Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Financial Planning for Communities, Not Corporates

Transcript

Financial Planning for Communities, Not Corporates · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone, it's Elena back for this week's episode of the Financial Planner Life Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: And this week I'm joined by Stuart Jackson, founder of Cheatham Jackson.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: In this week's episode, we discussed Cheetham Jackson's unique business model.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: This includes opening offices in market towns instead of in CBDs, how they make financial advice accessible for all, their new employee ownership trust, and how they create a sense of community, not just within their offices, but by providing an exceptional service to their clients.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much, Stuart, for taking the time to speak with me this afternoon.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the question that I always ask.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me a little bit about your career journey today and how you got to the point that you were at today.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So interesting career.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I started out as an accountant or a trainee accountant, certainly.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the the inaugural office of Cheatham Jackson is across the road from the accountants where I started out my career, which is slightly weird.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I started out as an accountant, a trainee accountant in practice for about three years.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Got to a point where I felt like accountancy was very much kind of looking backwards at a business, how it's done and how it's progressed.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of wanted to be a bit more involved in where a business was going.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I went back to university and did a degree in uh business studies and then came out of there and did a variety of roles in terms of did a bit of um retail uh management with Aldi.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was interesting.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then went into the sort of recruitment field um with Hayes Accountancy personnel.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I was recruiting FDs and FCs for businesses in the Northwest.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um and from there, I kind of loved I loved recruitment um and and really enjoyed working with people and finding them their kind of dream jobs.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was dealing with a variable product uh made life quite difficult.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd find the perfect some perfect answer for the perfect candidate, and then their existing existing uh employer would give them a little bit more money uh and and therefore they they wouldn't go for the job that you'd find them.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So so that that was the only issue with with recruitment, and and I think because of that, I then decided to kind of go back to my finance routes and I moved to a company called Georgia Pacific that were uh initially based in Bolton.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they I was in their accounts payable department.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was only supposed to be a kind of a part-time temporary role, uh, but they were moving to a shared service center in Didsbury.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I then started working in that shared service centre, and they were effectively bringing in a variety of accounts functions from European operations within it as a global um manufacturer.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I was then responsible for bringing those accounts functions back to Didsbury, and then we would manage them out of Didsbury.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent a bit of time in Denmark, some Sweden and Norway um tidying up their accounts functions and then bringing them back to Didsbury.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and which point I started to get into people management.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I then became the accounts payable manager for Georgia Pacific um across Europe and then um did a bit of work in continuous improvement there.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then a job came up with their operational division.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they made very glamorous, they they made toilet roll uh and kitchen roll.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that was their primary uh product.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I got an opportunity to go and become one of a three-member team from the UK to go into what was called the Mill Improvement Program, which was going over to Green Bay in America.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I spent eight months out there, learned how to deliver their program.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was a McKinsey program, um, learned how to do it over in the Green Bay Mill, and then our job was to then bring that back to the UK and implement it in the UK.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we did that for probably two or three years, early 2000s, um, going into a mill, taking 30 people from the mill at various different levels, and then finding ways to improve efficiencies, reduce cost, reduce waste, all those kinds of things.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it was the ideas of the people that did the job that then we then implemented post the initial uh phase.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that was great in terms of learning how businesses work, understand the importance of processes, um, how to optimize processes to make them consistent and and the output consistent, um, and really enjoyed it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I then had my first child, so I came back to the UK or I went back to the head office at that point.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no, sorry, that's a lie.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: I went into Europe.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I then went into become European continuous improvement manager for Georgia Pacific.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that was interested in that I was going into Spanish mills, French mills, and a an early 30s British person going in telling a French mill manager how to run their mills didn't go down very well.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to learn quite quickly that that there were many different ways to skin a cat and try and get them on board with the concept of the work we're trying to do.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it was a great learning experience.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But then my first child arrived in 2004, that brought me back to the UK and I went back into account management uh working on the Morrisons account for Georgia Pacific, um, which is great, but it it was selling toilet roll and kitchen roll.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So ultimately, it wasn't the most exciting of endeavors.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at that point, I started to think I didn't really want to do the travel as much anymore.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'd always had it, I'd always had an appetite for financial advice.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'd tried to get in very early, um, but I didn't have the experience.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And looking back now, I totally understand why I didn't get the job back then.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: But because I'd done accounting, I'd done finance, I'd also done sales, it it just seemed a logical answer.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and an opportunity came up with uh Edward Jones, um, stockbroker and financial advisors, you US organization that had you know a myriad of offices around the country.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they would take people who were doing career changing into financial advice, get them trained up very quickly, get them out and dealing with clients and that kind of thing.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that Edward Jones were amazing.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think they were a brilliant organization.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: They had they did many, many things very, very well.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't profitable.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The the business model that they transposed from the US into the UK just didn't work.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, real estate costs are totally different in the UK.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So an office in America plus uh an administrator probably costs around$10,000 to$15,000.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the UK, you were into 30 to£40,000 and it just didn't work as a commercial model in the UK.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they ended up backing out of the UK market in 2009, at which point my mentor, which is Alan Cheatham, uh, who was the Cheatham of Cheatham Jackson, I'd been nibbling at Alan for a little while anyway, thinking I could do it better and start our own business.