Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Taylor Beavis on LGBTQ+ Financial Planning & running a business with purpose, and why he went self employed / DA

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Taylor Beavis on LGBTQ+ Financial Planning & running a business with purpose, and why he went self employed / DA · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, and welcome to the Financial Planner Life Podcast, where we talk to professionals at varying stages in their career about what it's like working in the wonderful world of financial planning and financial advice.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is proudly sponsored by Recruit UK, a recruitment consultancy specifically focused on the financial services.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: They have a niche specialism, recruiting, within the financial planning industry, so check out their website for the latest job opportunities, hints and tips, and blog articles.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And today's guest is Taylor Beavis.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Taylor is the owner of a company called Universe Financial Advice.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's a directly authorised IFA practice.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Taylor shares with us today his career journey so far, how he got into the industry and why he chose to go straight in as a self-employed advisor, ignoring the traditional route of say administration, power planning, or even employed financial advice.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's been a success.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he shares that success with us today.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about things like PR and the impact that's had um on raising his personal brand.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um we also talk about purpose, why he does what he does.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: We talk a little bit about financial education, ethical investments, and we also talk about LGBTQ and how underrepresented that community is within the financial planning profession and what he's going to do about that in the future.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really great podcast.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed interviewing Taylor, and I hope you enjoy listening to it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Taylor.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks very much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life Podcast.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good, thank you.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, thanks for asking.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: No worries.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, obviously, Taylor, looking, I've been reading loads about you in the in the online publications.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you've got your own magazine as well, putting stuff out there.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're getting seen and you're getting heard.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really pleased today that you've come on the podcast because a lot of what I've been reading, I'm really keen to ask some questions because I think it's going to inspire, especially some of the younger guys coming through are thinking about becoming financial planners who are just starting out.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I also think, as well, some of the more established advisors who might not be who are a bit worried about perhaps taking a leap almost into the world of being directly authorized and self-employed.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you've um you've got some great experiences around that.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: So really keen to find out a little bit about that.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so Taylor, um, the first question I always like to ask really is how did you end up getting into financial planning as a career?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the honest answer is I completely fell into it, Sam.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I started out working um without going into too much detail about how we got to this point, but I was working self-employed for a few banks.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh from that point, I self-taught the level four diploma, and then very fortunately was offered a role with Intelligent Office, which is the CRM for most financial advisors.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And really that took me up and down the country, uh, working with planners, finding out the ins and outs of their business.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And really, without that kind of stepping stone, I wouldn't have been able to see the these kind of innards of other financial planning firms to know that I wanted to A, be a financial planner, and B, what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so yeah, nice.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you had an insight and a view, a bit like me, really, at the moment.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a really good view into the industry.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking a lot with financial planners, and at the same time, you're probably asking a lot of fact-finding questions around the struggles and the problems that they're coming up against and the realities really of doing the job.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas like a consumer might just sit in front of a financial advisor and just see the polished article, whereas you're seeing behind the scenes.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, what then what was it about financial planning that that drew you into it and made you think, you know, that's the career for me?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think for me, it's the difference that I saw these that the good planners were making in people's lives.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, don't get me wrong, I'm I'm a big believer in the fact that just because you hold a qualification, it does not make you a good financial advisor at all.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but having said that, the vast majority are fantastic advisors, and actually the most valuable part of the business is the planning.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why when I saw scenarios of clients where planning had significantly changed their lives, then I thought this is the kind of business I need to be in.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I truly feel I found at that point um kind of my purpose and and what I'm about.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's kind of why I made the jump.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't so much about the money.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's all very interesting.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: I've always been interested in money and how money works and grows and invests.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I always read up on things like that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it was very much linking the two together for me: money and life-changing stuff.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So have you always had an interesting?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned there about money and understanding money.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So have you always had an interest in money?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of people are just quite scared of money and quite, you know, the thought of having to learn about it is is quite like overwhelming and quite worrying, worries people.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, what age did you sort of show an interest in money and start to kind of break it apart and understand how it works?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So this is quite interesting.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if I kind of trace it back, I I actually left home at 16 and became, I guess you would say, financially independent at 16.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was, you know, doing my shopping and I was budgeting at that point.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I created a very simple budget template at that point.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and with with a lot of help from my mum, you know, over the years, uh, who's struggled financially, been ups and downs.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I was always interested in well, why sometimes is it working for her?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then other times she's really stressed about this.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is this all about?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I became financially independent at 16 and moved out.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I really started to understand money.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Then I started to work um at 20, sorry, at 18, I was working and you know, earning 40,000 pounds a year for that age, fantastic, and then saw the negatives of money, you know, when actually you start to think you've got too much, and then you end up with credit cards.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to dig myself out of that point, um, which I did fairly quickly.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, I understand money more than the average person here, so I need to sort of harness this.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: So then I was from there on, I guess I was just reading more about money and about investing.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I can honestly say I didn't actually understand it until I had been up and down the country in each advice company, even after studying the qualifications, which might shock you, I didn't really understand it in full because I was studying without ever seeing a pension statement.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: My family, my background and my family, they've never seen a financial advisor.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't even understand what that job role would have been.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, there are so many families in this situation that could do with some advice but have never had it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of where I came from.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And do you find okay, so very early on then making that emotional connection to money as well?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about your mum and the ups and downs of what your mum went through.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just, you know, in the back of your mind, you're thinking, well, how can I help my mum be better with money?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: What could I do to learn myself about money to better improve my relationship with it?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Experiencing both being quite young and being financially independent at quite a young age, but also having some income, all of a sudden thinking the bit of the bee's knees, realizing that when you start to earn more money, you spend more money.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you've gone through that sort of journey, haven't you, of the emotional connection with money and how it can actually make you feel?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you do you kind of do you see that as being a big part of financial planning as well, is the emotional connection to actual money?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you mentioned there that people don't, there's a lot of people that don't seek financial advice and could, without a shadow of a doubt, just do with somebody sitting down and even basic finances, going over their basic finances to help them understand a little bit more.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's a big barrier to entry is people's emotional fear, if you like, to money?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this really, this point, the exact point really interests me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I've done a lot of research on this, and it tends to be uh people, the the emotional connection that people have with money is developed very, very early on.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of that 16 to 26, that 10 years.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that 10 years will shape their lifetime.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, that 10 years was very much um trying to understand how we get from having no money to having some money, um, which is why now I enjoy the process of helping clients build wealth.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you find it similarly with people who who had that period, that 10 years of their life, if it was uh a market crash, they're quite risk averse generally when they when they go forwards.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so the research is behind this.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so it's usually that that 10-year period in your life that that forms the connections.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It sorts to shape it.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there was a client, there was a child psychologist that um commented on my a post um a little while back around when we start to learn about money and we start to form certain behaviors, and apparently it can be as early as like four, four or five years old that we start to kind of can be molded and can be shaped into thinking about saving and the positive um effect that that can have, and how then you start to ingrain and build that thought process, that behavior.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's yeah, it's really interesting.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of people, and again, you know, we can bark on about this forever, but you know, education in school in respect of financial education, there isn't a great deal there that prepares you for the real world.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: You tend to learn through doing.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And um, unfortunately, there's so much temptation, more so than ever.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have so much access to consumerism and buying things that we just are, it's not our fault almost as human beings.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: We've been shown things like Christ, you can bring your phone up and just press a button and get a meal delivered to your front door now.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so much, there's so much that we're battling as to how to save money, and then you've got these apps that are coming in that are helping you squill things away and whatnot to make it easier for you to do it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: But um yeah, no, that's a really interesting point about the sort of the access, the access to being able to spend nowadays is is is much more open.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um so so it's if you actually look at it, when I was at school, there was no educational piece on budgeting, for example, no educational piece on pension, no one knows what that is when you leave school.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, now if that was in place, I feel that then when I transitioned into a uh a lifestyle of influencers and Instagram and products being rammed down our throat and feeling social pressure to spend, if you were deeply rooted in understanding a budget, you would have an easier way of understanding your limit.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: And this is why I think a lot of people my age are in eye-watering amounts of debt at the moment, social pressure to spend, going out, meals, it's an influencer lifestyle that we're living in.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, the educational piece of the budgeting and the looking after your money didn't happen for a lot of people.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's such an extreme version of keeping up with the Joneses.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I was younger and um you were taught sales, it was all about selling off the back of keeping up with the Joneses.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the very first jobs I ever did was knocking on people's doors and trying to get them to change over, you know, product providers and stuff.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it was always about, you know, John round the corner's doing it, you know, and if they're in this little kind of row of houses and John's got the nice new car and the windows in the, you know, that done, then oh shit, if John's doing it, I better do it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're in this kind of like super duper world of keeping up with the Joneses, and it's and it's just intense.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you can kind of start to understand why.