Turning Personal Loss into Professional Growth: Guy Skinner's Journey in Life Protection and Financial Planning

When life handed Guy Skinner, from CityGate Financial Planning, a devastating loss, it carved out a path for him that would intertwine personal resilience with professional wisdom. Join us as Guy shares the deeply personal experience of losing his father and how it shaped his approach to life protection in financial planning.

In a conversation that navigates through the valleys of grief to the peaks of professional growth, Guy’s narrative is more than just an account; it's a beacon for anyone looking to understand the profound impact financial foresight can have on a family's well-being.

In the heart of our discussion, Guy opens up about the art of forging genuine bonds in the professional realm. Tearing down the walls of transactional interactions, he reveals how sharing vulnerabilities and focusing on immediate problem-solving can lead to meaningful advocacy and trust.

We also delve into the practice of asking clients reflective questions, guiding them to align their financial plans with their life ambitions. It's an approach that reinforces the concept of financial well-being and underscores the ongoing personal development crucial for Financial Planners.

As our episode unfolds, Guy imparts his strategies for staying level-headed amidst the whirlwind of business ownership. Embracing the Pareto principle, he underlines the significance of identifying key efforts that yield the greatest outcomes, achieving success and equilibrium.

Authenticity, simplicity, and clear communication emerge as the cornerstones of thriving under pressure. Whether you're navigating the high stakes of the financial industry or seeking to apply life lessons from those who do, this episode with Guy Skinner is set to inspire and enlighten.

Be sure to check out Guy Skinner's charity of choice  - Stand By Me Be - Bereavement Support 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today's guest is Guy Skinner from CityGate Financial Planning. He is a financial planner and he is a business owner. We talk about his personal journey from losing his father at 10 years old and how that inspires him to work within the financial planning and to position life protection. We talk about the importance of life protection. We talk about his charity work, growing a business and why building a relationship with introducers doesn't need to be that difficult. I hope you enjoy this episode, guy. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planning live podcast. How are you? Yeah, well, thank you. How are you, sir? Not too bad, yeah, not too bad, thank you.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Working through lots of stuff at the moment. It's a bit stressful and a bit tricky in my work-life balance, but I'm finding the time to work on myself and discovering some really interesting things about me. I always find that when you're under pressure and you're under stress, you start to recognize those defects of character. They start to come to the surface and you start to look at the things that are perhaps behaviors that you need to change. They become way more obvious when your ass is in the fire. I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker 2: 1:20

I tend to agree with that. But a bit of pressure and your habits are not to the side. Bad habits come out more, so I suppose they can take over. Yeah, precisely.

Speaker 1: 1:31

What do you do to deal with that pressure and stress? You're a business owner. If you were to give anybody some advice right now, you seem quite level-headed. We've had a great conversation. You're very driven. You've got that performance mindset. I think that's one of the reasons why I once joined the podcast. We had such an interesting conversation when we were talking about recruising for your business as well. What do you think other people can do when they're under that immense amount of pressure and stress? What do you do to keep yourself level-headed?

Speaker 2: 2:00

I'd love to say that this is always the calm demeanor that I had. Simplicity is what it always comes down to. You've just got to remember the simple habits and life. I could regale some relatively embarrassing things that I think are just simple, things that I forget to do, like not drinking enough water, which sounds like such an obvious thing. It's part of being alive, it's what makes us breathe, and being hydrated, there we go. If you're dehydrated, it's going to have loads of knock-on effects. Likewise, during lockdown, did I get out enough? Did I go into nature? Did I get fresh air? You've got to get all those simple things in life. You've got to go to the gym, you've got to exercise, do whatever those things are, and it helps you just function.

Speaker 2: 2:43

Life is all about balance. There is always a balancing point with anything life. Too much pain is not good, too much pleasure is not good. You've got to find the middle ground. So if there's a stressful period in life, it's because you're doing too much of something you shouldn't be and not enough of something else. Then you've got to find the equilibrium every time. That's how I remain relatively calm, I suppose.

Speaker 2: 3:03

A lot of the time when I do get out of sync, then I identify why and I just get back to the simple habits of really simple stuff that you don't set a clock to brush your teeth, you just do it. We shouldn't really have to set a clock to just go right, I'm going to drink some water, but we lose focus because we get ingrained in other things and caught up with other stuff. So, yeah, I'd like to say I try and practice it all the time, but I'm not perfect nobody is so you've just got to draw yourself in now and again and remember what's important. Now, I suppose, if you can always identify, it's like Pareto, isn't it? It's the 80-20 rules. There's 80% of the stuff you do is a waste of time. If you can narrow it down to the 20% that you should be focusing on, stick to it and just do that exceptionally well, and the rest of it will follow.

Speaker 1: 3:51

That's really interesting. Can we just elaborate on that 80-20? Are you able to reflect right now and give us an example of what you think is 20% worth while spending your time on your business and in your job role?

Speaker 2: 4:04

Yeah for sure. So it would be too easy to say that. The technicalities of learning about pension rules and lifetime allowance and keeping up with trends in the marketplace, just the general noise around investments and should I be evidence-based, should I be passive, should I be active? I would bucket all of that into the 80%. They're necessary things, they're hygiene factors, but actually they're just great distractions for a lot of people.

Speaker 2: 4:34

The 20% is know your focus of who you want to work with, why you want to work with them, and then just have conversations. Don't over-reli on emails, don't over-reli on voice notes and WhatsApp, whatever. Just pick up a phone. It's a bit old-fashioned, really, but the best way to ever get people to take action, I've always found, is to speak to them. So the 20% comes down to just knowing who you need to speak to and speak to them, which, again, it's really basic. It's like drinking enough water and being hydrated, but that is genuinely what it comes down to. We can make loads of excuses because I sent somebody an email but I didn't hear back, and that's the 80% of wasted effort and also time kills deals, doesn't it?