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: This kind of forced his hand.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think he'd have gone if it hadn't been for the fact that they got bought out, but they got bought out by Tyree Law in 2009.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the point at which myself and Alan set up the office, uh the first office in Chorley of Cheatham Jackson.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Alan is probably now towards 70.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: So he was very much at the the sort of the latter end of his career.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I was a young upstart that thought I know you knew best and and wanted to take over the world.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think there would there was there was starting to be a little bit of a a difference of direction between the two of us.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: He just I think in his mind it was Stuart and Alan in Chorley, and that would be it, and he he'd have been delighted if that was the case.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I did get this being my bonnet about creating a business that, in my opinion, did financial advice the right way.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Tried to serve the mass market better than it was being served by the banks.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, didn't really have the appetite to do what most advisors are doing, which is going into the world of wealth management and trying to be uh serving that top 1% of the of the population.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to bring financial advice to the masses, uh, but do it in a really process-driven way that meant that you could serve more people and give people access to great financial advice um without having to have two, three hundred thousand pounds to invest.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to bring that level down.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's that was the mentality we brought into Team Jackson.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um in 2012, those differences of opinion started to play out, and Alan left and and it and as and I believe he's still operating the same investment philosophy that we operate.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was an important part of coming up with that.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he's now doing that from a from a his home over in Bolton.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore from 2012, that's when it kind of fell under my um full kind of ownership, and and I was the the founder at that point.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when the the kind of the fund started and we started to build Cheatham Jackson with the premise that um a lot of the things that Edward Jones did really well, I wanted to try and uh replicate.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to have, I saw the value that the being an advisor at Edward Jones, I saw the impact of being local uh and being part of a community and having uh an ability for clients to walk through your door and just come in to see you whenever they were feeling um nervous or worried or any of those things.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: So local presence was was very much important, and I'd felt that through my experience at Edward Jones.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then knowing that that model wasn't profitable, we had to do it slightly differently.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, whereas an Edward Jones office would have one advisor and one administrator, Cheaton Jackson offices would have eight advisors and three administrators and build it like that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we got the economies of scale of having everybody all under one roof, um, with the premise that we would have initially our medium-term objective was to have 30 offices across the north of England.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're currently at 10 um across the north of England, um, and populated on average, there's probably about five or six on average in in uh people in an office at this point, four advisors, two administrators.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: And now we're in a new phase of growth and wanting to take that forward.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, when we get to the to that 30 offices, I can't imagine there's a reason not to go beyond and and you know, focus and take that forward into more national presence.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think 30 offices is enough for people to get their heads around at this moment in time.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and do it in a way that, as I say, the ideal scenario for me was that somebody that walks into the office in Chesterfield, I'd either I'd like to think that they'll get pretty much the same service, the same offering, the same great advice that they would get if they walked into the trolley office.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So trying to build processes that ensured that consistency of outcome for clients was a really important part of it and continues to be a really important part of it.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And also the ability to deal with higher volumes and potentially the lower values that sometimes that we deal with compared to other firms meant that we had to be really efficient.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: We had to be able to do it in a really efficient way, and that's where the processes drove that efficiency and made us able to deal with a a wider range of portfolio sizes.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that was such an interesting little nugget of like Cheetham, Cheatham Jackson history in a little nugget there.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's amazing, as you've said there, to be the founder of a business that started in like one little or in one little office in Chorley, which has now got to 10 offices all across the northeast in a position where you've got potential ambitions to stand to on a national scale.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it goes to show how you can definitely do that that journey.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So you've mentioned then for like for a couple of there was a couple of points then when you built Cheeseham Jackson off the back of your previous experience that were really important to you.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And one of them was just making financial advice better.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you mind elaborating in terms of like what your previous experiences were and what you really wanted to do with Cheesham Jackson moving forward?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think the key thing in terms of um is better the right word, I don't know, but I think what what I saw Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: What I saw in the market and part of what makes up the fabric of Cheesum Jackson is uh a belief that financial services wasn't done well, in my opinion, historically.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly pre-RDR and and and even since RDR, there's still there's still elements of it that I don't necessarily agree with.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that what what drove that was certainly Alan's Alan had been in the industry for probably 30 years, if not a little bit more.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and he'd seen all aspects of advice and many of the scandals that had hit financial advice in the past um were indicative of the fact that it was too easy for advisors to sell things that may not have been appropriate for the clients, but they earned a significant amount from.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I think uh RDR went some way to solving that, but there is still an element of you know, particularly in a world of self-employment, where you've got, you know, if you do not sell, you do not eat and you do not provide for your family.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that's that's conducive to high-quality financial advice done for the client in the client's best interest all of the time.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: So so we've all as part of that, we always committed to being an employed organization.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do self-employed at all.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, partly because it gives us a level of control, it gives us a level of consistency um in terms of how things are done.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's all born out of things that both Alan and even in my relatively short period of time before starting Cheatham Jackson as an advisor at Edward Jones.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I would come across a client, one of my first clients, Margaret Skinners.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: She I walked into her after her husband had passed a few years earlier.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you can just see the advice that's been given, it wasn't in her interest.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even in her husband's interest at the time.