Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / The Power of Podcasting and YouTube with Pete Matthew

Transcript

The Power of Podcasting and YouTube with Pete Matthew · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, Sam Oakes here from the Financial Planner Life podcast.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: And today we've got an amazing guest.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: We've got Pete Matthews from Meaningful Money.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Twelve years ago, he set up a YouTube channel.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: So he's the OG of content creation in financial planning.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about the difference and the distinction between financial planning and financial coaching when it comes to content creation.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he shares some amazing hints and tips to get you started.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I learned so much on this episode.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: You will too.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Pete, thank you so much for joining me on the Financial Plan Life podcast.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've been really excited about getting you on.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've been watching you from afar, your journey with meaningful money TV.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've been in the profession for 15 years as a recruiter.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen that grow.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And what an amazing piece of educational content that actually is.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So today I want to find out how the hell did you build such a successful YouTube channel and podcast while spinning plates and running your own wealth management firm?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I want to understand that symbiotic relationship, but also dig a bit deeper and see if I can learn, because I'm starting to build a podcast, starting to build a YouTube channel.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I speak to lots and lots of people in the financial planning profession, and especially some of these newbies that are coming through, they want to do the same.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is it easy?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And is there a return on investment of your time and money?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, first off, Pete, before we jump into it, can you just give us a bit of an overview of where you are in your career, how you got into the financial planning profession as well?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sam, it's great to be here, mate.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've been really excited about this.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for inviting me.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you are a long way past just starting a podcast.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're already doing excellent work, mate.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So uh uh it's an absolute joy and a pleasure to be here.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm looking forward to digging into this because uh, you know, in just your intro there, there's a ton of stuff we need to get into and talk about.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: But very briefly, my journey.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I dropped out of university, did an electronics degree, or rather, I did uh like two years but failed my second year.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not sure if that counts.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Hated every minute of it.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh went to work for McDonald's and uh just went into management for them, which was fine, but got married and sort of McDonald's shift life was very much not compatible with my uh nurse wife, who was also on shift patterns, and so it came became pretty obvious that one of us needed to make a change because we were just never seeing each other.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We'd be married six months and uh we were just never seeing each other.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a friend that worked for the CIS, the co-op insurance, back in the days when you would collect life insurance and also car and house insurance premiums on the door.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I lived in South Wales at the time, and so I joined the CIS, got my initial FPC exams through them, uh left the CIS, went to the Royal Sun Alliance, and then became an IFA, still in South Wales, uh, and started work on my advanced FPC there and also CMAP and stuff.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: My Cornish wife, though, felt the call home to Cornwall.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, certainly once our eldest daughter was born in 1999.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we moved down here.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, financial advice is a job you can do anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I moved to Cornwall, found a job uh as an IFA with a practice which was linked to a legal firm in Helston, was there two and a half years, and then was approached by Jackson's, the directors there to join Jackson's as a self-employed advisor initially, but I was always kind of their uh succession plan.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I've you know bought out four colleagues, I think, uh already over time.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, this sort of the old guard, the previous generation.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: But Jackson's is a hundred-year established uh company, started as a general insurance broker here in Penzance in 1923, span out the life and pensions advice side in 1974.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So even the sort of what we call the new side of the business is 50 years old next year.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I just you know, I I for completely fell on my feet.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: An opportunity to buy in pretty cheaply to a, you know, a really strong local brand and well-established company here in Penzance.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a 25-year advice industry veteran this year.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this that's a fantastic overview.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for that.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you I guess you you were absolutely lucky to fall on your feet there, weren't you?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are a lot of advisors at the moment that are exiting the industry.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're getting to that age where they're looking to retire.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And succession planning is what it's all about.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of financial planning firms that and a lot of people who run those companies, they have an affinity and a deep connection with their clients.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea that they sell it out to one of the big consolidators causes them a lot of pain and a lot of sort of concern because they don't want to be passing their clients over that they've dealt with for years and years and years to somebody that will kind of treat them as a number on a piece of paper.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And there is this succession planning and this kind of battle really of do we sell for the highest bidder or do we build this succession plan?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So when people listen to this podcast, there's a lot of employed advisors or even self-employed advisors that are looking for those routes into those firms and to be part of the succession plan.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And do you, you know, your personal experience of going down that route, then obviously you've been lucky, it's worked for you, you've been able to buy out those individuals.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see that now, though, in the current market, in the current space?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that's a viable option for somebody if they are considering to buy client banks from a succession planning perspective?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh gosh, there's a there's a lot of uh meat in there.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Buying a client bank is not buying a business, really.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason why it's still extremely difficult is that most advice businesses are not run in such a way that they're actually businesses, or many, I should say, perhaps not most.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if if the relationship is between if the relationship from the client's point of view is just with the advisor, that makes it infinitely more difficult to uh pass that client to another advisor.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if the relationship is with the firm and the you know the company and the ethos of the company and the way it's run, it's a lot easier.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm doing that right now.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in the process of handing over about 90% of my client families to my advisors here at Jackson's simply to give me more time to do what I need to do here.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I think because those clients have got a relationship with the firm, that is much easier than it would be otherwise.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they've built relationship with that brand.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, the succession part, I've I've always I have aspirations actually to be part of and to build a financial planning business, and I'm always looking at the model of being able to grow it.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is attracting those advisors that perhaps are on their own and haven't really thought about those succession the succession plan inside of it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then how can I bring them an under a business?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Give them a really strong exit, exit strategy, exit plan, and then they build a relationship with the next generational advisor.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: So timescale-wise, right?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: How long do you think it takes for the new advisor to really be embedded into the relationship with those clients for you to say, Peter, in your experience, to feel comfortable saying you're now dealing with Sally or Dave?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think it depends on the client.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, some clients are you know very easy to hand over.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think sometimes we as advisors put too much weight on ourselves and our importance to the clients.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly that's the case with some, but for many of us, we we have to remember that we're just a professional advisor to them.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: It might feel like a friendship and it may well be, but people are a lot more fickle thing than they used to be.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think actually, for the vast majority of clients, if it's a seamless trans transition, a handover, you can do that in a single meeting.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now in my case, I'm not retiring.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm still gonna be here at Jackson's for at least another 10 years, god willing.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um I'm able to say to the client, Look, I'm still around if you absolutely need me, but Paul will now be your first point of contact and his CRM Teagan.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And anybody in the team has all your notes on file.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've got any question anytime, anybody can answer it, but Paul will be your first point of contact with Teagan, the CRM.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it it is if it's set up right, I think it's easier.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But handing over a client is different to selling a business, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got if you're a retiring advisor and you want to realize some value from the work that you've done over the last 30, 40 years, I don't really know there's any alternative but to sell, really.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And most younger advisors would have difficulty finding the money, I would have thought, to buy into anything of any size.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you most I'm sure like most 30-year-old advisors haven't got, I don't know, a couple of hundred gram worth of headroom on their mortgage, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: To be able to do that, and so I think we need to look much longer term as business owners and think actually, is there an alternative?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there is.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely building something here which I would like to put into an employee ownership trust in due course.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Chris Budd's The Eternal Business.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just love that idea.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea that Jacksons will still be uh independent in another 50 years' time, you know.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a massive subject that, Sam.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think we need to uh one of my favourite books is Simon Sinek's The Infinite Game, where he talks about we need to build businesses with a sort of no-end point uh point of view, right?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: That there isn't necessarily a sort of a hard stop in this business, but actually it could continue much longer than we as individuals do.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody will better be better off if we do that.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Stakeholders, clients, team members.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we do that?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm building here.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Really interesting, actually, because you you recommended that book to me and I started listening to it on Audible.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it I think you recommended it because of the conversation that we have, that I feel there is no end line, there is no finish line when it comes to building a business.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly in my head, that doesn't feel that way.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And recently I've been sort of asked when what's the amount of money that I would want for my business to be able to sell it, at what point would that be?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really difficult for me to actually put a figure together because it's I don't base my success, I don't base my um end goal on a monetary value because I like the continuation of building something that works and continues to work.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't ever see my it's like the it's like the term retirement, you know.