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what you're starting to see very much in the Australian market, American market, and now in the UK market, is what I would consider financial coaches that are influencers.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: They're starting to become this kind of go, you know, a go-to influencer, if you like.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I had a chap on the podcast called Emmanuel Asuko, and um Emmanuel is very much positioning himself as the financial advisor, you know, the black Martin Lewis, talking to the black community about financial planning, which they haven't really ever had.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he's talking about simple things like mortgages and where you're spending your money and the psychology of why you're doing it.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Stop trying to catch up with everybody around you and just start looking at what you can afford.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: If your pocket can afford Aldi, go to Aldi.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't go into don't go into waitros, that kind of psych mentality around it.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's doing is just really unique, it's really lovely and really interesting to see, but it's free content.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's putting it out there and he's building relationships with people and and sort of tapping into their their worries and their concerns because you know, we all want these shiny, you know, it's nice cars, nice house, and all those types of things, but we're all sp you know pissing money up against the wall.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a nightmare.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about that?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's a good do you think there's a do you think there's a place on Instagram and Facebook, um, social media in general for financial planning?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, no, the answer is I guess no.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I think a lot of these people, they don't need the traditional financial advice, you know, that that is the core of my business.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: They don't need that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it is psychological and emotional, as we were saying before.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, a simple example is an overdraft.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I find, and from my experience with clients, friends, and family that have that have been you know up to their eyes in an overdraft, and they they say every month, I'm gonna pay money off, and they never get out of it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, psychologically, I think the the problem there is that that that zero balance, when you're when you balance it zero, but you have an overdraft that takes you to minus 2000, suddenly minus 2000 becomes your zero, and that's that's when you run out of money, not not zero.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're really dangerous vehicles.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's more of an emotional thing in terms of educating, well, actually, that's not your money.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you have enough.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, a lot a lot of people don't believe that they are enough, so they feel that they need to buy more things or they need to have the shiny new car.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that's that that's something that I've struggled with as well.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just sort of growing up and going from through the early 20s is well, do I start with a BMW?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and now I'm back to a small coarser because I realize I've completely detached myself emotionally from uh buying things and I've realized that I have enough in what I have.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting there with that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was never really a massively materialistic person, but I've become more aware that of what I need in life.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do I really need the things that I want?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I went through a bit of a headache of trying, I've always I run a business, and you want to stop when you run a business.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: When you're running your business, trying to buy a house, for example, can be quite difficult because it's dividends, it's salary, and you know, it and and you never really can.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you're running a business, you've got this image of yourself as being prestige, you know, you should have this, you should have that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And people look at you and think, well, you run your own business.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why haven't you got a nice big house and all that kind of stuff?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you start looking around and compare and despair.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I go through it and I I was gutted before um lockdown.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I put an offer on this house, it was like a half a million quiz, right?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need to have a half a million pound house.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just didn't, you know.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then all things kind of happened.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: My wife lost her job and all that kind of stuff.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it all just went to its up.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I was obviously devastated, gutted.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then when I went back out last week to have a look around, and I'm looking at smaller houses, less cheap, you know, cheaper houses, I felt calmer.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, I had to get rid of that expectation in my head that I should have this, you know, this thing because I am who I think I am.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as I realized that actually a smaller house, I could still live in the area I wanted, it was still smaller, it did enough for what I wanted.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: There was no extra pressure and worry about having a giant normal, you know, ginormous house, mortgage, huge bloody mortgage and debt to get into.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was affordable.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at it and I thought, wow, I feel why didn't I have that feeling before?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because you're driven, aren't you, by this prestige and the want and the need to have more, more, more, more, more.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the that's a bit of a bitch.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing as well, two things on this is that coronavirus, as terrible as this has all been, has been absolutely fantastic at addressing this issue because we've been stuck at home and we can't spend very much, we can't drive our flashy cars very far.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that it's been fantastic in that level, in that spec.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think, yeah, that that's the first thing.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the second thing is as Brits, we we don't like to talk about money, and that that creates a really big problem because by not talking about money, and then you look at the neighbors and it's keeping up with the Joneses, but what you don't know is that that's all financed.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that their BMW is financed, their new hot tub in the gardens financed, so we keep up with them, and we're all just heading the same way.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I think to answer your original question, if we invest in that emotional intelligence with money, then that in terms of impact, that will be really fruitful.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's the thing, isn't it?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is that it's it's it's and and the the what I'm seeing is financial advisors adopting that approach, being more emotionally, you know, having an emotional intelligence attached to financial planning.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: But there's still that divide, I think, between people going to see a financial planner because they feel that they're not worth it, that they shouldn't go and see a financial advisor because they don't earn enough money.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a lot of people out there that probably would have, if they did think that they needed financial advice, they'd have walked into a bank and probably got some form of financial advice back in the day.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas now with the RDR kicking out all the bloody advisors in the banks, and you know, there isn't a and the model of financial advice really being minimum 250k transfer, you know, minimum 250k investable assets, people don't want to go and see a financial advisor, and then a financial advisor doesn't want to waste his time talking to people, that's the reality of it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this gap, isn't there?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we can say, oh, people can benefit from it, but the advice industry also needs to offer that advice in a way that is beneficial and accessible to somebody that isn't gonna, you know, it's not gonna make them a great deal of money on a yearly basis, you know?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I I actually think um, in that respect, I don't think that a lot of that is an issue from an advisor perspective because I think there are a lot of advisors, younger advisors, that would quite happily take on people with much lower values or people that are starting out, but it's the sheer time to do the regulatory side of things that takes it up.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I I think I think we've got miles and leaps and bounds to go on the regulation and to get that to some level where we can profitably service small clients.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's exactly right.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't what what do you what do you think the solution to that actually is?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's like a fixed fee type um approach?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um bit of technology tech app in involved in that, limiting the amount of paperwork and uh etc.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: that needs to be done for those individual clients, off-the-shelf type products, what what is it?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's two things.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think firstly, it is um balancing risk.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if we have somebody who is young and doesn't have a pension and just wants to start one out, how can we reduce the paperwork for the advisor and make sure that the PI insurer is happy with that, et cetera, et cetera?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So reduce, understand that it's a lower risk case, most likely, and therefore less paperwork potentially needed.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's number one.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: But number two is actually adapting to the model that psychologically we're tuned now into paying.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: We are used to paying everything subscription-based model.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's your Netflix model, it's your Amazon Prime.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're used to this model.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, financial advice is a percentage on your assets, and it really confuses people.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think if we want to attract the younger individuals, we've got to work out ways that we can change our financial.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely cool.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, talking about the young, you know, younger generation, um, you are, in essence, one of the 1% of financial planners that are under the age, I think, of 35.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you are one of the younger financial advisors out there.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not only that, you came into financial advice self-employed.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you went down the self-employed role route, and now you're actually running your own directly authorized firm.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of what you've done that not everybody does, not even people who have been in the industry for quite some time would take the leap and the plunge into that entrepreneurial side of running your own business.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really keen to find out a little bit about that and also find out your journey about how you got into it and perhaps some of the barriers and the challenges you came up against.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think the story will appeal very much to the next generation of financial advisors coming through.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're working for Intelliflow, and obviously Intelliflow is a back office system that financial planners use that allowed you to kind of understand how financial planners did their job because you were traveling up and down the country.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like you were really successful there, building those transferable skills that would move you into the world of a role which is predominantly relationship-based advice.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I suppose my first question here to anybody listening to this podcast who's thinking maybe thinking about becoming a financial planner, how important is it that you have experience of uh working towards targets, perhaps sales targets, and being within a relationship-based role prior to getting into financial planning?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a major benefit to that?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I I think it does.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me if I don't answer it quite what you're meaning.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the the answer, I guess, for me is um is no.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't think it's highly important for a certain type of financial advisor.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if, and this very much links into what we were just talking about, if you are a financial advisor that can, for the first one to two years, completely detach yourself emotionally from the fact that you're not going to earn what you earned in your permanent job before, and that you might not earn as much as you'd love to earn, but that in year three.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: For you will, um, then I don't think targets are a problem.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: There are 65 or whatever million people in this country, there are so there's so much work out there.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, I don't think so, as long as you're driven.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, having said that, if you are a financial advisor that is moving from one highly paid employee job and you want to replicate that, then you need to be pretty hot on on reaching a target.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it benefits those people.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody looking at the industry coming into it without say any experience of working within financial planning, I guess the benefit if you've got if you've got a background of working within a role, say, where you are relationship focused, um, that would be a beneficial transition into financial in going straight into financial advice.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the relationship piece is by far more valuable, in my opinion, than the target sales thing.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, um the thing is, Sam, you you don't have to sell at all in this industry.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to help people.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to help people understand their money.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can do that, you've sold yourself.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: So um, I'm not a salesman, never have been, never feel like I am.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's just helping.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can do that, then you'll be absolutely fine.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you talked a bit about your purpose then originally, you know, at the start of the podcast, you found your purpose.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is your purpose to help people?
