Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Building a YouTube personal brand with Financial Planner George Agan

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Building a YouTube personal brand with Financial Planner George Agan · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: And this week's guest on the Financial Planner Life podcast is George Aigen.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: He is a chartered financial planner.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_02: He's a YouTuber, delivering financial education to the masses.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: His channel is called Principal Personal Finance.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: He's also delivering full financial planning to his clients through flying colours.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about things like intellectual property rights when it comes to building a YouTube channel or content around your own personal brand.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: What happens if you leave an employer and join another one when it comes to things like YouTube content?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: We also look at the ecosystems within financial planning firms when it comes to the clients.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: What does the ecosystem look like and what part does marketing play in that in the future of financial planning?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: This is an excellent episode talking to somebody who I think is a light years ahead when it comes to client acquisition.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Enjoy George, thank you for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: How are you?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm really good.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Sam.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You all right?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm really, really well.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a really busy day today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: I've got four podcasts back to back, which is uh keeping me busy.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Wednesdays are now my content creation day.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I work from home Monday, Tuesdays in Wednesday, and I love to just have back-to-back content creation.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: So it's podcasts and it's also creating content for my new YouTube channel as well.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna really invest some energy and time in that, which is why I've got you on the podcast as well today, because you're a bit of an expert around that.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so I have a chance of getting like a one in four.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope it will be the best out of four.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Might not get a medal spot.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: More pressure.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I've got to start big because I've got you know a big day here.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's caffeine, start big, and hopefully by the end of the day, I'm not falling asleep into the microphone.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:46
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right, brilliant.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've had a great chat prior to you coming on the podcast.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you've got a great YouTube channel out there.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: You've got a really great presence.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: You're what I consider a next generational financial planner, and there's a lot that you're doing, which I think is just so interesting and that other financial planners can learn from what you're doing, especially those that are coming through that have a higher sort of level of entrepreneurialism and also buy into social media, content creation, um, digital marketing as a whole.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Now, often we look at other people's content and we think how easy that must be to do.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And if I just create content, all these clients will land in my lap.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: If I just put a post out on Instagram, then I'll be rich.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: But there is a reality attached to creating content, and we're going to get stuck into that now and hopefully inspire people to make the right decisions when it comes to starting that content creation journey within financial planning.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: But let's kick things off first, like we always do, with just an insight into how you got into the financial planning profession.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the truth is, like many uh professionals, I fell into it and I went the long way around.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a slightly unusual journey.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd studied kind of business and economics at school.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always been really interested in finance.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: However, age kind of 16, 17, I'd really got into music.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And despite not being particularly gifted at it, I uh I was like, right, I'm gonna give this a go.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of kind of going the standard route and going to university, studying business and all the rest of it, I thought, right, I will try some creative projects and take from there.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So my first job was in a call center, an absolutely dreadful call center, to be honest.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it was for categorically the worst uh hotel chain in the UK.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: They get that reward quite a lot.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was typical kind of like sales stuff.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm kind of sat there doing, I don't know, 60, 100 calls a day.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: You'd nip to the toilet and they'd come back and say, Oh, would you mind just getting that, you know, that toilet break?
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Less than 90 seconds next time.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be really appreciated.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it taught me a lot.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Taught me a lot about speaking to people.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was useless at 18.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I developed a lot as far as resilience and sticking out things.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, I was in bands, doing creative stuff, dealing with very inconsistent drummers, which are exactly the same as a stereotype uh indicates.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I stuck at it for five long years, frankly, while I was really trying to trying to make something of it.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then at a certain point, we started one of the projects that I was in, started doing well, and we got the opportunity to go full-time for a bit, which especially if you're making any sort of music, is incredibly, incredibly rare.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So then um I spent about two, three years of my life a mixture of touring Europe, uh, mixture of kind of playing lots of gigs.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were brought on board by a relatively large management company who had some somewhat big names.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it didn't work out, is the truth.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we weren't really good enough.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But then I found myself back, uh, now kind of sort of eight to ten years in on the journey from leaving school.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I was back in a John Lewis call center because if you do a break of like three, four years in music, you might as well have been a rep in Ibiza for all that matters for your CV, you'll probably know this.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I was I was terrified, frankly, because um all of my friends had you know started to really develop in their career.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um just by chance, after kind of getting to that stage, um, I there was a couple of jobs that I did, and one of them was for an IFA practice, uh small IFA, just outside of Manchester, and it was an IFA administrator role.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd always had that interest in business and economics, and I had such a fire in me to um to make something of myself and of any opportunity.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I started doing administration, went through my exams.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the thing that people sometimes take for granted in the financial planning profession is that if you, you know, you do have a path, there are so many roles out there where your future success is so dictated by what your next manager thinks of you and you know what the politics are of the of the working environment.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And in financial planning, while obviously it does matter what your colleagues and your employer thinks of you, there is a route via exams where you can upskill and you can really start to develop.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I just took to it with APSIC fire in me.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I did my exams.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I moved up relatively quickly.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was working for somewhat smaller firms.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So they were they were very gracious as far as they identified that I was really hungry.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I just did absolutely everything I could to learn.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been a little bit obsessive, even when kind of doing music.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I kind of took that on, but rekindled my passion for business and economics and always just was asking questions and learning as much as I could.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I got qualified, moved to kind of a paraplanner role.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, then I moved companies for uh sort of a more pension technician role.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was a company that specialized in pension work, got my level four, became an advisor.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, again, I was fortunate just to jump straight up to an advisor as soon as the uh the opportunity came about, continued to work as hard as I could, got charted.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in the process of doing all that and doing the exams and developing myself as a professional, I was also listening as much as I could to the great content that is out there and is available in the profession.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the likes of Pete Matthews was a huge mentor for me.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to, once I'd discovered him, I listened to pretty much every episode that I could find on Meaningful Meaningful Money.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Andy Hart from Avon Money, um, I listened to a huge amount as well.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then what I did eventually is I was like, well, I feel that the future is content creation.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'd seen how my relationship and how I viewed the likes of Pete and Andy had developed over time, and how much kind of I had a connection with those guys and what they'd done for me.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and for me, it was just obvious that this was the way things were going as far as building relationships online.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So then the pandemic struck, and me and my my now wife uh decided we want to live in London.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're in Manchester at the time.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I then had the challenge, and we both had the challenge of trying to move from Manchester to London just after the pandemic, the job market was a little bit on the floor.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we we had a bit of a discussion about how we're going to do this.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as you know, Sam, if you're moving from one part of the country to another, it does not limit your job opportunities, but it does make it a little bit more difficult because they've got you've got a different postcode on your CV.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a bit of a hurdle to come across.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I moved to Chase DeVere, who are a national, um, and then started my my life in London while my wife was moving down.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the people were fantastic at Chase DeVere, but I kind of just realized quite quickly that this wasn't the sort of financial planning uh that I wanted to do.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to do stuff which was a lot more cash flow-centric and kind of the plan comes first, the products come next.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I was there for a relatively short period of time, kind of like eight, eight, nine months.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, actually, maybe a bit longer.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then at that point, um, I was in London um and the job market picked up a lot.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So then I had various interviews, but I was absolutely determined to find the right home this time, as far as find somewhere that I could be for the absolute foreseeable.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I spoke with various firms.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was fortunate enough to have quite a few offers.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and yeah, I chose the company I'm working for now, which is Flying Colors Advice.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a medium-sized company, uh, about 60, 70 staff.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we look after about five billion, uh not five billion, uh half a billion of our clients' clients' money.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, um then ever since then I've been building my client bank and thankfully things have gone from strength to strength.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: Lovely overview.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for that.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a couple of questions around it.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: You obviously were started off as an administrator, moved into power planning and then into financial financial advice.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: That opportunity isn't there for everyone in the current marketplace.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like I've got an academy coming out.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna plug that right this second, but I've got an academy coming out.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: But the design of the academy is to be able to support anybody to enter the profession.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now, when someone goes in as an IFA administrator, I think, based on my experience, that's a really suitable role for perhaps when somebody is at the beginning of their journey.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're a bit younger.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's like an it is kind of like an entry-level opportunity.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then from the IFA administrator, you can work your way up through power planning and financial financial advice.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Now, somebody who's considering coming in as a financial planner and might well be used to higher levels of earnings, or might have higher levels of life experience, perhaps has a network already built because I don't know, maybe they worked in finance in another uh part of financial services, or maybe they were a marketing manager, or maybe they ran their own self-employed marketing business and they've got loads of clients.