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It the products sold were the products that gave them the highest commission.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you're in that environment and you can earn more by selling certain things, I don't think that's ever good for the client.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So so we came into it with a blank canvas, and we were fortunate in that you know, a lot of firms when RDR came really struggled because of the legacy of back book that they had and converting that into the new world.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: We never had that issue.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: We started and did it from day one the way we believed it to be the right way to do it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um so we had that advantage, but we started out from day one, even pre-RDR, we were fee only, um, we didn't do commission.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we tended not to use investment bonds, which I think were one of the key products that that got uh sold sometimes incorrectly, uh, depending on tax positions.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we set out our stall on day one with the knowledge of what had happened and transpired historically, um to avoid the pitfalls of the past and to to not allow our advisors to do some of the things that that maybe other advisors and other firms have allowed in the past.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there was a lot of historic learning, particularly from Alan.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, his his ex historic experience was integral in avoiding some of those mistakes and he'd seen those things in the past, and therefore bringing that into Cheetham Jackson meant that we didn't, that we started out in, in our opinion, the right way.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had we were very early in adopting a centralized investment philosophy, um, pretty much day one.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: We had a centralized investment philosophy, uh, which is now progressed and transferred into a managed portfolio service for the clients that we've got today, risk rated scales of one to ten.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and I think because that's where a lot of the efficiencies came from.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we weren't, we were never active managers.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we always operated, I wouldn't call it passive.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is we came across um dimensional fund advisors very early in our evolution, and they have a particular way of managing investments in in what I believe to be the right way to manage investments, um, which is they understand where the returns come from in the market.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they have a three-factor model and now a four-factor model that identifies and accesses return where it comes from.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I and my belief was that at that point, as soon as I saw it, it was the right way for Cheem Jackson's Invaluation philosophy to play out.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore it didn't buy into the world of investment uh active management and and pretending that you could um pick the next great thing and the next apple and all of those things.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was the market gives you a great return, access the market as cheaply as you possibly can, and then you get the market capital return.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we never we've never pretended to be able to go and get double digit return on a regular basis.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: We just want to work with people that want a good return.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can can take people that naturally would have always deferred to the banks and probably been too heavily invested in cash.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: We can then give we gave them a new option.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because we were on the high street, we were able to be a second opinion to the banks, and that's probably where I saw our main competitor base being, because they were the ones that served the mass market that we were interested in in being part of.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we knew that our offering was better than the banks.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: We knew for a fact it was better than the banks.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore it was relatively easy uh to be able to convey that to clients when they came for that second opinion.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we showed we we educated them in terms of the efficient market hypothesis that dimensional um founders came up with uh and and they won the Nobel Prize for it.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the rest of the industry uses as its reason to do the things that it does.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some fund managers pretend it's their expertise.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe it is, I think it's just the market doing what the market does.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they then claim to be the best things in sliced bread.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then you then find out a few years later that they weren't as good as they said they were, and then you get the big scandals and and all the rest of it that follows.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we were very early into adopting um uh the philosophy that we have, and it's you know, it's not exciting, it's not it's not massively um interesting, it's just get the market return as cheaply as possible, and you then return, you retain as much value to the client as you can.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it's all about putting the client first in everything that you do, that philosophy.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a very interesting point that that you touched on then was in terms of like being on the high street, and that means being in market towns, because you look at some of the big wealth management firms, the big financial planning firms that operate nationally across the UK, their offices are in the city centres, you know.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you might have one in Bristol where we're based, in Birmingham, Manchester.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing that's very unique about your philosophy and the way that you've scaled up is you are in market towns.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna test my knowledge here.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: You've got offices in like Chorley, Glossop, um, Sale, Bolton.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So offices in market towns rather than being based in the big CBDs.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do you mind elaborating on a bit more on how you've scaled up that way, in which is slightly more unconventional in terms of what you've you'd expect, and why that ties into the Cheatham Jackson philosophy, why that's important to you?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there's a really interesting point to that, and and well done on on the uh remembering of the officers.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think we've always done almost the opposite of what everybody else is doing.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm all right with that.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because I think when when everyone's everyone follows the same route, you always kind of get the same answer.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and people will look at our model and go, that's ridiculous.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're incurring costs when you don't need to have regional hubs with more advisors in it.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think what you lose with that mentality, it's not we've never been about satisfying shareholders.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So shareholder value has never ever played a part in Cheatham Jackson.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: I never did this for my own personal gain.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I kind of did it because it was an adventure uh and it was exciting, and I'm and I think I could do it.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I got a load of people around me that also got excited about the idea of doing it.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when you come at it from that perspective, and money isn't your god, I had a really I've got a relatively um cheap lifestyle.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm not at work, I'm generally riding up and down hills on my bike.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't need a lot of money to do that kind of stuff.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So so when you when you're free of that need to generate wealth for yourself or for shareholders, you get to make different decisions.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and sometimes those decisions might not be the most cost-effective decisions.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Having 10 offices instead of three is cost ineffective.