Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Networking for Financial Planners with Octo Members Founder Lee Robertson

Transcript

Networking for Financial Planners with Octo Members Founder Lee Robertson · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: And today's guest is Lee Robertson.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Lee Robertson is the founder of OctoMembers, a networking community for those that work within the financial planning profession and the wider financial services.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: So whether or not you're an administrator, power planner, financial advisor, or you work in investments, you might work in marketing.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: OctoMembers creates a community where you can go and debate and to talk about and to learn more about the profession that you are in.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: We go into detail about why he set up Octo members.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: We also talk about Lee's actual career within the financial planning profession.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: He ran his own business for 18 years that he told he is chartered and he shares with us some of his views around the next generation of financial planners.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: He also passes on some hints and some tips around networking, something that he is hugely passionate about.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Although he says, naturally, he is an introvert.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: So we talk about that in a bit more detail.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's a fantastic conversation.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's the first one of 2023.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Apologies for the delay.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope you enjoy it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Lee, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's the first one in 2023.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not because I've been lazy, I don't think, anyway.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've just been as we were talking about before the actual recording, I was focusing on organising my diary.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I can go into the year with a bit more structure, and I don't cause the chaos sometimes that I was causing last year.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you've got to give up some something, given me for a little while before and it was podcasts.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: But here we go.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to go.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, listen, absolute pleasure.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um as you say, we were talking about this before.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: We both have sort of diary management, diary blindness, as I call it, kind of things to deal with.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, but listen, I'm really pleased to be here and uh a real pleasure to hopefully have my brain picked here and there on um stuff that might be useful along the way.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Lee, the Financial Planning Life podcast is all about shining the light on a career of uh those that work within the financial planning profession.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just about the financial advisors, there's operations managers, there's marketing managers, there's a plethora of different roles that are now coming into play within the financial planning profession.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: The days of the sales agent working out of his back bedroom are changing.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've got lots of individuals that are entrepreneurial that want to create startup businesses.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: We've got technology coming in and completely changing the landscape.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea here is to say, look, hey, all you second careerists out there, this is a fantastic career.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's a huge amount of opportunity.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: Why not change career?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: Come over here, start a business, and let's make it absolutely pop.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, a lot of our listeners are already in the profession, and they love learning from peers, whether they're power plants, administrators, financial plans, self-employed, employed.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: You yourself are somebody that has been on my radar.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: We've been communicating with each other on and off over the last sort of six months.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: You're the founding member, and you set up Octo Members, which is a networking uh community for those within the financial services, and obviously it's services financial planners.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think let's kick off with that first of all, then.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little bit about OXO members.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Why did you set it up?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: What's it all about and who it's for?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, sure.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: It you know, it was kind of conceived about four years ago, and myself and my co-founder Andy Brown, he and I uh he come from he came from the investment end and I came from the financial planning end.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was a 30-year advisor of one description or another.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we used to have these kind of long detailed chats.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was from the West Coast of Scotland, I'm from the East Coast, so between the banter of the East versus West and the Rangers fan and all that kind of stuff.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We um we often used to get into discussions about our roles, but our perceptions of roles.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, because he he was involved with a mighty proof fund, you know, um, billions under management, opaque with profits, all that kind of stuff.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I say, yeah, but it's opaque, and why would you use it?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he would give me a different perspective.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he would say things like, yeah, but you financial planners are all about commission, it's all about this, all about that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, that's long gone, et cetera, et cetera.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we just had this view that wouldn't it be great if we understood each other a little better?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Not just financial planners talking to financial planners, not just investment people talking to investment people, but if we actually talked to each other across the piece from marketing, investment, fund selection, fund ratings, financial planning, paraplanning, marketing, whatever the disciplines were.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if we all spoke with each other, shared information, shared best practice, picked each other's brains on stuff.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: The meta, there might just be better plan outcomes further down the line.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that was the original concept.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we set it up with about 40 people.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, we went through the we went through the usual phase of should we just have a WhatsApp group?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do that.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: But we're already on some of that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone's standards on WhatsApp are slightly different.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some people, what some people think is really funny, other people think, oh my god, that's you know, it's that's not gonna work.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: We then looked at Facebook.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but around about the time we were thinking about this, Facebook had all its privacy problems with data analytica and selling data on and giving people access.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: We thought that doesn't really work.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: LinkedIn was particularly clunky back then.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's got a lot better actually, but it it back then it was quite clunky.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: But we wanted a private social network in the end, is what we decided.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um we thought about should we have one big extra net that might work?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then we realized an extra net is just a multiple-use intranet.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the only the only reason people want intranets are you know, what's my leave entitlement?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: What's the grievance procedure, probably?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we thought that's not going to work.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um but by this time I'd I'd found um a platform in the States uh founded by Gina Biancini, a fantastic um Silicon Valley entrepreneur.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: She set up a huge extranet company.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is what she'd been a co-founder of a business called Ning.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: She'd had this dancey moment that that didn't really work.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: What you wanted was all the benefits of social media, but within a gated community with control of your own privacy and behaviors and that kind of stuff.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember getting in touch with her and she said, Well, it doesn't really work for us because you want a membership model where you don't want to charge your members.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, membership's got to be free.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's going to be a pay to participate for people who feed content into the network.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Well, that doesn't really work for us.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But she said, I'm getting on a flight.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: When I get off the flight, I'll call you back with a yes or no answer.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she came back and said, I've thought about it, and I'd love to do it with you because everyone's going to know loves a challenge, and you brought me a different thing to think about.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I'd like to give it a go.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we've we've become firmly, firmly uh good friends, and we've loved using their platform.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the concept was cross-sector, sharing ideas, sharing best practice, showcasing good, showcasing uh great practice, um, publishing other people's content.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's aggregation, curation.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: We create a lot of our own as well, but it was about debate.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was about people who recognize in themselves they're not the finished article, that they want to keep developing, they want to keep learning from each other.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when they have knowledge they'd like to share, we give a forum to do it, where it's professional, it's a safe space.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's fed back to us by a lot of our women members, that they like the standards that we maintain within Octo.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not the we're not the only um community out there, aren't we?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've got a very strong one.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: You look at NextGen, you look at Institute Financial Wellbeing, you look at Advisor Lifetalk.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of them, the humans on the management um community.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots and lots of we all overlap now to some degree or another.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we're doing things in different ways, but similar ways.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and everyone now, including you, is a content producer.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's great to have a platform to be able to distribute content that you think is relevant, actionable, contextual, um, educational, and just genuinely helpful.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the concept.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're now, what are we now?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Heading fast for 4,000 members, we're holding live events, we have daily content that goes up.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, membership is still free and will remain so.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, engagement's about 80%.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we feel like it's in a good place.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Long answer to a short question, I know so.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's great.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's perfect.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I love to hear about the history of why it's set up and the reasons why it's set up.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: 4,000 members strong.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's impressive.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not quite, but not far.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: Not far off 4,000, but still, that's that's impressive.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: How many of those have come over in the last year?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: Is it grown within the last year?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it it grows weekly, interestingly?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we we went, it seems it does this kind of it grows at plateaus, it grows at plateaus, it grows at plateaus.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's probably like everything, but it's never really stuck on a plateau.