Unlock the secrets to entrepreneurial success in the financial world with Alan Smith of Capital Asset Management and co-host of The Real Adviser Podcast ( TRAP) we start our journey with Alan tracing the milestones of building a financial planning firm, where vision meets values, and the magnetic pull of a mission-driven culture draws exceptional talent.
Alan's candid narration of his rise provides a roadmap for those yearning to carve out their niche in the financial planning landscape, emphasising the critical role financial advisers play in steering clients' financial dreams to reality!
Explore the delicate balance of money and personal ambitions with us, as we discuss why understanding clients' life stories is at the heart of meaningful financial advice.
Alan and I dissect the importance of assembling diverse teams that blend technical prowess with empathetic client relations, reinforcing the value of a trusted adviser in navigating life's complex financial web.
We probe into the evolving nature of financial planning careers, challenging traditional hierarchies, and illuminating the benefits of role specialisation in fostering both team satisfaction and exceptional client service.
Step into the future with us as Alan shares his firm's bold strides in embracing AI to revolutionise business efficiency, freeing human creativity to enhance client relationships.
We wrap up the episode by pondering the art of building a niche personal brand and the nuanced art of monetising influence through financial education.
for those that don't know, Alan is also the host of Bullet Proof Entrepreneur Podcast!
The episode crescendos with a look at the strategic wins technology can offer businesses keen on innovation, ensuring a smooth transition into an AI-augmented era.
Join us for this engaging episode, brimming with insights for both experienced financial planners and enthusiastic entrepreneurs alike!
Begin your financial planning career journey today
Whether you are looking to become a paraplanner, administrator, mortgage and protection adviser or financial planner, the Financial Planner Life Academy is for you.
With limited entry-level job roles, giving yourself the best financial planning career education, will not only kick start your financial planning journey with relevant qualifications and skills, but it’ll also help you achieve success much faster.&nbs
Be sure to follow financial planner life on YouTube for extra content about a career within Financial Planning HIT THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!
If you're looking to start your career in Financial Planning, check out the Financial Planner Life Academy here
Reach out to Sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or career development.
Unlock the secrets to entrepreneurial success in the financial world with Alan Smith of Capital Asset Management and co-host of The Real Adviser Podcast ( TRAP) we start our journey with Alan tracing the milestones of building a financial planning firm, where vision meets values, and the magnetic pull of a mission-driven culture draws exceptional talent.
Alan's candid narration of his rise provides a roadmap for those yearning to carve out their niche in the financial planning landscape, emphasising the critical role financial advisers play in steering clients' financial dreams to reality!
Explore the delicate balance of money and personal ambitions with us, as we discuss why understanding clients' life stories is at the heart of meaningful financial advice.
Alan and I dissect the importance of assembling diverse teams that blend technical prowess with empathetic client relations, reinforcing the value of a trusted adviser in navigating life's complex financial web.
We probe into the evolving nature of financial planning careers, challenging traditional hierarchies, and illuminating the benefits of role specialisation in fostering both team satisfaction and exceptional client service.
Step into the future with us as Alan shares his firm's bold strides in embracing AI to revolutionise business efficiency, freeing human creativity to enhance client relationships.
We wrap up the episode by pondering the art of building a niche personal brand and the nuanced art of monetising influence through financial education.
for those that don't know, Alan is also the host of Bullet Proof Entrepreneur Podcast!
The episode crescendos with a look at the strategic wins technology can offer businesses keen on innovation, ensuring a smooth transition into an AI-augmented era.
Join us for this engaging episode, brimming with insights for both experienced financial planners and enthusiastic entrepreneurs alike!
Begin your financial planning career journey today
Whether you are looking to become a paraplanner, administrator, mortgage and protection adviser or financial planner, the Financial Planner Life Academy is for you.
With limited entry-level job roles, giving yourself the best financial planning career education, will not only kick start your financial planning journey with relevant qualifications and skills, but it’ll also help you achieve success much faster.&nbs
Be sure to follow financial planner life on YouTube for extra content about a career within Financial Planning HIT THAT SUBSCRIBE BUTTON!
If you're looking to start your career in Financial Planning, check out the Financial Planner Life Academy here
Reach out to Sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or career development.
Today's guest is a masterclass from Alan Smith from Capital Asset Management. Alan talks to us about AI, some of the things that he's doing right now to disrupt his own business. We talk about getting into the financial planning profession and what people should be really thinking about and businesses changing their career development plans and talent attraction strategies to attract the best people. The hierarchy needs to change. It's a bit boring and it's a bit dull. We talk about all things financial planning. He's a fantastic guest. You are definitely going to enjoy this episode, alan. Thank you for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast. The great Alan Smith, bulletproof entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:Or something. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 1:That's brilliant to have you on. I'll start with a bulletproof entrepreneur. Would you consider yourself an entrepreneur?
Speaker 2:I would now. I didn't used to think that at all. I think I'm like a lot of people, what I would call an accidental entrepreneur A lot of financial advisors, financial planners. I think certainly the conversations I've had with them over the years went down that route. What you did started and we are 20 years old this year, so we've been around quite a while actually in this business and the business started Just with me, literally me by myself, in a glorified broom cupboard, a little room above a shop in Victoria in London.
Speaker 2:And what happens is and obviously I came from a large institutional background that I thought I'd give this IFA lock ago. How difficult can it be? I can tell you there's a very steep learning curve in the early days. But in those days I just gave myself a job. I had a little inkling I could maybe do this reasonably well. I'd worked with intermediaries and advisors in my previous role and I thought if I could cherry pick the best parts from various people and organisations that I'd met, I could probably pull something together quite good. But it's literally it was me. It's long enough ago to have a full-time person to do, but literally typing Me don't do that anymore. Typing letters, sending letters in the post, answering the phone, so that's the kind of it shows just technology. That's really a pretty largely redundant. So it was me and Molly, and I certainly wasn't an entrepreneur then. I was just trying to sort of stay alive, keep my head above water and give myself a job.
Speaker 2:And what happens? Just without? I didn't write a business plan, didn't write anything. I had some ideas but I never really committed to one of these sort of big, documented plans because I didn't need to raise capital. That's the good thing about advisory business you don't need a ton of money to set up. Really A bit of savings I had. So I didn't really write a business plan.
Speaker 2:But what happens is almost sort of organically, without you really knowing it is. If you do reasonably well, then you think, well, I could do with another pair of hands here and I've got to find somebody to come and work alongside me. And then life goes on and maybe a year later you seem, oh, we're quite busy again, who else could help us out? And before you know it, maybe you look around at a couple of years, two, three years and you might have 10 people there within your organization and all of a sudden, well, hang on a minute. There's other people who are relying upon this work and this business to pay their mortgage, to feed their kids, whatever. And then you think actually this is kind of an entrepreneurial role. So I certainly wasn't that stinking that way from the beginning, but quite a number of years in I thought take a deep breath here, because now it's not just me, there's other people reliant on this. We've got increasingly a number of clients whose family's life savings, the security and well-being of them and their future you begin to realize there's quite a lot of responsibilities there and then sort of going down that entrepreneurial path is something that well, it grew on me.