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, my purpose, I would say, is something that has taken a little while to develop and it's still developing, and I imagine will develop um the time.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: But generally, what I put it down to now is a couple of things.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: So my purpose is to educate as many people as I can that they actually probably have enough money already.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: So rather than chasing that promotion, that actually doesn't include the value of your your pay rise, doesn't increase the value of your happiness by the same amount.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I want to educate as many people as I can on that.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, number two, I want to have a really sustainable impact on the world.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason why is um because I'm I'm passionate about that.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my own lifestyle is is built around that that largely, not in every aspect, it's always developing, but generally that's how I feel.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: But also going back to what we said earlier on in the podcast, the the people that are developing now in their 20s and 30s, we're in an environment where you've got your David Attinbros, you've got your documentaries and everything.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Their emotional connection to money when they're 30, 40, when they're ideal IFA clients will be ethical and sustainable.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: I 100% agree.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: If I was going down the route of setting up my own financial planning practice now, I would be going down the route of being very uh yeah, ESG, impact investing, very much around ethical, connecting with those people, talking about the subject matters um that are of interest to them.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So sustainability and you said about veganism, we had a little bit of a chat about that.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: So anything really that's going to add that emotional connection and help the world uh come out of this crap that we've put it into.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think people are going to be interested in it.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's funny, isn't it?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that David Attenborough mentioned it on his recent, um, his recent uh Netflix uh Netflix documentary.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I also spoke to a financial advisor from Tilney last week about uh there's so much change that we can actually do within our own pension plans that will have an imp that will have an impact on the rest of the world by looking at where our monies are actually invested and changing where it's invested into more sustainable, we can have a huge impact by and it's like 10 to 15 times bigger impact than just say changing like meat, for example, changing from meat to veganism.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a huge impact.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: But people aren't even aware of that, they have no connection to the fact that what they're and everybody's got a pension now.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have a pension, don't you?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's kind of like it's one of those things that we can we can make a mass change, but I don't think anybody ever talks about that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: No, like vegans is a really interesting one, um, because there are about 600,000 vegans in the UK.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh a little bit more now.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's grown exponentially between 2010 to 2019.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, if you were to do a survey of those vegans and ask them, do you understand where you've put your money?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them, or a large proportion, will say no.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't know that they're in pharmaceuticals, animal testing, they don't know they're in fossil fuels.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is almost feels like a scandal that that we're doing enough.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that all of this, this billions of pounds.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just looking at uh the people's pension, which is a big auto-enrollment um provider, or or nest even, you know, they've got 10 billion under management, 10 billion pounds, it's huge sums of money.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's absolutely where my purpose is focused.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the route that you're looking to go down.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, don't blame you.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's great.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um when we're talking a bit earlier about sort of influencers, there needs to be more influencers from the financial services, I think, talking about that.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge niche there, and it's a growing niche.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And with the transition of wealth happening in so many years, when the next 35, 40 year olds, they are going to be way more um savvy in wanting to win on in knowing where their monies are invested and the impact that it's having.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's a great that's exactly where I would go.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be green, green, green.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, that would that's where I would go because it just makes complete and us a common sense at the moment.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of things as well though, so um a lot of financial advisors um don't like you know a lot of talk around ESG, and that's okay.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: But what they've got to understand is forget vegans or forget people that are really ESG and forget people that are really passionate.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Just take the average person who is indifferent.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you were to lay it out in in front of them that you've got one investment, this is the return, you've got this other investment, I don't know, maybe it's Lion Trust, it's had a 10-year fantastic record, it's pretty good, but this one's sustainable and your children and your grandchildren, it's going to be supporting the world that they're in.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: I would I would believe that most people would choose that option.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's giving and it's also giving people the choice, which is what it's all about at the moment, isn't it?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's look, here's what the this is the impact that your investment is actually having.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you okay with that?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And not everybody, some people might be like, well, I'll put 30% in that and I'll put 70% in that.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And also people are starting to think about their next generation within their families anyway.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if they are saving up for the future, someone's talking about ethical investments and they've got a couple of grandchildren they absolutely love.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've got a daughter, three, four years old.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I watched something like that Asenbrook program, and I watched lots of other, you know, programs, do some research into it.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm worried about the future for her, you know.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can do something now that hopefully might help impact her future and her kids, you know, even if I'm thinking like, Christ, I might live to 100 years old.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: God knows how old she's gonna live to, and then she's gonna have children.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that's 200, 300 years there, you know?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you're thinking to yourself, like, where's this?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, this world's gonna be in the right place.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: But um, no, I agree on the ethical stuff.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's really cool.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's that's exactly the route to go down.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, so you you were doing your studying for level four diploma then whilst you were at um Inteleflow, is that right?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, before, no, before.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I completed it and then Intelliflow or the recruiter for Intelliflow approached me and asked me if I wanted to combine my level four knowledge with my training.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was training for the bank, so with my training experience.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: What was that like as a job then, the Intelliflow one?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because that sounds quite interesting.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: So learning and development consultant, great team, really friendly team.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was really interesting.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: What I took away from it most is it was the most valuable year that I spent I have spent in any job.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's the only year that I've been employed.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um the key thing is I wrote down and kept a note of all the good things and all the bad things that I saw in advice businesses and just kept kind of going through those in my mind.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what was most valuable about it.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um but as a job, it was good, um, but it has its limits, you know, because that wasn't what my purpose was to be there to do.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it worked for what I needed it to do.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So come to it as a route into where you needed to get to.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Cool, man, excellent.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you decided then to become a financial advisor, okay?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you made that choice, you wanted to become a financial advisor, okay.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you go from there?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it was like a minefield.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I had a few financial advisors that had given me a potential job offer, and which I've spoken about in press a little bit before.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you could come and be an administrator for me for a few years.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, none of those really felt right.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then I had a couple of uh academies, networks that want to take people on.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um but even from the very beginning, I remember phoning um 360 or 365, I think they're called 360, aren't they?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't use them, but I phoned them at the time to ask about the route to become directly authorized because I was really interested in that.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized quickly that I would need to find somebody who would um help me first achieve competent advisor status.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I did a lot of Googling and trying to find my eventually Ping came up with Julian Harris.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, had never heard of them, and I just had a had a call with Julian Harris.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: And um, from the outset, I said there's two things that I need to make sure happen.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is I need to own all of my clients because my clients are my asset um long term.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to own them.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: And number two, uh, I need to tell you now that I won't be with you long term because I I will leave you um and become directly authorized.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're happy with those two things, I'd love to work with you.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that was the key thing, work with you rather than for you.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Julian, who is fantastic, said that sounds absolutely brilliant, and I'd love to help you on your journey.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: So off we kind of went and and true to my word, I got competent advisor status, did a fantastic job for them, uh, became an AR, you know, set up universe, and then uh and then took it directly authorized.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you joined Julian Harris then.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting that you were so open and so knowledgeable also at that early stage as well, around the understanding that the clients are your assets and that you didn't want anybody to have that ownership.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: You had that sort of foresight and understanding.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not everybody does, even people that have been working on an employee basis as a financial advisor for some time.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was where where did that come from?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Did that come from questioning financial advisors when you're in Telegraflow?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Was it you just understanding the role?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you get that information from to allow you to kind of be to have that foresight?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I did have one or two advisors on my teleflow journey that that kind of get in part, gave me that kind of knowledge and said, if you ever do it, one thing, make sure you own your clients, number one.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also I, from other advisors that I saw, you know, they let's say they would like to brag about how much their business would be valued at if they sold it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then I quickly understood the mathematics behind assets equals long-term plan.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you you can work out the bit in the middle, and then you end up with the solution of the fact that you just want to own your clients.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: Fabulous.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you had your level four qualification, you've had that honest chat with Julian Harris there, and fantastic that they've actually, they must have looked at you and just thought, you know what, fair play, he knows what he wants to do, and this would be the right thing is to help this chap on his journey.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so when you were in there then, let's talk about cash status because it's something that comes up obviously a lot with anybody that doesn't have a great deal of experience being a financial advisor and they get knocked back because of it.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about cash status.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Just explain to us your journey around cash status.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I found it quite straightforward, in all honesty.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the reason why, and this would be a big tip that I would give to any new advisor, is I kept within my comfort zone.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: So as a financial advisor, I'm completely vanilla, and that's how I explain myself to clients.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do anything risky, I don't do anything out of the ordinary, it's vanilla, it's pension, it's an ISA, it's protection.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I stuck to my boundaries and I promised myself that if I came across a client, even if they were going to pay me£10,000, I wouldn't go through and put that as my cash journey if I wasn't 100% happy.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've got years ahead of me to go through the complexities and earn that client later down the line.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I went through CAS with quite simplistic vanilla clients, um, came out of CAS, and I my business is very sort of vanilla work, still is, but now I'm starting to get some complexities and now I build on that.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it can become really overwhelming for a new advisor to think they've got to know everything.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they've got to know a broad understanding of trigger points when they might need to talk to somebody about a VCT and EIS, but they just need to understand the vanilla to start with.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And again, it can be very overwhelming for a new advisor.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're sitting there and you're doing your qualifications, that's overwhelming within itself.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: So people are like, you know, I've got to know everything that's in this book because that's what, you know, if I if I do this qualification, I read this book, that's exactly what it's like to be a financial advisor.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then they think they're gonna get into a financial advisor role and they've got to do absolutely everything straight away.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a really good bit of advice there, is that to get through your competent advisor status, especially if you're going down the route of being a um an independent advisor directly authorized, which you eventually became.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where's how quickly can I get through competent advisor status?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: What type of client should I be dealing with and how can I make this really simple for myself?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds to me you've got a really your brain is very good at simplifying process to get you to where you need to get to.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do you agree there?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that you will yeah, and it's also um so I'm really brutally honest with myself a lot of the time.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: So what you can if if you're really overconfident and and don't like to tell yourself that you shouldn't be doing something, then you could be somebody who goes through content advisor on those simple vanilla cases and then tries to, you know, win over some massive business on some DB stuff or whatever you decide to do and really come into problems.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I knew I was honest with myself that you can only, your your scope of knowledge is what you've gone through.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: So do that and do that well, and then build on it.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think from the simplest thing, so somebody's starting out and doing their qualifications, when you actually think about it, you're going through a textbook, in that textbook, you never see a pension statement.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: You never see one.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, how on earth do you understand you don't even understand how to get a letter of authority to a provider?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: Those were the hurdles, not the knowledge and not the tax and and all of that.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's what I stumbled with first, and I had to really get to grips with is the fact that when you're sat with a client in front of them, they are not going to ask you to do a tapered annual allowance calculation on the spot.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you just need to know trigger points as to when you then need to go away and work it out.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's what I think a lot of new advisors get overwhelmed with.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the initial meeting, really, it's my understanding here, is with a with a client when you sit down with them, is to kind of put them at ease, is to kind of put them at ease, ask them some, ask some really good fact-finding questions that build a relationship and a confidence and a trust that you know what you're talking about, and that you can go away and create a solution that's going to add some value to their life by hopefully understanding their current situation from a brief conversation and where they eventually want to go.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna hopefully come back and sort of say, Do you know when you were talking about wanting to retire at 65 for this much money?
