Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Unlocking Success in Global Financial Advice: Insights from Dubai with Jacob Hall of Hoxton

Transcript

Unlocking Success in Global Financial Advice: Insights from Dubai with Jacob Hall of Hoxton · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Sam Oakes: And today's guest on the Financial Planner Live podcast is Jacob Hall.
• 0:03
  Sam Oakes: He is the Global Head of Advisory for Hoxton Capital Management and today we talk about his Hoxton life, his role, responsibility, where he manages up to 40 individuals within Hoxton, including business development managers and financial planners.
• 0:19
  Sam Oakes: We talk about the international market, the opportunity there, what he did as a business developer, what a business developer does at Hoxton.
• 0:28
  Sam Oakes: We break down at the very end their exclusive pathway opportunity for new advisors joining the profession.
• 0:36
  Sam Oakes: Trust me on this one you do not want to miss this episode.
• 0:39
  Sam Oakes: It's full of international gold.
• 0:41
  Sam Oakes: Jacob, thanks for joining me today on the Financial Planner Live podcast here in Dubai.
• 0:56
  Sam Oakes: How are you?
• 0:56
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, good, Sam.
• 0:59
  Jacob Hall: Nice setting you've chosen for this.
• 1:01
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, a bit formal.
• 1:01
  Sam Oakes: That was then actually because I've gotten to know you now.
• 1:03
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, well, that's what happens isn't it.
• 1:06
  Sam Oakes: So I'm like that probably I'm like that with my introductions, like welcome to the financial planet live podcast, but it's like well, actually now I've got to know you for like five weeks well, a couple of weeks out here in dubai, but obviously got to know you a little bit before as well and it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:17
  Sam Oakes: I must say.
• 1:18
  Sam Oakes: It's been great getting to know you wish I could say the same.
• 1:22
  Jacob Hall: No, I'm only kidding.
• 1:23
  Sam Oakes: No, it's been great, it's gone, gone very quickly, I think yeah, it's been a really enjoyable experience and um, settling into a new business, especially when, like, I've come from self-employment 15 years right and I'm coming into an environment where I'm now employed.
• 1:35
  Sam Oakes: So, culturally, it's strange for me, um, let alone being in another country, having to move from england with my family.
• 1:43
  Sam Oakes: It's been freaking me out.
• 1:44
  Sam Oakes: So you're somebody who has been there for me during that period and just kept me on track.
• 1:50
  Sam Oakes: So, first off, massively grateful for that.
• 1:52
  Sam Oakes: And it's also an insight, I think, into who you are as a person and your character and why you are, um, I mean, the global head of advisory, um, for hoxton.
• 2:04
  Sam Oakes: So I think let's just kick things off there, really, because let's give our listeners a little bit of an insight into who you are and the job role that you do.
• 2:11
  Sam Oakes: So what is the global head of advisory?
• 2:13
  Sam Oakes: What do you do at Hoxton?
• 2:15
  Jacob Hall: I mean, it's a title that's recently changed.
• 2:17
  Jacob Hall: Obviously we had to put something around it.
• 2:21
  Jacob Hall: I originally came in and set up the client services department and then, naturally over time not through want and desire to become global head of advisory I started to look after a few advisors, help them, and then a few business development guys and people in the business and then over time it's just generally scaled and naturally it just transitioned into that which it's a great title and you know, it's really, really nice to be that and I suppose when you think about it it sounds a lot more than it is.
• 2:50
  Jacob Hall: I just help people and provide structure and guidance and generally put people together.
• 2:57
  Jacob Hall: I'm available overseeing all of the advisors in some way, shape or form.
• 3:03
  Jacob Hall: Some people need more help than others.
• 3:05
  Jacob Hall: Some people just need direction.
• 3:07
  Jacob Hall: Some people want me to sit down and go through statistics and look at data.
• 3:10
  Jacob Hall: Some people want me to look at their personal businesses and see if there's any gaps that I can help with.
• 3:15
  Jacob Hall: Some people just need someone when they need to ask a question, to get hold of and make sure I can direct them in the right, right, right way.
• 3:20
  Jacob Hall: Really, over time, I think people have.
• 3:24
  Jacob Hall: I like working with people and I've grown up doing that and I think over time I've learned how to work with different people and alongside them and help them, um, and I really enjoy it.
• 3:34
  Jacob Hall: I suppose is what I would say fantastic.
• 3:37
  Sam Oakes: So you've been in the international space as an international advisor in some capacity or working for international advice firms in some capacity.
• 3:44
  Sam Oakes: For how long so?
• 3:45
  Jacob Hall: we moved out in February 2012,.
• 3:49
  Jacob Hall: So 12 years, 12 and a half years, which seems to have gone quick, considering when we moved out initially.
• 3:55
  Jacob Hall: We've had this conversation.
• 3:56
  Jacob Hall: I was coming out for two years to see what it was like and do something a bit different, and now this is home and I think we'll be here a lot longer really.
• 4:10
  Sam Oakes: But yeah, 12 years has gone like a blink of an eye really.
• 4:12
  Sam Oakes: There's a lot changed in the last 12 years in the advice space, in the offshore market?
• 4:14
  Jacob Hall: Oh, absolutely yeah.
• 4:15
  Jacob Hall: I mean, what I came into 12 years ago is very different to what I am now.
• 4:20
  Jacob Hall: I mean, when I joined Hoxton three years ago it was like coming into a bit of a new industry and I realized very quickly that if I didn't get into the Hoxton way of doing things very quickly, I probably would have got left behind a little bit.
• 4:34
  Jacob Hall: You know, the way in which we work now is so different to what I remember from 10, 11 years ago when I was learning, and most of those changes for the better, right.
• 4:44
  Jacob Hall: You know there's been a lot of consolidation, there's a lot gone on, but you know, everything seems to be heading in a really positive direction, which is great for the market.
• 4:52
  Sam Oakes: One of the things I've noticed about you as well and we will get onto this a bit later in the podcast, and we put a post about it on LinkedIn, didn't we?
• 4:58
  Sam Oakes: You care very deeply about someone joining the business and being on the right pathway to becoming a financial planner or being a financial advisor, whether that's in the UK, whether that's in the international market.
• 5:08
  Sam Oakes: I think historically what you used to like fly a load of people over.
• 5:15
  Sam Oakes: You know 20 people starting at the same time, all self-employed, chuck them in a room, chuck a yellow pages out of them or whatever pages they have out here and hope for the best, and you might find that 18 of them go home and two of them stay right.
• 5:24
  Sam Oakes: But you seem incredibly passionate about attracting the right people to the business that have the right mindset, the right attitude, but at the same time, you have a role, responsibility to make sure that the pathway and the framework that you deliver and provide them is achievable right.
• 5:40
  Jacob Hall: yeah, I suppose if you take that back.
• 5:42
  Jacob Hall: You mentioned a couple of things there.
• 5:43
  Jacob Hall: So the first thing is throwing people in a room and getting on with it and that worked for a number of companies and it did create an international industry.
• 5:51
  Jacob Hall: But coming through the ranks in a company or in a situation like that, having people sit next to you one day and be gone the day after without, maybe, the right structure and support that they needed, it wasn't great, you know it did.
• 6:05
  Jacob Hall: Really it was fight or flight.
• 6:07
  Jacob Hall: You know you either dug in and got stuck in and did it or you didn't.
• 6:11
  Jacob Hall: And you know we used to have a bit of a running joke that as people moved closest to the door that was on the way out and I, you know we do laugh.
• 6:18
  Jacob Hall: But I've seen some unbelievable talent over the years come in, get going a lot of the time, be put with the wrong people or in the wrong line or in the wrong direction and leave and now they're working in completely different industry and it was wasted talent, you know, and I mean I could name people, but it's unbelievable when I think back to some of the talented people I've seen go and something we've really worked on over the last three years is changing that rhetoric and making it if you do what you say you're going to do and you you follow the process that we give.
• 6:50
  Jacob Hall: If you've done everything and you don't get there, it's kind of we failed you not you failed us.
• 6:55
  Jacob Hall: You know we're not asking the world of people, we're not expecting them to come in and go out and find hundreds and hundreds of people every day.
• 7:01
  Jacob Hall: We're just asking people to follow a process, learn.
• 7:03
  Jacob Hall: Some people go down that process and we discover halfway through that maybe a planner's not the right route for them, maybe it's a paraplanner or maybe it's more in an operations route, and I've had someone personally that worked for me who's not left me but moved across into operations and has flourished since.
• 7:18
  Jacob Hall: That's happened.
• 7:19
  Jacob Hall: So we try and provide a structured pathway to get people from well, either already qualified in the industry to a standalone advisor so they've got their own team or from day dot you know, never been in the industry, come straight out of university or another job.
• 7:35
  Jacob Hall: I mean there's a lot of talent in Dubai, in the UK, that maybe has just fallen into a role, a bit like I did when I was younger.
• 7:43
  Jacob Hall: That isn't the best for them.
• 7:46
  Jacob Hall: My longer-term plan is that we can take people straight off not off the street, but straight from the beginning that have got an interest and a keen interest to develop over a longer period of time and become advisors.
• 7:55
  Jacob Hall: We're successfully doing that, which is the real thing, the crux of it.
• 7:59
  Jacob Hall: And some people are faster than others, right, everyone moves at different paces and um, but no, we, we've definitely started to get it right.