Speaker 2:I suppose it wasn't just a sort of flash in the pan. I'm definitely not one of these. There are people who I consider real entrepreneurs, serial entrepreneurs. They have an idea, they go out, they borrow a ton of money, they put their house on the line, all that sort of stuff, and they do it several times. They scale up the exit, they make a lot of money and they go again. I'm not one of those, but I would consider myself to have an entrepreneurial skill set nowadays and an increasingly a flair for it, and I do like working with people with a similar sort of mindset in terms of clients and we've definitely kind of evolved our client base and our focus. And you started with mentioning thank you for mentioning it the Bulletproof Entrepreneur Podcast, which was just come out of. That just come out of my passion for dealing with and speaking with like-minded people, some of whom are clients and some of them who are not. They're just sort of in that space, fantastic.
Speaker 1:If you were to kind of think about financial planning in the state as in now as a profession. Let's not call it an industry. I used to get my hands slapped for calling it an industry, but it's a profession at the moment. Is it ready for entrepreneurs to come in and really grab it by the scruff of the neck and make it theirs?
Speaker 2:In 20 years in business, it's never been more ready than it is today, or an entrepreneurial, creative mindset. Now, you mentioned this and you're right. People often get their knickers in a twist about industry and profession. What is this blend of both? There's a huge industrial investment complex that sits at the heart of financial planning because, at the end of the day, what is financial planning? It's really helping in guiding people A to understand and articulate kind of where they are, how they are in life, really what the current sort of position is and really where they'd like to get to, what does an idealized future look like? Or, if they feel they're pretty much there right now, okay, well, how do we manage to protect and preserve and look after that situation? And so it's a combination of multiple different skillsets, factors, data, knowledge. The creative part is very much a profession. The artistic part, the financial planning part that really is a creative process of thinking, of joining dots, of recognizing what's particularly important, because it's not a pain by numbers job. You're different to me, my value is different to yours, different to hers, different to his. We've all got our individual outlook on life and so it's the role of the creative artists in the form of the smart, thoughtful financial planner to really understand those things.
Speaker 2:But it's a lot of the work we do. We have to engage with the industrial side of the business, which is investment managers, platforms, tax related issues, and that's fine. It's there for a purpose and they serve a reason. But when I was growing up, when I was in the profession, they were the most important part of the role and a big part of the intermediaries role. In those days it certainly weren't called financial planners, they were called financial advisors, very specifically, and the primary function was and it's kind of nuts looking back at it, although I have to say I think it still exists in greater numbers than I'd like to believe whereby your primary role was saying pension A is better than pension B. I've done my research, mr and Mrs Klein. I think you should put all your money in pension A because it's tough and certainly cheaper than this one, or its past investment performance is better than that one. So that was just a kind of you're effectively a kind of an intermediary looking for the best product.
Speaker 2:And what's happened over the last in the 20 years that I've been in business is that that's become largely commoditized. You still need access to place your capital within various structures that are likely to fuel your future idealized lifestyle, be they investment funds or whatever. But I don't know. A lot of the investment industry would argue with me all day long about this, but it's largely commoditized, in my opinion. You can get an off the peg investment offering very low cost, very cheap. That for 99% of people is good enough.
Speaker 2:But you've got a trillion pound industry in the UK alone still arguing about it because there's a lot of vested interest within that industry and sort of keeping that a focus, which my view is the real focus is the client, is the family, is their values and their future, and we can sort of craft a really viable, a really sort of visible and engaging opportunity for those. And then we'll use all those various tools in the toolbox or not, as the case may be, but to fuel, to fuel that ideal future. So we are on a crossroads and just about to your original question, I think having an entrepreneur and a creative and a future focused mindset, it's a fantastic time right now. We can talk about it more if you like, but there's a coming together of a lot of different things right now.
Speaker 2:I've been predicting this for years and I've been somewhat disappointed by the lack of progress, but I honestly sense that it's almost just since the beginning of 24. It's kind of been building up. But in the last few weeks I've been in conversations, I've had meetings, I've had just healthy, productive, future focused engagements with people, smart people around the sector and there's a genuine sense of positivity and optimism.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about the future, then we're talking about our future thinking. You're in that world, alan. You're enjoying that. By the sounds of it. What part do you think? The vision, the importance of a vision and values and the alignment of the two when it comes to pushing forward right now within the financial planning profession.
Speaker 2:I think it's essential. Again, these are things I've got to tell you. I just evolved my thinking over the years. The idea of having even at sort of an individual level, at a personal level, then at a company level, the idea of having a company vision, to me I just thought it's just bullshit. That's the sort of big stuff that Google or Facebook or some of these mass, massive kind of tech businesses, what this is our vision to change the world, and I used to think that was nonsense. I've come to the realization that everyone should have a vision, every business should have a mission. We should be really clear about what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2:You've heard the concept of things that Jim Collins saying a big, hairy, audacious goal, something just so damn ridiculous. I remember reading about Google, google's original mission when they set up apparently in a garage or something a couple of these guys all those years ago. Their vision was to organize all the world's information, and you can imagine how ridiculous that sounded 20 years ago, however long, how you can all guess what they've done it pretty much. Our vision the capital was to transform wealth management. We're trying to make it short, snappy I could talk, it could be a longer version of that, but transform wealth management or transform financial planning A version of that and that sounds ridiculous, a little firm like ours. How the hell are you going to do that? Well, I don't know, slowly but surely, we can weaken we can't maybe transform the entire industry, but we can certainly impact and influence our little corner of it. So, being clear about a mission and a vision and kind of embedding that and making sure that it's not just some stupid saying that no one really cares about it's on a coffee marker or a t-shirt. You've got to live it and breathe it and you've got to come back to it on a regular basis and check in and kind of recognize are the activities and actions that you are going through in a daily, weekly, monthly basis? Are they kind of in line with that mission? I think it also helps if you've got something like a bigger picture, something bigger than us bought for a team.
Speaker 2:I think the right people and certainly I find that a capital the right people are attracted to a mission-driven business, someone that's trying to do something, someone that's trying. We may well fail, who knows? But we want to, we're trying, we want to make an impact, we want to make a difference. At the end of the day, we are talking about and the industry forgets this sometimes. I specifically say the industry we're talking about family's life savings. This is it's not our money, it's other people's money and it's their security. It's their. I just think money is an anxiety-creating thing it's. I've known really rich people that got anxiety around money. I've known people with no money and they got anxiety around money and I think we can play a role. So having a big picture vision is important. And so just to come to you, your other quick point about values.
Speaker 2:Values are another thing that I thought. When you're a tiny business, you think, well, that's just, that's almost, it's a luxury to talk about values. But I've come to realize it's really important. A capital. We've got our own core values. I won't go through them all. They're called the five Cs, but things like curiosity and collaboration, things like that, and they're just things that we embrace. And again, I think it's important.
Speaker 2:There's so many examples of big companies that talk about these values and they just don't damn live them. You can tell by their actions and the. You know the fines that they get handed out. They're not, they don't live through this kind of lens of integrity. They say it but they don't do it. So we've got our core values and we will recruit people based on those. We'll identify people who've got those and we'll have a process to ask questions and engage with potential new hires and candidates and we're looking for them to reflect in those early stages, in those early conversations, that they're embracing the values that we stand for. So I do think it's important, regardless of the size, shape of the business whether you're a micro business or a big company to have a clear set of vision and values and to share it with your team on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:You talked about the little, your little corner of financial planning. Do you think your little corner of financial planning is different from the rest of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, from what I don't spend a ton of time with yeah, I don't know there's 20 something thousand. You'd know more than I do financial regulated financial planners in the UK, 25,000, something like that. I think 27,000.
