Latest / Financial Planner Life Podcast / Finding The Perfect Niche with Financial Planner Richard Weatherburn

Transcript

Finding The Perfect Niche with Financial Planner Richard Weatherburn · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: 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.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_03: This podcast is proudly sponsored by Recruit UK, a recruitment consultancy specifically focused on the financial services.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: 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.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And today's guest is Richard Weatherburn.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Richard.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: Not only has he got a lovely Geordie accent, we all love a Geordie accent, don't we?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: But it's just refreshing talking to somebody who's got such a different approach to financial planning and marketing.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: And what I mean by that, he's not your traditional financial planner and suited and booted and ties and brogues.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: He wears jeans and t-shirts, and his client acquisition strategy is the graft the market.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I love that.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_03: He talks to hairdressers and he talks to brickies and scaffolders and plumbers, and he's offering financial planning to them and their families, and he's making a massive impact.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: And 313 Wealth Management has managed to triple their turnover in AUM during lockdown.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: He loves a bit of social media, so we talk about that.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: He is definitely one to watch for the future.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you enjoy it.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_03: Rich, thanks very much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: How are you doing?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for having me.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing very well.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: Top man, excellent.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Good to hear.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Is the weather nice and kind to you up in the northeast?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, it's beautiful.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is, I think, our one day of the year.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_03: We get the sunshine.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: Lovely.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Gonna be sapping a couple of Newcastle brown alees out on the uh oh, you see, I don't like that stuff.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: I probably shouldn't admit that as a Geordie, should I?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I really don't like that stuff.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Nice paint of Peroni will go down a treat right now, though, wouldn't it?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: Nice, nice, cold pineapple peroni.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think everybody's super excited about getting into the bars, aren't they?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: Getting into the bars, having a bit of a laugh, meeting their friends, and just getting out there and leaving this lockdown behind.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it's something I'll never ever take for granted ever again.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know how we love a drink up here and we love to socialize.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, we incorporate that at work.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, we've got big client events every quarter, you know, where we basically take them to a nice place, put drinks on, and we've really missed that the last 12 months.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, everyone is counting down to the uh well, it's not not the April one, the June one.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's when we can sit inside and we need to sit inside up here.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: The thing is, man, a bit of sunshine.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I live in central Bristol on the waterfront, and a bit of sunshine, like last night I was walking home and it was absolutely rammed.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: So no one's caring at the moment about the um the lock, the lockdown situation.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: They're just literally out, everyone's out having a few drinks on the waterfront.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I kind of like think, okay, it's hard to say don't do it, but I'm always I'm at the same time thinking, please don't go backwards.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to go backwards.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a funny thing right now that uh if we do start going backwards, then we've got real big problems because the vaccination isn't working as it's meant to.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that will be a real worry.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think we expect to see a few increases in cases in younger people, but that shouldn't result in hospitalizations because the ones that are vulnerable should have all now been vaccinated.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: So, yes, if we do see more lockdowns, we've got a much bigger problem to handle than what we initially thought.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: You've calmed my nerves.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm I'm convinced we're gonna be fine.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you've got to be got to convince yourself you're gonna be fine, and otherwise you're gonna be constantly freaking out about it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: I think this this time around, I think they're being overly cautious, if I'm being completely honest, I would like to see it open up a little bit quicker.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like last year we opened up quicker without a vaccine, and now there's a vaccine in place, and 30 million people have received it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: All of those that would have been, you know, in danger of ending up in hospital or tragically dying from this, they have all now got protection, and yet we're still opening up very slowly.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, every day there'll be another business goes under as a result of that.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: So to me, it's balanced a little bit in the wrong direction now.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, cool, man.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I've enjoyed I wouldn't say I've enjoyed it, but I've taken a lot from being uh this whole period, actually, this whole COVID period and being in lockdown.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've taken a lot from it and I've made a lot of changes in my life, in my business.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I've tried to use it as positively as I possibly can.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: And um, I speak to a lot of people who feel I feel like they've done the same.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: I think they're starting to kind of value what really matters in life, um, streamlining their businesses um and sort of not panicking as much, you know, especially if you're in a position you're lucky enough that your business is still here.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there are other people that I know whose businesses haven't been open.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_03: A friend of mine's a PT and he's been shut for ages.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I feel really sorry for him.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: He just told me last week that he lost like 16 of his PTs.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's like that sucks, man.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, because he was doing really well with them.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_03: He just got himself up to a really good space.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I feel sorry for people like that.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_03: But he will bounce back, you know, his business is still there.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: So Rich, so thank you.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, thanks for coming on to the podcast.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, obviously, we covered off COVID, classic chat.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and um, I brought you onto podcasts today.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I see you on social media, you're quite active on there, and you are the uh founding director of 313 Wealth.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which is your own business, your own financial planning firm.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you didn't jump two-footed into running your own practice, you've got a bit of history there as well within the financial planning profession and within financial services.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_03: So today I just want to just very quickly, if you would be so kind, just to give us a brief overview of really how you got into the profession financial planning.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um goes way back.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I started when I was 16 straight from school.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: I went to work at uh National Wide Building Society.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, just because to be honest, I wanted a job where I got to wear a suit.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: That was genuinely genuinely the case.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and uh now I do anything I can to avoid wearing a suit.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, man.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: But uh yeah, I went to work at Nationwide Building Society on the counter, was serving old deers, their pensions and stuff, and then very quickly learned that I like talking to people, you know, and I like the interaction.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I was promoted to uh I think it was called account manager back in the day, where I was opening kind of bank accounts and savings accounts.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then by the time I was just turning 18, I applied to be a mortgage advisor uh with Nationwide, and I actually was successful in becoming the youngest mortgage advisor Nationwide ever had, um, which was cool.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: So um, yeah, 18, 2007 mortgage advisor, and then 2008 happened.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, being in Newcastle as we were, we were just down the road from the flagship Northern Rock branch.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a really, you know, scary but interesting time to be in financial services back then.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, long story short, redundancies were aplenty at nationwide during that time, particularly in mortgage advice, because of course the house housing market was decimated.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, fortunately, and I'm proud to say we back then never gave some of the negative advice that's left people mortgage trapped in negative equity nowadays.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we used to have people disappointed that we would only do 95% loans, um, whereas they could go to the Northern Rock next door and get a essentially what was 125% loan because they were doing 100% mortgages with 25% secured loans to make the house your home.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you know, catchy sales pitch at the time, but morally very questionable now with hindsight.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so uh looking back, took the voluntary redundancy because uh I wanted to explore other opportunities.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'd always wanted to do the armed forces.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was still a young guy, I was 21, I believe, once up once all this unraveled.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: So I decided to join the Royal Air Force.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: I did about five years in the Air Force, uh, worked in military intelligence, which was very interesting.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, deployed in operations uh in support of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria towards the end of my career.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: So that was very interesting.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then I met my wife um whilst I was home on Christmas leave.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: I was on Tinder.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: I certainly wasn't looking for a wife.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_02: No one is on Tinder on it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but a wife I found.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: So she uh we actually were together for two or three months, and then I had to deploy again.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I was away to uh the Middle East for six months, uh just shy of six months.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: She didn't enjoy that.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, she wasn't quite uh adept to being a military wife.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: So whilst I was away, we kind of decided that we were going to get quite serious.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I resigned, I put my uh resignation in.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: The scary thing with the military is you've got to resign with a six month notice period.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: So it's impossible to have another job lined up.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I'd never done that before, you know, I'd always had another thing lined up to go and do.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of was a jump into the abyss, and I had a bit of a sketchy CV, you know.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've been in, yes, I'd been in financial services for a few years when I said I was very young, but then military intelligence doesn't really translate to that much in civilian life, unless you want to go and work at MI5 or MI6, and that would kind of uh defeat the object of leaving the military to spend more time with my missus.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, it was a bit of a shot in the dark.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: I remember applying for hundreds of jobs on Indeed, pretty much anything, um, and not getting much back and kind of getting quite um concerned as my notice period was getting towards the end, and I realized that it had almost become a bit too easy in that modern world, which had changed a lot in just a few years I'd been in the military.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I realized I was sending off my CV at the push of a button, and it was probably landing on the desk of a receptionist who wasn't passing it on to the decision maker.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, how can I I know I'm good at communicating, I know I've got lots of experience in that now, giving presentations in the military and stuff.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: How can I meet decision makers?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I went to networking events um who I knew were filled with business owners, and I thought, I'm just gonna go and throw myself in there, say, look, I'm leaving the forces, I'm looking for opportunities, what's out there?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I stumbled across um SNJMs' place partnership.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: And uh they told me about the academy program.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I had a background in financial services, not financial planning, but financial services, and you could talk to people on that level.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it seemed like a great opportunity at the time.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of jumped into it with both feet.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_03: Right, lovely.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, thanks for that overview.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: I love the fact you said you stumbled into an SJP representative.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think if you walked into any pub, any networking event, whatever, you trip over about three of them, don't you?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: You do those world business cards are everywhere.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: They're everywhere, aren't they?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: This is I'm gonna ask you just briefly, just very briefly, give me an overview of what you were doing in the RAF then, if you can, because that just sounds really interesting, actually.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it probably sounds a lot more interesting than what it actually was.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of 10 minutes of excitement followed by six months of monotony.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, right.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, we were working on uh I spent time in imagery analysis, so working on satellite imagery, um, so the signals intelligence, human intelligence.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, a lot of the stuff is obviously classified, so you can't really talk about too much in detail.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there was some very interesting times during that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: I spent uh one of my tours was working as a British embed within a US team, which was very interesting.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I've now got lots of friends over in the States that I worked with back then because you were kind of the go between between the British forces and the US forces, which was quite cool.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, it was it was fun, it was rewarding because there was times where we were working on stuff that you know you would see on the news later that night and you already knew it had happened.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so and a lot of the stuff that was being reported was absolute rubbish as well.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: So quite an eye-opener to see how you know it was translated in Chinese whispers from whatever leak there was to the journalists that were reporting it.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, can't go into too much detail.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to sound like Tom Cruise on Top Gun, you know, I just end up who are you, goose or goose or Maverick?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm taller, I'd be goose, man.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: Goose, yeah.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: What's the other one?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Ice Iceman, isn't it?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Iceman.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'd possibly be him, yeah.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: Valkill.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: There's one, there's a Top Gun 2 coming out, isn't there?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: I think.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: Oh mate, I've been waiting for this so long, right?
