Shaping the Next Generation of Financial Advisers with Expert Guidance from Matt Fowler of St James's Place

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Embark on a journey with Matt Fowler, a chartered financial planner and partner at St James's Place, who joins us to share his remarkable career evolution and the strategic insights that have propelled his success.

From his transition out of corporate finance into the heart of impacting lives through financial planning, Matt shares the profound satisfaction he derives from his role.

Our conversation traverses the crucial pathways of talent attraction, retention, and the creation of career development plans—core components that Matt believes are essential to cultivating a dedicated workforce and a thriving business environment.

As we navigate the complexities of building a financial planning business, Matt offers a candid look at the dual hats he wears—an adviser and a managing director. He illuminates how incorporating specialised financial planners and paraplanners enriches the client service experience, resembling a mini family office.

Matt’s anecdotes about client acquisition, leveraging referrals, and practice buyouts reveal a tapestry of strategies needed for a sustainable financial firm. The dialogue also touches upon the balancing act of cash flow management and the profound impact of investing in employee growth, drawing from a corporate-style banding system that fosters clear career progression.

Looking toward the horizon, Matt delves into the future of financial planners, emphasising the shift from a sales-centric industry to a respected profession. He shares his passion for aligning personal values with professional goals and cultivating the next generation of advisers, equipped with a structured career development framework. This episode is not just an exploration of leadership within a financial planning firm but also an inspiring testament to the power of vision, values, and dedication to personal and client fulfilment in the financial industry.

Join us for this wealth of knowledge, whether you’re an emerging financial planner or an industry veteran seeking to deepen your understanding of business growth and leadership dynamics.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

And today on the Financial Planner Live podcast, I'm joined by chartered financial planner Matt Fowler of FFP. Matt is a partner of St James's Place. He joined eight years ago. He went on the St James's Place Academy and has since grown his business to 10 staff. It isn't plain sailing when you're growing a business and he talks about the support he gets from the partnership. We talk about talent attraction and what he's done around career development plans to attract the right talent to his business and helping them progress their career with realistic expectations. We talk about practice buyouts against organic growth and how referrals are a major source of inbound leads for his business. We also talk about Matt's due diligence on the wider market and why he goes out to look at directly authorized and network options up against St James's Place. I hope you enjoy the episode. So, matt, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Live podcast. Now, just for our listeners who don't know you, can you give us a little brief introduction?

Speaker 2: 1:13

Of course. So I'm Matt. I'm the managing director of Fowler Financial Planning and we're a partner practice of St James's Place wealth management and which I've been now running for eight years, and during that time I've become a charter financial planner and a fellow of the PFS.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Fantastic. Thanks so much. G-footed, who you might know from the St James's Place Academy, runs a podcast called the Switch, and it's all about people switching careers. Now, you switched things up yourself, didn't you? You changed from one career to become a financial planner. First off, why? Why financial planning? And second, which career was that you switched from?

Speaker 2: 1:50

Okay, so why choose financial planning?

Speaker 2: 1:52

It's because I wanted to work with people and it actually dovetails into the answer to the second question, which I was in finance before, but I was on the corporate side of finance.

Speaker 2: 2:00

So I was working when I was in London on corporate M&A financing and then I spent some time offshore in Jersey working with alternative investment managers with their offshore needs and I basically got fed up of the corporate world and I got fed up of the politics which just didn't suit me as a personality. What I realized was I like solving problems and I found that when I solved problems in the corporate world, it was political as to whether or not someone accepted your advice, because they cared about what their boss thought of their decision to say yes or no, rather than whether it was the best solution or not In this world. If I'm sat down with you as a client, what incentive have you got to think about what someone else thinks? It's all about you, it's about your goals. Does my advice help you better achieve your goals? And that kind of simplicity and honesty was something I was really looking for.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Interesting. So simplicity and honesty is what you saw within the financial planning career. Yes, excellent, it's never really had the greatest of reputations? Is it for simplicity and honesty?

Speaker 2: 3:02

No, and I think you know potentially leading question there as well and potential rabbit Warren, but I think for me it's the. The simplicity is in the relationship. It is one to one or one to two. Typically. You're not talking to a team of 10 corporate decision makers, you're talking to real human beings. It then goes to your own personal values, neathos, how you deliver that, and for me, I think coming into the profession post professionalization is an advantage. I was post RDR. For me, I've only ever known the professional way of doing it, and so that simplicity comes with an honesty and a desire to do the right thing. But certainly there are elements of our profession which are not simple, but that's always going to be the case.

Speaker 1: 3:44

You searched on it. You came straight into the financial planning profession. You joined St James's place. First off, I'm going to ask you a question straight away. So why did you end up choosing St James's place?

Speaker 2: 3:55

So in the first place I was very fortunate to have a good understanding of St James's place. One, I was a client. Two, I had family connections who had worked on the corporate side, so I understood a bit of that, but also probably more personally when I was in corporate, financing St James's place for a client of mine, and so I had to decide or certainly with a team of other people, because I was a lot more junior in my career then but part of my role was to decide were they a good institution to lend money to? And so it meant I had to really do my due diligence on them as an organization. So I was very fortunate to have this understanding of how their model worked and we talked about the switch. The academy process I went through. It gave a huge opportunity to make that transition that I was looking for into what I felt was a very well organized position to be able to go and launch the next part of my career.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Fantastic. So you joined the St James's place academy. Then did you?

Speaker 2: 4:49

I did yes back in 2016. So coming up to eight years now.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Eight years, okay, fantastic, so we're probably one of the first going through the academy it was. I don't quite know how long it's been around for, but it's probably very different to the academy it is today.

Speaker 2: 5:02

Yes, back then the academy was more focused on building your own business, which meant you were going into learning new profession as well as setting up your own business and looking at the various options of how you could do that. St James's place definitely was the right place and best place to do that. As I understand it now, when certain I've had members of my team go through new iterations of the academy, now there is probably more focus on advisors coming through into practices, that's not to say, in the future they will end up running their own business as well. But we've definitely seen that shift, which personally, I see as a good thing, because I think that will help deliver greater client outcomes, which is what it's all about really.

Speaker 1: 5:41

Yeah, and I think we had some stats recently on St Corwin I think it was two-thirds that go through the academy and now going down the straight into financial planning route, as opposed to like one-third going into running their own businesses. I think we touched on it as well, didn't we? There's two hats to wear when you're a financial planner and you're a business owner. We're going to dig into that a little bit in a minute. Actually, I think it's a really interesting subject. I think those listening thinking should I run my own partner practices or should I just focus on financial planning? So we'll get stuck into that. Do you want to ask you about Charters? Okay, so is Chartered really important to you?