Speaker 2:Right, and so how many do I know? Maybe 200 or across the board. So I know a tiny microcosm of it and I think it's like a lot of things in life. You know, the people that you hang out with, sam, your mates outside, at work or whatever I kind of a bit like you probably. You probably enjoy the same things, enjoy doing the same things, and it's the same in the profession. So the people that I know and spend time with in the profession kind of broadly share the same views as I do. You know we're talking about podcasts and we've got this other podcast called the Real Advisor podcast Trap, which again it's going to be really popular.
Speaker 2:I think it's filled the gap that didn't really exist before because there's four practitioners there talking about the issues of the day. It's not necessarily coming from you know, a fund manager or someone else is kind of not in the weeds like we are. But despite the fact that we disagree, you know, quite visually and verbally in a number of occasions, with a lot and a lot of issues, at a core level we all agree with the same, on the same thing. So those guys and a bunch of others like it and the people that go to the same conferences that I do. We're all pretty much singing from the same hymn sheet, so I was under the false pretence that, well, the whole industry thinks of this, the whole profession.
Speaker 2:There's thousands of people with the same mindset. And then I meet people who spend a lot of time with other parts of this community. I've not been disparaging in any way. There's a lot of different ways of achieving the right outcomes for ourselves and for clients, but what the feedback I get is that, you know, we are most 10% in terms of our thoughts, our processes, the way that our approach and the style that we take towards the work that we do is very much in the minority. There's still a huge part of the sector that, in my humble opinion, would benefit from learning a bit more and identifying where the real value is within the work that we do.
Speaker 1:Can you elaborate on that piece then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it can go a number of different ways. It's I've tried to simplify it. It comes down to, you know, the simple question that I'd ask. I'd ask if anyone listening to this and I'd ask anyone who's an advisor or engages with you know other human beings that you're advising clients, families.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of conversation around money. That seems to be the core thing around money. So the question I'll start by asking is what's the money for? What's the money for? What are you doing here? There's we're looking through the long wrong end of the telescope here because everyone's like talking about the money and the funds and the portfolio where I can get it for you know two basis points cheaper, or that fund I performed that one last year Whoa, what's the money for?
Speaker 2:You start asking that question to go. Well, sometimes clients that I hadn't really thought about. I just want to beat the market, I want to get a good return, but okay, okay, okay, get that. Why go a level deeper? Go another level deeper and often you'll find this because I'd like to fundamentally goes down to the base level. I want to feel secure, I want to reduce my levels of anxiety. I'm a little bit worried. I don't know if I'll be comfortable in retirement. I want to fund my kids through private school if I can afford it. My parents are getting old, I don't know if they're.
Speaker 2:You know, the basically is it's really at the intersection of money and life. That's where it's at. So and that's what again on the track podcast is very intentionally called the real advisor podcast. I mean, it's pretty arrogant in the way, because but it's all of you this is real advice, because it is at that intersection of families and humans and money and life and it's not just focused on the money side of things. And you got to be careful here because one thing I'm definitely not as a like a psychiatrist or a psychologist or even a life coach, and certainly some of the conversations I've had with clients, prospective clients, over the years you begin to, once you start asking a layer of questions, you scratch that and go two or three levels deep.
Speaker 2:All of us have got backstories right, we've all got history, we've all got things and our thoughts and our views of the world are largely shaped Again. That is, that's. That's evidence, that's scientifically proven, the sort of things that you went through as a kid, normally about sort of age eight to 15 run by. That they're quite impactful. They can be very impactful for some people. They certainly would have left a mark and the way and our outlook on life and business and money and all those things are often well, they're impacted that they don't necessarily define you completely, but our histories and our backstories and things that happened in the last few years.
Speaker 2:So we're all about trying to identify and really get to the nub of what the what the challenges are, because we want to get from a client view perspective. We want to get them feeling happy, secure. One less thing to worry about. I've got the team at capital. They're taking care of all this stuff. That's as one client said to me very aptly. He said it's the dull but important stuff, because a lot of clients find this, all the stuff, is a mystery. It's complex and, frankly, a little dull, but you know it's important. So the ability to work with a trusted advisor and a partner on that, on that journey, is just invaluable. However, there's a part of the, the industry, which is focused on. As I said before, the money and the performance and I can, you know, put this product here will save you tax, but it's a bit risky, but we can save a bit of tax. Okay, okay, maybe, maybe that's relevant, maybe it's not, but is it answering the original question that we asked?
Speaker 1:So how much of an individual genuine me interested really, you know, because if I was a financial planner, right beyond the other, I wouldn't I think I would be not that interested in the technical side. I would feel like I wanted to have somebody alongside me who really was interested in that and also it was able to articulate that in a simple manner. Right, I'm interested in the relationship side, I'm interested in the human side, I'm interested in getting to know that person. Is you turn in them? You know the telescope, telescope around, and so when you know in your career and in your client development and in your introduced relationship building, you know valuable clients, how much of your time do you spend in the technical zone and how much of your time do you spend in the, in the getting to know the human side? And I know you say you're not a psychologist, but the well, what makes somebody tick side?
Speaker 2:We increasingly we've got a team of people here and we've increasingly just shaping the individual roles and again, as I said before, we're all made differently. I've never, on a personal level, enjoyed the technical side of things and it is frankly it's complex. You know pension legislations can be complex and there is rules around. You know annual allowances and various things like that and they change on a regular basis and it's quite technical and in the past I went through through gritted teeth and got my qualifications and exams and stuff like that and I just sort of squeezed through in the thought I don't have to do them again. But there are people that love doing that and they love the technical stuff. They really get deep in the weeds on it and they sort of model different things.
Speaker 2:And the great thing about building a team is finding people who are, you know, ideally suited to do the work that they really enjoy doing and not to see things through your own. You know unique rose color glasses, because I think I would hate to do that but someone else says I love to do it and I'd hate to do this kind of having deep and meaningful conversations with other people because, oh, I don't know, I'll be too shy, I'm out my depth. So, rather like you know, putting together a great rugby team or a football team or something that you find, if you're really good at that particular thing, then go and do that, but stay away from this thing over here because you might be dangerous in the business. So the ideal setup, I think, is trying to identify what work people really thoroughly enjoy doing. You know, that thing, when people are in flow and they just, you know, three hours goes past and it doesn't it feels like a few seconds because you just now you put me in front of a creative entrepreneur that's just going through a business sale and exit and I'll talk. You know, I could spend three hours with them and it would feel like three minutes to me. I'm just enjoying the vibe and I'm really sort of digging deep. I'm just genuinely interested in the human being. That's the thing. I'm not doing it trying to make a picture or make a sale. I'm that's a particular thing. I am fascinated by the entrepreneur journey as a just as a sort of side story Anyone who's at some point.
Speaker 2:Most business owners were working for a company and they thought I think I could give a go, I could give this a go myself and to understand that. And most of them took a risk, most of them gave up a salary Often they had, they were married, they had kids, they had, you know, obligations and I think, wow, what does it feel like? You know, that to me, is just fascinating. It's just a great conversation to have and regardless of client worker or anything else which I meet people on my travels and I have these sort of conversations, I'm genuinely curious about this.
Speaker 2:I read books about it, I consume great podcasts, so that's my hobby, my passion and my interest. But for others, they don't want to do that, they're not particularly interested. Some people it's kind of like left brain, right brain type thing. Some people are very much kind of left brain, technical detail, and you absolutely need the blend of both. I think it's a challenge to try to be both. You know you set one person, you can sort of have a go at it, but we tend to just act and respond just as human beings, in slightly different ways.
