Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Cathi Harrison - business owner, CEO of the Verve Group talks graduate recruitment, outsourced paraplanning & compliance.

Transcript

Cathi Harrison - business owner, CEO of the Verve Group talks graduate recruitment, outsourced paraplanning & compliance. · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, and welcome to the Financial Planner Life Podcast, where we talk to professionals at varying stages in their career about what it's like working in the wonderful world of financial planning and financial advice.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is proudly sponsored by Recruit UK, a recruitment consultancy specifically focused on the financial services.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: They have a niche specialism, recruiting, within the financial planning industry.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So check out their website for the latest job opportunities, hints and tips, and blog articles.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Today's guest is Kathy Harrison.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Kathy is the CEO of the Verve Group.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's a collection of companies that provide power planning, administration, compliance, and training support to the financial planning industry.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Kathy's a fantastic guest who shares her experience of her career to date, how she set this company up, and the struggles and the difficulties that she has come up against.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you this, it's not plain sailing.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: She's a massive fan of graduate recruitment, hiring 80% of her staff via this in-house method.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she talks about the success rate that she has had around this.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: We go into detail about compliance, we go into detail about power planning, and we go into detail about technology and how that's going to only improve the way that compliance and power planning is done for financial planning companies.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is a podcast everybody should be interested in.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me know your thoughts, as per usual, in the comments.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hi Kathy, thanks so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're very welcome.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: How are you today?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good, thank you.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm all right.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm um back in the office.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Costa's reopened, so you know, happy days.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Happy days.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Big Costa fan, big coffee fan.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's needed.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where I live, I've got this um this guy's got this little hatch sort of crep creppery and um sells um sells coffees and he's kept open the whole of um the whole of lockdown.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I've literally been keeping him in business.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So uh do you know we've got one called Hatch actually in Darlington and yeah, same just there every day.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you not just because I've got coffee addiction, I'm doing my bits to local businesses.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, same.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, they're um fair play to them.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of these little hatch ones have done quite well.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's a few little ones around Bristol, so fair play to them, absolutely.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so thanks very much for joining us on the Financial Plan of Life podcast today.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, really excited to have you as a guest on the on the podcast.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're somebody that has a um significant footprint in the financial planning supporting functions area of financial advice.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I've not had anybody on the podcast yet, really, from a background of power planning or compliance or outsourcing.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So it would be really interesting to learn more about your journey.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it will be interesting for um anybody who's you know currently a power planner and perhaps thinking about going outsourcing and um and to hear your journey really and and your story.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um thank you for joining us.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, the the the first we're willing to ask any questions about COVID-19 and lockdown at this stage.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've done that to death, haven't we?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um we'll move on from that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're all ready to move on from it, yeah.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're all ready to move on from it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, the first question I always ask uh one of my guests is really is I'm really interested in finding out how you got into the industry.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So can you sort of give me a little bit of an overview of how you got into the financial planning industry?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, of course.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I guess everybody always, and I mean everybody that I speak to, I'm sure you see the same, they always say that they fell into financial services, um, which is you know a separate story, I guess, in itself, that people rarely choose finance as a career, they just seem to end up in it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think mine was similar in the sense that um I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left college.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was working at Royal Mail at the time, worked at the post office for six years actually, um, and I just thought if I've had to do enough of studying a don't record to university, I'll um carry on working here and figure out what I wanted to do.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And about six months later, really regretted it, decided that you know I need to get to university to do something.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I did um I'd done business in college and I loved business studies, but I thought I'm kind of a bit sick of that, actually really like reading.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I just did English with a um like an English major and then a minor in business, um, which was good because it meant that I was doing something that I enjoyed.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, actually just got to read for my degree, which was amazing, and carried on working at Royal Mail the whole way through.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then got to the end of my degree and just thought, right, now what what what do I do with six years Royal Mail experience in an English degree?
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I had a boyfriend at the time and his ex-girlfriend, she'd just received an inheritance over£100,000.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I remember him saying, Oh, you know, she's received this inheritance and she's gone to speak to a financial advisor to see what to do with it.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And£100,000, this is what God, how old am I now?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: 15, 16 years ago.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I mean it's a big amount of money now, it was huge back then.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was kind of mind-blowing to think that somebody in their early 20s had received£100,000.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, what I I literally just had absolutely no idea where where you would begin, what the advisor would say to her.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd never even heard of an ISA.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there was just, you know, you're a young person, you've got£100,000, you're going to see an advisor.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: What does that look like?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it just really, really piqued my interest.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: It made me realise that there was a massive area um that I knew absolutely nothing about.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, nobody around me knew anything about it either.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, back in the day, this is before, you know, you were job business, so uh the only way to find a job was to look through the local paper, and there was a little access paper for being an administrator in a financial advice firm that wasn't too far away.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I applied for that and um kind of talked my way into it because I did want somebody with advice, but I I guess I kind of sat in the interview and said I I already feel really passionate about this thing, even though I don't know what it is, and you know, I know I can kind of throw myself at it and um I just need somebody to give me a chance, which they did.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the reason I say it's interesting, you know, so people fall into finance.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I kind of did in the sense that I didn't have a lifelong burning ambition before then to get into financial services.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Years later, I did um this coaching course where they try and draw out of you um your leadership skills and how you've actually got to where you are, and something that and they go right back to kind of your childhood and the things that formed you, and actually what came out with that was that ending up in finance maybe wasn't as random as I thought, and people maybe don't fall into finance as much as they think they do.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the the result that we got to was that um growing up in a poor family and having no money meant that there was something inherent in me that I wanted to understand finance and I wanted control of my own future, and then that's actually translated into a career in finance.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, partly fell into it, partly look of an ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, and partly apparently just you know, has been building up over years and years and years.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, cool.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So just kind of I recap there then.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you were at university, you were you you were studying um whilst working at the the Royal Mail.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um no interest in in finance at that stage.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: There was no burning desire to become a financial advisor or to learn about the financial you know services or anything along those lines.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Quite typical, quite typical then, you finished your degree, you've done an English degree.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Quite typical then, you you know, you finish it and you're thinking, well, what what what next?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've had you've heard somebody talking about a large sum of money that they're looking to invest, and that's made you think, well, what how does that money get invested?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Where does it go?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Who who's gonna do this?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that then got you onto the the mindset of thinking, well, what does a financial advisor do?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of little drop into your mind then really sort of opened up the world of financial planning.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you you're you approached um so when you went out there to then as a as a graduate, you went out there to to find a job opportunity.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny that you mentioned the newspaper because I remember opening, you know, the newspaper up in the evening post, for example, and you'd go through it and you you you know, you literally be job adverts in there on a Thursday.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we found we found one in the office actually a little while back.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite it's quite weird.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's really weird.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, as recruitment consultants.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's recruitment consultants as well.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: You would order it, you know, and you know, all the newspapers encircle them and phone the companies up.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, yeah.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was how you think is even the fact that it was only on a Thursday as well, like if you didn't have a job, you had to wait a full week until you could see if there was any others, it's just yeah.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's mad, isn't it?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can't I remember when like even emailing your CV out to people was like, wow, cool, that's a really novel way of way way of doing it.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fairly sure I posted mine, I don't think I had an email.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, posting, exactly.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's mad, isn't it?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it has the the world of recruitment and how companies hire is is has has massively changed.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, we can kind of talk about that a a little bit later as well because I know that you're uh you know a keen advocate of taking on graduates, but you know, you joined this financial planning firm.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you went through the process and and and you started up, so when you what did you start as in this financial planning firm?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did you start as an administrator or did you an administrator?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that was um and it was yeah, it was so it was a small financial uh I wouldn't say planning at the time, it was a financial advice firm.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um they were in Bishop Auckland, so about 15, 20 minute drive from where I was in Darlington.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they were very much um just you know how financial advice firms were at the time.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was a number of male, um, middle-aged financial advisors and a number of um female support staff.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was a lot of investment bonds going around.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, it was kind of it just was what finance was at the time.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, so I went in as an administrator.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was the administrator to the MD, who was kind of, it was his company, he was the main business writer.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it was kind of a a bit of a mixed role of doing general financial services admin, so new business processing and appliance and drop back office systems, um, but then also a bit of sort of general PA work to him and sort of managing his diary and and everything like that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, post opening, there was a a rotor for taking your turns opening the post and you had to block out hours every so often to stay back on a night and do all the filing because everything was paper-based.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: We used to put all the files down in the cellar in a different building a few doors down the street.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, it just sounds like decades ago, doesn't it?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And not that old.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: So much, yeah, well, you so much has changed, and um, interestingly enough, so much has changed, but like there are a huge amount of other visors out there and companies that still are paper-based.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: That still doesn't very old school.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I remember somebody asked if they could fax an invoice a while back, and we were just like, What do you want about?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can't fax an invoice.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: What the hell's a fax machine?