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Top Gun was my favorite film growing up.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: I actually I wanted to be a pilot, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: But I was actually too tall to be a pilot.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you you I remember when I was 16 going and like kind of looking at the RAF the first time and wanting to be a pilot, but I was too tall to fit in a fast jet cockpit.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they measure your thigh.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and my kneecaps would have been under the the well, it's called the head-up display, but the dashboard of the jet.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: So if I'd ever had to punch out, I'd have lost my knees uh ejection.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: So uh yeah, that that was why I kind of put the the military on hold for a few years when I was young because I spat my dummy out.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, if I can't fly fast jets, I don't want to be anywhere near it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, I'm gutted about Top Gun.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: I've been waiting, it was meant to come out about a year ago.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_03: It would come out soon now.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: And what a great time that'll be.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: I love Top Gun.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: How old are you?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm 32.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: 32.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, I was telling you, okay, fair enough.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm nearly 40, actually.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: I'm 30, 39.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: So when I was growing up, like Top Gun was like the you know, it was my eight years old or something.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was like the the film, like your dad would have it on BHS or Betamax, and you'd be like, Top gun on.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was more different.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: It was my dad's favorite film as well.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think uh my fight of pilot ambitions were just living him living through me.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was what he always wanted to do as well.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, fair play.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right, okay.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you got yourself in a um nationwide prior to that.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: You had a few years in there working your way up through the personal banking route, which is a classic route into uh financial services to anybody of any age, and you proved that by becoming the you know, the the youngest mortgage advisor in the UK for nationwide.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_03: So you cut your teeth in that environment, went off to the R uh went off to the RAF, struggled then coming out of the RAF to find an opportunity.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: Did you not think about going back into mortgage advice, or did you actually meet some barriers to entry in that respect?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I didn't meet any barriers to entry, but I didn't want to be seen to be making a step to what I used to do.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, um I felt like I'd learned a lot and developed a lot as a person throughout that five years.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I it wouldn't have been a step back in hindsight, it wouldn't have been, but I think I would have perceived it as that um if I'd gone back to mortgages.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I was quite keen to s to do something else.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, when the financial planning opportunity came along, it was I just felt it was more varied.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that was something I wanted to watch up to.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Cool.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_03: So when did you start doing your question?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: So you you obviously went to some networking events, got yourself out there.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's a great bit of advice for anybody, really, if you are struggling to find a route into financial planning.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you don't need to go into networking events physically, but you can do that to open up lines of communication.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you've got a network in front of you, which is LinkedIn.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's plenty of people to connect with on LinkedIn and speak to and open up opportunities.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I say that to everybody.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: If you if that's what you want to do, what have you done about reaching out to people already in the profession?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: And nine times out of ten, they've done absolutely nothing.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's so true.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I remember I went back to the barracks kind of after I'd landed this opportunity.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, all the guys I was living with at the time were like, oh, you're falling on your feet, type of thing, you know, we can't fight.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, well, how many networking events have you been to to try and meet these people?
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, just put yourself out there, do something different.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you're quite right now.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I'm I'm sitting in the business owner chair now.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if anyone approaches me, I'll give anyone half an hour of my time that wants to learn more about this profession, learn more about opportunities.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: And once you meet that person who knows a few people, it won't take long because if you've shown yourself to have that gumption, which you need quite a lot of to succeed in this profession, you're gonna not struggle to find a place to sit.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well, we talk about the types of things that people need to become a financial planner and what they really need to become a success in the role as well, a little bit later when we talk about 313, your business.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_03: So you ended up speaking to a St.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place financial planner, as do many people that come into the profession.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_03: So just tell us a little bit about your journey then.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you got into St.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: Did you have your qualifications?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: Did you go down the academy route?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_03: What was your sort of um entry point?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So um a condition of my being appointed to this particular practice was to pass R01.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I had about a month left in service in the RAF.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I spoke to my boss in the RAF and said, look, I've got to study for this exam.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Is it okay if I spend some time doing that?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So I studied for R01 for like a month, passed it, um, and that got me in.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I had R01, but then I went through the uh next generation academy, which got me R02 through to R06.
• 16:11
  unknown: Okay.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: So I think in-house training.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: And how long did that take you to get through that academy?
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_03: 12 months.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_03: Right, 12 months.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that was quick or did you think that was slow?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: What was your thoughts around that?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: It was about right, I'd say, to be honest.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone by the end of the academy was qualified.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Some people took a few goals on some of the exams.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the one that most people tend to struggle with first time seems to be R03.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: That was the only one that I failed first time as well, going through.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, it it served its purpose.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think you come out the other side of that academy a particularly good financial advisor.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you come out compliant and qualified.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, fine.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_03: So when you say you didn't come out, you you don't think going through that route, you wouldn't necessarily say you're going to come out a financial planner.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to be qualified, ready to go.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_03: So when you were in the academy, were you then working alongside any financial planners within the partner practice?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_03: Was that your sort of setup?
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_03: Were you learning on the job?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_03: Were you doing like business development, for example?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_03: What was your sort of first year looking like running alongside the academy?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: Or were you 100% in the academy?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was uh one week in the academy and three weeks back at the practice for my um course.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: So initially I was doing administration and power planning stuff, but to be honest, that's not my bag at all.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like paperwork.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I wanted to be out making relationships and building.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: So I basically said, look, I can I go out and do business development stuff for you and try and cover the costs a little bit here, which I did.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I went out and I found business and made a relationship with accountants, solicitors, you know, introducers, um, and brought in clients, which is what I enjoyed doing.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, that all the business was written by the put the qualified individuals in the practice, but I was bringing that work in.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, you don't come out, you know, experienced as an advisor.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Of course you don't, but I was learning on the job from the people I was referring the business to because I was shadowing them in those appointments.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, great.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: So you work yourself then through St.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place, you're working underneath a partner practice.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: You didn't run your own partner practice then.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: So you were at St.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place doing that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you've obviously left, you've moved on from St.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um, that's fine.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: People do that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and um any particular reason why you left?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, your first financial planning role, they've given you the academy, they've given you some training, some development, you've gone out and done some business development.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Surely, I mean, St.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place, 70 odd billion under management, surely you found your home and you're gonna be a success forever there.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: You stacked that up nicely.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, no, I uh to be honest, the more I learned about the profession, um, you've got to remember coming into that was quite naive.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: They've got a very compelling sales pitch.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, to a lot of practices, they are a good fit.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but for what I wanted to do, um, the service I wanted to provide, I didn't find that they were the best fit.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, as I started shopping around and realizing that, you know, there were better performing investments out there, there was a way to charge a lot less.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um I wanted to be able to offer that independent service.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: I felt like as an advisor there, I was more of a salesperson for an organization.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was working for the organization rather than working for the client.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that in this job I wanted to be seen and feel as though I was working for the client and not the company whose name was on the letterhead.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, fair.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's a nice diplomatic answer.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: Moving on, moving on quickly.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: So you okay, let's get down to the degree then, because obviously you are now running your own practice, which is 313.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, now, obviously, a naturally ambitious person yourself, because you know, number one mortgage advisor for nationwide.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Did you join nationwide straight from school, from from university?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_03: How old were you?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: School, I was 16.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_03: So 16, okay.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: So typically somebody then that didn't then go on to further education either.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, I didn't.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um interesting time in my life for that to be honest, because I did quite well at GCSEs, and I think it gave my parents a small heart attack when I decided I wasn't going to go on to weaving air levels and finish those off.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to get into work.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um at the time I I had quite a lot of older friends.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I always looked older than my age, as I know I still do.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: I saw the shock on your face when I said I was only 32.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I had friends who were like in their 20s when I was 16 through sport, and uh a lot of them had degrees and were struggling to get work.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I just thought, well, hang on, if I can just get myself into a big company here at entry level by the time I'm 21, how far up that ladder can I be?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I went down that path.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: And to be honest, were it not for the recession in 2008, I might well have still been at nationwide and been, I don't know, like an area manager or something by now.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that would have been a perfectly legitimate career path for me to follow.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, I didn't want to go down the education route, which at the time was massively against the grain.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: I remember I did start sixth form.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: I did about one term at sixth form and then realized it wasn't for me.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: But it was so geared towards university.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we had that one hour a week with our kind of form tutor who would say, you know, we've got to study towards our UKS applications now.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, well, kind of, I don't want to go to university.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they would they would just farm you off to the library with the three or four other people from the 1000 in the year group who'd said the same thing.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I just remember thinking there's not enough graduate jobs for all of these graduates that are going to be coming out, they're all just getting themselves into debt, and you know, it just didn't sit right with me.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, getting into a big organization was my aim, and I did it.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: And like I say, without different circumstances, I might well have still been there.