Speaker 1: 5:16

When nobody really likes their inbox, it's always full up with either junk emails or things you've got to get to. You can get overloaded really quickly it can be quite a stressful place to actually go and visit. So if you're relying fully on email marketing to generate business or to generate introduce the relationships or whatever it might well be, you're kind of sending something into an environment which most people find relatively annoying and stressful, and then that person has to stop. They have to read it and if it's too long they don't, and then also as well, they've got a reply. You know I always love the quick approach. This is what I love on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 5:50

I use LinkedIn all the time for business development and I can't even be asked to send a message, I just send a voice note. Hey, how are you doing? It's Sam Hakes from the Financial Plan of Life. I just look at your profile, really keen to speak to you about coming on my podcast, perhaps talk to you a little bit about some of the work I do as well in attracting top talent to your business. Loving your profile. Have you got two minutes? Here's a link to just book in and have a chat with me and I find that the personalization of it works really well.

Speaker 1: 6:14

And when you end up getting on that Zoom call, I don't even like the telephone anymore. Once I get on that Zoom call, I build a relationship with them so much quicker. And no beautiful glossy pamphlet, no well-constructed email, no link to a funnel marketing system will supersede the ability to connect with somebody deeply when you look them in the eyes. And I think the dawn of video should really enhance everybody in any client-facing role, especially financial planning, because the old school didn't use it. They're only not really using it. I'm speaking to quite a couple of young. I spent a young guy last week actually at St James's Place through Instagram 200 grand's worth of business through Instagram in the last year through face-to-face, straight through a system, straight online, straight into a system where he's booking them in for that face-to-face chat and it works an absolute treat.

Speaker 2: 7:08

Yeah, I must admit, I didn't even know you could do voice notes on LinkedIn to know what your one, so I haven't figured it out for myself yet or taking the time to look at it. But yeah, I think there's a lot of people get probably too caught up in different marketing funnels and how do I do this and how do I do the other. But I've got to say I've never spent a penny on marketing or advertising. I just ask clients for referrals. I speak to professional introducers. I show them what we can do. Actually, I actively encourage the introducer to be a client of ours first and foremost and explain to them how we work and why we do what we do, and then, once they understand it, they can sell it far better than be an advocate.

Speaker 2: 7:48

And yeah, too many people, like I say, I think in the 80% bucket are spending money on different methods of advertising, expecting this tidal wave of stuff to come in, but actually just asking for referrals. I get two to three introductions and referrals a week and I'm just having conversations. I'm not paying for it, it's just and it's that momentum that you mentioned earlier. It's kind of that mushroom effect and the quicker you do it, one goes to three, goes to nine, goes to 27. And that's how you grow a business quickly. That's how you find more clients quickly.

Speaker 2: 8:22

It's not a case of, well, let's use SEO or let's do whatever. It's all a distraction. So, yeah, that's honing in, narrowing in on exactly that. 20% is the simple stuff and it's very effective. And we also have to remember that a lot of people want to use our services because they leave. They lead busy lives. You know the cash rich, asset rich, perhaps time poor. So let's just cut to the facts and deal with things. You still got to do that in an empathetic way. You still do that in a way that generates a record. You can't shortcut that, but you need to be quickly but expert. I can get to the heart of the problem and then demonstrate. You can solve it without using too much jargon. No jargon, ideally, but just, but just hitting the sweet spot of what it is that they want to know.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Fantastic, great advice. Just get stuck in, take action. You know you can waste so much time planning and reviewing and going into the detail and unless you're actually speaking to somebody, what's the actual point? You mentioned there about introducers, introducer relationships and within that 20% of your time you spend that with introducers and you're asking for business, you're asking for referrals. How do you segment that then? What? What are you doing? How do you target introducers? What would be a typical introducer for you? And perhaps, if someone's listening now who's struggling a little bit with introducers, what kind of advice could you give them?

Speaker 2: 10:34

Yeah, okay. So again, this is stuff learned by accident. It wasn't deliberate from outset and I'd love to say I'd love to claim that it was, but it's not. But this is the whole point of this. Maybe I can help other people shortcut this journey right. So the first thing first is that they have to be an advocate of what you do. So I would go to an introducer and I would ask them and I'd be interested in them and what their client base is and what is it that's different about them and what do you show your clients which is really value adding? Because actually, maybe there are opportunities that I could identify for you If I understand more about who you work with. This could be a mutually beneficial relationship, but they need to, ideally, be a client of ours as well. They need to understand it, they need to get it and they've got to have their heart in it as well as their head, and then it will just flow. They become your biggest marketing support. They are your advocate. They have hundreds of people that they will want to put in front of you and actually the challenge becomes more so deciding who do you really want to work with Well, who do you serve best but ways that I've found accountants.

Speaker 2: 11:40

We have three accountants they introduced to us. One was just the accountant that did our company accounts and my personal stuff. Another accountant I met through a finance director and I spoke to him about what we did. He saw a presentation that I gave and he wanted to speak to me about his own finances. That was a really easy win. And then we've got outsourced HR companies also referred to us because we do employ benefits as well as private client work and it's just look, I explain my story as well. I never leave that off the table. So there's not a client who doesn't know about my story. There's not an introducer who doesn't know about my story. And I suppose it's that authenticity and just the fact that I am happy to share information about myself, which means that people impart it back the other way and you build that connection. I think the best way to ever build trust with somebody is to actually reveal personal information about yourself. And then it comes back and forth and not only do you actually again get to know somebody really well, but you've shown your vulnerabilities, particularly with what my aspects of my life are, and I'm not ashamed of things to tell people the good, the bad and the ugly and I think that's what carries weight.

