Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Can 105 Financial Advisers Be Wrong? Find Out! | Sam Wallis

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Can 105 Financial Advisers Be Wrong? Find Out! | Sam Wallis · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So, sam, welcome to the Financial Planet Life podcast.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: We're having some fun, aren't we?
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: We're getting to know each other, yeah.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: So, sam, you are the Managing Director there at Newleaf.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: How many advisors do you have in the network?
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Across the piece, there's around 350.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: So what are Newleaf doing to be able to support new people joining the profession?
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a few things that we do able to support new people joining the profession.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a few things that we do particularly well that I'm very proud of, which would be our mentoring program.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Every single case goes past three people.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: The world's your oyster, go for it, that's.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: That is really the beauty of a network situation.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Is that the ars, the appointments of representatives?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I haven't told me so right, you're in the new leaf club you're our family.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: You're our team.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Let's do everything you know just for you guys, and let's not tell anyone about it.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: But actually why I'm learning, uh, when I'm being dragged along, yeah, is that we could help a lot more people and a lot more people be successful if more people knew what we're doing welcome to the financial planner life podcast.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: How are you, oh?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: good, really good, really good, really good.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Love it here.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: We're having some fun, aren't we?
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: We're getting to know each other, yeah.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So, for those that don't know, we're here in London and we are filming the New Leaf podcast.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It's a brand new podcast for your network to get out there and attract new advisors and basically let people have a little peek behind the curtain to see who's in the business and who's benefiting in being part of the partnership.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Right yeah, 100% Amazing stuff.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: So, sam, you are the Managing Director there at New Leaf and you're also involved in the proposition for clients and the proposition for financial planners, so why don't we start there?
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Then Tell us a little bit about the New Leaf client offering.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: What did you do?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: What have you put together?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good question.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: So it's really been a journey.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Actually it's been a very long time of refinement and changing and adapting.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: There's been certain regulations come in along the journey that you've had to go back to basics, go back to the original kind of thought process behind things and bring them back to life, reinvigorate them, um.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: But effectively what I look after is the entire proposition for finance planners, as you say, which is everything from the documents they might use, the way that they onboard clients, all the way through to, eventually, the end portfolio, the end investment the client would be placed in.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Um.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: So it's very wide ranging, very wide ranging.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: One thing I don't do I don't run any money, not an investment manager.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Uh, we believe that there's far more uh superior people out there to do that job over and by myself but myself.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: But what I have been able to do over the years is develop a keen eye for kind of what works and what doesn't uh for financial advisors.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: I think some of them, when they come to new leaf, they think it needs to be really complicated and mysterious and kind of hard to understand sometimes for clients.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: But in reality what I have found over the years is the simple things done well are often the best.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: So putting it together brings a lot of research.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: So first of all it's thinking about the people, the clients thinking about.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: We call them client segments or target markets.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: So this is where you sit down as a business and New Leaf has lots of different businesses on the IFA side, up to probably a hundred different kind of ways of working on that side.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: So what clients are they going to see?
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: What markets are they going to fish in?
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Which types of clients are they going to attract?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: And then you have to try and marry up the things that are important for those clients.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: So a really easy way to think about it is people that are just, if you compare and contrast, people that are just starting out, maybe putting away their first bit of money in their ISA or their pension for the very first time.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: So if you think about their needs, quite low complexity, understanding might be quite low.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: And if you contrast that with a high net worth client sophisticated investor, has invested before in the past, maybe has buy to let portfolio, maybe has a few things going on.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: If you think about the service from an IFA and the product and the portfolio, they're not going to be the same for those people, are they?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: They'll be vastly different Now.
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: They're two extremes.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Same for those people, are they?
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: It'll be vastly different.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Now, they're two extremes.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: In actual fact, when you meet people and ifa's take on clients, there's actually a bit more nuance to it.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: You're not always seeing, you know, the new starter or the the high net worth individual.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: So building the proposition is about thinking of the types of clients that advisors would see and then matching them to both products, uh, plans, plans, the most important thing, the financial plan, of course, um, and then the portfolio how much of your time is spent listening to those financial planners that are actually part of your network, hearing their feedback and the wants and the needs and the changes that they think should be in place to be able to deliver a really outstanding client experience?
