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How Paraplanning and Financial Advice Prepared Me For A Role In Operations · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: And today's guest on the Financial Planner Life podcast is Mel AbplanAlp.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I hope I've pronounced that right.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's gonna tell me off otherwise.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, she's the head of operations at Buckingham Gate Chartered Financial Planners, and she will be the first to say that she's jumped around a little bit in her career.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: But as we established on the podcast, that's not always a bad thing.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to get experience at different companies in different roles.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: As she puts it, there was power planning as a route, there was financial planning as a route, and there was operations at a route.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And she's gone down the operations route.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And she shares with us today that journey that got her to that place.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: She also talks a bit about what she does in the operations role.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a fantastic episode for anybody that's at the beginning of their journey and are thinking about where they want to go and why.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: But also fantastic for power planners this role, because it opens up the idea of not being stuck in a power planner role or not just thinking it's powerplanning to advice, but actually there's a growing need for more operations manager.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And as the profession gets bigger and bigger and bigger, so many roles and operations are gonna start to open up.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy the episode today.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, yes.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm fine, thank you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm less perky than you this morning, but I'm I'm pretty good.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm perky.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I did a 54321 countdown in with jazz hands.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I am a bit perky today, but as I said, I get up at 5 30 in the morning, I have my run-in, I get my sleep melt.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know how important that is to me.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I wear a whoop, I track everything.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a crazy person when it comes to fitness.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're the bang opposite, and that's fine.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent stuff.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: What time do you start work, Mel?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Today, nine.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nine o'clock?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: What, nine till five?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: I try and work as much as possible, nine to five.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't always happen, but that is what I'm aiming for every day.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is that like your sort of non-negotiable nine till five?
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not non-negotiable, but that's just what I try and aim to do, I think.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's a it's important to have a clear um boundary around the hours that you work, because I had a habit of starting really early and finishing really late.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd be sat in bed and I'd be going through my emails on my phone, or I'd be going through LinkedIn, and it became very evident that I was working sort of 10, 11, 12 hour days and I wasn't fully switching off.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we'll talk a little bit about that, Mal, actually, and the role that you do.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're coming on the podcast today.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Financial Planning Life Podcast is a careers-based podcast where we talk about all the different roles within financial planning.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, it's not just about the financial advisor.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a huge amount of other people involved in a financial planning business.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those positions is an operations manager.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we see the operations manager role appearing more and more and more now in the smaller to medium-sized businesses where the role responsibility of looking after compliance and the operation, the running of the business is just too much for an advisor to actually cope with, as well as being a business owner and having to win clients.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm seeing firms now as being set up from the get-go from day one with an operations manager and a financial advisor.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had a really interesting conversation this morning with an advisor that was keen to uh uh to go directly authorized.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we're talking about the difference between DA and going AR, and he was talking about his wife that's got 15 years of pensions experience, might well come on as well and become more operational based.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a really, really interesting conversation.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, Mel, I think lots of people who listen to this podcast want to hear about the different roles.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody wants to become an advisor.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Your progression within your career up to operations level.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So your head of operations over there at Buckingham Gate Chartered Financial Planners.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think they want to hear about that, your career journey, because you have tasted what it's like to be an advisor, right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Briefly, yeah.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Briefly.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with that then.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So just tell us a little bit about your career then.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just let's start from the beginning.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get into financial planning and take us all the way up to operations?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, fine.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So there's two answers on the like, how did I get to financial planning question?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Firstly, my dad is an IFA.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think a lot of people say this that, like, you know, you've got a family member in it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I guess it's a career I always knew about.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: My dad worked for HSBC for a long time.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he was a bank advisor um for a lot, a lot of his career until he was retired.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think I kind of always knew about it because of that.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but actually, I started my career in pensions administration um when I finished university.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um my uncle is a recruitment consultant, he got me the job when I finished university.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's very nice.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, he's not in recruitment anymore, but he was at the time.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he kind of said to me, What are you doing?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I haven't got a clue.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Okay, well, there's a company quite local to you.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'll find you a job, like go and interview.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being like, Okay, yeah, that sounds really fun.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I absolutely love pensions administration.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I worked like on DB pensions, and it was really technical, and it was like lots of like actually sitting there writing down all these calculations to work out pensions, and it was like really interesting.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I did like absolutely love my team.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: I worked with absolutely wonderful people.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great first job because I think those first jobs, like you need to learn how to work and what it's like, and what an email is like and how you should be behaving.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think back and I was just so lucky that I had such nice people around me that just kind of took me under their wing.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, so then I went from that job and then I moved to Capita.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I moved more into the project team.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I did like pension projects instead.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was always quite interested in project work.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I took that job, massive pay rise comparatively, and I was like, Oh wow, you know, I'm doing really well.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I thought it'd be great.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: I was there for three months and a week.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because on my first day, my team took me out for lunch with my manager, and I was like, Oh, this is nice.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: On my second day, my team took me out for lunch without my manager, and they said, This is a terrible job.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Don't work here long term, this isn't a career job, and we're all looking for new work.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I have made a huge mistake.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was true.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Once I left, um I think there were seven people on the team, six of them were either left or on their notice period.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So listen to the people around you, I think, um, which is crazy.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I I wasn't there very long.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was out on an eye out with my friends um that I used to work with in my first job.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: My friend Bobby had also weirdly been at Capita and had left just before I started.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So he was three months into his new job at Smith and Williamson, and he said, We need someone on my team at Smith and Williamson um working in financial planning.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, Do you know anything about financial planning?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, my dad's a financial advisor, actually.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Are you interested in in coming along?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, why not?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a small team, you know, we were classic pod, we had our advisor, Andrew, Bobby had come in as a trainee power planner, and then they needed like the admin, so I think I was a financial planning assistant or something, you know, the admin role, you know, very classic three roles.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I went to interview for that, and I think I got the job because I think Bobby put in a good word for me.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: We'd worked together before, and I think you know, when you're working in a team of three, if two of them like each other already, that probably helps.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was great.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: I really love working at Smith Williamson.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: We worked there for I think I worked there for nearly three years.