Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Cleona Lira: Moving from Mumbai, first year self employed as an IFA and the importance of branding - and how it will propel your career forwards!

Transcript

Cleona Lira: Moving from Mumbai, first year self employed as an IFA and the importance of branding - and how it will propel your career forwards! · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  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.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is proudly sponsored by Recruit UK, a recruitment consultancy specifically focused on the financial services.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: They also have a niche specialism within financial advice.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So check out their website for all the latest blogs, hints, and tips, and speak to a consultant if you're looking for a new job opportunity or looking to hire your next superstar.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sam Oakes, and I'm joined today by Cleona Lira, an independent financial advisor from Conscious Money, which is an AR of two-plan wealth management.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, we talk about her journey so far from moving from Mumbai as a car saleswoman to becoming an IFA seven years ago.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoy it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So here we are today, the first ever episode of the Financial Planner Life podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this podcast is all about me meeting the people that work within the financial advice industry to understand what it's like, the lifestyle, why you became a financial advisor, and why people should really join the industry.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the purpose of the podcast.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: My background is eleven and a half years of working in the recruitment industry, specifically financial advice.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to be a trainer also for Reviva, training out financial products such as bonds, pensions, and investments and things like that.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't ask me anything about that, because I don't think I can remember any of it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very dark time.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um Cleona, thanks so much for coming today and and choosing to meet with me.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and today what I'd really love to do is just find out a little bit about you, your career, um, what you were doing well, some of the things that you've struggled with perhaps in the past.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And just find out a little bit about why you think somebody should also join the industry.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we're gonna touch also on the lack of females in financial advice, I think, as well, because that's a really big topic at the moment.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Cleaner, can you tell me about your career leading up to being a financial advisor?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, what were you doing before you made the choice that you wanted to become a financial advisor?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was actually uh in a job selling cars.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_05: That was my first job.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_05: I was pretty good at it.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_05: And I met someone who moved on from car loans to life insurance.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: And he got me a job in financial services.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I contacted him and um asked him if he would give me an interview because I initially got rejected.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_05: This was back in Mumbai.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_05: A company called ICICI Prudential, which was a venture between ICICI Bank and India, which is which was the largest private bank, it probably still is.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_05: And Prudential of the UK.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_05: And that started me on a trajectory of financial services.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_05: I it was the first bank assurance team ever in Mumbai.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: And it was very, very exciting.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_05: I was in middle management and decided to do an MBA to progress my career.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_05: And then somehow came to the UK and got back in bank assurance.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_05: Right, let's talk about India.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_05: So you were living in India.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: I was living in India.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Whereabouts?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um I'm originally from Goa in India.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_05: But I moved to Mumbai after graduation.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_05: So when I was 20, I moved to Mumbai.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah, in central Mumbai.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, how old were you when you were what selling cars in Mumbai then?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_05: 20.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're 20?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: So was that your job then?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Was it?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: You were you were a car salesman.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so alright.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, financial planning in its own right, there is an element of sales to it, isn't there?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, there is it's a sales job, you know.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um what did you feel that you learned from selling cars that was transferable across to financial advice?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_05: I learned that I was really good at getting along with clients and getting excited about the product that I was selling.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_05: I sold the Honda City, which was an easy car to get excited about.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_05: It was the first foreign car in India.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so the car pretty much sold itself.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I learned that I had to be really organized and, you know, um be on time, keep my word, those kind of things.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, good stuff.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_05: Selling came very naturally to me.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: You enjoy it?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_05: I enjoy it.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_05: What part of it did you enjoy?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the people part.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, meeting people, learning about them, just being really relaxed around them, giving them what they want, which is the information about the product that would help them to make their decision.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you're working as a car salesman and you salesperson, sorry.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Salesperson.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Shot myself in the foot already.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, so you're working as a salesperson and you decided that you wanted to move into financial services, and you said somebody was moving into the insurance side, is that right?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so there was um like a a person who we got car loans from and he worked for with the Bank of America, and then he moved to a insurance company.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_05: And I I I I was tired of selling like selling cars was great as a first job, but it wasn't where I wanted to be ending up for the rest of my life.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_05: And so I got two job interviews, one with ICIC Prudential and another with a brokerage firm.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_05: I I got in with both, and then I decided to go with the insurance company.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_05: Prudential.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So a worldwide company.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And is that ICICI Bank?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_05: ICICI Bank, yeah.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: I used to deal a lot with um ICICI Bank in the UK when I very first got into recruitment.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I used to recruit for their UK branches.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we had a lot of people contact us from abroad, as you can imagine, from India that worked for ICICI Bank.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, so I used to deal with a lot of those, uh, a lot of those guys.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you decided to join NetBank.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So how long were you working there for then?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: I think three years.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Three years.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what were you doing when you were working there?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_05: I was a manager, a sales manager when I so I started off as a bank assurance.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um I I managed a branch quite close to the head office.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_05: And so I had to be really careful.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: Like lots of people from management from would would pop into my branch, uh, including the CEO, Mrs.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: Shikasharma, wonderful, wonderful woman.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_05: Um who who led, you know, this insurance company.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_05: And um yeah.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So a positive female in financial advice from a very early From a very early age.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_05: And so she was the CEO then, was she?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_05: She was the CEO.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So she was she quite a public figure as well?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_05: Was she Yeah, I think she had Scotek Bank or um some other I I don't remember what bank she's moved on to, but she's moved on from ICSA Prudential now.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_05: But she was there for quite a long time.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh great stuff.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: So from a um so you got a bank assurance background.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Was it similar to the bank assurance in the UK then?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Was it investments and pensions and protection?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Was it tied?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: How did it work with those guys?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then was it just prudential products?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_05: At the time it was uh ICSA prudential products and it was selling life insurance completely differently.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_05: Not so many endowment-based products with pensions and investments, but more unit-linked plans.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, stuff like that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was it quite a lot of products off the shelf and you were sort of selling it to a select few type of clients that would walk through the door, or were you actually giving full financial planning?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh pretty much a few products.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_05: A few products, yeah.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_05: Product sales.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: A bit like the banks in the UK or product providers.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Quite limited tide, if you like, yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the difference between India then selling or well providing financial advice to the UK, was there qualifications required?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Was there uh you know the equivalent of the FCA there?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: How did it work at the time?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_05: It was re it is regulated.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I don't think it's as strongly regulated as the UK.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_05: The Prudential uh ICICI Prudential gave us quite a lot of trainings and it was a very professional environment to work in.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_05: We were the first bank assurance team ever, so there was a lot of attention given to, you know, um given to how we were trained.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_05: Selling uh in India is probably different now.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know what it's like, but my experience was that uh there there was quite a lot of pushing and a lot of convincing and a lot of like real hard-core selling and follow-ups and you know, insur I was selling life insurance, which isn't the easiest thing to it has to be sold, it's not really bought, you know.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_05: Unless it's term insurance when people, you know, have a kid or something and then they decide to think about it.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well insurance is always sold off the back of the fear of something that might happen.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's about putting fear into fear-based selling, isn't it?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_05: It is a little bit, yeah.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I was at Aviva, that was the you know the concept around it and why people got financial advice, why we had customers.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I trained out customer service guys around that, you know.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So when people were making the claims as well.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, it's like fear-based selling, isn't it?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you weren't so you weren't pushing like investment products or anything like that as well?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_05: Investment-linked uh insurance products as well, yes.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um and there were some tax benefits to investing some money in pensions and things like that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: I I remember it was a time when this this was like the nine late 90s.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: India was just opening up its financial services to non-state, you know, companies.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_05: So people were very used to the life insurance company of India, which was the only life insurance uh company that existed before then, and they were used to guaranteed interest rates.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: And so the biggest challenge was to convince people to opt out of guaranteed interest rates, which were very generous, paid out by the life insurance company of India, which was the biggest financial services company in India.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and and switched to something that was marketling, stock market link, taking risks.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_05: It was, you know, it was um a different pitch.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So what about your beginnings in in in India then?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Come from humble beginnings, or were you quite sort of you come from quite a well-to-do family?