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: yeah, so it's.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: It's completely built um, built from their feedback effectively.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: So first, when you first start out and this is going back a while now, probably 10 years ago you have to kind of look at data and and just go for it.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: We're very small then.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: We had, we had a few advisors.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: We knew that what we were doing was quite labor intensive, quite manual um and yeah, the initial feedback was you know, there must be a simpler way to do this um.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: So over the over the time, over the years, as people join, you know, newly for tracks, new people, but also experienced advisors um, they'll come over with their ideas, their fresh perspective and there have been times over those years where we've made changes based on the feedback, like you say.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: So a lot of time is spent listening and and dan, our ceo, does that as well with his meetings with ars we're often looking for feedback because, at the end of the day, although in my past I have seen clients, I've done the, the job and I think that's important to have at least done it a little bit to be able to you know, coach and train and educate people to do it.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Our advisors are the ones that are out there.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: They're seeing the reactions to what the offering is and how it lands.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: You know your fee structures.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: How does that land?
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: How does that sit?
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And so something that's happened in the last few years from feedback is advisors would often say to me that they're having trouble servicing lower value clients.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: It was difficult for them they had maybe minimum fees in place or the time constraints with seeing somebody, if you think about it, somebody with a small amount of money or somebody with a large amount of money.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: There's still some basic things that go into every single financial plan.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: You have to get to know the person in discovery.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: You have to complete the client records you might have to write off to providers for information.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: So building a proposition that that suits all of those people is high on the agenda.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: People were advisors were definitely saying, look, we need to be out of service everyone we come across and not to the detriment of their plan or um way of working.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: You know, taking someone on outside their target market, but just making sure that whoever they really sat down in front of, they had something in their toolbox that they could.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: They could offer.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: That adds value how many advisors do you have in your network um so?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: there's, there's two answers to that.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: So in across the piece there's around 350.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So that would be mortgage protection and ifa.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Um, the proposition that I've, that I've built uh, is primarily for the IFAs, which is around 105.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Okay great, I say around because we've got people joining all the time.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, brilliant.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you are getting plenty of feedback.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: You're talking to a lot of IFAs who are out there talking to clients.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: You know they're on the front line, basically but I suspect you're probably getting inundated as well with all the tech companies and all the different bells and whistles and tools, all these wonderful things that are going to make their lives a million times easier.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: So I'm guessing you've seen a few beauty parades along the way.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I can imagine you've probably got some tools that have been tried and tested and you're probably thinking of your select tools that you would recommend.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: So which ones do you think are the ones that are adding value at the moment for financial advisors, advisors, what, what tools are you using?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: yeah, good question, there's again two answers.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be that guy that says, oh, there's two answers every time, but there's for building a proposition, for researching the marketplace and for building a robust, repeatable way of giving an advice.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Tools are very different to what you might use on your day-to-day.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: So the tools that I've used over the years and you know um I had great success with would be, first of all, something like dynamic planner.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: So dynamic planner really rationalizes the investment marketplace, applies um, ratings, badges, risk rating.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: So uh, that's kind of where you you start your journey building proposition.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: You need to have a universal, agreed idea on the risks that clients going to take um or needs to take for their investment, or something like de facto.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: So de facto engage is a tool that will gather up all of the information about product providers, platforms, life companies, so that's they're really detailed tools that you need to really sit down with and use Things like Platform Analyzer when you're doing your due diligence and you're picking out which of the myriad companies am I going to choose to entrust my end clients money with.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: There's lots of things there, things like Mabel Insights, if you're looking at model portfolio providers Lots of tools in that area that can help.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: And then, on the advisor side, dynamic Planner does do a dual job that works for advisors as well with their clients.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: We use the IntelliFlow back office CRM system to good effect.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of features there that help advisors with onboarding clients and also practice management.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: So, for example, the FCA is asking 5,000 firms about data about their clients, and if you're not using technology, how on earth are you going to do that?