Speaker 2: 12:51

And I think one of the best lessons I ever had, actually when it comes to introducers, was I was part of a beauty parade back in 2012 looking for auto-enrollment. I was up against six other advisors looking for auto-enrollment work and I asked them why did you choose me out of the others? I was the smallest company, I was the sole advisor, it was just me. I didn't have any support, and yet there could be this tidal wave of lots of companies they could send over. And it came down to two things. Firstly, I didn't speak about anything else apart from the problem they wanted to have sold, so everybody else was talking about. Well, we could then deal with the company owners. We can manage that. Well, they just wanted a pension brought to enrollment, so let's tackle the matter in hand.

Speaker 2: 13:29

And then, secondly, I didn't offer to give any kickbacks.

Speaker 2: 13:33

I wasn't going to give them a share of commission.

Speaker 2: 13:34

I wasn't going to give them necessarily a referral back.

Speaker 2: 13:38

I was just there to solve the problem and it's all about the client betterment. If we have the sole focus of we want your client betterment, we want to have an excellent service and that's going to reflect well on you. That's enough and that's all any introducer really wants. If they're honest and if they're asking for 25% of this, that and the other, you're probably not a very good fit anyway and they're probably not actually going to be as successful in terms of sending over a number of referrals as one. That is just about the client betterment. And they will land the ones that want the client betterment, the ones that understand what your value proposition is, and they will be able to identify the best fits for you. And actually it comes to a point where you might be too busy and you've just got to turn people away and they'll get irritated with you for their thinking well, that's a lost revenue because you're turning away things. So I never worked with any introducers that want a kickback as well as another key point to it.

Speaker 1: 14:30

A couple of things brilliant. A couple of things that I was going to dissect. First off, you mentioned your story, and I guess your story also was why you got into financial planning. So can we start there and just take a little look at that?

Speaker 2: 14:44

Yeah for sure. So I mean it's a really boring answer, isn't it? Because there's not a single person you've interviewed that didn't say they didn't fall into financial planning. So it's add me to the numbers, because I fell into it. My left university, I went on a graduate scheme. I had my enthusiasm drained out of me by older members of teams that you know the old adage of people saying I'm 30 years experienced. They are, but it's the same year, 30 times over, and you go into a corporate world and you meet a lot of people like that.

Speaker 2: 15:17

And so at 27, I decided I wanted to do something very different and I left the company I worked for. I started mucking around with property in Vitalettes and Off-Plan. I made a bit of money doing that, but again, it wasn't regulated. There wasn't a barrier to entry and I was up in the Northwest of England and I had loads of friends that lived in London and obviously the streets are paved with gold down here. So you've got to get here, because this is where the action is was kind of what I was told and I didn't know what financial planning was or financial advice was whatsoever. Day one I expected that I probably have two screens that I'd be trading, I'd be buying and selling and I'd be thinking about equities and this, that the other, and it completely wasn't at all.

Speaker 2: 16:01

And actually on my very first day in 2007, not too long after the Northern Rockets had the bank run, I was told that I would be doing a lot of basic things like getting people to write their will and take insurance, and actually, about a week after, being told that, the penny really dropped, because I connected all of that with the fact that my dad died when I was 10 and he was only 44. And the only reason why I had the childhood I had was because he had a lot of life insurance. He was the managing director of the company and had he not been the managing managing director, he wouldn't have had that fate and I wouldn't have had the childhood that I had. So after he died, I didn't get taken out of school, we didn't move house. My mom hadn't worked for years. She didn't have to go to work. She didn't have to do. This sounds terrible, but she didn't have to go and find another partner and make a new man her financial plan. She didn't need that.

Speaker 2: 16:58

And my life as a consequence was pretty bad because your dad's died, you 10. And I've got two older sisters, so I was the youngest of the family. But it could have been a hell of a lot worse than it was. The money doesn't make the world go round, but it certainly greases the wheels and it enables you to do a lot of stuff. So I didn't actually cry for eight years after my dad died. I was told to be the man of the family and be strong, and it was only my 18th birthday. It was a big outpouring of emotion and it was really, really tough. But look, I can tell you it's a hell of a lot worse for a lot of other people.

Speaker 2: 17:30

I actually I volunteer at a bereavement charity now and I support young people who've lost parents and grandparents and so on. And the difference between my I feel actually lucky, which is a strange thing to perhaps say, but I feel lucky and privileged for the outcome I had, which I trace it all back. It comes out of the fact that my dad had a financial advisor and he was the managing director of the company. So that is why I do what I do is I fell into it. It's not why I joined it, but it's what kept me in.

Speaker 1: 18:02

Thank you for that. Thank you for sharing that. What's the bereavement charity called? It's called Stand by Me. And what do they? What do they do? What's their focus?

Speaker 2: 18:12

Yeah, so they're based around where I live in North Hertfordshire and Stephen Edge and essentially they have a seven week program for young children. They can be primary age, they can be teenagers, it varies but essentially it's the fact that we don't know how to grieve when somebody dies. We don't really know what to do and everyone's experience is going to be different. But there are some simple things that you can do to help people figure things out. And I suppose, like I said when I was told at the age of 10, you're the man of the family, you've got to look after your mum and your sisters. A 10 year old's brain connects that to being well, don't cry. Trying is not something that you want to do in front of somebody else because they're going to cry and actually it's at odds with everything that you should do when you re-eat. Then about the theory of bereavement You've got to experience that pain. You've got to let that into your life, as hard as it is. You've got to accept that death is a final thing and that person's not coming back. You know, when I was in my teenage years, I'd have reoccurring dreams about my dad just being away on business, because he used to fly to France every now and then with work and I'd wake up in a bit of a cold sweat and think he was going to walk through the door and your brain plays tricks on you. So we have to get the young people to again. There's so many parallels with financial planning as well. I don't do any of the talking, which is really difficult, because I want to impart and let them know this was me. I'm 43 now, but you are 10. When I was 10, this happened, but I don't do that. You've got to encourage people by asking the right questions, but you've just got to listen. Listening is such an underrated skill and people feeling like they're heard and they're validated. I've visibly seen the weight lift off the girl who's 14 years of age. I've seen it lift off her shoulders when I listened to her tell me about her dad die. But it's really powerful stuff so I would have loved to have had that. I didn't have that. It was 1990 when he died.