Speaker 1:So that's what I've aimed to do is build a team to allow those who thrive on certain aspects to do the work that they enjoy doing, those that are coming into the profession and going down perhaps a fast track route, becoming a financial advisor or a financial planner, and they don't have the experience of working in the profession. Yeah, do you think it's a bit of a bat they're looking, they're looking at really a real baptism of fire when all of a sudden they happen to wear the power planner hat, the financial planner hat and, in some cases, the business owner hat.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's a steep learning curve. Do you think they should?
Speaker 1:do that. Do you think that's a wise move based on your years of experience?
Speaker 2:What to do, what to go through, become a plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah let's say somebody comes into the profession and they're going straight into becoming a financial planner. Yeah, based on your knowledge, your experience, what you've seen We've just described that they're a you got the financial planning. The person who sits down builds relationships as a skill set within its own right. You learn that on the job and you've got the technical detail. And then you've got the business owner hat. Someone's never worked in the profession before. Yeah, they might have had some success in other areas or whatever. Yeah, but they're coming on in and they're going to set up their own business from scratch. What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:I would say it's a real challenge if you've never worked in the sector before, because that there's so many nuances within it.
Speaker 2:Again, just go back to my own circumstances. I've always worked in financial services but I've never been an advisor before and even then, having worked at an investment management company, I had a huge learning curve and at the time I had a lot less to lose. If it didn't work out, I kind of go and get another job. It wouldn't be the end of the world. But others are doing big career changes and if they're a bit later in life as well, they probably have got a few other obligations and requirements. If someone was thinking of doing that, I would get. I would rather get into a business because it's like learning through osmosis just being around. There's just so many subtle things. I used to learn a lot when I was working for this big company just by, literally, you know, homework and challenges to some extent hybrid and homework Because I used to listen to this over here people on the phone experienced people, just conversations and I used to think, well, have you said that that was really smart? Have you positioned that this, the words are really important. How you frame conversations are really important. So I think there's a lot of value being around other like minded, smart people and just kind of learning from them. The classic, you know, over a coffee, water cooler moments. I wouldn't recommend. I mean you know it's up to everyone how confidently I wouldn't recommend you to starting. If you're doing, if you're getting into the industry for the first time, starting your own business, get into an organization, spend some time around other people. But and here's a thing, this is and this is kind of you heard it here first because this is just my latest thinking this traditional historical prevalence everywhere, including my phone right now, but depends on this podcast goes out. It may change. It's like it's wrong. The hierarchical model of I mean talk about you kind of the being an administrator, financial services administrator kind of it seems to be an early sort of early stage, early career type role and the so called grunt work is just getting data. Speaking to legacy product providers, getting information is kind of it's just it's a pain to do. So you deploy that down to the effectively kind of junior member of staff and then they gather information and they fire up to the para planner. We don't we call them associates here, but the kind of that intermediary step between being a financial planner and the admin and data, and then sort of the glory boys and girls are the financial advisors and the financial planners. They sort of you know, they see the clients, they engage with clients, etc. And I think that's wrong. I think that is this hierarchical thing. There's so many things wrong with it.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, as a colleague of mine said to me the other day, do you know what, alan? She said shout out to Fiona, she's a superstar. She said you know, we're all financial planners. Oh me, really. I said yeah, you're right, we're in meetings, we're in conversations. They're receiving, you know, phone calls, messages, emails from clients and the only thing they're not doing, unless they are a regulated person, is giving regulated, signed off advice. But that's a tiny part of the experience. People just, you know, they ask it just bounce things off. You ask a few questions to the high level conversations and pretty much everyone in our team here is there to deliver it. So I think there's a kind of different, a different approach to different strategy. What I think is delivering high quality financial planning.
Speaker 2:A financial planning experience is a skill set in itself, but winning new clients is a different skill set and they aren't. They're not necessarily the same thing. There are some people who are just fabulous financial planners but frankly they couldn't sell the way out of a paper bag. Converting is certainly the sort of clients that we like to work with, which are, you know, larger, more complex people, a lot of things going on. They tend to have greater wealth.
Speaker 2:You know that's not an easy skill to do. Just to engage with them, those sort of people have got a ton of choices in terms of what, who, these who they turn to to get financial advice. You know the kind of so called high end private banks are all over these people. They're kind of prize clients for this sort of these organizations. So the ability to shape a conversation, to ask the right questions, the meaningful questions, to build reports, build a relationship. Not everyone can do that. I've historically been okay at it. A few of my colleagues here are pretty good at it, but then it's a different thing than delivering the ongoing. So I'm just thinking we should shake, shake out this traditional kind of vertical model admin, para, planner, advisor and say hang on, let's, let's have a more horizontal model with people that are really targeted to win business. They're really good at it, but they're not necessarily the same person that should be delivering the ongoing advice.
Speaker 1:I think you're absolutely bang on. I absolutely echo exactly what you're saying, because it's boring, for a start, when it comes to talent attraction Yep. Are we taking an administrator? We have a para planner. We have a financial advisor, we have a director. It's just so old school and boring.
Speaker 1:I think, when it comes to talent attraction, we can be more creative, yep. So I think, having personal development plans that run alongside clear career structures, and you know so, for example, I don't think with the para planner, for instance, you say, if you label them all para planners, but they're not, they're all very different, there's got to be like five or six different types of roles within a para planning function, of which you could identify in each and every single one of those roles what skill set is required to do it. And therefore, when you go out and try and hire somebody, instead of saying I'm looking for a para planner, you could say I'm looking for this type of person work within the para planning capacity. So you know different stages, different ways. But when you actually then sit down with that individual at the interview, instead of saying I want a para planner, what you do is you pull out a career roadmap, a career development plan and I say what? And what I used to do in my recruitment company is great. I had this on the on the wall. I went and every year I'd print out what our career development plan looked like and then someone would sit in there and interview. I said I'm just going to get coffee. What you want? Yeah, I have a coffee. I said that's our career development plan. Have a quick read of that and see what you think. And I'm going to ask you some questions when I come back. By the time they've gone through this lovely, graphically interesting thing that tells them all the wonderful things that are going to happen along the journey and how much they're going to earn and what experience they're going to gain, they're already absolutely charged up to want to join my business. And I'm talking to them about what do you, where do you see yourself on that career ladder right now in respect of your skillsets? And they'll start to identify where they think they belong. And instantly I'm very quickly aware of where I should direct the questions to get the type of information I'm looking for as to whether or not they're fit for my business. And I'm also getting a gauge on their ambition and I'm starting to look for that evidence.
Speaker 1:Now, within financial planning, I think you can create a personal development plan, a career progression plan that can be very much broken down and used also from a retention perspective. Yeah, because it's nothing worse than having somebody sat in a business use. An administrator wants to become a financial planner? Come and join our business as administrator and then you can be a trainee financial planner. Okay, well, what does that look like? Yeah, like people aren't investing energy in creating what that actually is and again telling the career development story to the individual of where they can actually go and how long it's going to take, the realistic expectations, what they can earn. And as a business owner, you're able then to look at that and then go to market and think, well, at that level, that's right. At that level, that's right At that level, that's right. So you can always completely check in and it's no one size fits all Correct. So it's just a very lovely way of doing it.