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So we're pretty confident that that's all in the right place and we can run the reports.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Um, but on a day-to-day, I am seeing more advisors get involved with ai tools, um, so I've spoken to a good number of those guys, some of them I'm probably not their best friend because I can't always pick up a LinkedIn message to apologize um, but from what I have seen and there's a few that we've we've looked at pretty closely um, it's fantastic, it's fantastic.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: And what I did realize actually during this process is that, um, you can't really assume that everyone has seen the same information you have.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: That seems really basic, but if I'm being bombarded by AI tools and technology and news, it's in my nature to kind of assume that everyone else is.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: But sometimes when you have, say, through discussions with advisors, they say, oh, what does that do?
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Or I could really use that, or I didn't know that that was happening.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: So everyone's kind of getting on that journey at different, different time, um, but I think it can only be a good thing.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's massively confusing.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Ai, I think tech in general can be hugely confusing.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: You can go out and download the latest piece of tech, try and implement.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work with the plan, you know.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work with your crn and then something better comes out, that one gets out of date or it goes out of business, and all of a sudden you've got this quite expensive tech stack that doesn't talk to uh talk to talk to each other, and that's in any profession or or any field that's universal everyone's suffering with it and I think you know, ultimately, the basics people are looking at.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: How are you going to save me some time?
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: How are you going to get me in front of 30 more clients?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: I spoke to Saturn.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: AI recently and you know they worked out roughly.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: On average they're freeing up enough time for an advisor to go out and add another 30 clients a year.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: And that's the sort of stat that I want to hear.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that you know like 30 new clients and when you work that out from a fee basis what your average fee is.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: That's, that's pretty impressive, and that's now that's current um.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: You know, the key thing I think I'm coming across at the moment is, um, the note taking element of it.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just how intuitive the note taking element actually is and saving time in that early stage, even crossing over in the power planning side of things as well.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: The power plan has been able to very quickly um access the data that they need, fill those forms out as quick as they possibly can and get those suitability reports back, and it does seem to be saving a huge amount of time, and there are a few AI companies out there at the moment that seem to be absolutely nailing that.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: And then you've got the compliance element coming in as well, which is going to be very, very interesting.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: What I find interesting as well around is power planners.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to get these power planners that are, you know, able to manage multiple projects right, but I think also freeing up their time to almost be client relationship managers.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: I think the idea of bringing these power planners into the meetings more, speaking to clients, more being a bit more face-to-face, being a bit more human you know, AI makes you more human, which I quite like yeah.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it, which I quite like, yeah, yeah, it definitely makes you focus on the human side, because if your, if your skill, if your talent, if, if what you do is replaceable, so if you're, if you're, fantastic at taking notes from a meeting, if that, if that was your role, if that was your job, you've got to pivot, you've got to move, you've got to.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: You've got to move, you've got to, you've got to adapt to, uh, to what's coming, um, and I think, use it, use it as much as you can.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: You should lean into it.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Definitely.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: Power planners.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: You're right, you know, one of the disconnects in our business is we have an internal power planning team, um, which acts as a compliance team as well.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: Every case with new leaf is pre-approved, so all the advice is guaranteed from each advisor, um.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: But that has its challenges, because there's that transmission from the advisor who is at the meeting, knows the client incredibly well.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: The relationship's been going for years, and how do they actually get that over to the power planner?
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: We are definitely finding that transcripts or recordings of meetings are fantastic for that, because, instead of a couple of notes, and a lot of advisors will put their hands up about the quality of their notes pre-AI, you know, they left a little bit to be desired.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Uh, if you're a power planner trying to pick up on the case, so exactly right what you say, that that is helping.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Um, and I only really see positive things.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: I only see positive things.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: No, I only see positive things about it as well.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I love ai.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: As soon as I started using an ai note taker and actually, weirdly I was in a, I was a late adopter to ai note takers I was one of those people that you know I'd be writing on my notepad.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I'd have a pad of paper next to me with a pen.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: I'll be writing on my laptop.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: It'd be like everywhere.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I had notes everywhere scatterbrained.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Now I just press this button.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I'm like you know, fathom takes my notes, records it as well.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I can go in there and it will automatically, in whatever scenario that I want to recap that meeting and then we'll automatically send it to that person.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So let's say, for example, I'm sitting down with you and we're doing a pre-podcast chat.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I get the opportunity to sit there, talk directly to you, really look at you your body language, understand you, ask relevant questions, knowing that in the background my note taker is preparing my podcast questions.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: That will go out like that as soon as the call ends.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So the person the other end of the other end of the line is thinking, oh my god, like what did I cover?