Speaker 2: 6:14

Yes is the short answer, and I guess there are multiple reasons why I think one. There's that sense of wanting to deliver best client outcomes, which I've mentioned before and I might sound like I'm repeating myself, but it's so embedded into the DNA of what we do. Take every opportunity to do that, and so I think furthering your professional knowledge and understanding alongside real life experience is a fantastic way to do it. I also see it as differentiator. St James's Place.

Speaker 2: 6:39

I've just come from a Chartered conference today called the Charter Symposium. They've been running it for maybe six, seven, eight years now. A fantastic day showcasing all the technical expertise for people that want to develop to Chartered as well those who are. I saw the stat today St James's Place advises 25.1% of them are now Chartered, which, compared to the industry I don't know the wider numbers I know is a significant step forward and it shows that wider commitment and that support there and all the stats that they have in the background. They show that clients get better outcomes when they deal with Chartered advises, and so I see it as important from a reputation, from a client outcome, but also from a development. I, as you said, I wear two hats. As a business owner. I don't want my team to come in and feel like they've just got a job for nine to five to tick the same boxes every week, every month. I want to think about how can they progress in their careers, what's next with them? Professional development is a big part of that.

Speaker 1: 7:39

Oh, fantastic. Well, let's just go into it now. Then we're on the subject. So, wearing two hats, you've come into St James's Place. You've chosen the route of being a partner, which is running your own business. Tell us a little bit about the difference between the two, then, and how you've kind of navigated that in your journey.

Speaker 2: 7:53

Yeah, and it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about, because you also have different types of business. So you've got the option you could come in and run your own business but very much be a sole trader type setup. So you're going to run a lean business, probably limited support staff required, a more concentrated number of clients. That is more kind of, like I say, sole trader type of environment. But once you start growing into a larger business, we're going to be through more clients and more advisors. You need more support staff so that you end up having an operating business.

Speaker 2: 8:25

That transition is a very different proposition. So with those two hats, you've got your financial planner hat and when we spoke before we talked about the way we look at holistic planning and maybe we'll chat about that later as well but with the running a business hat, you've got people's careers to think about. You've got client outcomes. You've got shareholder requirements. You've got HR hat, your property hat. You've got to make this thing work effectively because if that falls down, ultimately you lose out, your team lose out, your clients lose out. So it's a very different hat. You've got to be a lot more strategically minded and corporately minded and very much dissociate yourself from the business. That is a difficulty for you, the shareholder in your own business, but you need to think about yourself with different hats on in that regard as well. You're thinking what's good for the business rather than what's good for me.

Speaker 1: 9:16

It's tricky, isn't?

Speaker 2: 9:17

it Very, but it's so important to do and I think if you can create that dissociation and think about yourself in, you know those two shareholder role and your kind of director, strategist type role, as well as the planner role potentially, if you're doing that as well. But by doing that you will make better decisions for the business and you know it then links to what are the values of the business. What's the ambition of the business For us? We say that our mission is to leave each client's financial life in a better place Very much stolen from the all blacks who talk about leaving the jersey in a better place for the next player. But for us it is just about. We're custodians of our client's financial plans for the future. We won't be forever, but we want them to be left in a better place for having let us into that important part of their life. But with that very clear, very succinct vision for the business, my decision making is based on that, not on how does that impact me or whoever else as a shareholder. That is very important.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Has that formed the basis of your values and culture of your business Completely?

Speaker 2: 10:26

So a couple of years ago we went through an entire process where we set out the vision, the mission, so where do you want to be? So that is kind of telling the world what are we about and where are we going. We then say, well, how are we going to do it? And that's when you get values to underpin it. And at the center of those five core values we have what we call an aspirational value of excellence. There are brands out there in the world who, I think, have achieved excellence, but most who talk about it as a value. It's aspiring, because you're always trying to get better. But we also have things such as continued development is one of those values because, going back to the charter piece, we see that as so important. But once you've decided your values which supports where you want to in the future you have to say how are we going to behave day to day?

Speaker 2: 11:08

So we did a big piece the middle of last year saying if these are our values which underpin our vision, what are our behaviors, what behaviors are appropriate as a team underpinning each of those. And we've literally a couple of days ago I had printed it into a book and we've based it on a Clive Woodward's book, which she did obviously work at winning coach. You can tell him a rugby fan. There's lots of themes along here. I was very fortunate to listen to him in a session talking about this idea of team ship, where the team drive the ideas of the behaviors. As a leader, you still, you know, have the veto rights or the steering rights, but the team own it, they feel part of it. All of that links into the values of values linking to the vision and, as I said, the vision links to the clients.

Speaker 1: 11:52

You read that in the book. Is that something that you've learned along the way, or did you have that in place when you very, very, very first start up the pilot practice, or have you learned it?

Speaker 2: 11:59

along the way. Oh, that I've learned along the way. My prior career gave me advantages in terms of understanding a lot of the mechanisms around corporates, so I talk about corporate financial planning as opposed to personal financial planning. So capital structure, p and L, cash flow, as well as some of the operational elements. But this piece about culture, about people, that has been learned along the way because I've been exposed to some very good people who really understand it, and if I hadn't been exposed to them, we wouldn't be where we are as a business.

Speaker 1: 12:34

How long are we working in the corporate world?

Speaker 2: 12:36

Oh, that's a very good question. So 2009 to 2016, so seven years.

Speaker 1: 13:28

For those in that world right now sell to them financial planning as a career as opposed to being in corporate finance and the transferable skills perhaps that they will have doing the job that do transfer across into a career within financial planning. I'd be interested to hear what yours were and what you think they could be for somebody else listening who might be in the corporate world right now.

Speaker 2: 13:51

So, in terms of selling it, what I would say is in the corporate world I went back to my point about politics, about decision making, but fundamental, when you design the three and a half billion dollar financing package for a big S&P 500 M&A deal, who benefits from it? Some shareholders over the pond or some investors? Do you see them? Do you see the gratification for it? Personally, what I love about what we do is we deal with real people's goals. I go back to example. You said you've got a child. Let's say big goal for you is sending her to university. That day when you can send her to university and pay for it because the planning we've put in place, we see the smile on your face, we see it come to life for real.

Speaker 2: 14:39

That for me is the, it is self gratification. You know, I think it was Buffett that said there's no such thing as philanthropy, because ultimately you feel good when you do good stuff for others. But you do and it's that kind of warm sense inside that you've helped someone achieve something they might not otherwise have been able to do if it weren't for your help. Where's the corporate world? You don't see that end benefit directly and that there is indirect benefit. You know, trust me, that does exist. I just like seeing it firsthand. So that's the sell. That's why transferable skills, relationships and understanding problems those are the two big ones I would say there. So if you're good at building relationships, building rapport, and you're good at solving people's problems, you've got the foundations of what it takes.