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Stop it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, you know, okay, cool.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So your sort of faptism of fire then moving into like the financial advice world was was being an administrator, general um PA by the sayings of it as well, to uh to a director, I suppose was out there selling products, product selling, you know, and um, you know, and you were you were calling up sort of companies and getting valuations in and all that kind of stuff, chasing it up.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that starting in an administration position when moving into the world of financial advice, do you think that's a really good route into a financial advice company?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think um I just I think with anything that you do, you can skip levels and try and sort of backfill, but it's never, it's never quite as good.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: The depth isn't there.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think with absolutely any any element of your life, if you go in and you get the foundations and you build up, then where you end up will be so much more robust.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's absolutely the case in financial services.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're uh you know, dealing with insurance companies, and even now they are still around, all the old products are still around, understanding the intricacies, kind of even just understanding.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I got a good grip on how regulation was working and how it used to work just by the products that I was doing the admin on.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, dealing with section 32s or old EPPs and all of these things, I would then need to understand how the rules used to be in order to understand how those products came to exist, in order to know what that looks like in comparison to today's world.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not as simple as admin.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think even when we've tried to recruit for people in my firm and it's it's around data gathering and getting plan information, if you describe it as admin, it's massively um underselling it because actually it's much, much more complex than that.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not faxing or photocopying or kind of doing day-to-day things.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a lot of knowledge that you need to build up, and it does, it just gives you a really good sort of grounding in in finance, and then you can kind of build up from there.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nice grassroots level sort of introduction to what's going on, learning and understanding the terminology and the requirements, timescales, how to you know, how to work with these external providers as well, and and different um different places.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, how long were you doing that role for out of interest?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how long was I doing that role for?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the majority of the time that I was there, I think, um, because so basically when I'd gone in, I'd thought, okay, I want to be a financial advisor.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that was your goal.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you wanted to be a financial advisor.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've heard about being a financial advisor, that's something that I want to do.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then when I got in there, because it was a traditional selling firm and they all had targets, and they were very um serious about their targets, there was a lot of pressure on people to sell a bond um if you needed to to hit your target that month.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: It put me off.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought, actually, I don't, that's not what I want to do in the slightest.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm really enjoying what I'm doing.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'd started to do my qualifications, it was a certificate in financial planning back then.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I did that, then I started on the diploma.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was really kind of enjoying the finance part of it.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I really didn't want to get into being a pension salesman or a bond salesman.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'd come across this role of a power planner, I'd read about it and kind of pushed and pushed and pushed to say I want to be a power planner.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um sorry, my Zoom's just doing funny messages, so I'm hoping about it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it they they did the thing of kind of going, yeah, sure, we'll we'll call you a power planner.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: They gave me kind of a made-up job title, and it wasn't power planner, it was you know, just a senior administrator or something.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and said, and and you know, there's an extra thousand pounds a year on your salary, now you're a power planner, but also can you just carry on doing what you were doing?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which was the point that I'd I'd started to look around.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I was there for about four years altogether.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was a really good grounding, but it was yeah, I without being able to actually progress my career, then there was there was no point staying much longer.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Was this pre or post RDR?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was pre- I got I went through RDR there, I think.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let me think.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I started there in 2005, yeah.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 2005.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, cool.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was, yeah.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and because then I started at another firm at the end of 2008.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, probably about three and a half years there, and then it was 2009, um, that election started my own business.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so in essence, really, they wouldn't have really kind of understood what the role of a power planner was and the value of what a power planner will add, especially post-RDR.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you had sort of sounds like you had a bit of a foresight there at that stage to start to see the role of a power planner.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've been doing you were doing your research and looking around and sort of thinking, well, that's the route that I want to go down.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting that you wanted to become a financial advisor but were put off by the the higher pressure sort of sales targets that were in place back then.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think if it was now and you just started your career, do you think the changes that have happened post-RDR would have changed your mind about being a financial advisor?
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is it less salesy, do you think, or not?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um it is, it absolutely is.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, RDR had a big impact on that.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you know, any business has targets.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: You you your business, you know, my business has targets.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't think there's anything wrong with aiming for a level of sales.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you need to project, you need to create turnover, you need to have profit, that's only where you can get staff and you can grow and you can do your service.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think back then it was just the extreme, it was kind of the sales came above anything else.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and obviously, because it was pre-RDR, because commission was built into the product, you know, they didn't see that there was anything wrong with quickly churning a bond and because it was costing the client nothing.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think in the current world it is very different, and I think people do stuff targets, but that's fine, it's just to encourage activity to get people out.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um do I think it would change whether I want to be an advisor?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, in the sense that I wouldn't have been put off by the lack of sales, but I'm now put off being an advisor, being an advisor by the regulation.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um so actually, I I still wouldn't want to get into that advisor world.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'd still prefer being on the support side, but for different reasons.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, you know, a question I definitely want to ask you then is so why did you choose to um go down the support route as opposed to the financial planning route?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you you know choose to become a power planner instead of a financial advisor?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'd seen the power planner role.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember how how I came across it back in whenever it was 2005.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I had come across it, I was just really enjoying my studies.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I, you know, I worked long hours at that firm.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: You you just kind of worked seven till seven, that was the default, and then you'd go home and study.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um I was new in my career, and you know, you're just thirsty for knowledge and you're just you're learning and you're soaking it up and you're really enjoying it.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I'd got to the point where I could do my day job with my eyes closed, I needed more hours in the day because we were so busy, but actually it didn't challenge me.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas I could see that the power planner role would that I could take all this knowledge that I was learning and building up every day and actually start to apply it.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: I could see how it would add value to the advisor.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I could just see how we could do a much better job for the clients.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when I moved to the next firm that I went to, they did understand the role of a power planner, they were actually um way ahead of RDR, they were different in how they charged clients, they did um, you know, financial plans, they did cash flow, and they had a poiner already, they were looking for another one.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it gave me the that experience, it made them go actually, you know, this is what I thought it could be, this is something where personally I'm feeling quite fulfilled because I'm getting to do all of this technical stuff and all this information and learning and actually apply it to my career.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then yeah, from that point I think I'd already been put off advising and just found that I I could really get my feet stuck into power planning, and then was just quite happy to kind of keep powerplanning, just not have that firm.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, fair enough.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, interesting actually, because I think that's a classic scenario, really, you see even now is that somebody's working for a company, their job title is power planner, but actually they're not power planners.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're not doing a true power planning role.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if anything, they are an administrator being given a power planning title and perhaps a pay rise.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I always sort of challenge people in the the role with the job title of power planner to explain to me what actually it is they do to consider themselves a power planner.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And more often than not, that challenge comes back with you know an answer that it's like you're not a power planner.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what you're doing right now isn't is is is not true power planning.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you obviously felt that when you were in that role.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You looked at this new company, they'd already had a power planner in place and established the role of a power planner.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Were they a fee-based firm then at that stage?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it didn't really suit the kind of commission-based type type outfit, did it, power planning?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't, it wasn't really like um, it wasn't a service really that there was no, it was just a like I say a glorified administration.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So um all right, so you were working for that company, you left the first firm, got into the you know, got into the industry via an administration route, very typical, yeah.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um still very quite difficult for some people to actually get into the administration world, but you know, you talk your way into it by the sounds of it very convincing.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um then you moved, then you thought to yourself, great, don't want to be a financial advisor, not for me.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be a power planner, I want to be support, I'm doing my qualifications, I'm learning a lot about the industry, and I'm you know, and I'm I'm I'm really enjoying that side, the learning side of it.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then the research and everything that goes with power planning obviously tick ticks and boxes for you.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: You found yourself a new job, you know, you stepped into the role of a power planner, a true power planning role.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, how long were you there in that role for then?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Eight months.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Eight months, so a short time then.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Why was that?