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're still about two-thirds client-facing, so advisors, paraplanners, discretion managers, wealth managers, with the other third coming from investment, marketing, regulation, you know, associated fintech, the associated um uh roles.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think there's ever been a week where we haven't added members in in the sort of three and a bit years we've been going.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's encouraging.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing I love to see is because either Andy or I welcome everyone on.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: When people join, you will have, when you joined, you will have had a message from me, a personal message saying, Great to have you here, great to speak the other day.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some stuff to get you going, here's some stuff not to do, and here's some stuff that will really help you, et cetera.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we it's just wonderful now when we see when people join to say, introduced by a colleague, introduced by ex, introduced by a friend.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we've grown in that network effect way that you all would happen, and it certainly has.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: Are you finding that you're getting a lot more um administrators, power planners, financial planners within the financial planning profession actually joining?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is that sort of increasing?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Are the numbers increasing?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a kind of an idea of how many it's growing by in respect of that?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously financial planning is the predominantly sort of focused area of financial planner life.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um I love the fact that, you know, there's other people from other, you know, investment managers, etc.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I like the cross-communication, the debate that that might bring.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: But, you know, will somebody say, for example, listening to this podcast, you might be a couple of years into their role, or they could be thinking about becoming a financial planner or maybe a year in or whatever it might well be, will they find a place there and will they get, will they get, will they get what they're looking for?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Can they connect with others and learn from others?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they can.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we have some kind of watchwords, which um actionable, contextual, debatable, and educational, you know, one way or another.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the content you get on October, because as I say, we curate and aggregate content, ideas, thought leadership, but what you will never find is a fun fact sheet or the stuff that's just not relevant.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we have members, you're you're you're right to ask the question.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: We've got administrators, we've got um we've got back office people, we've got consultants who who come in and help practices get going.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the bulk of the two-thirds of our membership is client-facing uh client-facing, but the other the other third of it, give or take, are in other roles.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, and many of those will be um support roles of one way or another, paraplanners, um, office administrators, um, operations people, whatever it happens to be.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: I always used to see some of the the more disgruntled financial advisors commenting on money marketing and whatnot.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: And it used to be like this bitching match between financial advisors.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, sometimes I get a bit fearful of these communities.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: You chuck too many people with a lot of opinions in one place, it just becomes this kind of uh echo chamber of ego.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: What's it like within within that community?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is it helpful, is it constructive, or do you get these debating situations a bit like Twitter, where it can almost get a little bit toxic sometimes?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I've never seen one like Twitter.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Twitter can get toxic really quickly.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I even see people who are friends of mine sometimes think, wow, I can't believe you just said that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's it's a sin of omission or a sin of error.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I made one just just trans to go aside for a second.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was brought to my attention by a really good friend of mine, a very high-profile financial planning practice leader.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd responded to him on LinkedIn and used an emoji at the end of my very short sentence.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I was obviously busy, quick, quick, quick.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I probably used the emoji I thought was right, or probably even worse for me, I mistyped what I wanted to do, you know, fat finger symbol or something.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it left someone in his firm feeling quite uncomfortable.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he brought it to my attention and he said, Don't worry, I put their mind at rest because that's not you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: If anything, you are overly polite.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I brought it to their attention, but I wanted to bring it to your attention.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I thanked him for doing so, and I got in touch with the individual, and we we we agreed that it was, you know, it wasn't malign in any way.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, actually, upon reflection, thank you for supporting it.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if I just took the emoji off, the sentence was great.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Just the emoji slightly altered the meaning, and I took that on board.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I even wrote an article the other day that went onto LinkedIn talking about beware the power of these we emojis, but um, because they can they can mess stuff up.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: But going back to the original question, you never see snark um on October, you just don't.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it might go on because members can private message each other.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's think WhatsApp within the app, direct messaging within the app.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it to individuals or you can do it to small groups.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: It might go on person to person, but it's never only once has it happened.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And we we actually red card of that individual.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I got I got on and said, and I I don't I don't even like football analogies, but I said, listen, play the ball, not the man.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Play the ball, not the man.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what you've done there is um you've been disrespectful and unprofessional, and you cannot, you cannot act like that on here.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have a code of conduct, and actually, what you've done is you've questioned their qualifications, which are which are beyond reproach.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: They actually have a doctorate in the subject matter that they're talking about.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Right, so those are the rules.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's my club, it's not just mine, it's all bars club, if you know what I mean.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I if if I'm one of the policemen, I say, listen, withdraw it or alter it.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: You can still disagree with what they've said, but but go for the subject matter, not the individual.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: That particular individual refused, and I said, Well, you know, thanks, but I'm just going to revoke your permissions.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he he huffed off and he's asked twice to rejoin, saying you'll behave.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I just can't be both.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I despair sometimes of the way sometimes the discourse down the Twitter stream begins to go.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I hear exactly what you're saying.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've all had it, you know, if you put your head above the parapet, you will get it from time to time.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're like me, you don't, you don't, you know, big broad shoulders, had it all before, don't really care.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you do.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: You it sort of hits you a bit.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember speaking at a conference.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, did I warn you there might be long answers to short questions?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember speaking at a conference after I just sold my financial planning practice to my team.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I was asked by the conference organizer to do a um soapbox slot.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: 10 minutes.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you were starting again, what might you do differently knowing what you know today?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, one of those blue sky kind of so I I stood and talked about, you know, marketing is so much different to when I started, social media is there, professional connections have always been a big thing for me.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um we might come to that later.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I said I'd I'd probably look at you've just got to look at investment propositions.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, the whole index staff versus active management, that's got to play in somewhere.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also, of course, the charging structure, the value structure.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, we've got consumer duty coming this year.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I talked about, you know, people that you know, I call them Henry's high end is not rich yet.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't coin the term, but I read it somewhere from something out of the state, Michael Kitch is probably.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I said it's about delivering value.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at what is stripped out of portfolios over an accumulated period of time, you've got to think about the value there.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, one of the trades reported it as Lee Robertson.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: When I start to get I'll undercut expensive IFAs, which is not what I said at all.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, it was reported that way, and then whoosh, in it came, you know.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: People I'd never met, people I didn't know, few I did, uh, by reputation at least.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you thought, wow, that is ferocious.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this particular trade publication, because they loved that clip-bait stuff, uh, they didn't let my response to it come in until two days afterwards.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: By which time, people who had been at the conference, who were financial planners, were weighing in saying that's not what he said.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were there, if you actually watch the video of him speaking, these this is stuff we've got to think about constantly and do that, and he was right to bring it up.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of fizzles out.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's ferocious when you're in that maelstrom, and people you don't even know are maligning your integrity and and you know, all sorts of stuff.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a younger person in our sector, or even worse, if you're a younger person thinking about joining financial services and you see all that going on, I don't know, would you think this may not be where I want to go?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about, and I do, financial planning as a profession.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: You never see the other professionals pulling themselves apart like that.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we've got a particular situation going on.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the rights and wrongs of it.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've got my own views around the professional, one of the professional bodies at the moment.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And some people are being very temperate, very professional, and others are being very intemperate, and I would say bordering on unprofessional in the way they're talking about it very openly in open social media where their clients, their professional connections, other participants or potential participants in financial advice might be looking on and going, wow.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Why do you think that is?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do you is it is it a certain I'm gonna be a I'm not gonna be an ageist here in any which way.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think it's a certain generation that don't seem to, I don't know, understand the impact of what you put out on social media?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: The I yeah, where am I trying to get at here?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of people that I know who are a bit older, older generation, 50 plus, right?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: Let's say that.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: And they're and they're way more vocal and way more um less caring what people think about what they say, which I respect.