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is how you can do it, but actually, you don't need to worry too much because you could you could actually retire at 60 if you do this or do that.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it's that kind of understanding the client situation, the emotional connection to them, building that relationship because because in the first initial meeting, anyway, uh, you're not getting paid, are you?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a it's a fact-find kind of I'm gonna tell you what I can do and add value to you.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: But if you want me to do it, I'm gonna go away and do the work, but it's gonna cost you cost you a few quiz.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and actually one thing that even I still battling with now to improve is I talk too much.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um when you're in that first meeting, you don't really need to talk very much.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: It should be the client doing the talking.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and as a brand new green financial advisor, I just talk, talk, talk.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to get through that fact find, and I thought I cannot have a box missing on here.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: What if I don't have the national insurance number?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, certainly I've quickly learned that it doesn't matter.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: As long as I understand what they're trying to do, I can ask those questions later.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's about establishing straight away is there a is there a need?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: Can I add value to this person?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can I improve their life situation?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then yeah, but suppose as well, that's what anybody does going into any job.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to do everything they possibly can to make sure that they don't muck up and there's a lot of pressure and worry upon yourself.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And also you've got aspirations and ambitions.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you're probably thinking to yourself, if I don't do this, I'm not going to get to where I want to get to, because you've got those goals and ambitions in place, which um obviously are driving you.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: Very interesting now, Julian Harris.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: So self-employed, say, when you're going through that process, you were you an RI with them, were you?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, like I was an advisor with uh like advisor with Julian Harris, yeah.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you had your business card, it was Julian Harris.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Just through Cass.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as Cass finished, I became universal.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: So how long did it take you to pass Cass?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a very good question.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Probably four months, I would say.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: And what did you have to do to pass CAS?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: There was a certain requirement of cases, so numbers of cases.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: And my best advice would be just ask all of your family and friends to give you some something to look at and something to advise on.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, there's a certain requirement of cases, uh, you know, they're they're rag rated, and you've got to get a certain number green or amber.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and then a lot lots of coaching, so calls, um calls with experienced advisors, and and I got a lot of knowledge from them actually in things um such as the questioning styles and and the soft skills, really, because you can't teach soft skills so much.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you've either you've either got the ability to talk to somebody or you have to work really bloody hard to understand how to do that.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, so so it's kind of like four months, I believe, four, four months, four or five months.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was a really short period, it went so quickly for me.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you were obviously self-employed at that point.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when you were going through Castasis, how were you in those early stages of being self-employed?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: How were you actually financing your career at this stage?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so um I built up some savings.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: So whilst I was working for, let me just think, when was this?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: So before Intelligent Office, I was working and I was earning fantastic money for it with the banks.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I saved a lot because I knew that I would need it for something.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was already doing the basics of financial planning there, even really before becoming one, you know, building an emergency fund, those kind of things.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so what I did is when I was working for Intelligent Office, I kept building that.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: I bought my house here.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then after I'd bought my house, the remaining money, I detached myself, and that's when it started really from actually, I'd love to earn 40,000 pounds um self-employed.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: But then I thought, well, actually, how much do you need?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, you don't need 40,000, you need X.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then I divided my savings by X, as long as I could run for eight months, I think I had at the time, um, then I'm I made the jump.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the biggest challenges and fears that people have about getting self-employed is actually getting clients, is winning those clients.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're gonna go employed, the the impression is that the company you're working for are giving you that security of a salary and pension, all the other little benefits that might come along with a with a job as an employed financial advisor.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: But they're going into a company where hopefully the experience of that firm is gonna also help them generate clients.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're self-employed and you're under a network as an RI, or even as you've now done going directly authorized, which we'll talk about in a minute, there is this kind of shit, where am I going to get my clients from?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, what did you do about that?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: What was your client acquisition strategy?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it was a bit kind of um point and fire to begin with, um, and try and work out what on earth I would do.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what I ended up doing is firstly, Julian Harris, uh, we don't we didn't have an arrangement where they provide leads.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't matter.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it was all self-driven.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, two things really.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing is you've got things like unbiased.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't use and I haven't used vouch for before just because unbiased was sufficient for me.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I I in the early stages I don't use it anymore um for various reasons, but in the early stages I used unbiased quite a lot and I invested, I invested money to get some inquiries.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: That gave me a little bit of traction.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the second thing is I took a model from I don't know whether you've heard of a company called Um Argon before.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Argon, yeah, I do.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've heard of Argon, yeah.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so they um so it's kind of like a toilet trees company, but that's right, yeah.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Very successful um sales model.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that they uh introduced is I can't remember what they call it, but essentially on a piece of paper, write down a hundred people that you know or that you think you could talk to about what you do and go and talk to them.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's pretty much how it started.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: And once you do that, then you get referrals and it builds and builds and builds, and quite honestly, now it just organically grows.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good bit of advice because that's a kind of multi-level marketing approach, which is like go and see a hundred, yeah, write down a hundred people that you know within your circle.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even if you're not a hundred percent mates with them or anything, still write down their names and approach those hundred.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's like a really solid bit of advice for anybody starting out in you know in financial planning is that there must be, you know, if you can write a hundred names down, go out and approach those hundred people.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, out of those hundred names you wrote down, how much business did you actually write through that approach?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, quite a lot, to be honest.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the actual answer is I haven't got through the hundred yet because that's a lot, that's a lot of people.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other thing is I think we're so we're so afraid to approach people.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I I picked up a very good tip from Richard Branson on this, and it what he does in business is he Approaches you and he says, Would you like to buy virgin cola or virgin water purifier?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you say no, he says, Okay, no problems, have a great day.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he moves to the next person.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't let his day get bogged down.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard, even now.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: When I have a client that says no, it knocks you a little bit.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I try really hard not to do that.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a hundred, just keep going through, and obviously you're gonna get some yeses and you'll build your business that way.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so to answer your question, a really high success rate on that because they know you.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think as well, it's a really it's a it's a again, it's like not eating your it's not eating the whole cake in one go.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, you know, if people sit there and they think, I've got to do some, you know, I've got to get I've got to get online, I've got to have my website, I've got to do some social media marketing, that's a massive thing at the moment.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not on social media and you're not on video, then you're not making any clients.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: The perception is that because that's how the world looks at the moment, everyone wins loads of business because they put loads of videos out there.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it has its place and it works.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's things like digital marketing, lead generators.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you're kind of overloaded, aren't you, with all these kind of multiple ways that people promise that you can that you can write business.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, all this costs money.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: And by simply putting a hundred names down on a piece of paper and approaching what I would consider to be warmer people as well, who know you, it's a great opportunity and a great way to write business.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so simple.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a hundred households, go out to a hundred households, and you know, you'll start to work out what your conversion rate is, and it might be one in four want to buy something from you.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get to number 10, your pitch as well is infinitely better than what it was when you when you're at number one.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um the first ones for me were just absolutely cringe worthy, but you know, it's also um it doesn't necessarily have to be direct approach as well.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, uh I've got a few people on my friends list who I know, um, and sometimes the list doesn't have to be physical, it can just be in your mind because we've got a list of friends, it's on Facebook usually.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, so you can just kind of work through that, and usually we have more than a hundred, we have hundreds.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you can target, and so rather than approaching somebody directly, if I know that I've got five single mums with children or uh you know, whatever the demographic is, then post something that you know they're probably going to be those Facebook watchers that watch it and see it and approach you.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the ways that I've done this, um, and it was really successful, is I wrote about income protection, um, I got it published in the Sun newspaper, and then I used that leverage and just posted that everywhere.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then I had two friends who are really close who I see all the blinking time and have never talked to me about income protection, who then said, can we just have a chat?