• 8:07
  Jacob Hall: That's not perfect, you know, and nothing's ever perfect, and if you think it is, you probably need to keep evolving it, but it's definitely a big change to what I've seen previously this evolved, is changing.
• 8:17
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, um, I think culturally, businesses had to think more about retaining talent.
• 8:23
  Sam Oakes: I suppose in the international market and very much like in the UK market with self-employed advisors, if someone's upset or has an ambition to do it themselves, they can walk away.
• 8:32
  Sam Oakes: And I think it's about what can we build that makes people so happy they don't go away and they stay.
• 8:39
  Sam Oakes: What value are you adding in that person's life?
• 8:43
  Sam Oakes: What area where they might have weaknesses or non-strengths are you adding in that person's life?
• 8:45
  Sam Oakes: What area where they might have weaknesses or non-strengths are we adding value to so they stay?
• 8:50
  Sam Oakes: And I like that.
• 8:51
  Sam Oakes: And I like the way again, if I you know, as I look at hoxton under the bonnet and I get to meet all the different people in the leaderships team and the tech team and all these different operational power, planning, administration, I mean there's so many different people within that business adding value.
• 9:05
  Sam Oakes: I think if you're good at your job let's say you're good financial planner, right, let's say you love talking to people, you love picking up the phone, you love going to networking events, you love delivering financial plans.
• 9:15
  Sam Oakes: It's an environment that is built to create success in those types of people because you take away the stresses and the pressures that they would often do if they were in the back bedroom on their own doing it themselves, right?
• 9:28
  Jacob Hall: yeah, so that's absolutely right.
• 9:30
  Jacob Hall: You know the international market and probably similar in the uk.
• 9:33
  Jacob Hall: Really, people go down the self-employed road role, which is a great, you know, conceptually is a great great thing to do.
• 9:39
  Jacob Hall: But what we've also realized over time is not everyone is able to manage their own business.
• 9:45
  Jacob Hall: You know, we've got some unbelievably talented people in the international space that actually aren't very good at managing people.
• 9:52
  Jacob Hall: So if you're building out a self-employed role and you you've got, you know, 100 clients, you've got 100 million under management.
• 9:58
  Jacob Hall: You need a team of people to help manage that and you'll never be able to do it properly without that.
• 10:02
  Jacob Hall: We're very good at helping people grow those teams.
• 10:05
  Jacob Hall: Um, we're good at helping them with managing those teams, but we're also good at trying to take that away from them as well.
• 10:10
  Jacob Hall: So some people you know don't want to be based in the office every day.
• 10:14
  Jacob Hall: But if you're not based in the office every day and your team is, it's quite difficult to to manage them effectively unless you've got a really good relationship and some people do an amazing job of it.
• 10:22
  Jacob Hall: There's people you've met already that can do that successfully if you can't keep your team happy and working and you can see how they want to progress.
• 10:30
  Jacob Hall: It makes it quite difficult for you to progress and keep growing and those people, when you introduce them into your business and your client bank and everything else, you want them to be there for a long time.
• 10:38
  Jacob Hall: You don't want that disruption that comes.
• 10:40
  Jacob Hall: So we're really trying to reshape that as well and not I don't like to call it plug in and play, but it's like if people don't want to manage and work with business development or they don't want to work with power planning, you know we're trying to come up with a way and a solution that they can, you know, do the front end relationships of the business and work with a team that we've helped build for them in the background.
• 11:00
  Jacob Hall: One thing I'm really focused on with people in the company is trying to spot the gaps in their business before it comes.
• 11:06
  Jacob Hall: We do find people grow very quickly and they onboard clients very quickly because we know our brand is good and we're successful in the industry.
• 11:15
  Jacob Hall: I personally had it where I mentioned earlier.
• 11:17
  Jacob Hall: A young guy called Louis that works for me and has done for a long time moved into operations and it left a gap in my business which put me under unbelievable amount of pressure for a small amount of time and had I thought about it again, I would have brought someone in to replace him before he, before he, stepped away.
• 11:30
  Jacob Hall: And sometimes when you realize you need that person, it's a little bit too late and then it's like, oh god, I've got to fill that gap.
• 11:36
  Jacob Hall: So that's one thing I do with people.
• 11:38
  Jacob Hall: I mean, there's a couple of guys that I've helped in the the last 12 months just say, like I think you need to start thinking about a power planner right now.
• 11:44
  Jacob Hall: You're getting to this amount of clients.
• 11:46
  Jacob Hall: You've got these clients going here and they've looked at me a bit silly, gone.
• 11:49
  Jacob Hall: Well, you know I'm not right ready.
• 11:51
  Jacob Hall: Yeah, I'm saying, but you will be quite quickly and actually you'd rather have them up to standard before that happens.
• 11:55
  Jacob Hall: So it's just, you know, it's just providing that structure as much or as little as people want.
• 11:59
  Sam Oakes: Some people want to just do everything themselves and that's fine, you know, and it works people often think I'm not there yet and it's like where you are, you just don't know it.
• 12:06
  Sam Oakes: And now's the time to start building that.
• 12:08
  Sam Oakes: In respect of louis, I can understand why you let him go before you took him on, because your character is that way.
• 12:16
  Sam Oakes: You're that type of person.
• 12:17
  Sam Oakes: You're probably thinking about him, yeah, and his happiness and his future, yeah, and put yourself aside and thought, god, I've just put myself into a really sticky situation.
• 12:25
  Sam Oakes: Um, that's what I would probably, from observing you and understanding you for the last few weeks, I would say that that's probably why that happens.
• 12:32
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, it's difficult and it's tricky.
• 12:33
  Sam Oakes: I've done that before.
• 12:34
  Sam Oakes: Oh, you're absolutely right.
• 12:35
  Sam Oakes: You put people like 100 before yourself, don't you?
• 12:37
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, and you're thinking, oh god, I just put myself under a huge amount of pressure.
• 12:40
  Sam Oakes: Um, you are managing people.
• 12:44
  Sam Oakes: How many?
• 12:45
  Jacob Hall: it's quite hard to put an exact number on that because I'm technically there to help all of the advisors, right?
• 12:52
  Jacob Hall: Um, we have people that work with the business development team and then we have tommy, who you'll meet, who helps all the pathway guys, but I don't say, well, you can't speak to me because you know tommy looks after you or you can't speak to me because somebody else looks after you.
• 13:04
  Jacob Hall: So, indirectly, pretty much everyone I'm available for.
• 13:08
  Jacob Hall: I'd say directly, I work really closely with 30 to 40 people probably.
• 13:13
  Jacob Hall: Yeah, I sit, try and sit down with them as much as they want to, within reason.
• 13:18
  Jacob Hall: Um, you know, some people take more, you know, need more time than others.
• 13:21
  Jacob Hall: Um, but I try and be as available, but indirectly I try and help everyone, but managing probably around 40.
• 13:27
  Jacob Hall: I mean, we have 60 advisors, but I'm very lucky that we've got some great managers around the world that obviously deal with most of the day-to-day in the different locations.
• 13:35
  Jacob Hall: As you know, I'm based predominantly here in Dubai.
• 13:37
  Jacob Hall: I do want to get out to the other offices a bit more.
• 13:45
  Sam Oakes: But yeah, no, enjoy it.
• 13:46
  Sam Oakes: You know I do enjoy it.
• 13:47
  Sam Oakes: Well, we're looking to attract people to the business.
• 13:48
  Sam Oakes: Um, dubai is such a hot spot.
• 13:50
  Sam Oakes: Right, let's just kind of give people a bit of an insight into why one the international space is so interesting, what is the opportunity and why basing yourself in dubai is a good idea.
• 13:59
  Jacob Hall: I'm a bit biased, right, because I, because I live here.
• 14:01
  Jacob Hall: I mean, firstly, let's talk a little bit about dubai, and we've obviously.
• 14:04
  Jacob Hall: You know you came into dubai, you stayed in the marina, you liked it, and then we jumped in a car, I think last weekend or the weekend before, on father's day actually, and we went and I drove you around all the compounds and communities and you know everyone has this, this view of dubai, of high rise and buildings and cars, and you know you quite quickly saw it's green and it's, you know, it's, it's lived in and it's community-based.
• 14:25
  Jacob Hall: I mean dubai is a place, big, big reason.
• 14:29
  Jacob Hall: Obviously, number one is tax.
• 14:30
  Jacob Hall: You know we do have the advantage of the no tax and things that I know down that route.
• 14:35
  Jacob Hall: It's multicultural, it's safe, it's vibrant.
• 14:39
  Jacob Hall: One thing that I love about it is people are hard working.
• 14:42
  Jacob Hall: I think there was a stat recently in the national to say that dubai is one of the hardest working cities in the world.
• 14:46
  Jacob Hall: I think people are willing to work a bit harder because lifestyle is good.
• 14:49
  Jacob Hall: So the weekends you're always doing something.
• 14:51
  Jacob Hall: I mean a weekend at home for me, in the house with the kids, is the best weekend ever, because normally we're at a kid's party or we're doing this or we're out doing now, we're out for dinner and you know it's like a 100 miles an hour and it really brings you forward.
• 15:05
  Jacob Hall: You know, one thing that we've always struggled with with the offices internationally is getting that same buzz.
• 15:10
  Jacob Hall: I mean I get in the office some morning, 6.30.