Speaker 1:I had a chat with Matt Fowler, who's a St James's place partner. I went to St James's place. We're doing this new thing called talent attraction partnerships now, where we bring people's, company's staff, onto the podcast. Talk about what it's like to work for that business and the idea is that people listen to it hopefully, and they go. You know what I really like the sound of that company, I like her or his story. That relates to me and he does exactly that personal development plan. He's got it all keyed out and it's helped him no end in attracting talent in the back end of like Devon. It's really, really helped.
Speaker 2:It makes a ton of sense that there's so many things that you know every walk of life is just traditional. We've always done it that way, so we're always kind of continue to do it that way. One thing I'm proud about at Capital is that over the years, we've constantly just challenged, we just disrupted ourselves before everyone else does. Everything we've done, from the financial planning process or investment process, our fee structure, the way and this and now the kind of there's a number of things that we are in the process of just kind of disrupting right now within our own business, which I think will begin to become more commonplace. So I just I mean the other thing as well is let's go back to, as Steve Jobs famously said you know, begin with a customer, then work your way back. Instead of doing things that are better for us, what is the client one? What's a really what's a far better experience for the client? So just think about the way anyone you know takes on new clients, or you know an advisor gets a referral or something like that, so they take them in.
Speaker 2:Historically there was also in the compensation model wrapped up with clients or revenue or something attached to them, so naturally most advisors would put their arms around these clients and, you know, look after them, say, because it might have a positive impact on what they earn. But on a personal level they just might be like chalk and cheese, these human beings. They might like to completely different. I don't know political views or just outlooks on life or style or everything else, but as a guy or girl sitting next door to them, it's just, you know they're perfect, they're a perfect match. But just because they just weren't in the office that day or they didn't get the referral, didn't get the introduction, they don't deal with that person. So how would it be if you just sort of open things up and that applies all the way through in the advisory business, because there are some clients and we'll just be typical of many firms there are some clients that are the lives and their circumstances are just complex. There's just a lot of stuff going on, both on a personal level and maybe just on a financial level. They might have offshore property, you know, obviously property trust structures, just a web of all sorts of different things going on.
Speaker 2:That demands us a skill set and a level of knowledge. Surely you should have your most talent to people, regardless of what the advisory thing. Across the company you're people the most experienced delivering the sort of support, the advice and everything else to those people. And there are clients, frankly, whose life is pretty straightforward, they don't need and the analogy I've used around here more recently people are tired of me saying it is that to some client you know we've some of our team are to me they're the financial equivalent of having a Harley street brain surgeon. But some of our clients have only got a mild headache. You know they need an aspirin and an early night. You know they don't need a Harley street brain surgeon. So to some of our clients we probably over-delivering in terms of kind of deployment of human capital If you really just think about your resources, your important resources in the business, both time and human capital and saying we're over-delivering to those they don't need that level of complexity but these other people do.
Speaker 2:And so you were able to just effectively to evolve the shape of this role called a financial planner and kind of effectively blend what traditionally was a para planner, which is a kind of just someone either more technically competent or they may or may not wish to be dealing with clients face to face and meeting people, but eventually finding like the right fit, both from a technical competence viewpoint but also from a human being viewpoint and a personality viewpoint. And so this I just feel that the role, the traditional hierarchical role, is now evolving towards a blended role. Yeah, I like that. Finding the right people for the right job. Yes, you have to have the legislation state, so you have to be regulated and signed off and competent, et cetera. So fine, but ultimately why can't we have that to most of our team? Maybe why don't we have everyone kind of signed off and all the sort of checks and reviews and all the appropriate things done to make sure that everyone is able to deliver regulated advice?
Speaker 2:But I think what you've also what you're doing, is saying the delivery of the financial planning experience is effectively, it falls under the remit of the operations team. It's no longer a sort of a sales team. Again, full of analogies today. But there's another colleague of mine saying if you go buy a car brand new from a garage, the person that sells you the car is not the person who services the car year after year. It's just different people, different team, different skill sets, different experiences. But financial advisors the person that brings the client in, it might not be the best fit.
Speaker 2:So I think there's an opportunity to sort of break up that historical kind of monopoly around this, as you described it. This you know, go through this job, this career path Now and if you work that out in the most appropriate way, there should be enough revenue and margin within the business to make sure people are compensated appropriately and there are incentives. Let's face it, and it's one thing I've definitely learned. Sometimes people used to say to me the money's not important. Well, actually it is. It's up there with oxygen, you know, it's quite important. So there should be enough revenue in the business to compensate people appropriately for the value that they deliver to the clients and therefore to the business as well. It just takes a little bit more creative thinking. That's historic than historically has been in place.
Speaker 1:Do you think remuneration from a profitability of the company and then a profit share across the business, more so than individual bonus structures or remuneration structures for traditionally just planners, no admin or no power.
Speaker 2:It's nuts, it doesn't make sense. This is and again, honestly, I just learned I've done everything wrong over the years and when you do things wrong consistently, you learn to do them right, because you just bang your head against the brick wall and you can't work out why you're not progressing sometimes to the business. So you have to reverse back and say, ah, interesting Big Hero of Miney died recently Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger talks about this. He said that the single biggest impact in anything in our lives is incentives. You just track back why people did anything, as often you'll find there's an incentive attached to it.
Speaker 2:If you have an advisory business that is out winning, trying to win new clients and somebody gets paid for them, an advisor or somebody actually earns more money as a consequence, but everyone else in the team doesn't All there is is more work for the same pay. So, and it's more. And who's getting excited about that Really? I mean you can talk about a big grand mission and everything else and I'm going to change the world, but if I've suddenly got again 10%, 20%, 30%, more activity, more work, more space in my calendar and my income hasn't changed at all, then I've actually I'm net negative in those circumstances and what you need to do is align individual incentives with company incentives and vision and ambition. Again, there's no silver bullet. Just to be clear. There's no. You can't say this is how the pay structure works, but there has to be some sort of recognition of that so that people are excited to grow the business, to win new clients, to increase the revenue, to help more families, as opposed to it's just more and more work for you.
Speaker 1:They're aligned to the goals of the business. If everyone's putting in the same direction as the classic, isn't it they're all going to be incentivized to want to do it. So I can yeah, I echo that. And running a recruitment business where you have a lot of kind of individuals in there and they're all kind of historically it was all competitive and everything I don't like it. If I'm honest, I don't. It doesn't agree with me anymore. I think it can change With your business. When you grew it and you just kind of been there, then I got the t-shirt a few times and made a few failures. Did you ever have a self-employed model up against? No, you've always been employed model, have you Always?
Speaker 2:employed. I just felt in day one self-employed will always just hide guns to me. They would, they would. Um, it's really about the deal. They were never part of the mission. They were part-time missionaries, they weren't full-time. They really didn't believe. If you're not prepared to come and join a business, get your hands dirty, be part of the organization, embrace the vision, get behind it, part of the team, then there's other places you can go.
Speaker 1:Right, like a freelancer, isn't it really?
Speaker 2:It's like a freelancer, you're not part of the team. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there's exceptions to that rule, but I've never had a self-employed and we had a lady who worked with us for a while who just really, for various reasons, it was perfectly legit that she wanted to go that route. But I just said, this doesn't work. It doesn't work for us. We part of the company in really good terms. I actually found another job with a mate of mine who was hiring on a self-employed basis, so it worked really well, but it's just. Again, this comes back to core values, one of us being collaborative and I think you'd be far more collaborative, but everyone's on the payroll, everyone's in the same team. We live a dive in the success of the company, as opposed to a hired gun, sort of freelance consultant sort of thing, dipping in, using all the resources within the organization but potentially being able to just to jump ship at any time that they want because someone down there was offering them a better split or deal or whatever. So never done it.