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think you should be yourself, you should be authentic.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: But sometimes it's coming across as being like whingy and moony.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like you're saying, if somebody who's I don't know, younger looking at that or other people, it's like you may have a point, but you just hang like such a miserable old bugger.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like change the tone, be more, I don't know, um, constructive around your your point instead of being so aggressive.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Some people are really aggressive on social media, I found, especially with the older advisors.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, listen, it's an interesting thing, and I guess not an advisor now, but I was still an advisor into my 50s.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I think there is something about experience, there is something about successful financial planners are often very entrepreneurial, therefore they have um they have a go-get kind of mindset, and that that probably spills over into the way they sometimes communicate.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, the lots of people that I really respect, and sometimes I see them on social media thinking, whoosh, I wouldn't have said that.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not to say they're wrong.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I think as long as they keep it professional and non-aggressive, then it's good.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I we did something on october not so long ago about a particular subject matter, and the person who because we love debate, you know, not everyone's going to agree all the time.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it's through this debate that you you hopefully get more rounded, even if it just reinforces what you thought all along, at least you kind of sense checked it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this particular individual who put a lot of time putting his slides together did a great webinar for us, got quite a beating on social media over one of his um one of his thoughts on this particular piece of legislation.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, he got a beating.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, this, you know what?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: He he he's knowledgeable, he's he's respectable, he's respectful, he's professional, he put a lot of time and research into doing that.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: It just seemed a little bit personal just because they disagreed.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I I hear what you say, it it but it's not just the younger advisors.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen stuff from younger advisors, and I think, wow, for a generation that is, I think, genuinely more in tune with their mental health, with the social norms, with social niceties, that grew up with social media when those of us who didn't uh maybe struggle at times, it's not just, but it you're right, it does seem to lean more towards the older advisor.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Which I don't mind because I cut like you, I like a bit of debate and I find it quite fun, you know, and I can see it for what it is.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: I just worry sometimes that they don't see what they look like from the outside.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, come on, you've got to have there's there has to be a there has to be a balance here, like change the tonality of what you're saying, you know, because I mean in what you're saying, like there's a guy I know, I what he says is spot on.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: I totally agree, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: I totally agree, but it's it's the delivery, you know, but it causes reaction, it causes the debate, it causes conversation.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I think often it's about like chucking a grenade out there and seeing what happens.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think some people just naturally like that.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, some people like to do it, you know.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some people I do quite like to do that, and I I think there is there is something about that, about stimulate debate.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we've all got friends, haven't we, who will almost are or relatives who will argue the opposite of what they believe just because they want to have that debate.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, you do see that, but I think you're right.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you think, wow, I'm not sure.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: But then of course, Twitter particularly, although Twitter, I think next month is about to have much longer um word counts coming in.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at the moment, what is it, 240 words or 280 words, or whatever it is.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes what you think is humorous, a short, snappy, punchy, humorous retort, actually, and you see it in short emails as well, you think because you can see people smiling, you can't see the you can't see what they're doing on their face, which is why I would say in my practice, face-to-face beats telephone, beats email, beats WhatsApp, or you know, whatever.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because you and I, right now, even on screen, we can see when we're smiling, when we look a bit perplexed, you get all those cues, physical cues, um, that you don't get through the written word on social media.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think all of that wraps.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of layers to the onion.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there is bad behavior on social media, but we certainly don't get it on Octo, and actually we can tolerate it and all.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the part of bank communities.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was chatting to you before, wasn't I?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, um, I might I would like to set up a closed community, but at the same time, I don't think I would.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's I'm not sure it's for me to do it.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: But the one of the benefits that I see is that it is closed, right?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that you're not public.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: Therefore, your opinion about the profession is for those that are in the profession to have that discussion.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas Having an open debate and almost an argument on social media, there's a real high risk that you are going to be seen by your clients, employees, um, and the interpretation of what you're saying can be bent out of shape, and you could potentially could potentially lose clients, alienate yourself based on the tone of how you're coming across.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden a client doesn't want to see you anymore, or you people don't come to see you anymore.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thinking, well, why is that?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's because, well, your personal brand's been slightly changed, because out there in the social world, you've been speaking your mind about things that you're passionate about, but you're coming across as a bit of a aggressive person or something like that.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And but what I would say is many clients flock to, but as a feather flock together, is what I'm trying to say.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And often clients will join an advisor because they chime somehow with the way they act, the way they talk, their social standing, their geographical location, all that stuff plays in.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And very often people like a particular type of advisor, you know, they gravitate to, and their friends who also are similar gravitate to.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you build a network of like-minded people as clients.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you could overstate that.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for me, I used to get a lot of work from professional connections.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I was very careful on LinkedIn, particularly the professional social network to call it, you know, if there is such a thing, to be uber polite, uber professional, uber helpful, because playing it out there is not the place to do it.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think LinkedIn, a bit like Octo and the other communities, you've got to be the real you.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, your picture is there, your contact details are there.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're being unpleasant, you're very identifiable.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's not always the case on social media, memes, and and even on even on the they all say they're getting better at it.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not entirely sure.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look at some of the trade publication, you will see you know, GH22 is that's put the boot into someone.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: You think who the hell's GH22?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: No idea.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: I made that up, by the way.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry for GH22 watching.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: Networking is obviously at the heart of who you are as a person, it's part of your intrinsic values.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you we we we've spoken about your business investment quorum.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: You were there for 12, well, sorry, 18 years running a time I left, 18, yeah.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Running a city-based financial planning firm.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: You we talked about you know moving to London, picking up a yellow page and thinking, I've got to start somewhere, I've got to build a network here.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's funny how you ended up now, your job, your one of your key sort of passions is octo members.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Those, you know, to create a community for those to network within the financial planning profession.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_02: But a lot of those that are joining the profession or quite early on in their career, and some that have been there for quite some time do struggle with networking, do struggle with building professional introductions, introducers, do struggle to build client bases and client banks.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um talk a little bit about your history then and your experience of running your own business and what you did to really get out there and win new client relationships.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: You touched on it with professional connections.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's obviously an area.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Some people don't have the confidence to go out there and do that.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: So just first off, investment quite in there eight to 18 years.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's running your own business in the city, right?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um how did you get that off the ground and how did you start winning clients?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: And what did networking and building professional relationships play, what part did that play in it?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it was it was probably off the ground before it got going.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll explain why.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I came out of the armed forces, I was going to join a civil service department, they mucked around the start dates and all that kind of stuff.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: I had to earn a living.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was a very low barrier to entry, and all these free magazines that they used to, I don't know if they still do, giveaway at tube stations, always had financial services, sales jobs, and Allah Dunbar, Imperial Trident, MI Group, Prochester Group, Reliance Mutual, all these.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember going for an interview at the MI Group, which was based in Centre Point in London.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was all Porsches parked outside, and you went up and you met the sales manager who said, Wow, see those Porsches downstairs, you can have one of them this year and all that.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just ever dies.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, for anyone that doesn't remember it, go look it up.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I did go into Allah Dunbark's.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, it sounded vaguely Scottish to me.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: It turned out it wasn't, it was it'd been set up by South Africans, but anyway, there you go.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I did a year of direct sales, uh, and I knew no one in London.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I knew two people in London, I wasn't going to hit them up for sales, so it was yellow pages or nothing else.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard slog, you know.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: But to be fair, it was round about the start of um retirement annuities, became personal pensions, contracting out of setups all those old-style pension stuff.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there was an appetite, and even the government advertised on TV that you should get pensions and all that kind of stuff.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I made just enough to get by, but it was a hard slog, and you know, you know, there was a hierarchy of sales manager, and your sales manager shouted at you, and his sales manager shouted at him, who then shouted at you all the way up.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then they went to the wine bar at lunchtime, had loads of wine, came back, shouted at you, and then drove over there, and it went all over again the next day.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: So after a year, I went mortgage broken, uh, did two years in the Halifax group, loved it, um, really, really enjoyed it.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hard work, 12, 12 points a day.