Speaker 1: 15:27

When you were in corporate finance, did you find that that was missing from your life, this feeling of actually delivering something that, yeah, financially gave you gain. You built a business, you know earning money, but did you feel that you were missing that intrinsic feeling of purpose in what you were actually delivering, that you were actually changing somebody's life?

Speaker 2: 15:52

Yes, but I didn't know that's what I was missing. At the time I knew something didn't quite fit. I knew that my natural numbers brain fitted finance. I knew that in theory, these are exciting deals we're working on. You know we work alongside the corporate finance advisors to put the financing packages in place. But I wasn't feeling fulfilled from it.

Speaker 1: 16:16

So what triggered you to search for that? Where did that come from? Where did you recognise that that was what was missing? Was it that that triggered you to leave corporate finance, for instance, and join St James's place? Or did you learn that when you actually ended up doing the job of financial planning, for instance?

Speaker 2: 16:33

A bit of both. It triggered me to look for something else. And in looking for something else I came across St James's place in the academy and, as you said earlier, the academy hadn't been running for that long and so it was still relatively new. They were still finding their feet on the recruitment process. But one of the things I really liked and I'm sure it's still fairly similar the first interview was very much a do you pass the bar? There were three more interviews and they were more self selection. At that point it was more here's more information about this potential career change, because that still fit you. That, for me, was when it really started to come to light that I felt that it could fit me and that it would help with that gap and also here.

Speaker 1: 17:16

I am Fantastic what I have found about the academy and talking to GE and hearing about people that go through it. They do spend a lot of time kind of pushing back on people to come through, to get them to discover really what their purpose actually is and to quickly establish is this the right route for you becoming a financial planner? What's your purpose, what do you think it is, and are your values really aligned to what the job actually is? And I think that's really really useful. I don't think people should be hey, here's a red carpet, come and join.

Speaker 1: 17:44

I think people should be challenged on any career they go into and I think you could probably echo this. You're not going to step across into a career within financial planning, whether you're a partner or whether you're a financial planner, and from day dot it's going to be easy. You know it's going to be tough and I think people need to be challenged on their thinking before they enter the financial planning profession anyway, because it takes time to build client banks, it takes time to build a business and you're not going to do it from day dot, are you?

Speaker 2: 18:11

I think you're at challenge is such a good word there and you know if you've been told to be a slight red herring. It's the same with clients, and I now have the confidence to sit in front of a prospective client and say this might not be right for you because we work in this way. This is how we help people. But actually it may not fully align or you might be fine without us. And so, challenging in all areas what we do is important. But to go back to the Academy point, that was the self-selection points that I was talking about, whereby they challenge you to really understand the thing. Does it fit you?

Speaker 2: 18:42

It's not easy, it's. You know any career change is hard. You know we talk about change curves. You know if you know what you're doing at something, you start here, day one of a new job, you're back down at the bottom again, doesn't matter how good the transition is or what walk of life it is. You drop down. Building back up that curve takes energy, determination and a desire to actually climb back up, and everyone will climb at their own pace, but you're going to have to expect the drop and climb back up again. So it's important to challenge people to make sure they're up for that challenge.

Speaker 1: 19:17

It's also a balancing act, isn't it, of doing it yourself and somebody may be dropping down a rope and giving you a helping hand. Did SJP drop down a rope for you and give you a helping hand?

Speaker 2: 19:29

I think they dropped down the appropriate rope is the way I'd put it. So what I mean by that is they give you the support required to be successful. I'm sure there are lots of people who in their first couple of years that they were trying to go entirely alone, would fall out of the system. But they don't want to do it for you because that go back to your challenge word. It's then just setting you up for longer term.

Speaker 2: 19:53

Failure or failure may even be a strong word, but it's just not been the right thing for you. So you still need to be challenged, you still need to work hard to put the effort in, but what they are there, it's almost like a safety gate to. Actually, we don't want you to fail. We want you to build a fantastic either business or careers flat, your planner to deliver great outcomes for clients, and we will support you in the appropriate way. And what I've really valued is they have so much support available across so many different areas and I've seen that evolve over time with our business needs. That, for me, is a really powerful thing about it. So, yes, there is a rope, but it's not to pull you up. It's there to help, guide you and let you climb at your own pace.

Speaker 1: 20:36

The support that actually is in place, from wearing your financial planner hat to wearing your business owner hat. They support you on both sides.

Speaker 2: 20:43

Correct. So I talked earlier about bringing on more advisors into the team. We have our direct liaison with SJP. So manager, or whatever word you want to call them in the corporate world, they change their title every three minutes, as they do anywhere in the world.

Speaker 2: 21:01

I've got a fantastic one who is integral If it wasn't a risk under IOD rules of him being called a kind of intrinsic director, but he's like that non-exept director voice in the background. However, we've got these other advisors coming through. They don't go straight under his span of control because his expertise is for people that are more established and for business owners. They have an entirely separate team that support them as they're growing through their career. They transition through different areas of support as they go through that journey.

Speaker 2: 21:32

So I'm confident that the business has support. Excuse me, sorry. So I'm confident that the business has support, but also each of my advisors have support that's tailored to what they need along the way and eventually they might all catch up to the same part, but it helps them there. But, as I say, I then also get that business support, which is really invaluable, and it is a two-way relationship. We give to them but also we take from them. So we support them where we can, but also we take support from them where they offer it, and that has been immeasurably important in getting the business and the team and the clients to where they are today. Does that free up a lot of your time, then? No, do you know why? Because it creates more work, because my mind goes on to the next strategic thoughts.

Speaker 1: 22:24

So I just say.

Speaker 2: 22:25

I go on to the next item on the list. But it's a flippant answer. But the reality is it means I've achieved more in eight years than I would have otherwise done. So in theory it could have freed up my time, but I filled that time with the next project.

Speaker 1: 22:39

I like what you said there about it being a non-executive director, but you've actually also got somebody who is in so managing and coaching and training the advisors in your business that you've got two tiered support. That is the partnership that you're not employing. Yes, you obviously put money into St James's place. That puts money into the salary pot for those types of individuals, but that is a nice win, isn't it? It's nice to have that support around you where you don't have to actually hire yourself into your own business, right?

Speaker 2: 23:12

It's a fantastic win and you know, as you say, we kind of put money in the pot. In a vertecom is right. At the beginning of this. I use the word simple. You always laugh to say there's not a lot of simplicity and there isn't a lot of simplicity and financial services as a whole. But where you can take some, I will, and this is a great example of that. Yes, it means that you know some of the fees go to SJP as opposed to us. However, what I get back in terms of support, it takes a problem off my head of, as you say, thinking who do I need to hire? Do I need to hire someone? Do I need to rent someone or a trainer or whatever it might be. It just means that when I need support, I can ask and I don't bother about doing a balancing act of does this cost that and does it all add up, because actually I'm so comfortable that the business gets further propelled forward from my time being available to focus on what's important that I see that simplicity as a win.