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see that I don't see this idea of this word retirement, I think is going to be obsolete at some point because it's a weird way to say, look, there's an end goal, that's the date that you need to retire on.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, well, I don't want to retire.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I speak to people, and especially people that have got purpose and meaning in their life, they don't want to retire either.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a weird concept.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: And as health becomes better and we live longer, I think again the concept of retirement has to change.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um how we factor that into financial planning, running our businesses, living our lives, you know, it's uh it's a long game soon, isn't it?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it is.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think if the if your business is merely a cash cow to fund your life, that's a a very hard dichotomy, there's a very hard separation between the two.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I think a much more fulfilled life is where there's there's a lot of overlap.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I I can't see myself ever retiring.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can't see myself working as hard as I am now, indefinitely, but I can't imagine not being involved with this business.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: In some both businesses, in some capacity of yeah, in in a role that gives you fulfillment and joy.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned there, like you're gradually passing over your clients now to the next generation of advisors or other advisors within the business.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned there that was because it was to free up your time, um, of which I love because I'm on a similar journey.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, I've got a recruitment company with 20, 20 people within it.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's growing, that's going great guns.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: To think that I would be only doing recruitment or running a recruitment business for the next 10 or 15 years isn't um isn't fulfilling enough for me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I've built a succession plan.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: We've got managers in place, and that's growing great, and it's a great brand and it's doing really well.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I add value to that business now by focusing my attention on creating brand awareness, uh, my own personal brand, and creating alternative revenue streams that can actually benefit the recruitment business, whether that's recruitment partnerships, bringing video content, podcasting.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also now set at the Financial Panel Life Studios.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've mentioned I'm out at Legal in General, hosting, you know, you know, filming their podcast, claims videos.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I get so excited about the content creation side and the creativity that brings.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not to say, Peter, you know, I'm the guy who had the camera who understands all the, you know, that's Tristan, who's currently sat in front of me filming me.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm somebody that enjoys the creative process and creating solutions for people for their problems and um doing something different that makes them stand out.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the financial planning profession to me was always something that was slightly stale.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: There were a few people within it that were pushing the boundaries, and you're one of them with meaningful money.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So, with you know, I love what you said there, you know, you create a succession plan, you're bringing people, uh passing business across to them, so it frees up your time to focus on the other passions in your life.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And clearly, one of those is making content.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And meaningful money TV started 12 years ago, and I looked over some of the stats, and you can kind of give us some most up-to-date stats, probably, but they're astronomical figures that you're getting in respect of listeners and viewers on YouTube.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, that's super interesting because I'm there, I'm on that journey, and I want to do better to want to learn from the boss, the OG, which is you.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: It has been said, it's the grey hair, I think.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about meaningful money.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, you went in as a financial advisor, client-facing product seller, essentially, right?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's yeah, that's what you know, financial advisor.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's sells products.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: But meaningful money TV, that's a that's an unregulated business, isn't it?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Completely separate business, separate limited company, yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, separate limited company.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: So let's look at that symbiotic relationship because you on one side you're, you know, you have to be level four qualified to give financial advice and sell financial products, right?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other side, you can do life planning, you can talk about the psychology of money, helping people with their day-to-day finances, etc., education and coaching, and that can be completely unregulated.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, why did you go down that route and set up meaningful money TV 12 years ago?
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think to answer that, we need to understand motivation.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and uh what it is now is so much bigger and different with what I thought it could ever be at outset.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to understand, I had no idea what I was doing, right?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 2010.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I just wanted to have a bit of fun because I love technology, right?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you could see all of the room that I'm in, it's ridiculous.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the it accounts for about 40% of the electricity bill of the business, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I I love technology, I love software, I love just learning by doing and making mistakes and all that.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of uh a bit short of a hobby.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, perhaps I'll you know grab a camera.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I bought a little flip camera.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: The reason I'm looking up is that it's right behind the massive camera that I'm now using.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it started, it was like a hundred-pound flip camera.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, what am I going to talk about?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, okay, I need to talk about what I know, which is financial planning and financial services and how it all works.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, that might be cool.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: It might sort of uh leave a little bit of a dent in the universe if I help some people understand this stuff.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I definitely come to a point where I didn't just want to spend the rest of my life helping people who are already pretty rich, you know, get richer.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I understand I live in one of the poorest areas in the country.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Penzance is very, very there's a lot of poverty here.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you see that around you, and you want to do more than you know, just look after the clients with the Bentleys and the Mercedes and all that sort of stuff.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a kind of a bit of fun when I started, and of course that takes all the pressure off because you're not trying to achieve anything.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, nobody was watching, so uh I could just mess around and do stuff and just try things.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I had a a plan for the first 75 episodes, which is something that I think if anybody wants to start this, it's worth doing.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe not 75, but certainly the first 50 episodes of what you're going to talk about.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: You might want to at least have titles for, um, just so that you've got something to work to, right?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I basically sort of mapped out, can I teach everything pretty much anybody needs to know about financial services in 75 episodes?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer I think was yes.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then basically, since then I've been regurgitating it in different forms and you know, coping with changing legislation and things like that.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I started it just for fun.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that it would even become a link to Jackson's.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I put my first video up in April 2010.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: In August 2011, I had an email completely out of the blue from a client who lives down in Bexhill on Sea, which is like 350 miles from Penzance.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the crux of this email, as well as tons of detail about their financial situation, which you should never do on email.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, after all that, there was a single line at the end that just said, Pete, we've watched several of your videos and we feel like we know you and can trust you.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Will you work with us as clients?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I nearly fell off my chair.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I remember sitting back in my chair and going, Wow, how on earth is that gonna work?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've never dealt with a client remotely before.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So 2011, you know, I sort of opened a Skype account and you know, and got to sort of know these clients over video, and they ended up investing about 300 grand with me in 2011, and you know, they've been clients for a long time, actually not clients now for all kinds of reasons, but they you know, they were they were long-standing, very faithful clients.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: I went down to see them eventually in Vexhill.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was the first time I became aware that wow, okay, maybe there's a link here, and maybe meaningful money can become essentially a lead engine.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, by 2014, it was the biggest producer of new inquiries to Jacksons.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's over 80% of all our inquiries come from Meaningful Money, and we never get less than one a day, put it that way.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's become a monster, it's become a fire hose of new inquiries, then we can't take them all.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we've had to become a lot more picky and stuff like that.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it the symbiotic relationship has developed.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea it could be that at the outset.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I did.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have achieved it a lot quicker if I knew what I was doing at the outset.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's really that's really interesting.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I love the fact that you started it as a hobby and behind it was also purpose, the fact that you were in um an area that was was classed as poorer than the rest of the locations within the UK.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And for you, there was an element of purpose there to be able to deliver financial education to those that probably don't have access to it.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I love about that, is that you you one of your driving purposes was to help others.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if that is one of your driving purposes, it's it it multiply it pushes you forward, doesn't it?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because even in the background, if you know that someone's watching it and they're getting help from it, you're you're doing good, and good always tends to attract good.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a big big believer in you know laws of attraction, manifestation, putting one foot in front of the other and giving.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you you receive when you give.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really, really interesting.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I like that concept because there's a definite link in with what I'm doing.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always thinking, by the way, as I'm listening to you, is there a link into what I'm doing on your journey?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is it similar to mine and am I going down a similar path?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And mine was about educating the masses to what a career is like within the financial planning profession, because the financial planning profession on its own hasn't done a very good job in sharing actually behind the scenes what it's like.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, the obvious choice was to bring people onto a podcast that can educate by saying what it is they do day to day within their job.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, that grew.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And the symbiotic relationship then between my recruitment company and that is it gives you brand awareness and companies start to see it, and then I start to build partnerships and paid partnerships, and it's really kind of escalated from there.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: But the beginning was can I use this as a tool to add value to the profession where they have a pain point?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Can I solve this thing that was bleating on in every bloody magazine and every article with, you know, the advice gap, the advice gap?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking, well, could I, could I, could I, a recruitment consultant, solve this advice gap?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that was the thing that spurred me on.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: I I love fixing things and solving problems and creating solutions, and that was a big driver for me.