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, didn't even have to say it myself.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it was an income protection product.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't some complex investment solution or anything along those lines.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's that, you know, you don't have to go out and sell loads of crazy investments or in complex investment solutions.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: You can start in the beginning and selling investment, uh, sorry, selling protection propositions.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: You don't you don't have to bog yourself down with absolutely everything, do you?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, and and protection is an interesting one though, because there are some pitfalls there without going into too much detail, in difference between indemnity and non-indemnity.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Either you're gonna sell a protection policy and receive a massive lump sum now.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: But if Mr.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: John cancels, then suddenly as a brand new advisor, you've spent that money because you're trying to earn your income.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd always write protection on non-indemnity.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is that just covering yourself there, are you?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: It just means that you receive a it's not so great when you're starting out, but you receive this recurring amount each month, much smaller.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if somebody's basically with protection, you've got two ways of writing of you're receiving your money as an advisor.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: The first is give me all the commission now, but if the client cancels within the first four years, they will claw back some of that money that you've spent.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right, okay.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas what I did from the beginning is I never wrote it on that on that basis.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: A lot, most advisors do.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't, because you can write it on non-indemnity, so they divide that amount down to monthly amounts, and if you cancel, it makes no difference to me because I'm just receiving it monthly.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: So after that first year of writing protection, I then had only gone one year into all of the fees I had earned.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I knew I had three years more of what I had done in year one coming in.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really nice way of um building recurring income.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thanks for sharing that.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really good bit of advice.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff that is.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Julian Harris then.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: So you got your class status, got it in four months.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Was that quicker than you thought?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, much quicker.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, cool.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, Julian Harris, see you later.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're off.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: What what what happened then?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so no, no.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I got the class status and I set up universe.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: So universe is uh so the name is a bit strange, um, but the name comes from two things really.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: In my own personal life, I believe that everything happens for a reason.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that the universe will will work things out.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and number two is that I believe the universe is all-encompassing, it's an all-encompassing thing.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore, my advice would be all-encompassing.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I would kind of treat my clients like I was advising mum.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: And if I was happy to tell mum to do that, then then that's what I would present to the client.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of why the name Universe started.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh yeah, so I set up universe and and the clients kind of were liking that, and then I took universe directly authorized from them.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: So when you left Julian Harris and went across and set up your directly authorized firm, okay, why was it so important that you had a directly authorized firm?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Control, really.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so being able to uh, for example, the simple most simplistic answer to this is marketing.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if I want to be somebody who is an influential person on social media and I want to be posting every single day, you imagine the complexities of sending each video to a compliance team for approval to come back to me a week later and then post it.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the topic I was talking about is completely irrelevant now.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, it was about owning what I wanted to portray and to be able to do that quickly and to move quickly.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's one element, but also um a challenge.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: So financial advice is a big challenge, but then I wanted to understand well, how do I run a compliant business?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that from a client perspective, if they understand that you are directly authorized and regulated by the FCA, that's a big thing.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And do you think your clients, excuse me, do you think clients are concerned about whether or not you're directly authorized or an appointed representative?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because I used to have a lot of clients that say to me, Who on earth is Julian?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: Who who are this Julian company?
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I imagine if I was, I don't know, Taylor Beavers as part of Quilter or whatever the network I'd be, there would always be people that would say, people are really switched on now.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's mainly driven by the investment from the FCA in in adverts about scams and pensions.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're really switched on.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they want to know.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if I can now say, Yes, I myself have to uh you know communicate with the SCA, I'm directly authorized, um, it's really reassuring.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I talk about it.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you were an appointed representative and you know, you said universe was an appointed representative at the bottom of your website, it said, I don't know, two plan or whatever.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: That would still be picked up, you think, by clients.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're astute enough to recognize that, well, who is this two plan and what are they doing?
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, but some.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, some absolutely have no idea what they're even looking at a lot of the time, but it's growing.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Younger people my age are really astute and they think a lot now before they sign anything, before they you know, read, they read everything.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's the younger, it's definitely the younger clients that pick up.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so Julian Harris over to being directly authorized.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: How long did it take you to become directly authorized to go through the process?
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, it was 10 months, roughly.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: A long time, isn't it?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: Very long time, yeah.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, what were you what were you doing in between uh you were just you were just still advised you were still writing business, but you were authorized by Julian Harris at the time to do that, were you?
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I still um AR, so so the SA the SAR goods, you know, they let you seamlessly transfer, so you don't have any sort of um gaps, and and a lot of advisors can can maybe put uh the fear into other advisors.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: It it's a really hard application process and it's gonna take you a long time.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: It just takes time, and as long as you're happy with time, um it was no real difference for me.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was universe this side and I'm universe this side.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's just I've got a whole lot more work to do this side um every day than I did when I was at Julian Harris.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: So you set yourself up as an AR universe underneath Julian Harris and then transitioned it across.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, smart.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: I thought there might have been a gap where you were Julian Harris and you were no, you decided to go AR at that point.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, perfect.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Nice transition then for you.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um going down the DA route, so I think the last question around DA really, but sort of going down the DA route, there is a lot more work that you have to do as a financial advisor.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Has that been, you know, being somebody that hasn't run their own business uh for that long, was it a bit of a shock to the system how much more work you had to do being directly authorized?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it wasn't so much, and I'm not gonna lie, yeah, the answer is yes.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't so much that I had a lot more work to do ongoing.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: I underestimated the sheer volume of policies, procedures, um, uh, and sort of templates that needed to be put together.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I I guess the simple the simplicity of my business being just one advisor, I thought it must be quite simple.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was simple in terms of all of the bits weren't hard to understand, but they took a sheer volume of time um to get them all ready.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that would be the one thing I wouldn't underestimate, it's just give yourself enough time.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but in terms of capability, uh I believe every advisor could do it.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a it's it's not a difficult thing to do.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, you know, it's not so challenging that you're just like, oh my god, I'm not doing that.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what people kind of have this impression that it's like it's such a hassle and you shouldn't do it.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna cost you so much money and so much time and energy.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you're running a directly authorised firm and you've got 20 advisors working for you, it's a different, it's different to be in a one-man band running a financial advice practice, which kind of leads me on, really.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we're in the world now, we're in universe, you know, you set universe up, you've got your you've reached your goal that you set yourself, you've got your own company.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: What you know, at the moment it's just you.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: Have you got aspirations?
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where does the journey sort of it's not even just beginning, but where does it, where does it go for you, Taylor?
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking to hire people into it?
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Are you looking to build a big brand?
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: What's your sort of goal here?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: No, not really.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm not looking to build, I'm looking I'm looking to build a strong brand, is the priority I'm gonna think.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm not looking to take on more advisors at the moment.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: That may that may change and my priorities may change, but the main reasons behind it is that that is when your time starts to to sort of be um used up in other ways.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: I do not want to be the director of a wealth management company doing just you know managing advisors and and dealing with compliance problems.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: It would it would detract away from my purpose generally.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: So I think at the moment it will be just me.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: The only time I can see that increasing is if if there's a way that I can support a younger advisor to come in and help them along the way.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: That would be the only time I see myself growing.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: The long-term plan for me is to build a highly profitable business that I guess that uh one day I would pass on to somebody.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so pass on to somebody or potentially sell.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean sell.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sell.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you're looking at a kind of build something up, exit.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, brilliant.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, again, you know, from what I know, I used to run an IFA acquisition business as well called Gunner and Co.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm similar to you in the sense that I had a good understanding of what makes a strong financial planning business, you know, when you, you know, and um absolutely I've been doing exactly the same, building that value, thinking about the exit and um and building it up and building it for yourself.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Directly authorise a route.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I would go down that route because I don't think I would I I don't think I'm can I'm um uh organized enough to to run that side of a business.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I've got a business partner who takes care of the technical side of my business, really, the operations, and I like the marketing and I like the sales side and all that kind of thing.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I would struggle that way and I would prefer to be an AR and do it that way, but still retain control of the clients, which you can actually do.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm the other way around.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the marketing and all the bits that you've created that I have to outsource because I'm not.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just swings around about you.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: Can't be all.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had a big I'll tell you what, Taya, you and me then.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll come in, you know, I'll I'll take care of the marketing, you do the financial planning and all the operations, and we'll build this superstar business, you and me, mate.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you too, mate.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, cool.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got you, you've got you've got universe, you've put that in place.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so fantastic.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one thing I've noticed is that you you seem to be out there, you know.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: If I type your name into Google, which I did, a lot of articles have come up and you've been out there.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: So you've obviously been investing in some PR.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: How did that come about and has it been beneficial to you?