Speaker 2: 20:17

Charities like that are few and far between. It's a postcode lottery. You're reliant upon mental services and child mental services and them navigating through all of that and people being recognized. But I'm also a huge advocate of look if you stem the flow in childhood of pain and problems, you stop why the social thing is knocking on. So if you help somebody come to terms with the fact that their parents died, maybe they don't enter into a system that could have been the route they shouldn't have gone down to, be it gangs, be it drugs, be it other things that we might rely on as a crutch to get over that pain.

Speaker 2: 20:56

As I say, I'm lucky. I mean, my outlet was that I just played a hell of a lot of football and I attached to other people Again, you look back, I attached to my football coach, another male role model, my next-door neighbors, their dad, who actually died 18 months ago and I hadn't seen them for 25 years. But I made it to his funeral and I sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed. And it's the realization that actually I was scoring up a hell of a lot of pain from my own dad and I'd never realized that I'd attached a lot to him being a farmer figure in substitute until he died. And I only connected all of that to the theory of it now that I'm a volunteer of this charity.

Speaker 2: 21:39

But I really want to help those children. I'm actually also the fundraising trustee for the charity. I was appointed that at the back in the last year and I'm trying to raise funds for the charity, so that's something else. That is another reason why I want to get out there and get known. There's got to be a hell of a lot of insurers out there that shouldn't be putting their hands in their pockets to support what they're making money out of, which is people's death, so they can give it back to support the children or those that will breathe.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Thank you so much for sharing that story and you're so spot on in respect of talking and listening, because talking and listening is the thing that releases oxytocin. The oxytocin is the love drug that connects us. You turn the story that was painful into something that was very inspiring, and I can understand how. If you sit in front of a client and you explain the benefits of why your father took out life cover and how that actually improved your life, and you talk about that in a positive sense, not in a way that death is something that is terrible and you can't talk about it, you bring it to the surface and the things that can be done and the way a life can go if somebody protects them. I think protection and I hear this a lot okay, because I do the production for the Just Covered podcast at Legal in General and somebody I'm going to introduce you and I'm going to follow it back up because I think you make an amazing guest and I'd love to get to meet you on a face-to-face basis when we record it, because your story is incredible and I think your story should inspire other financial planners to not go away from the difficult conversation of death and life cover, because it's the fundamental framework, isn't it? It's the fundamental foundations of financial planning. It goes life protection, pensions, investments, right. So I can understand why, if you're talking to introduces in that way, why they like you? Because you are doing something that makes a difference, going back to the charity, and I'm on this at the moment. You're going to have to bear with me because I'm emotional at the moment.

Speaker 1: 23:35

I am emotional at the moment and I've always tried to give back to others. I went through a 12-step process around drinking about five years ago and I gave up alcohol and it was really difficult for me to give up alcohol. I grew up in a household with a dad who's an alcoholic, an abling mother. It was very hard for me and I developed coping mechanisms and all sorts of things and drinking became a very easy habit to deal with my problems of the traumas growing up in that environment. Right, my dad had his problems. I don't blame him. In fact, recently I've just got back in contact with him. I'm so glad I have. Just a story reminds me the fact that they're not here forever and we need to kind of try to understand the problems that we all have and look past them and hopefully they change, but not to blame based on trauma.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Now, giving back to others during that process that I went through has now transcended, also across the talk club, the men's mental fitness charity, because men have a difficulty, don't they, in opening up and sharing how they actually feel. And I've gone through it recently where I've gone through some real trouble, real difficulties, and I've lent in to other men and it's been so powerful to be able to share how I feel because it takes my pride away and it allows me to be vulnerable so I can start to reflect properly on the things that I can change and the impact that I've had from others that I've lent in to, especially within the financial planning professions. I know a lot of people now in there and they're so welcome in there and I've just done this thing around. How are you at a 10?

Speaker 1: 25:07

This is the talk club philosophy. How are you at a 10? Why? What are you doing to work on your mental fitness and what are you grateful for today? And usually at the end you check back out again. Your numbers should hopefully be higher. So, yeah, I'm all for that. Implementing that in the process of advice is amazing. So introduce the relationships. I can understand why you're winning them in that way and why you're getting so many referrals. Do you find that it's kind of an education piece when it comes to dealing with introducers, because you said you almost we said to like some of your clients, like accountants, are using your services for financial planning. Do you find a lot of the time they, even in those positions where you might assume that they know what they're doing, they actually don't, or maybe they need a different perspective.

Speaker 2: 25:51

For sure. Yeah, we don't know what we don't know, right, and that's true of everyone, and there's a lot of stuff that accountants will do that I'm not aware of. I don't have to slap them around the face with it, though. It's a gentle conversation. Rather than challenging them directly in butting heads, we just need to migrate them from their position where they are to a position of being no in the know, so to speak, without making them feel belittle. It's the same with any client as well, because any prospective client if you start picking apart what they've got in terms of existing investments, you're actually criticising their previous beliefs and their methods of how they did things. None of us like to be told they were wrong, right? That's probably quite an obvious thing. So you've got to do it in a gentle way that doesn't upset them, and I think the best way to do that is just to calmly, rationally explain how we do what we do, and then they see it all in its glory. For one, its simplicity, but two, how you've made, you've changed their perspective and their outlook of their own financial world.