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when people look at creating content, if you're doing it from that perspective, then there's purpose behind it and money will flow.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: It will absolutely right.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am raised in the Christian tradition.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a minister, right?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously, deep within that is the principle of giving.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but whichever way you come at it, from a religious one or an uh an irreligious one, it it matters not.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: The principle of giving and then the universe looking after you, um absolutely, and more so than ever, I'm convinced about.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, but I also think motivation is important.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a case of, oh, okay, great, there's this brilliant rule that says if I give, then I'll receive.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think motivation for giving is important as well.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And um it the idea is to give selflessly.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think again, I certainly don't want to paint myself as a saint, but because I had no even idea that it would come back to me in spades, that kind of was a given, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like, okay, I'm just gonna put this stuff out there.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: From my point of view, it's just I'm having fun with the camera and software.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then it turns out it's become a lot bigger than that.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm more convinced of that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: than ever.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's now speaking to everything that we're doing here at Jackson's, how we, you know, do a lot of work on how we give back to the to the local community and things like that.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: So even we'll, we're in the next sort of nine months or so, we'll be moving to a new space.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, how can we use that to increase financial literacy locally?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Can we sort of offer debt counselling or hire somebody who can do that, you know, sync with step change or one of these other organizations who can help us do that locally.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so you know this it's about thinking how can we use the skills and the the businesses that we've got to make a difference.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that is the internet economy, right?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you can add value relentlessly the internet and the universe will look after you're no question in my mind.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I see it everywhere, don't you?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, I 100% and the more I give the more I receive the more content I put out the more I remove this idea that everything has to be transactional and make me money.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be this monetary goal at the end of it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: When I removed that and just trusted the process and you know Pete, you know the the process takes time.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: It takes money right you know you don't just pop a video out on YouTube and bang you get a 300,000 pound investment.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: It took you how long did it take you to get your first leads?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well it took me sort of 16 months I think something like that and probably 150 videos.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing see and and that's the thing I think that people often don't see is the hard work and dedication the habit building the consistency that has to go into to building um a YouTube channel or a podcast to see that return on investment.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know the same for me we were with the financial plan of life you know I I had it running probably two years before I started making any money.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going into this year and it's just shot up like year three it's ridiculous.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it takes time doesn't it you have to put that content out and build that brand awareness.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Pete when you started you there's something you mentioned there about the YouTube let's go back to starting it because that was 12 years ago you started a different world probably when it comes podcasting and YouTube right you can't you can't move for a YouTube channel now or a or a podcast.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you know do you think 12 years ago it was harder or easier to start a YouTube channel within the financial planning space or the financial uh advice space?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Easier within a niche like that um and simply because of volume I mean YouTube was always a very deep poor even in 2010 whereas podcasting was extremely shallow by contrast I mean I think when I started the podcast which was November 2012 I'll come back to that in a minute but when I started that I think there was me and Martin Bamford uh doing anything in that space uh in personal finance in podcasting whereas there was some stuff going on on YouTube and YouTube was was already a very deep pool so it was harder to to sort of make any kind of splash there but if I'd have known now if I'd have known then what I know now I would have blown up a lot more quickly because I've learned a great deal particularly about YouTube which is a kind of black art to try to nudge the algorithm to push you in front of more people you know titles thumbnails all that sort of stuff it it's a it's a science really um but with podcasting which for me was easily the breakout medium I mean I had a few views a few hundred views on my videos but nothing material not really I mean yeah it started to lead to inquiries but for me it really went nuts when I started the podcast and that was November 2012 I did 13 episodes over six months and then I thought nope I need to take this seriously and commit to going weekly and as soon as I did that my download numbers went through the roof um and continued to to do so continue to grow and it's that that has built the Meaningful Money brand really even though the YouTube channel predated it.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't really do anything on the YouTube channel for I don't know four or five years.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then I started recording the podcast and just you know on video and just uploading that and really only 18 months ago did we decide YouTube will always be my first love and so we decided we as me and my partner Cal we um decided we're going to go all in on YouTube.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm still doing the podcast but I brought in a co-host which means there's less writing for me to do uh for the podcast which allows me to write for YouTube and since that time we've uh well 18 months ago I had 1000 subscribers and now we're on uh nearly 78000 so it it's worth going all in and I've learned a great deal as you can imagine the process but for me I was just an early adopter in podcasting and that was definitely a massive factor as well as then the consistency.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: No absolutely I and I love that one of the things that you said there you know it and and this is where I'm gonna sort of dig a little bit deeper now on this is that if you knew what you knew 12 years if you knew what you knew now 12 years ago what would you teach yourself Pete um I would as far as YouTube is concerned I would teach myself that the click is everything.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to get people to click your video if anybody's gonna watch it.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay and of course in order for them to click it they need to see it they need to see the thumbnail they need to be attracted by the thumbnail read the title and in a sort of infinitesimally small space of time make a decision to click and that really is everything.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Once you've got them clicked though you need to hook the viewer very quickly and then maintain their interest and there's all kinds of sort of techniques to do that you know um it sort of trail what you're going to be talking about drop in an open loop question so that you know the viewer wants to uh sort of stay the course so to get the answer to the question uh to put in chapter markers and things like that so they can see the sort of the thread of it so these are the things that we've learned really just in the last 18 months which have allowed the channel to blow up as it has um but back then you know I I was I was just more interested if anything about getting the camera angle right and the lighting and the audio and stuff.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's all important but it is I mean these days you can get such fantastic quality on your iPhone or your galaxy or whatever and you know even the audio too can be brilliant and it's good enough for somebody to watch but they'll never watch it if they don't see and click that thumbnail and so that's the sort of things that that I think you really need to to get good at yes the content is important if it's boring if it's not educational if there's no inspirational element to it you know you're not gonna uh succeed really in the long term depending on what your definition of success is so there's a whole bunch of stuff that that kind of comes together but really it starts with the click and that's what I would apply uh you know 12 years ago if I had my time again so I often say to people I think I I would grow a lot quicker if I started now knowing what I know now but hindsight's a wonderful thing isn't it no absolutely I love that it starts with the click um with let's go I I'm gonna dig on that because I feel like it might even start before the click in this is my understanding like I've got my YouTube channel in fact it's just gone into monetization and like you I've up all I've ever really done is uploaded my YouTube my my my podcasts my podcast is super niche so I'm never gonna get you know millions and millions of views on it or thousands and thousands of views on it but I put my content out there the thing I would ask you about having a really strong thumbnail is obviously enticing and engaging.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know I've been I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole recently into UFOs and you can imagine on YouTube the the click the click opportunities you know about UFOs is insane.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I couldn't really understand that and the loop and the hook that they get you in to continue on through to find the answer to the thing you're searching for might well be at 15 minutes.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if there are chapter markers then you can look at it and you can zoom straight to that part.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So these are all really kind of tactics that get the person's dopamine charged up to go and find the answer to the question that they're seeking whether that be within financial services how to get out of debt for example or how to pay off a credit card effectively you know and I and those are the types of topics of conversations that the masses who are experiencing debt for example are out there and they would be searching for and looking and why not go onto YouTube to find it because we like to read, watch um and we like to listen so the podcast comes in handy there.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: But going sort of predate in before the actual click and the image and all of that kind of thing do you get into any do you go and you sort of talked about black arts there and people laugh about SEO for example key words being a black art what part does the research into the topic that you are going to be talking about play in your decision to create content yeah no well okay so it's a factor but I don't want to just be driven by what people are searching for.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely a factor.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if I might have an idea right and I think okay that might make an interesting video and then we'll research it and we'll you know come up with a ton of different um potential subjects we're even now starting to use uh AI to suggest titles um based on so we'll we'll put a we'll write a sort of two or three paragraph outline and then ask chat GPT to suggest uh titles for us and keywords and then we will run those through a couple of tools we use one is called vidIQ and the other one's called TubeBuddy and just that will give you you know the um like the search volume uh competition levels for that keyword and stuff like that.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't what we don't do is start with keyword research.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I always start with an idea um sometimes that's easy Chancellor you know abolishes the lifetime allowance clearly that's the next video I'm gonna do right but in the absence of any sort of external um uh sort of um trigger like that then I might just have an idea or I mean I got like 13,000 people in a in a Facebook group which is an endless source of ideas as you can imagine so uh you know it's just I letting those triggers happen and then sometimes we will just sack an idea because you think okay there's click nobody's ever going to click on this I might think it's a good idea but turns out YouTube doesn't and so we'll just bin that and move on to the next one.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: But we keep a database of ideas we get questions on email questions in YouTube comments I have sort of people watching that and just saying hey this might be an idea for a video and we just it's damn there's something like 250 trigger ideas in there now so I'm never going to be short people ask me all the time are you ever going to run out of stuff to say uh to which I just laugh and say well no not as long as there are people on the planet you know they're gonna have questions about their finances so I'm never gonna run out of stuff to say but it doesn't start with keyword research that just uh helps us really refine firstly to filter a a a goer from a not from an idea that isn't gonna have legs and then to refine how we present it.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that's kind of the process that makes sense yeah it makes perfect it makes perfect sense.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean marketing and uh and any anything where you're looking to drive inbound business and inbound leads you're gonna look at all these different tools and and ways to do it.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think sometimes these are the things that can stop us from moving forward and creating the actual content in the first place.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you know it goes back to the idea look I've got an idea here.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's driven by purpose to help people.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: If I just put one foot in front of the other and create video content that I think will help people, then that's the way to get started to forget about the keyword side of it to forget about the click side of it just to get going, put one foot in front of the other and start doing I mean you mentioned about your podcast 13 episodes over how many months was it six?