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I wonder what this podcast is going to be about.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I'm really nervous and all of a sudden they get a whole outline of exactly what we covered and what the questions I'm going to ask in that podcast episode even some key takeaways for them to go away.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: So if they picked up on, they learned something from me on the, on the, on the conversation.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It's a recap of what I've taught them.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah and they love it, and I was like, oh my god, how could I live?
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: you know why did I live without this?
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: Because sometimes you're sitting there scribbling away head down.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: You're not looking, you're not engaging, you don't know what the hell's going on, you're not picking up on cues and, for financial planners, you might be not picking up on vulnerabilities which is really important.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: That's a big deal If it can help in any way.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: You know we're talking your post-meeting work down from an hour to 10 minutes, an hour to five minutes.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: People are looking at these time savings.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: But if it can um help you with your skills in meetings, help you, like you say, identify vulnerabilities that's key on the fca's um radar.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Uh, now and probably forever, and should be on advisors radars as well, it can only be a good thing.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, can only be a good thing.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, so for new leaf, um, I think you said you're a little bit late to it yeah note taking and stuff.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: I think, um, I think, new leaf.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: To be fair, we're we're on the cusp of something really good.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Uh, with ai, we've taken our time, we haven't rushed in and, like you said, put too many disconnected things together.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: It's really about what problem are you trying to solve, and that's difficult because if you ask 10 advisors to line up, they might have 10 different problems.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Some people have got great, fantastic admin support, so it's not a problem for them.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: They do the meetings, they hand it over, and then that magically gets through to power planning and it's done.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you can't move on LinkedIn for financial advisors arguing about investment propositions.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, what do you think advisors are looking for from an investment proposition?
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the people that come to New Leaf and the reason they seek New Leaf out is because they want something sensible, they want something that's designed with the client in mind.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: I think, broadly speaking, there's kind of two sides to it.
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: You can either have a restricted offering, which does often deliver good outcomes, that don't really see, you know it's not a massive deal, but what we find, in general, most advisors and clients look for is something that's independent.
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: The issue sometimes with independence is the broadness of the proposition can be too wide ranging, in which case it's very difficult actually to channel down and narrow down what that client in particular needs.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: It's very difficult if you have too many relationships, to actually manage them and nurture them to to being strong relationships with providers, things like platforms.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: If you use too many platforms, in my opinion, um becomes very difficult to manage, and there's some really good quality platforms out there uh that we've we're working with um that, on the whole, do a good job for a lot of different types of clients does that make sense?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: yeah, no, it makes sense.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: No, I love it.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Great stuff, I know.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Look, financial plan of life.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: When I first set it up, it was all about attracting new talent to the profession.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: The higher purpose was little.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: You know, average average age of an advisor 56 years old, not enough younger people coming in.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: So I thought, you know, in my infinite wisdom, I'd set up a podcast and the aim of it was to attract talent to the profession.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, and we've done a good job at that.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And in the process, we actually set up an academy, the Financial Planner Life Academy.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: It's first independent academy, if you like, not ifa, but independent from all the other academies.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: It's like a pay-as-you-go sort of offering.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: I partnered up with the next gen planners team I don't know if you know those.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they do a fantastic job of rolling that training out within the community and each person will learn stuff from each other.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I think we've got about 100 people going through at the moment, which is kind of cool.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: But I know, as a business, uh, newly really getting behind new people, new people joining the profession and and that's how I got talking to mark originally- was yeah, I got this academy, but where can I send them after they've done their qualifications?
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: because none of them have got cas?
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: And that one of the biggest things, one of the biggest problems was like well, how do you take a new person into an ifa world if they want to go self-employed and start off because no one was willing to do the cast status with them?
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: So what are New Leaf doing to be able to support new people joining the profession?