• 15:13
  Jacob Hall: There can be 10 people in there.
• 15:14
  Jacob Hall: I've got people in there that are working on Australia.
• 15:16
  Jacob Hall: I can be leaving at 8.30 at night sometimes and there's people in there that are speaking to people in the US.
• 15:20
  Jacob Hall: It's a real good central hub to build a business internationally and the difference and we talk a bit about Hoxton with that is it's that borderless financial planning you can give the fact that we have the licenses we do and the jurisdictions we are and where we're going to develop into.
• 15:36
  Jacob Hall: You can give that continuity of advice to a client.
• 15:40
  Jacob Hall: I'm a very relationship driven advisor so I have clients and a lot of them came from networking and meeting them out and about and I'm not saying I can be their advisor forever and ever at one day, you know, and maybe I won't be, but at the moment we can pretty much offer that wherever they go because of the regulation and license we have.
• 15:58
  Jacob Hall: So the downside of that is people come here and go right, I'm going to do business in Australia, us, europe, uk.
• 16:04
  Jacob Hall: Well, that doesn't work either sometimes because you're spreading yourself too thinly.
• 16:09
  Jacob Hall: So you've got to try and bring people back in and say don't focus on too many places.
• 16:13
  Jacob Hall: But it gives you a great platform to go always If you want to be here and focus on the odds.
• 16:17
  Jacob Hall: If you want to be here, you can do that.
• 16:24
  Jacob Hall: Also here we have a lot of opportunity in the GCC and as a company traditionally we never really focused on the GCC as much.
• 16:27
  Jacob Hall: You know we were very initially.
• 16:28
  Jacob Hall: We were very, very good with pension business and that was a big strength of ours.
• 16:31
  Jacob Hall: But there's a massive amount of business here like huge, and everyone you meet needs some sort of help, whether that and I do a lot with wills and life insurances and you know insurance business and everyone needs something.
• 16:44
  Jacob Hall: People have good disposable incomes.
• 16:46
  Jacob Hall: People don't have pension schemes.
• 16:48
  Jacob Hall: At the moment there is some scary stats that six out of ten expats leave Dubai in a worse position than when they got here, and I think we touched on it before about how things have changed.
• 16:57
  Jacob Hall: There was a bit of negativity around financial advice back ten years ago, you know a bit like there was in the UK before RDR and deters people from taking advice.
• 17:06
  Jacob Hall: So I'm really big on trying to change that.
• 17:08
  Jacob Hall: That ethos in Dubai of people going, no, you need help, you know the way that we work works is the same as what it would be for you if you came from the UK.
• 17:16
  Jacob Hall: I mean, I predominantly deal with British expats and it's great when you do start helping people and they can see that and they can see the full financial planning rather than just selling them a product, and you can help people and benefit them, because there are lots of things to do here when it comes to planning and advice.
• 17:30
  Sam Oakes: I do like the way Hoxton has positioned themselves as a one-stop shop, if you like, for all the different things an expat might have to deal with.
• 17:37
  Sam Oakes: You talked about wills trusts.
• 17:39
  Sam Oakes: We've got a tax department there in hoxton investment management and full fat financial planning, and it's on a fee basis as well.
• 17:46
  Sam Oakes: Um, the multi-jurisdiction approach as well, I think, because it's a transient country and people come in and out allows you to hold on to those client relationships as well.
• 17:54
  Sam Oakes: You know there are teams call away, aren't they?
• 17:56
  Sam Oakes: If they go back to australia, if they go back to the uk, if they go off to the usa.
• 17:59
  Sam Oakes: So I think that is a huge opportunity, isn't it right for advisors?
• 18:03
  Sam Oakes: And I guess, positioning yourself and you kind of touched on it if you're going to be an international advisor, then why not position yourself internationally, because you can service clients across the world but at the same time, don't spread yourself too thin, because you're probably be awake for 24 hours, right with the time zones.
• 18:18
  Jacob Hall: Yeah, I've seen that happen before as well.
• 18:20
  Jacob Hall: I've seen people are getting in at six to do Australia meetings and then still there are eight doing in US meetings.
• 18:23
  Jacob Hall: I mean clients.
• 18:23
  Jacob Hall: Before as well I've seen people are getting in at six to do australia meetings and then still there are eight doing in us, us meetings.
• 18:26
  Jacob Hall: I mean clients move as well.
• 18:27
  Jacob Hall: Right, you and I are living proof that we don't stay in one place.
• 18:30
  Jacob Hall: So and and we see it now with the uk a lot so we have we have a, a guy who I'm sure you speak to is michael, based in france.
• 18:38
  Jacob Hall: Michael has great relationships with a lot of uk advisors because a lot of people are leaving the UK.
• 18:43
  Jacob Hall: So if I built my business in the UK of high net worth clients and things change and people start to leave the UK and you can't look after those relationships well, that kind of depletes your business.
• 18:53
  Jacob Hall: So Michael's got advisors regularly reaching out to him saying can you help my client that's leaving the UK, moving to Europe or the US, which is a great service that we can offer.
• 19:04
  Jacob Hall: But again, it comes down to that continuity of advice.
• 19:05
  Jacob Hall: You know, once you've got your client bank, really you want to look after it and just slowly work with the clients.
• 19:11
  Jacob Hall: You know you can only have so many.
• 19:12
  Jacob Hall: If they start to leave and go to different countries and you can't continue that.
• 19:16
  Jacob Hall: Well, that's a limitation.
• 19:17
  Jacob Hall: And people do leave now, you know people don't just stay in one place anymore, you know.
• 19:21
  Jacob Hall: I mean, I have stayed here for 12 years and I'd probably stay here a lot longer, but you just never know, do you?
• 19:26
  Jacob Hall: And having that open door is really good.
• 19:29
  Sam Oakes: Let's look at the client demographic then.
• 19:31
  Sam Oakes: Do they tend to be of high net worth, the ones that you're dealing with?
• 19:36
  Jacob Hall: It depends on who you are as an advisor, right, my typical clients, I mean.
• 19:45
  Jacob Hall: I built my business in a very different way.
• 19:46
  Jacob Hall: When I came over, I found the business development role quite tough.
• 19:48
  Jacob Hall: I'd never done it before.
• 19:50
  Jacob Hall: So I built a golf society, which I met a lot of people through it.
• 19:55
  Jacob Hall: And I built the golf society.
• 19:56
  Jacob Hall: Obviously, the agenda behind it was to meet people.
• 19:58
  Jacob Hall: It was never oh, I do this, can I help you with that.
• 20:02
  Jacob Hall: It was this is what I do, I'm here if you want help.
• 20:03
  Jacob Hall: It was never a oh I do this, can I help you with that?
• 20:04
  Jacob Hall: It was this is what I do, I'm here if you want help.
• 20:06
  Jacob Hall: And over time that became my main source of business.
• 20:07
  Jacob Hall: So off the back of that, I mean, I ended up bringing on all sorts of different clients.
• 20:12
  Jacob Hall: Some were in the high net worth space, obviously, some weren't.
• 20:16
  Jacob Hall: But the difference in Dubai is people can quite quickly move up the ladder because the disposables are so much bigger and people need to save money.
• 20:24
  Jacob Hall: That's why they're here, right?
• 20:25
  Jacob Hall: So, yes, I mean I took a client on.
• 20:28
  Jacob Hall: I think I took a client on once for a thousand pounds into a into a general investment account and then now got, you know, over half a million pounds invested with me, which we slowly just built up over a number of years, and they've got insurance, they've got the will.
• 20:40
  Jacob Hall: You know, they've had all of their different ancillary services really, I suppose, as I call them, and I really focus on that.
• 20:46
  Jacob Hall: You know, I'm really passionate about, you know, making sure people are protected, not just about investments, and that's the problem.
• 20:53
  Jacob Hall: A lot of people see me as an investment manager.
• 20:57
  Jacob Hall: I'm not an investment manager, I'm a financial planner, which is goes well with with the name of the podcast, right.
• 21:02
  Jacob Hall: But, um, you know, the investments is kind of the easy bit and you know I say that flippantly because it's it's obviously a lot more technical, but it's actually the structuring and planning that gets you to your goals.
• 21:12
  Jacob Hall: The investment bit should look after itself.
• 21:14
  Jacob Hall: So, yeah, I enjoy the real long-term planning with clients is probably what I get from that.
• 21:19
  Jacob Hall: So, yeah, going back to your question, clients are very varied.
• 21:21
  Jacob Hall: My stereotypical clients are over 40-year-old British families really, and I get to normally know the husband, know the wife, know the kids, and a lot of my clients have been with me now for six, seven, eight years.
• 21:33
  Sam Oakes: Do you typically find that you pick up clients Someone's listening to this.
• 21:37
  Sam Oakes: They're thinking, if I go over to Dubai and I set myself up as a financial planner, let's say they're starting from scratch in this instance.
• 21:43
  Sam Oakes: Okay, they don't have an existing client bank in the UK, although that's a very interesting area.
• 21:47
  Sam Oakes: If an advisor does sit on a client bank in the UK, then you can still get that recurring income and move to Dubai.
• 21:53
  Sam Oakes: Right, correct.
• 21:53
  Sam Oakes: But let's say, for example, I haven't got any clients and I move over to Dubai, what should I be doing?