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: Those types of individuals stepping into the financial planning, going like, well, what's the entry point?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they look at IFA administrator where a salary is maybe 25 to 30.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't make much sense for them to come in at that level.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea of the academy, like, you know, is to train administrators, power planners, and financial advisors, get them through their qualifications and putting them in at the right place at the right time in their journey.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I just wanted to kind of point that out.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you obviously were at a stage where you were in contact centres, you were umming and Ring, you went into the music industry, it didn't work out for you.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: So you were looking at options.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: So for you, that entry point was there and you were ready to grasp it and take it and work through the process.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think starting as an IFA administrator, working your way up to the level you are now of a chartered financial planner, do you think that's a really credible route to go down?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think somebody maybe who's thinking, umming and arring about becoming an IFA administrator, thinking that's a route into becoming an advisor over the long term, do you would do you advise that that's a good option for them?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Or do you think they should do their level four qualifications and try and you know join a St.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: James's Place Academy or another academy or a firm straight in as a self-employed financial advisor?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it for me, it was I was very glad that I took that route.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what I would probably suggest is look, I fully acknowledge that if you're someone, maybe you're someone in the 40s or 30s, and maybe you're someone coming from a different career, that taking the salary hit to go to IFA administrator just might not be practical.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I acknowledge that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a guy I follow called Alex Hormosia, and he talks about the concept of ignorance debt.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that I would just say about that is that what do you want to be the end goal?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because the ideal position I would say for any financial planner is that you don't have to be an expert at every bit of the workings of the planning, um, planning process.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: But if you've started in administration and then you've done power planning, you're gonna be fantastically positioned to then actually be able to go over to your administrator and check the forms and to, you know, you're never gonna be as good as someone that does it every single day, but you're at least gonna be able to do it yourself.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're able to act more, more like a business owner because you're able to oversee the entire process.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the same with power planning.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you need in my view, especially for younger financial planners who are looking forward in their career.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge that if you've got someone who's a business owner who's on the sort of the retirement trajectory, that this might not be as appropriate.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's just absolutely essential that you have to know the technicals of how cash flow planning works, of how reports work, that you could write your own reports if uh if pushed to it.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I do think I can only speak for as if I was speaking to my younger self with this, but the concept of some of these um opportunities where they it's from what I've heard, there are some where it's you'll even take out a personal loan on your own name and you'll jump straight in as a financial planner after you've got your level four.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth of the matter is, is you know, the one bit of advice I could give to my younger self because it's so dominant on exams.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's so, you know, you get the exams and then you'll be a financial advisor.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, that is a madness.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is just a madness.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no other proper profession we would consider that.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: You would never speak to a consultant in a hospital and go, yeah, you get your qualifications and then you're going to be top level.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: It, you know, I've heard it's you know a 15-year journey.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if well, that would be one of my tips that I would have said to my younger self is say, look, qualifications are essential.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're a hygiene factor, frankly.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: But there is so much more beyond the qualifications.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you really want to put yourself on a stable footing for a career that lasts multi-decade, um, then it's best to fill in those gaps some at some point throughout the process.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And for that reason, look, if you can, the more typical process is gonna give you a more holistic view.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I agree with you.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: It scares me a little bit that people are jumping straight into self-employment just because they're level four qualified, like literally jumping into self-employment.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna be crap.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm sorry, uh, I've listened to the podcast and it's something that always jumps out.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just if you've just rushed the exams and you're now advising clients, um, you know, this is just my opinion, so so I hope it doesn't trigger anyone.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I but I I just I just think there's so the clients don't follow a rule book, and you need to know these rules in and out, inside out to really feel confident.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that's always served me well is that clients, um, we just as human beings, I think we have a really good sense of when somebody's not confident and someone's maybe trying to, you know, trying to make out that they know more than they do.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's not to be discouraging about people that want to get into the profession soon.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there may be, for example, I think last podcast I listened to, you talked about your recruitment um colleague who'd gone into a firm.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's a fantastic example where your personal skills in business development can outweigh maybe the experience on the other things.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you can absolutely make it work.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: But make no mistake, um, you know, you want to come in and be the real deal, be the finish article, and that's gonna take time.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And bear in mind when we use that one as an example, um, the recruitment is a fantastic space to be in to learn client development skills.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, like from a client, from a client perspective with recruitment, it's like talking to business owners about their business, where they're going, what are they doing.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, sales, marketing, consultative approach, being able to position yourself as an expert, obviously deliver an after-sale care.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: So those are great things that you learn within that, but you're also dealing with candidates who would be like customers for you, you know, consumers who buy your who buy your products, not the business owners that you're trying to get referrals at or whatever.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: So having that skill set across that is really great and really transferable.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: This chap is probably, I reckon, early 30s, maybe late 20s.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now he's moved from recruitment, doing his qualifications, gone into a financial planning firm, and they're supporting, training, and mentoring, mentoring him through the process.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: And he's in his like year one now at the moment.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: But by no and with all that support, with a firm that's local to him, that he can go into the office and he's got mentors and in there, he has it, he held himself to a high standard by the sounds of it, but he's still it's it's hard, it's graft.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought I just don't want people to think, you know, you get your level four qualifications, you're being told it's easy, go out and build a client list through your friends and family, start doing this, that, and the other.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: You're not probably going to make decent levels of money until like year three.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, as in like when I say decent levels of money, like I would say even earning 60k a year in respect of net income into your bank account, I reckon year three, with my experience of talking to people who've gone down that route is a bit more realistic.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And there's lots of people I've spoken to set up on their own, self-employed, and it's taken them between three to five years.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So when you look at like starting out in your career and trying to get that level of experience to gain a better knowledge about the processes of how a business actually works, what a client actually goes through, the timescales it takes to get information back from product providers, what a plan actually looked like, what the research looks like, how you conclude that research, the difference between restricted and IFA, does that make a difference?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: Does the level of knowledge around your qualifications also increase the level of knowledge that you require to be able to deliver a full financial plan and understand things like inheritance, tax planning, you know, difficult, complex tax situations.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: All these things take time, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that IFA administrators to power plan as a financial planner route because you could really build that out over five years.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: And at the end of that five years, you will be fantastic going into the role of a financial planner.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I do see it as a really, really valuable route, but I also understand that there is this difficulty where someone's like, I want to get into advice.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm used to earning over a hundred grand a year and I want to transfer into it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: What I want to say to those people is like, be realistic.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: How good is your network?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: How good are you at finding clients?
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: What is your sales ability and marketing ability like?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because ultimately it comes down to you to deliver that, and that's tough.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that is hard.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: So people need to think hard about that.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: And with our academy, it's about look, don't rush into the financial planning profession.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's a well-being process associated to this.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: Come in, do your qualifications, get all the support, but don't leave where you're currently working at the moment.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: Don't leave some great salary.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: And also lean into our practical and soft skills training to talk to you about what cash flow forecasting is.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: Have a little play around with it.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: Here's some sales and marketing training, social media training.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a deeper dive into what you need to know to make sure that you are ready for what to actually comes up within the financial planning profession.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: But also understand what the world of financial planning looks like from a career perspective.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you're going in there with the blinkers on and you don't have an idea of what the market looks like as a whole, how you can come self-employed, what does self-employed look like?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what does an employed option look like?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: What are the typical types of salaries?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: What does it look like in my area?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: How can I build a business to sell?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't know these things in the very, very beginning, then you're kind of you're just kind of hitting and hoping and having a go.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: But if you understand the pathway that you can go down from day one, you're going to be so fired up and you're going to be sticking to that plan and getting to your goals a lot quicker.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that's again what we offer within that financial planner life community, is the careers aspect of it.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: So great stuff.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_02: You obviously decided quite early on by consuming content from other financial planners that that was what you wanted to do.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: You saw content creation as being an opportunity for you to establish yourself, what, as a key person of influence thought leader, to generate in bang clients.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Was that what your thinking was at the time?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think we've both read the Daniel Priestley books.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're fantastic.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think also um, so I do want to say, because I'm very aware that we're probably listening to within there's probably some younger planners listening, that the first thing you need to do if you're considering any content creation is you do absolutely have to read all the guidance from the FCA that puts out some new guidance um before you start throwing stuff out there online, because it is fantastic that financial professionals are starting to engage with content.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: God knows the world needs it because there's so many people out there giving terrible, terrible advice and things that are truly damaging.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: However, we do it is incumbent on us to make sure that we're doing this in a responsible manner.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So without kind of, you know, again, I'm I'm not your company's compliance professional, but generally general financial planning, I never mentioned products on any of my videos whatsoever.