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a mix of things.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: So they that film was down in Harrigast, um, which meant quite a commute for me from Darlington, there and back every day, which I wasn't enjoying and couldn't really afford.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, petrol was just crazy expensive at the time.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and also I it was a small firm and I didn't really get on with the advisors in the end.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was just quite a big personality clash between me and them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, it was kind of the driver to go, okay.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I do enjoy power planning.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I did they were actually quite key, I guess, to shaping a lot of what I've done in Parasols in the end, because what had happened with that firm was I'd interviewed with them initially.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um obviously I'd applied, I'd interviewed, we'd done like a Myers Briggs or some sort of personality test.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd then done another interview, I'd then gone down to the office and met some of the team.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a really, really, really thorough um interview process.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was really kind of hard to get the job.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And when I left and I handed my notice in at the first place, the the boss there, the MD, who wasn't very happy with Meneven.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: People generally don't seem to be very happy when you decide to leave.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: He he was kind of full of caution and said, oh you know, be careful, it mightn't be the firm that you think it is.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, have you looked on companies' house to see if they're even secure and solvent and and I just was like, yeah, you know, you just you're just being bitter.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's great, it's great.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Doing his best in general.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I went and literally within a week I just thought, oh yeah, this isn't the firm that I thought it was.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they've done a very good job of selling themselves to me during the recruitment process.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been so busy trying to sell myself to them and I'm so kind of inexperienced in this recruitment hiring game that I don't know what else to do.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: But actually it's not it's not the company that I thought it was.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just in the sense that it wasn't right for me.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's kind of still going and they've got employees and they're all happy and so on and so forth.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: But absolutely it didn't it it wasn't right for me.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's shaped a lot of what I do now when I hire people in my company I never want them to leave a firm to come and join my firm and to then go, oh hang on a minute this isn't the business that I thought it was.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I make quite a big point of saying that you're interviewing us just as much and it's not lip service thing.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've I've been there I've done it I've made that leap and then thought oh god what have I done um and I also get them to come in and do a trial even for kind of a few hours or a day and say I can tell you you know until I'm blue in the face that my company's amazing but of course I'm going to think that it's mine.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Come in, sit in the office feel the environment speak to the people see what it's like because I'd rather you decided now at this stage if it's not right for you than you make the leap, you quit a current role you come and join us and then kind of regret it.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah it didn't work for me um and that's fine because it gave me the push ultimately to start my own business and also then shaped the way that I have kind of recruited and and brought people on myself.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh great so okay great you you know you are a business owner you've set up the Verve group which is a group of a group of companies and we're going to sort of break that down and have a look at each of those areas of your business why you set it up and um you know what what those what those individual businesses actually do.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just prior to that really you know it's not not not everybody sets up their own business.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not everyone leaves university becomes an administrator in a financial planning firm you know does their qualifications has a stint in power plan and then decides do you know what I'm going to set up a set up a business.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to build a you know an empire.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why did you do that?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know why why did you choose to leave employment and set up your own business?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Why did I um do you know what it's one of those things I don't know if you've felt it I I think if I'd overthought it at the time I mightn't have um you know I there was a huge amount of naivety on my part.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was younger I didn't have a child like I have now so you can kind of make different decisions.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'd always failed so I did business in GCSEs and then in college and then a little part of my degree and I'd and I'd always found the business studies came very easy to me I found that a very simple thing simple thing to grasp.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: I I enjoyed it and I found it easy.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: They were where I got my highest marks um you know my degree my the majority of my degree mark was because I did so well in business and I'd actually fight quite hard on the English side um probably because of the northernness.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: But um what the subtitles are there and I think I don't know if it was because of that that I'd always had this very vague general notion of I want to run my own business someday and I always thought at some point down the line I'll figure out what that business will be in and then I'll do it.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of I know I want to run a business and just don't know what it'll be and it was just a you know at some point eventually in the future I will um in the meantime I'll go and do this finance thing and I think I'd got to the point where my the job that I was in I was still living power planning I wasn't enjoying working there I was absolutely fed up with the travel um and I don't know I guess the idea just kind of came to my head and then once it does it's quite hard to get rid of it of well I I like doing this I want to run my own business could my business be doing this is that kind of the the opportunity for them to come together um and obviously it's a it's a big leap and there's kind of all the risks and everything that go with it but I think I think knowing that I wanted to run my own business and then having built up a skill set in financial services I could kind of combine the two and yeah give it a go.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: Give it a business.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely and I think um it's interesting you said in the back of your mind you've always kind of had a burning desire to run your own company and that when you've worked that out that you'll get stuck into it and actually do it.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was a bit like that.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was similar in the back of my mind I don't know I didn't I didn't I always thought I was going to run my own business.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't quite know when or where or how but I knew that if an opportunity came up to do it then I would that that was that was what I wanted to do.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think some people just have that burning desire inside them to want to to own something.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think there is a a natural creative inside of you or an entrepreneur as they would say that that um needs to be scratched and when the opportunity comes up you sort of jump jump on it.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I think um I right to sort of assume that when you did set up um your first business which we're going to now um did you um did you find there was a you know a huge amount of of competition or anybody out there that was offering the same services to you because your first business that you set up is Parasols.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and Parasols is an outsourced power planning solution for financial advisors.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: How long ago was that you set it up 2009 June 2009 so just 11 years ago.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So 11 years ago um I mean power planning roles weren't really out there you know they're not 11 years ago I wasn't I wasn't recruiting for power planning positions.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah so you must have seen some kind of gap in the market for power planning support.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And just just give us a sort of an idea about how that came about you know why did you decide then that outsourced power planning was was was the right route for you and how did you test the market to know that it yeah I mean I wasn't organised enough to test the market I just did what I do with everything and just dive in feet first and then figure out how to swim.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: But there was a couple of outsourced power planning companies that were already out there.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Richard Allen who has um it's called the power planners now it was um powerplan plus at the time I think um his firm was already in existence quite new um and I think there was another one as well so I'd kind of seen oh you know there's people that are out there and they are working as a power planner and essentially freelance was the way I looked at it.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't I wasn't even thinking about being a company or taking on staff or any of that um I just saw that people had found a way to to be a paraplanner but without being full time employed by somebody um and actually and I've mentioned this many times over the years Richard bearing in mind that technically I was competition couldn't have been more helpful more supportive you know told me his experience what he'd done what had worked well what hadn't worked well gave me advice on pricing um you know how to start kind of start things to start thinking about and processes and um bit because he very much recognised even before I did that you know it it wasn't that I was competition it's that I was another person that was going to actually help push forward the point of a power planner and why you might want to use one and that in itself would then just kind of create more advisors that wanted power planners which would then open up the market to all of us.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: So stimulate the market a little bit.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely yeah so yeah he was a massive help with that um and yeah my my thinking at the time was why don't I so we just obviously 2009 just come through the recession and what I'd initially started doing was thinking okay I I want to power plan um I don't want to commute so I was ringing around advice firms that were closer to my home so back up in Darlington, County Durham um and just saying I'm a power planner I've got my diploma I'm working on my charters do you have any roles and what they were saying over and over is um I'd like some power planning support.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely I can't hire right now you know we're kind of in the middle of a recession this isn't the time for me to be taking on a full-time employee and so I think it was a kind of a bit of a mix of that of seeing that other people can do it and then you know kind of going back to those advisors and saying okay well what if I could come and just work for you as you need it and just on an hourly rate would would that be something that you'd consider and they were like yeah yeah maybe you know that that would be more kind of appealing than trying to take on an employee right now.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess that was the point where I thought okay well the only way to do this is to actually quit my job and to have a go to start speaking to these firms and just saying you know I'm here use me for an hour here and there and just whatever I could kind of get um which was yeah which is how I started so nothing as organized I was testing the map anything like that now.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah so you just so you you yourself you made the decision right you know I'm I'm a pan I'm I'm working as a power planner at the moment I'm experienced in doing this um I've got a burning desire inside me to set up a business something dropped and said okay well I could do my own business you know doing this the recession I remember you know absolutely set up my recruitment business during the recession the recession hit you come out the back of that people probably weren't in a position to be looking to hire people but still needed some sort of power planning support and you set the business up and started doing your own I guess marketing if you like you're going out to companies and speaking to them were you email marketing them were you phoning them up and selling you were cold calling people oh my god and you're not into that are you at all no I mean I'm a power planner by nature I am not into picking up the phone and speaking to people so I um yeah I basically I just handed him a notice um and I already had a mortgage at the time so I the car that I had I sold that car um and I got four thousand pounds for it so I spent a thousand pounds on a car a replacement car which was a battered old escort um to kind of be able to get around which left me£3000 which back in the day you could live on a thousand pounds a month so my mortgage was£500 a month left me another£500 a month for all my bills and food um so my logic was great I've got£3,000 that gives me a three month buffer um plus my car and you know I've got I've got three months to kind of make this work and um yeah initially there was kind of um there was little sort of grants and funding that was available at the time so I got something like£350 to build a website which was you can imagine the quality of website that you get£350 it was that um this logo that was built that was horrid um and you know pulling an idea of services together and putting them in in a word document and then PDF in it and just trolling the FCA register started emailing around um and then at some point thought you know I'm gonna have to bite the bullet I'm gonna have to pick up the phone and speak to people um tasked myself with making 10 phone calls a day hated every second of it that for me by a long shot was the worst bit I absolutely despised it.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you definitely couldn't be a financial advisor I mean business development so there we go if someone's listening to this and they don't like the idea of picking up the telephone and making telephone calls um power plan is definitely you know it functions power planning route is definitely the um the angle for you all right so um okay so you know it wasn't some kind of like I've got 15 20 grand in the bank you know I've got some some backup you know I can't set a business up unless I've got a load of money you just literally just thought you know I've got a few quid I've sold a few things you know downsized cars and all sorts of things just to make this to make this work you stepped outside of your comfort comfort zone trying to trying to win clients how how long did it take you when you set up your outsourced power planning how long did it take you to win your first client um my first bit of work that I did was in the third month so I actually didn't get to invoice it until the fourth month so I I completely ran out of money.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: I you know I'd got to the point of I I couldn't eat um literally couldn't feed myself I tried to do some waitressing on the side to be able to do that like to be able to eat and I was a terrible waitress and very clumsy so that didn't work um I had to get a repayment mortgage on the holiday I'd got to the point where I couldn't afford that anymore um you know it got to the point of my mum saying just go and get a job you know that there's jobs out there just go and get a job this is this is awful to kind of watch um and then a lady called Flora who um was actually still a client until very recently when she retired um I one of the calls that I'd made wasn't to her but it was to another advisor who'd then spoken to her and said oh this girl I know who's um doing some freelance power planning work.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you want to speak to her so then Flora messaged me and I'd spoken to her um and I did sort of three hours work for£25 an hour.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: So my first month I invoiced£75 quid um but you know it was invoice and I didn't practice it and I didn't think I was modern enough then to email.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: But then Flora was happy so she used me again the following month and she referred me to somebody else and you know probably invoiced a couple of hundred quid the next month and um it just kind of started to build back up from there.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it was hard and that's what I mean about almost got you know going into it very naive yeah um without there was no buffer there was no plan there was just uh this is something that I want to do and I feel is the right thing for me and um I guess just stubbornness once I'd kind of started it was you know I'm in it now we might as well just keep going.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Keep going, yeah and you're and you know and and that's really you know it's really good to hear the honesty there because setting up a business is hard.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know it it is going to be difficult and yeah I think you have to expect within the first three, six nine months that it's going to be really tough and you might not have uh some income coming in and especially if you have to step outside of your comfort zone to be able to generate those clients absolutely as well what's really good to hear and and see because it's a you know referrals is a massive part of generating new clients a massive part of building your business I I think you know if you do a really good job for somebody and sometimes you have to give that job away for free.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know you have to kind of do something for somebody for free and um what you put out we tend to get back.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely you know in in in in our game in recruitment during sort of sort of difficult times it's not unusual for us to be able to do really good deals and things with people to make life easier but they come back to you.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody setting up so you know a lesson okay so what was the lesson you learned then from you know your first if someone was coming to you now and saying Kathy can you give me some advice about setting up my outsourced power planning company based on your experience in your first year what would your advice be?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: I just I think if it's whether it's power planning or anything else if it's something that you're genuinely passionate about and like you say you're willing to go outside your comfort zone for it's you know it's not the glamour of running your own business.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's you've got to it's got to be an itch that you really really really want to scratch because there's going to be pain to go through and you know even once I've got clients it wasn't plain sailing then it was well now I need to give up my life because I foolishly thought I'll go freelance then I'll be really flexible I'll have loads of time off I can work what hours I want I could take holidays and didn't have a life at all for two years.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was literally chained to my desk um but at no point would it have crossed my mind to not do it because it just felt the right thing for me.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I had an enthusiasm for the work the actual paraplanning I love para planning you know I I've had to stop power planning now because the businesses have grown but it was prized out of my hands because it is just something that I thoroughly enjoy doing.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if you want to go and start your own business and at the outset it's going to be you doing the doing then it needs to be something that you will happily get up and do at five o'clock in the morning and do until midnight if you need to because the chances are you will need to to kind of get it up and running.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if that's the case then absolutely go for it.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely no reason not to you're a massive advocate of marketing aren't you?