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: But what we get from having those local presences is being part of a community and for our advisors to be part of that community and to get involved with local causes.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, philanthropy has always been a really important part of everything we do at Cheatham Jackson and having the advisors able to have some of their time allocated to going and working with a local hospice or a local charity, um, and being a really important part of helping them raise funds is as important as being a great financial advisor, because part of it is having an impact in the world we operate in, not just the clients, but also the local communities and also the local causes and also the local professionals, because the joint venture model is a very important part of Chee Jackson's growth, and we work very closely with local professionals and help them to provide financial services to their clients.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: But that's because we care about the communities in which we operate.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, everybody did transition into the city into the cities.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it kind of plays to the idea of the top 1%.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Top 1% tend to operate out of cities or live around a city.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have no interest in going into that world.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think the reality of the satisfaction you get from helping Joe and Josephine blogs who've who've accumulated 150 to 300 grand of wealth in their lifetime, whether it's pensions or or otherwise, the difference you can make to them in terms of gaining an extra one or two percentage points of return annually, it makes a difference to their lives.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: That they they if say, let's say they've got 300 grand and they get an extra 2% on that 300 grand per year, that's an extra 500 pound a month they can spend.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that will make a massive difference to their income in retirement and their lives.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you get a millionaire an extra 2%, doesn't really impact their lives greatly.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get that same flush of satisfaction that you can, knowing that you've had a material impact on someone's life, that that matters.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what our advisors get.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our advisors get the chance to help everyday people make a difference to their lives, whereas most of the market doesn't really care about Joan Josephine blocks.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have enough money for them to be important to them.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore they tend to unfortunately get um this a singular answer of it used to be the banks, um, and then they ran away from financial services and now they're kind of running towards back towards it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but again, with the banks, are they always making the right decision for themselves or are they making the best decision for their shareholders and their market and all the rest of it?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we found a niche in in the world of financial services in an area that most of the industry doesn't really care about.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: We really do care about them.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we want to be part of that local community that looks after local people and gives them a chance to get great advice um really cost-effectively and make a real difference to their actual income, which is the reason we do what we do.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And also you brought up a really good point earlier on, you know, the making financial advice accessible is about having that place on the high street where you can be nervous and you can be a little bit worried about something.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the same way that you'd pop into a shop or you'd pop into the pharmacy to discuss, you know, my knee hurts.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can pop into your local Cheatham Jackson on the high street and have that same conversation with someone.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, as you mentioned there, you know, becoming really embedded within the community and building really trusted relationships with the community and also being more out there through having those initiatives which allows you to support those local causes, creates that trust which, from a business perspective, allows you to access more people and allows you to speak to the Joseph and Josephines that might have previously gone from the bank.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you've mentioned there how important it is for you that you know financial advice is accessible for all, it's not just about serving that 1%.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: You we mentioned there the point of the fact of like having those um offices that you can go into on the high street.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: What other barriers have you broken down in the Cheatham Jackson model that just make financial advice more accessible?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think part of it is um I think cost is always going to be to a certain degree an inhibitor to people, um, or or a perception of cost, maybe, or a perception of value.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I think I think the whole industry of financial services, they're all trying to attract the same 1%.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: So when you when you think about marketing, you think about um how they put themselves forward, if they're trying to attract a market that's the top 1%, their marketing will all be directed to that 1%.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So as a as a retail client who doesn't have that level of wealth, they're gonna feel like they're irrelevant.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna feel like they're not speaking to them, um, because clearly the the marketing is done in a way that appeals and speaks to that that top 1%.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think by definition, the way the market, the way our industry went, um, it it started to its language and it's and it's the way it portrayed itself didn't speak to the vast majority of people.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and therefore the you know, the way we talk, our language, the way we deal with people, it's a it's very much Joe and Josephine public.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not you know pictures of of Porsches and Ferraris and all the things and and giving clients iPads that I think one of our competitors did at some point in their lives.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: If they want an iPad, let them go and buy an iPad.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because they are paying for that iPad, whether whether they'll admit it's or not.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's certain things that our industry does which perpetuates this issue, this this image that it's only the very affluent um that that really will benefit from from good financial advice, when actually it isn't.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's the exact opposite.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: The the mass market, which is uh which are the ones that are receiving inheritances that and they don't know how to deal with it, they've never experienced good financial planning.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so they end up sat in cash.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, the last five to six to seven years, cash has been an awful place to be.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it and it and it depresses me that people haven't felt that they had a place to go, um, and and why it's been really important for us to to grow at pace, which at times was very scary.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that there are certain times in the evolution of Chief Action where we probably grew too fast, but it was so important that we got sufficient scale to create the base from which we can then take it into its next phase of growth.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um so so I think I think costs, the perception that the marketing of our industry creates, the fact that you only have to watch a Grand Prix or any sporting event, and and most of the advertisers tend to be from the financial services industry.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's only one person that's paying for all that advertising, and it tends to be their clients.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, so I think there's an awareness, and you even saw it to a certain degree in terms of some of the press coverage that that SJP got, uh, because of some of its practices, there's a much greater awareness of the reality of life now.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And and people aren't prepared to stand by and let people be taken advantage advantage of.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that what that then brings is is market scrutiny or press scrutiny.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that awareness then gets transferred into the everyday public by the medium of of newspapers or any other form of media out there.