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: How how was your upbringing around in India?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's so much diversity in India, you can I picture it in my head, I've never been.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be interesting to hear your sort of background really.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_05: I was the eldest of three girls, and my mum was a single parent.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um I had a dad, but they weren't on good terms, and they split up when I was six.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_05: Humble beginnings because it's quite hard to raise three kids on a school teacher's salary in India.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_05: I was very lucky though.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_05: My mum was in education, she was a school teacher.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_05: I went to um English speaking school, we s we spoke English at home.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_05: So there was a certain standard of living, but we weren't, you know, we were we sometimes didn't get food and you know, there were hard there were hardships.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: There were hardships, yes.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: There were hardships.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: You experiencing the hardships.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't all roses.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't all roses.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_05: I had to come back from school and sometimes help my mother make pickles and make sausages and cut kilos and kilos of pork.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_05: That sounds like that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_05: Because yeah, that's what she did to earn extra income.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, she was doing it on top of her off top of her work as well.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_05: On top of her work.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_05: And then she also gave tuition, so you know, she was pretty exhausted most of the time.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Was school was was being a school teacher um a well-paid job then in India?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_05: Not really, no.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_05: Is it not?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think it's particularly well paid anywhere in the world.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_05: I think we we could value teachers a lot more than you know how to do that.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's interesting then, because financial education is kind of at the core of what you do as well.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: That I've seen on Instagram and you know, your conscious money blogs, and we'll talk about that a bit later.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that then obviously led you to leave India and and and move to England.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about that, because education had a part to play in that as well, didn't it?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was trying to get my MBA because I was in middle level management and that was one way to progress my career.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_05: And you have to remember India is a very populated country.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_05: So to differentiate yourself, education seems to be the ticket, and you know, you you just buy into that when you're there.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: I'm so glad it's not such a it's it's not such a big deal in the UK.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_05: Experience counts quite a bit.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um so my best friend found uh this MBA degree in the UK, and she said we could work part-time and study full-time.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_05: And it sounded like a good deal to me.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_05: So I applied for student loan, applied to the university, got in, got my visa, and then moved.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, cool.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_05: What university was that then?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_05: Leeds Metropolitan.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes I say Leeds.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_05: Mumbai.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_05: Mumbai to Leeds.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, Mumbai to Leeds.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: Well, that's a bit of a culture shock, wasn't it?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_05: A bit of a shock, uh temperature-wise, yes.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I've met.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Crikey.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you ended up in the UK.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that you know, so so how old were you when you moved to the UK?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty-seven.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty-seven.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you had how many years did you have then in financial services whilst you were in India?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_05: Probably uh five, six years.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so when you were when you were a prudential in India, you started as a salesperson, so like an insurance sales, and you said you went all the way up to sales management.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was like I was managing a team of people in bank assurance.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: In bank assurance.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So how many people were you managing?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_05: Um fifteen.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: About fifteen.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd established yourself quite well in India.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So to make that sort of transition from India to the UK, what was your perception at the time?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because I get approached by a lot of people who live in like South Africa or India that are well qualified, well experienced as you were, but want to come to the UK and transfer their skills.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: What was your perception when you were in India moving to the UK?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Did you think you could just transfer those skills straight across, or were you just purely focused on your MBA?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_05: What was your sort of I was purely focused on my MBA.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_05: I had every intention of coming back to India.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_05: Right, okay.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_05: And it was just a very temporary thing in my mind.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you started focusing on the MBA.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what was the MBA in again?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um it was a general MBA, like a business MBA.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Business MBA, yeah.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you started doing that at 27 years old when you got to the UK.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And how long did that take you to do?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_04: A year.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: A year.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then that MBA ended and you decided to remain in the UK?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_05: I decided to remain in the UK.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_05: I was uh I was married at the time to somebody who was doing his PhD in Bournemouth University.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_05: We both decided to come and study in the UK at the same time.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so I just got a dependent spouse visa and decided to stick on.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: We were trying to work on our marriage, and so it made sense for me too.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_05: So I moved from Leeds back to Bournemouth.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_05: For a few months.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So at what stage then did you then decide?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So how did you then get into financial advice in the UK?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: What was your route into financial advice in the UK?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because I can imagine it was probably relatively difficult.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_05: While I was a student, I worked in Halifax selling insurance, home insurance, and things like that, travel insurance over the phone.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_05: And so I still had like my feet dipped in financial services.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_05: When I moved to Bournemouth, I worked for Household Bank, which is now defunct.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_05: It was a like a sister concern of HSBC Bank.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_05: They sold very exorbitant loans.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_05: And I really didn't like it.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_05: Like it was selling things that I didn't believe in over the phone to people that I thought were very vulnerable, you know.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I was terrible at it.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought I started questioning, you know, maybe I'm not a good salesperson because I can't do this.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I was very stressed out.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, um that was in a contact centre though, wasn't it?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_05: That was, yeah, that was like in a in a in a in a bank uh office, in an office.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, but through the phones.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Was it loans and things?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Loans and things, yeah.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I remember them, yeah.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think I worked for one of the similar sort of companies.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: They were really bad loans, weren't they?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know about it.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hard hard job that.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_05: So I didn't enjoy it and I decided to do something else, which was working for an employee benefits consulting.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't enjoy that either.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_05: And so after a couple of years I decided to go back into a bank.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, start right at the bottom.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_05: As a trainee financial planning manager with HSBC Bank.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_05: I think I applied to a couple of banks and they declined because they couldn't see my work experience.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um HSBC gave me a shot.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: HSBC gave you a shot, which absolutely was an incredible route into the industry.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I mean when I started recruiting eleven and a half years ago, we recruited for all the major banks.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the bank assurance advice advice market was the place to be able to send people.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if we if you were looking for a route into financial advice, I mean if you started as a cashier but you had a a a vision or of wanting to become a financial advisor, then the training and the development and everything was there in in in front of you, um, which you just don't seem to get these days.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So for you it was a it was a clear route, wasn't it?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever try to get into um financial planning practices like IFAs or wealth management firms?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Did you did you kind of understand that at the time or I had no concept of what was available.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_05: And what was familiar to me was, you know, I I was so stuck in in that job, I wasn't enjoying it.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_05: I knew I wasn't very good at uh selling employee benefit packages.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_05: And I had a lot of confidence issues because I had a little hang up about my accent.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_05: I was an immigrant, I didn't quite understand the jokes, I didn't quite understand the TV, con like TV-related conversations in the UK.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_05: It took me a little while to catch up with it.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_05: And so yeah, I felt like completely like a fish out of water.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_05: And so I thought, let me just find a job where you know I I there's some familiarity.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: So familiarity being that you've worked in the bank before in the past.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think the route into um so let's say for example someone's starting their their journey now, they're thinking about becoming a financial advisor?