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh about six months yeah it flipped around a bit six months and like you build that kind of and all of a sudden you think well to take this seriously I need to do it every week.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to build that habit loop in there and the processes of actually creating that podcast because these things aren't easy.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think when people look at content creation sometimes they can be quite overly analytical and we'll look at like the strategy first before actually creating the content when the creating of the content itself is the thing that's going to drive brand awareness and drive your personal brand but also drive your confidence in your ability to actually continue on and to work out whether or not you can factor in content creation into your weekly um work structure because it takes time Pete doesn't it it really does.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: It really does yeah yeah let's talk about the realities of the time it takes you you know how much time and energy you have you spent on creating content and has that over time decreased or increased I'd say my amount of input has stayed largely the same but the total number of sort of people hours has definitely increased.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've just got more people now so bear in mind it started as a hobby so I was entirely happy to edit a video in an evening and things like that.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: People always ask me you know how do you get some stuff done is the answer is I generally don't watch TV very often you know I I tried to be very intentional.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing wrong with watching TV if that's what you want to do but I tend I try not to default to anything scrolling watching TV I try to be intentional with with with my time and so uh I'm a big fan of time blocking so you know uh Thursday evenings for example are sacrosanct because Joe and I uh are learning to dance and so that's our thing that we do together and uh you know I'll I'll never sort of blow off dance class so that I can edit a video or you know do keyword research or anything like that.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: So try to be pretty intentional about my time.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I do has changed.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't edit anymore very often at all I have an editor to do that.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: He's actually much more than an editor he's kind of my right hand man really uh uh great guy called Cal in uh Bulgaria uh he speaks better English than I do it's amazing incredibly intelligent guy great friend and he gets it you know he spent his life studying this stuff that's what he does so he's a freelancer but and then some um and then I have a great guy called Nick who is my sort of uh I want to say customer service but he's also much more than that because even though he's not a financial advisor himself he has an incredible grasp of the finance system it's his hobby and so he helps me answer email uh moderate the Facebook groups uh I have another moderator called Ruth in there I have a lady called Gudrun who helps me with some writing so I've just there's more being done but I'm not doing it all but I'm you know fortunate that the the business has grown to be able to uh allow me to do that um but otherwise man I I'd have keeled over by now because it it puts demands on your time and I'd have had to have decided you know either put one video out a month if I'm lucky or just sack YouTube and stick to the podcast or if I want to grow this thing if I'm really committed to it and I love it as much as I say I do then we need to throw some people behind it and and that's where we're at now.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I still love it man.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: I still love getting behind the camera or in front of the camera um you know setting up the lights and all this sort of stuff.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm as enthusiastic about it as I was right at the start.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah definitely a hobbyist isn't it you started as a hobbyist and took that into so you took you took what you knew made it a hobby.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things you said though I love as well is that you know we all have free time.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: We do have it's 24 hours in a day right and like if you if you wrote down on a piece of paper where you're spending your time and some people who I don't know down the pub with their mates four hours they could be like watching YouTube and uh well it could be YouTube binging on YouTube it could be binging on Netflix.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: When you add those times up and someone says I haven't got enough time it's like well I'm I'm pretty sure you've probably got enough time if you genuinely are serious about starting something you have the time to do it.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: I started doing that blocking out time and like realizing how much time I was wasting and like if it when I started breaking that down and looking at it and obviously time is our most valuable resource you know it's the most valuable thing for me.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And when I look at it I'm just like wow I totally have more time than I did I thought.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well you know I got two kids they're now adults so they're a lot less needy than they were a bit more expensive than they were but they are you know because they're young adults but um you know there was a time when I became aware that I was spending too much time behind my laptop in the evening and my kids who were then I don't know maybe like 11 and 8 or you know 12 and 9 something like that they needed me more.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said okay right so for a period I'm gonna get up at five and work two hours you know and write then or edit then and you know it was really hard.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a generally a morning person but five o'clock was always a bit of a stretch.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I did it I did it for about three years until the kids got to the point where actually they needed me a bit less in the evenings they were much more self-sufficient.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then I stopped but it's so you go through seasons.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have no time at all for people to say I just don't have the time for that it's like you you do you're just choosing to do other things and that's okay.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't lament that you don't have time if you're spending it doing other stuff you should just think well I am choosing to spend my time differently and that's absolutely cool.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know if it's golf it's watching tell if it's down the pub if it's going to the gym all those things are entirely legitimate uses of your time I choose to spend a lot of time doing what I do here because I love it.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah no absolutely you mentioned about the podcast then and it really kicked off for you meaning meaningful money when you when you produced that podcast was that because there were lots of listeners and then they went over to YouTube and started binge watching like your episodes for example to find out more about you how how how did that relationship between the podcast and YouTube for example um correlate and and improve yeah hard to tell um there's definitely some overlap but it's really hard to tell uh which is which we do ask potential clients who get in touch uh which sort of medium they've come from you know you listen to the podcast or you're watching the YouTube channel um it definitely skews in favor of YouTube now because that's been where we've been putting most of the energy over the last sort of 18 months to two years um but it's a real blend and plenty of people say both um but I literally didn't do YouTube for years you know I went all in on the podcast and that was my only audience uh to speak of and when I was just putting the podcast on YouTube that's suboptimal there is you know plenty of people have proven that you can put long form content sort of talk show type content on YouTube and it works just fine but the biggest channels on YouTube generally speaking are the ones that do sort of 10 to 15 minute um mini movies almost some of them you know and uh so that's what we do on YouTube now we don't put the podcast on there um so you know you've got to just sort of learn this stuff and try it and see what works but as far as audience is concerned it's really hard to know the only real metric I've got is people who get in touch with me here at Jackson's and then we ask the question and I would say it's probably top of my head it's probably about a little over 50% YouTube maybe 30% podcast and maybe 20% both.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay but that's interesting you mentioned about the longer form and the then then the 10 to 15 minute ones because everything I put on my YouTube channel at the moment tends to be about an hour.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um and I and and does that in your knowledge and understanding does that have a negative effect on the growth of your subscribers then?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Does it for example if I've got long form video on there and perhaps people might not be watching it long enough does that then is there an algorithm within YouTube that would then stop my video from being recommended?
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's part of it because view duration is part of it but generally speaking view duration is done on time not on percentage I believe so you know if if they watch five minutes or you know 10 minutes of a of a 60 minute video they're watching 10 minutes they're not watching a sixth essentially and so a 10 minute view duration would actually be very good okay whereas obviously if you put a 10 minute video in uh and they watch it all essentially it's the same I I believe there may be some weight given to percentage but I mostly it's time it's it's it's length of time in in terms of view duration.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think it'll be massively negatively affecting you.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: I just think it's a little bit more of a niche audience.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah um and people are a little bit more rapid fire on YouTube than they are say on Netflix I would argue.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I'm sure people know more than me maybe have something else to say on that but that's my perception at this point that shorter stuff works really well.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because collectively actually if I if I because what I tend to do is marry I I add up the amount of viewers on my YouTube channel to the amount of downloads and listens on my podcast and 60% is actually via YouTube.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: So YouTube for me is you know a decent following on there and the average age as well is around the age I want them to be which is like between 30 and 40.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a good sort of age demographic that the podcast and if I for some of the look at the stats and the podcast is going up and I and it's again it comes to that point as well.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: When you when you create something a topic that's so super duper niche I mean financial planning's niche and then careers in financial planning is even more so is even more so niche.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I forget sometimes because if I look at my podcast, like the the downloads, views, if I add it together, when I looked at the stats in respect to podcast performance, I'm within the top 10% globally within the first seven days of an episode being released, which is about 500 plus listens or listens or views.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like super psyched.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: 500 sorry, 500 within a week of it being produced.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's good numbers, mate.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: So like within the first seven days, 500 plus I tend to get, and that is within the top 10% globally across all different types of podcasts.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: So when I saw that and I heard that, it really fired me up.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think low numbers can sometimes neg people out because you see somebody, somebody's got like, I don't know, a million followers or whatever, but you have to kind of understand that like what you're talking about, the subject matter that you might choose, if it is super duper niche, niche, but you look at the stats that are shown your listeners are going up, you look at the stats of how it's performing within the first 10 days.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I looked at my charts today, and I'm number 11 in the careers charts in in in Apple.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like you have to then kind of almost 10 times that if you were to compare yourself with somebody who's just doing like a mindset in business, uh, you know, a business mindset podcast.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that can often often put people off because they compare themselves to those big numbers and forget the fact that what they're doing is super niche and that the audience that they're talking to is the right audience, it's not a broad audience.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Really important.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the problem is that stats don't really show you that.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've always treated engagement as my primary metric.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that comes in a ton of different ways, you know.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, comments on a YouTube channel uh is really important.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: You want your filter out the spam garbagey ones, um, and you know, emails.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we've grown a Facebook group, open Facebook community, um, you know, from zero to thirteen thousand people in uh a little over three years, I think.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and it's a really lovely place.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the internet's a bit of a dump for the most part, but for an online community, it's very, very well moderated by the two guys I've got in there.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, it's a very sort of low uh stress way to ask financial questions um because there's no pressure, there's no negativity, it's it's really it's a good place to be.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: And these are the kind of engagement metrics that I really like.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, number of questions being asked, number of responses to those questions on YouTube.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's comments uh numbers, um, as as well as downloads and subscribers and views and all that sort of stuff.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: I just think those are vanity metrics, and these you're dead right, Sam.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're never in your niche gonna compete with Mr.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: Beast on YouTube, right?