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: Did you know much about financial services when you were 16 years old and you made the decision to leave school and then go and join nationwide?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_03: Were you like, did you just sort of you know put your finger into the phone book and phone somebody up?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: Or what was your strategy?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: For did did you know much about financial services?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I knew nothing about financial services.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think looking back, like I said, it was did I wanted to feel like I had a profession, so I wanted to wear a suit and be Smart to work and all that stuff.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, it was one of the few places where you could just go in as a 16-year-old and get a job.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was kind of that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: Or retail was what I was looking at.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I'd kind of had a part-time job at Sainsbury's and there was a management scheme there.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I looked at that, but I thought, actually, no, I'd rather be in a suit in a city center every day.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, typical 16-year-old thinking.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't there wasn't much uh method to it.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: It was just, I want to wear a suit, I want to get paid reasonably well, and I want to be able to work in the city center so I can go for a beer after work.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that was pretty much it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: So you romanticized really a little bit on the wearing the suit and being in a business and being in that professional.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: That to you was something that you wanted to do.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: I had a bit of that in me as well.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I left school at 16 years old.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: I wasn't um I wasn't into the whole university of I struggled with education really.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: I talked too much as well.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_03: I just talked too much.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm it wouldn't, I wouldn't say I was a lack of intelligence.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_03: It was just a lack of concentration on the subjects that they were trying to teach me in the environment.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_03: I just couldn't, I just couldn't get on board with it.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: I played a lot of sport and you know, I liked um like getting out and about and doing things, you know.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: I think the thought of sitting down and having to listen to somebody and not only just speak to me, but speak to 30 other people about the same thing.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_03: It just I I struggled with it massively, couldn't concentrate.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of it as well.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: I remember like rationalizing how relevant the wives of Henry VIII were going to be to my future success, you know, and uh Pythagoras's theorem.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I I read a lot of books by you know successful people, uh Branson and DeJones and people like that.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of them didn't have any formal educational background at all.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it just seemed to me that their biggest advantage was getting a head start on the competition by not going to university and by getting straight into the the adult world.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: I think that education world, and I don't know if it's changed now.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: I'm 39, I'll find out because my daughter's like five, so she's going through school at the moment.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I was quite impressed when she came home a couple of days ago at five years old, and they were talking about mindfulness and meditation.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, that's pretty cool because that's the sort of thing I'm into.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: I've only really just started discovering now.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I wish they taught me when I was in school.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: But like I love the idea about mindset, you know, um, understanding your emotions, mindfulness, meditation, yoga, all that kind of stuff which grounds you and and makes you aware of what your thoughts and feelings are and why we do the things that we do and what do we truly want.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: I love all that kind of stuff, and I wish they I wish they taught that sort of thing in school because that was a thing that always I always gravitated towards, you know, was trying to self-improve, but not through I didn't mean to self-improve, like you said, by learning every single bloody king and queen, you know.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: To me, it seemed pointless and irrelevant to where I wanted to go in my life.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think there's so many kids that are like that in school that are just like clever as you like, got loads of energy, and they're just being knocked back because they're not being really given the chance to be able to learn the way they want to learn.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, and business and entrepreneurship isn't taught as such until you get to I think GCSE level when you can take it as an option.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: Right, okay.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: But how many people end up in business of some kind, you know?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Surely that is more relevant than for most people, religious education or RE or even geography.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, I think, like you said, it's going to be a big old beast to evolve the national curriculum.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that they are starting to incorporate some financial stuff into that finally, because again, the lack of financial education at school is staggering, really, because money is something that everybody needs.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I always say that the biggest contributor to the gap between the rich and the poor has got nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the education of the people coming out of school.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, like everything, I think it's going to be a positive move towards that over time.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so hopefully your daughter will have a nice, a better education than what we had, mate.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: Hopefully so.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you obviously got a very entrepreneurial mind anyway.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: You worked for St.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place for some time.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: You've gone out and found that job off your own back, worked for St.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place, got your head around the role, decided it wasn't the right environment for you, wasn't client-centric enough, and you went off and set your own practice up.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: So tell us a little bit about that then.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_03: What made you set up 313 and how did you go about doing it?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the name 313 has nothing to do with me.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the way that where that came from was I announced to everyone I worked with that I was gonna go out and set up my own practice.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_02: And two of the guys I told that to were the mortgage advisors I was working with.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that I was sending them mortgage referrals and they were sending me pension and investment referrals.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, two guys called Jordan and Paul, who actually went to school with Jordan.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: So I've known him for a long, long time.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and through social media, he'd started advertising his mortgage advice practice at about the same time I'd started with SJP.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of reached out and said, Oh, mate, I haven't seen you for like 12 years.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Let's have a chat about this.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we got to be quite close again.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he had 313 financial.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, two ambitious guys that they'd grown from just the two of them to having a team of about six at the time, six mortgage advisors.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, Well, look, Rich, we've always wanted to do 313 wealth, but we're just mortgage advisors, we haven't got the qualifications to do financial planning.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, right, that's interesting, but I'm not working for you.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: The whole point of this is that I've got to have my own thing.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And to be honest, Sam, there was a bit of a swallowing of the pride moment because I, you know, I'd wanted to have probably a weather burn financial planning or something along those lines, but they had a team of people that were already going to refer into me.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_02: They had 3,000 clients that they dealt with over the last five years that had already bought into the 313 brand and ethos.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: They had an office.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lot of stuff that was just already there.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, this makes an awful lot of sense to set up.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: So from there, I had a name, I had a brand.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: So it was a case of deciding, well, what how do we set this up?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: Because I had no idea about how to do that, you know.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a case of Googling networks and finding out about the different financial advice networks that were out there because I wasn't in a position to go directly authorized and nor would I have wanted to, to be honest, because like I say, I was still quite inexperienced.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted that support network behind me, but I wanted more freedom to be able to market the business how I saw fit and uh productively.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we went around lots of different networks and settled eventually on Tenet, Tenet Connect at the time.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they've been our network for the last, well, business is coming up two years old now.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, there's obviously the frustrations, but overall it's been a it's been a good experience.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: And when I'd had a St.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: James's Place background, it's refreshing how hands-off they are with regards to letting you run your business and just being involved in the stuff that you would want the compliance network to do, which is to keep you safe and keep the clients safe and make sure that you know you're staying within the regulators' requirements.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so 313 Financial was the mortgage side, yeah.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: And there was your friend, they were the friends, these guys that you knew.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: And um, you'd had this aspiration when you left St.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: James's place that you were going to set up your own practice.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: You'd already had that in your mind that you wanted to go become a financial planner, run your own business.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: Is that right?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: So then going and speaking to your guys, you've seen what they're about, you've communicated with them, you've seen an opportunity.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: So they've got mortgage, they've got 3,000 mortgage clients.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_03: You're thinking to yourself, hang on about, you know, they've got a client base there, and there's a great opportunity for you guys to be sharing business back and forth.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: So um, when you did that, and then you went out and you started looking around and you settled on tenant.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: So tenant being a network, yeah, to look after the compliance side of your business.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_03: So going directly authorized, you'd have had to do absolutely everything.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: Can it have been too many hats to wear for somebody so kind of young, if you like, to the profession in respective experience?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: So did you go out and you look at anybody else?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_03: Did you just literally go to tenant and that was it?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_03: Or did you do a sort of bit of a beauty parade or not?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: I looked at lots of them, to be honest.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was quite pleasantly surprised at the the range of options that were out there.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but overall, they just seemed like the best fit for you know the services that they had and the freedom with which I would be allowed to practice and the independent status, which was very important.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, a lot of networks are out there, offer restricted models, and I didn't want to be restricted any longer.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: So you've been going for how long now?
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of years?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of years.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we wrote our first bit of business because obviously the authorization process takes about it took about six months, I think, to get through everything.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: So we wrote our first bit of business in about September, October 2019.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: So officially the business is about 18 months old, I guess.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: So how long did it take you to write your first bit of business?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: Six months from kind of applying for authorization, going through the authorizations process, getting set up, yeah, and then getting paid on that bit of business that we wrote about six months.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Was that quite a bit of a shock to the system?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Did you think it was gonna take that long?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, I didn't.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: I I think I left St.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: James's place in the January and I didn't earn a penny until the October.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, that was a shock to the system, definitely.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_03: That is well worth noting if anybody's listening to this as well.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_03: There, I mean, you know, if you're gonna get authorized at the moment with the FCA, it can take three three to six months.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_03: It can take a really long time.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, some firms obviously have got it so you can literally join them and you're authorized straight away.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, because the firm's got the authorization.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: But like yourself, doing it that way, yeah, it can take some serious time.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think, as well, going from St.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place where you became, and obviously, I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more actually, your entrepreneurial side, whilst at St.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_03: James's Place, sort of really, really deciding that you weren't the administrative type, that wasn't the type of thing that you wanted to do, you very quickly recognized that your strength was going out and talking to people, winning new relationships and bringing business in.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_03: So you went out and and and said to yourself, I want to said to them as well, I want to be a business developer.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: Let me go out and pay for my pay my way by bringing business in, even though I'm not qualified perhaps to be able to do so straight away.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So, did you do you think that exposure that you had at St.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: James's place was the making of you and the reason why you went and set up your own practice?