Speaker 1: 24:08

Where are you spending most of your time at the moment?

Speaker 2: 24:11

So this year for me is actually a big year for financial planning because, as I said, we're going to our eighth year. As of April there'll be four of us giving advice. Up until about 18 months ago, it was predominantly just me. I've told you on our session before I really like running the business, so the managing director hat. I love what we do with the clients. I'm also building loads of people that love that as well, and so it's a transition year for me to start to move more towards strategic planning, which is the growth aspirations of the business as well as the development of the advisors.

Speaker 2: 24:44

Because, in simple terms, I spoke to my father about a few years ago, who has worked in the profession for a long time, and he said you know, why would you want to pull back from giving clients advice? You know, I think you're brilliant. He's my father. Of course he does. I said surely it's better if I can have five or six people as brilliant doing it but me not, as the kind of cost and trade off to training them up to just me doing it but not having the time to develop others. And so for me that's the kind of the what next is training the others and focusing on the kind of corporate growth that we've got planned for, the next kind of three to five years.

Speaker 1: 25:21

So you're going to step back from the frontline advisor facing grow. Your team focus on the strategic direction of the business, but also where the trainer hat. So everything that you know and you love and the things that you do, you're going to pass that knowledge onto your team on an internal basis. In a byproduct of that is they help more people. You still get the same reward.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Yeah, so I will probably still keep a portion of clients myself because I think it's important in that role to understand, keep your finger on the pulse and so on, but I see that moving to 20% of my time.

Speaker 1: 25:53

I think it's important for you, though, not to let go of that, because you just told me earlier that's a big part of what you love about financial planning and I'm, for a period of time, I stepped away from client facing work within my recruitment business and focus more on marketing and strategic growth. I actually it made me quite sad because I wasn't talking to people enough. It's when I ended up setting up the podcast and I started talking to people again and going out and doing business development and meeting people and it was like hang on, this is the part of the job I absolutely love. I've worked out that the managing of people and the training of people and all of that, even though I used to be a trainer for Reveaver. I don't really enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 26:28

I enjoy the development of a business. I love going out and meeting people and talking to people and asking questions and other thing opportunities and quite creative in that sense. Creative in the sense of human to human contact and what together, two humans can create. I love that and that's the bit yeah, hearing what you said, I don't know bit of feedback. You know, however you take, it is your choice. You sound like a very strategic and driven type individual and you've obviously got a plan, but I love the way you're positioning it as a byproduct of they're going out and they're doing good. Then you feel good anyway and you're keeping your hand in there and making sure that your skills are there and obviously, making sure that what you're teaching them is right.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yeah, and I think there's a few points that I really appreciate the feedback because it's important to get that kind of the bouncing back, and also from different sectors. I think quite often financial planning is very introverted. We talked to other financial planners about our businesses. I like looking externally for ideas but and that links to kind of a second point there so you talk about keeping your hand in talking to clients and then there's you've got a limited amount of time, so it's how you allocate it. So one of my viewpoints for the development of the profession is that if we want to be more like established professions like law for example, you don't go to one lawyer, but your will and your divorce and your conveyance seeing and your corporate structuring, you might use the same firm because you agree with their values and how you deal with them.

Speaker 2: 27:48

But different people come in at different times. I like the idea of clients having a core relationship, contact, but having the ability to bring in other advisors for areas of expertise on a regular basis, and part of that is about creating the right team ethos within financial planning. But it also gives someone like me the opportunity to be brought in for the right reason to client meetings. But from a time commitment perspective, if that's not a core relationship of mine that I own, I'm not doing the ongoing piece Someone else in the team is. I can keep my hand in. I can keep the enjoyment of seeing people but be part of a team as opposed to the only person on that client relationship.

Speaker 1: 28:30

I like that. I love the way you're looking at it as a team effort as well. It's just coming back for your ropy days, probably, isn't it? And it feels to me like a mini family office. You know everybody's got an area of expertise, you know, and the client then feels like you know, we've got somebody who can talk to you about this. We've got somebody who can talk to you about this as a team of us here that can actually service and look after you.

Speaker 1: 28:48

So when I I often talk to power planners that get the mushroom treatment, you know they keep them in the dark and you know it's some work to do, get on with it type of thing. Whereas the ones that have gone into those client meetings and actually felt part of the actual delivery of the you know, delivery of the service to the client, they enjoy it. The power planner, for instance. But the client also gets somebody who might be so technically knowledgeable around certain subject matter and that individual is kind of presenting that technicality and can explain it. And the financial advisor might be more the relationship focused type individual. I can keep the conversation going and, you know, open up opportunities and talk about the future and all that kind of stuff, maybe present the cash flow forecasting and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1: 29:25

I just love that element and it's a great learning, a great environment teaching and a great entire environment learning, because the advisor can learn from the person from technical perspective and think well, I can simplify that in a different way when I'm talking to people. I think I know I love that and I think that works really well. And especially traditionally, you see admin, power, planner, financial advisor, team of financial advisors, and you also kind of see sometimes in these firms like just a team of people that are all against each other. They're like all individuals, aren't they? You know, they're all just doing their own little things and their own little mini businesses within the, within a financial planning firm. So I do like that strategy. Talk to me more about that, because I want to hear about your strategy and your vision and where you're going with this business, like what's, what's your aspirations.

Speaker 2: 30:04

Yeah, so we have a vision for the business to be a multi branch office down in the Southwest, where we are. So we, you know, live in beautiful Devon. There's some fantastic places there, but there's also a lot of people that retire down there that need help with retirement planning, inheritance planning and the variety of the needs. There's lots of fantastic businesses down there. Business owners benefit so much from the advice that we can give them so we'd like to create almost like a branch network. Again, we have to be true to our identity so we're never going to be the big shiny office corporate with Pinstripe Soops. We are the local, approachable, you know the kind of our first office which we've got at the moment 200 year old building on a beautiful little high street in just outside the center of Exeter in a you know nice affluence suburb, if you want to call it that, the city of that size. And so with that we want to build that kind of model in different places rather than grow and go into the big shiny office. But with that I can be the right people. So I'd rather take longer and get the right people in place than rush it, because one person can undo all of that work and you know I really resonate with what you say. There.