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's risk warnings everywhere.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's one to many.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it is just general stuff.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: So first you need to understand that if you are considering it.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: But but for me, and and I'll just I'll talk about kind of my my journey on on how to uh how I did it and some of the hurdles that I came across.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because there was a bit in that story that I talked about earlier, which I didn't uh I kind of left out, which is um so I just got chartered.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was uh I was working in Manchester um for the pension company, I was doing well by all the Objective measures.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I'd been listening to Pete and Andy and a ton of other creators.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it was just obvious in my mind that content creation was the way that people were engaging more and more and more.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what was so interesting about it is how, and this is very similar, you know.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I've I've listened to this podcast quite a bit.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when we spoke for the first time, though we'd never spoke before, I felt like I knew you.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And we actually both, you know, to a bit of analogy about what you do and what I do, is that, you know, we both come from professions which perhaps on the outside doesn't maybe have the best reputation.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people talk about financial advisors and recruit recruiters.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not unfair to say you're probably going to have slightly guarded individuals the first time they're speaking, one of these professionals.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I just thought that it ticked all the boxes as far as I wanted to, you know, going back to that, you should see it as a 15-year journey.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that I wanted to be in this profession for many, many decades, probably the rest of my life.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that if I was to look forward 10 years, what is the most important thing in this profession?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's to ideally be self-sufficient with clients.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that ultimately being able and being known as somebody that is doing good educational content and getting my name out there and showing people the value of planning and what I do really was um something that even if it took five, 10 years, this is the big problem that I think most people, um, this is the big mistake most people make when they try and do content creation, because it isn't easy.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: But there was something I was listening to on a podcast by Michael Kitts.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Adventures and Advisor Marketing.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a uh it's a US podcast.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they had uh this guy and uh Taylor Shu and Michael Kitts is on on the on the uh the podcast.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he basically said there's this thing called the three-year rule.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't really know why that is the case, but it seems that whenever anyone tries to do anything business related in general, but especially content, it takes about three years.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, well, if I'm in a position where it's taken me three, five years to start to build somewhat of a following, surely it's better to start now and start putting um putting stuff out there.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I went and spoke with my employer um and I said, Look, I've just got chartered, I've been an advisor for a while.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, I'm gonna do this, which I probably was, I probably should have been a little bit lighter on it.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I said, But if you um if this is unacceptable to you for whatever reason, you know, I'm willing to move down from a regulated role to power planning, um, which was quite a big thing for me at the time.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, you know, that was how committed I was for it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just to be absolutely clear, after the initial surprise, they were incredibly gracious about it and uh and very supportive.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I would say also as another tip, you know, these are if this is something you're thinking of doing, this is probably a conversation to have if you are an employed advisor or considering a firm, because you don't want to be stuck in a network or whatever that aren't going to allow you to do this if this is important to you.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I just started creating content.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as far as the people that started to notice, you know, I was very fortunate because um, you know, I messaged Pete and Andy, who had been big influencers, and uh they had me on their podcast straight away.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: That gave my channel a bit of a bump because they've already got established following.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was just creating a video a week for at least the first five, six months, which took some time.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm because of my creative background, I do quite a bit of editing.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking eight hours of video here.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we're talking, you know, quite a quite a lot of work.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then ever since then, I've been doing broadly one every kind of two weeks, unless life gets in the way, um, sometimes more, sometimes less.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what was really interesting is the first thing I noticed was that the people in the profession took notice.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there were people who um, you know, through what I'd been gotten introduced to through Andy and Pete, there were people who, you know, instead of being in a position where prior to that I probably wouldn't have even had an audience with these individuals, they were now aware of who I was and what I was doing.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because actually it's quite unusual to see people jump out and start building personal brand, whatever you want to call it.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then eventually it continued building, and then about kind of year one and a half, I now started having clients who were aware of what I was doing because they were in the market for financial advice and obviously had started using YouTube.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then at the end of, and I want to be absolutely clear, at the end of about a year and a half in, it is a grind.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and and I know Freddie that you had on the podcast talked about this as well.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to manage expectations because sometimes people come into the content game and they just disappear because they get into like a year, a year and a half, and they go, Do you know what?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is really hard.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is taking a lot of time.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent quite a bit of my weekend on this and it's gone out and got, you know, 500 views or whatever, which is not terrible, but it's certainly not, it's not viral, is it?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not something that's going to change your business.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: But because I'd done that stuff with the music and it kind of taught me the resilience and frankly the creative nature of stuff that you can create stuff for its own sake that has its own purpose.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just doggedly stuck to it.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then lo and behold, weirdly on the three year mark, uh, for whatever reason, the algorithm gods and YouTube shine like decided to uh decide to smile on me.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, it started to take off quite a lot.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of my videos eventually got over a quarter of a million views.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I've got about 10,000 subscribers.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm certainly not the biggest financial content creator out there.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's some that are much bigger that are doing fantastic work.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then it started to lead into clients.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, then I think this year had something like 30 inquiries.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's mixed as far as assets and whether I can help them.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I always try and be as helpful as I can.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got processes in place now to kind of, if it's not a suitable client, to maybe put it elsewhere in the business.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it also started bringing in fees and and from here it's you know, hopefully going to openly build from there.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much for that.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Great overview.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, a couple of things I'm gonna pick out on that.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: So you just said you got about how many clients since since this year, did you say?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: 30.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's 30 inquiries, 30 inquiries.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, no, as far as kind of clients, I'm thinking by the end of the year we're kind of be looking at five, ten.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're not talking big numbers, it's the truth.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's what I would say in relation to content creation, is that it's a long game.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I talked about it being a five-year thing.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I would not be looking to, you know, don't get me wrong, I don't want to there might be some people who turn around and you know do something amazing and it immediately takes off, and then that leads to lots of clients.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the audience is something that takes a while to build.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's I would not, if you're a business owner, I would not put your hat on content creation as a quick fix.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a long-term play.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: That I would 100% agree with.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I've had the podcast now, the financial plan of life is a brand, and that was created A to solve a problem in respect of attracting new people to the profession.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that was the problem I was solving for the profession.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: There's my worth, there's my trust, there's my commitment to the profession that I'm helping.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a hindrance.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not some cheeky recruiter just stealing their stealing people from their businesses.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm actually trying to help.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: So that was one thing I wanted to do with the podcast and the financial plan of life as a brand.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: But what it also did for me was I own Recruit UK, which is a seventh figure recruitment company.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: So for me, I could I could market as Recruit UK, or I could market as Financial Plan of Life and build that brand in its own entirety, entirety, and call it powered by Recruit UK.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it became the marketing wheel of Recruit UK, but also became an entity within its own right, building a level of audience within within that over like a three, over that like this three year period.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: And what I want to make really, really clear is I treated it like a business.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm lucky enough that I got a passive income from Recruit UK, right?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do any recruitment, I don't work in that area, but I've got a business that pays me a nice income and I've got a passive income.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: So therefore I can spend 100% of my time on financial plan of life.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: Your content creation was additional to the job that you were doing, right?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was taking up in your evenings, your time in the weekends.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: So to commit to that for and now I'm gonna be honest with on my side, I hadn't I didn't make any money in year one or year two.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing, not a bean.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: Year three, I started making trickles of money because I started building an audience, an authority, and people started to trust me.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's only in the last six months that I've started making good money.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: And over the last six months, I probably a hundred grand.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like like literally three years to get to the point where over a six month period, I'm doing about a hundred grand.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm estimated off the back of what my podcast and content creation has given me in respective opportunities to provide products and services to the audience that consume or the audience that want to piggyback market off the back of my audience to sell their products, services, or attract talent to their business.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm confident it's a half a billion, it's a half a million pound turnover business by the end of next year.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: So the end of next next year.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: But for two, three years, 100% of my time, it was nothing.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: So would I have given up?
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: You know, could I have viably made a business out of it for that long without the ability to invest from my other business?
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: And this is what you want to get at with people.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like, don't overwhelm yourself, I think, isn't it?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Don't overwhelm yourself with thinking like if I don't get a return on investment straight away, that the return on investment, be confident that the return on investment will come when the time is right.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: You called it the algorithm smiled on you, the gods of YouTube smiled on you.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: But it wouldn't have smiled on you unless you created content on a regular basis and put that and you were consistent with that approach to creating the content.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the more you consistently did that, the more you put yourself out there, the more comes back to you.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a firm believer in the laws of attraction.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: The more you put in, the more you get out in the right areas.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Put a lot of shit in, you get a lot of shit out, right?