Speaker 2: 27:07

So many people think, well, I should take my tax-free cash because I'm now of retirement age, should you? Let's explore. What is it that's important to you? What are you gonna do in the next five years? What sort of things might you spend that money on? Go down that path rather than well, hang on a second, don't you know? It's the most tax-efficient place you can keep your. That's just not serving anybody, it's not helping and it's too confrontational. And it's the same with the introducers. So they do definitely think that we do stuff that we don't do and they do just think about the tools of our trade rather than actually the value that we add, the conversations that we have with clients around.

Speaker 2: 27:47

But I use the kind of questioning when I speak to prospective clients. So I asked them like shortcut, and I don't actually ask the first question, but I asked them if you had five to 10 years left to live and you have the same resources available to you right now, what would you do with your time? And then I asked them if I told you it was too late and you had 24 hours left to live, what would you regret? Who didn't you get to be and what didn't you get to do? And it's really powerful because we don't know. We don't have five to 10 years left to live.

Speaker 2: 28:21

You know, the 14th of April next year, for the day, I'll be the same age that my dad was when he died. So from that moment on I kind of feel like I have a responsibility to live the best version of my life, because he didn't get a chance. I also have two children. So, bringing it back to the simplicity of well, why am I hydrated? Why have I been to the gym? I need to be the best version of myself that I can be, not just for me, but I mean that is important, but it flows, because then I can be a better dad, I can be present with them, I can make sure my health is good, because, hopefully, if I can control some things that are controllable, my health is one. I can still get cancer, as my dad did, but I can be around for longer and I can be a better dad. I can go to the football at the weekend and I can do all the things that you'd love to do with parents.

Speaker 1: 29:17

But yeah, I'm going on a tangent there, right? No, I like it. I love your angle and the approach to well-being entwined with financial service. So financial well-being is such a big deal, but I don't think everybody has the ability to deliver it in a way that hits the mark. I think you've got people going through the process of I've got to get these exams and none of that's practical and that teaches you about people and how to connect with them and how to understand them and what they're going through, what it's like to be a human, because we're all trying to work that out ourselves.

Speaker 1: 30:00

And I think the approach to understanding what it's like to be a human would only make you a better salesperson, consultant or financial planner. Right, if you're dealing with people on a face-to-face, you need to understand humans. You better off understanding humans, I think, than understanding every single technicality of something. If you want to understand every single technicality of something, focus purely on power planning or compliance or administration, investment management, understanding, I suppose, behaviors around there, around investment behaviors and things like that. But even it comes to people and you're in front of people.

Speaker 1: 30:42

There should be a huge investment you shouldn't there in understanding yourself. Know yourself first before you start to know somebody else. I think that's a big thing. So if you aren't looking at them, getting a mirror out and taking a good hard look at why you do things, how you're affected, what are your character defects, what are your fears and what are your worries and what are your resentments, then you're not going to be able to really truly understand somebody that lies in front of you and I think that's a big gap there. Is there anybody within financial planning training for instance that might well have influenced? You said kinder, didn't you? Is there anything else within financial planning and you feel free to go back to kinder if you want that has influenced that side of your ability to go out and build relationships and understand the human side of money.

Speaker 2: 31:27

Well, I did Paul Armson's Inspiring Advisors I think that was 2019. And that finessed things a bit more on it. Prior to that, it was mostly around that I wanted to protect parents and I wanted to make sure I had these simple things in place. But it's also maturity and personal growth and as we get older, every cell in your body is replaced every seven years. You're, physically, 100% a different human being every seven years. Psychologically, you move forward as well, and I think what a great example of growth is when you actually almost feel embarrassed to look back at something because you're so far away from what it was that you were doing then to where you are now. You almost get that sense of embarrassment and you shouldn't be embarrassed. It's just growth and that's a great thing. We all should be looking to improve it all the time, but Paul Armson finessed it as much as it brought to like the well, hang on a second.

Speaker 2: 32:21

It wasn't just the fact that I had a great childhood, or better than it certainly would have been, and it still was a great childhood. There is the fact that there are so many people out there that aren't living a fulfilled life. My grandmother actually died aged 101, 18 months ago and for the first time since my dad had died, I met my mum's cousin at the funeral and I didn't know this till that point, but he actually said to me that the classic kind of story of my dad's death bed. He asked my dad, is there anything you'd regret? So it is the kind of question. It is that final question.

Speaker 2: 32:59

And he said he wished he'd spent more time with his family because he was the managing director of various companies. He'd get headhunted and he would have left for work every day before I got out of bed and every day I'd already gone to bed before he came home from work. So I didn't see him, apart from the weekend, and then he needs his own time. We'd go and see other family and I've got two older sisters so I'd get a third of his attention one day a week at best.

Speaker 2: 33:28

So why I've got my own company or part of the reason is because I can see my kids. You know, I did the drop off this morning just before I went to the gym and I can control my time far better than being at the whims of a boss and a corporate saying be here, be there, do that. But he regretted the fact that he didn't spend more of his time with his family. My daughter will be four next month and I've already spent my far and away loads more time with her than my dad did with me, and you don't want to be on your deathbed regretting not seeing your kids and not seeing your family.

Speaker 1: 34:03

I love spending time with my daughter. She's like. She makes me so happy. I ridiculously happy. I'm so proud of her. I'm so also proud of the relationship that we have and how open we are and how loving we are to each other.