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you think it's worthwhile that somebody cuts their teeth, say, within a contact centre of a bank, or perhaps just focuses in on one specific area of financial advice, uh or financial services, say, before embarking on a journey into a financial advice role?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's beneficial going through like a contact centre type training environment, if you like?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_05: It depends because I don't selling in a contact centre and selling in person is different.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, anything that gives you some confidence in talking to people and talking about a product and you know.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I found it because for me, I I used to work for Aviva.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I started in Aviva for on in in the customer service team.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd be on the telephone answering calls from people about their mortgage endowment plans or their pension plans and um with profit bonds and premium bonds, all these different types of bonds that were the Aviva that were the Aviva products that were sold through the Royal Bank of Scotland.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, that was kind of like a my uh my first exposure, if you like, to investments.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we learned about the FTSE and we learned about you know what makes up a fund and all those typical types of small things that we had to know that we couldn't give advice on, obviously, because we were customer service agents and people were saying, should I take my money out or not?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we were like, we can't give you that advice.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it was at the time, and I look back on it, a really great way for me to get a good understanding of investments and the industry as a whole, and as I naturally progressed through that into like training and development of um training and development of newbies that came on, you know, I could see how um it was it was a really good starting point for somebody.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I do think the contact centres within the UK, especially within financial services, can be a great place for new people to start their journey into financial advice.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, there's a fair few people that joined when I did that are now chartered financial advisers.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So one guy, uh Rich McDaddy um at Tilney, and he's doing incredibly well.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he started on the telephone exactly the same thing as I did, but he's a chartered financial planner.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I do see that kind of route being quite attractive for somebody who's looking for a way into financial advice because that route that you had into HSBC, for example, isn't there anymore.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there isn't these trainee financial advisor roles in abundance that are out there.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, a lot of time we have to argue with companies to say, look, advertise that as a trainee advice role because what you're looking for is a trainee advisor.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: So did you have your level four qualifications at that point?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had no qualifications in the UK.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, right.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: There we go, that's amazing, isn't it?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So how when what what date was that?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: When was this?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_05: This was October, sorry, October 2005, 2006, probably.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_05: Something like that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, April.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, May 2006, something like that.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, okay.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, 2007 actually.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: 2007.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So not that not ages ago, but yeah, it's not that long ago, is it?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So no qualification.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you had to pass your well, it's pre-RDR, wasn't it?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_05: So Yeah, so I I got into this bank in Southampton and the branch manager was very not excited to see me because he he realized that he had somebody a liability on his hands.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_05: I couldn't I couldn't talk to clients, I couldn't answer the phones, I couldn't do anything.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_05: And so I I went into a mad rush to get my qualification so I could get back on his good side.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_05: Because I was in his branch sitting for six months training, you know.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what again, so he had a bit of a problem with you today.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, because if you if you if a branch takes on a person and they they can't actually sell, they can't actually produce, they can't actually contribute, then you know, when you're a competitive branch manager, you're seen as a bit of a oh, and you know, I hadn't proven myself in any capacity.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they are super competitive as well.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: I used to recruit into the branches as well, HSBC.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, they are super competitive, the personal bankers as well.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Proper sales machines, weren't they?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was a great, a great ground to get into financial advice as well, is learning to, you know, as like premier relationship managers as they were, and personal bankers.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it was a great point.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so how long did it take you to get past your exams then?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_05: Probably six months.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like I I really worked hard and and got the initial exams and then started producing and he was very happy with me eventually.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: So so what did you pass your did you did you go up to level four qualification?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Were you doing FPCs or were you?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, FBCs, yeah.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_05: So they they had levels within HSBC, so you could do a s a certain number of exams.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_05: So first you did mortgages, then you passed those, and you did investments a certain level, and then you did, you know, pensions, and so you just kept adding more and more things and doing e internal exams.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you were at HSBC, and you came as a training advisor, so within six months you got up to the qualifications required for you to give financial advice.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, on mortgages.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: On mortgages.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you started in the mortgage arena.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So when you said training financial advisor, it was really a mortgage role.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_05: It started it starts off like that.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_05: And then you can quickly lose your mortgage role and move on to investments and pensions, which was what I wanted to do.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: I wasn't very good at I like I did I did mortgages because I had to, but I was really interested in investments and pensions and that side of things.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how come you were so interested in investments and pensions?
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um I've always been interested in the stock markets and how they work and how people can, you know, make money through investing, and that side of things is much more intellectually uh challenging and and fun to explain to clients than talking about a mortgage.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_05: I mean to me, I know I know a lot of advisors enjoy talking to people about them uh about mortgages because it's uh it creates an emotional connection also and it is nice, but I prefer the investment side.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when you said there about the emotional connection then, so do people get quite emotional around investments then?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, not about investments, no, about buying a buying a house they do, I think.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_05: But around investments, yeah.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_05: I uh I don't know if they get emotional, but they have um more um challenges, you know, and fears and uh irrational behaviours and habits.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_05: We all do, I mean even financial advisors do.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's also the unknown, isn't it?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think when people are sitting down, they've got large sums of money and they're passing it over to somebody else, then that's their future potentially, isn't it?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um there is a lot of unknowns, and I think also as well when it comes around, especially around ethical investments as well, people get concerned and worried where their monies are being invested and what damage it might well do.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um you've got quite an interest in ethical investing, haven't you?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you what sort of stuff do you do around ethical investing?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_05: Um so I have a lot of clients who are drawn to me because of my values and because of what I put out there on my social media on Twitter or or Instagram or whatever.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_05: And um so so maybe 60% of my clients choose to invest ethically.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_05: I ask all my clients.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um and usually the topics that are on people's minds are things like climate change, you know, they don't want to invest in fossil fuels, they don't want to invest in companies that are violating human rights.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's moved on from alcohol and pornography and tobacco, you know, it's it's much more intricate now.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_05: And it's quite fun to talk it's quite fun to talk about ethical investing because you get to talk about what's really juicy for the client, you know, what they believe in and what their values are.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: A bit passionate, passionate as well, and you can align their beliefs, I suppose, to their investment.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: If they feel like they are investing in a way that's adding good to the world, yeah.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: And they're making money out of it, I think that's good, isn't it?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna make you feel good.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I think as an advisor, you have to have your niche, uh you have to follow your interests.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_05: And I find it interesting.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, an advisor who doesn't find ethical investing interesting could find a different kind of niche, you know.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: But why do you think um is when it comes to actually making profits, is ethical investing as profitable as a mixture of unethical and ethical?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_05: There aren't any conclusive studies to say that ethical outperforms all the time, or non-ethical or mainstream investments outperform ethical investments.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_05: But if you have a couple of years where, let's say, extractive industries like oil and gas suffer, then most ethical investors will do better because they don't have investments in those kind of sectors.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_05: So it really depends.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_05: It's hard to say one way or the other.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_05: Although there have been more and more studies saying that there is such such a thing as an alpha from investing ethically because more and more companies are moving towards being more environmentally friendly.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So do you find that your clients I're talking about the present day here, but we're going to talk about it.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you find that your clients now currently do they ask for ethical investments or are they are you kind of educating them to the benefits of investing ethically, or do you choose more ethical investment strategy yourself and guide them down that path?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: How do you present it, I suppose?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so from the time I started as a financial advisor, I always let clients know that investing ethically was an option.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_05: In the last couple of years, people come to me for ethical investing because of my blog and because it's something that I talk about and write about and um yeah.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just something of it, you know, you you put yourself out there as somebody who's interested in ethical investment.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: You speak to your clients about it.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you put it out there, it just one thing leads to another and you tend to kind of look at that area as well.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_05: And part of your job as a financial advisor is to ask a client, you know, do you want to invest ethically?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_05: It's one of the questions on our fact find.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_05: So it's a requirement to ask.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is a requiremental ask, is it?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I didn't know that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a require it's a requiremental ask.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_05: By the FCA, the regulator.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's a recent requirement.