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, certainly it carved out, you know, it told me that I had the ability to go out and generate business and generate conversations, um, which is nine-tenths of this.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: If you can find people to go and sit in front of, you will be a success in this business.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the rest of it can take care of itself.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that technical knowledge is important.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but to be honest, I don't think I will ever be the most technically proficient financial planner.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I have my business partner and a chartered power planner that works with me.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for me, I'd rather focus on bringing in as many people as possible who can benefit from financial advice.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I feel like as a profession, we have a moral obligation to share the knowledge that we do have with as many people as possible.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because of that thing I'll always come back to, you know, the gap between the rich and the poor, the main difference is knowledge and education.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm reading a great book at the moment where uh it says, if you're not good with what you've already got, me chucking money at you will not solve your problems.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: You'll just lose more.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and I think it's really important that we get that message out to as many people as possible.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to spend my time doing that, you know, podcasts and YouTube and going standing on stages and talking to people about how to be better with their money.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then when it comes to the technical side of things, my business partner is very technically proficient, probably not as keen on going out and generating business as I am.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I think we're a good fit.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and then as another fail-safe, we've got a chartered financial planner who works with us as a technical power planner.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so within the firm, we've got that technical knowledge.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's not where I see myself, my strengths lying, to be honest.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think as well?
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good point.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I think the need to let go of control is really, really important um to anybody's looking to grow their business because we can hold on to things for dear life, thinking that if we don't let it go, so if we let it go, it's going to cost us money.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: Or people might think I'm not as great as I think I am, you know, like um do you ever feel that way while you were setting this business up?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because the very fact that you very quickly got a chartered financial, uh a chartered um power planner in and you partnered up with somebody else who had a skill set that you um perhaps weren't uh confident in.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think that that was a quite a risky move early on?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_03: Did it cost you a lot of money to do that?
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, was it playing on your mind?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_03: Did you think you had to do absolutely everything in the beginning to make it profitable?
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: No, I I was very aware, I think, from the get-go as to where my strengths lay and where my weaknesses were as well.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I think if anyone was setting up, they've got to be quite honest with themselves and do that SWOT analysis on themselves.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is a very varied and wide-reaching profession with which requires lots of individual skill sets.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that the chances of any single person being good at all of them, it's very slim.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: You tend to find that those that are technically proficient are a little bit more reluctant when it comes to going out and generating business, and vice versa.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I was very aware from the get-go that I loved going out and generating work.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't particularly like writing suitability reports.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I knew from the very get-go I wanted to have a power planner there to help me do top slicing and all the usual stuff.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: I know how to present that to a client.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: I know enough to do a convincing job with a client.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I think whenever I speak to clients now, I tell them that this advice that you're receiving is a team effort.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just me.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: I have an entire team of people that help me produce this stuff for you.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_03: Do you often bring the power planner in to client meetings to sort of if things because you said there, you know, you're able to demonstrate and you're able to explain to the client what top slicing is, right?
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_03: In in simple methods.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: But do you bring the power planner in to talk about more technical issues to give the client more confidence, or does that come from you?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, the the relationships with me is the advisor, um, but they're aware of what goes on in the background.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't brought the power planners into the conversations.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't think that's what they want to do.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if my power planner wanted to be an advisor, she's more than capable of being an advisor, but she wants to be a power planner because she says she doesn't like dealing with people very much.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: She likes doing the technical stuff, doesn't like dealing with people.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a perfect fit for her.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and you hear like um because of the natural progressive route, say from a younger person coming into financial planning, traditionally is administration into power planning.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of the time I'm banging the drum by saying to companies, look, if you've got people in positions of of the admin, bring them into client meetings.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: If you've got power planners, bring them into client meetings because um they need to start to see and understand.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_03: And especially if they want to become a financial planner, they need to understand what the client meeting is all about, but also have the confidence to present certain sections of that meeting.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of the feedback we get from, especially someone like InvestTech, et cetera, the having the couple of people in the meeting, it's almost a bit like a family office type presentation.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_03: That as you rightfully said there, the client can get to see the obviously your client understands it's a team effort.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_03: But when someone comes in and might give a little bit of a presentation on this or a little bit of a presentation on that, it upskills the individual within the business who wants to step up into the role of financial advisor.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_03: I know the lady at your business doesn't want to do that, but there is kind of benefits to doing that that I've seen, and it helps people progress their career.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: I would completely agree with that.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if we ever had you know administrative staff in the team that wanted to progress on to being advisors, I would encourage them to shadow us as much as possible and partake in those conversations as much as they can.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we do do um team meetings with myself and Andy, my business partner.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: We've done dual calls on lots of stuff um where I felt that you know us both being there would be of benefit to the client.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we've never brought the power planning team in.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_03: When you leave a company, you always think about and you think about running your own business.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: You have this kind of vision, this idea of what you would do differently.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: So, what were the things that were really important to you when running your own practice that you would implement into your new business?
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, independence of advice and freedom of charge, how I saw was fair, was the main thing.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but from a marketing perspective, I wanted to be able to embrace the modern methods of marketing a little bit more freely.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so social media is an obvious one.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to be able to use that uh, you know, at the previous place, we will stop talking about the um I couldn't even tell my Facebook friends where I worked.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: They were so adverse to it.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, hang on, there's 1,200 people there who I've got some kind of connection with.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: I dare say a third of them would probably be good clients.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_02: Why can't I tell them what I do for a living?
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um now obviously I can, and you know, it's interesting.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: I've just hit on a client who I went to the air cadets with um long, long ago.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: Haven't seen him really since uh we were 15.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: But we've, you know, as you do, you're you're friends with people that you've known all your life on Facebook, and he's been watching the stuff that I push out.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: This is really interesting.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: And we've just had a really productive chat where it turns out he's been quite good with his money, he's saved quite well.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but by tweaking it and investing it rather than saving it, we've been able to encourage them to save less and end up with more at the end because they're going to get you know proper investment returns rather than just cash savings rates.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: So being a guy in your early 30s at St.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_03: James's place, and at the time being told really you're not allowed to build out your personal brand and use your own personal network and what you can and can't do on social media, you felt that that was a kind of bad business model and that it was limiting, limiting your ability to go out and win new clients, especially from your immediate network.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I had my hands tied behind my back that I couldn't, you know, speak to the most obvious leads that were in my network, which are the people that I already know quite well, but don't necessarily know well enough to just pick up the phone and say hello to.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that's where social media is great.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that if I just rang this guy, I went to the air cadets with, it would have been quite obvious, you know, that I was just calling to try and prospect him.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas him gen gradually being exposed to the content I've pushed out, which has obviously been useful to him over time, he's then thought, actually, I want to speak to him.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: He's reached out to me.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, that I don't think we can underestimate how important giving away a lot of useful information and content is for free in order to it's the personal trainer model, isn't it?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, you know, personal trainers push out stacks and stacks of free content to thousands of people, safe in the knowledge that three or four of them will sign up to become clients.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that financial services is going to become a very similar model.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_02: We're very, we're very similar, you know, in that a lot of the stuff that we tell people, like personal trainers, is quite common sense.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, everyone knows calorie deficits, everyone knows if you do bicep curls, your biceps get bigger, but they use a personal trainer because of the accountability and that expert knowledge of the personal trainer.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I think we're the same.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: People all know if you save for retirement, you'll end up well off in retirement, but they don't necessarily know the best ways to do it, and they don't have the accountability partner.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I think we act is keeping people on that track.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Making a plan is one thing, sticking to it for 30 years, very different.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, accountability.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: That's a, you know, and I like the PT model um comparison there.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: And also the financially fit, isn't it?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, being financially fit, it is very similar to being a PT, being physically fit.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: And you're absolutely right.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_03: We all know what we've got to do, but um, do we do it?
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I think when you end up connecting with a PT and go and use their services, or you end up connecting with a financial planet and go and use their services, and someone sits down with you and really digs deep a bit deeper on what your actual goals are and what it means to you, then you start to build that relationship.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the key, isn't it?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's the power of the relationship because it keeps people coming back.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_03: Not only keeps them coming back, but it keeps them ingrained into who, into the relationship to know that they're being looked after over a period of time.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the beautiful thing about financial planning, isn't it?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: You can almost project the future for people, can't you?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: You can take away their future worries by doing cash flow forecasts, by looking at their future earnings and life events that might come up, by taking a snapshot of where they currently are at this moment in time.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_03: Can they improve it?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: What are their views about retirement?
