They did not think the new owner was a good fit so they decided to take the plunge and set out on their own.
One thing they really liked at Towry was its time-based, or fee-based, charging. So they decided to take that on.
Angus says: "They wanted you to operate like a lawyer, billing for time. Some 15, 16 years ago that was a strange concept for advisers but it made so much sense because a lot of what we did as advisers back then, you weren't getting paid for.
"You do the preparation, you do the planning, you do the report and hope that they're going to write a cheque or you get a new client."
The business has since undergone a number of transformations, especially since bringing on board consultant Brett Davidson from FP Advance about a decade ago.
They were in the first cohort of his Uncover Your Business Potential course, which takes a deep dive into an advice business with a view to optimising systems and processes.
Angus has since become a practicing Life Planner, and Shadi an NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) practitioner, a practice which looks at how and why people make certain decisions.
As a result, their practice gradually changed from one focused on wealth and investments to one focused on financial wellbeing and finding out "what clients really want", says Shadi.
"We find that when you do that with clients it actually makes them more interested in their finances.
"It's a very, very different way of working, so we are having different conversations with clients than we were probably having about 10 years ago."
But perhaps their biggest transformation was yet to come - triggered by a realisation that nobody in their business could be taken for granted.
A new journey
Confronted with Jenn's passing, it dawned on Angus and Shadi that processes and process sharing needed to be changed somehow.
The role of practice manager needed to be replaced, though the time was not right to do so (as previous "hiring disasters" had taught them).
There were several things that needed to be figured out first.
"Finding somebody to see clients is easy, but finding somebody to almost understand how your business works is very tricky," says Shadi.
"You've got to make sure that you've got measures in place, that if somebody else comes in they can step into it. It's that tacit knowledge about understanding how the business works, understanding how a client works, that is really valuable.
"You can only get that if you've updated your CRM properly."