Speaker 2: 31:17

I have seen many of these businesses where each advisor is their own silo and they're protective. My newest advisor, who joined and you know I was at a conference today. I said all about chartered and my newest advisor and one of my other advisors sat there chatting. My newest advisor had a great opportunity to go and work with a business on their employees. First thing he said, turn to the other advisor and said is this something you would like to help me with? None of this silo it was. I respect the fact that you have knowledge here and here. This is also a great opportunity I would like to share. That, for me, was kind of one of those proud dad moments, if you will. You know, look at the way those interact together.

Speaker 2: 31:59

That, for me, is a really effective team that wants to deliver the right thing for its clients. So, yes, we have a great strategy. We want to have multiple offices, we want to have more advisors, but we only want more advisors if they have those ethics and those values. We want a variety. We want people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives and experience and skills and expertise. Talk about professional development. We might have someone that's later life expert, someone that's defined benefit pension expert, etc. Etc. But you can have a variety of backgrounds, variety of experiences and expertise, but we want to have people who share core values and core vision Sounds perfect.

Speaker 1: 32:42

So how has your talent attraction strategy gone?

Speaker 2: 32:47

It has been a roller coaster, I think is the best way to put it. So we are now the strongest team we've ever been at the business and you go through challenges. The first high as we made we were a small start at business that could not afford big salaries, so you're going to be more limited in your talent pool, because who wants to take a risk on a small business with a salary that they might be able to get better elsewhere? So we've grown, we've learned. You know everyone that's come through the business has played their part in the evolution. We're now in a really strong place. One of the things I really noticed with the advisor recruitment in the last 12 months was the work on the vision, the values and the behaviors, and we've put in place a career development framework. We're a team of less than 10 people but we have I'm very proud of this a way that people could be rewarded in role. They're not going to a small business for the benefits, such as, you know, being a bit more flexible and friendly, but giving up a career. They're getting both, in my opinion Again, I'm biased because I helped design it.

Speaker 2: 33:52

It's another great example. So James's place gave me support in designing and building this. I had the idea of what we wanted to do, but I needed expertise in how to develop that because I've never done it before. But now we have, like a banding system that you see in a big corporate, whereby the team can say well, I'm starting as a band one trading administrator. In the future, I'd like to be a band four financial planner how am I going to get there? And we can map it out with them. We can map out where their career is, what they need to do to get to each stage, and for me, that is a really powerful recruitment tool because I can say if you come to us, this is how we work with you. This is the map. We will create your own personal or professional development plan for where you want to be in three to five years and we will help you get there.

Speaker 2: 34:37

Because I'm just a big believer of investing people and it was. I will probably completely massacre it, but there was a quote from Richard Branson years ago where I was talking about developing people and apparently someone challenged him and said oh, but what if we invest all this money and time into people and they leave? And the response was but what if we don't and they stay, and that's always really resonated with me. So I would rather invest in people and, at the appropriate time, for them to move on elsewhere, to leave with a really good impression of us. That is going to be far better for the business, for our clients, for our team than anything else, in my opinion.

Speaker 1: 35:15

I really love that, and something we don't see enough within financial planning firms is a clear career development plan. So I've been in recruitment for 15 years advising recruitment firms how to hire and a conversation piece that always comes out if I speak to them about their businesses show me your career development plan. No one's ever got a career development plan. I had someone on the podcast recently and she runs an outsourcing power planning company and power planning is one of those things that people really struggle to hire and I'm like there's got to be like five different roles within a power planner. You know five and she thinks she's about having eight different roles within her outsourced power planning company. So for her it was far easier to be able to ascertain whether or not that power planner out there on the open market is looking for another job is about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, right, and somebody coming in at one can see that, wow, I can progress to the level I need to get to. It's going to take me time I'm lying next to each of one of those bands are the competencies required and the evidence required to be able to actually say that I am at that level, and I think it really has affected people and how they hire Because, like when there's been a power plan I'm using power plan as an example at the moment when there's like a power plan of shortage and someone puts a power planner on a CV, they're so kind of like I need a power plan, I need a power planner. They're not actually properly quizzing them on their skills, their experience, their competence, their competencies and the evidence that they can do the job. They're offering high basic salaries, taking somebody on and getting a senior administrator and it's really a bad hire. It's costing them money because they don't and they can't blame the person. They're just marketing themselves right and they're looking for opportunity and opportunities coming. So what businesses can do to protect themselves is create that personal development plan but at the same time, inspire those that actually work for them to say look, if you're coming at this level, this is the pathway that you can get to Now. I know this for sure.

Speaker 1: 37:07

I used to bring people into my recruitment company on my wall in front of me. You might want to do it. Put your career development plan up there, put it on the wall, because as you're talking to them, as you leave them in the meeting room for like 10 minutes, just like I'll leave you 10 minutes. By the way, our development plans up there have a quick look and they sit there for 10 minutes and they look at it and they go through it all and by the time you've come back they're inspired and you're like what did you think of the career development plan?

Speaker 1: 37:31

They're like I've never seen anything like it. You know well where would you put yourself on it, where would you want to get to and what sort of timescale you're looking for. But all of a sudden you've won their hearts' minds because you're investing in their future, their development, and it's an area in financial planning that has not really been looked at outside of the larger corpus, and I think that's why a lot of the firms are quite small and why people move around quite a bit Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 37:57

It does, and I think for me as well. Where people have started to do it, I've seen them focus on the advisors, not the support team. So we've done it for the whole team. So we have kind of four roles that we have admin, power planning, marketing and advising and each of them have their kind of progression through. So you can map, if you want to go, between teams, how you do that and whilst you know you're never going to have 10 CEOs of a business. So you get to a point where it does have to become dead man's shoes.

Speaker 2: 38:23

The point is to be able to reward people without dead man's shoes at that earlier part of their career. So the first four or five bands within structure you should be able to be rewarded. And I was having this conversation the other day with my trainee power planner and trying to help him understand it and he was saying but if you're other power planners senior power planners that mean I can't be a senior power planner. We can in the future have four senior power planners. We're a small business.

Speaker 2: 38:49

The flip side is you'll all have to do the boring jobs as well, because the work still needs doing, but I would still reward you for being that standard. Now, if one leaves, then I'm probably going to hire more juniors to pick up the boring tasks. But that's part of the corporate hat strategy hat. But from a, if you are worth it and you've put the effort in and you've proven yourself and, as you say, you can meet those markers you talk about the bad highs. I've been there before. We had this but if you can meet all those markers, then you will be rewarded for it and that's important for me.

Speaker 1: 39:22

How have you found trying to attract talent to your business based on the movement of salaries over the last few years? Because you're a smaller business, you might not be rolling in cash, so have you found it difficult around salaries?