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think people are more savvy.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the ability to learn and and to know more about each area of of each industry.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think people can get away with what they got away with in the past.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think there's become a greater awareness, been a to be honest, a greater appetite, partly driven by the fact that you can't get 6% on your cash, which you might have been able to do late 2000s and early 2000s, uh early this uh last uh decade.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: So there's been a need to find alternative solutions.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's driven people to look for financial advice, which means that being on the high streets and being visible and and being um a firm that genuinely believes that clients deserve great advice uh and and across the market rather than just that that top 1% means we we fared well because of that, I think.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the fact that the banks ran away.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: That did us a massive favour.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: You also don't think that your clients deserve good financial advice, you feel like everyone should deserve good financial advice, which I feel like is the difference between some firms and other firms.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's such an appetite at the moment financial education.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: You look on LinkedIn, you look at what lots of large corporate nationals are saying trying to promote that.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: But if you as a company don't have a model which makes your financial advice accessible to people that might not have a large lump sum to invest in the beginning or anything like that, it's a very strong juxtaposition.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: You've definitely got um a firm which is massively underpinned by a really strong ethical compass.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that doesn't just span to how you treat your clients, but you have something that's very unique to yourself as a business, to the employees within it.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you've recently turned um into an employee ownership ownership business.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: So there'll be loads of people that don't understand what this means.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Even my partner is part of an employee ownership business, and I don't really understand what it means.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: So for our audience, do you mind elaborating on this a little bit further?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh ultimately, um, as I said when I earlier, when I started out Cheets and Jackson, it was never about my own personal circumstances, never about creating huge wealth uh for myself.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I always believed um uh one of one of the phrases which stuck with me, um, that that Nikki um Jones is here came up with is that I'm a socialist capitalist.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I totally believe in in capitalism because I think when when a business does something really well, that business should be successful.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got I've got a fundamental belief in capitalism, but I also don't believe it's for the one or two percent of people in that business to then suddenly become incredibly wealthy.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I'd always intended that Cheetham Jackson would share its financial success with the people that helped to create it.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a belief from day one.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and I'd already started that process.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: At the time we became an employee-owned business, we'd already got around about 18 or 19 shareholders uh in the business.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd already divested a lot of my shareholding into those people who I believe had made you know a significant impact in taking the business to where it was at any given point.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And those people then um held shares and became part owners in the business.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: So in a weird, perverse way, we were already an employee-owned business.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: But but there come that there came a point where myself and my family's lives became, have always been intrinsically linked to the business.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: So in the early phase of any startup business, and I'm sure most founders that you'll ever speak to will say the same thing, you don't earn a lot, and and you actually eschew your own earnings because you need to pay other people.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there are many, many times in the early days of Team Jackson where I didn't take an income because the business couldn't afford to pay me and also the staff.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the staff came first and they got they got paid first, which is fine in a startup environment.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: But at some point, I needed to detach that relationship so my own personal circumstances weren't directly linked to the the future of the business.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, you're only you you only have a limited number of choices.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is sell the business to uh somebody else in the industry, and then you get a big payout.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't do that.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um the culture achieved Jackson, and I have a very paternal relationship with the business and the people in it.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore, you know, it's the it's the idea of doing that is effectively like selling your children.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just would never consider selling the organization to another organization that then would potentially you know pillage the business and get rid of people that I genuinely care about.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I could never bring myself to do that.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um management buyout is another option where you could put you know, a group of people may choose to then take the business on.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, when I came across employee ownership, which was probably in 2019, um, it was the perfect answer because what employee ownership allows you to do is that achieve that end of detaching my own personal circumstances from the business and to the extent that you know if the business went under it won't, but if that ever happened, then then I'm not directly um affected by that.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it but it also achieves the second purpose, which was always the intention from day one, which is every single person now that is an employee of Cheetham Jackson will share in the success, the financial success of creating this amazing business.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I never wanted employees, I wanted fellow owners.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I wanted people that treated the business as though it was their own.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, turn the boiler off at the weekend because it's gonna spend money that you're just wasting that money.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Turn the lights off.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: All the stuff that you would naturally do if it was your thing.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wanted everyone to feel like that.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted everyone to feel like every client of Cheatham Jackson is one of their clients, not just one office, the whole business.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the best way for Cheatham Jackson to be successful is to care for those clients diligently and carefully, um, and and wanting the very best for those clients is the best way to create a successful business because those clients then talk to their friends and their family, and you get referrals on the back of it.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: What employee ownership drives is that, and we're only at the very early stages of it, so we're nowhere near where I want to be at this moment in time.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: But what it will drive, in my hope and belief, is a true sense of ownership, a true sense of what every single individual does, no matter what their role is, has a direct impact on the success of this business.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if this business is successful, they and their families will share in the rewards that come from creating a successful business.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because it's already a very successful business, but it could be so much bigger and it can be so much better.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it needs that cumulative effort of 80 great people to take it onto this next level.