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know you you you do well um with your branding and your marketing do you think um somebody should invest in that very early on in their new business or not?
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm smiling because um I wasn't um so I I was lucky in a lot of ways with Parasols because when I started it power planning wasn't really well known um then there was RDR.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of come out the recession you come through RDR and at that point I kind of rode a bit of a wave where advisors were going right all of a sudden I've got all of this extra responsibility that I need to do I can't go and get business as easily as I could I need to spend more time in it.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: I do need some support they started to understand the benefit of power planning and at the same time you know technology started to advance so where advisors previously when I very first started they were still saying come and sit in my office you know that they didn't want to work remotely they wanted to have me there physically that started to change and the outsourcing model started to work better.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: So for years I was very lucky I did very little marketing once that kind of once it kicked off it it went I didn't have to do anything I did eventually update my website and and that was pretty much it my challenge for a long time was actually getting staff you know I had a huge amount of demand and I couldn't create the supply to meet it.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: A few years ago three and a bit years ago three years ago in January and I actually hired Natalie so she came in to do some marketing because at that point um she was working as a freelance consultant I knew Natalie from uni and um I said oh come in you know I've never really got to grips with my marketing so come in and have a look at it.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_01: So she came in and she sat down and said right okay so you know talk me through your challenges what's your problems and I said oh you know we've got too many clients and she was like oh no yeah you don't need marketing why am I here?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is madness.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: So then what we did was got into okay well what's the problems how can you help and then realised that it was the recruiting and that in the in the previous couple of years I'd taken on a couple of graduates and they'd worked out really well and they'd um trained up so actually Nat's first thing was to come in and help me formalize and create the grad scheme.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Once we did that we started to build up the supply then she could go right now all focus on marketing and has um absolutely transformed our marketing across the whole group um so again you know I guess it's business lessons isn't it you learn it with hindsight and if you're not riding if you're not lucky enough to road the wave that I did with power planning growing then yes having some marketing at the outset would make a difference.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: The only thing I would caution against is it's it's easy especially now you can get so many marketing tools you can use Canva for design and use a website builder and build your own and make it look amazing and but actually people they'll be drawn in by the marketing but you need to have the depth behind it to actually deliver what you're promising and so I wouldn't go all out on marketing with the risk of people coming through the door and then it falling down because actually you haven't been there to build up the resource internally to actually deliver what you're promising.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's that whole kind of overpromise underpromise over deliver.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think with marketing it's easy to kind of tip it the wrong way especially if you're really good at it.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yes the marketing can definitely help but absolutely you know kind of get it there get the thing that you're going to be marketing build first before you really focus on that.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: Fabulous okay so you went from working in your back bedroom by the sounds of things at home you know eating beans on toast uh for a few months um then it worked then you started winning clients um and then at that point you thought right okay I need I I I can make a business out of this I'm getting too many clients coming through my door I can now turn this into a business where I start to hire people um and grow.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: So talk me through that then so you decided to start because you you're a big advocate aren't you of hiring graduates as opposed to hiring experienced power planners is that correct?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I am I am now and I did again what everybody probably does I I thought you needed experience.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: I guess especially when you're a small business you hire at the point that you're feeling the pain you're higher at the point that you just you know that you've run out of hours in the day and you can't physically do any more yourself and because of that you end up looking for somebody who can hit the ground running because you're there, you've already got the pain you haven't got the time to train them all.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: My first hire actually was Jo Campbell so she's um again still with us now so she I she and I worked together at the original firm the um older school advice firm in Bishop Auckland and she was still there um and again was feeling very frustrated was doing qualifications wanted to be a power planner was being held back even though this was a few years later and took a massive massive risk to come and work with me initially I was still in my living room and I didn't even have a spare bedroom I worked in my living room so I'd kind of said you know can you can you come and work in my living room with me and eventually I I took on a kind of a little two-person office and that was the point that she came and again when she handed in a notice at that advice firm and said she was coming to work with me and there was a lot of this won't work out you know you've thrown away a career here you you know you you've gone to work with a friend and that's that's not a viable business model and um you know all the stuff that just helps drive you even more to be honest.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: So she came so what was lucky with Jo was that she's smart and switched on and could learn.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: She already had the basics but she wasn't already experienced because she couldn't get the experience to where she was um but I knew that I could work well with her because we already knew each other really well um and you know we were good friends.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: So she came in and kind of trained up with me and just essentially mirrored every single thing that I did.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you know we used to share a phone in the middle of the desk and we just kind of pass it backwards and forwards when clients ran just like yes I'm just putting you through and then um but that was brilliant.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: High years after that I think took Long time to get right because exactly what I was saying, we'd get to the point of feeling the pain, we would need somebody, we would take on somebody that seemed experienced, that had power planner on their CV, and exactly as you said, um, probably weren't a power planner, and you know, through no fault of their own, they've gone through I've gone through where their advice firm has gone, yeah, yeah, you know, I'll give you a pat on the head and give you a little pay-vise, and we'll call you a power.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, and you don't know what you don't know, especially if you're in just an advice firm, if you're not part of the wider financial community, you would think you're a power planner because you are in the context of where you are.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a few times I did that where I brought people in thinking, Great, you know, here you go, you're a power planner, there's a computer, there's a pile of work, get on, and they couldn't do it.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, just because they their experience of power planning was so different.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we did eventually go down the grad route, and that works now, but you know, it's again a lot of difficult lessons learned from the wear.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the difference, yeah, because yeah, absolutely.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: So hiring a graduate against hiring somebody with experience has its, you know, has its has its challenges.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you find like an experienced power planner that's perhaps worked with one company or perhaps a couple of companies and work quite closely with with say a financial planner?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do they struggle in that outsourced model where you might have to manage multiple relationships with different personalities and different wants and needs?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or is it all pretty simple and straightforward?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's not pretty simple and straightforward.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do think there's a struggle.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just thinking of um then actually one of my next employees um had had kind of a couple that didn't work.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then the next was the power planner that had been at the second firm, the one in Harrigo.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so he left and joined us.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he was so intelligent, such a good power planner, so, so, so smart.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but exactly that had been in one firm, had worked with these two advisors, knew the clients, knew the model, you know, they used the eccentric platform, they used Presswood um for the cash flow, could just kind of do it in his sleep.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he had Asperger's as well.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: So actually, all of a sudden you're going, he has a wide range of clients, everybody's doing things differently.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you're a phenomenal power planner, but you need to learn how to adapt yourself.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: You've got Asperger's as an extra level of challenge there for you.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you need to be able to build relationships with those advisors, you need to accept that some, you know, some of them are going to be really, really into the detail, and they were all about where, you know, three decimal points, others are not that bothered, they're more about kind of the colloquial nature of a suitability report and how that comes across to clients.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that was a steep learning curve for him.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: But like I say, for somebody who had challenges adapting anyway because of his aspergers and had come from that environment, you know, he he's still managed, and I think um more than managed, I think it's the thing that can stop you from getting bored if you are very good at your job, if you've done all the qualifications there is to do, sitting in one firm and just kind of doing it day in, day out, day in, day out, you know, at some point you'll lose that challenge.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: But actually working on an outsourced basis um and getting to deal with so many different providers, platforms, clients, advisors, it's the thing that means you've still got that core of power planning that you love, but the flexibility to actually just still give you a kick up the bum every day.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think from the outside looking in and and and obviously having a business myself that recruits for power planning roles, different different types of power planning roles.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um the role of a an outsourced power planner is is very different to an in-house power planner, especially around client facing.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you guys aren't sat in the office with the financial advisor that you're supporting.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can't perhaps go along to a um a client meeting.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not all financial planners like to bring their you know their power planners along to the meetings, but what you're starting to see with some of the smaller, more boutique firms is that they're taking this kind of family office type approach and bringing in the multiple, you know, the multiple people within the business that can say, well, here's your power planner and this is what he does, and you know, or she's going to talk about what they do and all that kind of stuff.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you're sort of taking that that's not happening.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're outsourcing, if someone's outsourcing their power planning to you, do you think that the firm is missing out on something there or or or or not?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Is that an objection that you come up against at all when you're trying to win a new client to use your services?