Speaker 2: 39:38

Yes, to a degree. Our approach is to kind of pay fairly but, given environments which people enjoy working in and can get on board with, that's generally our approach. So it has been a challenge. Obviously, as you say, you know, power planner salaries have gone up and so on. We are we've not been hit as badly as London, being Southwest based, but it for sure has gone up.

Speaker 2: 40:03

Part of building a business, when we go back to these two hats, is cash flow management. Cash really is king and you need to be able to pay your bills. You know you can't pay your salaries. You haven't got a business. So managing that has been hard. There have been times where I have been wearing more than a hundred percent worth of times worth of hats. You know, for the first few years I did my own power planning and my own admin to make the business work and to actually build cash for the future, to reinvest into the business. So I've never been one to take large amounts myself. It's always been a reinvest and grow because I'm excited about what the business can deliver in the future. And so it's always going to be a challenge with a growing business and until some equity backer comes along and says here is a load of cash, go and make the vision happen now, and I don't even want that much equity. Those things don't exist. So you plan it out carefully and just make sure you make the right decision at the right time.

Speaker 1: 41:00

You've also got the career development plan, the personal development plan. So when it comes to actually offering salaries, you can kind of also then say, but here's our career development plan and most people are looking to get ahead. You know the amount of people that I know have taken higher salaries, gone into a company and been like I kind of so happy in that firm over there on less money, but you took that role because it's paging more, right. It's like, yeah, okay, so lesson learned perhaps what you really want out of life is fulfillment in work opportunity, a great environment to work in. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. Well, do what you can here and maybe go and look for that again. You know I like the personal development plan route. So I'd love to come and come and sit down and be on your business and have a look at it and just understand it a bit more, because I'm really interested in that. I think it's such a powerful way to attract talent.

Speaker 1: 41:48

Let's talk about growing your partner practice. You went down the partner practice route. You know one of those that set their own partner practice up. You've come from a corporate finance background. Your dad obviously involved in St James's place from that perspective as well and you were obviously a JP or a client of yours. So he talks about growing your business and you obviously are employing people. If you're employing people, you're having to bring clients on. Can we just talk a little bit about how you've grown that business from a client perspective?

Speaker 2: 42:20

Of course. So starting the business was entirely organic. My network and I was pleasantly surprised actually, how many people who I knew from law banking backgrounds who said you know what, matt, I need someone to sort this out for me. I do not want to be cold-called, I want someone I know and I trust Can you just sort it out for me. I was very fortunate to have a network like that, who I could lean into, and it was also an advantage because it wasn't just one or two big clients, it was a large number of medium-sized clients so I could get experience, I could get better From there.

Speaker 2: 42:56

We had referrals and so on, but about two years in we were presented the opportunity to buy a client bank from a retiring partner, the St James's place. That was transformative for the business. We did another such acquisition 18 months ago. So we've coupled the two together. We've done organic, which we continue to do. Referrals continue to be our best source of business, but those acquisitions have also provided a scale, the ability to have clients, as you say, because if you have advisors you need people for them to look after, and so all of that together has been really positive. And again, I'm a bit of a stats geek, I actually record where every single piece of new business we write comes from and I can tell you a quarter of all new business we've ever written as a business has been a direct result of those acquisitions.

Speaker 1: 43:43

Wow, yeah, that's fantastic. So, when it comes to the acquisitions on an internal basis, what do they call it? The St James's place?

Speaker 2: 43:51

So the department's called BSP or business sale and purchase. I like to think of it as a marketplace, a liquid marketplace for buying and selling either full or partial practices, which was a big draw for me in coming to St James's place to have a liquid marketplace in an illiquid asset, essentially.

Speaker 1: 44:10

So how do you go through the process then, and how do you qualify to be able to go to that marketplace as a partner? Have you got to jump through some hoops? Have you got to hit a certain level of business? How does it work?

Speaker 2: 44:20

So obviously I'm coming from the side of having been through it myself rather than working in the team, and so I don't want to say anything I shouldn't. However, as far as I'm aware, there aren't any fixed criteria of who can engage with the team. If you are interested and it is a sensible approach to your business, then you can have conversations. I spoke earlier about the support St James's place give you. It's not just a case of it being forced upon you or you forcing yourself upon them. It is a case of a sensible conversation of is this good corporate strategy?

Speaker 2: 44:52

If it is, you then start looking for opportunities and that could be your own networking with other practices or the St James's place marketplace. They know who's looking to sell and so on. They might match you up and it's all done in a responsible way. Having been a corporate lender in my past life and having seen some of those hurdles, which are essentially financial due diligence I was comfortable with the way in which they took me through it. They taught me through the risks. Obviously there's upside as well, but I was very comfortable with that. But I'd say it's open for anyone to have a discussion, but that doesn't guarantee you're going to get to do it.

Speaker 1: 45:29

So you've done two. What did you learn from first? That made the second a bit easier due diligence requirements.

Speaker 2: 45:39

So, having worked in the corporate MNA world on the financing side of it, I was familiar with the concept due diligence and certain types due diligence, so I certainly wasn't slack about it. I sat down with the retiring partner. We went through client by client and he told me the story. And the fact that he could tell me a story about each client was a big part of the due diligence the fact he actually knew them. That was really successful as a result.

Speaker 2: 46:08

But there were little bits and pieces in there to do with how some of the calculations and value are made, whether things are exactly as they seem. That I was then able to incorporate into the next one we did, and even since then our IT systems have improved such that you can do even better due diligence now in a more automated fashion. So St James's place are always looking for ways to help support that. But equally God remember they're not an advisor to it, so they can't do the due diligence for you. Otherwise there's a potential risk of being seen to be something they're not. So it is on you, but they give you very good guidance on the kind of things that you should be looking at.

Speaker 1: 46:45

What things are you based on your knowledge, your knowledge about this? What was the kind of due diligence you were doing there? What were you looking for?

Speaker 2: 46:51

So simple things. So, as people in the profession will know, typically you charge your fees based on a percentage of funds under management, and so you're looking for indicators that the funds under management may not still be there in the future. So, for example, have you got a large proportion of pensions with 54 year olds who are about to take 25% out tax rate? If that's the case, your fees can drop by 25%. But you've paid based on the whole thing, while they're, say, higher valued assets, so maybe for younger clients that might have a higher value.

Speaker 2: 47:26

Obviously I'm not privy to the black box methodology of how these are calculated, but you can see some of, say, the higher valuations versus lower ones. So it's those sense checks. What's the age? If everyone's 88, are they still going to be here? You know we look at the Office of National Statistics data on life expectancy, so things like that are is the funds under management still going to be there? But then there's a qualitative assessment of what's the depth of those relationships. Are they bought in and are they open to a change of advisor for the right reason?