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And employee ownership gives us that both incentive, but also sense of belonging um that then means that people feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when you feel part of something bigger than yourself, you do go that bit further, you do go that bit extra.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: You're you feel the work that you're doing is no longer a job, it's it's it's got a higher purpose to it.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and having a higher purpose in your life, I think makes you strive to be the best every day and do things that, you know, on the days that you wake up and you don't really want to do it, you're doing it because A, it's important to you, it's important to your family, it's also important to all of your other fellow co-owners.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a sense of accountability that comes from being a co-owner.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because if you're a if you're a co-owner of a business and you recruit somebody into that business and that person doesn't fit, if you're just an employee, you'll kind of put up with it and say, well, that's that's Stuart's job to sort that out.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's nothing to do with me.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, no, because now if you're a co-owner, you can't walk past that anymore.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to actually take a uh a role in the solution.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you can't allow those things to manifest themselves because it's your business that's actually being affected.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it will change the whole relationship that people have with the business.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I think that sense of accountability will create a better business for it because there's now 80 stewards and not just one.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and there's a everyone, everyone will take this business and care for it the way I would hope that um the next stage of each evolution requires.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Incentive and sense of belonging.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's like a really beautiful way of putting it.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you've just highlighted this, but just to break it down, I think it's this is so beautiful, especially in the sense of a financial planning setting, where normally in the financial planning setting, we you people naturally almost view things as like a pecking order with your financial advisors, your client-facing people all the way at the top, and your administrators, you know, sat, you know, doing the post and stuff like that.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: But having this sort of you know, scheme means that everyone, whatever their role, is just as valued and just important and gets the same amount of credit as everyone else.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just the advisors at the top that are seeing people and getting bonus and feel like they're, you know, really well paid, fill in their pockets.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, the people that are doing all the hard graph day in, day out.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter what job role you're in, you know, it just shows just how valued you are.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, it really does create that sense of belonging.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it means that everyone, whatever your role, when you feel part of something, you work harder, you're more driven, you're more committed, you care more.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And naturally, having that scheme, as you said, it's a beautiful incentive, but it also just creates that sense of community.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I think you touched on something really important because one of my favorite analogies in in this area is when when Microsoft listed back way back when.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the reality is when Microsoft listed even even the person on reception effectively became a millionaire at the time.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and to me that's really important because and I I agree in terms of I hate hierarchy, um, I hate ego.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I see those things as natural deterrents to success because it tends to be driven by individual individualistic uh beliefs and thought processes and behaviors.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think when when you're when you're part of something that every single role in this organization has a value, there wouldn't be a role if there wasn't something some value to add.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and when you have most advisors, you know, the majority of the industry uh in terms of financial advice is in the world of networks, and you've got a myriad of smaller firms that have been built by very good, very credible financial advisors that get too busy, who then need to recruit somebody else in to come and help them take on clients and grow further.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: So you end up with almost the principal with a few advisors and then the administrators, but it is literally like that.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about lit levels within the organization.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: And from day one, I wanted the flattest structure that was humanly possible because flat structures take away the risk of ego.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have um the support office where I am based out of.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I do my client work out of the trolley office, but but um I base myself out of the support office quite close to us.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: But that whole office is a support office.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's some very you know well-paid, high-level um people that have that have got a massive amount of experience, and in any other organization, might be senior management, director level people, but they see their role as supporting the offices to be successful.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Their role isn't to tell the offices what to do, their role is to tell to ask the offices what support do they need in order to be successful.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not asking the advisors, that's asking all of the office.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the administrators, um in in this, even in the support office, we have some central administration teams and research teams.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a voice.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, they know their jobs better than I do.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they're the people that should be able to tell me what's the best route to making this business better.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then our job as the support office is to break down the barriers and make that possible and make their lives easier so that they can continue to be brilliant at their roles, which makes the business better.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole premise of ego um and the way we all behave, um, we're we're not hierarchical in any way, shape, or form.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: We we believe in the value of opinion, um, and everybody has a voice.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that will increase as we go because um we'll have employees on the on the trust board of the of the employee ownership trust.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be a genuine sense of ability to influence your own future because no one, no one in the support office or no in no one in the senior management group, if if that's what you want to call it, believes they know best.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: All we are are conduits to making their lives easier.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if their lives are easier and they're able to look after clients better and they're able to look after more clients, the business can't be anything other than more successful.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Also, it's just practicing what you preach, isn't it?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: You said then ability to influence your whole future.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got a model there that makes financial advice accessible to people that might not have access it to other in other organisations that mean that they have the ability to influence their own future.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you've also then got a structure within the business that means people, you know, are co-founders, do have a voice and they have the ability to shape their own future of the bus of the business.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it just becomes something that's very intersectional and covers sort of all layers rather than, you know, a business that maybe looks like it has a really good outreach, but you know, doesn't treat their employees very well, or vice versa.