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so it all started at the beginning of lockdown.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially, I had absolutely no real understanding of personal branding or leveraging personal branding before then.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what I decided to do, and and the decision to do this came completely from the heart rather than from a PR perspective to start with.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was sat in a meeting.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a treasurer for a charity, I was sat in a meeting with a charity, and we were talking about how this pandemic is starting at that time, and how funders, big funders like the big lottery that that give us money, were moving their focus to helping with the pandemic.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was going to leave us financially with a hole in a charity.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I was creatively trying to think of ways that I could help not just my charity, but charities generally, and how to set an example.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided, well, okay, look, I've had a great year.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um I could get by for three months without earning another another penny because I've got existing clients in terms of new business, I mean.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'll do is I will carry on as I'm doing, bring on new clients, and every single penny that I earn from the new clients, they can choose which charity they want to give it to.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: That was the complete catalyst for it.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I wasn't shy to shout about it.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I wrote to New Orleans Advisor, I wrote to other publications, um, Financial Times, and said, This is what I'm doing.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why don't you why don't you support me?
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because we could potentially get other advisors to do the same.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's where it started.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then when that started, I had this massive blow-up um of response from the community.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I really realized that, and new clients as well, and I realized that actually this is the smart way to do marketing.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then I've built and built and built on that, and that's kind of where we are today.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I've just been asked along the way organically, could you write a piece here?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Could you do a profile piece?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_01: I did a big profile piece in NMA.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and that's kind of how it's developed.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: It all started from that.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you're getting out there and you're almost becoming this kind of again, this this influencer, and um, and it's very on point.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, like uh, you know, a younger advisor out there as well, talking about the industry, it's attractive.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: Younger people are gonna see that and are gonna look at it and think, well, I'll become a financial advisor as well.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, no, I I think it's fantastic.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think the bit around the charity side of it, I think that was great anyway.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you get, you know, you you provide, you know, ensuring that charities are still receiving donations during a period where most of the monies were being transferred across to deal with COVID, I think was great.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's keeping those charities alive.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got that kind of altruistic side.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I'm picking up with you, you know, your company's called Universe.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: You believe that the universe has got your back.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you're very altruistic.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're doing, there has to be purpose, and there has to be a purpose of helping others.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm picking that up on you about you.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_00: Are you quite a sp are you quite a spiritual type person?
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I am, yes.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry to interrupt.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm kind of the uh woo-woo person who would see a white feather on the floor and jump up around thinking it was amazing, or the kind of person who on the office desk has a crystal, you know, a crystal that is their work crystal and helps them.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I don't believe those things actually do anything.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really don't.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: What I believe is that they allow me to latch on to a focus.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that if I need to get some work done, I pick up my work stone and I put it by me and it makes me focus.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that if I see a white feather, it's signalling to me to put positive thoughts out there to get back what I want.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_01: And every single time it works, every time.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not because the feather's done anything, it's because I've changed my mental state.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you're giving yourself that kind of uh taking yourself away from what's going on in your mind and attaching it to something else, and that something else is a positive force that's guiding you and looking after you and protecting you and leading you, so leading you to something that's good.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, so so spiritual, yes, I don't have any beliefs about you know spiritual or any any religious side to it.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: It is purely a mechanism for me to focus my mind because I mean, look at depression, look at that.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a pandemic in itself in in our in our country.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, if I can do anything to help my mental state when I have ups, downs, whatever, um, that's what I latch on to, and that's kind of how I do it.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: So interestingly, you know, running your own business.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: I run my own business, I have done for some time, you know, and I've had my fair share of battles with um with my with anxiety, um, addiction, all sorts of stuff.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I found it very stressful, and work has been a catalyst for that.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: What apart from your crystals and white feathers, what else do you do to kind of keep yourself mentally in check?
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's quite lonely, isn't it, on your own?
• 1:02:01
  SPEAKER_01: Very lonely, yeah.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: I um so a couple of things.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: So to keep myself in check, collaboration over competition.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we kind of touched on this before in the fact that there is so much work out there for advisors, we're not in competition with each other.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: So building a really strong network like next gen planners, that's amazing to keep you sane within the industry.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to keep you sane outside of the industry, that would be charitable work.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: When you're meeting with people that are really passionate and really positive, that really helps.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I find my biggest challenge as a business owner is the sheer emotional ups and downs.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: So you could go from at 9 a.m.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: stealing the deal on a client to at 2 a.m.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: having a rejection or a negative email from somebody else, and it's a roller coaster.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're like me or like you, you generally don't have people to bounce off of.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the people that you do have close to you are all employed.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: They don't understand and then they don't understand the world you're in as much as you sit, so you almost don't have the energy to want to explain it to them.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I find in in those scenarios, what I do a lot of is YouTubing TED talks, and and I I listen a lot to people, coaches like Marissa Peer, not just coaches that are coaches for coach's sake, but real credible individuals.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: Marissa Peer is absolutely fantastic.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I listen to her a lot, and and that generally gets me through anything.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: I like to listen to podcasts.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: Rich Rolls is one of my favourite.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's like an old he's an ultra runner, um, and um, but a very successful ultra runner, like one of the he's like one voted like one of the fittest men in the world.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's like in his 50s.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I got his aspiration to, I'm 39 now and I'm going into my 40s, and I want to be the fittest and the healthiest I can ever be in my 40s.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I I lived quite a terrible life, a bit of a naughty life for for you know during my 30s and my 20s.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: But now I want to be the fittest and healthiest and the wealthiest in my mind, you know, but health is wealth type mentality.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I love listening to him because he's so he's so cool and so spiritual, and he's always has amazing guests on that are like um just like even like learning things about like your gut health and how your gut health can affect your mind and you know can affect things like depression um and anxiety and all that kind of stuff, and and people that sort of, I don't know, teach you about goal setting and realistic goal setting.
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's just really interesting.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's a really good bit of advice is kind of take yourself out of your head and listen to some mentors.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it was interesting what you said there about the is it the next gen platform, isn't it?
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I need to get more involved with these guys because well, I've got a plan myself around financial planner life being a platform for a community platform for financial planners um to come in and and and and not only pick up sort of uh training and development, um, but to be mentored by those that are in the industry already.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it so there's a kind of like a self-sufficient, self-sustaining kind of community, and people learn from each other and they can log into it and get advice and help, but it's all live and it's driven by the people that are within the community.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm kind of on the on the verge of doing something like that because I think there's a definitely a kind of you were bang on it, really, because when you're alone and you're on your own, it's hard, isn't it?
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta you've gotta you've gotta speak to some other people.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're a business owner on your own, it can be lonely because again, you're putting up that facade or that prestige that I know what I'm doing, and you've kind of kind of got to keep like pushing forward.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, inside sometimes you're you're presenting like you're all right, but inside you're not.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: You're like it's hard work.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: And my advice to anybody who's going through any stress or anything like that is is to reach out because you absolutely nailed it.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I'm hearing from other financial advisors is it is a community of financial advisors.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's enough business out there for every single financial advisor, come together, build a collection within your area, and learn from each other, you know?
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: I genuinely do feel, I mean, it doesn't happen now.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe it's something you won't work on, but I was thinking about this even yesterday that for example, take your local town.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: If all of the planners, the financial advisors built a community in that town and you know, collectively did marketing and and distributed things equally.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: The problem is that's an ideal world, and unfortunately, people Some business owners aren't fair and aren't reasonable.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: But if if that if we had that kind of group where everybody in that town was serviced by a collective, um, that would be a really interesting proposition.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what next gen feels like for me.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was really apprehensive about joining.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the reason why is because you I see the forums on things like new model advisor, where you get, you know, people so unreasonable.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've thought, do I want to pay to be part of something like that?
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's completely not that.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I can post anything on there and people will help.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think what you you made a really good point there because some of the forums and some of the comments that I see on money marketing or on your model advisor or something, it's just sounds so kind of like pedantic and stuffy and sort of negative.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like some people are always beating somebody down, and it's like stop trying to beat somebody down because you're given a really bad impression that the industry is really like stuffy and you have to know everything about everything.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, there's all this element of I am this and I am that, even on the IFA's bashing like restricted guys or whatever, you know, it's like there's too much bashing going on and not enough support and not enough help, and bringing that personality to life to life, and this is what I was trying to do with the podcast really is to sort of show because I know a lot of people come to me and say, I want to be a financial advisor.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's no content out there, so it's just like look, listen to my podcast and understand the realities of what it's like to be an advisor.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: And and and so many people are learning from it and loving it, and it's giving them the kind of oh great, yeah, I could do this because that guy's done it, you know.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um, no, it's really, it's really good.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, brilliant.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, you've got your own business, universe, love it.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're running that at the moment.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: How long has that been going for?