• 22:00
  Sam Oakes: Where am I picking these clients up?
• 22:02
  Sam Oakes: Am I trying to capture them before they leave the uk or leave another country?
• 22:06
  Sam Oakes: Or is it networking events?
• 22:08
  Sam Oakes: Do you provide any leads?
• 22:11
  Sam Oakes: What you know, if I'm an advisor and I want to get out there but I don't have anything to bring to the table, but I know I've got the mindset and the attitude and the tenacity to make it point us in the right direction of what they should do and how do we support them really hard question to answer because everyone's different, right?
• 22:25
  Jacob Hall: you know, if you take me, you know I built a business from networking.
• 22:30
  Jacob Hall: Um, I obviously, uh, had some meetings, you know, from lead generation, things like that as well, but it's predominantly networking.
• 22:36
  Jacob Hall: I've also got advisors that don't like networking.
• 22:38
  Jacob Hall: So I can't give you the blueprint for for a single person.
• 22:42
  Jacob Hall: But you look at all avenues if you're if you're really passionate about something can obviously you're passionate about.
• 22:46
  Jacob Hall: So I can't give you the blueprint for a single person, but you look at all avenues If you're really passionate about something.
• 22:50
  Jacob Hall: Obviously you're passionate about financial planning.
• 22:51
  Jacob Hall: But you know golf, let's go back to golf.
• 22:52
  Jacob Hall: I'm sorry, but you know I enjoyed golf.
• 22:53
  Jacob Hall: So I built a society around golf and off the back of that I met people that became clients.
• 22:59
  Jacob Hall: If you don't like golf, don't go and build a golf society, because it'll quite quickly show it's inauthentic.
• 23:06
  Jacob Hall: You know, you can literally set up any sort of networking or any sort of group and I always say to people initially, you'll go to someone else's group, right, and you'll go and sit on it, and it's not the same if you're going to do something.
• 23:15
  Jacob Hall: I mean, there's three routes to market in my opinion.
• 23:17
  Jacob Hall: So one is business development.
• 23:19
  Jacob Hall: So we do have a business development unit and we are very, very good at marketing and we've been really successful with the marketing over the years.
• 23:25
  Jacob Hall: So that's outbound marketing.
• 23:27
  Jacob Hall: People obviously fill in their details and we reach out to them.
• 23:30
  Jacob Hall: So we have a team that specialise just in that and there will be meetings for the right people that come from that.
• 23:35
  Jacob Hall: So, depending on where you're qualified and the types of advice you give, we're quite good at looking at your client bank and making sure that we try and get some activity into you.
• 23:49
  Jacob Hall: I mean, that's not me saying that we fill everyone's diaries and meetings.
• 23:50
  Jacob Hall: If we could do that well, I would never need to recruit again.
• 23:51
  Jacob Hall: You know it'd be, it'd be really easy.
• 23:51
  Jacob Hall: But that's one route, okay.
• 23:52
  Jacob Hall: The second route is to, you know, go out there and meet people and then you've got two types of networking.
• 23:56
  Jacob Hall: You've got I call it like direct networking, where you go to an event as a financial planner.
• 24:02
  Jacob Hall: I'm here, this is what I do, can I please help you?
• 24:04
  Jacob Hall: You know, and it you know it could be speed networking where else.
• 24:07
  Jacob Hall: And then there's passive networking, which is doing what you enjoy anyway, building a network of key people of influence and then springboarding off that to meet more people, anything like that.
• 24:17
  Jacob Hall: You have to be consistent.
• 24:18
  Jacob Hall: You know, if you come out, set up a gold society, do three events, don't get a client and stop.
• 24:22
  Jacob Hall: Well, that doesn't work either, right, so do what you enjoy.
• 24:25
  Jacob Hall: You know, and one thing I'm quite good at with people is helping them with that.
• 24:29
  Jacob Hall: And a lot of people say I love this, I'm going to go and do it.
• 24:32
  Jacob Hall: And you say, great, go and do it.
• 24:41
  Jacob Hall: Yeah.
• 24:42
  Jacob Hall: And then you've got, obviously, referrals.
• 24:43
  Jacob Hall: You know, you meet people, they refer people on and go from there.
• 24:47
  Jacob Hall: But the hardest part of this job and and I say this all the time, you could give me the best advisor in the world.
• 24:54
  Jacob Hall: You know, if he doesn't sit with people, he is not going to do business.
• 24:57
  Jacob Hall: Right, you know, and I've seen it happen, they come and people come out of the uk, which is definitely a little bit of a different mentality.
• 25:04
  Jacob Hall: A lot, lot of people in the UK.
• 25:05
  Jacob Hall: They have practices, people come to them.
• 25:06
  Jacob Hall: It's not quite the same internationally.
• 25:08
  Jacob Hall: You've got to be willing to get out and about and meet people.
• 25:11
  Jacob Hall: And then the third one is content.
• 25:13
  Jacob Hall: You know, and, as you know, we've.
• 25:15
  Jacob Hall: We've brought you in as head of creative for that reason.
• 25:18
  Jacob Hall: You know, and I was quite amazing.
• 25:20
  Jacob Hall: I'd listened to some of your podcasts before we ever spoke and I almost felt like I knew you, which was a really weird concept in my head because I was like familiar with you.
• 25:27
  Jacob Hall: But you know, I was like I've never met this guy.
• 25:28
  Jacob Hall: I think I was telling you last week that I've been speaking to a personal trainer and again the same thing happened.
• 25:32
  Jacob Hall: I'd watch his videos.
• 25:33
  Jacob Hall: I felt like I knew him and I I think content will be a big part of our business going forward.
• 25:37
  Jacob Hall: My view is, if you keep giving out, you know, free direction to people, help people and are available, sometimes you'll get nothing from it, but someone will go.
• 25:49
  Jacob Hall: I saw this guy on LinkedIn who put a post on it.
• 25:51
  Jacob Hall: It was really interesting actually.
• 25:53
  Jacob Hall: Oh, I'll reach out to him directly.
• 25:54
  Jacob Hall: I mean, I had one today.
• 25:56
  Jacob Hall: I had someone message me today, said I've got a friend based in Saudi.
• 25:59
  Jacob Hall: They need some advice.
• 26:00
  Jacob Hall: They're coming over to the UAE.
• 26:01
  Jacob Hall: Could they have a chat with you?
• 26:02
  Jacob Hall: I was like, yeah, you know, that might just be a conversation and give them some direction, and they go off in the sunset and they do it themselves.
• 26:07
  Jacob Hall: That's great, you know.
• 26:08
  Jacob Hall: At least I've helped them, you know.
• 26:10
  Jacob Hall: But they'll remember me from that and then they'll come across.
• 26:12
  Jacob Hall: But I think the content piece is a big piece and then just touch on the last one.
• 26:15
  Jacob Hall: Obviously we have our application, you know, and our technology, and that is you know the amount of downloads.
• 26:20
  Jacob Hall: We've got people coming in using the application.
• 26:22
  Jacob Hall: It's using our brand in the right way and people are starting to come to us.
• 26:26
  Jacob Hall: Now, which is, I think, 10 years ago, if someone rang up the front desk of where you were working and said, can someone give me some financial advice, you'd think someone was joking.
• 26:33
  Jacob Hall: And we get that now.
• 26:35
  Sam Oakes: It's quite amazing really yeah, now you're testing some brilliant things Again.
• 26:48
  Sam Oakes: Innovative company, you're not looking to slow down, looking to grow.
• 26:49
  Sam Oakes: I think the average age in your business is 37 years old, I think, for for advisors, I believe around about that, that figure, and one of the things that's really attracted to me, like chris touched on it on his podcast um, if anyone's listened to it then I'm repeating it.
• 26:54
  Sam Oakes: But 25 people in the in the tech team you know you're talking about the application.
• 26:59
  Sam Oakes: It's the hoxton app.
• 27:00
  Sam Oakes: It's constantly being developed and accessible to not only your clients but anybody for free to be able to look directly at all your assets in one place and to also do cash flow forecasting, or we call it Wealth flow, wealth flow Not allowed to use the word cash flow anymore, not allowed to use the word cash flow, right, these are the types of things I think that if you are an innovative company, you're only going to build upon and build upon and build upon, and you can tell already that Chris, the rest of the leadership team, are investing in new ways to develop relationships and not just these traditional methods of cold calling and knocking on somebody's door.
• 27:37
  Sam Oakes: You know there are more ways to skin a cat and I think a prime example of that is bringing me in, because me and chris have spoken numerous over the years.
• 27:45
  Sam Oakes: Numerous times he's he's recognizing that social marketing, youtube podcasting is such a valuable way to build relationships and you touched on that.
• 27:56
  Sam Oakes: Whenever I talk, whenever I listen to somebody's podcast and I talk to them, it's like I know them and I trust them and I've already agreed mentally that if I'm going to do some business, I'm going to go to that person because they are showing me value and that's like super important.
• 28:15
  Sam Oakes: It's at this point as well.
• 28:17
  Sam Oakes: Like you know, I was so impressed by how much as a business you're spending on marketing.
• 28:24
  Sam Oakes: You know, using things like paid advertising on Instagram.
• 28:29
  Sam Oakes: I mean it's like 1.2 million or something was spent over the year to generate inbound leads for advisors, for the business development team.