Speaker 1:You talked about disruption and at the moment you're disrupting your own business and there's no bigger disruptor at the moment than AI. What's your take on AI and it kind of also I think we can tie this also into this hierarchy structure Is AI going to remove the need for so many power planets, for instance?
Speaker 2:Short answer yes. Longer answer coming up. People smile. I went deep in the weeds, like starting January 23, because this thing called chat GPT first arrived in my inbox. And I am A lot of creative, entrepreneurial type. People are sort of magpie, like in there, shiny new thing, or what does this tech do, and I just loved it.
Speaker 2:I got sort of and I just I happened to know a bunch of people that I used to know them years ago and they were sort of building this AI business and so I spent some time with them. We ended up running a couple of workshops for advisors and all about the potential application. So I built my knowledge to quite a reasonable level. I mean, this stuff is moving so fast it's crazy. So the headlines really are working with some AI specialists. So I know the financial planning profession, I know what it takes to run a planning business. I know that pretty well. I don't know too much about AI, but they do these other guys running this AI business. So we just spent a lot of time together and I said, but what? And we literally just mapped the entire business, from when you first meet a prospective client, engaging client, all the kind of that middle office stuff that you refer to, paraplanning type stuff, which is basically data, data, numbers and interrogating data, transferring that into some sort of creative advice process, committing it to some sort of durable format in the form of writing or whatever, wherever you want to do it. And I just unpacked the whole thing with them, I mean, took the whole thing to pieces and built it up again with what they said was this bit here, you could plug this in here, this piece of technology, and obviously it's a fast moving space. So, in summary, we took a sample business right and knowing what I know, so we just made up this sample case.
Speaker 2:Abc wealth management was doing a million pounds of revenue. It was making a 25% net margin on that, which is ballpark, not a million miles away from a lot of firms operate. And just by deploying a lot of the tools which are available now incidentally, no, you know, in five years or something available now. And I think we were quite modest in the assumptions, a lot of things we said no, that's just too crazy. So it was making this a million million pound business doing quarter of a million pound profit. We were able to make enough projections and our forecast to increase that, to increase it by 370,000 pounds, so to almost treble the profit within the business. And how you're doing that? You're doing that by just being far more effective, far more efficient, cutting costs, cutting time.
Speaker 2:Bottom line is you would need less people to do the tasks that they are currently doing is the key thing here. A lot of those tasks, frankly, are dull and the people that are doing them don't enjoy doing them because they're not very engaging, they're not very human-like. But if you're able to redeploy, if those people have got the skills and able to sort of effectively redeploy those skills into other higher end, much more human related things, which not for a few years yet I mean all these predictions of AI in the future and bots et cetera well, who knows, for the next number of years they're not going to take over us and replace us as literally sentient beings Then that's great because all of a sudden, just very simplistically, we've got, we deploy all this stuff. We've got a ton more time. The things that people are literally taking in my team two hours to do using Excel spreadsheets, for example, I've done in literally two seconds with a higher level of accuracy. For example, multiply that across a business and we're a small business, but multiply that across. All of a sudden, people have got a lot more re-time, in theory available to do things such only human beings can uniquely do.
Speaker 2:Now, whether that's simply jumping on the call with the clients because you're too busy to even call them often, just touch bait. This is the courtesy call. How's things going? Shall we grab a cup of coffee sometime? Shall we do blah, blah, blah. Those unique relationship-building things become really, really important. So long story short, ai is going to make this.
Speaker 2:I believe the technology that is coming at us in the next one to two years is going to make greater change than the 20 years I've been in business in literally the next 24 months. Ai is not going to kill financial planners, but AI-enabled financial planners are going to kill people that are keeping their head in the sand and thinking this is all just hocus pocus, and I'm not interested in it, because I can see just in our business the efficiencies that we will be able to create over the next 12 months. We've already engaged, we're implementing it. We're going from bait.
Speaker 2:There's a whole lot of other things that people should be aware of. You need to start from base level. You need to get your policies and procedures in place. You don't want anyone running off on your team full of enthusiasm and loading up and I've heard this loading up confidential client data onto, effectively, servers which are non-EU, non-uk. There's a lot of dangers in it. So we're starting base level, getting our policies and procedures in place, just building the foundation stones, and then I think we're really going to make some significant impact and change in the way that we operate as a business, which will make us more efficient, help us to grow, and we are certainly not getting rid of any. We'll be hiring. We'll be growing because we're doing far more of the things that we all enjoy doing.
Speaker 1:Love that, brilliant, and it leads me into my next topic. Really, could that free time be spent on building personal brand, for instance on social media and engaging more with content creation and the likes of YouTube and LinkedIn, for example? You love it. You shared something recent. I think you had 4.2 million impressions in the last 365 days on LinkedIn 4.5 million.
Speaker 2:How many 4.5. No, no, I'm counting. I just saw that came up, but it's great.
Speaker 1:It is really great and you are putting content. I mean, you haven't accepted my connection request. I have not. I have to follow you.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that, sorry, I get so many. I'm not kidding, I'll do that straight away.
Speaker 1:I must admit I do follow you and I do really enjoy the content you put out and I comment from time to time and I love it, and let's just talk about that. It's something that you seem to be very passionate about. You're very enthusiastic about it. You've got two podcasts. Let's just talk about it. Is it worthwhile doing?
Speaker 2:It is, if you enjoy it. I think it's the bottom line I wouldn't get. I wouldn't begin to think about it If you just think I, I just don't like doing this. Some people just don't want a public profile. I don't mind.
Speaker 2:Some people just, off-radar, listen there and you you know them, sam, as well. I know a number of I mean world-class financial planners, professionals, and you've known, you never heard of them. You know people have just don't know about them and they're just busy getting on with their stuff. They say to me how'd you find time to do all that crap? And that's a whole other other story. But for me and I have been very, you know I started off just messing around with things. I've been far more, I suppose, proactive and thoughtful about. You know the strategy to do, but I'm still learning a lot. I've got a lot to learn.
Speaker 2:But to answer your original question, here's what I think social media and platforms and podcasts, they're just tools, right, they're just things to share a message and what they do potentially and what's what I've found is they can. They can attract Supporters and they can repel people that just don't like. And you know you're pretty active in social media. Inevitably you get people. They've got the entirely the opposite view to you and that's that's how the world works, perfectly reasonable. And I used to engage in all that back and forward, and Twitter became a bit of a cesspit for a while, but I don't engage with it now and it's perfectly fine and you entitled to your own opinion completely. You don't touch your facts, but you're entitled to your own opinion about these things. But if someone wants to have a go, then let them get on with it. But you won't get any response from me at all. That's just. You know I'm not gonna feed that sort of thing. But but the same token, you can sort of begin to build a network of people that do Somewhat share your same opinion. And, by all means, if anyone wants to engage in a sort of a, you know, positive debate, I'm all for that and I certainly don't have all the the answers. I'm certainly not right and everything. I think very open to doing that. But more fundamentally, if you're talking about building, you talk about personal brand. A personal brand could relate to individuals, but also, in my case, it relates to a business and several businesses.