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Bobby's still there, so it can't be too bad.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, we're still friends.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always good to have like a friend of the industry that does something similar.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, I think you know, kind of I followed a friend into it is probably the real answer of how I fell into financial planning.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I just loved it.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think I really like the people side of things, I like the variety.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I really loved that first job because I was the only person doing my role, and I meant that I just got exposed to so many things.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um yeah, I mean down the line I was there a burning ambition to so when you started on the administrative side and you'd had a few roles and you really enjoyed the pension side, you enjoyed the calculations, working things out, etc., you moved over to Smith and Williamson.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: As I look at your LinkedIn profile, it goes from administrator down to financial planning assistant, sorry, up to financial planning assistant and then across to assistant power planner.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: At that level, when you were an administrator, was there a burning desire to go through the power planner route that was in front of you?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a biz there a desire to become an advisor?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at admin level, were you even thinking about that at that point?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um I definitely really thought I wanted to be an advisor.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think everyone comes into the industry thinking they want to be an advisor.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: My dad was an advisor, you know, I really, really get on well with my dad.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think, you know, I was like, well, that dad, my dad does it.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's obviously a very good job.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: He will sell that job to anyone he sees all the time.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think, you know, Bobby and I were both like, yeah, we definitely want to be an advisor one day, and you know, it'll be the two of us, and you'll do this and I'll do that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, had all these ideas, it was great.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, there were four of us in the office that were like quite young, we're all quite friends, and like we used to go out and be like, Oh, well, I'll do this.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Two of them worked in the investment team.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we're all still friends, so we still meet up now and we still talk about how we're gonna like fix everything in the problems in the world.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we're the same, but just slightly, slightly different roles now.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, for sure, I thought I wanted to be an advisor.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, I think the main reason I left really is because the it was quite a small team and you know, we were limited on opportunity, and it would have been real struggle for me to move at the pace that I wanted to move at.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like I said, you know, like actually Swiss and Williamson has changed massively.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: They merged with Tilney and now they've changed name, they've rebranded Evelyn even.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Evelyn, yeah, Evelyn.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Evelyn.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I like the colours, it's very purple, purple.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Evelyn Partners, yeah.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, maybe it would have come, but you know, I kind of looked at the team's trajectory and I thought I just can't grow here anymore.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which was really sad because, you know, there was really a lot of good points at that job.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in my role, like my first admin role, I basically went to so many client meetings.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: I went with my advisor and I took all the notes and I wrote all the everything down.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: I met all the clients, so I was like instantly exposed to a lot of client meetings straight away, which I think is huge to see what it's like.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, this is nice, I quite like talking to people.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, whereas I think people don't go into advisor meetings a lot and don't understand that you're having the same conversations with the same people.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, even a client you've had for five years that you really think understands it will ask you the same question the next year, and you're like, okay, well, I'll really re-explain this to you.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's definitely a certain skill set.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um When did you start stepping into client meetings?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And because I agree.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think um more firms should put their administrators and power planners and trainees into client meetings because it's really, really good exposure.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's really great to understand and see the eyes and the emotions and the feelings and the reactions that go through on a face-to-face meeting.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's very different from talking to somebody on a telephone day in and day out, or responding to emails day in, day out, or writing letters day and day out.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It adds a completely different dimension and it allows the brain to sort of open up a bit, doesn't it?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The other possibilities of what the role can actually offer and can be you do.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: It can also make you think, oh, I don't really like the idea of sitting in front of somebody.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather not be sat in front of somebody.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'd rather write a sterling report and pass it to the advisor and let them do it and perhaps be aids with the advisor and talk that way.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a client-facing individual.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I really, you know, that that your experience around that I think is something that's echoed throughout the profession where we do need to bring more people through into client-facing meetings.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the ones that have it within their jobs, they tend to excel quicker.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's really interesting.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I did start going in, I think, relatively quickly, a little while ago now.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, and I mean, this is gonna sound terrible, but I just remember like the people I met, I was like, oh, I like that person, they were really nice.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I really want to work hard for them.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that that's what the advisor is always bringing to every firm.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, This is my client that I have seen, and I have to sit in front of, and you know, where I work now, everyone gets at least three meetings if they're gonna go ahead.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I have to sit with these people for what anywhere between three and six hours.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: You form a bond with them and and you are rooting for them and you're advocating for them.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt that when it was a real person, and you do struggle when you know, later in my career I didn't see as many people, particularly, you know, when I was power planning.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you don't know these people, and they are just you know, writing on a page and numbers on a spreadsheet, and it is different.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um so interesting then.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: You were in a power planning position.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you went from you were you were seeing more clients on an administration administrative basis than you were seeing in a power planning position, is that right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think you know, I'll I'll fast forward my career now again and then I can get to it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: So after I left Swiss or Williamson, um I went to SJP.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, right.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And lots of people have lots of opinions on St.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: James's Place.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when I left, people had lots of opinions on St.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: James's Place.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of went in with an open mind.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I went into a really small team with a kind of I worked for a principal advisor, which is like, you know, the top, top level of advisor at SJP.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think I realized that it would have been very different otherwise.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's very easy to kind of get hold of anyone.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: We had like a contact everywhere, we had like free this, free that, because you know, the level of money that we were bringing in was incredibly high.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the reason I did it was because at that point I thought, yeah, I want to be I want to be the advisor.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I was brought in because the advisor wanted to retire in the next kind of five years and he wanted to have someone who could train up.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think my job title there was business manager, it's kind of like a practice manager.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um with a kind of similar role where I was just kind of doing about this and a bit of that.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it just wasn't for me.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it just I I mean, I I was there for nine months, I think three months of that was my notice period.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I really wasn't there a very long time.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: What was it about it?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: What was it about that setup?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Was it the environment?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was it the management?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Was it the Yeah, I think it was a combination of things.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think, yeah, I mean firstly, I think it it took over, like it really was such a large part of my life.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, the hours that I worked and the amount of responsibility I had, and I just felt this kind of like overwhelming pressure.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I also really struggled having come from independence um to go into restricted.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know, there's a place restricted, and I don't think there's huge amounts of difference, but people would come in and I'd be like, I know there's something better out there that we can't offer.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I really struggled with that because I think I'm a client outcome person.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think you have to be led by client outcomes and the best outcome.