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: You put a lot of good in, you're gonna get a lot of good back.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the consistency of making sure you're putting the content out that is key.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: But how do we manage that burnout scenario?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's time consuming, it's your your social in your insecurities all come up, you're you're thinking, how are people looking at me?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm putting content out, maybe I'm not getting a quick return on it, I'm feel less than.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: How did you get through that type of thing?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: Did that ever, did you ever get attacked by your own thinking?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, the the the truth is, look, if you're going to put yourself out there, so so remember, I I had a background in creative stuff.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd already done the stuff on stages and all the rest of it.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Despite all this, I'm a bit of an introvert.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like I'm definitely not.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: But um, so so it is something that I really have to kind of push myself to do.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just love creating stuff.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there's some things that you're mentioning there, which I think are really important to talk about about content creation.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And one is self-sufficiency.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you, especially if you're a younger planner, look, if you're a business owner who's 40s, 50s and you're dealing with HR staff, this is not going to be appropriate to you.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the biggest issue currently is that if you go as to a content creation agency, because it takes a while to build, it's just very, very expensive.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned there, Sam, that you've invested heavily.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: I believe the opportunity, especially for younger planners, is being able to be self-sufficient with this stuff.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: As in, and it isn't as hard as people.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you can pass level four, you can learn Premier Pro, you can learn how to do a podcast.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely refuse to believe that people can't learn to do that and yet can get qualified.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then you've got kind of the insecurities and the work bit.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: And look, I will also level with you as part of um, I've always been, I mentioned before, someone I like to consider myself someone very hardworking.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is a lot of work, you know what I mean?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, if you listen to the clues of what people say, because I know you had Pete on this podcast, but he uh, you know, he this is his own story, so I'm sure he won't mind me telling me.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: But he had spoken to his business owners and dropped to four days a week when Meaningful Money was really busy.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: When his kids were growing up, he got up at 5 a.m.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: in the morning to do two hours of content creation.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And make no mistake, if you are going to do this and be consistent, you have to do something like that.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the opportunity.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: And because of the nature of it, because you can get so much growth eventually, you also have to understand the hockey stick nature of these things.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what you were saying, Sam, as far as kind of your business opportunities.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens time and time again.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it where people don't get a lot of traction.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: But consistency, and it's not just consistency, it's iterating as well and getting better over time, because that's ultimately what drives the algorithm, the YouTube gods to smile on you, or your podcasts to get better, the better guests.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: But if you think about all those things, Sam, just going back to you, because you know, we'll talk about you on this, we'll uh we'll uh but we'll uh you know, we we consider the fact that all those opportunities that you wouldn't have had those building blocks to do that had you not developed um the ability to content create that you're then building from there.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, especially in this sort of new world of because I personally can't see this content creation game going anywhere anytime soon.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's building on a larger secular trend that people, that media is disaggregating in general, and people are getting more of their sources from key people of influence.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think that's only going to grow over time.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can and you are willing to do the work, I feel you'll position yourself in a really good place.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with you on that.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: Quick question.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: If someone was listening to this now wants to step into the world of content creation, nervous about approaching their current employer about it, what do you think they should bring to the table to their employer to show them almost as a proposal as to why this is a good idea?
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good case.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good question, actually.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think one of the things that I would say as as far as somebody younger, and this this becomes specifically important when you now start want to build a client base, is that you need to be very mindful of what's the type of planner you want to be, what's important to you, and find a firm that aligns to those goals.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because we all know, because of restricted covenants and all the rest of it, that it is actually hard, what especially once you get an ad to become an advisor, to move firms because it's the client bank is very sticky for very fair and reasonable reasons.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that means that if you are going to move firms a lot as an advisor, you're potentially going to have to sacrifice the work that you've done to build those client relationships.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but at that point, that's that's when I what I did when I was looking to move to my current company, Flying Cause Advisors, I really did grill, frankly, any employer about, you know, what's your views on this, what type of planning work you did.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, there were some non-negotiables about the firm that I was going to work with just because I'd been round the mill of not finding the right firm and maybe thinking, you know, this doesn't quite align to where I want to be in the future, and I want to be there for a long time.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, it was evidence-based investing.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do active funds because I don't I don't think there's value there.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was planning at the heart of what we do.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was uh a work, a job that was going to provide me a degree of autonomy and support with power planning and administration, and also that they were an exciting company and willing to allow me to continue to build the channel.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: But when I first pitched it, so so you need to have those conversations and see how um open they are to it, basically, because the truth is if you go to your employer and they say absolutely under no circumstances, you're gonna struggle to get around that.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if they're saying, look, we want to get sign off of every little piece of content creation, that's gonna probably mean it's gonna be a non-starter.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you need to do one a week, you're just you're never gonna be able to establish consistency.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: I do believe strongly though, and this has even happened over the time that I've been creating content, is that and the financial services industry is very bad at being early adopters, um, is the truth.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's always tech startups, but the actual incumbents are not very good at adapting to change.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm absolutely convinced that over five, 10 years, you know, every financial planning practice worth their salt is going to be talking about we need to get content creation.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're willing to maybe take the uncomfortable leap about positioning yourself in that way, and you can be self-sufficient with your own content, you intent you potentially are going to be uh very valuable to a financial planning practice.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of things there that I want to explore, because I'm 100% in agreement with you.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: I do genuinely think as well over the next three to five years.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: When we talk about content creation for the financial planning company, I think financial planning companies are going to be going out and opening their arms and advertising financial coaches to come into their businesses because financial coaches that are social media led are content creators.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: So they may not be level four qualified, for instance, but they do have a sound understanding, most of them, or some of them, of the emotional connection with money, money beliefs, all those typical types of things, talking about debt, or you know, top funnel stuff for talking to the next generation of clients that might well be inheriting some money from the great transition of wealth, for example.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: They're naturally quite good at coaching.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: They're naturally quite good on LinkedIn or social media, mainly like Instagram and TikTok and YouTube tend to see them on more.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: You don't really see much of the coaches actually on LinkedIn.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's an area which needs to be developed anyway.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: But I do genuinely believe that these firms are going to be opening their arms up and saying, we need that person coming in because you need somebody that can A, generate clients, actually bring clients in, perhaps into a coaching mechanism within that financial planning business.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: So a bit like Meaningful Money Academy.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, Pete's done a great job there, and he's told me it's a you know it's a six-figure turnover business just from coaching in an automated way within a community.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that to me is an absolutely excellent opportunity to diversify an income within your financial planning business.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: So I do think that that that area there, they're gonna be opening their doors.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what makes it even more attractive is if people like you, who are chartered, level four qualified, giving advice to clients, are also content creators.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Now, the way that I look at it, it's a skill set that's gonna be looked for almost as much as what transferable business do you have, what client relationships do you hold, what level of recurring income have you currently got.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: I think all of a sudden, someone like yourself, they're gonna be looking at how many followers do you have, how many inquiries do you get, how many views of your content do you get online?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: So they're gonna be looking at that almost as a skill set or an asset.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: Now, we talked a little bit prior to the podcast about intellectual property.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the things that I think if someone's going to invest their time and energy outside of work, because your employer is more than likely going to push back on you, say as long as it doesn't affect you going out and winning new business for us and making us money, then you can do what you want to a degree, right?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Now if you are attached to a firm and you're investing 20 hours a week in content creation, who owns the content, right?