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: We drove big fast cars, we were thatch as children.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was um, but you fast run and I got made a sales manager there.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a team working for me, and I realized I'd become one of what I didn't like, which was I got paid a bit on what they got paid and stuff.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Then I joined a bank group.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I've done the whole thing, direct sales, mortgage broken, went to a bank group, bank assurance for five years.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Worked out after five years that if I did it everything almost exactly the opposite of the way they wanted it done in the bank group, I'd probably alright as an IFA, you know, build long-term relationships, do it properly, da da da da.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I became an IFA, IFA practice of its day, that went for five years.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: By this time, I'd begun to hear what was going on.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to go fee-based.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, our network at the time couldn't deal with fee-based, they didn't like that because, in effect, they still weren't, they were selling distribution, it turned out, to live companies and all that kind of stuff.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I went fee biased with investment quorum.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: But what I did was I split away from my business partner at the time, just spit the client back 50-50.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: He paid me a pound, he getting the name, and I set a brand new one up called Investment Quorum.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the track record.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I took those five years worth of clients from the trust business into investment quorum.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um but how did I get clients?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm nobody ever believes this, but I'm a natural introvert.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I've learned to, you know, to what Chris Budd from IFW calls a high-performing introvert.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've learned that you've got to overcome these issues as best you can.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, what are the ways to get clients?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to you've got to meet them in places that they want to be met, want to explain, to be to be discussed, those kind of things.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or the smarter ways to find other people to make introductions to you.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: How does that work?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Happy clients introduce people to you.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I never, ever, ever have asked for a referral.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I never even in direct sales, I didn't do that.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're happy, no, can you tell me three of your friends?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: All those old tricks, it wasn't me.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you seed your conversation with things like um, you know, thank you for you know coming along.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've been introduced by Susie, and that Susie's been a client for many years, and that's how my business thrives by happy clients introducing people.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: You you seed it very early on, and that's how you grow your business.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a very soft way of doing it.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds slightly blunter when you say it out loud like that.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Another one was professional connections or centers of influence.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I just I had two centers of influence in the Lloyd's market, so I ended up with lots of Lloyd's insurance brokers, underwriters, deputy underwriters, etc., etc.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest came from solicitors and accountants.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't have a panel of 20 or 30 or 40 solicitant accountants, you need two or three really good people that you've explained and explained and explained how you do the sort of client you look, how you can help.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and over time, and it doesn't happen overnight, over time they begin to refer and they begin to understand what that is.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you refer back to them, it becomes a reciprocal arrangement.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I always started by making referrals first, and you learn hard that way that sometimes their standards aren't as good as you thought they were, or that you would expect of your clients, et cetera.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: But but you work it out.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's about happy clients and happy professional connections who understand what you do and centers of influence who are in effect happy clients for them.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: So center of influence, just uh sort of delve into that a little bit because it's not a term I've ever come across.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there are people who naturally, and this I'm gonna explain this kind of clumsily, but bear with me.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: So there are some people who are just well respected, well-liked, well-regarded, fun to be around, known as knowledgeable, known as connectors, um, who all, you know, oh, I know somebody that can do that.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: That type of people.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know exactly who you need to speak to.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and I've always called them centers of influence.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And and I had a couple in the Lloyd's market, they were Lloyd's brokers.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: One was incredibly larger than life.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, everyone said he looked like Brian Blessed, and and bless him, he did.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he had a character just as big and just as fun and engaging.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he was one of these people that that that thrived on making introductions to other people.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just thrived on it.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I know who can help you there.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: I will put you in touch with it.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And if you get into that circle, you're away.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because these guys, and you know, you become part of a group of people who like, respect each other, who've been introduced by each other to each other, and you become part of that mini community, if that makes sense.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I think um was it not David Jason Priestley, David Priestley, I think.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a book called uh Key Person of Influence, which is very similar to be that key person, there's a key person of influence within a specific niche.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, I want to become that key person of influence within financial planning when it comes to talking about careers.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and you know the yeah, you're absolutely right.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what's the other one?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um trusted advisor.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: People talk about the trusted advisor.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: That means necessarily be a financial planner or a financial advisor, that could be someone within a social group of people or a professional group of people or um or a collegiate group of people who is trusted to know people who know people.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever they make a referral to someone for some kind of professional service, it stands up.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: They were what they were described as.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Do you find that it works quite well across financial services?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, like your Octo members is a collection of different people from different walks of life within financial services.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Do financial advisors, is it advisable for financial advisor can to connect with those within financial services, look for people within it, or to step outside of it into micro-niche, other completely other areas?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: So someone could be, I don't know, they could be uh an estate agent who sells houses to really high net worth individuals, right?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you you will you will work it out if you go out and try it out, if that makes sense.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, you're absolutely right.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: The thing about within financial services, a lot a number of my clients when I was in investment quantum worked within financial services.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't work in retail financial advice, but they might have worked in fund sales or financial services marketing or or whatever.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the thing about your peers, and this is what I keep saying, your other financial planners are your peer group, not your competition.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't enough financial planners out there, there aren't enough power planners out there.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: So no financial advisor or financial planner that I know has trouble finding clients at the moment.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't enough people on the ground.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they're your peer group and they know things you don't know, and you know things they don't know.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you share ideas and share best practice and share what works for you, and you know, you look at groups like the Information Exchange, what used to be the West End Brokers Group that I was a member of back then, we used to meet once a month and just kick stuff around.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: What's working for you?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: I just facilitated a fantastic group out in Spain towards the end of last year, and that was it.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: The first day was facilitated about what was working, what wasn't.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the second day was all about what's vexing you, what are you tripping up over?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: What issue have you got in your business that the rest of us as a group think tank can bring our collective knowledge experience battle scars to bear on to help you resolve that particular issue?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all opt to it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that's what NextGen is, although they're very training focused, and I think they do a brilliant job, Troop at all.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they bring like-minded people together to learn from each other because nobody but nobody has got the monopoly on knowledge, and and you know, wouldn't none of it, not one of us is the finished article.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think historically, and I've seen over 14 odd years of me recruiting into the financial planning space.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think financial planners are starting to open up.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: They're starting to listen to each other and they're starting to collaborate more.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I do think it's these communities that are bringing people together and those ones that want to seek out collaboration and not competition, that are open to um listening to others and thinking maybe I'm not doing it the best way.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe someone else can help me.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's that kind of dropping the ego a little bit, it's dropping the guard and the pride and connecting and working together.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you're right, because there's so very few financial planners and just so many clients that need financial advice.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: And we're not even talking about like the clients that are out there, the the 95% that an advisor might not work with because it's not cost-effective to work with.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the financial advisors that start to communicate and talk with the advisors that are implementing technology that allows them to speak to the Middle England clients that used to go to you know Barclays Bank or HSBC to get their advice.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's so much to learn around that area.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, you know, it's like the tech companies can help you, the investment managers can help you, the financial planners can help you, you've just got to let it down, let your guard down a little bit, connect, come together, and like you say, kick the can around a little bit and share some ideas.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you've just described the reason I'll get for October.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not bothered, if if you've got enough clients coming through the door and you don't want to change, you don't want to improve, you don't want to change the way you operate, then fine, don't engage with them.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think life is more rewarding and richer when we learn from each other and we share what we know together.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting because as you say, you're a at heart, you're an introvert.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's it's um but the thing is though, you could be like an introvert that is massively inquisitive.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that you're an introvert, therefore you don't want to talk to anybody.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: You're an introvert that wants to learn, but also values human connection.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: So you can be a social introvert.