Speaker 1: 47:58

We nervous about that. When you were taking on those clients, like, would they it's like a blood transfusion, isn't it, you know? Would they? Would they find the transition themselves? The clients, would they find it a welcome thing? You know, they've known that advice for quite some time Were you nervous about anything at all? Like you know, bringing those clients across?

Speaker 2: 48:20

If I wasn't nervous, then I don't think I'm doing my job right, because you should never be absolutely you know that confident that everything's going to be perfect. So, yes, I was nervous, but what nervousness does it? Inspires you to do something about it, and so you control what you can control. You can control the communication, you can control the messaging and you can control what you do. I can't control how they react, so some of them will invariably not like it or move away or whatever it might be. I can't control that.

Speaker 2: 48:51

So why am I going to waste my energy on worrying about it? It's actually the sound very kind of zen and Buddhist about this, but you've got to focus your energy where you can. So if we do a really good job of that transition and the messaging is after a long career, X is now retiring and you know I'm sure you know he deserves his retirement. He's helped you get to your retirement after all. That messaging is really important. The why are we qualified to take over?

Speaker 2: 49:16

So the second one that we did a couple of years ago, 18 months ago, the person who we were and taking over from was also a fellow said to say well, actually there are not many fellows in the profession, so it's important for him that you're passed over to someone that is just as well qualified.

Speaker 2: 49:34

That messaging is important. Then just make sure you follow up, and the reality is it's actually good in a way for clients to change advisor from time to time, in my opinion. So, if you indulge me with this, and it links to my idea of having a team whereby clients can move within members of the team over time, because if you have too long a relationship, you start to become closer to friends and professional advisor. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to be friends with people you work with, but does it mean that you're as sharp as looking for the opportunities or how to help them? I talked about the new business that we've ended up writing as a result. Probably half of that new business came as a result of those relationships having been going on so long that they'd missed really obvious things to do, and so a fresh lens is really good for clients as well.

Speaker 1: 50:23

I love that. So the BSP. Is there any other ways to grow your client bank underneath St James's place that you were aware of?

Speaker 2: 50:33

I mean there are a variety of things. So you could, for example, use some lead generation providers, where people are Googling or using whatever to look for financial advisors. You can do that kind of thing and we've tabled in that from time to time and during COVID obviously times were harder, so I was looking for ways to reinvigorate the business. But I go back to my stats tracking the most powerful ways to grow the business are referrals and basically existing clients through those BSP acquisitions.

Speaker 1: 51:04

So let's look at hiring again back into your business and the fact that there are a number of retiring advisors of which you're benefiting from from St James's place and buying their client banks. But when we look at hiring the next generation into your business because advisors are obviously aging out, the advisors are going to be a lot younger. Is your business set up to be able to take people on? Perhaps they don't have as much life experience?

Speaker 2: 51:31

Yes, I go back to the career development framework. This is powerful in two areas Experience advisors. It gives them something to buy into, you know, so where they can see their career developing. So in a market that's incredibly tough to hire an experienced advisor and we can't pay double the market salary like some of the big competitors might be able to pay fair. But we want people to come by and so that helps. But on the other side, it means we can develop people into advisors ourselves and I'll give you a great example.

Speaker 2: 52:01

I've got two training administrators who want to be advised in the future. We've mapped out those plans of how they want to get there. Through a team. They want to develop from a training admin to an admin, to a training power planner, etc. Etc. Going through that and we'll help them along the way. But in addition to that, st James's place have a separate version of the Academy which will take people who've got experience in the practice and qualifications but no direct experience, and they will give them additional training to help them. You know, three months of classroom training to help them with that transition, in addition to what we do within FFP.

Speaker 2: 52:40

A life experience is a really interesting one within that as well. So that's technical expertise and meeting skills, client skills. Life experience is very hard to shortcut need to experience it, and so, with my business owner hat on, I have to therefore think carefully about when someone's starting out. Perhaps, if they're in their 20s, they've got three, four years under their belt in the admin team, they've got their qualification, they've got their three months in the classroom.

Speaker 2: 53:08

I've got to be careful about which clients they look after. But I go back to my comparison with law. You don't qualify as a lawyer, you know, in your mid 20s, after your training contracts and all your time at the university and so on, and go straight onto the biggest, most complicated client, or, if you do, you're the junior undescribed to the partner. So for me, that is a very important part. You can't build that life experience without exposure, but you need to be mindful of still delivering great client outcomes along the way. It's a fine balancing act. That's something I'm very mindful of, because I want them to have that exposure, I want them to grow and I want to look after the clients simultaneously.

Speaker 1: 53:47

I love that. I love that comparison to law. I love the fact that it ties in with the creative development plan. It sets realistic expectations. It creates goals that people can work towards and everyone really knows what they need to be doing. Whether you're an administrator trying to progress, become a financial planner or a business owner trying to progress, somebody from an administrator Everyone's got a time scale attached to it and realistic expectations. And the thing again you know, people leave businesses when they don't have a clear career map. They don't know which direction they're actually going in. That's why they leave. They might be on less money, but if they know they can earn more money. If they go down and they put their energy and effort into the work that they're actually doing to progress, then they will. And I think that's a really great, great analogy you're using there with law. Financial planning is a profession right You're in agreement with that up there with accountants and lawyers, right?

Speaker 2: 54:33

That's what I think I'm renowned for telling people off, for calling us an industry. It's not an industry, is it? It was a sales industry a long time ago. We're now an advice profession. That is such an important distinction that I labour the point.

Speaker 1: 54:48

Yeah, I like it. It's a good mindset to have as well. You strike me as somebody that likes to do their due diligence, likes their numbers, likes to make sure they're not missing out on anything. Are there any better opportunities out there? So I'm asking St James's place in partner, do you ever look outside of St James's place at all?

Speaker 2: 55:09

Yes is a short answer and I tell my manager and we do it, we've done it for about five years in a row now and we kind of have different layers of potential due diligence we go to. I've never yet found a reason to go beyond the first layer and the first layer is very high level. Pick out a few different networks. I tried to look at different ones each year based on kind of what the theme is in the market and so on. I also look at, say, directly authorised as well, and I say could I deliver better outcomes for my clients and my shareholders if we were to move the business? Because those are my two key stakeholders, with my managing director hat on, and we look at various different things. So we look at things such as what's the product solution, what's the investment performance, what's the environment, what's the support, what's the financial deal? And in doing this analysis as I've never found a reason to go into a second layer of analysis directly authorised is the closest I've come to that second layer of analysis. And the reason why I haven't is because the amount of additional work that would go into it to have to double the size of the team would distract me from delivering the right thing for the business and the clients. So that's discounted. We're looking at other networks, this interest of people out there that say, oh, you could go to a whole of market or you could have somewhere with multiple different platforms. You can choose Right at the beginning. I use that word simple and I think if you use Occam's razor you strip it down to the simplest solution. That's what it's about. And when I look at these other platforms, they talk about being, say, a whole of market. When you really get into it, is it a white list? You're still operating off a smaller list. So, yes, there are regulatory reasons why it may be called whole of market versus restricted, and I completely get that because I am giving up the opportunity to do my due diligence on the fund managers on panel. However, if I went elsewhere, I may have the right to do it, but I'm still kind of giving it up because I'm going to use their white list. And so I then say, well, how do you get onto either a white list on a whole of market option versus how do you get onto the SJP essentially branded panel of funds?