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: And what perhaps should somebody be doing at that early stage to ensure that they are protecting themselves if they fall out with the employer and want to leave and continue on with their channel or content site?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a great, it's a great question and it's a really good point.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: So just to be crystal clear, when I um had the conversations, most employment contracts, I'm not sure about self-employed, can't comment on that, will have intellectual property conditions.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: So anything you create there and then is going to be part of the company.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've always, as part of one moving firms, made it very clear at the outset that we're going to need a car bout for principal's personal finance and the content that I create via it.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's just self-evident.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also it's probably in the business interest in many ways, because they don't necessarily want content, you know, it's going to be associated in a downstream way, as far as, you know, if I get clients and so forth, it'll then go through the regulated business.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you're absolutely right in saying that you're going to need to have conversations about that.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because make no mistake, your contract, if you're employed, probably will have that condition.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: But again, this comes back to working with forward-thinking firms that are going to see the value of what you deliver.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because what you were talking about there, Sam, is you know, Daniel Priestley has a thing that says that everything's downstream of lead generation.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in financial planning, that is the truth.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like we I harped on about um technical, admin, power planning.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about professional skills that um are very useful and required to be a great financial planner because I wanted to be a great financial planner.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be able to do all bits, and this continues to be a work in progress.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but make no mistake, you did the the got the absolute golden ticket is if you can become self-you can generate your own clients.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the big thing that most, especially new planners, struggle with.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, whatever happens, you need to ensure that you're thinking about um that process.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing you'd need to do is if you are seriously considering this, you'd certainly need to have a conversation wherever you are in the journey.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you're a paraplanner, you know, you might need to say, look, I'm wanting to do this.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got a forward-thinking employer, the way they should really be treating this, in my view, is brilliant.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're going to be whatever you're going to be in front of a camera.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: You need to obviously make sure all the risk warnings and so forth are there.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, once you can do that, you can come on board and help us with our content and you can be the face of the business for our labeled content.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I believe that's in a business interest is there is some stat saying Cristiana Ronaldo as a footballer has more followers than all the other major clubs combined.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: People don't like to really engage with corporations.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the truth.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can have the best brand in the world.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: But people, you know, if we talk financial partner life, Sam, you're the person who I'm thinking of in the same way that we taught principles, personal finance, that's me, or meaningful money.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be honest, it's Pete, not Jackson's wealth.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's what people engage with, and that's the real value.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: So they need to allow that value to be captured through the personal brand because there's no other way to do it.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But there's absolutely no reason why a good forward-thinking company can say, oh, you're self-sufficient in content, you can do your own stuff.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Great, come help us because God knows we need it.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So what you mentioned there about um intellectual property and stuff.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is I'm taking this from Carl, Carl Richards.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: But um I think the development of the financial planning profession, if we look sort of 10, 15 years into the future, we think about where it's gone to where it's gonna go.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, at the start in the 80s, 90s, it's heavily product focused.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: And products obviously clearly make a big, still are a huge part of the financial planning and advice process.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: But it then slowly transitioned to planning focus.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, people, the plan being at the heart of it, um, the fact that we've got to ensure that it's the life you want to lead, the lifestyle you want, which is key, and products follow.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then after that, more forward-thinking planners have been like, well, actually, if you look at all the studies, it's behavioral focused.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just about having the plan, it's not just about having the products, but it's about ensuring that you stick to the plan and that you don't blow it up.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because whether it's advisor alpha or any other data out there, everyone says the vast majority of the way that an advisor makes their fees is by ensuring they stay on track.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think logically, the next phase of that development of financial planning is going to be intellectual property.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that, just to be clear, is that if you think about what's really valuable with clients, it is that fact that you basically end up educating them and changing their behavior.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the challenge that every financial planner has, if you've got 100 clients, it's very difficult to communicate at high level a lot with that amount of people.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can't go and do 100 phone calls to give them an update or a market update.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: However, what content does allow you to do is allows you to scale exponentially.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I could very much see that the vast majority of value for these forward-thinking firms is about positioning their clients at different parts of their funnel.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: And here's an example.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you've got um, let's say it's a dentist in South London.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: I live in South London, so let's give that as an example.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to attack a specific niche, there is no reason why you can't use all the content available or options at your disposal, be it video courses, be it podcasts, be it targeted emails, to actually create sequences and an ecosystem so that it can be the wealth plan for dentists.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you onboard is you start the wealth plan for dentists.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: That means you can listen to the audio series, that means you can listen to how to become a better investor, maybe you watch the videos, and that intellectual property starts to get embedded in the financial planning process.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: So when, for example, you're going out for less of authority and it's taking forever to come back, and we all know the great silence that takes about eight weeks to get information back from the scheme.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: The financial planning practice is basically re-engaging with the client using their digital content in a very specific way to allow to educate them, but also continue to establish that relationship because there's there's basically research from Google, I think it's called the 7-Eleven something rule, where basically you need various touch points to establish a relationship and feel like you know someone.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I could see forward-thinking firms really embedding that position that I'm going to use my knowledge, but I'm going to use technology to ensure that I maximize that goodwill I have with you.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: So the fact that you have that experience, you content create and you've gone through like a sales process, that is part of the intellectual property and the experience and the skill set that you have that you would then bring to a business.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: I liked what you said there.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like let's say, for example, you again, let's go back to the candidature of somebody, right?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_02: If somebody, if in the future, which I'm a firm believer of this and it sounds like you are, that content creation is here to stay and it's only going to become more embedded within financial planning and firms are going to be investing more in it.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you can't, if you've got five years on anybody else doing it, and you stepped across into the firm, but you've kept pinnacle as being your pinnacle, isn't it, yours?
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: Principles, not even close.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: Principles, personal finance.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: Principles.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: So you've got there you go.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: Principles, personal personal finance, which is yours and your personal brand.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing stopping you then from taking the model of what you've created and adding value into that firm that you're joining, that you're joining to be able to upskill perhaps some of the financial planners in there that are specifically targeting a niche, such as dentists, for example.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: So there is that opportunity for that crossing over of your skills, expertise, experience to embed within that business and help the business grow as a whole.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: But obviously, you keep control of your brand and who you are.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's the one of the reasons why sort of bringing that up is because it's it's I don't, you know, it's really important.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: Over the years of working in financial planning recruitment recruitment, I've always spoken to financial planners that have gone in, been employed, but have been 100% business developers and have generated 100% of their clients, for example, right?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: So they might have 20 million under management, they've been there for a few years, but they self-generated all that.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, they hold the relationships with those clients, but unfortunately, the business is the one that actually holds the recurring income.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: So when it comes to that person wanting to leave and join another firm, they it's tricky for them to leave and just novate clients across.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's a whole kind of uncomfortable process of restricted covenants and all those typical types of things.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what we don't want to see in your situation.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's what we don't want to see for content creators.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_02: If you are going to invest in yourself, your personal brand, and build it up, is that there is some contractual agreement that if you walk away, it's your content, it's not their content.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it sits with you.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: When you leave, your following leaves.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I see again the value in the candidature of candidates now, financial planners, who have that following, who have that asset.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's yours.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: You've built it, not them.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_02: Unless there is something where they've said, you know what, we love the idea of this.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe someone's quite new to the profession, maybe they don't have the skill set, the money.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: So they need some training, they need some development, maybe they need some camera equipment, um, maybe they need some time in the office.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you've got a forward-thinking business.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: You say, look, you know, we're into this.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we're into this, we want you on board and we want to invest in it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Then it's a different conversation contractually about who owns what.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's just about also when we look at ourselves and we look at our future, where do we visualize ourselves being?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_02: If we're gonna come into the content creation world attached, employed to a firm and start creating that content with that firm, are you there for the rest of your life?
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: Are you there for the next five years?
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, how are you gonna feel in five years if you decide to go self-employed?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Because deep down inside you've got that entrepreneurial spirit and you want to run your own business.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna feel?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: So don't go into it half-hearted.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: Don't go into it in a way that you're gonna put all your energy into buildings for somebody else if deep down you want to set your own business up.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you've got to think about that when it comes to content creation.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: Where are you going on your journey and your pathway?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because you want to be able to take that content with you.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: If it if you can't, there's a big struggle there.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: If all of a sudden legalities come into it, big struggle.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: If you put out 50 videos and it's got your company name all over it, there's a problem there, right?
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: So these are things you've got to think about when coming up when coming up with your content marketing strategy for yourself and your personal brand.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Does it come with me?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: Does it live with me or does it live with the company?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's just, I I think it's a problem that's going to occur, you know?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: I I agree.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: I also think though, I think it's it's really it's a really interesting point about uh whether the company you're working for see things as zero sum or whether they see them as cumulative.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is that it's look, you know, if if the company invests wholly in their names on it, of course they should keep it.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're going to do that as a business development long-term play, it's frankly worthless if you step away anyway.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I got someone into Principles Personal Finance tomorrow to start doing the videos, well, they're probably do better.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: But but but the truth is is the relationship has been built with me.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the leads that come from it, they're the companies, you know, that's that's always the case.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess for me, that was very much, it was really important to be with a company that I was happy to be with for the foreseeable.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I just it doesn't make sense for the personal brand not to come with the person because it loses its value.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: But again, if I was a business owner um looking at that, subject to being happy with the structure of it, surely it's a case of this is a skill set that's going to be built.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is an audience, these are clients that are potentially going to build that kind of come to the business.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: They can have the content, they can have the YouTube revenue, they can have the, you know, the the um all the benefits of becoming a key person of influence.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why would I even want to take that from them anyway?
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because it I can't, it's there's a goodwill there and there's a there's a value there that you can't detract from the individual, hence personal brand.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but surely that individual is going to be infinitely more valuable in the new world than somebody that goes, oh, can't do it, you know, not going to build anything.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be wrapping, you know, if you, for instance, were working for me.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: Are you self-employed or employed?
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: Employed.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: Employee.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: You're employed, right?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if I was flying colours, I would be wrapping my arms around you and giving you something to push you forward to create content that aligns to the goals of the company personally.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: So if you were employed, if I employed you and I can see what you were doing, I would be like, right, I want to give you a percentage share of my business because I see value in the long term of that.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_02: I would want to in some way not trap you, in some way, trap you then.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's an insight in terms, I think.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_02: Incentivise you to want to align yourself with the business and continue with the content creation for again a long-term goal.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to be I would want you running alongside me.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's some of the things like when you're thinking about setting up your own business and you're thinking about doing content creation or aligning content creation or bringing somebody in for the content creation.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: As an employer, you need to think about look, this is something that could leave my business.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_02: This could be followers, brand exposure that could leave my business.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: What can I do as a business owner to tie that person into me and follow the same goal as where I want to go in the creation of my business?