Speaker 1: 34:14

And to think that I would miss something like that or somebody doesn't have that because it goes by like goes by so quickly, I can't believe she's eight years old. These are all really interesting questions and these are all really the whole kind of emotional subject I think is definitely something that has to be brought into more of the business development side of it, especially when the products and services that you offer are actually delivering that ability to freeze somebody's time up, for example, to retire earlier or to protect their family and the inevitable things that might or the things that might well happen. So I think you know that emotional connection to financial planning I think is again so important. It goes back like if you are considering to be a financial planner but you're technically minded, you're lacking those skills and you need to invest in those soft and practical skills, and these are the things that are missing from those that are coming through because they're not being taught it. You know they're not being taught it in the way it should be taught.

Speaker 1: 35:07

You're almost having to either learn it from another profession and then come in. But if you're expecting to be taught that when you come in you're not going to be. You have to either have it or you have to gain some training or some coaching, or get on YouTube, read some books and really start to understand the human nature, understand what makes people tick and how you connect with them. You run your own business. You're also a financial planner and you take that really seriously both sides of it. What's it like wearing two hats? What are the two different hats when it comes to running a financial planning business and being the financial planner?

Speaker 2: 35:42

Yes, it does feel like juggling a lot of the time and it is difficult. It's only now that we've got to a size of seven as a team that I can start to hand over plant relationships, which really does cause a lot of heartache for me, because I've really got to understand these people at a deep level and I'm connected, but there's only so many people I can speak to in the course of a day and I don't want to be average at doing this and average at doing the running of the business. So I've got to develop a team that can also love that client the way that I love them, and I used to know every client's date of birth because I used to key it in and do all of the paperwork as well as meeting them, and I still remember probably the first hundred or so client's dates of birth. But from there I lose track of client's dates of birth, because that's the evolution of growing and so on Running the business we're directly authorized, so I made it harder than it necessarily needed to be. I had been part of a network as part of the journey of 2010 to where we are right now, but I couldn't stand being part of a network. There were I won't say which one it is, obviously and stuff like that. But even in the product selection and the research, there were areas of the tools in the background that were grayed out so that you arrived at a solution that had a great invested interest for the network when it did for the client. Well, that doesn't sit with me. I actually stopped doing any investment work for about seven months till I got authorized by the FCA to go directly. Authorized Cost me financially. There was business that I could have done, but I just refused to do it. I just carried on doing the protection until I could get set up in the February 2015 it was. So that is a challenge and it's something that I did.

Speaker 2: 37:29

A business management degree, it's something I love. Knowing about business models, how they operate. But it comes back to what we said at the top. It's about simplicity. You know. Know the process, get rid of the 80% that's superfluous that you don't need. Focus on the 20%, focus on the relationships with the team members. So something I encourage all of the team to do and I've pretty much grown financial advisors, so I've never recruited anybody that's got prior experience. I'm not a gist. It just so happens to be that everybody's younger than me. But I like that vitality and I think I think one of the one of the tips I give anybody is never lose your enthusiasm. As soon as you've lost your enthusiasm, whatever you do, it's getting over. You've got to find something else that you can be enthusiastic about. So I say to the team look my why is what it is.

Speaker 2: 38:21

I cited Paul Armstrong earlier as somebody that kind of finessed it a little bit more and made me think about the life after death and the adult rather than from the child's perspective. But I was lucky and I'd almost call it my kryptonite that I had adversity at a young age which taught me a lot. So even at 27, I probably had an older head on my shoulders than somebody that was 45, say. But and that's to my benefit Not everybody has that life, which is a good thing, but everybody's probably had some pain. You know parents have got divorced. You mentioned your father earlier in terms of the fact that you didn't have a relationship with him and his alcoholism and how you've. You know how that shaped you and your life and actually going to the source of the pain can really help us uncover our purpose, because there's all this. It can always be a pull factor for motivation, but generally the push factor works better. So if you think in Carrot and Stick, stick really does help quite a lot better because that pain I'm almost going into now how we, how we work with the children when they've been breathed You've got to feel that pain. And as soon as you feel that pain, what do you get action and what do you get direction and you start to move.

Speaker 2: 39:37

There's a lot of advice out there that are sitting on this treasure trove of their purpose and their why, but they've not spoken about it, they've not thought about it. You know, I had a conversation actually with an advisor that I met at the dimensional conference at the back end of last year and we got talking and it turns out that he's the son of a farm farmer and his parents of divorce and I'm really keen to find out what people's why it's and why they want to give financial advice. It was a great podcast you did the other week with Bobby Sahota and I really like the fact that she asks people to think about their why. But I think we need to delve deeper than just why, because people say well, I like helping people. Look, most human beings like helping other people with human beings. We naturally geared towards loving, I think, not not tendencies towards narcissism and being a horrible person, right? So figure out what your pain point was.

Speaker 2: 40:28

So you know, I speak to this, this, this other advisor, and I think, well, you don't have a niche, so to speak, as to who you really want to help and why. But let's think about their background. Well, farmers, they're probably working seven days a week. Well, that's just alarm bells of my dad not seeing him, except I did get the weekends. So if you could do a financial plan for a farmer to show them that they could afford a farm hand and they could get two days off a week, and that means that you're then liberating the childhood of their children to go to the football, to take the door to the ballet classes Very stereotypical, right, but whatever those things are, spend that time with their eight year old that they love. That's really important.

Speaker 2: 41:09

You're changing somebody's life and this person's parents got divorced. Well, maybe they got divorced because dad was working too much and it was a bit of an unhappy household. And you can unlock all of that with the power of a good financial plan and just getting people to realize what is enough. And actually most people die with too much. So let's not have you die with too much. Let's not fall into that category. Let's have enough, as Paul Lomson would say, and let's change people's lives for the better. But if you can tap into that pain that you've had because your parents divorced, that is going to send you really far. Now I'm projecting too much because maybe that doesn't get to blow their boat, but I think there's a lot of advisors have that secret source, if you like, in their DNA, but they're just not uncovering it or thinking about it.

Speaker 1: 41:57

I think you're right there. Do you think? It's because, also as well, like there's a conflict between the selection of products and services that follow the actual financial plan and that can often muddy the water when it comes to giving the advice and being authentic in the beginning. There's this thing called the Academy of Life Planning that's coming out and it's out now and the chap who has developed it is trying to separate the life planning away from the actual planning element, away from the product selection and choice of investments, because he believes that that muddies the water of giving the true financial plan and he's trying to develop almost like a new role out there. So instead of like trying to get people out there who are level four qualified and going out and being financial planners, doing both, he's saying we need more people that are out there delivering the plans and removing the actual product selection side of it to be able to deliver the full plan and you charge from that side and then an introduction is made based on the recommendation. The recommendations are made and introduction is made based on the needs of that life plan.

Speaker 1: 43:02

It's interesting because if I was to become a financial planner, for instance, if I was to become a financial advisor for me. That side of it I love. I would love to do that. I'd love to build a business where I'm. That's why I love all these financial coaches that are out there now. They're doing the coaching bit, they're doing the deep stuff, and then, if they uncover and discover an opportunity, it's passed over to the person who can then look at the plan and execute it. And I don't know, I just like the separation. I just wondered what you thought about that. There's so much going on in a financial planner's world right now that perhaps that muddies the water a little bit to the authenticity of the plan.

Speaker 2: 43:43

I can understand why people can think that I can only speak for myself. So I know that when I'm doing things, I'm doing them solely for the client betterment, and I'd love to think that that just comes across. And I'd love to think that that would be the case for anybody that's thinking about taking financial advice, that they've got a really good bullshit detector and they will segregate those that are interested for the right reasons and those that aren't. Yes, we could talk about fixed fees and we could have it so that it's not about incentives, about how much is invested or whatever it might be, but I think you lose a lot in between as well. So if somebody's just dealing with the plan and not the execution and they're not seeing things helistically, things can slip between the cracks and ultimately I don't think it is rocket science. So there's no reason why I couldn't do both of those bits of it exceptionally well. And next year we still need an ongoing relationship. And I say to every client and I mean this this is a partnership for decades. This is not a transaction. You're going to hit your peak vulnerability when you're at your wealthiest, so that's after you've stopped working more often than not, and if you're the similar age to me or younger, I may have stopped working. So why? I'm really keen about building a business that actually has people that know their purpose, love the people they work with and just wants to provide the best service, because they feel that you're not going to do the wrong thing by somebody, it's going to flow and everything's going to be there.

Speaker 2: 45:16

And what happens if, two years down the line, the person that's done the life planning has decided they're doing something else or you don't fit their niche anymore? Who's their relationship going to be with the financial planner? What if they're not aligned? So it is pretty simple. I mean we can overcomplicate things. We can start talking about QROPs, qnuts, like it's about having the right money in the right place at the right time.

Speaker 2: 45:40

That's what financial planning is. It doesn't necessarily matter what the tax wrapper is. Yes, there can be a correct answer from a tax perspective or whatever it might be. But even still, with clients, I speak about the fact with any financial decision you make, there's a logical output and an emotional output, and I can't deny the emotional output. So if paying off your mortgage emotionally is better for you than putting money in a pension, that's what you damn well do.

Speaker 2: 46:05

I'm not here to dictate to you what you should or shouldn't do, and I would just like to think that every advisor operates within that parameter of just being very honest and doing the right thing and, look, it pays dividends. Because then you, when you ask them, look, you become a client. Clearly I must have done something right. Is there anybody else that you can think of that looks a bit like you friends, family, colleagues that you think might benefit from the experience that you've had. They're going to refer you and that's how you grow the business, not by just trying to put as much into pensions or whatever it might be. Good news travels.

Speaker 1: 46:45

Yeah, I love it. I love the whole referral side of it. Again, can I look at financial planning as a profession and where would I fit in based on who the type of person I am? I love meeting people, I like building relationships, I like the partnership side and I think it's wide open in financial planning to go out and build partnerships, build relationships with communities so many online communities, there's so many ways a financial planner can get in to be that key person of influence within a specific niche or area. I think it's wide open and I think, as a hunter, as somebody enjoys the relationship side, I don't think I would be the person in financial planning and definitely considering the whole financial planning world, by the way, being in it for a while but it's just I don't want to go through all the qualifications, I don't want to do all of that side of it and I would see myself additionally being like because you've got the employee benefit side of your business, haven't you?

Speaker 1: 47:35

And I like that. You know the ability to go in and talk to businesses and what they have to and how they're doing things and what's employee well-being like and all the benefits of it, and you know if your employees were financially well, that would have an impact on your bottom line as a business. So what are you doing about it? What benefits have you got for them? I love all that and the workshops and things. I could imagine like that. I would really enjoy the actual building, the investment stuff. I would have to hand that over to somebody else because I just don't think I've got the interest in that side of it. It wouldn't really interest me. Just interesting to ask you now and sort of come to the end of the podcast. I think one of the areas I like to look at is what do you think you're going to change? What would you like to change about financial planning in 2004 and onwards?

Speaker 2: 48:31

So getting back to the realities, the brass taxes of what a financial plan is. I think there's a lot of great work being done by a lot of great advisors with financial plans and cash flow modeling and we are getting to where it should be. Rdr has really pushed on the whole service-led aspect of it and clients now get a far better product or, where it's a service, but they get a better outcome than they did back when I started in 2007. When I first started, we only would catch up with the client six months later to try and increase their premiums or get a referral. We didn't have any sort of method as to how we would talk about how things have moved on and it was all very immature. But RDR has really forced that forward.