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_03: So it's very much um, and I like that whole that's the bit about financial planning, which I really like the most, is this kind well-being proposition, is that it makes people feel calmer about their future.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I literally just had a review meeting with a client this morning who's uh he's a local radio presenter.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: So um I'll be listening to him at drive time later on, which is really cool.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but he's you know, late 20s, self-employed as a lot of these um, you know, broadcasters are, earns reasonably good money.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: And we can now project all the way through to his 100th birthday where the money is coming from.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he was amazed because this was his first review today.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, the last time I'd see him was setting everything up, first review, going through the cash flow model, showing him how that, you know, very small portfolio right now is going to grow by the time he's in his 60s.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's incredible.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you can see people light up to it.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: They've just no one goes out shopping for this stuff generally, but once they're confronted with it, it is powerful, you know, and to show them the benefits of increasing or decreasing risk and having to consider inflation, it's all very important.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the the tools that are out there now to help us do it, you know, for risk profiling, for cash flow modeling, for the the review, it's all phenomenal stuff.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's there to be taken advantage of.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, how do you how do you get that across on social media?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: Social media, you've got to see, is a funnel, don't you?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's generic awareness of who you are and what you can do.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of the stuff I push out on social media isn't in-depth cash flow model examples, you know, it's um how to clear debt, um, how to start saving for retirement, what is tax relief, what is a pension, you know, the generic awareness, stuff to just get people feel like they can hold their own in a conversation with their idiot mate down the pub who knows nothing but spouts a lot, you know.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because I actually put a thing on Instagram talking about how that mate down the pub is probably broke, yeah, you know, the one that knows everything.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: He hasn't got a clue.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, um, but money is a funny thing, isn't it, Sam?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think it's one that a lot of people don't know much about, but it's something that everyone feels that they can offer advice on.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that everyone's got that mate down the pub.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you should buy Bitcoin, you know.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, everyone's got that mate.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I wouldn't dream of starting to give people advice on how to rewire their house because that's a profession.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: I'd leave that to an electrician, you know.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it's something that people, because they all use it, they all seem to think that they know the right answers.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um so many people are giving away free information about how to manage your finances at the moment, aren't they?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's starting to grow quite rapidly.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of people people out there on YouTube, etc., that are making a living out of it through YouTube advertising, you know.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and just their subscribers on their channels.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: How does a traditional, how do you think a traditional financial planner separates themself from the noise that's out there in the world of have a go DIY financial advisors who mostly are just a bunch of, you know, a bunch of people that are on Forex, you know, making a few quid here and there and telling everyone how fantastic they are and they should download their coaching script or guide, you know?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's very challenging because those people who aren't regulated have far more compelling sales pitches because they're not regulated.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: So they can tell you about ridiculous rates of return and there's no regulator going to tell them to stop it yet.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, hopefully that will come.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um there are some fantastic voices out there on YouTube.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Pete Matthews obviously I think is probably the leading one in the UK he's got 12,000 subscribers now pushes out fantastic stuff.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I listen to Andy Hart's podcast.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then you know there's the the younger ones like myself and uh Dan who we're trying to come up through and build up Instagram and YouTube followings ourselves.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it is tough because we're we're pushing sensible regulated financial planning advice not fantasy.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the the the stuff that's out there written by these commentators is a lot more compelling and we've got to you know against that.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: We need to hear more about the horror stories I think of people losing money in unregulated ways um and following you know these scammers you know yeah what is it Mike did you know ever heard of a guy called Mike Winnett Mike Winnett?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah contrapreneur yeah brilliant he's funny isn't he he's fantastic we need more people like him I don't know is we uh adapt my style to be more like I just calling out these idiots who you know just lying I saw one guy who it was sent to me on it was via a TikTok thing and it was something like if you get seven percent compound interest on 200 pounds per year it's worth 50 million by 60 and I was like that's just not right you know but he pushed it out there and it had loads of shares because people you could quite easily check this by going on a compound interest calculator but no one does they just see these headlines and they share it and it's just frightening.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's the dangerous thing about social media and no one's out there fact checking this information this financial information and it's very very worrying because people are getting themselves into serious debt they're believing if you if you see 10 videos and it's 10 v videos of people doing their own stocks and shares making and they're flashing the cash of what they've bought a car or a house or whatever it it is and most of it could be absolute bullshit if they see that that's what they believe.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's as simple as that.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: So why would they then go well if he can do it on his own then he's written a book and he'll I'll buy his book why do I need to go and see a financial planner what's the reason why I should see a financial advisor they're just going to take my money you know and it's um it's a funny one in it how do you and for for somebody to be able to cut through that bullshit and actually call these people out and do it in a way I haven't really seen I've seen people I've seen financial planners like yourself coming out and saying it and and and trying to check you know to to be a financial planner on camera.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's definitely what needs to be done more financial planners more qualified advisors.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: Peter do you know Peter Comalafe on the conversation of money no I haven't crossed that one look him up he's a good guy actually Peter um he came on the podcast and he's level four qualified but he does coaching so it's financial coaching which is obviously a very big thing at the moment isn't it there's always coaches out there but again unregulated.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: So he's doing like financial coaching but he's level four qualified and I've been on the podcast and he was just like just get more financial planners out there doing stuff like the the social media stuff especially on YouTube because it's such a gap on it and like if you keep on plowing that in that that content out there you're going to get a following because there isn't enough decent people out there doing it.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just got to be relatable isn't it you know the regulator does seem to be work, you know, doing something about it now I just saw that there was one of these Facebook scams that have just been um prosecuted because they were giving out investment advice via WhatsApp and he has been stopped.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: I forget the name of it I just read the article yesterday um it was one of these forex and he was calling them um I think it was called investment alerts or something along those lines but it wasn't it was buy this at this price and it will go up to and he was predicting something he had absolutely no idea about how to predict and he was costing people a lot of money so he has been prosecuted.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know if you'd like to think that the FCA will get on this you know and focus on it because it's gonna cost a lot of people a lot of money that they can't afford to lose and the biggest bugbear I have with it is once people have had their fingers burned by a scam like that, they're all the more difficult to convert to proper diversified investment plans because they're like no I've played in the stock market I've lost my money.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: But what did you do?
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because anyone that's lost their money in the stock market in the last 20 years has done something wrong or has been misadvised because all markets have gone up if you've done the right thing.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: I find it quite anxiety inducing actually because I downloaded the Hargrees Landsdown app and I thought I'd have a go at just stocks and shares and just have a like chuck a few hundred quid in and just even a few hundred quid and I was I didn't enjoy it at all.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I don't enjoy that kind of gambling feel you know things going up and down and I just I'd rather not do it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'd rather have someone else do it and put a plan in place for me because I feel more comfortable and confident about it.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well the the longer term you look the less risky it becomes obviously and I know I'm talking to someone who knows what he's doing but um yeah it's it's it's frightening how many people out there seem to believe that these people who are getting 100% returns can continue to deliver that every single year.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: If it were that easy everybody would be doing it.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_03: One of the guys in my office a recruitment consultant he's done really well on his stocks and shares ISIR like ridiculous returns um and he's done really well it's in so some people obviously quite good at it I guess but then a lot of people I think have discovered it in the last 12 months haven't they a lot of people went into lockdown and got bored and thought oh I'm gonna learn how to trade the markets.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah well and any fool could have made money in the last 12 months because you could have bought pretty much anything and it's gone up in value.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: But also we always you never hear about the people who lose money do you no and 85% of day traders do.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah that's not publicized enough as far as I'm concerned but 85% of day traders lose money.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: I had a friend who was an investment manager like qualified investment manager and he was doing day trading himself and he lost a considerable amount of money like a lot and um and he's an investment manager you know so it's not foolproof.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you know it's definitely risky biscuits.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: So you're very much a business developer, right?
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: We've sort of established that you like going out meeting people winning new clients all that type of stuff so what advice would you give to a financial planner who's perhaps struggling around that or perhaps wants to get out and become a bit more of a stronger business developer?
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_03: What advice would you give to an aspiring financial planner to be uh a better business developer?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_02: You can't meet too many people um try and get yourself some good introducers you know go out and speak to people who speak to the kind of people that you need to speak to um yes there's always your your cliched accountants solicitors mortgage advisors but one of my best introducers is a personal trainer right um because uh he's my client um I'm his client and I've taught him a lot about what we do because you you know you spend an hour with your personal trainer every you know however many times a week yeah you got a lot to talk about during that time um and he obviously speaks with lots of other people who are in professional jobs and he's like oh well my financial advisor's done this this and this for me and he introduces them through having that conversation um so see everyone as an opportunity to be helped because I I think a lot of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of business development see it as sales and see sales as a negative word.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: I think anyone that is lucky enough to come across a financial planner who knows what they're doing is going to be better off in life.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: So you going out and speaking to as many people as possible is you doing the country and its population a favor because you're gonna you are how often do we work with people who make them worse off doesn't happen.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: Anyone that you sit with you can improve their personal financial circumstances be it's setting up insurance so if they end up in disaster scenarios they're covered helping them get better investment returns or just actually start saving for retirement we do simple things for people that make a dramatic difference to their lives so you going out and speaking to more people is like I say I see it as my moral obligation to to impart the knowledge that's now in my head to as many people as possible so they can use it to their own advantage whether they do do a three me or not I couldn't really care less.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: Do you find that you generate more referrals or more more new business via B2C or B2B?