Speaker 2:My thought process is this we're all taking in, for historically, we take information from central sources and it tends to be television programs, magazines, newspapers you know, the Financial, the personal finance press. We've got there's a whole series of trade journals, articles, magazines, and that's all well and good to learn. I think one of the reasons perhaps that your podcast has been successful and things like traps been successful it's because we're practitioners, we're in the weeds, right right, the right, the cold face of this stuff and I think people want to listen to that. So your podcast, for example, is a niche podcast. It's not a sort of generic, not trying to attack, attract everyone in the world, and neither trap and it will repel a lot of people in the world, but from a Very focused, targeted, niche audience. If you find them, they love it and they can't get enough of it. And what I think is just the world is changing and we've got this concept of long tail media Like so no, we used to just go to everyone just because one central source that reads you know whatever the trade press is and you've got one journalist's opinion, having interviewed three people about the thing, and I might think that's entirely wrong.
Speaker 2:That's. I just completely disagree with that. I would rather go down if I wanted to learn About photography or something. I'd rather learn it from someone who's an expert in photography. They built a photography business and all talked about the trials and errors and you know the wrong lens that you bought one day and all this Of it, and just an engaged with them on a personal level, than a journalist writing in photography magazine just doing an article. And I'm thinking I wonder if he's sponsored, are these because he seems to be promoting one camera above another one, if they're getting paid for that.
Speaker 2:And I think increasingly and I'm Get, I'm not, I'm not actually, I'm not political at all, not really. And some people really have got the strong views. I'm kind of not. I don't really pay a lot of attention Generally to that stuff, but I think there's an increasing distrust with sort of central media. You know Newspapers and things and you know all that. We're in a year with his elections in the US and the UK and around the world, so everything gets very polarized and it's very. I find it quite tedious actually and I never know I'm really. I can read an article. I think, oh, this must be from this magazine or this newspaper, because the Narrative is very tilted. So therefore I would rather go to the end source, but you know the person or the people or the organizations who are doing the work, and so the same applies if you're trying to build a financial planning brand.
Speaker 2:So I believe that the future should be micro niche. You should deal with, you should, you should become an expert and you should provide ideas, thoughts and solutions to the unique challenges Faced by the small community of people that you really enjoy Working with. So, in my case, and through bulletproof entrepreneur, another work we do it is entrepreneurs, but that's to do this, millions of entrepreneurs, but so we, we specifically know the number of years we call it creative entrepreneurs. So a lot of our clients Come from the media sector. You know, they create Television programs, they make films, to do all that sort of creative thing. They're not, they don't make widgets in a factory, and there's nothing wrong with making widgets but seems to be different mindset. I like people who've got that kind of mindset and and every sector, every type of person has got, and then their profession, they've got their own unique challenges. So the the challenges of someone who's making popular television programs, for example, are different. They're different to a, you know, a partner at a law firm. Right.
Speaker 2:There's some core things, which is exactly the same, but around the edges that, a lot of individual challenges. If you can create your own personal brand podcast, youtube log, writing, wherever is the simplest thing to get started and you begin to and you're serving and you're addressing the key issues and challenges and you've got to find out what they are, by the way, and that's a that's a whole other thing which we can talk about if you want, but have you, but it's not that difficult to Find out what the key issues and challenges are. The chances are you know the answers to those things one way or another. You know. If you're able there, therefore, to shape some contents and thoughts and some ideas and and begin to share it with and be patient, because this stuff is, you know, it doesn't happen overnight and be patient and be a source of education, information and help. You can't help but build your brand and be successful over time.
Speaker 2:And if I was a, say, a partner in a law firm, to use this example and every, every time, I looked at the law gazette or whatever these, wherever they congregate, both digitally and in person, I'm seeing your stuff and you're answering everybody question I've ever thought about, about personal finances as it relates to being a partner in law firm. Am I going to speak to you? I'm going to speak to some generic IFA who just says I deal with doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, blah, blah, blah. In in life, the specialists earn more and are more successful. You know, if you had a problem with your knee, you can see a knee surgeon, not a GP. You know it's a little bit about everything. So personal brands really important, but go niche and then go micro niche and become the go-to expert, such that they you have zero competition. There's not another person, the country that has a depth of knowledge. You've got on that in that special, special sector.
Speaker 1:A couple of things on that I think You'll bang on. And in my head I do podcasts. I've started producing podcasts people. So legally, in general, I produce their just covered podcast right, which is fantastic. And I want to go out and I want to work individually with financial planning firms to say, look, let's develop a podcast, but let's think about it and let's think about your target audience. Let's think about how we're going to use that podcast to repurpose it in multiple ways to ensure that you're getting the most value for money that video first mentality. But you have to start with the problems and the solutions. I'm a target market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean podcast. I share you same thoughts that when I you know again, this is these sort of crazy things that you speak to someone. It's been a business 20 years. When I started business, a lot of advisors didn't have a website right, didn't have, did not have a web presence at all. Now you think that would be nuts. You can't imagine any organization not on your website.
Speaker 2:I think not another 20 years, but in another five or five years, plus most advisors where the would or should have a podcast, and Even if your only audience is your existing clients, because the what we know is technology has driven down the barriers to entry for most things in life. So you know I get on, jumped in his podcast. Now we're in a different part of the country, but it doesn't take too much to jump on a call like this. You don't need a ton of equipment, you don't need very much to actually to be able to do it. If an advisor let's say they only have 50 clients and you put out every twice a month nothing too dramatic, twice a month a podcast.
Speaker 2:What's been going on in the business, couple of thoughts, couple of ideas, and it was 15 minutes so that that would literally be the easiest thing you could do. Or, and it's just, it's just not having a conversation and you Center out to your 50 clients and you said to them if you wouldn't, if you found any value in this, share it with people that you know, anyone you know. I think that's a wonderful thing. I think it's an easy thing to do and the network effect will mean that people and Increasingly podcast, I mean some people say it's a saturated market. I think it hasn't even got going yet.
Speaker 2:I think there's the, the idea, video or otherwise, but people just can. We consume information. As I've said before, if you could tell me something that's interesting to me, I'll spend all the time in the world with you. Tell you know, and podcasting is great. Certainly you know audio podcast because you can do other stuff. You know you're in the car, you're at the gym, you're going for a walk and all that sort of stuff. So it's it's very, very meaningful and so every advisor in the country should have their own podcast and yeah, you are bang on.
Speaker 1:I'm absolutely advocate of what you're saying. It gives people the opportunity to build a relationship with that, with you, without ever meeting you as well, and I think that's one of the most powerful things. But also the ability to keep in contact with your clients. Spoke to an advisor Very much business about them, focus very much, loves going out on the hunt, right. But he says I kind of get to a point when then I have to service them, I get a bit bored and I was like, well, that's a really great opportunity for me then to help you, because why don't you create the podcast and when you create the video content, why don't you get them to follow you on social media so they're always connected to you, you know? And he was like, yeah, that's a really good idea. So there is, you know, I echo what you're doing absolutely spot-on.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna ask you a question around talent attraction again. Okay, and if someone came to you and they were a financial planner and they had a strong following on YouTube, for instance, yeah, sounds like I'm pitching you a candidate now, isn't it? But no, they've got a strong, they've got a strong following on YouTube, I say they had 25,000 followers on YouTube, yeah, and they were good advisor as well, yeah. Would you consider their following an asset of value and would you remunerate them based on the social following they have and their skill set and perhaps, ability to generate business?
Speaker 2:You ask two questions there and the answer is yes and no, in that order. So would I consider an asset? Absolutely. Would I remunerate them on the fact that they've got these followers? No, because those followers, though they are a lead indicator, they're not a lag indicator. Just because you've got followers doesn't mean, at the end of the day, everything does come down to the commercials and the numbers, and there are people with lots of followers that the followers never buy anything from them. They're like I've got a witness test, I've got a product here. I think there's a bit. I've never done this yet, but I know people have done it.