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's never been an objection.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um how so it's never been an objection.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um typically advisors will use us because um as a power planner, sitting in on a client meeting is brilliant.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the work that you do as a power planner, there'll be an extra level to it because you've heard the client's own words, you understand exactly what it is that they need, and you'll approach that case and that fine in such a different way.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: As a business, it's not necessarily the most efficient way.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, paramanners aren't cheap, and actually advisors aren't cheap, and then you put two of them in a room together, um it's not always the most efficient.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the majority of the time when the advisors are outsourcing their power planning, they're looking at efficiencies, they're looking at kind of getting through all this work and they're quite happy for the relationship to be with the advisor.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, having said that, you know, COVID's happened, and as much as we don't want to kind of go and focus on it too much, one of the things that came off the back of it was that we'd said, well, okay, all of a sudden, advisors are now meeting with their clients via Zoom.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're not sitting in their office with them, they're not going to houses, they probably won't for quite some time.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if they're sitting in on Zoom, why don't we sit in on Zoom?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as their paraplanner, there's absolutely nothing stopping us.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I can apply branding, which has the advice firm behind me.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: So to the client, I look just as much an employee of that advice firm.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, you're then getting that full benefit.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: So for the advisor, instead of doing a Zoom call by their clients, coming back, doing the meter notes, sending the case to Parasols, uploading all the information, telling us what they've discussed, and then doing it all back, we can actually just sit in on the Zoom, we're there as a you know representative of the firm.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're taking the meter notes, we're asking the questions as we go along.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you know we know that we're going to need it from the clients, you finish the Zoom, you have a quick debrief with the advisor, and that advisor just goes off and forgets about it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, we're there, we've got the knowledge, we know what's happening, and you just pick it up.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I guess you know, just like RDR changed the way everything's everything works then.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think COVID is and um the way that we're working with advice firms is already changing.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, that kind of relationship I think will continue to evolve.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think the recording of client meetings is it's got to be a benefit, hasn't it, to the industry.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there are some FCA requirements now where where where meetings are recorded.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of advisors used to be like, I don't want to do that, I don't want to record my meeting, it's gonna make people feel really uncomfortable.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, what you said there, and I think what COVID's definitely brought in is it's more people are using Zoom, more people are using video chat.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact of what you've just said there, that you can also jump on their on their meeting, because you know it doesn't matter where you're based, you can just jump on their meeting.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you are an extension of their business.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: If need be, you can sit on their website, you can sit on their team page as well.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you'll just oh I'm on so many advisor website.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: I can't yeah, I I absolutely just got more companies than just letting on.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so you can you you can be that extension, can't you, of their team.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to have somebody in in the office.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it is a highly competitive role power planning.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's very difficult for a firm of any size to really attract a power planner.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: They are constantly getting their heads turned because the salary keeps going up.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, it's not unusual in London at the moment to get 55, 60k for a chartered fight, you know, chartered power planner, you know, and it and and that is turning people's heads.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the security of keeping that person in the job is is is you know, it's it is a risk to a risk to a company, you know.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I can see the benefit of outsorting it to a power planning firm.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: I extort a lot of the tools, a lot of the process in my business.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love about it is you pay by the hour, you know, you pay for what you use, you don't have to worry about um holiday pay, sickness, um, and anything else that really comes with hiring somebody, you know, um the responsibilities of managing that person, for example.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um if you're somebody that wants to focus on what you're doing, your you know, the work that you're doing, and you don't want to have to turn your head and think, oh God, I've got no business for that person to do, they're sitting there twiddling their thumbs, it's costing me money, and you start to get resentful.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think the outsourced model is perfect.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's about just really over time building trust with that person.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I outsourced some stuff to India and it takes me time.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: It took me time to really kind of build the relationship, but now the relationship's in place, it works beautifully.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it works beautifully.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's another another thing that COVID will do.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it is that when you're outsourcing, you need to build that relationship.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I used to always say to advisors, don't you can't just outsource a problem, you can't just think, oh, this doesn't work, so I'll make it somebody else's problem.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's still your business.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_01: You own that process, you own that issue.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can use external resource, you can collaborate, they can work together.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you can't just go, well, here's a problem, you deal with it as an outsourcer, that won't work.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, if you work together and you do build that relationship, then absolutely it can work as well as having somebody in-house without, as you say, all the stuff around it.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think another thing that's come off COVID is again, people were just used it, including me.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've got beautiful offices here.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we're different in Parasols and that most other larger outsourced power planning companies, their team are scattered all around the country because they've always said you can do, you know, why not?
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've always said, no, actually, I want you all together.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: I like the way that people learn off each other, I like the way that do collaborate and we can do training.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and from the advisor's point of view, it's kind of they've made that mental leap of outsourcing to us, but then they know we're here, we're kind of we're not scattered around.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that always worked for us.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's just something around I like coming in the office and there's people here.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think most business owners, including advisors, were the same.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, what's happened in the last few months is they've gone, all right, okay, well, my team are working from home, and it's worked just as well, they're fine, they do work from home.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I need to bring them in the office?
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think again, that's just going to be another link that's severed with the difference between hiring and outsourcing.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: And when it's something as someone as difficult to find as a paraplanner, someone as expensive as a paraplanner, and if the main reason you were going through the pain of hiring one was because you wanted them sat in your office and you're now thinking, actually, I don't need them in my office, then you know, another benefit for parasols.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I didn't want COVID, obviously, but yeah, I think there's certain businesses and outsourcing's one of them that not even just paraplanning, outsourcing generally, where people are going, absolutely this can work.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think what COVID's definitely done is it's it's it's it's made us sort of stand on our own two feet a little bit and take a look at the look at what we do as a business as a business owner and to look at areas where are we spending too much money and why?
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is it you know, are we are we employing that person because we are worried that if we don't have them, our business won't, you know, achieve the levels that we hope for it to achieve.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a control thing?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes when you cut the apron strings and you let go and you trust somebody else to help you with your business from an outsourced perspective, and I think as long as, and echoing what you said, as long as you communicate exactly what your business is about, what what you how you like to work, you know, what you expect from the language used, I suspect, in say a report, you get all that ironed out in the beginning, then it just it's amazing how how quickly an outsourced person picks up your personality and how how you come across.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and I think COVID's allowing people to kind of take a look at that a little bit and um perhaps let go of some of the things that um they don't need to have anymore and outsource it.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it is, and you need to build that relationship, even when they're an employee, it's still the same.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, an employee isn't going to come in and immediately know everything that you do or how you were put, or you would still invest that time in your employee, so it works exactly the same.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: My my concern um at the moment is I think everybody was like, oh brilliant, you know, COVID 19, yes, we can all work from home and you know, uh, you know, finally that work-life balance things happen.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I think COVID-19 is a bit of a tricky one because some people have been working from home in, you know, and and under lockdown.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody have been working from home with their children.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they're trying to teach their children, you know, and that is it's been proper stressful, you know.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um I don't think it's a true representation of what really flexible working actually is anyway.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm a big advocate of flexible working and I want to bring it in and I think it's a trusting, and I think what you know, again, a benefit of what COVID-19 you know, a benefit, but something good that's come off the back of it, is that it's allowed us to trust our employees a bit more.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if somebody wants to do well and have that flexibility, they they they will do well and have have that flexibility.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think the the and I like what you're doing, really, because it's it's it it sort of echoes what I do as well, which where you know we could have recruitment consultants all spread out across the UK, yeah, but we don't.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: We choose to have them all in the office.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for that, it's to build a culture as well.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a bit, I think, that if you have too many people working from home, you don't have that office.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you going to create culture in a business that's spread out?
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's you know, and everyone's working from home.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's very difficult.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's quite refreshing if you are an outdoors business to, and this is what you guys obviously pride yourself on, is having everybody in that office space.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: They can come and go, yes, they can work from home, have that flexibility, but you're building a culture and you're building a business and they feel part of something.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an I do think that's important.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't think we're going to lose that.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden everyone's gonna go, don't need office space anymore.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think people are gonna cut down on their office space.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden the office that you thought could house 40 people could house 80 people because you've got some, you know, you've got people working from home, et cetera.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's certainly some benefits from there.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now you obviously had a really great success from Parasols then.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you outsourced, you know, you you've built an outsourced power planning company from working from your, you know, your front room, hiring your staff in your front room, you've then got yourself an office.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've moved into some you know really beautiful offices.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you've hired how many people work in under Parasol now?