• 28:39
  Sam Oakes: I mean you've got some balls of steel to do that, really, because you can burn through a lot of money on social media marketing.
• 28:50
  Sam Oakes: So I think having the courage to do it and to be bullish about it and to make it work shows to me that you're an innovative thinking company, because if you look at the uk, firms really aren't investing heavily in that type of thing.
• 29:05
  Sam Oakes: It's just not really the done thing, and they're only really just starting to see podcasts, and it's really only the major ones that are doing it.
• 29:11
  Sam Oakes: A handful are starting to do it, but really it's the major ones who are investing in it you know your SJPs, for example.
• 29:18
  Sam Oakes: So the market's wide open for someone to come in and be able to deliver it, and I'm excited about how I'm coming in as head of creative to bring out the you know the Hoxton podcast and the Hoxton YouTube channel, and how we're going to use that to become a well known and well respected wealth management firm that can then add value to other well known and well respected firms on the international market.
• 29:41
  Sam Oakes: And then, how do we then distribute that content?
• 29:44
  Sam Oakes: How do we give our listeners and our clients all the information not just financial planning, but all the information they need when they're thinking about an expat life and also the things that they're not thinking about?
• 29:56
  Sam Oakes: That's really important, isn't it?
• 29:57
  Sam Oakes: It's giving them solutions to problems that they're not even aware of yet or they haven't got the courage to ask.
• 30:02
  Sam Oakes: If we we can catch them at the right time, they're like, bang, that's brilliant.
• 30:05
  Sam Oakes: I'm going to go back to that page or I'm going to recommend that, or he just talks about tax and that's obviously going to come up.
• 30:09
  Sam Oakes: So I need to speak to these guys.
• 30:11
  Sam Oakes: But we might be talking about property and I think that's where we need to be innovative and I love that.
• 30:24
  Sam Oakes: Ho of the things here as well.
• 30:25
  Sam Oakes: We're talking a bit about the different role types, um, within the business and I think we just want to clarify a few things here.
• 30:28
  Sam Oakes: Right, because we'll get onto pathway in a minute and um, what we like to now call probably the trainee financial planner route.
• 30:32
  Sam Oakes: Right, there are different sort of um roles within uh hoxton um, and different roles will give you different levels of uh knowledge and experience.
• 30:42
  Sam Oakes: So you yourself right, you started in the profession out here as a business developer.
• 30:47
  Sam Oakes: Right, we have business developers in Hoxton.
• 30:49
  Sam Oakes: You touched on that a second ago.
• 30:50
  Sam Oakes: Draw back on your experience of being a business developer, what it was and what it's like here at Hoxton.
• 30:58
  Jacob Hall: Twelve years ago, business development was very, very different.
• 31:00
  Jacob Hall: You know, I mean it was very outbound.
• 31:03
  Jacob Hall: It was lists of names that had been, you know, collated or thing, and it was reaching out to people trying to book a meeting for an advisor.
• 31:11
  Jacob Hall: It was, you know, it was bloody tough really if you think about it, and that was it.
• 31:15
  Jacob Hall: You know people didn't really network, people didn't really market.
• 31:20
  Jacob Hall: You know, it just didn't happen.
• 31:22
  Jacob Hall: It was very much, it was outbound, cold calling.
• 31:23
  Jacob Hall: You know that that's all you got it.
• 31:25
  Jacob Hall: You got a referral.
• 31:26
  Jacob Hall: It was like the best thing in the world and you know, you hung on to it for dear life.
• 31:29
  Jacob Hall: Um, crikey, I mean the changes.
• 31:31
  Jacob Hall: I mean I I do sometimes think that the trade and the trainee wealth managers now right, they're not business development.
• 31:36
  Jacob Hall: You know, we need to get away from that business development, because my view is, if you're just a business development manager and you want to be a business development manager forever, maybe this isn't the industry for you, because you should want to develop and move forward into a different role as time goes on, um, the role now is very different.
• 31:51
  Jacob Hall: I mean, yes, obviously we have leads coming in.
• 31:54
  Jacob Hall: You know, the guys are ringing people off the leads and you know that works.
• 31:57
  Jacob Hall: But they're also helping their advisors with the clients.
• 32:00
  Jacob Hall: They're learning.
• 32:01
  Jacob Hall: They're sitting two sessions, sometimes three sessions a week, training them up to try and get them through that process.
• 32:06
  Jacob Hall: Some people will be a business development manager for a year because they're you know, they're a bit more mature and they want to be an advisor and they go off and do their examinations.
• 32:13
  Jacob Hall: Some people maybe for three or four years, you know.
• 32:15
  Jacob Hall: But I think if you've done that role of learning how to generate activity, you've pretty much cracked it to be an advisor.
• 32:22
  Jacob Hall: You know, because if you can, you could be the.
• 32:25
  Jacob Hall: You know you might not be the best financial planner in the world in the fact that you can't ask for the business because that's a confidence thing.
• 32:31
  Jacob Hall: You know.
• 32:32
  Jacob Hall: Speaking to clients and saying you need to do this, let's get it done, is a confidence thing and you might be underconfident, you might have to sit with 100 people, but if you can find 100 people to sit with, you're going to do business.
• 32:41
  Jacob Hall: If you can't find 100 people to sit with, it doesn't matter how good you are at asking for the business.
• 32:46
  Jacob Hall: So yeah, I mean it's definitely changed these guys.
• 32:49
  Jacob Hall: Now I mean there's business development managers within our team.
• 32:53
  Jacob Hall: Trainee wealth managers have probably got a better knowledge of pensions than I have.
• 32:56
  Jacob Hall: They've been doing it for four or five years.
• 32:58
  Jacob Hall: I mean some people knew the Shell scheme better than probably the people at Shell did.
• 33:03
  Jacob Hall: You know the amount of times they'd helped people and gone through the processes and everything else.
• 33:06
  Jacob Hall: So it's very much a trainee financial planner trainee to trainee wealth manager, you know whatever you want to call it, but they're all on Apprenticeship.
• 33:14
  Jacob Hall: I think cheapens it, you know, because it's not an apprenticeship but it is a guided route to being a standalone planner of yourself, really.
• 33:22
  Jacob Hall: So yeah, it's changed dramatically.
• 33:23
  Jacob Hall: You know it has.
• 33:24
  Jacob Hall: And you know people don't network as much as I'd like.
• 33:27
  Jacob Hall: I do try and get them out there, out and about, but because of the way we market they don't need to as much.
• 33:32
  Jacob Hall: You know we've got marketing.
• 33:34
  Jacob Hall: Leads come in and it works, you know.
• 33:36
  Sam Oakes: I think there's something in that and I think it's to do with people say oh, you know, everyone's glued to their screens these days, that's why they don't want to go outside.
• 33:46
  Sam Oakes: You know?
• 33:47
  Sam Oakes: You look at the parks in the uk.
• 33:49
  Sam Oakes: There's no kids playing in the parks anymore because they're all playing computer games so they're on the sofas.
• 33:52
  Sam Oakes: But that in its own right is networking and it's like I'm helping a lot of people now within hoxton who've got real, real appetite to want to get on linkedin and use it, and I'm like it is networking on steroids, right.
• 34:03
  Sam Oakes: If you use LinkedIn correctly and you use social marketing correctly and you're not on there wasting time because it's an absolute time killer, right, then you are building an audience of relevance and you are hopefully creating content that solves their problems or their friends or clients problems.
• 34:22
  Sam Oakes: When you can do do that and you do it properly with the right strategy, you could have a thousand followers, right, you could have a thousand and someone might go well, that's thousand, that's nothing, yeah, but that's a thousand quality followers that you are creating content and reaching out to to get to know that can pass business to you if you convert 10.
• 34:41
  Sam Oakes: You had a hundred people that were converting.
• 34:44
  Sam Oakes: But you know, giving you business, there's your client bank, there's your client bank and guess what?
• 34:47
  Sam Oakes: You can communicate with them at any time you want.
• 34:50
  Sam Oakes: So when they're sitting there, uh, at home, and they're having their dinner in front of the tv and they're getting a bit bored, and obviously they're going to go on linkedin or instagram or whatever, you can have something of relevance to them there and then that's going to build that deep relationship and you could be talking about a problem that's being solved for them at that point.
• 35:06
  Sam Oakes: Or you could be in their ears on a podcast like this yeah, whilst they're in the gym doing the washing up, driving the kids to school, driving from abu dhabi to dubai, you listen to my podcast I have listened to a number of your podcasts in the morning, you know, on the journey, on the journey.
• 35:19
  Sam Oakes: So how can we create content, how can we network which is outside of the box in the traditional sense?
• 35:24
  Sam Oakes: Now it goes back because I'm do you know, one of the things that I never traditionally networked I never traditionally went to networking events or anything like that, and I'm starting to now put on events and I think, being out here in dubai as well, you have to network, I think, because people like want to get ahead, right, they're out here to make money, they're out here to build connections and they want to get ahead.
• 35:42
  Sam Oakes: So I think there's a network culture here I want to tap into just on that then you know you talk about and everything is networking.
• 35:50
  Jacob Hall: You know going to the pub with your mates is technically networking.
• 35:53
  Jacob Hall: I mean I try and deter the business development guys from all going out together because that just doesn't, you know, doesn't bring anything, but everyone you meet is networking.