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was always in my head thinking, Oh, but there's this thing, and you know, I think it's similar with most firms, like 90% of people kind of get very, very similar outcomes because that's kind of the best outcome for most people, or very similar people come to similar advisors, but it's that peripheral 10%, and that's what I struggled with when I was restricted.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: That peripheral 10% just couldn't get them these other things.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess maybe if I were in charge, if I was the advisor, I would say to people, Oh, I'm not for you, why don't you go and see somebody else?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, that wasn't what we were doing.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think I I struggled a bit with the personalities on the team, and my advisor and I were just very different people, like fundamentally very different in the way we approach things.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean, the reason I left, we agreed between the two of us.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: We sat down and had a very frank conversation, and he said, I don't think it's working for me, and I don't think it's working for you.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I really appreciated that conversation, like it was honest, um, and I think it was accurate.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it wasn't, I just wasn't thriving there.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was putting in the hours, but I don't think I was putting in good performance.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um that because you weren't intrinsically linked to the values and the direction of where the business was actually going, that you felt differently and you wanted different things.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: You you mentioned and touched on I think having do you know what?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think having experience of IFA and then moving into restricted.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Restricted IFA, absolutely there is space for both.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, an IFA shouldn't demonize a restricted proposition.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's absolutely space for both, and the client has the choice as to where they go and who they seek advice from, and that the advisor, whether it's restricted or IFA, provides the best advice that they can exactly within the rules, right?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Within the rules.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you feel like because you had a taste of that IFA world, that it had opened your mind to the possibilities of a higher level of service?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think higher level of service, I think maybe is a bit harsh.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: I just think different levels of service or more bespoke when needed.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, whenever I describe myself positively, I always say like I'm a paraplanner.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So like with my power planner hat on, I always in my career remember like the really interesting cases where we've had to like really go above and beyond and find something and be like, oh, okay, they want this with this and this, and where can we find that?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you get on the phone or you get on like the research tools, and you're like, How are we going to achieve this?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then you do, and you're like, Oh, we've really done well here.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we've really given these people the exact thing that they wanted, and yeah, it was a struggle, but you know, you go home thinking, yeah, I've done a good job today.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's always the cases that I remember.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's always my favorite cases.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when I was restricted, that just wasn't a possibility, I guess.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think it's a higher level of service, I think it's just different.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when I worked at SJP, my advisor saw all of his clients twice a year religiously without fail.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: I've never worked anywhere else where every client was seen twice a year without fail.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, in terms of client focus, you can't fault that.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, and you know, I think also ultimately I on the other side of things, I don't think I wanted to run my own business.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think everyone thinks that they want to run their own business, but it's probably safer to run your own business, you know, being employed you're at the whim of somebody else.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think everyone thinks it's more safe to be salaried.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it isn't because you're always gonna give yourself a job, aren't you?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I think at that time I also realized I didn't want to be self-employed, I didn't want to like have my book, I didn't want to like you know, the model is you know, you buy a book and you have the debt and you have to service their debt.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think I really bought into the model either.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, I get that.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, lots of people want to be self-employed, and it's a wonderful industry if you want to be self-employed.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I would always say to someone, if you want to be self-employed in financial advice, it's an excellent, excellent career for it in a lot of capacities.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's so many outsourced power planners and outsourced firms that do compliance or administration or VA work.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So do you also think at the time you were perhaps I get the I get the fact that the model, the ecosystem, how the model works.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I totally agree with what you said about their the higher level of, you know, their a level of service, you know, transcends IFA, or it doesn't matter.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen really poor services from IFAs.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and really, you know, fabulous services from restricted.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make a difference to the level of service.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the detail that you like to go into to know that you intrinsically have done everything you can wasn't quite ticked, wasn't it?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: That box wasn't ticked within that environment.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, you know, going in with the aspirations of and I um and bravo to you to go into a company where the pressure was, look, I'm I'm gonna take on, not only am I gonna look like I'm running the business here, but I'm also gonna take on a client bank, and I'm gonna take on that client bank, I'm gonna buy it, get into debt, to then build a business.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: To you, that that was too perhaps extreme for where you were in your journey, because you've gone from power planning straight into that kind of world of um potentially buying somebody else's client book, right?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the pressure and everything that's then upon your shoulders to do that.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Was it at that stage then that you thought to yourself, ah, maybe financial planning isn't for me as an advisor.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I should look at back to what interests me, which is the more operational power planning, research, uh problem solving aspect as opposed to client-facing.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: Was it then or was it a bit further on down the line?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it was further down the line, to be honest.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you hadn't put you off.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: It hadn't put me off, but it hadn't confirmed it one way or the other.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, I I took the next job and I was like, I think I want a power planning job.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the best way to get technical knowledge, I think that's what I need.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm relatively confident in front of people, but if they ask me certain questions, I know I don't know the answer to them.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, I I've kind of had my career at Smith and Williamson, I had a lot of clients facing time.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I was kind of on the search for a job that I could really write reports because I didn't really write reports towards the end of my career at Smith and Williamson because it just wasn't my role.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And when I worked at SJP, I wrote a few reports, um, but not really.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought I haven't really done report writing properly.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think, you know, I was Looking for that.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the kind of role I was looking for, like pure power planning roles.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started interviewing, and I had I had three, I had three months' uh notice.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had six weeks' gardening leave.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I had six weeks' gardening leave to find a job.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't feel huge pressure.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was sitting at home watching Grey's Anatomy, to be honest.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I did.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I started from the beginning.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just kind of will I just got engaged as well.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I was like, oh, I can do some wedding planning.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was looking for a job.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I got offered two jobs in the end, two paraplanning roles, quite different firms.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um one was kind of local to where I grew up, and one was in central London, and I was kind of uming and ring between the two, and I just did a really awkward thing where one of them offered me more money and I had to negotiate with the other one, and it was really awkward, and I don't love it, but you know, I did it.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, ultimately I picked Black Swan.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons I picked them is because they work with completely different clients to what I'd worked with before, and I think at that point in my career, and and even now, you know, I always try and work with different kinds of people.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'm necessarily mature enough in my career to specialise yet, or it certainly then, what was I 28, 27?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't feel ready to specialise.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: So at Smith and Williamson, we dealt with a lot of like really high net worth people, really complicated.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, at SJP, they were even more wealthy, um, but maybe like you know, more families.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um Black Swan, we had more clients, it was more mass affluent.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: There were a lot more kind of what I would call normal people, and I was like, oh, that's interesting.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And also I was working with multiple advisors.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: There were like four or five advisors that I would be working with, um, which I thought would be fun.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember, you know, the other job I had, I think was a great company.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I was really sad not to take it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: But the reason I didn't take that job was because they were dealing specifically with SaaS pensions, um, so like family businesses that had pensions with the family business and then the family wealth.