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's just never gonna happen.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and why would it?
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'm a UK financial planner.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: I start every single video saying I'm a financial chartered financial planner based here in the UK, gives people context straight away.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of what I talk about is UK personal finance system specific.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm immediately, you know, removing you know about 99% of the world's population from it being applicable to.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, the numbers are always going to be low, but if it doesn't matter about numbers, it it it it's engagement and the joy that it brings me doing it and all that sort of stuff.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I understand about the postcards.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna agree with you on that, you know, and the brand awareness that it's it's the being noticed.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I often, you know, I get really excited when somebody sends me a message.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: So if my if my listeners have learned something from it or it adds value to their life and maybe it started kick-started their career, or maybe they've made that you know leap from employed to self-employed because I had a self-employed person who did the same on there.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: I get these messages and and and and it really that really charges me up.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I often share those on LinkedIn, and they're the ones that tend to do the best because and then when you do that, you get a flux of other messages come in saying, Sam, keep doing it, it's really good.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I do love and I I I measure myself on that, but I also measure like when I make a phone call to somebody, Pete, and someone goes, Sam, I know who you are, and you know nine times out of ten, I'm getting that.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's cool, isn't it?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: I get I get inbound business now.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, that's what Tom mentioned about legal in general doing the work with them.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: If I didn't create that podcast, if I didn't put that marketing out, if I didn't repurpose it and then have a social strategy attached to it, I don't know whether or not they would have ever reached out to me.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I absolutely I've got my own story on that because you're absolutely right.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm a you know, we're a tin pot little practice, really, very ordinary IFA practice, all the way down in Penzance.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Another 10 miles, you fall off the country, right?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: And Cornwall's very long and narrow.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're right at the end of it.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: It takes ages to get anywhere, six hours on a train for me to get to London.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, nobody knew who I was.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I joined Twitter in 2008.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I think I was in the first million people that joined Twitter, and a bunch of us in financial services also joined Twitter about the same time, Rich Allen.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And among those was Nick Kann, who then was the chief executive of the Institute of Financial Planning, as it was then.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember going to my first IFP conference, and I'm naturally an introvert, and so I was just like, but I thought I must put myself out of my comfort zone, and I introduced myself to Nick.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Nick.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Pete.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a financial planner from Penzance.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Really excited to be here.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: We chatted for about 90 seconds, I moved on.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: He who he definitely forgot who I was, right?
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: By the next year's conference, we'd been corresponding on Twitter a lot, and he hails me across the room.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Pete, great to see you, bud.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: How you doing?
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we, you know, we sort of had drinks together and all that sort of stuff.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he kind of put me on the map as a person in the industry.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: And for an introvert, that was actually incredibly helpful because then people, you're the video guy, right?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're the podcast guy.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how's that going?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: And people, you know, make it easy because they would approach me and they know who I was.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like you say, then stuff comes out of it.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've written a book, writing another one, you know, publishing deal.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've done work for providers, done video work for them, uh, you know, affiliate links with Life Search, you know, sort of sending business their way to do protection business, all this stuff, meaningful money has become a business in itself, which, you know, from starting on a you know, in a field in Cornwall with a 100-pound flip video camera, it's become a bit of a beast.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it it does that for you.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: It it people know who you are, it helps you build a business, it takes time.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it's helped me more than anything to distill my thinking on a range of subjects.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're going to put content out week after week after week, you kind of refine what you do.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's like any advisor worth their salt will eventually come up with ways of explaining certain things that really hit home with most clients.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just little sort of statements or comments that we might say, ways of explaining things.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: And doing a podcast, doing a YouTube channel, does that as well.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you just learn, it it helps you distill your thinking, which makes you, I think, a better thinker.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's what I've really enjoyed getting out of it.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Again, massive similarities there.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: The additional revenue streams that you mentioned, that's where that's what I've started to do.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: As the pod, you know, it started off as a podcast, Financial Planner Life, for instance.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then I've now got Financial Planner Life Studio, I've got Financial Planner Life brand partnerships where, like you, I'm working with product providers, suppliers, I'm soon to be going to be start working with asset managers.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: So all these individuals, companies that want the financial planning profession and those within it to know who they are.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I brought Kin Herit on, and we talked about the um trusts and wills and the technology they have around the Kin vault and how it's simplifying things like the um opportunity to recognize uh wealth handover during the great transition of wealth.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there's always these what what I love, and I'm a I'm a connector and I and I like to connect things and I like to be connected to others.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what it does is it opens you up to a profession where you didn't have that influence before.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a book that I I'm a do you know what I'm like?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I tend to say someone will recommend a book to me, and I don't know if this is just books in general, but they all tend to repeat themselves, right?
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they tend to give you the answer to what the to what the book's about within the first like 20 pages.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there was one called Key Person of Influence.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, Daniel Priestley.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and often than not, I pick something up and I'm on the I'm on the journey anyway.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, I'm on the journey anyway.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I read it and I looked over the kind of steps guide to to becoming this key person of influence, and it's such a good step guide to becoming this key person of influence.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it happened to you, it happened to you at that meeting.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: You were a naturally introverted person, but because you were recognized as a key person of influence, you you were wanted to be, someone wanted you to become part of their circle.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when they come, and when that key person of influence brings you into their circle, you become the key person of influence within their circle.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the most powerful things that I have learned from my journey.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: A is that you can create multiple revenue streams underneath a brand.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, I've got recruitment, I've got brand partnerships, I've now got an academy coming out, you know, I've got um partnerships with um recruitment firm.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's I've got loads of things on the on the go at the moment.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's ridiculous.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: But they all are symbiotic and they all they all help each other.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the one thing that has been a standout is I had to establish myself as a thought leader, and which is imagine like as a recruitment consultant, trying to be a thought leader within a recruit in a professional in a profession such as financial planning, you're always considered a bit of the devil, really.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so that not me.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had to change that.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: I had to change that perception of who I was and what value that I added, uh, that I had.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that was through communicating with people like you to share your journeys because that's what people wanted.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: That was a go-between, you know.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: What better way to do it though?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what an amazing time to be alive where you can set your iPhone on a tripod and talk to it for 10 minutes, and thousands of people can watch, if not tens, hundreds, even of thousands, or even millions of people.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: We've never had this ability to reach the people we need to reach so ridiculously easily.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's you know the internet uh basically was born for most ordinary people in 1995, right?
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: When Windows 95 came out with Internet Explorer version one.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's when most ordinary people started using the internet.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's less than 30 years old for crying out loud, right?
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: What's it gonna be like 10 years from now or 50 years from now?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: That our ability to reach people is insane.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, there's more people, right?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a deeper pool, so you it's harder to stand out, but we don't need to reach everybody, we just need to reach the people who need either who need what we're providing, you know, or who can connect us in such a way that it improves our life and our business and whatever.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just I could get so excited about this, and you say, you know, you read these books and you feel like you're already on the journey, I'm the same.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: But most people still are not.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: Most people get up, go to work, chill out in the evening, and repeat, right?
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: And look forward to the weekend.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the internet and these media make so much possible.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it takes effort, but man alive, is it worth it?
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: My life has completely changed thanks to meaningful money.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, nobody would have ever heard of me.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I went for a job before I came to Jackson's.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was speaking to another advisor in Cormore.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: He interviewed me.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And when I rang him and told him I wasn't going there and coming to Jackson's instead, he laughed down the phone at me and said, Jackson's is a dinosaur, it's dying.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: And these are his words.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody will ever hear from you again, nobody will ever know who you are.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this guy was always in the industry press, everybody knew his name, and now everybody knows my name, or many people do in the industry.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that I mean, you know, in this sort of slightly um vindictive way, that kind of like you know, I'm very glad that it ended up like that.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I just think it's an incredible time to be alive where you can get your message out.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: That was part of the trigger for me with Meaning for Money.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: I read a book called Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk, who's probably my number one internet hero.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: And he just said, look, what this is 2008, whatever your message is, if it's any good and if it adds value to enough people, just put it out there and people will listen.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are now no gatekeepers, there's nothing standing between you and uploading a video to YouTube.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you do it?
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: And plenty of people are and making a difference to their lives and hundreds of thousands of other people's lives.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely spot on.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: With meaningful money then.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned there that you've got this gated uh community now on Facebook of around 13,000 people.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Did you mention that?
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's a just a free um, you know, uh group on Facebook.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you did that three years ago.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Now something I'll be honest, and and it's something that I've steered away from is creating a community.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: One was because I was nervous about having to create the content to put into the community.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the other one was having to manage the community as well.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not high I'm not I'm I'm organized, but I'm not highly organized.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those things I was a bit nervous about.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: So recently I've decided to join forces with next gen planners and create a community with next gen planners and sort of big piggyback.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it goes back down to my partnership mentality of trying to connect with people who are key people of influence and helping me, you know, it's a piggyback type type scenario.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but let's just kind of just look at that community side of it.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it was three years ago you set it up, but you mentioned that you get great it's almost instant feedback from the community that then gives you ideas and what they like and what they dislike, and you build that relationship with the community.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're in there because they're interested in you and they're loyal and they are interested in what you've got to say, right?
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that if Pete of old 12 years ago, would you have told Pete 12 years ago to get cracking with that community straight away?
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like me, I'm on the fence.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you should I get cracking on it straight away?
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: Should I is it something you think is a real value add?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think you could.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I could have when I started.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've already got enough of a community because you know you're already doing great stuff on Instagram and stuff like that and your other socials.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you could open a community.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: The great thing about Facebook, I I I've undernarred about shifting it to some other platform, you know, to Discord or uh maybe even putting a community element inside the Meaningful Money site.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the great thing about Facebook is that people are already on there, yeah.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's providing the platform.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_00: Generally, you shouldn't build something on somebody else's land.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, that's so I know I'm uh in a sense I'm doing that, and that all my videos are on YouTube, but I also have copies of all my videos.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if YouTube failed, I could, you know, I could you know uh shift the videos to whatever the new thing was, but uh community running a community does take work.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have two mods uh who volunteered, right?
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were in there anyway, brilliant at answering questions, and so they gatekeep, nobody gets in without answering three questions, so we don't have spam.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um they're very quick at responding to reports.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I had uh um an advisor from a very large wealth management firm who shall remain nameless join the community and starting DMing people saying, Hey, if you need advice, come to me.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we kicked her out.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, stuff like that.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: It it takes time and effort to run a uh community.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think the model for this is Phil Calvert with his life talk community.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you have you come across Phil?
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean he had, I can't remember the name of the platform that he was on back in the day.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was on a completely separate platform, and then he shifted it to Facebook.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember him saying that running a community is it's like having a fish tank, right?
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: Every now and then you've got to sprinkle a little bit of food in, and it sort of gets things talking, gets things moving, the fish start moving and getting the food.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes putting in a question for people to answer uh is is is a certainly as things get started, that's great.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean, his community and mine now, they're kind of self-maintaining, so there's enough people in there that there are enough questions that people want to answer, and so it it takes time to build it to that sort of self-sustaining level.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I reckon you could do it now.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, is there value in it?
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: And many of these people in the meaningful community money community on Facebook have never watched a video or ever listened to a podcast, they've joined the community because Facebook has presented it to them, right?
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it for me is another way of capturing audience who may then because very often my mods will say, Pete did a video on this, here's the link.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and so it's another way of capturing audience that perhaps haven't heard me, it's pretty low numbers, really, yeah, relative to organic podcast listeners and YouTube viewers.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, it's just another thing.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the other thing I love doing is a weekly email last.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I do a digest on a Friday, goes out to about 11 and a half thousand people now.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the feedback and the engagement from that is not usually most of my Friday afternoon is trying to reply to all the people who hit reply to me.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing I learned from Gary V is that if you can reply personally to as many people as possible, it does wonders for your reputation and uh sense of community.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I tried to do that, but as the numbers get bigger, it's getting harder.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: I am looking forward to setting up the Financial Planner Life Academy and having the community on there.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the one of the things that I like the most about it is that I can partner that with NextGen by leaning into their community.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: And because one of the things that I I want to make sure that if I was ever creating a community, I would I would want it to be monetized.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I I don't want to do it for free because I consider what I do through the financial plan of life as an open source community anyway, across social media, because there isn't many of us actually doing it across social media and considering that to be their community, like an open source community.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I do feel like I'm quite open source.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: I may not be able to distinguish who each and every person actually is, but the fact that it's open, it allows it to be shared and it allows it to be seen by a wider audience and it's not so kind of um uh elitist.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I quite like that approach to it.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: But then if somebody is messaging me and they're asking questions about how to become a financial advisor, what's the best route?
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do this?
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do that?
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: That was when I was like, look, there's a community there for those types of people, whether they're second careerists, whether they're graduates, or even if they're people within the profession that are just stuck, you know.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to create a community, but I want to make it paid.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I want to have it if it's paid, I wanted it to be valuable.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing that the profession has lacked massively, I think, is look, we can train you.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, i.e., get trainers, whatever qualification it is that you want, we'll do that for you, right?
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_01: Give you trainers online, all of that stuff.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a distinct lack of soft skills training, of which we've now solved that, and we've got brilliant soft skills training.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, if somebody wants to be an IFA administrator, we could then put them on systems training within the community, and they can start learning and even or I could bring in like a CRM expert who could talk about what the system is that they use.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: But also as well, like we can do cash training, so preparing somebody for cash.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody like an employer was looking at that community and saying, like, have you got anybody in there that's ready, ready to become a financial advisor?
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: Perhaps they're a second careerist.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I've got John and he's, you know, he's done his four exams, he's done four exams, he's on his way to six, but he's also gone through this, this, this, and this training, soft skills, how to position.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's adding value in that, in that sense.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing that's always lacked, and and I don't want to kind of beat up the St.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: James's places or your MNGs, et cetera, because I work with them and I partner with them and they offer a fantastic service.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: They do stimulate the profession with new advisors, but they do limit people essentially as saying this is the only route to becoming a financial advisor.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas I want to say, look, you know, if you come into my community, you can be an administrator, power planner, mortgage protection advisor, you could be a financial advisor, employed or self-employed.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the problem you've got is you don't know yet.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you come in and you don't commit two-footed into joining an academy where you have to leave your job, for example, you can pay a specific amount of money, start your qualifications, of which we'll train you for free, and you've got me in there who can educate you as to what the profession looks like and what the roots are and the realistic timescales.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: And to back that up, I'll bring some really great guests in and they'll talk about their journey so you can understand from their perspective what it is.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: And partnering with NextGen allows me to have mentors from NextGen that can sit in the financial plan of life community.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like it's a I didn't want to, I didn't want to do, I don't like doing things, Pete, for this for the sake of doing it.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: The time always comes at the right time.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: There is always a time when it's the right time.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I talked talked to NextGen years ago, and I and and at that point I saw them as competition, you know.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: I saw it as compet competition, whereas now I see it as collaboration, and I love that.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the collaboration for me that excites me because it's the ability to deliver a better service instead of going up against somebody.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's leverage and scale, isn't it?
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, for me, the community it is is it's a little bit of a it's a bit of a bolt on.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was um just a way of perhaps getting the message out a little bit more, and because it doesn't take me a great deal of time, uh it it's fine to do that.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out that what I've built is a funnel, and I again I didn't know that this was even a thing.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I started, I don't think the phrase content marketing had been coined.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you know, but a funnel obviously, as the name suggests, is it's wide at the top, and that's where you're Putting loads of stuff out and you're trying to reach lots of different people.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: So Facebook group is great for that.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, podcast, YouTube channel, all these sort of free, that's kind of the free tier, if you like.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: But that leads to the sort of middle tier for me, which is meaningful academy.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I have a paid academy as well.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: So people pay a one-off fee for essentially more distilled learning that takes them through a journey of uh learning about everything they need to know in the particular life stage they're at.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: So whether they're just starting out with their finances, need to get rid of some debt, understand about budgeting and things like that, or whether they're building, you know, understanding investment, um, a bit more details about protection and making sure that the rug's not pulled out from you, and then to the retirement planning, the sort of end game stuff.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have Academy for that.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's about 900 people, I think, in there.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: They've paid a one-off cost.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's amazing how many people go from the free tier, they listen to the podcast, they watch YouTube, they sign up for the academy, and they consume all of that, and then they still think, Do you know what?
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I I'm basically teaching them to never have to use a financial advisor, right?
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: But it's amazing how many people say, Yeah, do you know what?
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: I still want some help with this, and who are they gonna ring?