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a few things that we do particularly well that I'm very proud of, which would be our mentoring programme, and so I think some of the challenges for brand new people is there's lots of information out there, but they maybe don't know what to trust.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: They possibly don't know who to ask.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: So when you join New Leaf and you're brand new, you get one single point of contact.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: They will then ask the wider team if it's outside of their remit or they're probably more than capable of answering the question in the first place.
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: So it's effectively a business partner to start with, um, and that doesn't have to be, you know, financial planning, investment.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: It can be about thoughts, feelings, goals, that kind of thing.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: I think they're really important when you're starting out a business, of course they are how, if you've got no direction, you know.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: How do you know where you're going?
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And the other thing that we were really proud of is the power planning department.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't be quite as cool to call it the compliance department, but they do act in that way.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: So they check every piece of advice that comes through.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: So when you're new, I think what a lot of people share with me is their fear is getting it wrong.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: They're taking on a client, and when you take on a client's finances, that's really, really important isn't it.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: You can't get it wrong you can't have a second chance.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: So some people that start in the industry, they do get scared about the advice they give.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Is it right?
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: They double check it, triple check it.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: So the good thing about working with new leaf is that every case is pre-approved.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Every single case goes through our power planning department.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: They work on it for you, they work on the research, they make sure all the documents are there.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: They produce what we call second meeting pack, which is suitability report, the sales aids, the illustrations, all the documents you need, and that process that every single case goes past three people.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: So there's three people checking if something could be tweaked, something could be upgraded, something could be changed, something's not quite right.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: So I think the new guys really they take comfort in that, and that team is a mix of youth and experience, just to make sure that we've got all angles covered.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: So I would say that those two things, the mentoring and the power planning are the main things.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, what we were talking about.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: The proposition is simple to understand, is designed with the client in mind and effectively it's guardrails okay, so it's not too prescriptive for each individual firm.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: You could have a different investment philosophy, you could have a different way of thinking about fee charging, different way of servicing clients.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Some people see every client face to face.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: They want to spend a couple of hours, they want to do cash flow tool, they want to do everything in that way.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Other people are looking for more of a light touch relationship.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Maybe they're doing things online, maybe they're having a higher number of clients.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: We can accommodate all of those things.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: So I think if you were to, if I was starting tomorrow, um, and not had the experience and the things that I've done and you know, been privileged to learn through the years.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: It would be a very daunting task to think, well, okay, so which platform do I use for my clients?
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: Which investments do I put my clients in?
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: You know, when do I use an investment bond, when do I, when do I use a trust, those kind of things?
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Whereas from day one when you join new leaf, you've effectively got a team of staff in your office.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: You are, you're more than you're, more than just yourself, with your brand new logo and your nice website that's not had any hits yet and your shiny laptop.
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: You know that you've just you just bought for your new business.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: You've got this team behind you.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: I think that's the most important thing.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I think as well you know, look people when they get, when they set their own, when they make the choice that they want to go on their own.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Uh, and they want to go self-employed maybe like someone's transitioning from another career.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: They've had a fantastic career, yeah.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Maybe they've got a bit bored, uh, but maybe they look at the career that they're in.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: I've seen people come from investment banking and go into financial planning, go back into investment banking and start delivering financial planning to investment bankers or people you think they would know how to run their finances.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: But when you've got these people and they're looking at it, what they also get excited about is their personal brand.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: They get excited about building a business with their branding and then I'm going to build a YouTube channel and I'm going to build my LinkedIn profile and I'm going to get out there and I think, bloody right because, you need to get out there, you need to promote yourself and you need to be seen.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: But sometimes people might clip your wings a little bit when it comes to networks.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Well, branding for a start, and that's it.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: So let's say, for example, I come to you, I'm sam oaks and I've got a brand called the financial planner life and I've given up on helping companies companies like you build brands and now I want to be a financial planner.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Can I come along and call myself the financial planner life?
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Can I build my own company branding?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Can I promote myself but still be ifa under the network?