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that's really interesting.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't done it before, and I was like, oh, you know, I don't know much about this area, I still don't know much about that area, but I thought it's too specialist for me.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I just can't niche that much at this point in my career.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would be working with like one or two advisors, and I really had a desire to work with more advisors, so that's why I chose it.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I worked really closely with four of the advisors.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: There were five advisors there, but I worked really closely with four of them.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote reports for four advisors, which was a lot.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think you know, I also then kind of went in with meetings, not often, but you know, often enough to like get different varieties of different styles.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I always would say to people, like, sit with as many different advisors as possible.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to align more similarly to one and the other.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I always say that one of the advisors I work with, Rob, I think is kind of more my style.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if I was to be an advisor, I always thought, yeah, I would do it like he does it.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I always like going to his meetings or like hearing about what he was doing or listening to him on the phone because I felt quite aligned with the way that he worked.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um stop you there.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just elaborate on that.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can you elaborate why what was it about that advisor that interested you so much in his delivery and how he became, you know, what how he delivered financial planning?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think it's gonna struggle to be positive without being negative, but I'll try.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I guess he was very clear, um, very concise.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think he had a very nice way with people without overly babying people or being condescending or assuming they didn't know anything.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um he always asked like good questions to like gain like understanding, and then he would be very good at tailoring his approach to different clients.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he had some clients that really were quite savvy, and then he was happy to you know judge where their knowledge was and then talk at that level, but for the people that had less, he would judge it and talk there.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a real skill to talk to people at the level that they want to be spoken to.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of advisors either, you know, talk uh very high level or they really dumb it down too much, and it is a real skill to be able to pitch it correctly, and I think it's one that he did really well.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I always found his answers very like sensible.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he is a real wordsmith as well, he's like written a few books, he was very into like literature.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know he had excellent vocabulary, I think that always probably quite helpful.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he wasn't overly friendly in a kind of how are your wife, how are your kids, let's talk for 20 minutes about your dog kind of way.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think he was slightly more professional, um but made a good rapport.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think before that I was always used to clock like maybe longer meetings where advisors would be like talking for longer and and you know, pulling out pictures of the grandkids and all that kind of thing, which is lovely.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I just preferred that way of working.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um and was he successful?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think we can be too overly friendly, we can waste a lot of time um talking about things that just you don't need to talk about, right?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if you're clever enough to be able to ask key specific questions that can gain an emotional response quite quickly and a report quite quickly, you don't need to reinforce it by showing your work as as being a great human being because that should come across anyway in the interest in the questions that you have, right?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know exactly.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as well on on the other end, you've kind of got the advisors that have really short meetings and probably slightly more products-based.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Give less away.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't quite want to be over there.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I ramble too much for a start, so I can't, I can't do short, concise, it's just not my thing.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, I think you know, the other the other thing I like just generally across the board from all advisors, really, was anyone that kind of came up with real-world analogies.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a big fan of explaining things to people in different ways that they might actually understand um in the real world versus using all lots of jargon, which unfortunately there is.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes sit in did you sometimes sit in meetings as a power planner and just be like listening to the advisor talk and think, oh God, you've explained it not the way really that the individual should be able to understand it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Did you often want to jump in?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did it was it like a bit of a uh, you know, a a partnership in those meetings, or were you sort of sitting back and and kind of biting your lip saying, I wish I could say that, I wish I could say that?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's a really good point.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I'm not a shy person, so if I said something, I would probably jump in.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and now, you know, I always tell people on my team that are more junior than me if they're going into a meeting.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, look, your role is to advocate for the client.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you think the client doesn't understand something, if you think their eyes are glazing over or they look panicked or worried, like your job is to say, like, oh, sorry, do you mind explaining?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you can act like the dumb person, you can say to the advisor, oh, like, sorry, I didn't quite catch that, or I didn't quite understand that, or can you explain that to me again?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you mean this?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I was always quite happy to do that because I think people thank you for it.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's difficult for the advisor to like have to dumb down too much.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, whereas if you're the other person in the room, and particularly if you've been brought in as a like someone that's learning or training, like I'm like, look, I'm really sorry, I hope you don't mind me interrupting.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just want to make sure I'm clear on it because I don't quite understand it myself.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I hope you don't mind.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to ask the advisor a few questions to clarify what he means and is it like this?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then they could explain it differently to me.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that helps with client understanding as well, because they don't have to ask questions.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think, you know, often when there's two people in the room, a good way to make sure that clients understand is to get one to explain it to the other.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you really know that they actually are understanding it properly.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think, you know, us as human beings do have a tendency to pretend that we understand things and be like, yeah, of course, why why wouldn't I get it?
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm a millionaire, of course I understand my millions.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Tax, yeah, I understand the annual allowance, of course I do.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't I?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: It affects me.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, so I never minded and I always felt like if I'm in a meeting, I have to say something, otherwise I might as well not be there and just watch it later.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think as well, I would always try, particularly when I was a power planner, to have like a bit that I would talk about.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: So for a long time I was on the investment committee in my last job, so I would talk about the investments because I knew more about it because I was looking at it and I was the one doing the analysis.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's a really good way of learning how to explain things is to take a section that you're comfortable with.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of people, for example, might want to take the cash flow and do that and present that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was like always building up my skills towards trying to be an advisor with this kind of undertone in the background of like, what do I want to do?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of always thought there's kind of three routes for me.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was like be an advisor.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, good, I can kind of do my own thing, be very autonomous, practically be your own boss, you know, run your own diary, have your own schedule, be the face.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I can stay in power planning.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can forge a really good career as a power planner.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, you could be really technical, you can really understand your stuff, you can be always striving to explain things better, you can, you know, be doing research, you can get out there.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I could do that.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, or I can kind of go down what I'm calling like more of the business route.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, you know, there's loads of business jobs within a financial planning firm.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can go into operations, you can go into projects, you can go to HR, you can go to compliance.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, really always constantly going, which one is it for me?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and by the time I kind of ended my career at Black Squad, I kind of was like, yeah, it's still being an advisor for me.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm a people person, I want to do that, that's what I want to do, that's the job that I want, that's the like big job in the industry, isn't it?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's called financial planning.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be a financial planner.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think that's kind of why I left because there was a limited opportunity for me to be an advisor there in the kind of timeline that I wanted.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was there for three years in the same role.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I I really learned a lot in that time.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a lot of reports and I had a lot of respect on the team and you know, really liked everybody I worked with.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was tough to leave.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I decided that I was gonna leave.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, what do I want to do?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: What am I looking for?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote a list.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a list of things that I wanted.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I want to work for an independent firm.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've made that mistake in the past.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want to work for a chartered firm because I hate doing the exams.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And if I work at a chartered firm, it's gonna force me to get to chartered.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I need, I need to like make myself do this.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I want to work somewhere relatively small, I don't want to work for a big firm again.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I want to work somewhere with a few advisors.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I want to work somewhere where everyone's in the same office.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: I want to work somewhere that there's an opportunity and a broad timeline of when the opportunity is to be client-facing.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to work with clients that I haven't worked with before.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I remember it was beginning of January.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know everyone does everything in January, and I phoned a recruiter and I spoke to her for an hour about what I did and didn't want.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, these are the only things I'm interested in.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: I want these things and I don't want these things.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen this job on LinkedIn that I think would work for me.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, okay.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, you can't put all your eggs in one basket.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So she made me interview at like five places, and I was just like, okay, but I really just want this one, but all right, I'll entertain you.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and I mean, to be fair, I had so many interviews with people that were trying to convince me to go into an operations job, and I was like, no, I don't want to do, I don't want to do that.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: But like, yeah, but your CV is excellent for it.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yeah, but that's not what I want to do, which is quite ironic now.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yes, and I interviewed uh Buckingham Gate, and I was just like, Yeah, this is the job I want.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was convinced I wasn't gonna get the job because they said that they were interviewing two people and they really liked the other one.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, they ended up taking on both of us.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if I was competing with Paul, I don't think I'd have got the job because Paul's great and I love him, and he probably was better for the role.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so thank God they hired two people.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I went in as a paraplanner with the view to being an advisor within the next year to 18 months.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was like finish your exams, get chartered, learn our way.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and even he's much more suited for that as well than I am.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: He's like got a really good sales background and like really passionate about that kind of thing.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, okay.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, even that probably helped me realize that maybe it's not me.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, fast forward, I guess.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I've had three job roles since I've started my job a year and a half ago, which is relatively impressive.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I started as a paraplanner, um, and then one of the girls on the team went on maternity leave while she was pregnant, and then went on maternity leave.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started covering what she did, and she was an advisor that was helping in a more kind of support advisor role, uh, Matthew RMD.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: And she did a lot of the estate planning on the firm because we do a lot of estate planning.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so when she left, I took over her role.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I was kind of half-advising like existing clients, like reviewing clients and going into client meetings with the advisor for like new clients and helping, um, kind of in a like a support advisor role or a client manager role or whatever you kind of lots of people call these roles different things, but that's kind of client-facing role.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would do kind of on my own the estate planning, like instruction taking for wills and powers of attorney and things like that.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like very client-facing.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Great, I've I've got the job I want, you know, and um I didn't do it for very long.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I mean so it's a weird, weird story, as is most of my career.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I went to a conference and last October, and at this conference, something happened like externally at the conference.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think there was like an email hack for someone, and like one of our clients got this weird email, and we were trying to work out what's happened.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, at this point the structure of the company was quite flat, and you know, normally it would be like my boss, Matt, who would be dealing with it, but he was speaking at this event that day, and I was like, okay, well, we don't need to bother him because he's speaking, and we're like, he doesn't need to know about it.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like running around, like in the breaks and in the lunch, like trying not to tell him and like trying to sort it out.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it happened to be that we were at the company where the problem was, so I was like, brilliant, all the right people are in the room for me to fix this.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like calling the team and texting people and emailing people on my phone and like trying to get it sorted.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and I did, and it was fine, it got sorted.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I think after he spoke, I was like, by the way, this happened, it's fine, it's taken care of, no big deal.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there was this keynote speaker that was talking about finding happiness and fulfillment in your career.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And like what he said really hit with me, and I had a two-hour train journey home that night, and on the train, I just sat and thought for hours about what he said, and I did this thing, which we can get into in a minute, otherwise, it's gonna ruin my story.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, so I did this uh coaching practice that's called the Wheel of Life, and I did like a wheel about my career, and I kind of split it into different sections, and afterwards I kind of realized that being client-facing, being an advisor wasn't for me, it wasn't hitting what I wanted to do, it wasn't hitting the points for me.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I emailed Matt, I think the next day or two days later, and I was like, Can we can we talk?
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Can we have a meeting?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, and he's really busy and he's a morning person.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, can we go out for breakfast?
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm not a morning person and I hate going out for breakfast because it's too early.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I was like, I will go out early.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: I will meet you at eight o'clock in the morning for breakfast in central London and we'll talk about it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Yeah, great, perfect.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was and I said, you know, I think I should start doing operational stuff.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think, you know, there's a need for it at the company.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think I can really help, maybe like part-time, maybe not full-time.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we sat down and he said to me, Okay, he goes, I agree with you.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a really good idea because at the conference that something went wrong and there you were fixing it.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't your job to fix it, and you just dealt with it and it was just done.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, I didn't really think about that as a big deal.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Yeah, but that's the kind of thing that you need to do if you want that kind of role.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, That's the kind of role profile for someone to do that.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh, interesting.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, So I was thinking the same thing, and I was like, Brilliant.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we're both at the same thing, and for different reasons, we both think that I'm not in the right place.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he said to me, You know, do you like sales?
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, No.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, if we get like a really big case in and we get like a million pounds in, are you fast?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, not any more fuss than if we get 100 grand in, like if the people are nice, and he's like, okay.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, What do you like about seeing clients?
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Oh, I like, you know, seeing people and talking to people and helping people.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Do you think only the advisors help people?
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, No, I fundamentally think that everybody is helping clients, like, takes a village, it's not just the advisor doing like an important role for that.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, okay.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, How do you feel about just dealing with the staff more and dealing with the team more and dealing with providers more?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Would that give you enough people facing time, not client facing time?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Probably, probably would.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, you know, how do you feel about like systems and improving?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know, since you've came, you've done this and you've done that.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, I really enjoyed doing those things.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Yeah, okay, great.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: So let's just move you into a role in operations.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, part time.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, nope, not part-time, just like full time, like that's the role that you need to be doing.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Okay.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, And I was just like, you know, imposter syndrome kind of comes up, and you're like, Oh my god.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Well, I'll do it for a bit, and then when the company gets bigger, we'll we'll bring in someone else that knows what they're doing.