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good question.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: I'd say it's probably about 50-50 um we get a lot of referrals from our B2B relationships you know with the mortgage advisors and the accountants and the solicitors but we get a lot of referrals just from existing clients as well they've either moved across from a different financial advisor or have just in most cases started working with a financial advisor for the first time and no one knows what we do for a living.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know if you go and ask a man in the street what does a financial advisor does they haven't got a clue.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_02: They certainly don't know what cash flow model is.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: They probably can't explain what tax relief is on pensions.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: They don't know anything.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_02: So once you explain this to a client and you do the job properly and you get learnt you do you do a lifestyle financial planning you learn about their goals learning about how they can make money work for their goals.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know I always one of the lines I use with lots of clients is money is a game you just don't know the rules yet I'm going to teach you the rules and that will help you become better off once you start using phrases like that that they can easily then regurgitate to their friends at the pub those referrals come quite quickly.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah yeah absolutely making sort of explaining it to them in complete layman's turns jargon free give them some supply them with some knowledge that can impress their friends down the pub.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah they go down there they talk to their friends little nuggets give them little nuggets and try and give them some good looking stuff as well you know I mean I don't know whether I'm allowed to plug software on ESTAM but we use we use dynamic planner a lot in fact we use dynamic planner exclusively for risk profiling client reviews and cash flow modeling and the documentation that comes out the other side of that is phenomenal um you can make you can change the themes at the click of a button so what I tend to do with clients who have a particular interest is I'll brand their reports up to their interest.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you know I had a I had a client the other day who was a massive Newcastle United fan bless him as am I uh you know it's we're long suffering Newcastle United fans quite easily brand his thing up just so it had a picture of St.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: James's Park on the front cover.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: You know so how likely is he to then go and show his mates look how my financial advisor did this and he made this personalized with a little cover on St.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: James's Park isn't that cool and then they'll start flicking through it and be like well what's this thing what's this chart and how does this all work and he can explain that to his friends and they're like well I need this doing and that's how it works.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know you've just got to give people that knowledge that they can then share with their friends and their family get them passionate about it you know get them excited about it.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah for me once I once I learned this stuff Sam I was genuinely excited about it.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was like why didn't I know this stuff growing up why didn't my parents know this stuff because my parents are broke and still are um you know despite my best efforts because they've just got bad money habits um and yeah it kind of got me angry and like why didn't anyone teach them this because then we could have had more holidays growing up and they they could have retired earlier and spent more time like I feel it's our obligation to teach as many people about this stuff as possible.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_03: Money money money doesn't need to be a problem does it it doesn't need to be a negative and I think you put the nail on the head there really was habits isn't it our life is just based around habits that we create bad or good and I think money gets tied up into that and it's not essentially our faults I think the way that we are marketed to the consumerist life that we lead captivity this life we think ourselves as but you know everything is about like I've got to have this I've got to have that so people get themselves in some incredible debt.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_03: I mean you look at the things like that is it Clara you know like girls love buying clothes right and blokes do as well let's put it that way right a lot of blokes like buying clothes girls is especially like buying it they go on Instagram every second of the day they're being marketed to by somebody who's prettier than them or wearing nicer clothes than them or whatever it is.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: So then they feel down on themselves and they go onto these bloody sites and they see they can buy the clothes in three you know in three payments I mean that is just asking for trouble in it yeah asking for I know um I know Martin Lewis who I know that this profession has mixed opinions on but I think he's done some great work in that regard you know raising awareness for stuff like that.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: I know he's trying to clamp down on this you know buy now pay later culture it's it's toxic you know when I talk to people about 0% credit cards I think I say do you think they're doing you a favor by giving you free money essentially no then they know that you're going to take that 10 grand credit card on 0% rack it up to 10 grand forget that the 0% ends 12 months later and then be stuck with 25% interest for however long it takes you to pay it off.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's stacked up against you.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like I say the rules are stacked up against you but learn them and you can understand how to make those rules work in your favor.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah people get trapped in it and just pilot upon pilot upon pilot on top of each other until the point they're in so much debt aren't they?
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: Well there comes a point though where you've got this and uh Dave Ramsey over in the States who I listen to quite a lot who's a real good straight talker about money says you've got to reach that point most people have to reach that point where you just say I've had it.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know I can't take this shit no more I am getting it sorted and you know most people to clut to claw themselves out of that position unfortunately if they don't come into money through you know a lucky stroke or an inheritance or something they're going to have to take a drastic drop in what their lifestyle has been in order to fix their problem.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know they've been earning say 30 000 pounds a year and spending 35 well to fix it you're gonna need to continue earning 35000 maybe try and moonlight a bit to make a bit extra cash and spending 20 to fix your problem and that's going to be tough.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_02: Your friends are going to think you've lost it because you're gonna downgrade your car, you're gonna stop going out on the lash.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_02: But in order to fix your problem that's what you're going to have to do.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't you're just gonna get deeper and deeper into that problem.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: And increasingly what I've learned Sam through doing this job is that how much someone earns has got boogger all to do with how good they are with money.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: The bigger someone's salary if they've got bad money habits the bigger the problem you've got to try and dig them out of when you first encounter them in some cases because they've just been able to get more credit.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_03: Do you get involved in the psychology around that as well because it's well and good sort of saying like you've got to change your lifestyles and all that sort of stuff which is really hard isn't it but like what about the psychology of how they got themselves into that so their beliefs about themselves um you know they buy things to make themselves happy do you ever sort of dig into like perhaps their fears or resentments, their fear of what people think of them, you know, how they feel about themselves you ever get involved in that sort of thing?
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I do you know how many people can you say you've bought that to impress someone that you don't know and you don't need it and you don't like the person you're buying it to impress either.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know it's Instagram is toxic for this I mean you go through Instagram now and I feel so sorry for like teenage girls because the girls that are on there don't even look real.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: I saw the you know um Jennifer Aniston from like 1996 in Friends you know when she was obviously the girl everyone with the hairstyle and stuff they put one of those filters over her that all these young girls use now and like obviously Jennifer Aniston's a beautiful woman but you put one of those filters on her and she looks a million times better and you just think these girls don't stand a chance because they're just looking at people that literally aren't real.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_02: They're looking at crafted versions with filters um and that passes down to money because they're all stood there with Louis Vuitton bags yeah wearing um Le Bouton shoes you know and it's ridiculous.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah the expectations of people put on themselves of what they should be in their life even though they're not earning the money that pays for a Louis Vuisson bag and bottles of cristal and stuff like that.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's just completely it's completely bent out of shape and it's a shame really and like I say if it always down to money they start spending all that money and they get themselves into debt and the next thing you know they're negged out because they're in debt and they're carrying on the cycle and they're borrowing some more money here there and everywhere you know and they wonder why they're not able to buy houses and stuff like that because at 27 years old they've got 50 grand of debt around the neck you know yeah it's awful and it is awful it's for the girls it's bad for the for the guys who are trying to keep up with these girls who have become like extremely expectant into what does a birthday look like?
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well it's it's five grand's worth of gifts if you want a Gucci handbag and all most people can't afford that.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: But the expectation is there because of social media and it's something that well I attribute a lot of the the recent increase in um suicides in young people directly to social media I think you've got to no I agree correlation is too clear.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's toxic so social media is a hugely addictive toxic environment it's not a positive positive thing at all.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_03: It can be used for positivity but I think it's far easier so you for you to fall into the gap of um fear basically not getting something or having something taken away I think we that that's the most one of the most damaging things I think that's in our society at the moment is social media.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: You can be used well if you can manage yourself on it well.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know if I spend too much time on social media let's say I spend too much time on LinkedIn right it's a good part actually because we're talking about social media and we do it for business.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now when you get into putting social media out as a as a business owner the same thing happens.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_03: You put content out there, you sit there, how many people have liked it?
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_03: How many people have watched it what are my competitors doing you put something out there and you spent loads of hours on creating it and no one's liked it and you're like oh for God's sake that means everyone thinks I'm a Wally or how are people going to view me and then you start looking at other companies and they're nailing it and you're like why are they nailing it and you get read down and you end up living in like this LinkedIn news feed and I got into that cycle it was terrible.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_02: LinkedIn is actually to me one of the shining lights of positivity as well in social media because generally it is just positive messages people encouraging each other.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's not the same snipiness and hate that you seem to get on the other social media platforms.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: But again to me social media is going nowhere you know it's our life so we all have a responsibility to try and make it as positive and as useful as possible.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: Hence why I wanted to put more content out there that is realistic and for those that stumble across it is hopefully going to be helpful for them and dispel some of the myths from the charlatans that are floating around.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think spend time creating content that's what I do now I spend time creating good valuable content that I put out on a reg and then you create then you spend some more time creating good valuable content.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_03: The more time you spend on the content creation the less time watching what other people are doing the better.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way I look at it.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_03: If you're confident in what you're doing and you believe in what you're doing why should you care about what other people are doing so that's the hat that's the approach that I have now I just put things out when I want to put it out there and I don't spend my time watching what other people are doing.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_03: It's just pointless because you're just comparing yourself and you'll only find something which isn't isn't good enough.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_03: So just do what you think is good enough and crack on and do it.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_03: So okay cool.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_03: So you very much obviously into financial education you're putting content out there doing that big business developer.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_02: You've set up your 313 okay you've got three of you within the business at the moment is that right uh so there's myself and Andy who's my business partner um we've then got uh we use outsourced admin staff for everything so we use the IFAPA who are phenomenal um anyone looking to outsource admin I can't go far you can't go far on with them yeah honestly I think our PA that we use within the IFAPA Claire I'm convinced there's three of her because every time we send her an email it's actioned like that and she doesn't just work with us you know it feels like she works for us full time but she doesn't um so I'm a big fan and a big advocate of uh outsourcing that again the power planner that we use is outsourced because if I was because of our CV if I had to employ her I dare say I'd have to pay her about 70 000 a year you know she's that qualified but she is there when I need her um and she doesn't cost me£70 a year.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_03: What is what does she do though?
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_03: Well you know because that's really interesting because it's because a lot of people said that like having a PA outsource PA is like one of the best things you should ever do.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_03: So what do they do for you out of interest?
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_03: What does a PA actually do for a financial planner?
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh ours does absolutely everything apart from C clients for me.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_02: So they're there to do whatever you want them to do and they'll take as much or as little work off your hands as you absolutely want to but for me all I spend my days doing are fact finds with new clients presentations reviews seeing clients and putting together marketing stuff I don't do any applications to platforms.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_02: I don't do any suitability report writing I don't do any quotes for protection policies it's all done by then because to me my time is best spent sat in front of clients and thinking about ways to develop the business um not doing stuff that can be done by an outsourced admin.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_03: So how is that affecting your so how is that sort of shaping the future of your business?