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think one point that we've, you know, going all the way back to to your beginning of your career within financial planning, you mentioned um that sort of, you know, you'd you'd had a previous career, you know, covered multiple different facets, including sales, you'd done some finance within your accounting, but when you transitioned into financial planning, it was definitely like a new career.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something that Cheatham Jackson is quite unique on when you take financial advisors as well.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: You very often take individuals that are qualified but cover these facets, don't necessarily have to have had any previous experience directly within financial planning or financial services.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think this came from your own prior experience?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: Or why did you decide to sort of adopt this model?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I think fundamentally, um we're open to taking great people no matter what their level of experience.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: So if a if a highly experienced advisor walk through the door, then then we'll happily give them a home.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think the key thing is I think there's a lot of great financial advisors out there.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes they find themselves.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Conflicted with sometimes culturally the world in which they're operating.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think we give for the right advisors, I think we give the very best home that you could possibly hope for as a financial advisor.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: You will never be conflicted in terms of um, are you doing the right things for clients?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can't not do the right things for clients at Jim Jackson.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's part of who we are.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I so I think we we offer a home for a variety of different uh advisors, different levels of experience.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: My own journey into it, being a career changer at the age of what would it have been at the time?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Been 2007.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I was about 36 um when I came into Edward Jones, and Edward Jones took me on.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had no exams.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I hadn't even taken an exam at that point.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: They got me through the exams.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think the great thing about career changers is you have life experience and you understand the trials and tribulations that life throws at you.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you're great with people, financial services can be a fantastic industry to come into.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because if you do care about people, you get to do it every day.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so so it is a fantastic role for people that have got that sense of wanting to help people.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think the the ability for us to um onboard people, train people, have a relatively simple way of providing advice means that you know we've got 35 advisors in the business.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we are we are confident that if one of our newer advisors or more or less experienced advisors came across a client that required a bit more complexity and or had a bit more complexity within it, required more tax planning advice.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've got, and because we're co-owners as well, all of our most experienced advisors want to help our new advisors get up and running because that makes the business better and that makes their own world better, because they get by bringing those new advisors through, everybody benefits.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we have this a nice almost volunteer is volunteerism culture within the more experienced advisors that enjoy working with the new advisors and bringing them on into the industry because I think I don't think the routes into the industry are um sufficiently effective or or even where they exist.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think there's a they know what they're looking for, and there is a lot of fallout of some of the programs that are out there.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we believe that our onboarding gives them a great chance of being a successful financial advisor.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um we know that our investment philosophy and our uh the way we invest for people and the uh advice that we give to people is great advice.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not having to learn all of that stuff for themselves.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have products that suit any client circumstance that we come across.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And where the area of advice is that little bit more complex, we have very experienced and and uh technically capable advisors that can help support the new advisors through a particular case.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: But it just means that we can bring in people without the depth of experience that maybe others want and require, because we have this kind of community effect of people that want to help, even in each office.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: So generally, our new recruits will go into the support office.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: They've got we've got an onboarding team there that will take typically four or five advisors a quarter at the moment through an induction program, help them get to the point where they're able to start seeing clients, and then they're moved into whichever office they've been recruited for.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: But then, even within the office, you've then got a lovely team of people that all want that person to be successful and give their time willingly to bring them and develop them into becoming a great financial advisor of the future.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, going back to what you were saying earlier, in terms of the hierarchical nature and the the way the industry has been, it does tend to be very much an individualistic thinking of themselves rather than the wider benefit of everybody in the business.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's I think it was already there at Cheating Dracks.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we we we generally recruit nice people and and nice people tend to stay.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and therefore we've always had it.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think employee take ownership takes it to another level because, again, from an incentive and a and a and a higher purpose, training a new person to become a great financial advisor that brings satisfaction with it anyway.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um that that gives a sense of satisfaction to everybody involved in that process from the support office into the offices and the various roles within that.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think we'll get more of that because of the employee ownership model.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it I think it's a fantastic job.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a fantastic career um done the right way, uh, and and therefore being able to give more people the opportunity to experience that um and and create a fantastic career for themselves, fantastic life for their families, um, is really important.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then ultimately, when they become really experienced and more technically capable advisors, they'll be then responsible for bringing the next generation through as well.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they share that that knowledge and experience with the next generation in 10, 15 years' time.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's a nice kind of self-perpetuating aspect to it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a self-perpetuating cycle, isn't it?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: But you mentioned there it is, and you come from a recruitment background, as you mentioned then from the very beginning.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you also understand that people have people very often have such a stringent model of how they want the, they think the perfect person to fit within their business would look, that it's not very often that people will will go aside from that.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I think Cheatham Jackson is very unique in that respect.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: And look at look at yourself, Stuart.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Come from a different background and a second careerist, and you're now sat in a position with with 10 officers.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: If someone had been really stringent in wanting someone that had done XYZ or had XYZ in qualifications, you potentially wouldn't have someone, you know, speaking to me who's managed to build up a really successful business.