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: You can be um do you know I'm doing where I'm kind of going with you?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I I know Chris Budd and I, I remember Chris Budd, you know, um, of IFW fame, and um before that, a great financial planner.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: He and I sat having breakfast in a in a greasy spoon cafe in Smithfields, uh, one and it was a freezing cold day, and it was a kind of slight blizzard, not blizzard, a few snowflakes, I shouldn't say blizzard, a few snowflakes blown by.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we sat having this discussion about introversion and how how you have to operate and how you move forward and all that kind of stuff.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we both agreed that we were eternally curious, so we can be introverted, but because we have a deep set community uh um curiosity to learn, to hear, to evaluate, to adjudge, that really helps you as an introvert.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to hug every two minutes of the day.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'm sure my slightly Protestant Scottish upbringing doesn't help and all that kind of stuff.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: We weren't a family of huggers, but um, there is this thing about if you're curious and want to improve, and the the military did this to me.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was a hopeless high school student, then I went into the military and learned that the way to get on was to be good at what you did.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you you ended up in smaller teams, you got more responsibility.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was because you learned quickly and you excelled, small increments, getting better all the while.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I carried that through into I hope my my um my business career I was a very young manager when I went to the Halifax, well, got made a very young manager within the Halifax group, was a highly successful down in London um consultant within the bank group, and then set up two really, really decent IFA practices, uh, one of which still survives and thrives today, and hopefully I left it in good shape with a great team who are still there caring for the clients.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: And but that's about curiosity learning and just wanting to be that little bit better because your clients they respect it and they understand it.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you know what you're talking about, you've learned your craft.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, you're well versed in current affairs and sector affairs and all the other stuff.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: It really shows to clients, I think.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think so.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's okay to be, and and I think some people kind of worry a little bit about being curious because it they would they they have this fear that it shows that they're weak.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that they're, you know, if they're asking somebody a question, especially somebody who's a peer, that they don't know what they're talking about.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's kind of like ditch that because so many people are happy to share information.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: I've learned that, you know, one of the best I'm a very curious individual.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, I love going out and talking to people, and I'm oh I'll go in there and I don't know what I'm talking about.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_02: I might go in there with a bit of an idea, but you know, I let the individual that I'm talking to share their thoughts and feelings on it, and it usually then triggers something in me and leads me.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: I had a great meeting with NextGen for you know, two and a half hours, and we came off that and we we said to each other like that was amazing.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like we came in there with an idea, and neither of us knew how to execute it, but we left with a plan.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah, and I love that.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: I I absolutely love that.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it takes a couple of meetings to really get that feel, to get that flow, but you know there's an energy there, you know that that person's got the knowledge that you're looking to um to gain from them.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: And if they're continuing to talk to you, they're curious about you as well.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: So you're bringing something to the table that they're interested to learn more about as well.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: And it brings me into that, you know, the mentoring side, you know.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: When you mentor somebody, well, I mentor a few people, but when you mentor somebody, you don't go in it from a place of arrogance that I know more than you, because the teaching tends to open you up to new conceptions and uh new perspectives.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you learn a lot from trying to help somebody else.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: You don't realize just how much you take from it from actually stepping up and being that mentor.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I I've written I've written on this um in October and elsewhere that I learn at least as much from my mentees as I give to them.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think everyone has uh their own point of view, their own their own lens through which they see life or their profession or their career or their sector, whatever it happens to be.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I know you have a lot of younger participants follow this podcast, and never put up with someone not not answering your questions, or else of the wrong people to be asking, because I think it behoves all of us who care about our profession to help each other at whatever stage we're at, which is why I love mentoring.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also a visiting lecturer at university, I love to give back that way.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's all sorts of stuff you can do.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone is not willing to share their experience or expertise, as long as you're not tripping them up every two minutes, but you you frame the questions right and you learn from it and you implement it, or you adapt what they've said to your way to help you get to where you want to get to, then you should never ever worry about asking questions.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Better to ask and get a bad.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you rarely will.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: In my view, you very rarely get people in financial says, stop asking me that ridiculous question.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: If if they do, you're in the wrong organization.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: No, absolutely.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's no um there's no denying it either.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: We're in a situation at the moment within financial planning.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking about young people here, aren't we?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's not enough young people coming in.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very aging population of financial planners.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: I outside of financial planning, power planners, administrators, there's a lot of younger people in there.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I put a post out recently, and I think there's a lot of uh, you know, a lot of people in this back office type functions that are probably sitting on level four qualification that aren't either um confident enough to step up into the role of financial planner or they enjoy doing what they do, and that's fine.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: A career in power planning, for instance, or compliance or administration or whatever is absolutely fine, and if that's what you want to do, you want to do.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: But for those that have got an aspiration to become a financial advisor, and and I think this is a good area to look at right now.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about it in the office today because we were talking about I've got a guy who's just joined me and he's like, Well, who who would be the best fit for an academy?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Would a graduate be a good fit for an academy?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, like, I'm talking about academies like your MNGs, your your St.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: James's place your quilters.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: My answer to that was no.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think a graduate, straight out of university, uh going into an academy that's designed to put them straight into a financial planner role at the age of 21.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I say financial planner as in client-facing financial advice, I don't think it's the right route.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think a graduate route, I think a gentle uh foray into financial planning as a younger person, understanding administration, understanding the power planner route, understanding how the dynamics of the business work, getting a really strong foundation, learning the life skills that go along with that, learning how to interact with clients, being gently introduced to that environment, not sort of the stress and everything that comes from not hitting targets or not bringing business in, or maybe not even having that experience of going out and networking.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: You've never really sat down with somebody and really had a deep and meaningful open conversation with somebody in their 40s, 50s about the future, about their future.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not to belittle somebody straight out of university.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's just my thoughts and feelings.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think you would be better off to like, I say it to people, it's no rush.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: You could be like, you could spend five years working in financial planning as an entry level, admin, power planner, trainee route.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: You could be 25, 26 years old going into a financial advisor role with five years of experience behind you.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: A, your candidature in the market will.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Be huge, you'll be marketable, your knowledge will be massive, your foundations will be massive, and you have a good better position, I think, to step up into that financial planning position.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the qualifications, if you're serious about that, will follow.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: You could be twenty, you could be chartered at 25 years old with the solid background behind you.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: So the second career-risk element, if someone's sitting in a role 30 years old, they've been smashing out marketing sales, they're they're a business developer, they've got all those transferable skills, they might be in a bit more of a financial position where they can fund themselves to be self-employed.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of these academies are self-employed, right?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: They perhaps, you know, the wife or the husband is happy for them to go out because they don't have as much on the mortgage or whatever it might well be.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think they can be best suited to those academies.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was interested in what you think.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you run a business, you've seen people come through your business, train, develop, become great advisors, you network with lots of people.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think somebody's coming out of university should go straight into a financial advice role or should they just find their feet first?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good question.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, like any question such as that, there's no 100% answer.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: I lean more towards your way of thinking.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going to be talking to people about money, life, future goals, current issues, it might it might help to have some of them.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, if you have a mortgage, you understand what people are going through with mortgage interest rates rise.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bad example.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you have dealt with uh the loss of a close relative or whatever, all these life things that as you get older, you just accumulate in your knowledge bank.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess it gives you more empathy as well as sympathy.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if I mean a given nowadays is of course get you qualifications.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know as much about those academies.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know they exist, I know what they do.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would hope they don't just drop them straight out of the out of the academy into giving financial advice because I think we need to be supported and mentored and and and husbanded through, if that's the right phrase, to get better all the while.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: I go back to you know my practice, we'd somebody that was pretty much one of the youngest ever chartered financial planners and was frightened to death the clients.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't matter what we did, he just he just didn't want to do a client meeting on his own, and yet he was a chartered financial planner.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that was lack of life experience for him because he he just, as people spoke to him about these big life issues of money, retirement, life assurance, death of a partner, he didn't have any anything to draw on beyond the textbook.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I get what you're saying, but do I think there are exceptions?