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_05: It hasn't been in place for all this time, but certainly in the last year.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what's the answer, usually?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um some clients are like, what is investing ethically?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_05: You know, they don't know that that it's an option.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_05: And then when you explain to them, they're like, Of course I'm an ethical investor.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh some clients are no, I would rather just you know invest in everything because they know that if they invest ethically, then possibly they're not going to be in um the SP 500 index, for example, you know, because you you're not invested necessarily in passive funds.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_05: And so they say I I want to just pay the least amount of fees and I don't care about ethics.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_05: So it's yeah, as a financial advisor, I don't see my job as being the moral police and guiding clients into ethical investing.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_05: It's just offering them the option of if that's what they want, then I offer it to them.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_05: All right, cool.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_05: All right, great stuff.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think probably now more than ever, people are a bit more open and aware to the damage that investing can do um to communities outside directly their own.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: So they're a bit more open to it, aren't they?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um certainly if I'm choosing any investments, I'd be thinking about what damage my investment is doing to somebody else's life, because I don't particularly want somebody to suffer for my gain.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think that's really cool.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think some financial advisors, not all not all some financial advisors out there, are marketing themselves as purely ethical in ethical investments.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, is that allowed?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you actually just say that I am an ethical investor and that's all I do, or is that a bad advice?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: How does that sit?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had this conversation with somebody in the pub and I was like, why don't you just set yourself up as an ethical investor and all you do is ethical investment.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't sure whether or not that's the the right thing to do.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_05: I guess well you always well if if all you do is ethical investing and then you then you don't attract clients that don't want to invest ethically, I suppose.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_05: And that's perfectly fine.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're basically alienating anybody or it's FCA rules around it or anything like that.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_05: I mean there's so many advisors that are out there that uh people can turn to if they want to invest non-ethically, also.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_05: I do both.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_05: I do ethical and non-ethical.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you make the option available to them.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose that's a great way of um establishing your niche, really, isn't it?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your niche audience.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk about that in a bit about branding and personal branding and trying to find your tribe really.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to go back to you because obviously you joined HSBC as a trainee.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: You had that lovely opportunity to step across.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're an immigrant coming from uh you know, from India.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Joined from India.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Started at the bottom in the UK after being a sales manager, became a mortgage advisor, didn't quite enjoy that as much for HSBC.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you then go from there?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Did you become a financial advisor for HSBC or did you step outside?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_05: I stayed with HSBC for six and a half years.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_05: I moved from Southampton where I was based to Canary Wharf.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_05: And it was a great place to cut my teeth because I worked with a lot of people in finance that were very stressed out, mostly like investment banker types.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_05: With big bonuses in those days.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, yeah, that was and yeah, uh, I I just kept getting promotions and kept doing my exams and kept moving on and eventually became chartered with HSBC.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, great stuff.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: So how long did it take you from joining HSBC to becoming chartered?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_05: I think it was two and a half or three years.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_05: I had an MBA degree, and so you get credits if you've done a master's degree, a certain amount of credits, so things were quicker for me.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_05: It was quicker.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: How did you find the exams?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did you find them difficult or?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_05: Difficult because it's hard to study and work and you know, your brains get rustier.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: They get older.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_05: It is really a thing.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: How old were you when you passed your your charters?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I must have been like 32, 33.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: So a good age as well.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Chartered female financial planets.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect there probably wasn't a great deal of chartered female adviser advisors out there at that time.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_05: Probably not, but there were quite a few with an HSBC because the bank had quite a a strong uh push towards you know getting all your qualifications.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well that's it.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I've um one of my guests later on actually spoken to me that when he joined as a cashier, they recognised him and what he was about and could see that he could be probably a good financial advisor.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And they literally took him off the job to focus 100% of his time on passing his exams.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he really struggled by the signs of it.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he just it's just unheard of now.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's no opportunity really that I could ever see that would allow someone to have that sort of training.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the I think with the banks it was a great training ground for financial advisors because you know they they they hired a lot of people and they and they put them through their qualifications, and um I think without as many in the bank short as market now, it's um damaging the effect of how many advisors come into the industry.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we saw that when the you know when RDR happened and the bank kicked the advice kicked the advisors out.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: You either sank a lot of them either sank or swim, you know, a lot of them aged out of the market, a lot of them didn't want to do their exams.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: But um you know, some of them went off and became self-employed advisors, but there was then a definite lack of new blood coming into the industry.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: You just didn't really see it.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, cool.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: So HSBC Chartered Financial Planner, and there we are.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you were at HSBC as a charter financial planner, and you were advising investment bankers, all these high rollers.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Did did you where were you in your league tables then?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because that was always a big thing at HSBC.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Were you quite high up?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was pretty much second, third, or first.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_05: Were you?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: What in the whole country?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_05: Among financial planning managers, you know, among uh among FBMs we they called us.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_05: We were FBMs, yeah.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what were you writing in respect of business per year then?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_05: I can't remember, but uh one quarter I wrote like ninety thousand in three months.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_05: In the first quarters, which was my whole year's target.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's a bit.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_05: But it we I was also in Canary Wolf in a very competitive branch, and everyone there, you know, was at their A game.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_05: So I I l worked pretty hard.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Was it competitive with the people that you were working with in the branch?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they had more than one financial planning manager in that branch.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: They did, yes.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was so you guys were kind of gunning for the the the the the client as they walked through the door.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_05: There was sort of an understanding, but uh they would often pick the one that was faster at closing business.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a limit onto the amount of advice that you could actually give before you pass that over to somebody else?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_05: There was a limit, yes.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: How much is that you mean?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_05: I think I can't I think it might have been 100,000.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because they've got what they call now like premier relationship managers now that deal with like the million pound type clients.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Were you dealing with those types?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_05: So back in the day the FPMs would deal with like more of the smaller wealth clients, and uh then you have the I that you had the IFAs, I think they were called Premier IFAs or something, and they they dealt with like the bigger stuff.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_05: Alright, cool.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So you're at HSBC chartered, you're a top of your game, you're doing really well.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: You were pretty much number one in the UK, which is pretty amazing.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or two or three, yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Two or three.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: So around the top three.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um so what what did you how long did you remain at HSBC for then?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: Six years, six and a half years in total.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then you decided to move on.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_05: I decided to move on, yeah.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you what what was that?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: What was the reason for that?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_05: I took a sabbatical.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_05: HSBC allows you to take a sabbatical if you work with them for five years.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_05: Um I was getting very disillusioned with product selling.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_05: I I think at some point when you work in the same career, you mature as a person.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_05: And um I couldn't offer my clients what they really wanted.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_05: I was product pushing and I was disillusioned with that.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_05: Also, HSBC was going through some internal changes themselves with FCA regulations and they were combining the financial advisor role with the premier relationship manager roles.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't want to talk about credit cards or loans or any of that.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_05: I was very interested only in talking about investments.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so um, and increasingly we were being managed by Excel spreadsheets and things like that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_05: So um the manager that I liked that turned his nose at me when I walked in on my first day, he was no longer my manager.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_05: He had actually moved to Canary Wharf as well.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah, so there were like multiple reasons why I decided, okay, that's it.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_05: I've got to I've just got to go figure out how to find my own business and work for myself.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you had that thought process in your head at that stage.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: It was about working for yourself as opposed to going to work for somebody else.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't think that I would become an IFA stupidly.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_05: I tried Avon and I tried like I tried different I thought, what can I do to work for myself?