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: yeah, absolutely.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, some of the challenges are is it, is it taken on company's house, because a lot of people come up with very similar names.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: But apart from that, I mean the world's your oyster, go for it.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: That is really the beauty of a network situation is that the ARs, the appointed representatives they have autonomy in how they present themselves.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: Now we've seen the goods, the bad and, unfortunately, sometimes the ugly of it.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Um, in terms of company names and things like this, remember, there's a little, there was a little phase of people just picking latin words, yeah, or greek words, oh, you know, it means grandma's shoe.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: It's amazing, let's for it.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: That was a kind of weird one.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: And there's websites and you think, hang on, how does that translate?
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: What's my email address going to be?
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: And there's a few weird things like that.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, you can.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: I think that's a great name.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: If you want to start that, sam, I think that would go well.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: Nothing wrong with that at all.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: We lean into it and actually what we're looking to do, when we find the right person to do it, is actually help with marketing and those kind of things.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I know a person who can help you.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: So, when it comes to the blueprint, okay, because Mark's told me about the blueprint and so I'm a financial planner.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm a trainee financial planner, right?
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: So I'm new to the profession, haven't worked in it before.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Fantastic.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: You told me about all the power, planning, administration, compliance, I'm IFA, all the platforms, tech.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about any of that.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I can get stuck in and do my own brand.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: But I can have a little bit of I don't know, maybe a little bit of um nervousness about how I get myself out there.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: How do I win business?
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: You know what's the realities of being a financial planner time expectations, how to generate clients.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: How do you go about supporting people like me in that respect?
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: one word for that, really, which is community, okay, okay.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: So what we, what we try to do and which what I think we've achieved, is to build a community of like-minded people, teams, individuals that are.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: We're striving for the same goal, aren't we?
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: We want to grow in business.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: We want better.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Um, some people's goals are different.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: They, you know, they don't want to shoot the lights out, they just want a nice life for their family.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Everybody's number is different, how they feel about where they need to get to in life, but we regularly will get these people in the same room.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: So one event that needs a much better marketing name is called the IFA day.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Ifa day yeah, it's been running on under the draft heading IFA day for about 10 years, um, and every other month, um, we will get a lot of our advisors along to a provider's office normally, and they're very gracious hosts and lay on, you know, uh, presentations and a bite to eat and a few drinks and things like that, and I just think those kind of meetups will regularly get 50 people to that.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: There's half of our advisor community.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: You can learn from your peers.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: If I'm saying something, it's because I've heard it from someone else.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: You might as well.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Hear it from them.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: You know if you're worried about does.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: For example, people ask me if I put leaflets in the newspaper, what will be my conversion rate on on financial planning as a zero?
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: And I can prove it because people have told me before.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I remember a while ago this is going back a while there's a guy who's on the course and he was absolutely dead set.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: He's going to put leaflets in the paper because it worked for his previous business.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: So what was his previous business?
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: It was cleaning ovens, okay.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: So there was a leaflet in the paper and at the bottom, if you've called the number and said it's in the paper, you get money off.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: It didn't translate to financial advice.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: You put 40,000 leaflets in a local paper.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: You got one, one phone call and it didn't go anywhere enough.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: So there is an aspect of you can help people along the journey and they can meet with our community.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: But also, if you speak to people like myself, dan or mark, between us there's a lot of experience and people tell us because we've got a good relationship with our advisor, they do tell us when things go wrong and maybe we can have a laugh about it.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: Um, and I think you're just.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: You're starting halfway up the ladder, aren't you?
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: If you're learning from other people that have been there before, I love it uh, your ifa day.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: I love it, come on no, I love it yeah, yeah, I'm looking back father's day, mother's day, christmas day, ifa day, okay, yeah, men's mental health day.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: You've got all these different days right.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Is there an ifa day?
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I think it's just about how you package it up.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Now you've got your new leaf podcast, you could have a new leaf podcast live on IFA day.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: You bring all these different people along, all these guest speakers, all these people that are going to absolutely blow their minds celebrating IFA.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: Then you record it.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Then you push that out on your YouTube.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Maybe you push it out to the people that couldn't actually come.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Maybe you push it out to your network of people that are interested in what New Leaf actually have got to offer and they've shown some interest in the past people who've applied for jobs, et cetera.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's a really, really good idea.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: I think if you get behind IFA Day and you actually pump it up, it's quite novel.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I've not heard anybody talk about IFA Day.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: Why can't you be the first to actually push IFA Day and make a day for IFAs?