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously you're a business owner 313 we've spoken previously to this podcast and you do want to grow your business don't you you're not doing it just as a lifestyle business for yourself you want to grow this business.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_03: So how does that kind of having a PA, having that outsourced support how does that sort of um shape the future of your business when it comes to hiring new financial planners in well first of all it gives me more
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Time to think about ways that we can get there quicker.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but also, uh, for instance, we are in the process of taking on a new advisor, we recruited them over kind of the the Christmas period, they're starting with us in around about May.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, again, going through the authorization process takes its time.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he will come in and he will be encouraged to just do fact finds presentations and reviews, and all of his work will be outsourced.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that to me is an is a selling point to us as a firm that if you want to be a financial advisor and be nothing other than a client-facing person, we've got the platform to enable you to do that.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: All the processes are in place.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a solid centralized investment proposition, uh, which gets reviewed regularly, and you would be included as part of that review process.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_02: All the administration processes that are there are there and they are slick, you know.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: So literally, all you have to do is see clients.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it makes us an attractive proposition for advisors to both train with us and become advisors through us and the next gen planners academy, um, and also to just join us if they're with another firm already and aren't happy for whatever reason.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_03: Fab.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously there's an advice gap.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_03: There's going to be a lack of financial planners within the profession, whilst a lot of them are starting to age out over the next five to ten years.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned there about next gen planners and their academy.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_03: So just tell me a little bit about how that fits in with your business and the future growth of your business then.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's going to be pivotal.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we aren't of a size where we can have our own in-house academy because, you know, we're not going to be taking on cohorts of advisors at a time.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_02: We'll probably be taking on one, maybe two at a time.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_02: So it provides us with the facility to train people professionally, knowing they're getting taught everything they need to, not just about the exams, which are obviously yes, they're important, but they're not the job.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_02: The job is client relations, cash flow modeling.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's all included within that, you know, good questioning techniques, financial coaching, which to me is just as important as being a good financial planner nowadays, asking the right questions and being a good financial coach to get to the crux of someone's um reasons for wanting to get to certain points in their life.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so next gen planners will be providing the training course for any advisors that we bring in that aren't yet level four qualified or level six qualified and want to go through that course with them.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_03: So, does that mean that you would be open to taking somebody into your business that is, say, from another profession that has good transferable skills, attributes, um, but doesn't hold the level four qualification?
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_03: You'd be interested in those types of people joining your business in the future, but putting them through the next gen planners academy to get them up and running.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like you say, there's an advice gap, isn't there?
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_02: I think financial services is one hell of an opportunity.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, given the size of the advice gap that's out there, the fact that I think the average age is currently 58.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_02: So 10 years, the vast majority of those people have retired because you'd like to think that they're good at retirement planning, right?
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um so coming in under that with all of the money that's going to be passing down from the one generation to the next, I forget the figure on that, but I think it's about 7 trillion generations in the next 10 years, you know, those people are going to need advice.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yes, the person, in fact, that we're taking on is not yet qualified.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_02: So he is going through the next gen planners um academy.
• 1:09:14
  SPEAKER_02: And in the meantime, we'll be working as a BDM, shadowing us, learning about the processes and learning how to be an advisor as we want them to be.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think if there's a particularly last year, Sam, a lot of good people lost their job through no fault of their own.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we've stumbled across one of them here who was a sales director for you know a FTSE 250 company, massive, massive organization.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he's been sitting at board level there, you know, and now he wants to come and work with us.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_02: He's going to be a huge asset, not just to our clients, but to us as a business.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and all we need to do is get him through the qualification.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's the least we can do to have someone of that caliber come on board.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to meet more people like him that can, you know, add to our business and help us build a business going forward, but also to help more people around us be better with money.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_03: Good man.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Do you not get anxious about being a small business and taking on people that are trainees and that it's going to be a big cost to you to do that?
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's an investment.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the way we've structured it, um, it's minimal risk to us as a business.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they come in as a BDM for that first 12 months and they've got a target to achieve.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_02: The made it's made very clear to them for the outset that if they don't achieve that sales target, they are costing us money and their job will be in jeopardy.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's simple as that.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you if you can't come in and generate business, you aren't going to succeed.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_02: So I wouldn't be doing you any favors, molecoddling you through and then setting you free because you're just going to fall on your ass 12 months down the line.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'd rather learn during that first six to 12 months if you've got the ability to go out and convert people to our way of thinking and get them to become clients of the firm.
• 1:10:51
  SPEAKER_02: If you do, then it's a sound investment.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_03: So talk to me a little bit about this BDM role, because if I was somebody chomping at the bit to become a financial planner and someone said, look, you're going to come in, we'll get you through next gen planners, we're going to invest in you.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_03: But what we need from you is to get stuck into a BDM role and start shadowing us and understanding the role.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_03: But this is what a BDM is within 313.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell me what it is?
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's going out and generating relationships with as many different people that you can help as possible.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_02: Generating relationships with your own introducers who will feed you personally, who won't just be feeding 313 wealth, who will be picking up the phone to you personally once you're qualified and saying, so-and-so, I've got this client that needs to come and see you.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I've got relationships with lots of solicitors, lots of accountants, and lots of people who pick up the phone and call me.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, uh chances are I'm going to keep the best ones, aren't I?
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to find them for yourself as well.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and any business that you bring in will come off your target during that uh 12 months.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And by that point, you will not only have proven to me that you can go out and generate the business, and so you are you are worthwhile the investment in that future, you've proven to yourself that you can do it.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: That that was the biggest thing for me when I started going through that process myself was that I learned I could go out and do it.
• 1:12:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I learned it's not that difficult.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_02: All you've got to be willing to do is go out and have conversations with people.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's it.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_03: And we talked about the sort of great transition of wealth, the huge amount of opportunity to give financial advice and the lack of financial advisors in the future.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_03: As a guy at 32 years old, setting up his new business, being very entrepreneurial, very being very business development led, are you seeing lots of opportunity for financial planning that just is not getting picked up by the financial planning community?
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'll never understand why the vast majority of what I call the old school in financial planning all seem to scrap around after the same 1% of clients.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_02: Never get it.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_02: We focus on people who aren't already working with a financial advisor.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_02: The vast majority of people we bring in, we aren't stealing business from anybody.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_02: We're not.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_02: We're just helping people who didn't know they needed help in the first place.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, your bricklayers, your plumbers who don't get any sick pay, so they need income protection.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_02: They've got kids, so they need life cover.
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_02: They haven't got a workplace pension, so they need a pension.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And they've never thought of this in the past.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_02: But they all earn decent money.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_02: And when you sit them down, you can, they're certainly profitable to take on as clients, and they all introduce you to 10, 15 more others who are all in the same position.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yes, and then of course, those 30-year-olds of today have parents and grandparents.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them will be passing down significant amounts of wealth that need to be factored into their plan.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And once you've identified that, after working with the client, you say, by the way, your grandparents that you've mentioned that will be passing that money down.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_02: I take it they're already working with a financial plan, yeah?
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh right.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we need to speak to them too to make sure that it comes down to you in the most efficient manner.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_02: All right, yeah, so you get the introduction.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think a lot of the time that the focus is on using the older generation to get into the younger generation.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, actually, that's backwards to me.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Use the younger generation who you've got a natural rapport with who you can offer immediate value to to make sure that their parents and grandparents are getting that right advice because a lot of them aren't.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, I love it.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good explanation.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_03: I also really loved on what you touched on earlier about speaking to introducers that are outside of the norm.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's too easy to say, oh, accountants, solicitors.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_03: When you started talking about PTs, like I said, my friends are PT and he's he talks to loads of people.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I think two or three of his clients are financial planners and he knows a bit about everybody.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_03: So they become really great connectors, almost like hairdressers, isn't it?
• 1:14:38
  SPEAKER_03: Hairdressers get to know their clients so well.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_03: And, you know, when it takes it a kind of five-minute spiel, and that person can just pass on a fantastic lead to you.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_03: And now, I don't know if there's a referral system that you can create with these types of introducers.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but it becomes a quite a great way to win new clients.
• 1:14:56
  SPEAKER_03: You want to be in those environments where people are talking, they're talking to each other.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's not some sort of secret club, is it?
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_03: You want people to find out about what it is you're doing.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_03: You want the gossipers, don't you?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, if you've got a good social media presence that they can be directed towards when they're talking about you as well, that helps.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you mentioned hairdressers.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_02: One of my other good introducers is a barber, runs his own barber shop.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_02: He is also a client of mine, but he runs like one of the coolest barber shops in the northeast of England.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_02: So he gets a lot of cool people who've, you know, young money, the social media generation who have, you know, got hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, they all got their hair cut with him.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_02: He's introduced me to some good people there as well.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and all he does is direct them to my social media content, which I like to think looks a bit different to most financial advice companies.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're not we're not scared of a few uh profanities on there because that's how people talk.
• 1:15:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_03: No, I like your I like your content.
• 1:15:51
  SPEAKER_03: It does stand out, you know, it is different.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_03: And and I do think that, you know, from coming from an environment where the last 13 years, I spent 13 years of looking at people's websites.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_03: I've spent 13 years of looking at people's social media, and it's only been the last couple of years that you're seeing social media presence within financial planning even coming out, you know.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_03: So it's refreshing to see people that are looking to challenge that norm.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have to be a stiff, you don't have to be wearing a shirt and tie and, you know, pinstripe stripe suit because it's just not what people care about.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_03: And you hit the nail on the head, you're trying to build a relationship with the next generation, the ones that are going to be inheriting that money.
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_03: So these guys, guys and girls could be in their 20, you know, 25 to 40 age group, really, couldn't they?
• 1:16:34
  SPEAKER_03: You know, anyone within that area that are probably now earning some good money.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_03: And you'll love the fact you touched on brickies and plumbers and stuff, because again, yeah, earning good money, but not traditionally where a financial planner might have gone.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_03: And also you're talking about products such as income protection, life assurance, things that kind of get some wealth managers and financial planners just don't want to touch that stuff.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what that really angers me.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_02: That really does, because that is such an important job.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_02: That is the foundation of someone's financial plan.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how these people answer when ultimately something happens where that would have kicked in, that life cover would have kicked in, or the income protection would have kicked in, and they haven't discussed it with them.