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Young people who are particularly good, particularly empathic.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there are.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I've met some of them over the years, but I think you're probably right, unless they're going to be looked after as they exit the academy in as some form of ongoing skills training.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: We used to call it soft skills training.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um that that phrase will do to help to help them with that, um, then they will probably fail, particularly if they are self-employed.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: They just won't be able to attract and retain enough of the right type of client who understands what they're trying to do.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: But there are always exceptions.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing I would say about youngsters coming through compared to my day is they are incredibly well trained.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that they're at qualification levels.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have any.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, don't some of us got qualifications before they were compulsory.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: The vast majority didn't.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas now the vast majority do have these qualifications and have learned a lot as they go.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's about bolting on the empathy, the life experience, the soft skills on top of that.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think particularly next gen do a fantastic job with something and you too.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, some of these organizations out there are doing fantastic soft skills training with people.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: No, I agree.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: With your business um investment quorum, you're sort of on the tail end, really, of um social marketing, digital marketing.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, or were you?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: Did you get involved in that at all?
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: Have you had much experience around that?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a bit of cloak and dagger?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a bit black magic, or do you believe in the power of digital marketing to track clients?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Personally, I do.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I absolutely do.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's it's it's gone from being a black, not very understandable art.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much evidence now of how it does work.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a slow burn.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you if you lean into really good experts and you look at you know Phil Bray at um Yarstick, you look at the guys at um clients first, you look at Faith Liver's Edge, all sorts of these agencies that do really, really well.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, listen, I'm not great at things like SEO and SERP and all that kind of stuff, but I understand if you message consistently and well and often, it does attract clients.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, not long before I saw my practice, we attracted a six million pound investment in through our website because we we made sure it was consistently updated, everything was going on all the time, there's nothing wrong with someone's website.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: The last blog thing was about eight years ago or eight months ago, you think they don't care.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you've got great social proof, great commentary, I don't mean just taking stuff, stuff off chat GTP and just saying, you know, eight reasons to use financial advisor, that kind of rough stuff.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've got well thought out client communications and potential client communications using social, I think it's a great broadcast.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I was a big believer of it.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um not everyone in my firm was as big a believer as I was, but every now and again a decent client would pop up, which meant, you know, it it sort of proved itself.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I I like it.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: For the advisors that are sitting here today listening to this podcast, perhaps they might be employed advisors and they're a bit fed up with um being employed and they can you know they see the opportunities out there, they're probably maybe not getting the lion's share, maybe they're bringing in a lot of business but not getting reward for it, client ownership, these issues, and uh also the obvious attraction to building a client book that you can eventually sell and and exit.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what advice would you would you have to those individuals if they were making that transition to employed to self-employed?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: Looking back on your you know, 18 years of investment quorum, for example, and I keep going back to that and even jobs in different areas.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what do you think would be the blueprint?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think that you should you they should do within their first three, six, nine, twelve months to really establish themselves and to make sure they're A, making the right decision.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: But once they've made that decision, what should they do within that first three, six, nine, twelve months that you perhaps, with all your wealth of knowledge now, would do now?
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh keep the lights on, that's for sure.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh try not to give equity away, try to keep the lights on.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you have enough of a nub of clients who will come with you who aren't subject to um non-compete clauses, and they've got much, much stronger over the years, you will know that.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure that what you're going to do is legal and honest and open and above board.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't make clients from someone that you you used to work for and paid you a salary to look after them.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not fair on them, and it's actually demeaning on you, I would say.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and even when I left Royal Bank of Scotland all that time ago, I had a number of clients who um tried to come with me and I couldn't take them, and I'd refuse to take them until the non-compete had lapsed.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: So people will wait if they believe in a use.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: So to go back to your question, think long and hard about it.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: The grass is not always greener.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: There is a huge amount of difference between being an employee where your HR and your pay turns up every month and your admin is done for you and your marketing is done for you, and all the other stuff that goes, you know, the lights gone when you switch the light on in the morning, the photocopy is there in the corner, all that stuff's done for you.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: When you set up your own practice, it's you.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: You are every hat.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the early days are the most frightening, but also the most fun, I would say.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you've you've thought long and hard about your business plan.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you are sustainable if things don't go quite as well as you hope.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have the confidence to do it, I suspect you will probably succeed.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: But just get a business plan right, get your branding, get your marketing right, get your business plan right, get your mentors or your board advisors or your business partners right.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and don't assume just because you work well with another employee next to you, because I see that happen from time to time.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Two or three people leave together and then they fall out within minutes because there are different pressures.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: And people accept roles that they then decide they want, didn't want to do, and then there becomes all these issues that you will be completely aware of.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, short answer: if you want to do it, do it, but think long and hard about it.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Think long and hard about the extra responsibility that it will take beyond just being an employee and just having to generate new business.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: You will have to be your own employee or an employee of a small group of people, um, all sharing the risk and hopefully the reward.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you will also have to be your own HR manager, your own marketing manager, your own social media manager, your own tech manager, whatever those issue compliance, all that kind of stuff.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: But lots of that now can be outsourced.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you've got enough money to make it happen for three to six months.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thereafter, if you competent yourself, I suspect it will.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are virtually no financial advisors I know.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I can't name any who aren't drowning in clients at the moment.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's huge, there's there's huge opportunity out there, isn't it?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: There's loads of clients out there.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think down the um the directly authorized route for somebody, or do you think they should take advantage of things like becoming an AR underneath a network?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, what what's your sort of take on that?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's cross just for good, isn't it?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I did um my first five year business, we were definitely part of the network.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the reasons I kind of broke away from that business is whether you want to be part of that network anymore.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um in one way, you give up one master to take on a kind of slightly less imposing master, if that makes sense.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if they've got the compliance standards and they've got the they've got particular standards you've got to meet, they've got a particular panel you've got to use.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these are all slightly old terms.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: If they've got a centralized investment proposition that you've got to follow, they've got a platform you've got to use.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have a lot of freedom within being an AR, then why not?
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: If that gets you going.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just I'm just always of the mindset, if I'm going to do something, I want to do it well.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I always felt having been an AR, I didn't want to be an AR again.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, listen, I would rather contract directly with the regulator, if that makes sense, uh, for my standards, and I will I will stand or fall on the standards that I built within my practice.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of newbies that are coming into the profession as well, they're not seeing the IFA route as an accessible route to get into, but being told that if you go down a route such as St.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: James's Place or MNG, then you're the devil, you're you're working for a sales force.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think there's space for there are space for these multi, these tide propositions and the IFA route?