Speaker 2: 57:32

The due diligence behind that at St James's Place is second to none, in my opinion. We talk about professional development. I'm very fortunate that my prior career I became a CFA charter holder, which and again this is going to sound very kind of self-serving but it's a global standard of investment qualification. So I feel like I'm well versed to understand that world. And ultimately I talk about recruiters.

Speaker 2: 57:56

St James's Place many years ago tried to recruit me into the investment team which, purely on the qualification and the experience to date. So when I look at that, I say I like the size and scale of the team, I like the due diligence process, but I also like and this is another tangent, I really like the responsible investing angle they take to the entirety of their fund range. That is something which clients increasingly are interested in. But actually I see FFP as a responsible business which covers far more than just investing but investing as part of that. So I look at this and I say, well, actually I'm given a broad spectrum of funds, I'm given all of the potential tools that I can see us needing to solve our clients' problems. And it's simplified for us by the fact that St James's place are doing that due diligence, which means my team can focus on great outcomes. That, for me is why we've not gone beyond that first layer of due diligence in the last five years.

Speaker 1: 58:56

Do you do that every year? Then yeah, interesting, let's see that.

Speaker 2: 59:02

A little bit of proprietary in there, but always happy to talk in more detail. And I think again, like the due diligence acquisitions, it evolves over time because the world changes. But also I see it as an important part of keeping St James's place on their toes, just as much as they have to keep me on my toes.

Speaker 1: 59:22

Let's just talk, finally, on the partnership as a whole. Okay, tell me more about how the partnership actually does support you, because I don't think that often gets out there into the public hearing about just how much support is actually on offer for the financial planner hat, if you choose that, or for the business owner. So just tell us a little bit about more of the extra things you lean into when it comes to the partnership.

Speaker 2: 59:46

Yeah, and I'd maybe just clarify a bit of a definition there. So the partnership is the series of businesses like mine and advisors within them, st James's place being the corporate that enables us to develop these businesses and give great advice. We get support from both and for me, the St James's place I'll talk about first, that is fantastic because, as I said earlier, I wanted to develop a career development framework. I spoke to St James's place about it and I was given essentially a project manager who then brought in an HR specialist and a specialist here and there, and you also suddenly have two or three people working almost full time on this for three, four months. That's kind of resource I couldn't afford otherwise. And the expertise we're bringing in. The project manager has an MBA in very relevant areas who was able to bring in his own expertise as well, and I'm sad. I think this is what I thought I wanted, but better. So that's fantastic. And there's lots of different ways I go about to BSP. They have consultancy teams, so you don't just rush into it. You don't end up doing something which you shouldn't. There's a reason why they have a very low default rate, speaking by corporate lender hat on from back in the day it's because they're really careful, give you the support that you need.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

The flips on the partnership side there was something called the spirit of the partnership. St James's place, you know, is over 30 years old, started as small family type business and this has been embedded from the start along with the St James's place charitable foundation. These things are core to the DNA and it's an increasing challenge for them to engender this as the partnership gets bigger, as the founders start to retire themselves. But I still see it day to day. I know that I can pick up the phone to other business owners and say I've got this challenge. What do you think? What have you seen? What have you done? That peer to peer network, in addition to the technical support just called sport from St James's place, is a real advantage. That again I go back to my due diligence. I don't see that anywhere else.

Speaker 1: 1:01:52

Nice, good answer. There's interesting answer. You know it's an honest answer. What I like about you is the fact that you are out there, literally in telling SGP that I'm going to go and check the market and see how good you are. I think that's fantastic. Why wouldn't you? No, you're right and like people do that you know that's the reality of it, you know, and I just think the fact that you're being honest about it is a good thing. You know. I think it's great. It keeps them on the toes, doesn't it? But it also keeps you on your toes as well, doesn't it? Make sure that you're out there looking at the right things and you're getting the best deal possible for you and, of course, your clients, you know, which is massively important to you. What does the future hold for Matt, then? What's going to go on next? What's happening?

Speaker 2: 1:02:34

I said when this transitional period where I'm going to say, reduce the let's say, let's call it client relationship ownership, I said, is that still that ability to come into meetings and support and focus more on the strategic direction? I've always been big on that. But I was chatting to one of the team the other day and I said I've probably been doing 60% of my time with clients. I've probably been doing 30% of my time with management. I've been doing 60% of my time with strategy. They said that doesn't add up. I said I know it's been stressful, but so I'm hoping to get back to 100% but probably have 20 clients, 30 management and oversight, 50 strategy. That's where I'd like to get to during the course of the next 12 months or so. From there, it's probably executing the next stage of our plan, which is hopefully in the next let's call it three to four years, opening that second branch office. That's the immediacy From there. Who knows?

Speaker 2: 1:03:28

I may have said to you before I'm very conscious that I'm sat here with an entrepreneurial hat on as a business owner, in addition to financial planner hats, but you're probably getting the sense that I want to develop the financial planners and focus more on the entrepreneurial side. I'm very mindful of the fact that entrepreneurs can outlive their own energy levels, skill set or usefulness. I don't want to sit here and say I'm definitely going to be doing this in five years, 10 years and so on. I want to be open to the fact that, for the success of the business, there may come a time where I need to change roles or step away or whatever it may be for the business to continue beyond what I may be able to do with it. Again, it's that honest self-evaluation, because no one has a monopoly on being good at something forever and you need to make way for others as well. I talk about development. I can't hog the helm forever.

Speaker 1: 1:04:24

I hear that massively. I'm going through something quite similar myself. I think it's a really poignant point you should put on there. I really appreciate that, matt, absolutely. I really enjoy talking to you today To hear about your journey as a partner at St James's Place. I really enjoy talking to you clearly an entrepreneur, clearly very focused strong mindset, rugby background, one of the boys Matt listen. Thank you so much for your time today, really really appreciate it. I think a lot of people listening to this episode will see a different side, I think, to St James's Place. So thanks for sharing, matt McLean, thank you for having me Astronomy計마uls you.