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I see the content creation side, you know, as a director level position of influence within that business.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I see it.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: So if I'm going to build a financial planning business and it's no, um, you know, I am in the process of actually developing it.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'm going off to London to meet a couple of quite senior investors, um, one of them being Monzo Bank, uh, one of the co-founders of Monzo Bank.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've got a number of financial advisors interested in starting a business, a financial planning business.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: But for me, I have to start with someone like you, a content creator, because that is a big part of the model of my financial planning business.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that person has to be a shareholder within it from day one.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_02: So that for me is really, really important.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: So if I was to start a financial planning business from day one, I'm invested in invested in social media coaching, an online YouTube channel personality from day one.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I want them entwined with my business and growing with me.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's super important.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then I'm looking at other ways of also then tying in with the likes of your Peter Kamala phase of the world, you know, these personalities, these coaches.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_02: What can I do to partner with them because they've got a huge audience, where they also keep their own personal brands, but they piggyback off the back of the great work that we're doing, whether that's sort of robo advice, simplified advice propositions or into product sales at the very end, wealth management.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's for me, it's a really interesting area.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I feel like business owners also need to look at these people in their businesses that are willing and able and want to create content and invest their time and energy in it and think they could grow my business.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: Let me wrap my arms around them and give them some sort of plan that perhaps gives them equity if they hit certain specific goals, as long as they understand realistically how long it takes for content creation to actually have a return on investment is my thinking.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's there's conversations around it.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: I think the generation coming through understand that.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think the business owner generation we have between the 55, 50-year-old, that kind of end, don't quite get it too much at the moment.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: And rightfully so as well, I guess, because they're thinking about exiting their businesses and selling it for a profit.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: But I tell you one thing, right?
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sure as shit.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: If you have an amazing marketing strategy from day one with your financial planning business, the value of that business will go up.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_02: It'll just go up.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: And especially if you've got some sort of subscription model in there.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because you're looking at four times recurring income, three and a half, four times recurring income for the assets under management model.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: Bring in subscription, followers, brand awareness, marketing, YouTube channels, the the return on the um accumulator of what you can sell your business for can go up to like eight times.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, I think this might sound a bit controversial, but I think, you know, people people like the quick wins in business and they like things that are more tangible.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: And uh if I if you look at Pete Matthews and what he's built with mean meaningful money, I have no doubt that is a million pound value of business.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know that might sound sound a lot, I potentially even more.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why is that if you look at what his academy's doing, he's already doing six figures, but also most importantly, think how much it costs for financial planning practices to get clients.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: And my understanding, again, is that he is basically turning the tap off.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's having so many inquiries that are coming in.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: What is the exponential value of that over time?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you this from um personal experience.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you have someone who follows your channel, they'll just like it's it's instead of having an initial chat where they're very guarded and you have to win them over and do the standard thing, they're just it's overflowing the information they'll give to you because they feel like they know you.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just the fact that you're building this, the goodwill that you're establishing is enormous.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, it takes a long time.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the way that um one thing that no one barring Pete, even though Pete says it's done it, but he's done it by accident, the one thing that people aren't doing, which I'm thinking a lot about, is about ecosystems.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do I mean by that?
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you think about it, how many interactions do you have with clients who are potentially great clients in the future, but just on the start of their journey?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe a conversation with a client who's not quite right for now, but maybe later?
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: How many financial planning practices actually have an ecosystem where that person can continue to engage?
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they can go on a course to do educational content, maybe they can continue to listen to you.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: That person is going to be valuable at some point, even if they're low value because of protection, mortgages, all the standard stuff.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: How much captured value is the financial planning profession taking on those individuals?
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the answer to that is basically building in an ecosystem where you can actually capture and add value.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: The great thing about content creation is that you actually add value by, you get the sale by adding value.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just takes a lot longer for it to happen.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_02: Really good points.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_02: Let me ask you about ecosystem and the sales process, because content creators can often create content that is useful to their audience to view, right?
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to give them valuable information.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_02: But that person might consume that and walk away, know a little bit and walk away.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: Now they might come back and think, oh, it's an update there.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: They've subscribed, so they'll see another video, or it might point them over to the direction of a video about pensions or budgeting or whatever it might well be.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: But they're going to consume that content.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_02: What are you doing as a financial planner who creates content to turn a viewer into a potential client?
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_02: Have you got any call to action or any sales process implemented in your uh personal brand and your personal business and your YouTube channel?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: I do, and to be honest, it's a really good point because it's a point that um I was so, and this probably is a bias of mine because I was so focused on creating and for its own art sake that I didn't, I haven't been paying as much attention as I should have done.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're looking at all the metrics of being like, okay, so you've had 70,000 people watch the video this month.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's been put out to 600,000 people have seen your face, you know, where's where's the conversion?
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I for me, this this is was transformational when I thought about this, not only for what I'm doing with content creation, but also for how I thought about when I got leads as an advisor in the past, because a lead can be anything, a lead can be a phone book entry, frankly.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's a lead.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: But we all know that the quality of the lead and where the lead is compared to buying makes a massive, massive difference.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: And especially when you're frankly selling something which is high value, you know, financial planning is thousands of pounds, whichever way you cut it.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um you need to think about right, where is the client in the funnel?
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I know this is on podcasts.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine a funnel going from top where it's uh wide base to bottom.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: And basically that is a the typical, I'm gonna do this just in case there's not people like marketing backgrounds.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: And basically during that funnel, the person's going from the top to bottom, and the bottom is where they're going to buy.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's divide that into four segments of awareness, interest, desire, action.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: Action at the bottom, awareness at the top.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: So basically, you think about someone who's got awareness.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe they've followed you on LinkedIn, maybe they've seen some of the content.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: They're certainly not willing to spend 3,000 pounds or give you your life savings yet.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: And why should they be?
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because they're just aware if they've got an issue.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, how do you get a client from the top to the bottom if they're a suitable client?
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think not only myself, but an area that I think we as a planet of financial planning industry aren't very good at.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because really, what you should be doing, and Pete does this via his Meaningful Money Academy, we should be putting things in place to nurture those individuals down and go from interest, yep, I'm interested in this, yep, there's interesting desire.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you consider things like targeted emails, going over the problem, agitating it, talking about solutions, and then action when you're actually ready.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what was really massive for me, and this is not content creation related, this is just lead related.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is actually one of my big tips for maybe the younger people listening.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be really honest with yourself when you're speaking with an employer about leads or you're thinking about leads, where is your inquiry in that funnel?
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because let's say it's your mate who, or let's say it's a random person and they're just aware of you.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you speak to a hundred of those individuals, that's probably not going to be as valuable.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that's going to be much harder than five of people who are action where they need to buy at that moment in time.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, without naming names, one of the roles I had in the past was a lot of leads we got were given to us, and it was sort of an employee benefit setup.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: So speak to a financial advisor, and often they just have very simple questions about how their pension worked.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: I would categorize them in as awareness or interest.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: They're right at the top of the funnel.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's very hard, or it takes a lot of effort to get that person down to actually buying a service that you have.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I moved to Flying Colors, they gave me fantastic opportunities.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_00: We used a very well-known uh lead purchasing and um you know uh source, and um all the clients were action.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, basically because of that, and because I'd developed a lot as a financial planner, it was frankly incredibly easy for me to build a really great client base, which I'm very fortunate to look after now.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: So, not only going back to the firm you're asking about, one of the big things that people have problems with is it's really difficult to know when someone says, Oh, we'll give you tons of leads, what does that mean?
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like what kind of leads are they?
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I would help I would my advice would be to think about that framework and really stress test it because it's better to stress test it at the start than to go into a role and really struggle for six months.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: You started off your channel B2C.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_02: So you're in now, would you say that you're in the world of B2C?
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_02: How much what percentage of your content that you create is directed to B2C?
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_02: 100%.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you're 100% in B2C.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: How much of the content you create is directed to new customer inquiries up against existing client relationships?
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's difficult because I wouldn't I don't necessarily segment that is.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: So when you go through the creation, does when you go through your content creation process in your head?
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I got an idea, this is what I'm going to do.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh when you visualize that content creation, who do you see being the end consumer?
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_02: Do you see it being somebody you already do business with and have a relationship with, or do you see it as the new person?
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's challenging because I see it as the truth is I make content to add as much value as possible.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I wouldn't necessarily segment saying that I'm speaking with with new clients.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_02: Do you carve that content up and repurpose it in a different marketing strategy?
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, like your YouTube channel, the content's out there.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of new people have probably watched that.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: Do you direct your existing relationships to your YouTube channel via, say, a newsletter that says I've got Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, so yeah, I went as I have done throughout this podcast, I went completely around the houses in the very direct and useful question that you answered us before.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: So so sorry about that.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do I get them down the funnel?
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um I like the idea.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the thing is one thing I want to touch on this, I'm just gonna reiterate something because it'll probably help you with your answer as well.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the in the space of financial planning, when it comes to content creation, straight away people think of new business and straight away people think B2C.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, sh I think there's a huge opportunity for firms, especially these bigger firms, right?
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_02: So you're a you you you got you're a content creator.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: You're experienced in what you do.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: You then go and join a company that has a huge client base, but they do very little marketing towards that client base.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_02: So instantly that firm takes on somebody like you who's got experience in it, has a bank of content that can then be used to re-engage with their existing client base to kind of get them thinking about things, whether it's pension transfers or whatever the topic of conversation is you're looking to do.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm interested in do you get a do you do you measure the return on investment to exit for the content you create and target to existing clients up against new uh clients on the in the B2C side.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_02: Does that make sense?