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: How many guys have you got working?
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: 30.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_00: 30 people.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: So how long did it take you to reach 30, 30, um, 30 staff under Parasols?
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because we um because it started to blur because we ended up with Appricity.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: So then some people moved from Parasols to Appricity.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that was the compliance company that we launched three years ago.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then last year launched the Art of Finance, which is the training academy.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_01: So again, some people moved across, so across the group there's just over 40 people now.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, they've kind of um I guess it's one of the exciting things actually for people is that you they've some have come in and they might have come in as a power, or they might have come in as a grad, and they've trained up, they've done their admin, they've done power planning, they've got the qualifications, and being part of the Verv group, they've then been able to try different things.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they've you know tried um compliance.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: Holly's just moved across to art of finance.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: She's actually now taken all that power planning knowledge and building um training courses for other power planners as part of the art of finance.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, it's quite transitional.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: People have kind of moved across to different businesses.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you so just so the listeners to understand, so you you own the Verve group, yeah.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: So underneath the Verb group, you've got apprenticity, and we're going to go on to that now, which is compliance, outsourced compliance.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've got Power Source, which we've just talked about, which is your outsource power planning company.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: You've got 30 people working in under that at the moment.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um that sounds like um, you know, a fantastic business.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you've also set up the art of finance, which is a training and development um company, um, sort of out so financial planning firms or financial services firms can use your services to train their to train their staff.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Cool, excellent.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Parasol setup, that's all up and running, fantastic.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you had the idea of setting up appricity, which is the outsourced compliance.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, why is there a need for outsourced compliance?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with appricity, what happened was I um had my little boy, I was on maternity leave, um, because I have issues and I'm easily bored, I was bored on maternity leave and was thinking about what challenges I had in Parasols.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, the main challenge that we had was the advisor would use us as their power planners, we would do some work, we'd send it back, the advisor would be happy, the client would be happy.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: At some point, they would get a final check done by either internal compliance or they were already using outsourced compliance.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that compliance would generally be a very negative experience, it'd be very nitpicky on the file and trying to find things wrong.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it would mean that the compliance then fed back to the advisor, who fed back to us, we'd make the changes, it'd go back to the advisor, it'd go back to the compliance.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: And while I was sat there with um a newborn who sleeps a lot, so you know, that was the mistake I made.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Oh, this child thing's easier, they just sleep all the time, I'll I'll come up with a new business.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I was starting thinking what my pain points were in parasols.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was this whole, you know, the the initial process, the dealing with the advisor, the initial parapartin was absolutely fine with nails, it was working brilliantly.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was the mess that came once compliance got involved in this sort of triangle that happened, it wasn't efficient for the advisor.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: They were then dealing with two separate parties.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'd start to think, you know, can can compliance not be done a bit better?
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it feels like a very negative thing, it feels like a necessary evil to a lot of firms, but actually, you know, if it's necessary, then why is it evil?
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: Why is why are we not all working on the same page?
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: Compliance advisor, power planner, to just make sure the client gets the best possible experience and the best advice for them.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I also at that time thought it's a very manual process.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everything is done with a compliance professional going and sitting in an advisor's office, blocking out a day, going through their files, and you know, how were we at this point?
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: It was 2016, how were we not using technology to do some of this?
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's where Pristy came from.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: It came from the desire to just improve the way that all the different parties worked together.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um compliance being a big block for a lot of people, and and to use technology.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I came back from maternity leave when my little one was three months old and just kind of got straight in the office.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, got Rory Purceville in who just left the FCA.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, got some external compliance consultants to say, okay, as power planners, this is what we'd look for in compliance.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: As the FCA, what do they want to see?
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: As existing compliance consultants, you know, what's the reality?
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: You, you know, the day-to-day challenges, what does that look like?
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then use that to just kind of with a blank piece of paper, so completely different to my experience of starting parasols where I just all fit in with applicity who actually thought it through, did some research, did some planning, and and then came up with it.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fantastic.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: So again, there so there was a need for outsource compliance because you know what what makes applicity then say different from um SimplyBiz?
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: What makes them different say from SimplyBiz, for example?
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess the main thing I get when you're looking at any any provider in financial services, like SimpliBiz, like some of the back office systems, they were all born pre-RDR.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: So what they've done is evolved over the years, but there's a huge amount of legacy culture, systems, processes, the way things work from the olden days, from how things used to be.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and with April City that wasn't the case.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: We very much went, okay, what's this is what finance looks like right now.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: What do we think finance is going to look like?
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let's not build it even for certainly not for the past, not even for what we have.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we're seeing older advisors retiring, we're seeing a new generation of advisors coming through, we're seeing younger people coming in.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: Are they going to think it's normal that they have to block out an entire Friday one, you know, once a month, for somebody to come and sit and check that they've done their CPD or look at their files?
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: Of course not.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're just going to think this is insane.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're going to want to just be able to deal with it on an app.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the way that we work and the way that it's happening is just it was just very backwards looking.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I guess the difference with the Pricity was we immediately went, okay, well, here's the tech.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_01: Not immediately, I wildly underestimated how long it takes to build technology.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this was in the November, so my little boy was born in August.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: In November, I was back, I was like, great, here's the idea, let's launch it in January.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um actually took a full year to build the system, so I was absolutely clueless on it.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then we said, okay, the you know, the current advisors are still used to a very human hand-holding approach with the compliance.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: So what you've got is the core of the technology, and we'll wrap the human support around it.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: But even that we'll do differently.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: We won't come in and say we're compliance and we're here to tell you what.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: We'll say we're compliance and we're here to help you, to de-risk your firm, to give your clients a great experience, to you know, take away the pain.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd said at the beginning that I don't want to be an advisor because the regulatory challenges, and that's awful.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that that puts me off advising.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure it puts plenty of people off advising.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with a pristine, we wanted to do that.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't want to be there to say, well, we're going to scaremonger you into paying for our services.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, a good pristiny experience would mean that you don't need us anymore because actually, what we've done is really helped you embed such good culture and business practices that, you know, you're not concerned about compliance.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: We've kind of done it and you use your tech to check in on it.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, again, we we were looking to the future, COVID's coming along, and actually what it's done is made advisors go, Well, actually, I need to embrace this technology much faster than I thought I was going to have to.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: I can't rely on my compliance guy coming and sitting in my office.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_01: This, you know, the future's kind of arrived a lot sooner.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, we again not happy COVID happened, but have managed to take some positives from it, and then it's it's pushed forward that future that we were building for.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, you know, it's saving people time, isn't it?
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's streamlining their businesses and their processes.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: As you said, you know, someone coming into the industry, I don't think anybody right now really wants to book out a whole day for compliance, do they?
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a pretty uncomfortable um situation uh to be in.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um and I think as well with with compliance, you know, it's uh it's always been deemed as a bit of a uh an evil, isn't it, really?
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not an evil, but a kind of uh you're stopping me from writing business.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a prevention unit.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely a prevention unit.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and and rightfully so in some s situations to be able to protect protect the customer and the consumer.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now you uh So you you're you're obviously an advocate of technology because you're talking about that there.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: You spent a year to build a technology that um supports applicity and the clients that you work with.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just sort of tell me a little bit about how your technology within your business works and how it benefits the clients that you work with with a on uh under appricity?
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um yes, so under applicity, it's um so briefly with Parasols, we actually built some tech in Parasols as well.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um once we had a few power planners and quite a few clients, it was not easy to manage it.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, outsourced power planning didn't really exist, so there was no outsourced power planning tools on the market.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: You just had to take like an existing project management system and try and kind of shoehorn it into what we were doing.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that didn't work.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we actually had our own system built on Parasols, um, which is ready for a refresh now.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but gave me my first experience of saying, and and that was build completely different to pristity.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't take a year to build, it literally took a few weeks.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was so simple, it's kind of evolved since then.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it gave me my first experience of going for my business to work well, for me to be able to deliver the service that I'm promising.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_01: There needs to be something in between us and the advisor.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: It can't just be this kind of manual, you know, whether it's emails or cloud services or whatever.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so with Aprity, it was a case of I could then say, okay, on Parasols, we've built some software, it's it's become a bit of a Frankenstein over the years, it does what we wanted it to do, but I never at the outset it was a very simple tool and it's built up from there.
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do that with Aprility.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want to try and think ahead and think what this will end up looking like and build it now, which is why it took so long.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I guess the aim with the pristity for the advisors is that you don't have dozens of files and calendar reminders and appointments for every single part of compliance in your firm, whether it's you know doing your training and competency checks for your advisors or their CPD or renewing your PI, doing your annual testing, making sure their GDPR is up to date, they're whistleblowing, absolutely everything.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's you people are managing it with spreadsheets and files and task lists, and actually what it is is a piece of technology that just you plug all your advisors in and it just runs.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you know at any point if um if there's a breach, if people aren't passing their file checks, if people's SPS isn't up to date, whatever it might be, the system will actually alert you so it's not waiting until you've got the time to physically sit down and look through something, it's kind of proactively checking that everything's up to date and working constantly.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_01: So then that just takes a big chunk away from you so you can focus on the stuff that you really need to do, which is you know your business, your clients, updating your processes, just making sure that it works.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's the aim of it.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's still, as I'm finding with technology, you know, you do it and you go, This is brilliant, and then a day later you just go, right, yeah, no, there's so much more I want to do, but you can just keep going and going and going.