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_05: What how can I bring in income?
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_05: It never came to me that I could set up as an independent financial advisor.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_05: Really?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you weren't approached by recruitment consultants or other companies like St.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: James's Place, for example.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_05: We, you know, I used to have coffee with someone from St.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_05: James's Place every month.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_05: But I didn't I honestly didn't think that it was a possibility for me.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_05: I think, you know, it it takes a certain level of confidence, and it took me a little while to embody even the idea that I could be an independent financial advisor.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_05: Because it it sounded it um it sounded like something that was very far away from me.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_05: And rem I was a financial planning manager, you know, IFAs were considered like another level up, like gods when from where I was.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_05: So I was like, am I going to be able to do that?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_05: It sounds very complex, it sounds very hard.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: So there was an element of prestige attached to to being an IFA and you felt like you were a bank assurance, it was nothing you couldn't do it.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's strange.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not strange, I can understand exactly why you might think like that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: I spoke to lots of people from the banks that you know you trying to convince them that the world of being a financial advisor is outside of a bank is a is the best place.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um I can understand that, and um but you were chartered, you you you were top of your game, um, you know, and so there was a a bit of a limited belief, I guess.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you even went off to try something completely different because you wanted to work for yourself, but yeah.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: So what okay, so that's interesting because I wonder how many people out there now are in that same position.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do they fully understand the transition of what it takes to be a bank assurance advisor or working for a product provider, for example, stepping into the world of financial advice as an independent financial advisor?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about that.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: What did you do to get the confidence to move into the IFA world?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_05: There was a big fear that if I don't have a job to motivate me and to go to work nine to five or whatever, you know, will I will I wake up and do the work needed?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_05: Will will I have that same fire in my belly, you know, with all the freedom?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_05: There was that fear.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_05: Being an independent financial advisor wasn't it wasn't so easy.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I had support.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_05: My I have a very supportive husband.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_05: I set aside some savings for the first year.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_05: I knew the first year would be very difficult to get clients to start trusting you and to start placing money with you when you have not much of a you know, not many reviews or anything to talk about.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: Starting from scratch, basically.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_05: Starting from scratch.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_05: And you also it's a massive learning curve because even though I worked in the bank and I had a lot of experience, I had no idea what an independent financial advisor actually did.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_05: So I had to learn like research tools and things like that.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: So um you were so when you left the bank, obviously you're leaving behind because when you say independent financial advisor, at that point in your head were you thinking by leaving bank assurance, I'm gonna have to be self-employed.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Was that your mindset?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_05: That was pretty much my mindset.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was that your mindset because that was the only options that were out there at the time was either be employed by, say, a bank or be self-employed?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_05: I just didn't want to work for anyone anymore.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you had that in your mind that I just didn't want to work for anybody else anymore.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: So why was that?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm quite quite intrigued as to understand why you don't want to work for anybody else.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_05: Even when I worked in HSBC or when I worked in car sales in my first job in Mumbai, I had very much this idea that I work for myself and I I used to achieve my targets and I hated being told what to do and being controlled and things like that.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_05: Um so that's why it was it was very clear to me.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it was a it didn't particularly like somebody planning out your week or telling you what you should be doing, or did it take away the freedom of you feeling like you're living the life that you went you wanted to you you wanted to live?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_05: I suppose when you do a job, you know, you like there are certain things that aggrav aggravate you, but you have to put up with it because that's what a job is.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh unproductive meetings, sitting and listening to drivel and things like that, you know?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_05: I was just done with all that.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_05: I just didn't want to.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't matching the lifestyle that you wanted to leave, probably as well, I guess.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: I can understand that.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't particularly like working for Viva.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like the red tape and everything that I wanted to do, how I wanted to present myself in the training meetings.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had to speak to technical ten million times.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like it just stifled my creativity.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: And however hard I wanted to work, it made no difference to how much I could earn.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it you felt like a bit of a cog in a wheel, a bit of a machine as well, you know.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I mean I was very grateful to the bank for giving me so many opportunities to learn and but I think there comes a point in your life when you outgrow it and you become really good at what you do and you have to go and figure out what's the next level of growth.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_05: And for me, the next level of growth was working for myself.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Working for yourself.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you didn't even think about being an IFA.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: So then obviously you did.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: How did that come about?
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: How did you think about what okay, well I'll step into an IFA world?
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_05: So I started talking to colleagues and saying, you know, I was disillusioned and I was looking at options, and then they they encouraged me.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: So at the bank, a couple of um financial advisor colleagues said, I had another financial advisor colleague that was looking at being a school teacher.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so we were both sort of carving out our escape routes at the same time and encouraging each other.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_05: And then I yeah, then I talked to different financial advisory firms, and they seemed open to take me on, so that was encouraging.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_05: They didn't say no, you don't have the experience as an IFA.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_05: So that gave me a little bit Okay.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: They gave you a little push.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great stuff.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: So um what were the okay, so let's talk about that then.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: Moving from an employed perspective, sorry, moving from an employed position into self-employed as an IFA, what was the first year like?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_05: Very lonely.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I watched a lot of Netflix.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_05: I watched the good the good wife, you know, on my couch for many days.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_05: I was not always motivated.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_05: Took me a lot of uh it took a lot of courage to make phone calls to clients and you know, like all the confidence that I had when I was in the bank, yeah, I had to I had real issues with doing simple tasks in the first year.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_05: But as uh more and more clients signed up with me, I grew in my confidence.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_05: You know, but I I knew that the first year would be hard, would be lonely, I would be, you know, I was used to working in a very social environment with lots of people around me, going out for drinks after work or whatever.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_05: And there was just me at home.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't even have an office then.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_05: So it was I was quite needy when my husband came home.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: I bet, yeah, I bet you were.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: I bet he was like, get off the sofa.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what did so who did you join then?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Who did you did you go, you you say you left the bank.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't go and set up your own company and become a directly authorized financial advice practice.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: I assume you joined a network or a a company as a registered individual.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: So who was that you joined?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_05: So I made a little bit of a mistake.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_05: I joined a really lovely firm, a small financial planning firm in Deal in Kent.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_05: Um but the mistake I made was I picked a firm that wasn't very high technology.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_05: At the time they were using Microsoft Word and they were, you know, it was very sort of old school uh financial planning practices.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_05: While I worked in HSBC, we used to use a laptop, like a like I used to input my fact fine and talk to the client at the same time, and everything was live, you know, really like efficient.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_05: Efficiency and competency are very important to me.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I just almost had a breakdown after six months.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_05: I like cried and sobbed and said, I'm really sorry.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_05: I uh I need to opt out of this place.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_05: And they were very kind and let me go.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it just literally got to a point where you think I just can't do this.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: So were you working in their office or were you working purely from home, or is it?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_05: I was working from home and I would go to Deal um every two weeks for some training, and you know, and they would help me out on my first few cases.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what's your perception about them before you it's not here to bash your old employer, but it happens a lot.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: So people will leave a bank or they'll leave an employer, go and join somebody else, and it's just not what they expected it to be.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Was that did you feel the uh the proposition that the the the the company that you were going into oversold it or promised too much?