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: It it does.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and basically I think my understanding of the question is that are you maximizing the not only with new out to many awareness, but also the existing relationships?
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: The answer to that is is no.
• 1:06:52
  SPEAKER_00: We've you know, without giving any secrets, we've had multiple conversations with my colours uh about about doing things like that.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an area that we're we're certainly looking into.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there is kind of on a wider point for people thinking about that, there is endless opportunities to do things like that and actually re-engage because we know one of the big sources of revenue, certainly conversion-wise, is always referrals.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's re-engagement.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the question is as often for a lot of financial planning firms, it's not necessarily going out to the nice, shiny new going to make my millions off social media, is actually how can I be really smart with my content so that I'm actually adding value.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, ideas which we've talked about, these aren't secrets.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, let's say you were to send something and engage your content with your existing client base, all you would need to do is be smart with the technology and say, do you have a friend that might find this useful?
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: Send it to two friends, you know.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and especially if you do package it as something exclusive, the uh the there is a huge opportunity there, without a doubt.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of speaks to coming back to you know the value of if you can make yourself self-sufficient in doing this, I believe for the right firms, you're going to find yourself uh you know very valuable at some point.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: Going back to that point about funnel and me, I I'm currently working on various things about that.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be honest, I need to be more intentional with it because I'm my biases I'm always pushing forward on more content instead of making the systems better.
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I've got the world's worst funnel at the moment.
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_02: You've got both.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: You and me both.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's quite normal in your content creation because there's so much you do on the other, if I get it out there, and it is kind of like if I build the the audience, then I'll fit then I'll build the, then I'll I think there's some logic in that.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think sometimes there is logic in it.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to kind of put some energy, you know, a real decent level of energy into content creation.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_02: When you start to see the return in respect of people coming in, then you can start to build the funnel based on your specific marketplace and all of that.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_02: Now you could go out, get some expert help from somebody who builds funnels, right?
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_02: But the product or the service that they're building funnels for, for example, e-commerce, is completely different from the funnel that you would build for somebody going on a journey around their personal financials.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you have to kind of build the content and then look at the funnel.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's actually quite natural.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_02: But what again you then have is the ability to say, I've tried and tested this over three years or four years or whatever it is, I've now got the funnel system that works based on this type of content creation strategy.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_02: So all of a sudden you're positioning yourself again as an expert with a skill set that a firm should be looking at to say, yeah, come on board.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because as you rightfully said 10, 15 minutes ago, if you're going to go down the content creation route, expect to be paying 60 grand a year if you're going to outsource any content creation processes or mailers or whatever, let alone the time and energy it takes for you to actually build the content.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_02: Leading a little bit around this B2C and the opportunity in B2B that I see is massive within the financial planning space, you guys at Trap, they do quite they do quite a lot around B2B.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_02: They talk to entrepreneurs and business owners and all that difficult type of stuff.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_02: Do you create content for B2B in respect of referral business?
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_02: So for instance, an obvious opportunity I see is a financial planner who creates a podcast talking to accountants and solicitors about the world of accountancy and law and how financial planning intertwines with that.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_02: So not only does it become an educational piece for anybody who wants to listen to it to push their business forward, but you're bringing on the types of referrals of business, you're showing your worth to them and showing that you stand out in the financial planning profession as an expert in financial planning and that you understand and want to understand more about the symbiotic relationship between accountants, solicitors, and financial planning.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_02: That to me seems like a wide open space because if I've got 50 accountants on my podcast and I'm asking them really good questions and building deeper relationships with them, sure as shit, they're going to be passing me business over time.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I can use that as a business development tool when it when I go out to build that referral network to generate those types of typical clients that I'm looking for.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_02: A friend of mine has 350 million under management.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: The types of clients that he deals with, right, are 10 to 15 million quid at a time.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_02: So this year alone he's brought in 110 million quid.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Purely through solicitors and accountants, there is personal relationship.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing, you know, and he is kind of building this almost this gap that the financial planning profession seems to have at the moment, this kind of private banking gap.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: So the two million plus type clients, they're the family office type fill that they require.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: He's kind of filling that gap there and supporting it.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's not a not many people are doing it within that space.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Not even, there's a handful of family offices in London, et cetera.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: But his comes through those solicitor and accountancy relationships that they hold relationships with some of the wealthiest families in the Southwest.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I see that as an area like we can get consumed, I think, with I must go out to the masses.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_02: There's 95% of the population that don't deliver, that aren't receiving good financial planning, right?
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_02: Or aren't don't have access to it.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_02: And we want to do good, and that's one of the driving factors of Pete Matthew is doing good for people that can't afford financial planning advice.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: At least they can sort their issues out, and then they go in the funnel, go through the academy, and then when they're in a position where they can start looking at investments, then investment solutions or pensions or protection or mortgages becomes an opportunity to sell.
• 1:12:24
  SPEAKER_02: Why not go the other way and create content specifically for the types of companies that you want to partner with for referrals and educate them at the same time around what financial planning is and turn them on to why they should be partnering with you.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then it gets used as a really great business development tool.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thoughts on that?
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think what it speaks to is it speaks to once you kind of enter this, and and you know, we chatted before the start of this podcast about your your endless business uh opportunities and things that you're doing.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think the thing is once once you kind of eyes are open to it, there are just endless opportunities to go down various routes.
• 1:13:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fantastic idea.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I could totally see that potential to working, but it would take a long time.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Where I think on where I think you what you touched upon is right is that there's opportunities within niches for this kind of stuff is is enormous.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and frankly, that's something that I'm thinking about a lot as far as the next phase.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So currently, right now, I'm you know doing well looking after kind of holistic wealth management, retirement planning, inheritance stats, all that stuff.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm thinking, okay, well, is it is it worth considering just you know setting pitching my wagon to one specific niche because this podcast is a great example.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's super niche, it's financial planner life recruitment.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, if you become the key person of influence within that over time, that's enormously remunerative.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then people start to recognize you, and then different businesses spring off the back of it.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it all comes from putting yourself out there and working very hard is the truth.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I think that's the thing that you know, I think we probably agree, Sam, that if if you if either of us had given up two years in, well, one, we wouldn't be speaking, but two, the opportunity wouldn't be there either, because you need to do that consistency.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's sort of the big managing expectations element.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're willing to do it over a very long period of time and be very, very stoic with it, the opportunity is enormous.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_02: There's lots of people sitting here, they're thinking about starting their content creation journey.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think we've given them some really great advice.
• 1:14:29
  SPEAKER_02: We've talked about the realities, but I'm gonna push this back on you.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Everything you've learned along the way on your content creation journey, if you were to start again today, what would you do differently?
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And now, uh because I built my kind of following audience through through YouTube, this is gonna be somewhat specific to YouTube, but I think it's relevant to other platforms, which is that when I started, and I think maybe this is a bias of my creator background, it was kind of build it and they will come.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like field of dreams marketing, which is like, okay, we're just gonna, you know, put some stuff out there.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really good at the start because it just, you know, enthusiasm is what's gonna carry you, especially when you're doing a lot of work for no no one's gonna watch the first few videos, no one's gonna get into it.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what I didn't quite realize, I used to watch YouTube a ton.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And even despite watching a lot over three years, I had no idea what I was doing.
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_00: So for one big thing to say for somebody watching, you may think that you know content creation, but until you do it, you do not.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second is always think about what's the audience gonna find valuable.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the key thing.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes I made videos that I was interested in and um they did okay, but actually, if I start to dissect the analytics, which is spoiler alert, something fun that you're gonna have to do if you get really into this, um, then you really start to notice patterns for the audience.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not necessarily about the content you like, it's about what is valuable for the audience.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, you're considering a service, you know, you are you are delivering value.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea is that value starts to transition to goodwill, which accrues over time and compounds.
• 1:16:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's the formula for building content creation.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then my final lesson is something that I am working on now, but I uh we touched upon this a few minutes ago, but I've not mastered, is that you then need to start acting not like a content creator, but more like a business owner.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, how are you nurturing that ecosystem?
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are you maximizing the opportunities there?
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of uh people are watching it, what demographics, how are you gonna are you aiming to turn that to a client?
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking to monetize it or are you building and just being really intentional?
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because it is not a case of you can just start making videos and you know, clients just get in contact with you out of nowhere.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to then start building in that sort of process.
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's really solid advice.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've been putting content out on YouTube um mainly like my podcast episodes, and I've got it to like 1.9, I think, thousand followers now.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm about to release content onto YouTube in a YouTube format, you know, like really uh good high edit highly edited educational um videos, and I'm delving into the the niche of financial planning career education because no one's really touching on it.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_02: The ins and outs, what what people do, how you do it, you know, if someone's thinking about going self-employed, what to consider, um, what are the roots and really kind of digging deep on it.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like if someone wants to understand what going directly authorized actually means, what's the process, what does it go through, then we'll talk about it.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's loads of things that we're going to talk about, and also around mindset, motivation, well-being, the things that I really enjoy talking about as well.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Entrepreneurialism when it comes to running your own financial planning business, the types of things you should think about and what to expect and how to build mental resilience when you want trying to push forward in your career.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got all these kind of content creation ideas.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like what you just said there, one of the things is like I can create content that I know my candidate or client base would want to actually watch.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_02: And some of those might not get thousands of views, right?