Speaker 2: 49:16

But I think people get a bit too worked up on the 80% of stuff that they shouldn't be thinking about and there's not enough protection. I would say this wouldn't I, but there's not enough protection being spoken about. If you look at the statistics, there's a lot of people that are focusing on AUM. They wanna get a saleable business. They wanna extricate themselves from the business, sell it and walk away with an eight-figure sum or whatever it's gonna be, but they've not actually done the basics. And if you could picture yourself looking at the children, looking in their eyes at the funeral of their parents that's just died, then you'd damn well be brave enough to have that conversation.

Speaker 1: 49:54

There's a chap I got him really well with on the podcast Again. He was on the League in General Podcast, adrian Benjamin, who focuses purely on life protection. That's his job and he's passionate about it, like you are, really passionate about it. I've got the Academy and people always ask what's the best route? Should I get an mortgage advice route first before becoming a financial planner, or should I go straight into financial planning and financial advice? I honestly would say go and sell or go and advise on life protection. Get out there and smash the phones, get out there and business develop and go out there and change people's lives and understand the value and the benefit of life protection, because it's only going to enhance your ability to deliver a full financial plan.

Speaker 1: 50:44

Build rapport, one of the hardest areas is talking about death and positioning it. You hear a lot about mortgage advisors. They don't sell it, they skim over it. They don't sell enough of it. There's a lot of training and development and that's what Adrian Benjamin is going to be doing is building and training and development program to help advisors and mortgage advisors help the best to position. That's what the Just Covered podcast is about as well is talking about those scenarios where you can do it If you're listening and you're younger, or you're listening and you need to it and you think you've got to go straight into financial planning. You don't. You can go straight into life protection and you can earn really good money, can't you? In the life protection world? It is wide open because not everybody's doing a very good job on it.

Speaker 2: 51:27

Yes, I guess. Look, I was a financial advisor but our focus was probably protection. There would be investments flow out of that. It's only as I've got older and I've matured and I've had a family and I bought a house and so on that you see the bigger picture and you get that experience which helps you become a better advisor. It's probably one of the best professions there is for just getting better with age, because you can't help it. You've got more wisdom, you've got more life experience, so you just naturally can impart more useful information to your clients.

Speaker 2: 51:58

I did fundamentally start with protection at the core of everything that I was doing. Like I said, it was a real climb down, thinking I wasn't going to be trading and having two screens and it wasn't going to be this exciting, fast-moving thing. I was looking at wills and protection. I did do that, but in my first year I was number one in open work. I'd done over half a million pounds in commission in my first 12 months. In two and a half years I'd had over 1.2 million pounds in commission. I banked 196,000 of it. So I didn't get the lion's share of it, but you definitely can do really well. I think it's just got to be that it comes from a place of authenticity, of why Actually being caring of it's not the crime that I see, it's their children that I see, but it's easy for me. I can do that because that was me. I can see past that and I can see the need for it. Yes, it's going to pay a good commission, but that is not the be-all and end-all. That's just the output.

Speaker 2: 52:58

You focus on doing the right job and you focus on having that conversation and engaging with that person. What would your family do if you died? How would your wife cope? She's not been working for five years. Would she go back into the labor market quite easily or would she struggle to find a job? You've got to find a nice way of answering these questions, because you can't attack somebody. I absolutely think it's a great way for people to get into it and I think they can earn a lot of money.

Speaker 2: 53:25

It is the foundational aspects that we shouldn't then forget because we think well, I'm no longer a protection advisor, I'm a financial planner. Let's not get too high-faluted about it. We still should be doing all of those basics. Every client they need their will, they need their lasting power of attorney. Have we written their life insurance into trust? Are we making sure they're reclaiming the high-rate tax relief on their workplace pension scheme? It's really basic stuff and that's why we do the employee benefits, because there's 50% of the population who don't need financial advice. They just need to think about budgeting and debt and then we're quite elitist. As a profession, we only really deal with about the top 8% of UK households. About 42% of UK households don't get this information. The things that I would really change about 2024, not just the protection side of things is let's serve those 42% of people.

Speaker 2: 54:27

My dad was the M&E. What if he died five years earlier? What if he was the ops manager? He didn't have that life insurance. My life would have been very difficult, but would he have been less deserving of that knowledge? Of course he wouldn't. If I can stand up in front of a room of a company and speak to 50 people and one, go impart this basic information about don't stay in your default fund. You've got 25. You've probably got 40 years to go until you're going to take your pension benefits. You've got the capacity to take more risk.

Speaker 2: 54:58

Maybe you should think about moving to 100% equities. A little bit of education about what happens with the stock market. It's not rocket solids it really isn't, but it's not tall. It really should be, but you still really get people to drive and make that action. I think, going back to what you were saying earlier about a life planner separate from the person actually implementing things, you don't guarantee that the action is going to happen if you have two separate people doing it. The action is the hardest part. Again, you could take it to the 80-20. If I keep on using this analogy, the action is definitely the 20%. We've got to get it over the line. It's all well and good talking about it. It's just hot air until you've got these plans in place and there's the products. As a result.

Speaker 1: 55:40

Love it Guy thank you so much today for sharing your thoughts and your feelings and how you position yourself as a financial planner in this world. I really, really appreciate it. It's been brilliant getting to know you. I tell you what, if I was a financial planner or if I was in the financial planning profession, I think I'd be knocking on your door because someone like you, I think, would be not only a great leader, good visionary, but a great mentor as well. Thank you so much for your time today.

Speaker 2: 56:05

Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed it.