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Or was it just you know why did you choose them?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: There must have been some reason.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there must have been lots of people sort of saying come and join me, but why why did you choose?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think I looked at m too many options and I think I was so keen to get out of HSBC and I needed to have something in place before I left.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_05: And they fast tracked the process.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't I don't think I really saw how difficult it would be to do a m a word fact find and how soul crushing it would be to write suitability letters that were just long and you know.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: So stepping into that initial stepping away from bank short and security of a job, uh salary, everything like that into the self-employed world, what advice would you give to somebody who's at that stage now thinking, do you know what I can do this myself?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_05: Meet various different forms and in that process work out what is important to you.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_05: So for me, I worked out that technology was very important.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_05: I need like a modern setup.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_05: I I had to upload things through the internet, you know.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, that's probably all sort of standard now.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um and I needed like a non-interference approach, not somebody who's trying to give me targets because what's you know, you're self-employed for a reason.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_05: You don't want someone breathing down your neck.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_05: And for me, it was very important to be a true independent financial advisor, which means that if I decided to offer an ethical portfolio to my client, that I wasn't told, oh no, you have to pick this particular product and this particular model.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_05: So those were the kind of things that were important to me.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that were important to you.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the advice to somebody at this position might well be in that same position that you were is just take a good look at the market, review the different companies, but perhaps look underneath the bonnet a little bit and find out what their systems and processes are really like.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps create a comparison table.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just go along to the same the the first company that perhaps rolls out the red carpet to you know, have a good look and look around.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know that's very much the advice that that we give and the idea of recruitment companies that we should know the market really that matches what somebody's expectations are and what they what they're looking for, what they need.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a good thing.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Write down what it is that you want out of your next job.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we say to people.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: Don't come to me saying you want a job, come to me say telling me what it is you want.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I'm gonna happily find you something that you want, and I'd much rather do that than present you with a load of options that are being that are gonna be wrong for you.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_05: And ask to attend their member meetings to get the vibe, ask to meet a couple of financial advisors, ask to have a look at the systems and see, you know, what like like talk to people offline, not when you're whoever's hiring you is in the room, but you know, I think that's important.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's some good advice.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: I like that.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: So then that wasn't right for you, that company, and then you moved on to Two Plan.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_05: Two plan.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is when I met you.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: We did an article about uh you really, wasn't it?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: And about reasons why you joined Two Plan.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: So um tell us a little bit about you know why you joined Two Plan then.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_05: I found their approach of a pretty um modern and you know efficient setup, a nice tablet, uh to uh a laptop, light laptop to work with.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh they're very good on compliance.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_05: They have very few, I think maybe only two complaints in the last 10 years that were upheld, which is one of the things as a financial advisor is you want to work with a company that's that's really taking care of their clients and taking care of you.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_05: That's your longevity as an advisor.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_05: And so those are the things that stood out for me.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that looking after you, looking after the clients, a good track record.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, they're independent as well.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you join them as a as a registered individual.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of you thinking I'm gonna go set up my own business, joining someone like Tupan's gonna look after all the compliance side, you know, they've got the systems in place and the technology in place, some of the best I've seen actually, which is which is definitely which is definitely a bonus, and it makes your life and your job a lot easier, doesn't it?
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, when they have their member meetings, there's a lot of banter advisors can be a cheeky bunch.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_05: They they take it on a chin, you know, the management team.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_05: They have pretty approachable.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_05: You can say, I don't like this, and they they will listen.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_05: So that's quite important, I think, in the culture of uh member meetings.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_05: I have been to member meetings where the person, one person just talks at you, and there's there's no productive use of time.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_05: And at Tuplan, they value efficiency.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_05: They're really like, you know.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's interesting to me is that they're leads-based, and your first place that you you went to is Leeds, wasn't it?
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: So perhaps you're just like the Yorkshiremen.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, perhaps, yeah.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's a they do definitely have a different way up north.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you felt at home, perhaps.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's really good.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's really good to hear.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: And how how has it been since joining Two Plan?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: How so you've you've gone through that stressful stage of being in bank assurance, going to the wrong company, and you're not alone on that front.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: So many people do that when they they leave an employee role.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: It usually takes a couple of chances, couple of couple of attempts to find the right home.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: You've now set yourself up under two plan.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been there for?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I think this is my sixth deal.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sixth year?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it must be working for you then.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great stuff.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_00: So just tell me about what's happened over these last six years.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the journey from setting up your own business to to now.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: What's you know, talk to me about like what were the biggest challenges that you came up against?
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_05: Learning the systems, learning how to write suitability letters, which for the first six months they checked everything and they were very, you know, they were very patient with all the mistakes I made.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so that things went to the client without mistakes, you know, they were checked prior.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh the biggest challenge I would say is finding my niche, uh, creating, you know, who I am as a financial advisor, creating my brand and putting myself out there.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_05: That that's yeah.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's talk about branding then, because I think branding is very important, especially now, more so than ever, with social media and getting yourself seen and standing out in the noise of marketing and social media.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you've set yourself up under two plan as an AR firm.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got your own brand, and that brand is called Conscious Money.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: So just talk to me about how you know how important is branding to you?
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's very important because I walked into an industry where there are many established financial advisors.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_05: I know there's like these jokes about the typical IFA being 55 and white and male.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_05: And so, yeah.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm quite different to that uh demographic.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_05: Also, I walked into the industry and realized that all um accountants and you know people who refer leads to me were taken.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_05: They were like, oh no, I've already got an established financial advisor relationship.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I was like, Well, how am I how am I going to find clients besides you know being on directories like vouched for or unbiased or um the ethical investment association?
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_05: How else can I create demand where people can come to me instead of meeting, you know, it's I mean it's you you can't really just walk up to clients and say, Can I help you manage your money?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_05: They have to they have to walk into your door.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_05: And so I I started, I went to a BI networking meeting for the first couple of years of starting my business, which wasn't helpful at all in getting clients, but helped me in having a support network of people who are also in established businesses.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_05: And one of the um ladies there who was in marketing told me to set up my website.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: So I did that.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_05: And um I started like a newsletter, and um a couple of years in into my business, one of my clients who also is very good at marketing said, I've signed up to your newsletter and I haven't received a single one for six months.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_05: So, what are you doing?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_05: And then she started coaching me.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_05: So I said, Oh, you know, there's too many emails and there's da-da-da.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I had so many fears about sending and a newsletter.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_05: And so she just spent, she she was actually going through a redundancy, so she had time to give me, and she just spent time coaching me and saying, You are serving people by making yourself available, like by making yourself known.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_05: You're not imposing on them.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_05: If they don't want your newsletter, they'll unsubscribe.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_03: Correct, yeah.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_05: Put yourself out there.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_05: Why aren't you on Instagram?
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, I don't even know what Instagram is.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_05: Why aren't you on Twitter?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_05: You're not tweeting anything.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, you you need to have your voice, connect with people in your industry.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_05: And so I I did what she said.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was the route that came out.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it took somebody in marketing to sort of turn around to you to get you to recognize the importance of personal brand and the importance of getting your message out there.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: So she was a client of yours as well.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: She was a client of mine.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: So she wanted to s she wanted to hear from you.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted to hear from you, you know.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_05: She was, why why and why am I not getting any emails when I'm signing up to And she believed in me and being a woman, she wanted to encourage a woman in business, and she's you know, so it it was also very important for her to encourage me and support me and to share and mentor and and give you some support in in in the area that you're you're not perhaps strong in.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, absolutely.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think personal branding at the moment is uh it is massively on point, you know.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's something that, especially within the financial advice industry, I think is not being utilized well enough by financial advisors.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of the marketing is very old, um, a lot of the marketing is very stiff, it doesn't really show a personality, I find.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't connect with an audience, I don't believe.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think the personal brand is all about getting your personality across and helping your clients understand a little bit more about you that isn't just I make you money, you know, it is a little bit about your personality as well, why you do it, how you do things, what money means to you, what money mean you know, what your future might mean.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a bit of a piece around financial education as well, isn't it?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's interesting that you popped yourself on Instagram because not many financial advisors use Instagram, and I think this is a really great platform to showcase who you are.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, why did you pick Instagram out of interest why you when you started using it?