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I know if 500 people watch a video, that's in that's powerful.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's powerful numbers for the type of content that I create within my micro niche.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to have a channel that has millions of viewers that are irrelevant to the actual brand that I'm trying to build.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's not of interest to me.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Numbers side of it doesn't do anything to me.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_02: The more I'm numbers I have, you know, yeah, I might get an ad revenue come through, and that's a nice added benefit, but that's not my goal of building a YouTube channel.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_02: My goal of building a YouTube channel is to build content that is valuable to a niche audience.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_02: So for what I'm taking from that as well, what you just said is look one of it is make sure you do your research into what your audience actually wants to watch and create content that's relevant to the audience.
• 1:19:15
  SPEAKER_02: The bit that I'm a little bit anxious about is the keyword research side of it and understanding how to title videos or tag videos within YouTube in the right way.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_02: And often that's been the thing that's created a um procrastination in me and pushing forward with the channel sooner.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_02: What would you say about that?
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Did you invest heavily in training development?
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do keyword research?
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any tools or a quick process that you can give to me now to say, look, Sam, follow this or do this or implement this or get one of your team to do it?
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And this is gonna push you further forward than guesswork?
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so basically, uh what I my tip for there is that that's how YouTube was predominantly the algorithm of last two years.
• 1:20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So what used to people used to do was long form keywords.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you were to go for uh pension planning, it was, or sorry, ISA planning, it was investment for beginning for Vanguard, UK, ISA, and the idea that you'll effectively use that kind of thing.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: The algorithm doesn't typically tend to reward that nowadays.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's now effectively about building a track record where they understand what your audience are like.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the the uncomfortable truth is that you're gonna have to have engaging engaging content that basically gets your audience on board, and then you're probably gonna have to push it out into other areas.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully you get some crossover and YouTube's algorithm starts to build that your demographic is people that are really interested in financial planning, careers, and all the rest of it.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if your videos are going to scale going forward, what will happen is you'll make a good video, which will be well targeted that people will click.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the click-through rate will be high.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then it'll potentially do really well with that audience.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if YouTube notices that that happens, it'll push out to more people that think will also like it.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because the key thing with YouTube just to understand is that it's it has the algorithm has one job, and it is to make key people on the platform and make sure they're engaged.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_00: It wants to deliver good content so it can sell them or ad revenue.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what that often means is it means that it's probably better, Sam.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_00: It takes an extra six months a year to build, but you then have a fantastic algorithm that looks at that journey than if you were to do a ton of long form keywords that have people that are interested in completely different things.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_00: That would be my tip because that's certainly what I've saw myself.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, great.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_02: And and that's where I what I'm thinking.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad you mentioned about the long form keyword titles because that was something that was in my mind.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember when I looked at it before that that was a big deal.
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that was really useful for me to not maybe I think the thing that I'm confident in because I've done the journey with my podcast, just get fucking started.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, 100%.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Just start, create content.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not starting from a stand-in start either.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're not.
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm building a YouTube channel with a bloody videographer with a team of people.
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_02: I got marketing support in here as well.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_02: I just literally turn up, mate, sit down in my little studio, and they click a button and off it goes, and they do all the rest.
• 1:22:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've even got a little bit of a script thing now, you know, like a projector, so I can read stuff off for the for the intros and all that kind of stuff, for researchers.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's just get started, isn't it?
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's just get started, get going, and that's what I've done.
• 1:22:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I've done.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm thinking about the audience being people that want to better themselves within the financial planning careers at whatever level that they actually are.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Where can I give them some support, expertise to push their careers forward?
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Whether they're a candidate looking for a job or to push their career forward, training, development, or it's a company that's looking to raise their profile to attract more talent.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I see value.
• 1:23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that shit.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to continue on doing that and creating content around it.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it will just happen if I do it.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's great.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, that that kind of service and also what Trap are doing is the big dichotomy is yeah, there are more advice, everyone needs advisors, but actually it's really hard to become an advisor.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So the more content we can have of stuff like yours, which is going over all those details, because I can speak for myself.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_00: When you're trying to get to where you want to be as a financial planner, there's a thousand opinions and you have no idea who to listen to.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the more content like this, like trap, like anything, the better.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, it'll lead to better advisors uh who have a better life.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's a great thing.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's all about perspective as well, which is why beautiful things like the podcast are so good because it you get so many different levels of perspective.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_02: With my academy, like the Financial Plan of Life Academy, it's I want that to be the go-to, the first place that some the idea for me is the financial plan of life is the go-to, the first place you go when you're thinking about the financial planning profession as a career.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because I want them to come into that ecosystem that's fully independent, right?
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't got, you know, I'm not going to push them down any roots.
• 1:24:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's fully independent.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_02: They come into it and they learn about the profession as a whole, whilst they do their qualifications, so they can come to the decision of what is the right path for them.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_02: And when the right path is presented to them in their thinking because they have a bigger picture, then we help them on their journey into the right firm that, as I mentioned before, should have a financial planner life accreditation that says they're a company worth uh joining because they invest in their employees, they do what they say they're gonna do.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want people to think there is a lot of opportunity in financial planning, and over the next three, five, 10 years, there'll be loads of opportunity.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_02: But right now, it is tough.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_02: So coming in and saying you're going to become a financial planner, you're probably gonna walk straight into a self-employed role more than an employed role.
• 1:25:04
  SPEAKER_02: So bear that in mind.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you if not, go down the route of trainee, like administrator, power planner, trainee advisor, or join a firm that's got a trainee advisor type program.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_02: We'll just prepare you fully for that journey.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_02: One thing I want to end on as well, and you'll probably agree, and it goes back to your original point.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_02: You were a musician, right?
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Did you say you went to university?
• 1:25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Did you get a degree?
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't.
• 1:25:29
  SPEAKER_00: I went the long way around.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_02: You went the long way around, right?
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_02: I left school at 16.
• 1:25:33
  SPEAKER_02: One of the first jobs I had when I left school at 16 was sticking bloody, was um stacking cat litter for Bob Martin's pet products, right?
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_02: I left school at 16 doing that.
• 1:25:43
  SPEAKER_02: I now run seven-figure recruitment company and I'm building a lovely business over here.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_02: Financial planning as a profession is a profession that you can earn considerable money in, really enjoy working in it, have really good value and add value to lots of people's well-being in their lives.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_02: And you do not need a degree, you don't need to have the typical educational background.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_02: You need to get in, do your qualifications, and learn on the job.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's one of the things when we're looking at opportunities in the UK as a career without barrier to entry based on academics, in the very beginning, our schooling system, for instance, or university, what we're indoctrinated to believe is the right pathway.
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can go into financial planning, you can be an IFA administrator at 18, 19 years old, and within five years, you could be a chartered financial planner sitting down with clients and giving financial advice.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_02: And there your journey begins.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because one of the things I would definitely say is at 30 years old, I think 30 is the perfect age to being a client-facing financial planner.
• 1:26:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I think.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think if you've got aspirations at 20 years old to do that, you're gonna struggle more than you would if you were, say, 30 years old with a bit of experience behind you and experience at the job and how it works.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not to seem ages, it's just going back to that consultancy argument that I made before.
• 1:27:09
  SPEAKER_00: We accept that in the medical profession.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_00: We accept that you're not gonna be a partner at a law firm at um at 20, at 25, or whatever it may be.
• 1:27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So why aren't we accepting that in the financial planning?
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we're probably not giving the profession the respect it deserves.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Great.
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_02: We're on the same page.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_02: George, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_02: I want to continue um talking to you in the future.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a shadow of a doubt, I'm gonna lean into you now because you're a bit of a YouTube expert and I'm on my journey on that.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm really, really keen to continue uh following your content.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, people can follow you on YouTube.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Are you on LinkedIn?
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_02: You use LinkedIn?
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, not as much as I should.
• 1:27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's I focus mainly on YouTube.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can connect with me on LinkedIn then.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_02: If you ever want to ask me any questions about uh LinkedIn, that's where the bulk of my income comes from.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always happy to help you around that.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe there should be an episode on the Financial Planner Life podcast about the power of LinkedIn because I think it's an area that's massively overlooked by financial planners uh to generate business.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you use TikTok, Instagram, anything like that?
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking to build out my other platforms um and I'm I'm looking to work for someone to do that.
• 1:28:10
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm not not I'm not doing it in any meaningful way at the moment.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So another great area of growth for you.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Fabulous.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for your time today.
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Sam.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers.