bit that is really rewarding, both for clients and for us."
Her dad had done the course first and after that "it was kind of like a prerequisite for anyone else at Emery Little who wanted to be a financial planner", she says.
Drawn out succession process
Little took over Emery Little from her father in 2019 after a drawn out succession process, which eventually saw him exit in a buyout.
Her father had approached her in 2014 about whether she could see herself take over the business. His plan had always been to sell it on but if she wished to step into his shoes he would start to prepare the business for that.