Speaker 2:The minute, the day that you earn a dollar or a pound online because you've shared a product of some description, is a day that your life changes, kind of thing, because there are people in the world that you don't even know, you've never met, you probably will never meet, who prepare to actually part. That's the differential. You part with money. It's a real thing. So 25,000 followers is great, and if they're in the target audience and they're the niche and the follower, fantastic. That suggests to me that you could convert those to some sort of relationship. I mean, that's a whole other thing as well. I think there needs to be a whole again, a hierarchy of products and services that exist within financial planning this experience of hiring a full-time chartered level financial planner. That's expensive Once all the costs are in a regulated business and people have to get paid to qualify and get their exams. Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, that is a domain of the wealthier, more affluent. There have to be a super millionaire but you're going to have a few quid to be able to pay for that level of professional engagement. But back to my thing about you know Harley Street, brain surgeon and all the rest. There's a lot of people who haven't got the problems that you need to have someone like that. I think there's a huge opportunity.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Pete Matthews, who's doing an extraordinary job. I don't know if you've interviewed Pete. I have. Yeah, I love Pete, yeah. So he's got. As I understand it, he's got a whole again. He's got a ton of stuff which is free, so there's no cheaper price than free. If you prepare to spend the time watching his YouTube videos and stuff, you can learn everything you want to know about personal finance. As I understand it, he's then got a mixed level, which is, I don't know. He's got something which is cheap enough for most people just to learn a bit more. And then he's got another product and effectively he has commoditized and digitized his experience. Because not everyone can get Pete as their planner I'm assuming he's quite expensive. I hope he is quite expensive because he's super smart and talented. But for the people that really value and need him, they'll pay, but they'll have to pay a bit more because it's a zero-sum game. For every hour Pete spends doing something, it's an hour he is doing something else.
Speaker 2:So having a hierarchy and I think you go back to your guy or girl with the 24,000 followers, build an education platform, charge £99 for something, so it's commercially worth it and we're helping people, some of whom will never be full fat engaged clients. But frankly, they don't need to be, and I think that's the point. Sometimes the advisors try to shoehorn clients into. How can we make this work? The guy really can't afford it. It hasn't got much money but it could become a client. Don't try to force something that's not relevant or appropriate. But if you can build something that they can afford and is actually going to, often good enough. There's just some basic rules in financial planning and just doing the basics often get you more than halfway there.
Speaker 1:I love the Pete Matthew model. I think it's fantastic. You hit the nail on the head. He told me it's a six-figure turnover business the academy side of it. So I love this model and it's one I sat in front of one of the founders of Monzo Bank a little while back. I've been talking to a couple of financial planners about assessing up a financial planning business and I would get involved in it. So I had the opportunity, strangely, to be introduced to one of the founders of Monzo Bank, so I pitched the idea, similar to Pete Matthew. Really, I really like that approach.
Speaker 1:I haven't got the time to go into the detail, but I love his approach. I think his model works really well. It definitely suits the content creator to be able to create that level of recurring income, pays for it then also creates brand awareness and adds value also to those that can't access the advice that someone like you might offer.
Speaker 2:Sure, I think that's the point. I think people like Pete and Arson we are honestly well-intentioned, we've done work in the past like Citizens Advice Bureau, pro Bono and then you realise there are some people they're not worried about what fund is, they're worried about just clearing their debt and just worried about paying the rent. So this is a different end of financial services and I think well-intentioned financial planners, we've got a duty of care to cascade this information and knowledge down. But you physically you can't really do this at scale because of all the regulatory requirements etc. But other ways to use modern technology content creation, ai as well to help educate and inform more and more people. I think it's got great grand ambitions.
Speaker 1:It would be interesting, right? Let's say, for example, we looked at all the challenges on the lower end of the income scale for instance, we just talked about debts and everything like that If we were not created a Q&A type session around all the things that you actually talking about, all the things that these individuals can do, what they should do, the plans and all that kind of stuff and then you package it up and then you put it in and there is an access, isn't there?
Speaker 1:Someone can access you in some capacities. Quite interesting, it's like it's there it can be done.
Speaker 2:It is, but I mean for sure. And again back to, I can tell you, though, the harsh reality, and this is more of a social, national challenge and issue. Not everyone's got a laptop at home. That's the reality. I mean, most people do have mobile phones or sub-description.
Speaker 1:It'll be mobile based. Yeah, it'll be mobile, it's great.
Speaker 2:You've got to be able to deliver the message with the technology that's available to everyone.
Speaker 1:It's really easy done. It could be done within a month. It's very easily done and all of a sudden it adds another revenue stream to you. You've got a lot of followers and there probably is a percentage of those followers that just follow you because they like you but they don't follow. They would love to be able to engage with you and you're kind of giving them an engagement. It's a bit like that masterclass platform where you get all these. I think there's definitely a space for masterclass within financial planning. I mean, you're a master, there's plenty of people out there that are masters and you get them all on there delivering masterclasses.
Speaker 2:I think it's golden that may sort out my friend sort of I'll be there, I'll come to your studio.
Speaker 1:You'll be my first. All right, then if I go masterclass, I'm going to phone you up and you'll be my first masterclass, and then let me work it out and I'll come back to you with an idea and see if it's viable.
Speaker 2:Yeah All right, mate, let me know.
Speaker 1:Listen, I'm going to call it a day there because we are coming to the end. I've got to talk about AI in a minute, actually with Good luck, apparently, somebody who's one of the most influential people with an AI called Joseph Twig from Aveni. Have you heard of Aveni?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have. Indeed, I spoke to them yesterday, funnily enough. So yeah, I know all about Aveni.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and finnish finnovation yeah, finnovation as well, yeah, spot Spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's just an example of what I see happening. I've spoken to all these people and a lot of others and I'm just thinking there's a convergence of things going on right now. So I look forward to that's a podcast, right? So I look forward to your conversation with Joseph yeah, because there's just a ton of stuff I send you it. There's a ton of stuff just going on right now. That is just inevitable. This, you have this conversation. 12 months from now, we'll be looking back and saying remember that we were talking about this is going to happen and it's happened. What?
Speaker 1:question would you ask him?
Speaker 2:I think I'd ask him where he sees the biggest impact in the shortest term If we have this conversation three months from now. Sometimes people are going to talk about things five, 10 years out. All well and good. What's the actual on the ground impact for a business like mine in the next three months If we just go all in on this, embrace it within reason, money, no object. Where's the biggest win? Where's?
Speaker 1:the biggest win, if you implement it, that we can have in the short term.
Speaker 2:Let's just say this year the biggest win. The thing about this technological change is you've got to get some early wins. That's the point. Sometimes people do these big, grand, ambitious things that are going to take three years to come to fruition or they're going to take longer. That's hard. If you get some early quick wins, then the team's brought in to say I love this, it's just saved me two hours just doing that. What's the next thing? What's the next thing? Look for the low hanging fruit, Get the quick win and move on.
Speaker 1:Alan, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. Really valuable time. Thank you so much, my pleasure. Perhaps now you can accept my connection request and I'll tag you in a post.
Speaker 2:I will. I'll do that right now, you're a legend.
Speaker 1:It's good to speak to you. Thanks for having me on Cheers. Thanks, Alan Cheers, mate Cheers.