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we've spoken a lot about how community underpins um a lot of what you know Cheatham Jackson does.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think when we talk about your personal mission and what you've wanted to achieve with building out a business, that has really driven that for you?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I think from day one it was always I had the advantage of working at Edward Jones and I saw it firsthand.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the value that literally somebody can walk in off the street with uh the weight of the world on their shoulders, worrying about whatever aspect of their financial life.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the ability to then sit down with them, talk to them, understand what their concerns are and what their worries are, and then show them quite quickly with some cash flow cash flow planning tools that we have, that actually they're way better off than they thought they'd be.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you just see this massive weight lift off their shoulders and and all of a sudden their world changes.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because most people, if you ask most people age 40 to 55, maybe, do they think they've got enough to retire?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is no.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Guaranteed the answer will be no.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we can show them that that's not always true.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, more often than not, people are significantly better off in terms of their income in retirement than they actually realize, because no one's ever explained what a pot of money, what does a pension actually mean?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a pot of money, it's a vehicle to provide an income for the rest of their lives.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we can show them what that income will be over time.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: So being part of community and and knowing that whichever community that we operate out of, every time a client walks past our offices, then that there'll be a thought process of at some point, um, I might need that.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or whenever, whenever they have that worry, whenever that concern strikes, they'll know that we're there and they'll they'll hopefully seek us out as a as an opinion on how to solve whatever those financial worries are.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and I just think that's really important because there's so many stresses and strains and pressures in the world.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: Knowing where there's a solution is really important.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: You might not access it immediately, you might not access it for five to ten years.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact that you know, and and we we always tend to want to be in in prominent positions.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the trolley office is in a very, very busy on a very busy road in and out of trolley, everybody knows where Cheem Jackson is because they can see the the big bright orange sign.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's um orange is quite a a notable colour.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone knows where Team Jackson is.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean people that have never come into Cheats and Jackson, but they know where Team Jackson is.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: That visibility matters.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: And people knowing that there is a highly credible, highly capable financial advisory firm that's serving their community that doesn't suffer some of the um the crosses that the banks have to bear because of their own historic pasts.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do I think the banks have improved?
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I do.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: They've been forced to improve.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but they're still serving the shareholder, and therefore there's still risks associated with banks.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we don't suffer that.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: We we we are a we are a bunch of nice people that are here to help people worry less.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and and therefore, the more we can get that message out, the more people become aware of what Cheam Jackson stands for, the more visible we become on high streets within those local communities, the more people we get to help.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, before we wrap up, Mr.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: You've got like a nice little anecdote.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, like a nice little story of somewhere where you feel like you've really added value, or someone within your team has really helped someone or helped the community.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm putting you on the spot.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I think it's always the always the thing that always strikes me is because we recruit nice people, and we are.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think generally to a person um in the organization, we have many, all of them are nice people.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're genuinely caring uh people and want to help others, and that that is just the fabric of who we are.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um Kevin Croker is probably the example I'll give you.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um Kevin's post 60, um, so he he's one of our more experienced advisors.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's got he's got a plethora of of very, very happy clients who continue to keep referring to him, uh, even though he's not supposed to be taking more on because he needs to um, if anything, uh he needs to he needs to kind of reduce the amount of time he's working.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he and his wife rode the full length of Britain uh last year.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: So over the age of 60, I can't remember his exact age, and I'm sure he doesn't want me to know his exact age.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but but just uh an endeavor that was really important to him.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he took the time out of the business to go and do that, um, folding at a number of the offices along the way uh as he came through the north of England.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: And and he is just one example of he's just an awesome human being that really cares about other people, and and he's taken on a massive challenge and and achieved it.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he's not and it and I guess the crazy part of it is he's not unusual at Cheatham Jackson, he's amazing, and what he achieved was amazing, but we've got a lot of people that would do similar things and and do regularly do similar things.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that to me is really important.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: The the philanthropic aspect of allowing advisors and and staff generally time to do things that are really important to them and support them in those endeavors, that's what makes life interesting.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um doing the job, helping people, you know, relieving the financial worry and concern of people, undoubtedly that's why we're here.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's what we're great at.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um but making a difference in in the lives of others that may not even be clients, um would actually give you a sense of satisfaction that you that you can't buy um and and make being part of Cheat and Jackson more interesting.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, what is financial advice, you know, having conversations about how we can, you know, investments, pensions, protections, you know, look after our wealth if we can't enjoy it, if we can't go out and do those things, you know, we're having these conversations.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you if it's for for my my dad would love to ride the the length of England, I wouldn't.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Mine might be like, you know, a trip to somewhere in the Caribbean.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: But what what is the point of us having these conversations if we can't make our lives better with the result of them?
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that's taking that trip or you know, retiring when you want to or putting your children through university, you know, it's being able to add value.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: And Cheatham Jackson very evidently doesn't just add value to the community that it serves, but to the people within it.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me this afternoon.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's been absolutely lovely.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Alina.