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: And if someone is wanting to get into the profession, there's absolutely nothing wrong with going down one of the product provider routes.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Look, you've got to miss a couple of frogs, haven't you?
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um it will depend on who you are, what you want.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you want the comfort of an organization around you that supplies it, it's a bit like being in the R, isn't it?
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you want the comfort of having something that around you, at least to get going, then I don't see that as massively difficult.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: There aren't enough financial planners.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: I keep saying this, there aren't enough financial planners to serve the public need.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: Unless we have big organizations serving the public need, even if they're not doing as well as some of the best financial planners think it should be done, they are at least getting people insured and getting them saving and helping them invest.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now they might be expensive, they might, I'm not saying they are, but if they are expensive, they've got exit penalties, if they've got old-style looking charging structures, yeah.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, get underway and work it out from there.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: You could if they're going to train you, that's a big plus.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get any training.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I got two weeks' training from the direct sales force, so that was about how to sell, nothing else.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Usually yellow pages, you know.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um stand on a chair and say, I've made a sale.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, um, but if they're going to train you up to a standard, they're going to help you get your qualifications, they're going to give you peer support, they're going to give you managerial support, they're going to give you compliance support, there is a value proposition there for you to consider.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be that you have to work that way for a while to work out, you know what, it's been okay, but I do still want to go up the route.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or you just kind of go straight that straight all the way through to be completely on your own.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: But everything that entails.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it is frightening at times.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't have the money to pay your administrator and your rent falls due because you know, you didn't pick up the client you the two or three clients you thought you'd get that week or that month or whatever, it's frightening.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now that may still happen if you're self-employed within a larger organization, but I suspect it is slightly less immediate.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: There will be a process that will have to be gone through by which time you should have recovered your position, hopefully.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: So listen, I I'm not the biggest fan of some of these huge integrated models, but in another way, I think they serve a purpose.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think they and some of them are incredibly popular with our clients.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: The clients aren't complaining.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole other discussion.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is there an asymmetric knowledge?
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do they understand different charge, etc.?
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the clients who particularly well served are particularly happy with most of them, from what I can see.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, absolutely.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think, you know, as a profession, you know, as the the firms probably have it in the financial planning profession.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: There are IFA firms, but there's not a load of massive ones that have got the funding in place to be able to bring somebody through from start to finish on an employed model, for instance, to become a financial plan.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: They just don't have it.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, there are talks.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_02: We're I'm in discussions with a few people about an art, you know, about an academy.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not just IFA, but it's about bringing IFAs into it, training people up and helping support that early adoption of the training and development soft skills, as we mentioned earlier, and then the implementation of their businesses without it.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think, you know, some of these larger product providers, et cetera, do have the money to pay for these academies.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_02: Now, a byproduct of that is not there isn't a hundred percent hit rate.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_02: For example, St.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_02: James's Place, don't take on a hundred percent of people that 100% of people don't stay there.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them filter down, leave, and end up in an IFA firm.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: An IFA firm's got somebody who's qualified and had some training.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: Look at the bank insurance market, that's exactly what that did.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we kind of get we kind of miss that, really.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we we miss that as an entry point into the profession, and then for an individual to make an informed decision two or three years into their career that, well, actually, I don't want to be here, you know, with this one product provider.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'd like to be going IFA, and that's cool, you know.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: But without that entry point, they'd have never known.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's difficult all around, isn't it?
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're absolutely right.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: In my day, um, lots of people who worked for insurance companies then became IFAs, lots of people who went through bank insurance then became IFAs.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we don't have that sort of that throughput, that that kind of funnel of people coming through now.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: So these academies, you know, they do work.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard for smaller firms, you're absolutely right.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we did, we used to put people on employed contracts and we would train them up, and we put we used to pay for their exam qualifications, their study material, et cetera, et cetera.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then they would become qualified, and within within a very short period of time, they'd gone somewhere else because they they were wooed away or didn't like commuting all the way up to London from wherever the departure or whatever it was.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I look at people that I really admire, Adrian Murphy up in um Scotland.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: He takes that university from Murphy Wealth, et cetera.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it's hard on a small firm to put that management time, that company time, the money, the resource into people who then decide, you know, I'm not that bothered.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to work for you, or I just don't like financial services, you know.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: But and at least academies are bearing a bit of that cost about bringing new entrants in.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got huge admiration for Kathy Harris and what she's doing about bringing young people through, etc.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there are pockets of it, but there aren't enough of us willing to fund it that way.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: So then perhaps the sector, if we want young blood coming through, we have to just accept that some of these larger integrated firms with academies are worthy of being around.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_02: I also think as well with technology is going to make a massive difference to the time it takes to give advice.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: I was talking to the guys over at Ammonite, so they've sped up the whole suitability report.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's insane.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like you can get through it in about 45 minutes of what might have taken about 10 hours for some firms.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_02: So firms are looking at it and thinking, well, hang on, we can give advice to people who perhaps might not buy at the end of it, for instance, but they end up on our database.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: These individuals of the next generation who are going to inherit wealth over the next 15 to 20 years.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_02: There is a model that kind of offers that new entrant to come in, work on the under, you know, the under 100k type market, that 95% that aren't getting advised.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: They're constantly on the phones, they're constantly having meetings, they're quick, they're they're interesting, they're engaging, they're learning the skills, and money is filtering through.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_02: It's a cheaper proposition as well.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: But also they're building that database of the next generation that are going to inherit wealth.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I think technology will be implemented into financial planning firms.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_02: And the ones that do that have got that base level for new advisors to come in and work on.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: Not everyone, you know, a new advisor coming in shouldn't be under pressure to be working purely with individuals that have got, you know, ridiculous sums of money to invest, you know.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, look, um, you're absolutely right.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's been a very recent AKG report out, and I'm doing an interview um is it this week or next week with with Matt Ward from AKG, and we've got um Duncan Muir from Fluido and Gillian Hepburn from Shoulders, and they're talking about this about having younger advisors growing with younger clients, using leaning into technology to help them do it.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think absolutely you look at what Anthony Villis is and Rob are doing over at um First Wealth.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just fabulous.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: There, you look at what Helen Awardle's doing at um Smith Award Money Needs.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: They are building technology as advisor advisory practices to serve the younger client who's not yet sitting on pots of money to be able to access decent financial services, decent financial planning, decent financial advice.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there are pockets of it, and technology will definitely help.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I at this weekend, just because it's it's flavor of the month, isn't it?