• 1:09:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, that was kind of the initial philosophy.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that was born off the back of Parasols, really.
• 1:09:13
  SPEAKER_00: You saw a need there for better compliance, a better support function.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose as well, one hand kind of washes the other with that.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you've got your uh power planners supporting um supporting firms in respect of their power planning, um, surely it's a nice, easy way to then um sort of start talking about compliance and then bringing it all under one roof, really, isn't it?
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: And and and one place, uh, instead of having to go here, there, and everywhere for it.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um internally then, when you when you hire into both of these companies, so Pritity and um Parasols, you mentioned that you predominantly have taken on, say, graduates um in the past and then training those graduates up.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: Across those two businesses, how many of the staff that that work underneath those two businesses have actually come through the graduate scheme as opposed to say coming directly from um uh a company where they've they have experience?
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think at the last count, there's about 22 would come through the grad scheme.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, a little over half.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it's there is still um need for experience at times.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously in appricity, when we started, as much as I felt the frustrations of compliance, and as much as I had powerplanning knowledge and new advice firms and so on, um I'd never worked in compliance.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: So my initial hire there had to be somebody with the expertise.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we can then bring in graduates and then you've got experience.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So there's kind of two main guys in Aprisity, and one of them actually was an advisor, which really mattered to me because he came in going, I've sat there as an advisor and had a really negative experience with compliance.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll make sure that I'm not doing that, I'm not just bringing traditional compliance that I'll then replicate.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the other guy's a huge amount of compliance experience, but is just a pristiny through and through, we absolutely hates the way that it has been done and the negativity of it.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so once you've got them in place, then you can bring the grads in because then you've got experience and you can create that training framework.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we've recently, so all the tech that we built in the past, we outsourced.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and because there's so much that we want to do with technology, we've brought that internal.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: And again, my initial hire is um a good, quality, well-experienced software developer.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when we next open the grad scheme, we'll bring in junior, you know, graduate developers because now I've got that experience for somebody to bring them in and train them all.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_01: My my preference is to hire based on values that you were talking about, culture.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_01: You just can't replicate it.
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can teach people in terms of power planning, I can teach people to power plan.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but their values need to align with the company.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And with software or my first um compliance hires, that's the hard bit because I can't hire based just on values.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I do have to rely on their experience because I need them to build it up.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: But once you've got that in place, um, yeah, it's brilliant.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can bring people in, you can train them, they learn your way, you know that you've got a good personality fit and you've got people with the right kind of resources to be able to do that.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you're a big, big advocate then, of taking on grads uh over experience, as long as you, you know, rightfully bring somebody in with a bit of experience, somebody who can kind of head it up, and then hopefully that person then can become a mentor or a guide, a trainer to um the less experienced guys, but who have the right attributes to make it in a pretty tea or parasols.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: So grad, you know, the grad scheme for you has worked is has worked really, really well.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, a lot of companies in financial planning, um, especially financial planning, do seem to struggle with taking on a graduate.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: They want experience over anything, you know.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they have to have two years experience or they have to have level four diploma.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I come across some amazing, some amazing guys who've got such really, you know, the right attributes that would make it, say, as a financial planner, for example, but they're just getting told that, you know, oh no, you can't join us because you haven't got the experience.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But yet the industry, yeah.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the industry is really, really struggling to attract younger people to to it, and they wonder why in in in in real life.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's amazing to see a company that's investing so heavily in the graduate side of things.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I assume as well, these guys come to you.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're not having to spend a huge amount of money on recruitment fees or or anything along those lines because you know it's um you know, when you're attracting grads, it's it's far easier and more cost-effective, isn't it, to to hire these guys?
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and we honestly I still don't know how it happened, but we um decided to call it the grad scheme, keep it simple, and somehow it must just be a stroke of luck.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_01: The URL, www.thegradscheme.co.uk, was available for like 20 pounds.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: I can only assume some bigger company had it at some point and let it go and we have them to find it.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it means that when you Google a grad scheme, you know, we literally have the domain name for it.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So quite quickly, we kind of put a simple website up.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, your challenge then was the first roles we were approved for through the grad scheme as a power planner.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: So your immediate immediate challenge is even if grads come along to it, they're gonna say, Well, what's a power planner?
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I want to do that?
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we had to be really sort of tongue-in-cheek with our sort of messaging around it and explaining what a power planner was.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_01: But then where we got to pre-COVID, it was that we were bringing in two cohorts a year, so April and October we were running them.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we were getting sort of literally, it was just there on the website, and we would do the occasional mail around some unis, and from that we were getting sort of 120 applicants for each cohort.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, really, really minimal costs once it was like up and running.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Once it was up and running, fantastic.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that obviously then you hire in all these grads, a lot of training needs to be done with graduates.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there is training, there is development, there is mentorship that needs to be done.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did that then spark the art of finance?
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was that why you set up the art of finance based on your experience of training and developing people without any experience of financial services?
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: It did, yeah, exactly.
• 1:14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd always wanted to launch a paraplanner academy.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think training them is fine, um, is part of it.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_01: But exactly as I said, attracting people to a paraplanner role in the first place, because nobody's ever heard of it, is a massive challenge.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I thought if there was an academy that was specifically for that, you'd get the role out there as a paraplanner.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: People might hear about it, they might actually actively choose to take out as a career rather than falling into it, and then you would have an academy to train them through.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Nat had the idea of saying, well, actually, you know, there's a general gap in financial services, not just power, you're feeling the power planning gap because you are one or were one, um, but it's across the whole of finance, so that's where the art of finance came from.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of early days um in terms of the bigger mission piece.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's working practically, we do training, we've got um we train people on administration, power planning, compliance, and we put them through their diploma alongside it, but with the aim of giving them practical skills.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, again, as an advisor, yes, your paraplanner can do their diploma through the CII, but who's taught them what a good suitability report looks like, how to do research, how to use the platform, and what cash flow planning looks like, all of these.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we give them the practical skills on it, but then the bigger mission piece around art of finance is to start getting the um career path of financial services.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: The roles are available outside of finance and actually getting a hell of a lot more people applying, not just to us and to the grad scheme, but to the Hall of Financial Services.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, creating that kind of um clear career path, if you like, outline exactly what it is, um, educate those that don't understand, say, the different routes of employment within financial services.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're starting off in power planning and what you know, financial planning, um, and building training programs around that and even getting them all up to level level four qualifications, but also building what they need to know and experience within the job, what they need to understand, not just the qualifications and what's you know what's on paper.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's not just the actual financial advice role.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_01: So even, you know, look at yourself, you you're in recruitment but in financial services, and there's almost when you do a role, you know, if you're in marketing but in financial services, you could be the best marketer in the world, but you need to understand the nuances of finance, you need to understand the regulation that applies to it.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you as a recruiter, you need to understand the different roles and you know the challenges around power planning and what what a power planner actually is that you can challenge back on a CEB.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I think one of the things that we're doing is saying actually, even a career in finance, there's more than just I'd have been power planner advisor.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: You could want to be a journalist, work in financial services, um, you know, the absolutely any career path, but almost with that finance wraparound, then it's just bringing more and more people into the industry and understanding that there's a lot more options there for them.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if I hire, say, five graduates into my business and I wanted to say, look, you know, I'm going to give you some real top-notch training around what a power planner does, what a financial planner does, you know, the industry itself as a whole, nuances, compliance, what part that plays in it.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that perhaps even myself, as a business that's a recruitment in financial services, I don't have to be, yeah, that's that's really interesting.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to, well, I'd certainly like to hear a little bit more around that.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sign you up.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Time me up, yeah.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_01: You get discount then.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_00: 50% off of it.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_01: It is right now, actually.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking, um, yeah, we're literally building the art financial marketing for that reason.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, like I say, you could be the best marketer in the world, but actually you need to know the regulations around it.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, you need to know kind of the restrictions that buy to advisors and the way that things work.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's uh you know, right back where I was saying, even just as an administrator, you can't you couldn't be an admin outside of finance and then assume that you can do the same role.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much more around it.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's that generally, it's breaking down, it's just popping that financial services bubble.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: I just think we're in a massive bubble and it's very we want more people in it, but then we're just as bad at actually not helping to pop it and not kind of breaking down those boundaries.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it what do you think of the image of um the external image of financial services?
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's your you know, what's your view on the external image of financial services to someone looking at?
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's to be honest, I think for the most part, it is still what it was pre-RDR.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like we know how phenomenal the change has been, um, we know how much evolution there still is.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's why I love finance, it's why I'm still in it, because it's not stale, it actually is rapidly evolving.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we launched our podcast, That Mint Podcast, um, when did we launch it?
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Beginning of this year.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so last year we did a bit of general, I'm saying market research, we were in the pub.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we were just asking people, obviously.
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were just asking people in the pub, you know, at the next table at the bar in the good old days of pubs, um, what do you think of when you hear financial services, when you think of financial services?
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it was exactly what you'd expect rip-off, um, scams, these were kind of the words that were still coming out.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_01: People just same as me back when I was 20, 21.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, somebody says financial services, you just go, I don't know.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the only thing you can grasp at is anything that's kind of been a headline, and unfortunately, you know, bad news makes headlines.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I do think the external perception is still, you know, a decade behind what the industry is actually like.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a big challenge that we all need to play our part in and actually changing that.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, what are you doing to change um the perception of financial services then?