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're they're gonna ring Jackson's and they're gonna ring me.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the sort of end of the funnel, really, is the one-to-one regulated financial planning advice that they're getting from us here at Jacksons, and it it turns out it's a funnel without any intention of it being so.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happened with different tiers, and it's amazing how many people come all the way through.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the community is at the top of the funnel.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it's a free element, but I also have a paid community inside Minion 4 Academy, and so it can do double duty really.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_00: The email goes out for free, the email blast, you know.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, anybody wants to download a transcript of a podcast or a worksheet that we've put out or whatever, it'll cost them their email address, they can always unsubscribe.
• 1:08:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's all just part of a like an ecosystem now that takes some looking after and managing, but it's become this thing, which is now obviously an incredible funnel uh of business to Jacksons, as well as me making some money in the process.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think that's I think it's fantastic, and I think there is this paradigm shift.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's so obvious that you know, not everybody in this country either has access to financial planning or is of interest to a financial planning firm at the stage they're at in their life.
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_01: And there is this gap, and you've had the fortitude to see that quite some time for some time ago and to create that academy.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_01: And again, built out of this idea of empowering and educating people to make their own decisions and make their own choices.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: And do they really need a financial advisor if they go through that academy?
• 1:08:46
  SPEAKER_01: But people, as you mentioned, you know, once they've done that and they've gone through it and they feel empowered, they still need somebody to guide them, they still need that coach, they still want that second opinion.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_01: But what that's done is that the journey from the podcast to YouTube, to your website, to your community and Facebook, to the academy, it's just a journey of relationship building and trust.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you're just you're never trying to take from them, you're just trying to give them the empowerment to sort it themselves.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_01: So when it comes to the stage in their life where perhaps they might inherit a large sum of money, and this is where this I love this, you know.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I A, I love it because it's unregulated, right?
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of really skillful people out there that build really good relationships and can really educate that.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're very clever at educating people and inspiring people.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the ro so the ability to set up a life planning business, stroke financial coaching business, is open to anybody and it's accessible.
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's an accessible way to do it.
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you have to understand a bit about the fundamentals of finance, but the amount of people that I speak to that have got a super interest in finance, they're just not financial advisors, you know?
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I am so excited about the future of financial coaching.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to explode.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it needs to.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the answer to the advice gap.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Most, I mean, most people, let's say, let's say it's 90 to 95% of people in this country only ever need to join their workplace pension or open a pension if they're self-employed and pay into that and their ISA.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Most people are never going to have enough money to save every year to max their ISA and their pension, right?
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: On current numbers, that's 80 grand a year you can put into those two things.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So most people are not going to get anywhere near topping both of those up.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't need EISs, they don't need complicated trust structures or anything like that.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_00: They don't need to invest offshore.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so, why do they need a financial advisor?
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can open all you can open a pension and ISA in less than five minutes on Argives Landsdown or any other online platform.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So we are no longer brokers of products and haven't been for a long time.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're financial planners.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a whole different skill set, right?
• 1:10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not everybody needs a financial planner, though everybody can benefit from working with one.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I think financial coaching, if it's true, and I believe it is, that the the biggest aspect or the biggest factor in your financial success is your behavior and the way you act towards your money and in response to external stimuluses, market movements, bad news or whatever.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_00: If it's true that behavior is the biggest factor, then it's coaching that is going to have the biggest influence.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think the best financial planners are coaches as well.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think people who don't have the regulated qualifications can build brilliant businesses and do an awful lot of good to lots of people just by being financial coaches.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a totally different skill.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this next decade will be the decade of financial coaches, and I'm really, really excited by that.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Just to pick up Sam on something else you said as well about content.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: You said about education and also inspiration.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I always try to keep in mind three factors for a good piece of content, right?
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever format, it needs to educate uh to a point, you know, it needs to have some, they need to learn something ideally.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it needs to be entertaining.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean it needs to be funny, hilarious, or whatever, but it needs to be good enough so that they'll come back and watch another one.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then it needs to empower slash inspire them to take action.
• 1:12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, any two of those is great.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So Mr.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Beast isn't really uh educating the world, but he's certainly enter entertaining us, and he's good enough that that's pretty much his only thing.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's built a massive business based on entertainment only, really.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you can nail all three as a small content creator, I think it really will uh accelerate your growth if you can both educate, if you can educate, entertain, and inspire and empower people to take action, that's where the gold is.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's an amazing tip.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And something that's just so quickly um you can you can add into your content strategy.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're thinking about that as your kind of framework for putting anything out, that's brilliant, you know.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_01: I love that I've always been a big fan of step processes, you know.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: I like a step process, and if I can if I can see it and then I put it out and I get the, you know, I can I can measure it, I'm I'm I'm I'm happy with that.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: I love what you said about the coaching element because I you'd imagine my my line of work.
• 1:13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've I speak to and and I look at so many different types of financial planning firms, um, financial planners.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm even like reaching out to coaches now.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like coaches have kind of been demonized by financial advisors, I think.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really sad.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's Peter Kamalafi, fantastic, you know, level four, used to be a financial advisor, conversation of money, YouTube channel.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's on television now, and he's educating and coaching people around money, and he's helping people, you know, it's like Emmanuel Asuko as well, very, very similar.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he's on the TV, you know, he's he's it's he's talking about money, but he's also talking to, he's a very spiritual guy, but he's also like talking to his community, the black community as well, which has often been left out when it comes to financial education, and he communicates so well with almost forgotten parts of the community to inspire, as you say, to make a change, to make a difference, but just through simple tasks, simple kind of processes, making that education less elitist and more accessible.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think accessibility is key.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the the the area of coaching.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when you talk about the when you talk about a financial planning business and you're doing it right, you've got a wealth management company, don't get me wrong, you know, assets under management model, right?
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Simple assets under management model is the best model, really, that's out there.
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the one that's the most profitable for the business and build sale value.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's not forget about it.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Financial products have to be sold by regulated individuals, and that's what that's what it's there for.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that in its entirety, when you look at the kind of what you can and can't say around FCA regulations around marketing, it can cause a stickiness and a worry for people to be able to get on social media, to be able to get on content creation because they don't know what they should and shouldn't say.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Coaching is completely different.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Coaching is unregulated.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Coaching allows you to be that person.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_01: You can be a salesperson within a coaching element, right?
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Until there's regulation around coaching, it's pretty much like free-for-all.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_01: There are some real shit ones out there telling people to go invest their money in bloody some terrible things, but there are some really good quality ones now that are rising to the surface.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And you're one of those elite, uh elite at the top that are at that service.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: My question, my question to you, to you now then, um, because I think it's the future, you know, and and I'm genuinely serious about setting up a financial advice business.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking to a number of financial advisors about it.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna have the wealth management side, the financial advice side, but it has to have the coaching element.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And the coaching element to me is the marketing element, right?
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: That is the marketing, that's the funnel that you were talking about.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And within that, I want to empower not just like I will, I don't want to be a coach because it's not, I want to build something, right?
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, it's about aligning myself to either coaches that are out there already doing the things that they're doing and bringing them into my kind of funnel, if you like, and partnering with them, or it's about training coaches.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So again, through the academy, why can't I start, why can't we start training coaches?
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't we start to set them up as becoming coaches?
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_01: They step across into the coaching business that we have, of which you clearly know how to monetize that.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Catherine Morgan clearly knows how to monetize that.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Peter Comalafe clearly knows how to do it.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's obviously a market there, a far greater market, 95% market, as opposed to the 5% that can afford financial planning.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So to me, it's like a no-brainer.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it just allows that, as you say, the funnel, when they come through it, there is going to be no doubt that there's going to be opportunity to provide investment advice or pension, sales, products, et cetera, to these individuals at some point.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that then gets handed over to the financial advisor.
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the coaching element as well, if somebody wants to go down the coaching route, what a beautiful way to step into the profession.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful way to gain engagement with the clients that you want to talk to and relationships with them.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can start on the, especially if they're younger and you're going for the younger audience that probably haven't built wealth, but you're going on that journey with them as you as you educate them.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when wealth naturally happens, and we all know about the great transition of wealth, you're positioned then to do your qualifications whilst being a coach, and then if you want to step into the actual financial planning side, if that's your thing.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_01: But then again, most financial planning firms that are worth their weight, right?
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And do a good job for the clients, they're the ones that are doing the life planning anyway, right?
• 1:17:35
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing that life planning element element already.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So they're coaching already.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why do you I yeah, I just see it, that's the symbol.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the way you're doing that and how you're doing that is exactly what.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_01: If I was to run into setting up a business, it has to have coaching on one side.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 1:17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it has to have that financial plan on the other.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's either you either do that, which is I think a brilliant idea, sort of two strings to the business.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think financial planners need to become better coaches.