• 1:17:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for me, that's whenever we speak with clients, we say, look, we're going to build your financial plan, but the foundation of that plan is making sure that in horrible scenarios that you will not want to consider, the plan is not ruined.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_02: You've got the income protection.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_02: One of the most common causes for claim we had last year was children's critical illness.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_02: So imagine how nice it is when you get that horrible phone call and you can tell them, well, by the way, you don't have to worry about money anymore for the next 12 months.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_02: You can take as much time off work as you need to to go and look after the child who's now in hospital with leukemia or whatever it may be.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, they think you're fantastic at that point.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_03: And also it's um it is, I suppose, from the types of clients that you're talking about there, they wouldn't potentially have those types of, they wouldn't may not have never had those types of conversations.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas perhaps a financial planner that's looking for somebody with, say, a million quid to invest or something like that, the likelihood is that client's already gone through the process of having that type of you know, product or uh um cover in place.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_03: So they're they're trying to win that new money for pure investment and assets under management.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas your model at the moment is geared around the early stages of building the relationship, putting the things in place that offer security.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_03: And then if anything's left over, then you can invest.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_03: But the idea is you're opening up the relationship to have potentially a long-term investment from them in the future or build an investment pot with them.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's doing the family planning job correctly.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_02: If you get in with the younger generations, yes, they're not going to have hundreds of thousands of investable assets with you, but their family probably does.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if you do a proper job for them, you get introduced to the family who almost certainly haven't got a financial planner either, because most people haven't, you know, there's I don't know why sometimes financial planners get quite in some aspects get quite precious with you know competition.
• 1:19:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think we should all be just doing as much as we can as a collective effort to raise the awareness of the profession as a whole.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_02: There is more than enough business to go around.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_02: If people just started seeing working with a financial planner as matter of fact, as self-employed do working with an accountant, we would have a far better profession.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just not seen as something that everybody should do yet.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's what we should be working towards is that everybody should have a financial planner, just like everybody has a dentist.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_03: I get often told that you should pick a niche as a financial planner.
• 1:19:40
  SPEAKER_03: That you should pick a niche when going out to try and win clients.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Do you agree with that?
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yes and no.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think if you are um one man band or one lady band and want to stay that way, um, I've got a a good friend and colleague who is under the same network as mine, and she is based in Harrogate, and she has niched very much into divorced the divorce market, and she's looking after women who are uh coming out the other side of a divorce, and you know, she's become an expert in that niche.
• 1:20:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for us, you know, 313, we're wanting to build a big, big firm where we want to be able to help thousands and thousands of people.
• 1:20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I don't want to niche down too much and do ourselves out.
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think to be honest, we probably have got a bit of a natural niche in uh a market that we call up here grafters, um, which is your your brickies, your plumbers, your tilers, your lads who work on building sites, uh, road workers, we look after lots of them.
• 1:20:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that's just because they're very good at introducing you to each other.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Because once you've shown one of them how 400 pounds plus 100 pounds of tax relief every month for a 30-year period adds up to over a million quid, they all get quite excited, you know.
• 1:20:55
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of them come to you to just say, You're written my mate off of you.
• 1:20:58
  SPEAKER_02: This sounds too good to be true.
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Once you point it all out, they're like, All right, well, I need to do this shit as well.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, yeah, whenever someone comes back and says, My mate down at the site says this is too good to be true, mind.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, tell you what, Sam, come and see me and I'll explain it to him.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_03: No, I like it.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_03: Grafters.
• 1:21:17
  SPEAKER_03: I've never heard anyone talking about a niche of grafters, so that's obviously very unique, and I like that.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_02: And as you said, you type they work so bloody hard, right?
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I've got lots of family in that type of work as well.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_02: If I can help them get off that scaffolding five years earlier, I'll feel like I've done a good job, right?
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if I can help them, if they fall off the scaffolding when they're 35 and they break their back, well, knowing they don't have to work for the rest of their life, I'll feel like I've done a good job.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_02: Though I think I said this to you on the phone, actually, but like uh I get far more satisfaction helping people like that than I do helping millionaires become a little bit richer, right?
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_02: I come from very humble beginnings myself.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know any millionaires growing up.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_02: I know one or two now, right?
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And yes, of course we can help millionaires, and typically financial planners will always have target millionaires because we get paid on AUM under the traditional model, right?
• 1:22:10
  SPEAKER_02: But that millionaire is already fine.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_02: With or without us, they are financially independent unless they're very, very lavish in their expenditure, right?
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas we can make a genuine fun, a genuine life difference, life, life-changing difference to grafters.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_02: You can't.
• 1:22:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm I can't wait for the day in 25 years' time when I go to the pub with all these lads and they're all retired, you know, 10 years earlier because of the advice I gave them today.
• 1:22:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's gonna feel wicked.
• 1:22:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um I like that.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_03: You've got an altruistic purpose there.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you're seeing beyond the assets under management, you're seeing beyond your financial gain, you're looking into the peace of mind that you can provide your clients, the better futures that they have for them and their families.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's um admirable.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you're not driven just by the pang coin, are you?
• 1:23:03
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not, but I'm not a saint either.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if you've got 25, if you've got like if you've got 500 of those saving however much a month, by the time I come to be looking to exit the practice, they will all have good large assets under management with me.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll have helped them get from a standing start to that point.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the succession plan within the practice will be that they've been fully aware that they have been helping me build my own exit as well.
• 1:23:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we are we just like to pride ourselves on being completely transparent.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_02: I share with all of my clients that yeah, I am 32.
• 1:23:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's a good chance I will personally be looking after you for a good couple of decades, but I'll not be looking after you forever.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_02: But what we will be doing is we want 313 to outlive all of us that set it up.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we want to build something special that people can just do MBOs all the way through.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_03: For them and their family.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:23:57
  SPEAKER_03: I like it.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Rich, what does the next year look like for you?
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_03: We're coming out of lockdown.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_03: What's the next year?
• 1:24:04
  SPEAKER_03: What's your plan?
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_03: How are you gonna charge out of lockdown and be an absolute powerhouse of a businessman?
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what we feel like throughout lockdown we haven't really stood still?
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's been so so busy.
• 1:24:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we've uh obviously we're just ending quarter one.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we've quadrupled turnover and quadrupled AUM in the last 12 months.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, we were very early days, um, quarter one, 2020, but still it's good growth.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'd like to see that continue.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Whether or not we can manage that again, I don't know.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_02: It would be a big, big jump.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we're adding the team.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I've got uh Phil joining the firm uh the summer of this year.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um we'll probably look to add another one by the end of the year, um, and just continue to grow, you know, continue to build those relationships, continue to build the um the social media presence.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_02: I've I'm in the process right now of building a course because I think that one of the biggest issues we come across is that uh a lot of the people we would like to work with, they're not quite there yet.
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they might have debt that you've got to tell them to pay off first, or they might not have their emergency funds saved up.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_02: And best will in the world, you can't start working with someone until they've done those few bits.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I've created a what I call my financial transformation boot camp, which I think can work for anybody.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's five phases.
• 1:25:23
  SPEAKER_02: And the first three phases have got nothing to do with regulated financial advice.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's clearing debt and saving emergency funds and what have you.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm I'm building an online course so that rather than saying to these people, go away and come back in two years once you've done all that, I can say there's a course, work your way through that.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And once you've graduated that course, then you come to see me for the next bits, which are investment ICEs and pensions and whatever else it may be.
• 1:25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I'd like to get that course finished, filmed, and out there, um, which we'll obviously be using as another marketing tool.
• 1:25:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, busy, mate.
• 1:25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Lots, lots to think about in the next 12 months.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_03: I really like the Sand of Act course.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's a really good idea.
• 1:26:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then you know who's serious about really getting through their finances and getting top on getting on top of it.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_03: If they graduate through that and they're ready to then go and seek financial planning, then fantastic.
• 1:26:13
  SPEAKER_03: And you know that they're ready to come in and start using your services.
• 1:26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of a lot of the market out there online now, YouTube and what have you, seems to be focused towards discouraging people from using financial planners, you know, putting them all their knowledge in their own head so they can do it off their own back.
• 1:26:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I agree with that to a point, but it removes the accountability part a bit.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_02: So just like I can watch YouTube and learn how to go and run a marathon or get ripped, I would still choose to use a personal trainer just to keep me accountable to it.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:26:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think I don't want to um cheapen the value that a financial advisor can bring because I believe a very good financial planner can, like I say, offer life-changing advice, but I want to open that up to as many people as possible.
• 1:26:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the only way to do that is to get them in a position where they would walk into any financial advice practice and they wouldn't get turned away.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and in order to be in that position, you've got to put with clear debt, saved emergency funds, and be ready to get going.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so hopefully that course will open that up to a lot more people.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it sound like you sound like the man to do it.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, absolutely get yourself out there, get yourself seen, get yourself heard because um you're approachable and you're likable.
• 1:27:25
  SPEAKER_03: So um I think if people buy into that coaching program, you know, eventually they're gonna filter down into clients in the future with you.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_03: Get yourself out there, get yourself seen, build a business of financial planners underneath.
• 1:27:38
  SPEAKER_03: Even if you're going out there, just generating so many clients you just can't know what to do with.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_03: At least you've got a load of financial planners working underneath you or filter down to.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's the idea.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_03: I like it, mate.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_03: Make it rain, make it rain clients.
• 1:27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Rich, brilliant.
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for your time today.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_03: Really enjoyed talking to you, really appreciate it, and um, and good luck with everything.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for having me, mate.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, have a good week.