• 41:18
  unknown: Right.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we'll bring in like a big shot.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think I said big wig at the time.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he just laughed at me and he just kind of looked at me and he just went, and I won't forget it because we were like out the restaurant at this point.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: We're walking back to the station to go to the office, and um, he just went, Mel, everyone starts somewhere.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't why can't it be you?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Okay, I was like, this is a lot of pressure, but okay, if if you think I can do it, if I can be the be that person one day, I'll do it.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it took somebody else saying to me, like, I think that you should do this, and these are the reasons why, and actually you I think you have the aptitude for it for me to be like, okay, I'll try it.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't ever really think of myself as a particularly ambitious person.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really think I was looking for a head of anything role in my career.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm definitely more of a team person.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: I like to be in the Wii, I don't like to be in the them.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's definitely it's lovely to see, sort of cut across to you because it's really interesting.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was lovely to see that you were able to sit down and have that open discussion.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think throughout your career, you have tried different things, and that's brave.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the lesson to be learned in that.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: We can step nuts it, can't we?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And expect for it to change.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or we can step outside of it and go and have a little look elsewhere.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we're not going to say that every road you go down is gonna be a core of a road of perfection, right?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you've done that.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: You've gone down different pathways, but you've got quite different things.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, first of all, yeah, it's the wrong role or it's it's uh go for find something else.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because we all know that the crime, yeah, the crime quality of the administration.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: You all um, you're gonna wear empty at the moment.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's confidence outside of it.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's also you know, it's not gonna be perfect every step of the way, but something will happen at some point within that journey where an aha moment happens and you're like, ah, right, yeah, that's where I'm supposed to be.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: But often that doesn't come unless you're courageous enough to try different things.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe I think you know, a lot of people stay enrolled.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're like, I've been here a long time, I'm comfortable, you know, you have more rights after two years as an employee, you know, you don't want to be first in, last out, that kind of thing.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, my answer to that always is exactly what you said.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're in an industry that's so candidate-led, people are so sought after.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you do change role and it doesn't work out, you'll find another one.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, on on the backdrop of this, I mean, I my husband has had so many different careers.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: He's someone that is always looking for something new.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: He has quit his job but no job to go to three times.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he has changed career like four or five times.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I've had to be A, the stable one, but B, it really makes you question if you're happy with what you're doing.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because I you know, I live with someone that's very brave and has really tried lots of things.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, he's like very courageous.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, right, well, here he is, like busting his gut, trying to work in something that he loves.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do I love what I do?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that helps.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: But also, you know, there was that kind of expectation that I had to be the stable one, and I think that's a lot of the reason that people don't leave is because they feel that pressure to be earning a wage and providing and all that kind of thing.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my husband is a primary school teacher now, he's just started in September.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: He went through a year of being a full-time student, um, which, you know, we got through and was fine.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it it always kind of people were surprised when I changed job because I changed job and he was a teaching assistant, and they were like, Well, what if your job doesn't work out, you know, it's a bit of a worry.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, It'll be fine.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: I could just find another job if I have to, like, we'll make it work, we'll make it happen.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people kind of put external pressure on themselves and worry about all the responsibilities and it's the fear, it's just it's the security instinct, isn't it?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's that worry that we're not gonna be able to pay the bills, you know, we're gonna be kicked out of a you know, you can play out a scenario in your head which is completely unrealistic.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and more often than not, it's about getting those um those thoughts checked with somebody who's a bit of an expert.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we come in as recruiters, really.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a recruiter and they're an expert in their field, they should be able to give you some perspective.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: They should be shoving jobs down your throat just to try and make a make a placement for you, for instance.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: They should be understanding and establishing uh what are you thinking?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we're releasing a uh a group of episodes quite soon actually about all of this, about what goes through your head when you're thinking about a new job and uh what you should do in the first instance.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one of the things that you did was sit down and talk to somebody and gain some perspective and share your thoughts and feelings, and also to get an understanding from their perspective of what they thought of you as well.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you came together and you established there was a different path that you could take within.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some people are scared of those conversations and they'd rather walk away than have the confrontation because they're fearful of rejection, for instance.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas sometimes being brave internally is always the first point of call in my eyes.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you enjoy the environment and that's key, I really, really like it here, but I want to leave.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you want to leave?
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want more money or I want more responsibility.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have you had a conversation with somebody in your business about the fact that you want more money?
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know where to start.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got a salary guide?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got some market research to go to that individual and say, look, you're I'm on 25 as an administrator, but the market's saying it's 30,000 pounds for a salary.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I need more money, and these are the reasons why I need more money.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: But you need to understand that I've got some research for you as to why you're underpaying your staff because it's a big risk.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: You might lose staff.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you do that and you come with evidence and you're able to have that meaningful conversation where it's not a I want something on the conversation without any evidence.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: It has a really, really positive impact.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's also a lovely, a lovely connection that happens between employer and employee.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of trust and of uh it starts to build.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I I when I have those conversations, I run a business with 20 other people in here.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when I come in, I sit down and have those trusting, interesting conversations with them and we develop the business off the back of it.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so connected to that individual in a completely different way.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where that operations role then took you, isn't it?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's taking you to be connected to one of the owners of the business.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then now you're an intrinsic part of that business.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've got that, you are the operations, or head of operations, essentially, I suspect, inevitably will move perhaps into an operations director role at some point.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the kind of the the path where you're going.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're becoming a vital part of that directorship level of the running of that business.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: Give us an overview then of what the operations role entails and what you've learned, though, say, over the last 12 months of being in that position.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um, what do I do?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I a lot of it is is HR and people and line management.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've written kind of policies and I've kind of changed the way we do the reviews, um, introduce 360 feedback.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was a good thing.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I help with compliance, probably because of my power planning background and my obsession with rule following, as I spoke to you about earlier.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: I like following rules.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anyone that's worked with me ever will attest that I like to throw a rule at someone.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: My current favourite rules is the consumer duty rules.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: If I want my way, I'm just like so in line with consumer duty, we can't do this because consumer duty says that.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I could be lying, to be honest, because I'm the only one that's like sat and read the whole thing.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel relatively confident that I'm not lying, but I could be lying to them.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I think you know that I do quite a lot kind of compliance and CPD and that kind of thing.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then projects like any kind of non-day-to-day stuff I tend to kind of be involved in, whether it's like planning or doing or helping or problem solving.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I can do quite a lot of the jobs at the company.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've done most jobs in a firm now.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which doesn't mean I'm an expert at them, but I can certainly cover uh well enough for a for a pinch, you know, if people are off or if someone's sick or we've had a couple of members of the team leave um this year.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I've kind of covered uh departments that need that.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then stuff like systems and processes.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: So talking to providers, looking at new tech, looking at new systems, looking at our current systems, talking to people to see if we can improve, trying to be more efficient, using the systems we already use in a different way or a better way, kind of cutting the fat on the process, trying to remove friction.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's quite a large part of what I do.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what I don't really do is kind of sales and marketing, like that's not my thing.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's not in my area at the moment.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but most other things.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I just think kind of being available to talk to people if they've got ideas.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the other big thing I do is recruitment.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I get CEPs, I do the first rounds of interviews, um, kind of a screening interview to give people an overview and kind of touch base with them.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's very varied, and I have to say I don't do everything every week, um, but it's it's it's a lot of different things which I like.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you find that there's always something to do in an operations position?
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and are you constantly recognizing areas of improvement for a business?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I think, you know, so Matthew and I work very closely together.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think him especially, he's always got an idea about how we can improve.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think it's trying not to change too much at once or trying not to implement so many things that none of them actually get done.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's my role is to make sure that if we are going to do something, that it happens.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: If we're gonna cause disruption, it's for a good reason, if we're gonna make a change, it's it's it's thought through and that it you know, we get to the other end and then we can learn from it and reflect back.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I think you know, it is about having the idea, but also about listening to the ideas.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think ideas just come from the top.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the really good ideas come from the people actually doing, like I'm quite far away from the job now.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not client-facing anymore, I don't write reports, I don't do admin work, like I need to rely on other people in the business to tell me if something's not right.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's why I like new starters because I always ask them, like, is there anything we do that no one's giving you a good reason why we do it?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me what that thing is because I will either get you the answer as to why we do it, or I'll be like, why are we doing this?
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: Could we change it?
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do when you do it under HR sort of functions then?
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are you also involved in in employee engagement?
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, perhaps one-to-one feedback, that kind of stuff.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so at the fan we try and make it so that no one has to line manage more than four people because we're quite a small team.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there's 16 of us and four people are line managers, so it works out quite well.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I line manage the heads of just departments, so like the head of admin and the head of paraplanning, they manage their teams because they actually do the job with them.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I think you know, feedback one-to-one.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I also obviously will talk to anyone on the team or just take someone out for a coffee or have a chat with people just to check in.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, I mean, obviously, I I think it's quite a large area of things that I'm looking into always is to kind of help with that.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always trying to understand where people want to go in their careers and how we can help them and and what tools we've got with the limited size that we are to be able to help enough people.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know that's always the challenge.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: People that want like a set progression at a set time, but want to stay in one firm is quite tough when the firm's small.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's much easier in a bigger firm, but then you're less exposed, and it's that kind of thing, you know.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: For me, I work at a big firm and then a small firm and then the biggest firm and then smaller firms.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: And for instance, is Buckingham Gate a a firm that wants to, you know, has aspirations to grow rapidly or bigger than it is, or is it does it is it happy to grow to you know humble levels of of advisors?
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's the what's the plan of action?
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in and does your vision you know match the vision of the director, for example, who's got quite a creative mind and aspirations by the sounds of it?
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think you know, he he does think big.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think big is different for different people.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, since I think since I joined, or just before I joined, I think it doubled in size in the last like year and a bit in terms of headcount.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we are growing, we are a growing business.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, our director's only nearly 35, he's only 34.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you know he's he's got that long, long view, um, which I think is is different.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: And some people in the industry tend to be a bit older and and don't have that kind of length of time.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think we've got a good team around us, I think we've got ambitious people, I think we can we can be bigger.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how big, I think you know that it is always difficult to see 20, 30 years in the future, but you can always see like kind of three to five years and try for that.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think we we will grow and we will try and grow.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, I'm committed to that to help that.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think by growing, we can facilitate more people staying with us, which I like the idea of.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um you um you mentioned there about getting involved in technology.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now I've just set up the financial planner life fintech, where I'm gonna sort of bring on different technology companies to talk about what they're doing to change the landscape for clients and financial planners within the financial planning profession.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's an area of interest to me and it's an area that's growing, you know, and I think tech is gonna really sort of um make its mark within the financial planning profession.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, based on your period of doing some research, looking at technology, looking at system CRMs, that sort of thing.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anything coming up that you think, wow, that's revolutionary or that's really adding value to our business, and perhaps other financial planning firms should do the same.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, interesting.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I actually listened to that podcast episode that you did, was it this week?
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, with Kim on the Kin Vault.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Win Kin Vault, yeah.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, I have to talk to them.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I will be talking to them.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let me intro, I'll I'll intro you after this.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: Nice, thanks.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I was like, that sounds interesting.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: We do a lot of estate planning.
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think I also was like Monday morning, I always have my meeting, or Monday afternoon we have I have my meeting with my boss every week, and I was like, Oh, I heard about this thing, I've got to listen to it.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a demo.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what do I think is really good at the moment?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think planner looks really good.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: The um CRM back office system.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen how it works a bit, I've seen a demo, I'm on a list.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think when it gets there, I think it will be the one.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um personally, I think it's really good.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a demo this week with advice front, uh, which is quite new.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know enough about it, so I'm interested.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's stuff like timeline, I think is really good.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe not for everyone.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know you have to really buy into that kind of model and take it wholeheartedly.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think the best data tech that we use probably is non-financial planning related.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's Asana, which is like a project management task management tool.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think Effie Analytics we use, I think is incredibly good.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's very, very expensive for a reason.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think in terms of like fund research and on the investment side of things, it's it's it's literally unparalleled.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know it's it's great.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think what about cash flow forecasting tools?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do you use?
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we use Voyant.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: Use Voyant, yeah.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I reached out to Voyant actually.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was meant to have a meeting with them and I missed it.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to get back on, see if I can get them on because I think um I think that'll be a really interesting conversation.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really interesting to have those conversations anyway.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like if I can create this kind of like space on my site that has loads of tech companies that are all talking about it, and you can just go there and just listen to them and pick up on the key points book demo straight away.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a really interesting way to look at technology and to bring it to life.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's that's becoming like a bit of an appetite.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a guy phoning me up today, actually, to go through it all.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um that piece of tech.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of the guys over at Ningi?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-uh.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so they reached out to me as well.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they got a piece of financial planning.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't quite know exactly what it is.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: I like the ones that I've not heard of.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like all over it.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there's a lot of financial planning.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of tech out there.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm in the right area.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I'm doing around that is going to be really beneficial.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let me introduce you to Ben Mason, because that Kin Vault, so Kinherit and the Kin Vault, it's a fantastic piece of technology.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been working with them for a couple of years now.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when they had about 200 visors on and now they got about 1200.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's a it's a fantastic piece of kit.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: So have a look at, you know, you've had a listen anyway.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll introduce you to Ben and Ben will go into a bit more detail, give you a demo on that.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: It got a few CPDs and things that you guys can do as well.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm I'm not short of CPD.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've done nearly 200 hours this year.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: Have you?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always out.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always out trying to learn and listen.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's my career advice as well.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for if it's worth my two cents here.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: If these people knew in their career, like work at a firm that will let you go out and learn externally.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of companies don't like people going to events if they don't need the CPD, you know, if they're not qualified, or you can't take a day away from the business or whatever.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like work somewhere that will encourage you to go and learn, not just from the company, but elsewhere.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I will always say that.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've always kind of said to employers, I'm like, I want to go out and learn, I want to go to events, I want to network, I want to meet people.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think some of the best ideas you get is sat on a lunch break talking to someone.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I try and get out a lot where I can and listen and learn and I think it's like hugely important to always be learning in this industry.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you where do you where would you point somebody in the direction of to do some extracurricular learning?
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think all the big companies like that you can think of, like all the big old life companies are always doing events, um, all the platforms are always doing events.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then there's always like webinars if people want to learn.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's as good, but I think if you know if you've got an hour and that's all you're allowed, then do it.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other thing is there's so many net more networks and groups now, it's so much easier.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like before you had to find all the stuff on your own.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's unbelievable how many more groups I am in the last year than I ever was before.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I do next gen, um, which is kind of um a networking group slash I study with them because they helped me through my exams.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so they're quite good.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's quite a good network.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm in a couple of Facebook groups, one kind of for financial advisors, one for women in financial advice.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean a WhatsApp group um with like young women and advice, which is great.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's like an agony on group.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, can I just ask what happens at your firm?
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: And should I ask this?
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: And someone was like asking for career advice, and someone was asking for exam advice.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's really very supportive.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um who runs that one?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then you've got so I think that was set up by Chanel Passon.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: Chanel Passon, yeah.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um the podcast Her Future Bright, which is yeah, she's been on she's been on my podcast.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: I like Chanel.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know why she set it up, but I'm in it and it's great.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very honest, which is very rare.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think most people always tell all the good stuff that like there's some bad stuff in there, which is very reassuring sometimes.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to do a deep dive into that.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to get like an anonymous discussion going around that um and be really, really interested in bringing those stories to life.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm do you find that networking, like for example, right, financial plan of life.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm in talks at the moment with creating a community for the financial plan of life.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: But like NextGen have got their community.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: Talking to the guys over at Octo members about potentially setting up a community within Octo members.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um mine would be geared towards well-being and careers.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: So careers, well-being, but also bringing in networking.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, the fintech stuff, it would be really interesting to then bring individuals on who can talk and to share about it and to do lunch and learns, that kind of thing.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to do the financial plan of life meetup, but it's not going to be face-to-face straight away.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be online.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so each region will have an ability to create a meetup, and we might invite Kinherit along, and we might invite some other people along, and maybe run it for a couple of hours, and you can jump on a web, you know, a webcam and you can watch it and listen and you can interact with it.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually I want to take it to being face-to-face and like having the Financial Plan of Life podcast live and then have some guest speakers, but come at it from a kind of different perspective to the likes of the traditional route, you know.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I feel like would you do something like that?
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: Would you, you know, if I had the financial plan of life one and it was like, I don't know, someone talking about well-being in the workplace, it might be someone talking about the great piece of technology that investment companies now got and they want advisors to look at.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, would that be of interest to you, or do you think it's too much out there?
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it sounds really good.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'd definitely go.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think people are kind of bored of the kind of classic provider telling you, selling you their product, yeah.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: Presentations of the past.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think people need reasons to leave the house and have to be enticed out with something interesting.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, look at what the PFS did.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't go, but you know, they did a festival this time and it was more about casual meetings and the agenda was fluid and people went to different bits and talked to different people.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think you know, networking is good and bad.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think it depends what you want it for.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think I quite like to understand what other people are up to.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think you know, I've found a firm that I really am aligned with and I don't necessarily want to lean.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of my strengths is that I've worked in lots of places and I know what other people are doing.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like the way that I can keep that finger on the pulse is to talk to people in other in in other firms.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_02: I agree.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, for me, I think that's one of the reasons it's important.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, you know, you do get to know people and you see them at different events and you're like, oh okay, yeah, you're going to that, or we're doing like a Christmas drink, or I went to an event and I saw someone and I saw them at the next event and the next day, or which was quite, you know, weird.
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was an event with one person and then the next day they were at the same thing as me, and I was like, oh, two days in a row.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um But yeah, I think you know, fintech is interesting.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people are interested in it.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think the problem is is that it's quite difficult when you don't have that position of influence in a firm or a firm doesn't want to change and you're there going, I really want us to use this.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's quite difficult to make that case.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm lucky now that it's easier for me to make that case.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously, there's always, you know, the finance and the change and the impact and the you know, if we've just signed a contract with one thing that does something for a year, you've got to see it out for the year, and then you can't change mid-contract and things.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I get it.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a fantastic chat with you.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's been really lovely, Mal, to to to understand your background, how you got into the profession and the journey that you've gone on as well.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's very, very interesting.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the fact that you had you can either go down the power planning route, you can either go down the operations route, or you can go down the advice route, and you went down every single route.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I I love that though.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the fact that you are someone of experience and that can talk about it, and that you did establish where you were trying to lie, and that you did have that confidence to sit down with somebody and have that conversation.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you were lucky enough that they saw that not as a negative, but saw it as a positive.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: As most firms, as they take on more and more staff, there is a need for this operations role, and the roles within operations and other operations will only grow, I believe, within financial planning firms.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing it in the larger ones.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we're seeing it, as I said at the very beginning, even in the smaller firms, small firms are setting up with an advisor and an operations manager almost because it's needed.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's needed to be able to do that to get a firm off the ground and to live the lifestyle that's that's required.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, that kind of believing that if you go down an operations route and you have perhaps an entrepreneurial mind or you're career driven, you're not going to you're not careering towards a dead end, you're careering towards an evolving area of financial planning.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's exciting for the right person going into it.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's still a new profession at the end of the day.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there will be bigger firms out there.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: I know there's not that many now, but there will be many medium-sized firms, and you know, you can have any job in a in a company.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's gonna be every function that you had in any other industry.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is growing.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think you know do what I did initially if you're interested in it.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: Say I'm happy to half the time, or can I take on this thing, or I'm interested in that area.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think most people are always happy if someone is passionate and takes the initiative.
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um I agree, 100%.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mel, lovely, thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure having you on the podcast.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, thank you for your time and continue to listen and support.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know you love it, don't you?
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna introduce you to listen.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna introduce you to Ben, all right.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yes, thank you.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: Have a lovely day.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your time.