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because it what are your preferred platforms that you'll use now you've established yourself as a bit of a brand?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_05: I use Facebook, but it's mostly my friends and family that follow me.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, absolutely.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I like the visuals of Instagram.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_05: And it's an authentic place to get your message across.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_05: You know, people are very real on Instagram.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_05: They're not like on Facebook you can be quite contrived, and you know, people put pictures of themselves to make themselves look a certain way.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sure that happens on Instagram too, but I find it much more of a real platform.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, it's visual.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's visual.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't particularly care to find clients on Instagram.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_05: What I know is that when a client comes to my website and they want to have a quick look at what I'm about, they can go and flick through my Instagram um profile and they get a pretty good idea of, you know, oh, this person is for me, or no, this person is not for me.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_05: Can I connect with this person?
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, like I put things about plants, my allotment, books I read, nonviolent communication.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_05: So it's all out there.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_05: So then, you know, they can they get they get the vibe.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: They can be interested in you.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I must admit, when I follow your Instagram page, I you you come across as interesting.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: There are certain things like the medit in meditation, in the certain books that you read, um, the spiritual belief.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's very interesting to me.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I connect with you.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm thinking I want to speak to a financial advisor, I'm going to speak to Cleona because she's on my page.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it's it's it definitely works.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it certainly does work.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I just think um it's a it's an area where financial advisors are falling a bit short on.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've got your Martin Bamford's out there at the moment, your Phil Brays are setting up their marketing agencies to help financial advice practices stand out in the noise and change their image.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that changing of personal brand as well and changing of image will also attract more people to the industry because when you do a Google search, and I do a lot of Google search and financial advice companies, a lot of them look really boring, you know, and I think we just need to bring them alive, bring them to life a little bit.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: My advice to any financial advisor is to invest in your invest in your personal brand and get seen.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's not a marketing's not a quick process, it's a um it's a long game.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got to build your audiences.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a it could be your mum and mum and dad following you, you know, week one, but by by the end of the year you might have 200 people following you that will also buy your services, and that creates that connection, doesn't it?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because your page as well on your website is all about you and um it's very personable and talking about your um what do you call it when you your plants?
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you you're really into plants, aren't you?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_04: What's the term for that?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_04: What's the gardening?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: There was a different sort of like Permaculture?
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_05: That was it, what was it?
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's um it's a way of honouring nature and nature's rhythms when you plant things, and you know, like like uh yeah, like like being careful with nature's resources.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which means that it shows that you care about the planet, which connects you to ethical investing, yeah, which makes me feel quite comfortable.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see straight away how that builds a connection.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what it's all about, that lovely connection.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, great stuff.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: So let's m you know, let's talk a little bit about You're a woman.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not a man.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um Women in Financial Advice, there's quite a big big subject at the moment.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: I put an article out recently about you know there should be more women in financial advice and what can we do about it.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it got a lot of uh a lot of likes, a lot of shares, um, and a lot of messages sent to me.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: First off, I want to ask you, as a woman in financial advice, you know, is it a great career for a female?
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what does it offer?
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, why is it suited to a female, for instance?
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_05: You especially if you have a family, you can cover the hours you want to work.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_05: You have a lot of choice and when you do meetings.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_05: You have choice about the kind of clients that you take.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot around, say, flexibility of time.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose that matters when you're in a in uh in a role where you're uh uh self-employed, for instance, not so much so if you're employees, because one of the biggest bugbearers or the biggest um requests, one of the biggest um pieces of advice that came back from financial advisors about how you can attract more people to the industry was companies need to be more flexible around time.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say for you got a lot of females that are working in power planning roles, administration roles, support roles, they tend to be drawn towards those types of positions anyway, as an entry point.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a lot of financial advisors saying that you know, flexibility needs to be there from an employee perspective.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: If I need to be able to pick my children up or I've got family commitments, then flexi work hours need to be there.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's quite a big thing.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_00: We brought it in in our office and you know, it does work.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a bit it takes a little while to get used to the trust side of it, but it does work and it makes life people's lives easier.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the biggest requests of how we can attract more females to financial advice.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you think we what do you think the industry could do to attract more females to financial advice?
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got any thoughts on that?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_05: I think the industry could be more inclusive about diversity in general.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_05: Financial services is very white dominated.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, um I don't I don't have any clear answers as to what we can do.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_05: But I think uh giving people more opportunities, you know, to qualify.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know, to I I really don't have the answers.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_05: No, you haven't got the answer.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, no sort of thing.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think this is um something that I'm gonna be coming across quite a lot on the podcast, really.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just really interested to to understand it, I guess.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, I guess the the main message is uh that that I would like to put out to women potentially looking to be financial advisors is there is nothing intimidating about money or financial advice that is easier for men to do, yeah, that women can't do.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_05: There's really nothing intimidating about it.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, my personal belief is that women are better at listening to their clients.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_05: They're in fact much more naturally empathic and probably understand money and are are better at managing money, you know, spending money.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_05: And so we can relate better to like like my a lot of women clients come to me as a female financial advisor because they specifically want to look for a female.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_05: I I also work with men, I'm not uh discriminatory in any way, like po chenders, but um they the experiences that they are sometimes they feel patronized when a man speaks to them.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think women are you know very well suited to the profession.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_05: And there is this um misunderstanding that you have to be good at maths to be a good financial advisor, and that's rubbish.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_05: You don't have to be good at maths.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_05: Excel spreadsheets and formulas are wonderful.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and yeah, there's there's basic financial numeracy that you need that that everyone needs, but nothing extraordinary.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: So most of the most of the tools that you need to be able to do a you know a clear cash flow modeling or financial plan is they're tools, aren't they?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's about they're about losing you know learning the tools and to not be intimidated by not being a an amazing mathematician.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you didn't, you know, it's not all about that because they're there's a calculator going out that you know you can do it that way.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I get that, okay.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: And saying like sort of empathy is so women tend to tend to be more empathetic.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that women are more empathetic, but they do tend to be more empathetic.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what you're saying, I mean, in respect of working as a financial advisor, that lends itself well to situations where you're talking about things that can be quite emotional, you know, someone dying perhaps, or the thought of somebody dying, and how you're going to protect your life and um things like marriages as well.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think when people go through divorces, women, I can imagine, don't really feel comfortable speaking to a man if they've been mistreated by a man perhaps, and they would rather build a relationship with a female.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think with the rise of more female millionaires, and I think they're gonna overtake I think it's by 2030 or something, they reckon more female millionaires than male, and also the wealth is going to be passed down to more females, then there's an opportunity there for more women with money to need financial advice.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um and I think it's that inclusivity as well, isn't it?
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about you know, it's like about we just need more women in the advice industry for situations like that, and um it's looking at ways that we can do it, and I think yeah, I think no one's really got the answer.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm gonna it's a question I'm gonna ask every single female on the podcast because I want to be able to build a uh think tank, if you like, around it and and and work out ways that we can do it.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so talk to me a little bit about non-violent communication because um that's something that you are quite an advocate of.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know you did a podcast about it quite not too long ago.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but can you just sort of talk to me a little bit about non-violent communication and how that um benefits your financial advice process?