• 36:00
  Jacob Hall: The difference here is, if I go I mean I'm from north wales, a small town north wales called denby, and you know I grew up in a in a restaurant there and if I went back to north wales, walked in the pub and sat down at a table and started speaking to the table next to me, they probably think I was crazy.
• 36:14
  Jacob Hall: You know they would.
• 36:15
  Jacob Hall: It'd be like what's this guy want?
• 36:16
  Jacob Hall: Everyone's moved here on their own generally, you know.
• 36:19
  Jacob Hall: So if you go and stand sitting, you know on a beach or in a pub or a restaurant or a golf course, everyone's welcome to speak to you.
• 36:26
  Jacob Hall: They've all been through what you've been through.
• 36:28
  Jacob Hall: They've all had those lonely nights where you miss home and miss the family and it's unbelievable how quickly you forage relationships because people are generally have a good ill that you know that they're educated, they're working, you know that they're open to chatting and you know it's so open in that sense.
• 36:45
  Jacob Hall: So I find networking very easy.
• 36:47
  Jacob Hall: Um, and again, you know the thing with what you said there is about the content.
• 36:50
  Jacob Hall: Content and networking all comes back to authenticity.
• 36:54
  Jacob Hall: You know, if you try and be something you're not, or you try, you know you can see it.
• 36:57
  Jacob Hall: I mean, at the end of the day, even if someone's posting on LinkedIn and it's not great, it it's better than not posting on LinkedIn, you know.
• 37:07
  Jacob Hall: But the real power behind what you do with content is being honest and being open and being transparent.
• 37:10
  Jacob Hall: You know, if you go on and you've got AI tools now right, you know you can literally go write me a post on this.
• 37:14
  Jacob Hall: People can see through that.
• 37:16
  Jacob Hall: You know.
• 37:16
  Jacob Hall: Suddenly the whole way you write it changes.
• 37:19
  Jacob Hall: The best people I've seen on LinkedIn I think I touched on Michael earlier, who does a lot through LinkedIn is quite incredible what he's done.
• 37:25
  Jacob Hall: He's honest.
• 37:26
  Jacob Hall: You know he doesn't talk about compound interest as this.
• 37:28
  Jacob Hall: He makes it fun.
• 37:29
  Jacob Hall: You know he talks about those sorts of things, as I've seen lots of other people do, and it's about being.
• 37:36
  Jacob Hall: But then you know, if you do want to focus on a niche, I listened to a podcast of yours recently about the lady in the UK that helps people that are divorcing CEOs, which I found incredible.
• 37:46
  Jacob Hall: I said to you like that's such a small niche, but if you know your subject and you put out the right free information, and I think that's a big thing.
• 37:52
  Jacob Hall: You know, everyone says this is what you should do, but doesn't tell you how to do it.
• 37:56
  Jacob Hall: Tell you how to do it, you know.
• 37:59
  Jacob Hall: I actually believe you should tell people how to do it.
• 38:01
  Jacob Hall: If they want to do it themselves, do it themselves, you know, and if they can, great.
• 38:02
  Jacob Hall: But by giving free information that's actually relevant and is actually good.
• 38:06
  Jacob Hall: And that could be how to invest when you're in dubai, how to make sure you're tax efficient.
• 38:10
  Jacob Hall: It could even be how do I settle in in dubai.
• 38:12
  Jacob Hall: It doesn't have to be financially related, yeah, um, it's just about being helpful.
• 38:17
  Sam Oakes: And also thinking about when you capture that target client in their expat journey.
• 38:24
  Sam Oakes: That's why I'm really keen into when we build out the Hoxton podcast and the Hoxton YouTube channel is connecting with those companies that are dealing with the type of client that we want to work with at various stages in their decision-making.
• 38:36
  Sam Oakes: How can I capture somebody at the point that they are thinking about going abroad?
• 38:44
  Sam Oakes: And I love that.
• 38:44
  Sam Oakes: I love the idea of like, not like.
• 38:46
  Sam Oakes: Well, I've got to go out now and grab them all who are here.
• 38:48
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, granted, there'll be loads of people here that you can start to build relationships with and network with, and the beautiful thing is is, once their networks and well, network, they can introduce you to 10 other people that are really great.
• 38:56
  Sam Oakes: Right, that's really really valuable.
• 38:58
  Sam Oakes: But I love the idea of being able to kind of use I think that's where social media comes in is that you can pick and choose at what stage in that person's journey they are at.
• 39:05
  Sam Oakes: The we talked about the, the niching down then.
• 39:08
  Sam Oakes: Right, like small niche, nice and wide.
• 39:10
  Sam Oakes: You know, like, I think people get scared of niching down, but when you look at a niche and all of a sudden it widens, you're like, wow, this is like a whole world in this niche got the lad in the in the um.
• 39:21
  Sam Oakes: But you know, I've been talking about computer game niche for ages, right.
• 39:25
  Sam Oakes: E-gamers, yeah, and there's a guy in the office who's keen to build out his niche in e-gaming and I'm so excited about it because there is huge opportunity in e-gaming and I banged about on about it on the podcast for a while actually and no one's ever done it um.
• 39:39
  Sam Oakes: So I'm now going to work with him in a workshop capacity.
• 39:42
  Sam Oakes: That's one of the things I'm liking right, where I've been on my own for ages like I haven't been able to um put into action that, I think.
• 39:50
  Sam Oakes: But now I've got this kind of like team of advisors.
• 39:54
  Sam Oakes: They're all enthusiastic about wanting to build out their personal brands and wanting to be like linkedin marketers and so improve their social presence.
• 40:01
  Sam Oakes: I'm so excited about being able to add that value to them without having to do it.
• 40:07
  Sam Oakes: So all the ideas I have for financial planning to establish stuff as a niche I can train the process, I can monitor it with them, I can hold them accountable and give them the blueprint and they can go off and do it, and so I'm really excited about seeing all these amazing ways that I can add value in that capacity.
• 40:25
  Sam Oakes: Does that make sense?
• 40:26
  Jacob Hall: like, yeah, I mean, I think we've you've mentioned a few things there about it.
• 40:29
  Jacob Hall: I mean, I I've probably got 10 people in the company that I I know what they could do as a niche already, you know.
• 40:35
  Jacob Hall: I mean they have to want to do it right.
• 40:37
  Jacob Hall: Yeah, you know.
• 40:38
  Jacob Hall: But there's some really exciting things that we can do with with some of the people that we have in the business and you know, I'm not going to put them on the spot on your podcast and make them shoehorn them into it, but if people want to do it, there's so many people have different attributes which can be used and you, as you say, you can go into a small niche and it can suddenly widen to something massive.
• 40:56
  Jacob Hall: You don't, as financial, we can only take on so many clients, right, you know you don't need to be touching people in 50 countries worldwide with 50 different types of advice.
• 41:05
  Jacob Hall: You could go out and focus on one product in one country and build a business around the one product and then off the back of that, you know, if people just needed savings or they just needed insurance, you could just go out and be an insurance specialist.
• 41:18
  Jacob Hall: Naturally, it will flow into wills, trust, property tax, advice.
• 41:23
  Jacob Hall: You know everything else that goes with it and you know before long you're a full holistic financial planner.
• 41:27
  Jacob Hall: But it's about doing as you say, doing the niche that you want to do and you know.
• 41:34
  Jacob Hall: I hope you do put the guy with the e-gaming on the spot because he has talked about it.
• 41:37
  Jacob Hall: I'd love to see that develop because that's an unbelievable market.
• 41:39
  Jacob Hall: It's like the influencer market.
• 41:40
  Jacob Hall: I talked to you about this the other day.
• 41:41
  Jacob Hall: All these people are doing really, really well off the back of social media.
• 41:45
  Jacob Hall: I can imagine some of them don't even know if they're a tax resident in certain countries and anything else.
• 41:50
  Jacob Hall: There's so much opportunity in that.
• 41:52
  Sam Oakes: There's loads of influencers out here into buys, isn't there?
• 41:54
  Sam Oakes: There's tons.
• 41:55
  Sam Oakes: There is yeah, okay, cool, tons.
• 42:03
  Sam Oakes: There is yeah, um, okay, cool.
• 42:04
  Sam Oakes: Average age in the uk of an advisor is like 56, now 57 even, I think.
• 42:06
  Sam Oakes: Right, the age of the.
• 42:06
  Sam Oakes: I think the amount of people under the age of 25 that are qualified to be financial planners is about 150.
• 42:10
  Sam Oakes: I think it's about a thousand and a thousand and a half under 30, right?
• 42:13
  Sam Oakes: Obviously there's an aging population of advisors.
• 42:16
  Sam Oakes: They're going to retire, not enough younger people coming through.
• 42:18
  Sam Oakes: We have a great average age in our business, but you're really passionate about bringing fresh blood into the profession, so much so that you've created this thing that you would call the pathway and that we've been working on tommy's working on it and we're looking at ways that we can improve upon it and how we're going to market it.
• 42:34
  Sam Oakes: We're going to lean into like things like the financial plan of life academy as well right right To get these people from zero to hero right?
• 42:41
  Sam Oakes: Tell us a little bit about it, Give us a little bit of an overview.
• 42:44
  Sam Oakes: And why is it suitable for people who are younger?
• 42:48
  Sam Oakes: For instance, Because it's good for the profession to get younger people in.