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's been going for two, just under two years, I believe.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Fabulous.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, well, let's talk about that then.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the first two years, what would be your biggest piece of advice to somebody who's starting out self-employed, running their own business?
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: What would be your biggest bit of advice to somebody to take on?
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Don't spend too much money.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: Don't spend too much money.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by that then?
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean things like marketing.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you can you could you touched on it earlier on, you could have the most shiny, glossy website.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you don't need it to start out, you absolutely don't need it.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, it's a lovely thing to have when you build when you get to that point where you really want to accelerate growth and and all of that, yes, and you have the money to do it.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_01: But to start with, keep the purse strings so tight and do the 100 people thing that I mentioned earlier on, because that's that's somewhere you can start for free.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's again a fear thing, isn't it?
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: People think they've got to have everything in place, they've got to have this, you know, wherever the a client turns, they're gonna see some information, they're gonna have this, they're gonna have that.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I you it's very easy to fall into that trap.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_00: And marketing is a very dangerous thing.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I spoke to, and it's expensive, you hit a nail on the head, absolutely expensive.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I spoke to um, I had a guy on a podcast who um built his business, Philip Instone, and he built his business purely off of acquisitions, so small client book uh um acquisitions, so buying through um you know retiring IFAs.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, he hasn't got a big, shiny website.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't find a bloody photo of him online.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, there was nothing there, but yet he's built a really great directly authorized one man band business with like 70 million under management.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you know, and he just showed me, and I and I I thought, you're absolutely spot on.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: You because he was kind of questioning me about the branding stuff.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need to do it?
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need to do that?
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, no, you don't actually, because you've just shown that you can build a business without this kind of belief that you have to have all the marketing in place.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I thought that was quite um, it was unique because not everyone does that, but it just shows you Yeah, you're right, you're right there too.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: In in terms of the marketing side of things, you never you never sit in front of a new prospect and they're like they're never gonna ask you, can you show me your newest advert that you've released?
• 1:09:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's never anything on the agenda.
• 1:09:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, really, marketing is just a a way to get from um A to B.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_01: So from where you are now to setting in front of a client.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can do that with your friends of family and your friends of friends first, well, do it for free.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, don't pay for it.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have you built any kind of internal marketing at all that you just manage yourself?
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_00: So things like HubSpot, are you using any marketing software for emailing, texting, or or LinkedIn or anything along those lines?
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: So completely organic.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, which kind of leads me on, then really.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that hundred that list of a hundred people that you contact, is that where the bulk of your business is actually coming from?
• 1:10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or are you winning business through your own efforts through social media?
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, what I thought is, and something I wanted to keep a hold on in in year one was actually having too much business from friends and family because you create this kind of unrealistic year, if you like.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um because you've only got one dad and one mum, um, for example.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, no, so at the end of the year, the end of year one, I looked at all the client back that I'd acquired, and it was about a 70-30 split.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_01: 70 not friends and family, believe it or not.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: 30% of that.
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I built the 70 through things like unbiased um connections with accountants, uh, things like that.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I had the benefit of being self-employed for a number of years.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd worked with a few accountants already on my business, uh, my other limited companies.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of had some connections there.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it kind of came from that.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: But no, my my base is largely actually people I didn't know beforehand.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you've you started off friends and family, but again, that's a natural evolution, isn't it?
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you start to do that, then you start to branch out a little bit further.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_00: You might ask for referrals, friends and family might refer people onto you.
• 1:11:31
  SPEAKER_00: You touched on there about the accountancy and having the introducer relationship.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So introducer relationships are relatively quite difficult to actually build.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did you find that?
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I I find they are really difficult to build, um, mainly because accountants generally know an IFA to refer to.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so from an accounting perspective, you know, they're just so busy with their day jobs a lot of the time, getting their accounts done.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then if they need an FA, they'll refer to one.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: So you can you can get those relationships built in a couple of ways.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Number one is by offering something different or or extended to what they currently do.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, number two would be personality, and that's really where I win those connections over.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a lot of them, um, but it's generally they know Taylor's really friendly, he'll chat to you with no sort of 50-year-old straight man in a suit.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and number three is I guess you could compete on cost, which is not something I do.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, cool.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think also, do you think that traditionally financial advisors always look at the same people for referrals, so like accountants and solicitors?
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because uh there's a couple of different let's say a financial advisor focuses on professional football players, then his introducers would be agents as well.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So he would look at the agents who represent the footballers.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_00: If someone was entertainment, again, the same sort of thing would be agents.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as we're talking about, you know, ethical, etc., then surely like connecting with perhaps um, I don't know, somebody, something that's kind of, I don't know, like a masseuse might be dealing more with people who have a bit more money, so health clubs, um, you know, those types of environments where someone with a bit of money might be going, but also has a kind of focus on um looking after themselves, their well-being, um, ethical, and you know, things that might might come across.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think you know, financial advisors need to spread a little bit further and look at other introducer relationships and stay away from accountants and solicitors, which sounds like it's completely saturated?
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I think so.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you actually hit the nail on the head much earlier on without realizing it.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's something that's coming and it's new for my business, and and something that I'm going to be writing about shortly.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is how you mentioned health equals wealth, which is very weird because that's a phrase that we've been battling around here in the office and with my partner.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_01: So my partner, Rich, is a is uh runs a fitness platform which is about to um be his full-time job, and we're actually merging the two, um, so health and wealth, because there's huge sums of research behind the two linking.
• 1:14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and actually, like you say, people can be introduced from somewhere else, and maybe they start by going to his fitness service and they get the health sorted, but they know that their health is wealth and they want to sort it out.
• 1:14:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we're looking at tie-ups like that.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the first way that we're starting that is kind of in reverse.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: So all of my clients are going to have access for free to this fitness platform, so they don't need to pay to go to the gym anymore.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that gym money, because they have 20 classes or so a week, they can invest that and do something different with it.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So each one of my clients will have access to that shortly, and it's something that I want other planners to do also.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what?
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about the universe.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer in people being placed in front of me, and that's very interesting because my, you know, I said I was going to the gym, I went to the gym earlier.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So my friend James, who I've known for years, um, we've come together to create something called fitting your forties because I want to be the healthiest and like mentally and physically, but the wealth element was also added to it in the sense that exactly what you just said is that if you're looking after your health, health is wealth, and then you bring in the financial planner that can then start talking about you know, looking after your financial well-being, because financial well-being is like huge and makes you ill.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you if you don't look after your finances, you could what it can kill you.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Some people die from it, you know.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we we've been talking about that as well.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really weird because um, and that's going to be a platform, and we're looking at all that as well.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's spooky.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's exactly what I I mean by the universe.
• 1:15:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you have, and and actually, there's there's a you kind of explained it there, the link between, you know, if you're overweight and you don't exercise and you you feel really crap about yourself, um, then why would you care about your money?
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're probably not buying nice clothes because you don't feel good, so you don't really care anyway.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's not a not to stereotype, there's a lot of people in that.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as those people start to get fit and to care about themselves and to want nice things and to need more money and to want to invest, it spirals.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, it's an experiment for us.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So all the clients are gonna have access to that.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that in the future it will go the other way around, so come from health to wealth.
• 1:16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think it's brilliant.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And is um and is that money then gonna be when you say they're gonna save, they hopefully they'll put that into savings as opposed to spending it on a personal trainer, for example.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is that are you sort of incorporing that incorporating an app into this, or are you um just quite simply saying, like, you know, have some free less, you know, uh help, you know, uh personal fitness on the platform and put your money into savings, or how does it work?
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so uh it's called RicherFit, is the platform.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and essentially my clients will all have ability to click on a link, it's branded as Universe, and they can register for their membership.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is just like a gym.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So imagine a gym, um, but it's all online.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So there are classes all through the week, so they're all free for the client, and it's free forever as long as they're a client of Universe.
• 1:17:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's not a limit on how many classes they can go to.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it re the retail price of that for since there's lots of um people that are members of this Rich Fit platform already, um, as individuals, and they pay about£40 a month to be part of Rich Fit.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So still cheaper than a lot of gyms, certainly done this way.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but my clients will save even that£40.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_01: They won't pay a penny for it.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And do you within that as well then, do you provide um so on the platform itself, will there be a section where you're also, you know, you know, it might say like um wealth is health, and all of a sudden somebody who's interested in their fitness going on the purely from a fitness perspective might click on some content about money, how money can affect your health or whatever it might well be.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think that's that's not to start with, but that's definitely kind of where we're going with it.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and just lots of things like uh the Rich a Fit platform is not just you know going down the financial advice route.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's that's a fantastic thing because we can offer the value to our clients, but it's also gonna go down the corporate route.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and if we can uh intertwine both together, then that's kind of a bit of marketing in itself long-term.
• 1:18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And also, as well, it's about adding added value to your to your financial planning.
• 1:18:13
  SPEAKER_00: So a member gets some added value.
• 1:18:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um, like benefits, basically, isn't it?
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if you use me as a financial advisor, here's a list of benefits that you're gonna get.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_00: And there isn't a great deal of advice firms that offer those benefits.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at the likes of Vitality and all of that, it's all there, isn't it?