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, nonviolent communication is a way to help people form connections with each other.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_05: And the assumption is that everything that we do is in service of our beautiful life-enriching needs, needs that we all have in common that are universal, needs like love or you know, food or peace or fun or contribution.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_05: And um one of the important things that I've taken in from non-violent communication that helps me with with my work is to be non-judgmental as much as possible.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I don't judge I really don't judge clients if they cry or if they have like anger towards an ex-partner, or you know, like you you get really comfortable with the range of human emotions and you you also become a better listener because you're listening differently.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_05: There's a particular way of listening in NVC where you listen for feelings and needs.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_05: And yeah, you I it's important to listen to someone, but it's sometimes it's also important to be able to relay back to them what you heard so that they feel heard.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_05: And when I can do that with a client and do it with uh accuracy, the feeling of connection that you have is just amazing.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_05: The client really feels like, oh, you've got me, you've heard me, you've you've you know, you you you are listening to what's important to me.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it helps you build better, stronger relationships.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: And is relationships what it's all about being a financial planner?
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's a very large part of what it's about, yes.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_05: I think eventually over time, clients become like your family.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_05: You get to really know them.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_05: You're talking about something very intimate and personal, like their life and their money, and you know, where they're gonna buy a house, how they're gonna raise their kids, um, how they're gonna give their money to their kids.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_05: So many very personal things that you you you get you get really close to.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like a financial financial counselor almost, isn't it?
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, if if the client wants to go there also, because it is a professional relationship, and some clients are more friendly than others.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, they they decide the boundaries.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_05: Uh some clients would like to meet for lunch and and just talk about non-in financial advisory things, and that's quite fun too.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_05: And then some clients are very like to the point and they want to just talk about their portfolio and be done very quickly.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: We spoke briefly about marketing earlier, and we talk about clients now.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: What what's are the what's the obviously finding clients as a financial advisor can be quite difficult, especially when you're self-employed.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not taking clients with you from a bank, for example, those relationships, and some people don't particularly want to do that because they don't want tanks on their lawns and all sorts of stuff.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: So what would your advice be to somebody who starts out as a financial advisor, self-employed blank slate?
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: What would your advice be to go out there to win clients?
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because we need to be paid, don't you?
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um find your niche.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_05: Find what interests you and stick with your values, you know, stick with what's important to you.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: So find your niche and stick with your values and what's important to you.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_05: And then read lots of books on marketing by Seth Godin.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_05: Seth Godin.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_05: I did I did his online course called the Marketing Seminar.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's really good.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: So would you should you say from a training, so from being self-im being employed to self-employed, so let's talk about that then.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: What what are the key things that you've l so training or or books or things that you would recommend to somebody to get stuck into to sort of enhance their experience?
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_05: I think nothing will push you faster towards self-improvement books than starting your own business because you realize that there are so many areas of business that you don't know about.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_05: If you've come from an employed role, you never had to think about where your clients are coming from.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_05: Somebody probably fed them to you.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_05: You never had to worry about marketing or your printer breaking down or IT and things like that.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_05: So it can be a huge learning curve.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_05: I think having a blog or having your voice and having a way to get your voice out to your audience is important.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_05: I think if I was looking for a service, I I generally want to know, you know, who is this person?
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_05: What does the website look like?
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_05: If the website looks like it was built in the 1970s and hasn't been updated for many months, and the last blog was written six months ago, I wouldn't, you know, like it has to be relatable also.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_05: The content has to be interesting.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: So focus your so f you're you're a firm believer that if you focus some energy on marketing as well as marketing in your personal brand, as well as going out and doing traditional methods, perhaps such as networking events or or whatever, that that's going to enhance your your business.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_05: I found networking events to be rubbish and hasn't worked for me.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_05: I haven't found like I haven't forged any relationships with accountants.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_05: So those sort of traditional things that work for most advisors that already established didn't work out for me.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_05: I find that I often will get people referring me to people on Twitter sometimes.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_05: For example, once uh somebody on Twitter asked, Do you know anyone like a childless IFA?
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_05: And I happen to be childless.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so somebody referred me and I got like a whole load of business because she had this group of women that were childless that needed the financial advisor and wanted somebody relatable.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_05: So, you know, so so just forging relationships online because I think when people use social media, uh sometimes they use it in a way where they want to promote themselves, but it's also about interacting with other people and and if you have a good connection, meeting that person offline.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, like using it like a normal Yeah, forging relationships.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but yeah, I I totally get it.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what about LinkedIn?
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_00: Do you get much out of LinkedIn?
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you use that?
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_05: Um I don't have much, yeah.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just lots of financial advisors don't use LinkedIn.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's like so much business is to be had on LinkedIn, it's unreal.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: I should open a LinkedIn workshop.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: I make a fortune out of LinkedIn.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would happily sit down with a load of financial advisors and talk to them how how LinkedIn works and how I've got somebody called the LinkedIn Lady, and she's um she uh is a lead generator for financial advisors, and what she does is will ghost your profile for you, get you out there, get you seen by people, create content and put it out, but also directly target people within your niche.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: So whilst you're not doing it yourself, you're out doing your your job, she'll do that for you, and she's got a huge success rate, massive success rate.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's a hands-on approach to doing it, as opposed to like I'm gonna create an inbound marketing strategy via Google job ads or you know, Google um AdWords or Facebook marketing campaigns.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever done anything like that, that kind of marketing, or have you not touched that paid advertising?
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's an area that again not many financial advisors do, um but there's a huge amount of business to be had from it.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's confidence and it's money up front.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so people kind of need to be again running that type of marketing for your business is a full-time job.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got to kind of spin a few plates, and it's good that that that Tuplan can do part of your marketing for you and everything like that, you know.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean that's the benefit sometimes of being underneath a network as opposed to being directly authorized and having to wear a million and one hats.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: So what does the future hold for Cleona?
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening over the next year?
• 1:10:00
  SPEAKER_00: What have we got what have we got to be excited about?
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I I don't think so much about the future.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very um today.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_05: I'm very yeah.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_05: I I hope I will c you know continue to run my business and continue to have clients that I enjoy working with.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_05: I'm pretty much at pretty near full capacity right now, so I'm really just growing my climb book through referrals and things like that.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I just want to be happy and peaceful and you know, live your life.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, live my life.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you feel that the lifestyle of being a self-employed financial advisor.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I highly recommend going working for yourself.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's just uh if somebody paid me like five times as much money to go and work in a job, I wouldn't do it.
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_05: Because I value my freedom and I value my ability to say I don't want to work with that kind of a client, I don't want to do this kind of a business.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_05: And you can't call those kind of shots when you work for someone else.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can't.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: What about hiring people?
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got that in your mind?
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to build a business or are you happy on just doing it yourself?
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that there you're a capacity right now?
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think I think that would stress me out.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_05: So I I think I'm really happy where I am.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't want to necessarily change the formula unless you know something big shifts in my life.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_05: But my husband also earns well.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_05: We have enough for for our needs, you know, so it's like I'd rather if I have spare time, I'd rather do something interesting and valuable rather than, you know, like keep working, work.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's great.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's great.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your time today, Cleena.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um really appreciate talking to you.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay and um sharing your experiences and your history of working in financial advice and your advice.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_05: So A real pleasure.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much, Sam.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_05: No worries.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for your time.