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was playing around with Chat GPT.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, in in later when G GPT-4 comes through, it's it claims it's going to be five Amazon is better than three, but three is fun to play with at the moment.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've had a play with it, but 12 reasons to get a pension.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you 12 bloody good reasons to put in a pension, you know, that you could drop into a into a suitability report.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that's exactly how it works, but you can see where the direction of travel is.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: And firms that get that workflow right with decent technology, with decent comms, with decent social media, with decent marketing, underpinned by really, really good, ethical, honest, knowledgeable advisors, they're on a winner.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: They will be able to serve younger uh younger clients.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be able to bring on less experienced, um, say less experienced, let's say younger financial planners or financial advisors, because they will have, as I said right early on, birds of a feather.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: So they will have the same sort of life experience as the people they may end up talking to and being helped with technology to make it slicker and quicker and cheaper to deliver, but also just as quality of service.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think it's incredibly exciting.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: It always has been for me within financial advice, financial planning, incredibly exciting.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's very resilient.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this whole nonsense about bank insurance would wipe out advisors, but integrators would work out, would wipe out the independent.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: They just it hasn't happened because they're incredibly resilient, they're very client-centric, they're adaptable, even though some of the old commodities whinge a bit on social media.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the main, they're really good, really adaptable, and they want to serve the client in a way that very few other professions are able to bring to bear.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think if they get that technology right, they get the attitudes right, uh, they get the recruitment right.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, the world is there oyster.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a huge part of the community that's, you know, the population is not served yet by good financial advice, and and that's a bad thing.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm and I'm I'm I'm a commentator on the profession.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I watch the profession and I talk to lots of people.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just waiting myself for that opportunity to go into financial planning.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not going in as a financial advisor.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: I want to go in and run a business.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_02: And the business that I want to be a part of is one that can serve that 95% in a quick and effective way.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really into marketing.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really into social marketing.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would want my financial planning business to have two, three, four, five financial coaches going out there on social media, qualified coaches, delivering an amazing coaching service, having an app that offers that coaching service, bringing that marketing into it and making it affordable, because you're only ever going to attract the sons and daughters of those that are going to be inheriting some serious cash over the next fair few years.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: So isn't this coming back to, because I know your background, isn't this coming back to what we would call the T-shaped employee?
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they've got a great, they've got a great core knowledge, they're qualified, they're extended understand, but across the T, they've got social marketing skills, they've got marketing skills, they've got coaching skills, they've got empath skills, they've got whatever it happens to be.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: I listen, I think these future T-shaped um individuals, yeah, the world is absolutely right for the taking in terms of client acquisition, retention, of and moving down the demographic, of picking up the intergenerational wealth transfer, of having advisors come up with younger advisors, younger clients, great empathy between them, similar experiences, student debt, et cetera, whatever that happens to be.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I think the future, if we get this right and don't muck it up by falling out all our professional bodies and all that kind of stuff, I think the future is incredibly interesting as we move forward with what technology is now beginning to overlay the people's skills with.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why that's why I'm super interested also in the second careerist, the academy side of things, because I'm starting to see the transferable skills from a market that's out there where we can take people from a profession that isn't financial planning.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_02: It could be from anywhere, but as you say that, T, they've got all everything that's required.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_02: Stick them into a stick them into a system that's click and works.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're going to fly.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's and I'm I'm very excited about that myself.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm seeing it happen.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's the the the old age of financial planning, it's dying it's dying out.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's the the the service of don't get me wrong, wealth management, high-end, you know.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Family office type feel.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I love the idea of having that type of proposition, but it's a separate proposition to that more transactional proposition, that auto-execution, that robo advice model, the one that's underpinned by solid marketing.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm I'm excited about that as much as I respect the ultra-high network type approach as well.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, listen, I think, you know, the kind of, I don't know about dying out, but certainly retiring out or selling out, you know, that kind of my generation, you know, I guess I'm a classic example of that.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think what what we're seeing now is, you know, the older model using your vernacular, you know, you you had a good financial planner who ran this practice and might have had an admin support or a couple of admin support, and then you just multiplied that up.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: So there was always a kind of figurehead who was typically a financial planner or a financial advisor.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you're going to start seeing increasingly going forward is professional management of financial planning practices, even relatively boutique, tight-sized firms where the person that's running the business is actually the operations director or the managing director who's not a financial planner.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: You we're seeing this already.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we had it in investment quorum, and I know many other firms do.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_00: We had we had a marketing resource in-house.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can have an in-source or you can outsource it, it doesn't matter.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: But you are seeing functions within modern financial planning practices that even 10 years ago were relatively rare.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: But now we're seeing professional administrators, professional management, professional marketing, etc.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's the resilience I was talking about, that these really thoughtful practices, the sort of practices that presented at Progressive Planning last year, are really focusing in on where they want to be, but more than that, what they want to look like to the outside world and the type of clients they want to acquire and retain of whatever of whatever strata of wealth or or age.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is this is um to be commended that those forward-thinking businesses are already down that path and will bring others with them in the way that I guess the early firms within the Institute of Financial Planning did way back then in terms of fees and higher qualifications, people get dragged along by the early early adopters.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's sort of I'm back on my sortbox.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just think it's incredibly exciting.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we see a lot of that going on within October, people talking about what they're doing in terms of marketing, how they're chunking down their client proposition, etc.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's just fabulous to watch.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_02: I think if I was a uh a really top-performing financial planner, or if I was a very entrepreneurial financial planner, somebody who enjoyed doing the job of financial advice, the first thing I'd be looking for is an operations manager.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be partnering up with an operations manager, you know.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: And there are there are firms now being set up purely by compliance people.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_02: There's people, the firms being set up by power planners and operation and operations, and then they're bringing financial advisors in.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's being run by operations and power.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I think that's really I I get it, I get it.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say what it does for me is it gives me that confidence in not confidence, sorry, it gives me that um, I want people who are in power planning and operational roles to realize that you can be entrepreneurial and you can run businesses.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like you talk about Kathy Harrison, et cetera, you know, she's running an amazing business.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and and and there are I mean, I mean, that's a very, very um unique business, and and everything Kathy does is to be commended.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm very lucky to be a personal friend of mine, but but I think you're absolutely right.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't you you no longer need to be a financial planner to run a financial planning business.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: You no longer need to be a financial planner to call yourself an entrepreneur or other people.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: The best thing I did in my business was to have somebody that that headed up ops.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, in retrospect, some because I I used to bring every single brand new client in or brand new client connection into to my practice, and I used to hand those referrals on to other people once I'd got the buy-in.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, actually, in retrospect, I was probably doing myself in some way the disservice by giving stuff to other advisors that really should have gone to paraplanners.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just because I didn't want to dot the I's across the T's all the time.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I could have done that as opposed to paying an advisor to pick that up.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I could have done it myself and had more paraplanning or administration support.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all that being built in, but people are learning this is the goal.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it is just, you know, I seem very animated at the end of this call, but but I just think the future really is awesome for the firms to get it right and are willing to step away from financial planner or must leave financial planning business.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the practice that want to stay that way, absolutely fine.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if we are ever going to step up and serve more of the public in the way they want to be served, intergenerationally, using technology, thinking about sort of not continual ongoing service.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some clients want to turn up, you called it transactional, they might want something, they're getting a mortgage, they want to start a pension, whatever that is.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_00: They turn up then, they don't want to be seen every year or twice a year.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: But what they do want to do is pay for service when they come back in now and again.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think all this has to be explored.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure it's exactly right for every firm, but all this stuff has to be on the table at the moment.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think technology will definitely, definitely help.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Lovely talking to you today.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going to bring that to an end on that note.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was a really interesting conversation.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Sarah, sharing so deeply about your your thoughts and feelings about the profession, what you're doing there at Octo members and your journey and your career.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's very um, it's very useful for me to hear.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm pretty damn sure the people that are listening to this podcast would also find it really interesting and really useful.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm applauding anybody on who's listening right now, go and check out Octo members, go and sign up.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's free, isn't it?
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, membership is free, absolutely.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_02: Membership's free.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Go along, sign up.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've signed up.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna be, you know, carrying on our conversation to Lee.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that you know we can continue to work together.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to add some value within your community also as well, and and learn from others.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you very much for sharing.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for connecting with me.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_02: I really, really appreciate it.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And um, have an amazing week.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, listen, absolute pleasure.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, for my time, I've really enjoyed the discussion.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: At whatever stage you're at of your career, if you're listening or watching, um, do engage with the rest of your peers.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is the best way to learn.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish you every success with your careers too.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_00: All the best.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Sam.