• 42:51
  Sam Oakes: But at the same time, why is the pathway good for somebody that maybe doesn't have an abundance of life experience?
• 42:57
  Jacob Hall: Because age is a number.
• 42:59
  Jacob Hall: Right, that's the first thing, and we do have an ageing population.
• 43:02
  Jacob Hall: You mentioned about advisors and I've seen a few other people who do podcasts with talking about that, and it is a problem, right.
• 43:07
  Jacob Hall: You talk about robo-advice, which is great and it will help, but it can't do this.
• 43:11
  Jacob Hall: It can't speak to you, it can't direct you and feel your emotions that you're going through.
• 43:17
  Jacob Hall: The reason it's so important is because we can bring people in from anything from just out of university right the way through, so they could be 40 years old and want to change in career, you know, be ex-military and want to try something different.
• 43:28
  Jacob Hall: Or sports people.
• 43:29
  Jacob Hall: You know there's so many, um, different people that want to get into this industry.
• 43:33
  Jacob Hall: The biggest problem when you get into this industry is, traditionally, it would always be.
• 43:38
  Jacob Hall: You know they used to pay a very, very small amount or a retainer base, um, which you know would accrue, and then you have to pay it back when you start to do, uh, generate some fees and then some revenue, and it puts unbelievable pressure on you, you know.
• 43:52
  Jacob Hall: It also makes you think, well, I'm not getting paid.
• 43:54
  Jacob Hall: So you know I don't have to get in at 8 30, which doesn't work either.
• 43:57
  Jacob Hall: So the reason we've created the pathway is to give people a salaried role right the way through, from the day they start with the business, forever if they want it.
• 44:06
  Jacob Hall: You know you could have a base salary forever and you still have a share of the revenue that you generate from your clients, but you don't have that pressure of having to go out and find clients just to you know, put, put revenue with it into your pocket, into the business pocket.
• 44:20
  Jacob Hall: People will progress at different times.
• 44:22
  Jacob Hall: You know, when I sit and I sit with the new trainee wealth manager courses we're doing interviews, for at the moment we had a huge influx this time, I think, probably because of some of your content going out as well.
• 44:31
  Jacob Hall: I've got people at 37 years old and people at 21 years old, and some people would discount the younger people because they haven't got life experience.
• 44:39
  Jacob Hall: But I actually see them, actually see them as just a good candidate because they might take a little bit longer but they're so much more moldable.
• 44:46
  Jacob Hall: You know, if someone's got a passion for financial planning or passion for helping people, you can bring them in at 21.
• 44:51
  Jacob Hall: They've just come out of university and they're like sponges.
• 44:55
  Jacob Hall: You can absorb information, you can do your qualifications.
• 44:57
  Jacob Hall: Age is just as I.
• 45:03
  Jacob Hall: I said, it's just a number.
• 45:03
  Jacob Hall: I mean, there's a young guy we brought on, jack, who you've met in the office, who does all of our wills.
• 45:06
  Jacob Hall: I mean, I interviewed jack.
• 45:06
  Jacob Hall: Oh god, it goes.
• 45:06
  Jacob Hall: Time was quick.
• 45:07
  Jacob Hall: Probably 18 months ago jack came into the business and he was uk qualified planner.
• 45:12
  Jacob Hall: He did his exams actually it's quite a funny story and he's in uni, covid was happening.
• 45:15
  Jacob Hall: So he thought well, you know I can't go out much, so I'll do my financial planning exams while I'm in university, as well as my degree, which is incredible.
• 45:21
  Jacob Hall: And he came over and everyone's like god, this guy's young.
• 45:24
  Jacob Hall: He then ended up setting up our wills department, or taking over our wills department and developing it, and he's grown it out, you know, to one of the most successful departments in the business.
• 45:33
  Jacob Hall: He's 22 years old.
• 45:34
  Jacob Hall: Yeah, and you know I take him to meet clients that are 65 years old, sits them down and they kind of look at me a little bit and go crikey, this guy's young, but he knows his subject.
• 45:42
  Jacob Hall: So why does it matter how old he is?
• 45:44
  Jacob Hall: Yeah, and they all end up getting the right advice and getting things.
• 45:47
  Jacob Hall: So, yeah, age is a number, but I really want anyone within a certain age that wants to change a career and wants to look at this to speak to us, you know, and because everyone has different attributes 100 speaking of jack, yeah, well, impressed.
• 46:03
  Sam Oakes: Loves his golf.
• 46:04
  Sam Oakes: Um, you love your golf.
• 46:05
  Sam Oakes: I've got a feeling I'm going to be getting into golf out here which is expensive, right, um, but I like the top golf.
• 46:11
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, he took me to top golf in dubai with an amazing view behind and we had a really good time.
• 46:16
  Sam Oakes: Um, but you're right, right, he's younger, but he's somebody that I've connected with so well since I've been here and he is so commercially aware, ambitious, clever I mean he told me he'd give up drinking at like 21 years old.
• 46:31
  Sam Oakes: He doesn't do anything like that.
• 46:32
  Sam Oakes: He focuses on his business.
• 46:33
  Sam Oakes: He did 190k's worth of business or something along those lines.
• 46:36
  Sam Oakes: Right, he's 22 years old, he's self-employed, so he's on a split.
• 46:40
  Sam Oakes: Right, he's got a small basic, doesn't he?
• 46:41
  Sam Oakes: Now I think, yeah, I'm not gonna say everyone what he earns, but he earns a hell of a lot more than a lot of advisors do in the uk, and he's 22 years old and he's 22 years old and a fee-based advisor.
• 46:51
  Jacob Hall: You know it's itemized fee business.
• 46:53
  Jacob Hall: He does wills, trust, he does give advice as well, which he really enjoys.
• 46:57
  Sam Oakes: But you know he's just doing what he would be doing in the uk, but in the international market, yeah absolutely, and there is opportunity for people of all ages and I'm really pumped about that because that's been my ethos.
• 47:07
  Sam Oakes: One of my biggest higher purpose goals with the financial plan of life was to reduce the advice gap even higher.
• 47:13
  Sam Oakes: Than that is to create financial well-being which, even higher than that, makes families more secure, um, people's mental health better, um, and we need young people in here coming through the ranks to be able to offer that and deliver that service, because an app can't do that.
• 47:28
  Sam Oakes: An app can add some value, but it's not going to be able to create human to human connection and solve those problems.
• 47:34
  Sam Oakes: So I'm really passionate that our um purpose aligns as two businesses and this is why I'm coming on board again and I just want people to understand that really pleased that people are applying to the pathway I think I've got about 160 applications in one day.
• 47:47
  Sam Oakes: Uh, to guys, is that why I've got?
• 47:49
  Jacob Hall: a busy diary of interviews next week.
• 47:50
  Sam Oakes: That's why you've got a busy diary, I'm afraid, sorry about that.
• 47:52
  Sam Oakes: Love the pathway, just anybody listening to it, so they're.
• 47:55
  Sam Oakes: If they want, if they're interested in joining, let's.
• 47:57
  Sam Oakes: You know, join on up right, there is a lot of interest in it.
• 47:59
  Sam Oakes: You know we can't take on everybody, can we at this point in time, and we're going to improve the processes as well.
• 48:05
  Sam Oakes: So hopefully bringing in things like video interviewing where people can uh, you know, everyone gets an interview, goes through a you know a testing system where we can kind of decline people or accept people based on not having to have an actual face-to-face conversation with them, which is good for everybody.
• 48:21
  Sam Oakes: Are they uk-based first, can they come straight out to dubai?
• 48:25
  Sam Oakes: Can they go straight to australia?
• 48:26
  Sam Oakes: Can they go straight to the usa?
• 48:28
  Sam Oakes: People are probably confused, okay.
• 48:30
  Sam Oakes: So how does it work?
• 48:30
  Jacob Hall: so initially, the way that we've structured it initially is we we've started it off the with the trainee wealth manager course and the pathway course starting in the uk.
• 48:38
  Jacob Hall: Main reason for that is we're predominantly recruiting from the UK, right?
• 48:42
  Jacob Hall: So, as you know, there's a lot of Brits in our company.
• 48:46
  Jacob Hall: So we started out the UK office.
• 48:48
  Jacob Hall: Okay, the plan with that is we take two intakes per year at the moment and they go into the office and they spend six months five to six months depending on the progression working out of the UK office.
• 48:58
  Jacob Hall: On rotation we've got people in the UK that work closely with them and then on rotation, different people go back.
• 49:03
  Jacob Hall: Tommy goes back, kane goes back, spends time just training with them.
• 49:06
  Jacob Hall: They have a roadmap of sessions of training they're going to have, which is going to change course to course because things evolve.
• 49:15
  Jacob Hall: That's everything from how to develop business right through to how to sit with a client, to soft skills, to how to use cash flow planning.
• 49:21
  Jacob Hall: Even when they're a business development manager, they're learning about this and a trainee wealth manager they're learning about this.
• 49:23
  Jacob Hall: You know, after three months, because the sooner we can start putting that content in front of them, they understand the process of the financial planning which, when they're speaking to the, the leads that are coming in from the marketing or their meeting, well, they already know how it's going to go.
• 49:36
  Jacob Hall: They're not just booking a meeting, they're actually talking about what it's going to be.
• 49:39
  Jacob Hall: Um, so they'll do three to six months six months is that kind of the, the, the turnaround horizon and then what we do in that time is we bring them over for a couple of weeks to see dubai, because at the moment they come from the uk to dubai.