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, here's your free Costa, here's this, that, and the other.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, oh, I get free Costa.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna definitely not cancel my£100 a month healthcare with with with uh with Vitality.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: So no, I really like fair play.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really cool.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's weird.
• 1:18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm we're in that place and you're in that place.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's really that's really cool.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've got a few younger clients, they will actually some of them are gym bunnies already, and and I know that they do want to go onto the platform.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: So for them, they actually would be saving more than they pay me in advice feeds.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So for them, it's pretty cool, isn't it?
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's well cool, mate.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great sell that's a great selling point.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, fair play.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck with that, mate.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's brilliant.
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another area I wanted to talk about, obviously, you mentioned your partner Richard, so LGBTQ financial planning.
• 1:19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've done some research and there isn't a great deal of financial planning firms out there actively offering financial planning to the LGBTQ community.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: First off, uh why do you think that is?
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I think it's because of uh sort of relatability or being relatable.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so for example, if we sort of look at a completely different scenario, if you go into a travel agent and you're looking for a holiday to the Maldives and somebody in front of you is selling you it, but they've never been to the Maldives, but they're telling you it's amazing, and this is what you're going to feel, and this is what you're going to think, then it's quite unrelatable.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think there's a shortage of LGBTQ advisors, but a huge number of LGBTQ plus people in the UK.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess you would think, well, do they even have different needs?
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Surely they just have the different needs.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Money is money, one pound is one pound.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, they absolutely do have different needs.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I can say that from my own personal experience being in the community, in that some of us do, and some of us don't actually want children.
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So some of us don't have that journey of, well, I need to build a uni fund.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Some of us want to go on holidays more frequently.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Our retirement looks completely different.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of the time, pink pound, we have a lot more disposable money.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_01: So our investment priorities are different.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so having somebody that any advisor could advise somebody with those different priorities, but they couldn't do that and also be relatable to them and say, actually, I know what you feel, and I and I I live that same lifestyle that you have.
• 1:20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I get it.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a massive shortage, and it's certainly for next year's an area that as a business I kind of want to clean up on and and go straight to market with.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've done some, like I said, I've done some research.
• 1:21:02
  SPEAKER_00: There is a couple of companies out there that are offering that service, but they're not actually advisors, they're just sort of um a contuit, if you like, and pushing them, pushing the person to uh to to an to to a financial advisor.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I've never I've never really either come across any outwardly, outwardly gay financial advisors um or or anybody from the LGBTQ plus community.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I do think it's an under um represented area, you know, and um without a shadow of a doubt, you know, if you're gonna move into that area and promote yourself that way, I think again, you're opening up yourself up to a niche, if you like, and if you call it a niche, but a community that will add value and purpose again, you know, and it ties in with your universal approach, doesn't it?
• 1:21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that approach.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I really like that.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So fair play and um yeah, cool.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I wanted to kind of find out a bit about that.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: But it's good, you're sort of doing something, you're doing something about it.
• 1:21:57
  SPEAKER_01: You also mentioned about oh, sorry, go on.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was just gonna add quickly there, is um going kind of that's from the relatability side, but there's also what we were talking about earlier with the kind of the ESG stuff.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, people in the LGBT community that day in, day out experience problems with employers that are not LGBT friendly, there's a small minority that are, want to make sure that their money is in a company that has you know top notch governance and policies for LGBTP, LGBTQ people.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's even another strand that they'll be interested in.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because also, as well, uh I suppose the the monies could be invested, and this is stop me if I'm wrong, but monies could be invested abroad into countries that don't have a very good policy when it comes to LGBTQ plus.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody could be unwittingly investing in a in a company within a country and benefiting that country that kill people who are homosexual, for instance.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that is so true.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it it's actually massive from the um advisor-client relationship, but further than that into the investment spectrum and actually what they are going to do with their money.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that from a trust perspective, they would trust somebody who is living that life too a bit more than um just any regular advisor.
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I believe the problem is that there's a shortage of advisors.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: So there we go then.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a similar situation to the shortage of female financial advisors and the shortage of um uh people from black or um minority uh ethnicity backgrounds, you know?
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I've had a couple of good um uh guys, and I just recently had a chap on the podcast, the most recent one, they released it today, um, and we talked about being black as a financial planner.
• 1:23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So being gay as a financial planner, do you find that you have any prejudice?
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you sit down with clients and do they pick up on it or anything like that?
• 1:23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does it stop you from winning business?
• 1:23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or uh no, uh it's it's absolutely something that was a concern, and it's it's terrible to think in this day and age that it is, but it for me it was a concern that I I might lose clients if they found out I had a partner called Rich.
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so what I did from the very beginning to avoid that is I always spoke about him on every first meeting.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, I would say, Oh, have you got a wife?
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you married?
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, um, or oh yes, I've got a wife, Linda.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: She, oh, what does she do for a job?
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_01: She does X.
• 1:24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then I would find some link.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a kind of similar industry to my partner, Rich.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And straight away, if they weren't happy with that, then they wouldn't come back.
• 1:24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if they did, then then great.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I never had to deal with a scenario where they found out later on.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because some people uh some people are not happy with that, and and I have no issue with that.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't want to change people.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but equally, you know, as my business moves towards an LGBTQ focus, if my previous straight clients don't like that, well, then they're free to leave.
• 1:24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have I have no issues with that, but I'm sure that they won't because they know from the get-go.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And do you find in the LGBTQ plus community there is a lack of uh support from financial planning?
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Are they lacking financial advice or is it just like, no, they're actually fine, they're getting financial advice perfectly, perfectly fine.
• 1:25:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I think because of how what I know that they're lacking it, but I don't think they know that they're lacking it.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was an edge, like an education piece then.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, cool.
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's okay, so this is going to be your approach then.
• 1:25:17
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna start to look at that, tackle that, and position yourself almost as a as an influencer within that space.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Fair play to you.
• 1:25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then tying that in with ESG as well, because that that does tie in nicely.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does the next sort of 12 months look like for you then?
• 1:25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So the next few months is a bit of a slowdown for me deliberately, um, because of Christmas and it's naturally a slow time of the year anyway, uh, but to completely upskill and research and get really in depth with what I want to know about ESG, about LGBTQ investing, and even down to a granular level of talking to uh companies uh you know that that have policies and procedures in place.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I want to get really involved.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got a couple of months of that.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd call that kind of my upskilling phase.
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then after that, the next 12 months from there on is going to be pretty powerful pushing on personal branding and really getting people to understand what my purpose is.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, aside from the financial device, all of that will come once you've built relationships with people and they understand what kind of person I am.
• 1:26:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's personal branding to answer your question in two words.
• 1:26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so education, learning, establishing your niche and establishing your market, then then content creation.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you're doing a persona map, really, persona mapping your market as well, then content creation, pushing out the personal brand, educating and hopefully winning some clients on the on the inbound.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess I want to be able to answer the question of why are you different to any other financial advisor?
• 1:26:48
  SPEAKER_01: At the minute, I'm just vanilla.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not really, I can advise you on a pension, that's fine.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I want to be able to say, well, because I have all of this research in these areas.
• 1:26:58
  SPEAKER_01: So for you as a vegan client and LGBTQ, I know exactly what we need to do.
• 1:27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like it.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Really cool.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, good plan.
• 1:27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, building up your recurring income is allowing you to also step back a little bit, I suppose, and focus on those kind of areas.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's another benefit of being a directly authorized firm and building up that recurring income.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can get it to a point where you know that you can cover your bills and focus on other areas to help yourself grow.
• 1:27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a really exciting point.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly where I am at the moment with saying now.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm at the position now where I don't take a lot of money out of the business.
• 1:27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I live on just exactly what I need, um, really conservative.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I leave money in there whenever I can.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm now at the position where the next 12 months, because of recurring income, is is kind of all done.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I know I'm not going to struggle or have any problems next year, touch wood.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's the exciting time now.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, well, how do I actually want to shape it then?
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I like it.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Fair play to you.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounds like you've got lots going on, Taylor.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um, you're full of ambition.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's plenty of things in you that I think are gonna get some some great things going on.
• 1:28:05
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't even touch on the magazine that you're also part of as well.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Was it Trusted Advisor?
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Trusted Advisor, yeah.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a publication that goes out to over sort of nearly 4,000 power planners and financial advisors, sort of talking about the hot topics really of the week or the month, to um to to educate and to share again, isn't it?
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_00: That sort of approach that you've got to sharing and building community, um, which is a big part of who you are.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but um I've got to come bring it to an end there because we've been chatting for quite a while and um I think we've covered a fair few things here.
• 1:28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm, you know, really pleased to talk to you today.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so thank you so much for your time.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think our listeners would have learned a lot about your journey as well.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um keep up the good work.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so much, I'm so looking forward to hearing about all the all the next things that you're actually doing.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for having me.
• 1:28:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's been lovely to chat.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Great stuff.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Taylor, have a wonderful day, mate.
• 1:28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.