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the the Verve group came about because um by last year there were the three businesses, the power of solidity and the art of finance.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted a way to kind of pull all of those together to have a consistent message.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And Verve Group has two visions.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so one is to support good quality financial advice firms.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that's through doing their power planning, their admin, their compliance, helping them, you know, helping them grow, helping those business owners to really develop and thrive and um, you know, train their staff and get them, you know, bigger and bigger and bigger, because that'll just push the industry out.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_01: But then the second part of the Verve group's overall vision is to pop this bubble and is to start to get out there and let more people realise how good financial services is, either as a career, because I genuinely think there's amazing career options, and or to not be afraid to go and get financial advice.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_01: There is so much that's kind of overwhelming around it and daunting that people, you know, they leave it until far too late to get advice.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_01: They think it's not something for them, they haven't received an inheritance, so why would they need it?
• 1:21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um so with the art of finance, we're pushing on the career side and getting more people involved and trying to have this fresh, funky, different image, which like I say is early days, there's a lot of what to do, um, and actually breaking down the misconceptions around getting financial advice is what the podcast is for.
• 1:21:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that means the podcast is Joe and I, um, you know, with financial service experience, but really going, you know, we're not traditional, we're not middle-aged men in suits, we are too generally drunk, and I'm appreciating that there's a theme that keeps coming off, but we're two generally slightly tipsy girls um who do work in finance and actually look at this, let's talk about a mortgage or let's talk about a pension and let's make you realize it's maybe not as scary.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so a long, long, long way to go, but something that we're really, really passionate about at Verve.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm getting the vibe that I'm getting from the Verve group, okay, is that you know, very forththinking, very much interested in simplifying the processes and um making it easier for financial planning firms or financial services firms to run their compliance or run their power planning.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Big emphasis on training and mentoring staff.
• 1:22:16
  SPEAKER_00: You aren't all about having somebody with the top-notch experience.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_00: You will take on a graduate and you will bring them in and you know that your training, your development, your mentorship will get them to the levels that they need to.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: You want to pass on that experience as well and of what you've um achieved in setting up your business because you have achieved it, sounds like an amazing business.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, from working from your front room to now having how many staff have you got now?
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_01: 40.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: 40 staff.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's amazing.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you're an outsourced company here that's looking at, it's got 40 staff, and you're running compliance, you're running power planning, you stepped into the training development side of things, and that's coming, you know, that's kicking off.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, but you're looking at marketing, helping support marketing for people as well.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you're becoming this one-stop shop for the financial planning industry.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, and I think it sounds, you know, like a really forward-thinking, interesting company.
• 1:23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the fact that you've brought out the Mint Podcast as well.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Mint Podcast is all about, as you said, a couple of girls, having a drink.
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're not middle-aged men, you know, talking about the ins and outs of a bond or anything like that.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're just talking normal language to somebody who might not have a great understanding as to what a mortgage is or how debt works or what a financial planner really does.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you're bringing that piece in again to educate people about the realities of financial planning.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at the same time, why perhaps they might be interested in a career in it, that it's not boring, it's not stuffy, it's actually very forththinking.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of these tech companies, fin tech companies, there's so much happening in finance, it's a very, very interesting time to get into it.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think it's just, as you said, perception from others is that the well, scam this or scam that, you know, you're all a bunch of crooks, and you know, um, that will naturally change.
• 1:24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think younger people as well sometimes overlook finance for something a little bit sexier.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: They don't consider um finance industry to be sexy.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_00: But what we're seeing more now, and I what I love is I'm when I, especially within my sort of bubble, which is bubble, which is financial planning, you're starting to see way more, and mainly women actually, um, stepping up and talking about behavioural psychology and you know, the behaviour science and why you might, you know, what fears do you have around money?
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_00: And really starting to explore the kind of um health and well-being aspect of what managing your money can do for your future and how great it can make you feel.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that as a lady called Catherine Morgan actually, who's got a podcast called In Her Financial Shoes.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think, you know, she's doing really good things from a marketing perspective and a personal brand perspective to be able to bridge that gap between um how we think about money, um, and there's lots of others that are coming up and doing that as well.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think anything that can do that is um is an absolute Brucey bonus in in my eyes.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_00: What does um what what do you think the future holds for you guys then?
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously you've you know you you're doing really well by the sayings of things, but what does the future hold for the Verve group?
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where are you where are you gonna take it, Kathy?
• 1:25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, who knows?
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, I never thought I would take it to where it is.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um I'm you probably gathered I'm not one for overly planning things.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_01: I very much go with what feels right.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to find um either gaps or um itches that need scratching and kind of go at them.
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think, like I say, with uh with the overall mission of the verb group, we've we've just started, um there is so much there.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think until the point that I really genuinely feel like I I can create a group of companies and people within those companies that can have an impact on financial services, and it's not gonna be organized, you know, it might be some 10, 15, 20 years before you really genuinely see.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I quite intentionally call finance an industry still because it is still, but I know that there's a lot of people that are really pushing towards making it a profession, and I think um we will get there eventually.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_01: A big thing in Verb Group is to um, and one of the things that we're gonna be kind of pushing over the coming year in particular is to say to all of these firms that have you've all got the same frustrations, you all want to see um finance developing, you want to leave kind of the bad old days behind us, you want to get new people in.
• 1:26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's time to, you know, almost put your money where your mouth is.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what are you actually doing?
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_01: What's you know, the firms that are still saying, um, are you only want to take people on if they're already qualified and experienced?
• 1:26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're not helping.
• 1:26:34
  SPEAKER_01: We can help you.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's give you a framework, let's find you some graduates, let's give you some training courses, you know, let me actually give you because that's what puts a lot of um firms off bringing in graduates.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you haven't got the structure, I don't have the structure, and it took a long time to build it and then to get it right.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but actually, if I can give you the structure, get some of these new people in, start having these conversations because us all talking about the problem, but then still doing the same old thing isn't going to change it.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because yeah, I think that's gonna be the focus for group for a while, and um ultimately it might expand outside of the UK as well.
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, fantastic.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why not?
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's um so many firms nowadays go international.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're international, you know.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_00: We recruit, we recruit in the UAE, we recruit in Hong Kong, um, we've started doing um working with a fintech company in the USA.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, so I you know, the world is absolutely your oyster.
• 1:27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um, you know, why not?
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Similar challenges with financial services, wherever wherever you are in the world, you generally get different points of this sort of RDR regulatory journey, but actually they're all going through them, they've either been through what we've gone through or about.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's actually we're we're in quite a good position to be able to help them with that.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what?
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_00: America is a really big market for financial advice.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like four.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's got Trump, yeah.
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's like when I looked at it, there's like 400,000 financial advisors over there.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's there's there's loads of financial advisors in comparison to anywhere else in the world.
• 1:28:03
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, yeah, but you know, something to look at, isn't it?
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, great stuff.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um thank you for your time today.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, thank you for sharing um your career um today.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we could talk for hours about that, but I think you've given us a really good insight into really how you started out, which was, you know, leaving university, struggling to find a job, selling yourself to get into that job, starting at grassroots level as an administrator, working your way up and sort of understanding the role of what a power planner was, making the decision that you wanted to become a power planner because you really did know that you weren't a salesperson, you weren't somebody that wanted to go out and win clients and sit down with them, and you were driven by targets and all of those typical types of things and money, et cetera.
• 1:28:46
  SPEAKER_00: You were more around the supporting functions and how to improve the experience perhaps for the clients and the security of the company that you were working with.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Went off and um had a you know a burning desire yourself really to run your own business, set yourself up as an external power planning company at home, and um, you know, found it very hard for the first three to six months, you know, very close to perhaps giving up or someone giving you some advice to give up.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was your mum, wasn't it?
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Saying, you know, what are you doing is go get a proper job.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, you stuck at it.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, the reality of it is when you run your own business, regardless of whether or not it's a supporting function, you're gonna have to do some sales calls, aren't you?
• 1:29:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why you had to roll your sleeves up, get, you know, get your hands dirty, and make some sales calls.
• 1:29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what happened.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_00: But once you did it for one person and did a deal with one person, then another one and another one, the referral systems work.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_00: You built up a, you know, you took on somebody, built up a company now that's got 40 people.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_00: You've moved from outsourced power planning into outsource compliance, into outsourced training, you're becoming this one-stop shop for the financial planning industry.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you're a massive advocate of graduate hiring, and 80% of your staff have come through the graduate scheme.
• 1:29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, that's a huge amount of success.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh an excellent role model for any other financial planning uh company or financial services company that are um looking to grow to grow their team.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, without a shadow of a doubt, they should be checking you out to help improve their processes and um get some advice on definitely how to do it on an internal on an internal external basis.
• 1:30:18
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of gives me an interview.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: But um no, real thank you.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Real real pleasure talking to you and um and um take care and maybe get me on your mint podcast.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ask me to.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what?
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_01: I actually will.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll sign you up for your courses first and then I'll get you on that mint podcast.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've got to spend some money first.
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm definitely interested in those courses because they they sound quite they're quite interesting.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely want to talk about that.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_00: So um brilliant.
• 1:30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Have a lovely day, Kathy, and thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Sam.
• 1:30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Bye.