• 1:18:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a separate discipline, but they obviously speak to each other.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so a good financial planner, a really good one, will be doing elements of coaching anyway.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's more than that.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's worth learning how to coach people.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm the same as you, Sam.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, in my sort of dreamier moments, I think wouldn't it be great to have a network of sort of meaningful money coaches around the country, centers maybe that can do both debt relief stuff and you know, coaching for those that are sort of past that phase or whatever.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I just think it's just such a massive opportunity, uh, like you say.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I would speak to your uh point about uh uh coaches getting a bad rap from advisors.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of my biggest bugbears with regulated financial advice is the arrogance that comes with just because we've sat a few exams and got a few years' experience, that we somehow are the sort of guardians of all the knowledge uh about how money works, and really the poor clients just need to hand everything over to us and not ask us silly questions and just trust us to get on with it.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that makes me want to puke and it makes me want to slap people around the face because I, you know, I just think how dare we uh underestimate the intelligence and aptitude of our clients.
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got clients that are infinitely brighter than I am and understand the finance system as well as I do, despite them never doing a day's work in it.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they hire me because firstly they don't know what they don't know, and maybe I know something that they don't, but they hire me primarily because I will hold them to account.
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had a client who's been a client for 10 years now, and he was a board director of a of an insurance company and a lawyer.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this guy was earning a fricking fortune and had forgotten more about financial the financial world than I will ever know.
• 1:20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to him within half an hour of meeting him for the first time, I said, Stuart, you don't need me.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I here?
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Pete, you're here because my wife and I hate having these clients to uh these conversations together.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_00: We need you to be a kind of facilitator of healthy conversations between us as a couple and as a family, so that we can forget about it in the meantime.
• 1:20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he continues to pay me to this day to do that.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I I said to him, Look, I will halve your fee, but what I want you to do is to mentor me back because I think I can learn a load of stuff from you, and it's a brilliant relationship.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he doesn't need me, but he pays me still because he sees benefit, but it ain't in managing his money, it's in coaching him and helping his relationship with his family around money.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Very well, very wealthy guy.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what value is there?
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I I could do that without being regulated, yeah, and so it's a real opportunity for people who become really great coaches to make a lot of money and do a lot of good.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a really exciting future uh and diversification for the industry.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_00: Financial advisors just need to get over themselves and realize they're not as smart as they think they are.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I'll get off my soapbox.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think interestingly, like, you know, I have to be careful.
• 1:21:34
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the younger financial advisors that are coming through, and there's a number of, you know, older financial advisors, they aren't they aren't arrogant, but they're the ones that are arrogant and feel that they hold the secrets to everything are the ones that tends to speak up the most on social media.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, it creates an echo chamber of this negativity and it just doesn't look good for the profession as a whole, whether it's consumer or whether it's trying to attract new people to coming on in.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like you know, this conversation about the old guard changing, whether or not there's some resentment or whatever it might well be.
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_01: But there, but but I do agree there is an air of superiority that can often be associated to financial planners when essentially, you know, you're a broker, you know, you're not sitting there managing the money, you're you're you're selecting products with being investment managers and managing you your your your your job is to find somebody who needs some help and then facilitate that help.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing the thing that you said, the thing that you said there, which I love, because you know, I got you know, I work out, I I can I can I got a great body, you know, I feel fantastic, but I've got a coach in the gym and I work with him and we share back and forth.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'll help him with his business because he's creating an online business at the moment to coach people called the alchemy of aging.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be fantastic, and I see that linking him with financial advice and coaching because I think it's again symbiotic, right?
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Body, mind, and all that stuff, spirituality, money, it's all connected, right?
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's all connected.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: But I he holds me accountable and I can have my thinking checked by him.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the days that I went swimming with him yesterday, um, cold water swimming, and afterwards he said, you know, you're you got like the superman for every time I see you, Sam, your body gets better.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know what?
• 1:23:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because I felt felt like a fat, skinny kid.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_01: In my head, I was a fat, skinny kid.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_01: But he was there to my thinking was wrong, and he was there to reinforce that actually, no, you are on the right path, you are doing the right things.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Let's remind you of what it was like a year ago, two years ago, three years ago.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it gives me that um ability to get out of my head and my thinking alone, which could possibly not take me somewhere and lead me down a negative path.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's like a council, isn't it?
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, it's like a council.
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that again is the financial coaching.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's soft, it softens the process.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_01: It allows the person who is feeling incredibly uncomfortable about the conversation of money, right?
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's an uncomfortable conversation to have.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had a financial plan, I sat down with a financial planner yesterday, and he wanted to take me through his process of how he gets me to open up from a life planning perspective.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very interested in how different advisors do it because they're all so different, right?
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I as I sat there and I went through it, I had to say to him, in every area of my life, I'm an eight or a nine out of ten.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to money in talking about it, I'm definitely a four and a five.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's synced into my belief system around it.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's synced into also the fact that I'm a business owner and what and I'm a partner within a business.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that causes complications as well.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm also not driven by money, Pete.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm driven by success.
• 1:24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm driven by building, I'm driven by helping.
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm driven, there is no so trying to align money to that, that also money does tickle away in the back of my head.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_01: It does make me say, like, you're worth more or you should have more, but I don't know what more is because to me there is no end.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know what that figure is.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm going through this process now of understanding, right?
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, Sam, if there was a figure, right, and I know you hate putting your your your name to your your yourself to a figure, but this gives you an idea of what if it was this, this is what it would look like for you.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Would that make you feel secure?
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I'm seeking.
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, Peter, let's I could talk to you all day, and there's so many things I want to talk to you about, especially around the coaching side of things, but that we'll we'll leave that for another day.
• 1:25:35
  SPEAKER_01: But let's leave our listeners with some uh guidance on how to get started with content creation.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you were to say to one of our listeners, do this to get started with content creation, maybe give them some examples of uh things that they can talk about.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_01: What would be the top three things that you would say to ease and to help them get started with content creation today?
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so determine your audience, first of all, because it'll be different for everybody.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to understand who you're speaking to and what their pain points are.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I honestly think uh the best way to find out uh what they want to know is to ask them, or they'll tell you themselves.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're an advisor, you're seeing clients every day, the same questions will be coming up inevitably, you know, whether that's because of it's the impact of the Ukraine war or inflation or whatever.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: If these are the questions that your clients are asking you, then there's plenty of other people asking those same things.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_00: So just be aware of the questions that people uh are asking you.
• 1:26:43
  SPEAKER_00: There is a brilliant book on this subject called They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan, and he talks about the top five, the sort of big five kinds of questions, and some of them apply to financial services, some of them don't so much.
• 1:26:55
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, that's it's a great book.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's dead easy to read.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_00: You'll read it in 90 minutes, and it's uh just answering the questions and adding those kinds of value.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I think timeliness is important.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what's going on right now?
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Really, only one story in town that's inflation, okay, and all its different the reasons why it is what it is, and why it's been a little bit stubborn on coming down, and interest rates are linked to that.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people are asking about that if they've got money invested.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it I think it just depends on your audience, Sam.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to understand what your audience are asking.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a million ways you can find that out.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's you join a Facebook group and you sort of lurk a little bit and ask, you know, find out what questions are being asked, or you just start writing down the questions that your clients ask you day to day.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got team members, you know, if you're working in a company and there's more than just you, maybe ask them sort of questions that actually, you know, a bit embarrassed to ask, but I don't understand how this works with pensions or whatever, you know, and uh there's a rich seam uh of uh of knowledge you can mine.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_00: I would forget about, you know, don't get hung up on really what medium you use.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna need to choose at some point, so podcast, YouTube, written, uh pictorial on Instagram, things like that.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to choose your medium, but I wouldn't get hung up on that just yet, and I wouldn't get hung up on having the right equipment or anything like that.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_00: You've got everything you need in your iPhone.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, concentrate on what questions you're gonna answer.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is the biggest takeaway.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna write content, create content, determine what questions you are gonna answer, and you will probably know that already.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if not, it's easy to find out uh what those questions are.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_01: But a bank bank of questions, great place to start as employees or customers, and get started.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get bogged down in the technicalities of it, just get going.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Pete, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I could talk to you all day long.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And likewise, mate.
• 1:28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for sharing your journey.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for sharing all your hints and tips and your experience.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And um, we are wishing you all the best here at the Financial Planner Life, Pete.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, Bachy, man.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing great work.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_00: Keep doing what you're doing.
• 1:29:05
  SPEAKER_00: You're a credit to the profession.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for having me.
• 1:29:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's been an absolute joy.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you, Pete.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much.
• 1:29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cheers.