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: And all the other IFAs that are out there you're not even part of your network are pretty cool.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: My going along to ifa day and it becomes an open community event like it.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I think it's great.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: It's just how you look at these things, isn't it?
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, that sounds a bit silly, but it's not not at all.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, you're exactly right.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: And what you're saying and you, this is the bigger picture, isn't it?
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: I've always I like to say right, you're in the new leaf club, you're our family, you're our team, let's do everything you know just for you guys, and let's not tell anyone about it.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: But actually, why I'm learning, uh, when I'm being dragged along, yeah, is that we could help a lot more people and a lot more people be successful if more people knew what we're doing, which is why we're here mate, you've got to give it away to attract it yeah and that's the truth.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Like, the more you give it away, the more good stuff comes back to you.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: It's laws of attraction.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: I know it sounds a bit cheesy and a little bit woo-woo, but I've experienced it.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: The more I open the doors and the more people come on.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Like I had a golf day, so we had St James' place there, hoxton, there, different IFAs in the same space, yeah Right.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: And people are like well, why are you all playing golf together?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Well, why not?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: We're all sharing ideas.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: We're all talking about different things and what we can all do to help the profession actually grow for the greater good.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And I think from doing that, people see that as collaboration, not competition.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Collaboration is a good thing for everybody, but it also shows as a business that you actually give a shit, that you care about others.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if they're working for you or not, but you'll happily share some good ideas.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: A good idea is a good idea and if it helps somebody, that's a great thing.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: But obviously, what do they remember?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: They go well, remember that from New Leaf or remember from the New Leaf podcast.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: So what you're doing is you're opening the doors now and you're letting people in and you're showing them a ago.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: It's all about like it's, it's my little community, I'm going to keep it and that's the problem I think the profession's had the profession has been quite sort of uh insular, if you like not had the doors opened and we're suffering by people not coming into it and actually seeing it as a viable career option.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: What we should be doing is opening the doors.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: A byproduct of you doing this today is that someone might find it when they're looking for a career within financial planning a university might find it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: You should send it to the universities, say, look, we've got this podcast.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: We want to give back.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: If people are interested in a career in financial planning or don't have a clue what it actually is, get them to watch our podcast.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all of a sudden, who do they think about when they think about ifa at that age?
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: They think about you, who, who are they?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: They're the next generation of people that are going to be inheriting money in that great international wealth transfer.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of a good thing when you think about it from a higher purpose, bigger picture perspective.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean a word.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: I use a lot is members, you know New Leaf members.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: But you're right, it's kind of I'm acting a little bit like Trump putting the walls up, putting the walls up, putting the tariffs out there a bit of protectionism.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, anyone's welcome, right?
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Well, in that case then, what can advisors do?
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: What can people who are interested in New Leaf do to make contact and to open conversations?
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, something that we've run for many, many years and it's actually my first interaction with New Leaf is an event that we run called the Change Event, so it's titled.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: The title suggests it's for people that are looking to change, so this can be second careerists.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: This can be people that are brand new to the industry, people that haven't even given it a thought.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Maybe one of their loved ones is getting into the business and they just want to find out a bit more.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Um, anyone, anyone at all, that's looking to find out more about financial services?
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's run by mark cobs.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: It's now moved online.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Uh, there will be occasional in-person ones.
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: We find the biggest reaches online.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Um faqs, q and a, and mark will share his experience, his vast experience and knowledge of starting and and running and owning a successful business in financial services fantastic, and how can people get get involved in that?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: where can they find it?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Is there a link I can put into the description?
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: yeah, be straight on our website.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, straight on our website.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Change sam great name, by the way.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: It's been absolutely pleasure getting to know you these last couple of days, really been enjoying uh, filming the new leaf podcast and I just just I love the energy of you guys as well.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: You're a young network led by a great guy.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Mark's a fantastic bloke, you know.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: He's a really, really good mentor to have in the business.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: We're excited to be helping you and we love your attitude towards open community and helping the profession grow as a whole and