• 49:53
  Jacob Hall: Right, the idea then would be a bit like hub and spoke so they start in the uk, come over to here and then can go off anywhere they want in the world, really, where we have an office, over time and as we develop out the other offices, which is something we're really passionate about, you know, we've got new york, sydney, cyprus, potentially south africa.
• 50:12
  Jacob Hall: At some point we're obviously, you know, we have the office here in dubai and I don't know where chris finds the time, but I think we've got about another 30 offices in his mind over the next God knows how many years.
• 50:20
  Jacob Hall: But we're ticking off the big hubs.
• 50:22
  Jacob Hall: It may be that changes, it may be that people start in the UK stay in the UK, which is also great.
• 50:28
  Jacob Hall: I mean, the UK, I still think, is one of the biggest opportunities we have.
• 50:31
  Jacob Hall: And if you take on a client bank in the UK and they leave and you can continue to look after them, well, perfect, right.
• 50:37
  Jacob Hall: You know, not everybody wants to live in Dubai, you know.
• 50:40
  Jacob Hall: So they start in the UK, come over here and now, longer term, I think that might be UK to US, uk to Australia.
• 50:47
  Jacob Hall: I genuinely think we could have 100 people on a trainee wealth manager course.
• 50:51
  Jacob Hall: You know, the actual course is great, but it takes time.
• 50:54
  Sam Oakes: I think we're going to have one of the leading financial planning academies in the world.
• 50:59
  Sam Oakes: I have one of the leading um financial planning academies in the world.
• 51:03
  Sam Oakes: I genuinely believe that there was a purpose and a reason why I set up the financial plan life academy and I think it's leading to this.
• 51:06
  Sam Oakes: I think we're going to build out and if I can get 75 people in my academy online yeah, interested and keen and studying right, what can we do if we can actually get them on the phones, get them in front of clients, get them learning the actual job on the job, give them a basic salary.
• 51:20
  Sam Oakes: You know, I can't see that we can't do it, and over time, I think we can, so I'm really excited about it.
• 51:26
  Jacob Hall: We do need to do that in a northern capacity as well, though, bear in mind, I'm from the north, yeah.
• 51:30
  Jacob Hall: You know, we can't just do it down south so over time, because we've got some great candidates up there as well.
• 51:37
  Sam Oakes: Well, there's huge opportunity and we touched on it a second ago in respects of look, if you're a financial advisor right now and you're unhappy where you are and you have existing client relationships, you know, speak to us because there are lots of advisors, massively qualified, that are living in the sun, enjoying the sun, still servicing their existing client banks, and their existing client banks are what's allowing them and giving them access to be able to sit in south of france, like michael, you know, talking about chickens every tuesday on linkedin right but seeing his clients over in south africa, seeing his expat clients um in in um in france, or going back to the uk and seeing clients.
• 52:15
  Sam Oakes: So there's a huge opportunity for existing advisors who are sitting on client banks right now and kind of twiddling in their thumbs and not quite sure what they want to do.
• 52:18
  Sam Oakes: And obviously there's a huge opportunity for existing advisors who are sitting on client banks right now and kind of twiddling in their thumbs and not quite sure what they want to do, and obviously there's an advisor population and want to retire.
• 52:24
  Sam Oakes: This could be an excellent opportunity to actually retire.
• 52:27
  Sam Oakes: If you want to have some capital raise, maybe from your client book we're talking to people around that as well.
• 52:33
  Sam Oakes: You know, I've got this younger girl who is in London and she's got a fantastic book of business.
• 52:39
  Sam Oakes: She's under 30, but she wants to buy a house and it's like, well, look, we can do something there.
• 52:44
  Sam Oakes: That's cool, that's no problem.
• 52:45
  Sam Oakes: There's loads of flexibility that we can actually offer in the UK to UK-based advisors.
• 52:49
  Sam Oakes: So I just want to put it out there If you're interested in Hoxton whether it's to work abroad, whether it's to have international access and license, whether it's just to remain in the uk as an ifa and um, be employed or be self-employed just reach out and let's have a conversation.
• 53:04
  Jacob Hall: You know the funny thing there, and I say this because there's obviously a bit of a stigma sometimes for people about the international market.
• 53:10
  Jacob Hall: Right, yeah, I get it, you know, I do get it.
• 53:13
  Jacob Hall: And but I've got a young guy joining us soon who qualified 30 million under management in the UK.
• 53:19
  Jacob Hall: Friends over here liked the idea of living in Dubai.
• 53:24
  Jacob Hall: I said, well, just come up.
• 53:25
  Jacob Hall: I went and met him actually in the UK and then I said come over and see us, just come and see, come to the office, come and spend a week in the office, come and speak to the key stakeholders in the business, get a feel for it.
• 53:35
  Jacob Hall: Because he was nervous.
• 53:36
  Jacob Hall: He was like, oh, you know, I've read this or things.
• 53:41
  Jacob Hall: I said, you know, come over, you know.
• 53:42
  Jacob Hall: And it was great, he came in, he went around.
• 53:43
  Jacob Hall: I set him up with a basically a lot of not interviews but like conversations with the right people.
• 53:47
  Jacob Hall: He went back and he actually I thought I thought he'd been spooked, he just went thing and anyway he'd had some a bit going on with life.
• 53:54
  Jacob Hall: And then he he popped up in in march and was like I'm still thinking I'm really sorry this had happened and whatever else and some family things were going on.
• 54:01
  Jacob Hall: He's coming over in July, you know, and he's so excited.
• 54:04
  Jacob Hall: I've been speaking to him quite a little bit about it and he came over, kicked the tyres, as you call it, and, you know, was really, really impressed and I'm really excited to have him on.
• 54:11
  Jacob Hall: You know, he's a chartered planner in the UK.
• 54:17
  Jacob Hall: You want to leave the UK.
• 54:18
  Jacob Hall: You want to do a bit of both.
• 54:19
  Jacob Hall: We live in a world now where we can work from pretty much anywhere in the world.
• 54:23
  Jacob Hall: Right, you know I like to do this.
• 54:25
  Jacob Hall: You know I can't do that with everyone in the world, but you know we do live in a world where you can speak to people all over.
• 54:30
  Jacob Hall: So, yeah, come over and have a look.
• 54:32
  Jacob Hall: The other thing you touched on before is this I feel like you know what I'm like.
• 54:36
  Jacob Hall: I do jump around a little bit.
• 54:37
  Jacob Hall: There is no reason.
• 54:39
  Jacob Hall: I mean, people do leave companies and they do move on, and you know.
• 54:42
  Jacob Hall: But one thing we're really good at and I think I'm living proof I mean I came over to be an advisor and then I helped do some client services and then now I'm managing is if people want to progress, the opportunity is there to progress.
• 54:54
  Jacob Hall: You know, if people want to manage a business or they want to open a new office, we're all ears and that's really exciting for us and that continuity of staying at one company.
• 55:05
  Jacob Hall: You could start with us in the UK, move over to Dubai, become an advisor, go to New York, stay with us, hopefully for another God knows how many years, and then you could retire out of the same company.
• 55:15
  Jacob Hall: Not a lot of people offer that and can do that, and moving's bloody hard work, you know.
• 55:21
  Jacob Hall: And if you don't need to move because hopefully we keep doing right and we, you know I'm biased, but I think we're doing a great job and I'm really, really proud of what everything we're we're doing and how we're driving it forwards hopefully people just stay and continue growing forever.
• 55:34
  Jacob Hall: And then you know we have the service now where you can if you mentioned you know you want to slow down a little bit you can get someone to help service your relationship.
• 55:41
  Sam Oakes: Yeah, huge amount of opportunities.
• 55:42
  Sam Oakes: Jacob, I literally could talk to you all day.
• 55:44
  Sam Oakes: Just want to say massive thank you to you for looking after me over in Dubai, making that transition for me so much easier, because it's not as you said, it is scary.
• 55:55
  Sam Oakes: I experienced a bit of a wobble over over the last few days and instantly you, in your natural empathic state and wanting to solve problems, came in and solved it for me.
• 56:05
  Sam Oakes: Um and chris got involved as well, so I just wanted to say thank you for that.
• 56:09
  Sam Oakes: I think anybody that's going to be coming in and working underneath you anyway, um is going to get a hell of a leader, um, who leads by example, because you have a book of business yourself that you're looking after, you are an advisor whilst managing all those people.
• 56:19
  Sam Oakes: So big thank you on that one.
• 56:20
  Sam Oakes: Really looking forward to growing this business with you.
• 56:23
  Sam Oakes: Uh, even further, um, really looking forward to attracting new talent to hoxton, and I just know it's going to be a hell of a ride for the next 10 years.
• 56:29
  Jacob Hall: I just know that for sure you know you can't stop after 10 years, sam, no, no, no, I mean same thing.
• 56:34
  Jacob Hall: I mean I've really enjoyed spending time with you, thank you, because I mean you've already opened my eyes to a lot of things.
• 56:39
  Jacob Hall: Um and it's, you know, we're very lucky to have you on board and, you know, worked closely together with you going forward fabulous, great stuff.
• 56:46
  Sam Oakes: Jacob, thank you so much for sharing um your journey and hoxton life on the financial planner life anytime sam cheers.