Today is a solo episode with your host Sam Oakes who gives and update in his brand new role at Hoxton Capital Managment as the Head Of Creative. Reach out if you are an adviser interested in joining Hoxton in the UK or abroad. - sam@financialplannerlife.com
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 is a solo episode with your host Sam Oakes who gives and update in his brand new role at Hoxton Capital Managment as the Head Of Creative. Reach out if you are an adviser interested in joining Hoxton in the UK or abroad. - sam@financialplannerlife.com
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.
Hey everybody, sam Oakes here from the Financial Planner Life podcast. Today is a special episode. It's a solo one, just with me. For half an hour you get to listen to my voice. Today I'm going to tell you all about why I exited the recruitment profession. So for 15 years working at Recruit UK built a business seven-figure turnover, why I've decided to move away from that, how I did it, what I'm doing with the Financial Planner Life podcast and some of the successes that I've had with it. My experience that I've built my skill set, that I've built underneath Financial Planner Life and recruitment, and why I'm taking that to Hoxton Capital in a head of creative role. Today is all about my journey. I'm super stoked to be telling you all about it and really looking forward to sharing my journey on the Financial Planner Life podcast. Cheers, hi, everybody, and welcome to the Financial Planner Life podcast with me, the host, sam Oakes, and the newly appointed head of creative for Hoxton Capital. And today's podcast is a solo one. I'm going to talk to you about why I've joined Hoxton Capital, what I'm up to, what I'm doing with the financial plan of life and, obviously, why I exited recruitment and how I did it. I think it's an interesting story and it gives people an insight into me, my background and how now I have ended up in the financial planning profession. So let's kind of start with Recruit UK. I sold Recruit UK so I've exited out of that business.
Speaker 1:I spent 15 years working in the recruitment industry, specifically for financial planning. I built a business. It became a seven figure turnover company. Planning I built a business. It became a seven-figure turnover company. But deep down it wasn't really making me happy. It wasn't something that I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:I do think with recruitment it can often be a bit of a shelf life. It's a young man's game. I'm 42 years old now and it's just not something that I'm interested in building out. But I love careers. I love talking about careers and that was one of the big reasons why I set up the Financial Planner Life podcast.
Speaker 1:As you can imagine, being a recruitment consultant, trying to build a relationship with your audience, which are financial planners, can be quite difficult because they always think you're just trying to headhunt their staff or you're trying to just get somebody a job. You know you're kind of up there really with an estate agent. I know that sounds bad and we shouldn't be comparing ourselves and putting ourselves down in job roles, but it can often feel that way. You're kind of like a necessary evil. So for me, how could I soften the brand of Recruit UK? So I built the financial plan of life and three and a half four years later it's a top 10 podcast on the Apple careers chart. It gets six to eight thousand listens on a monthly basis. To get into the top 10 is impressive for any podcast. I mean every single episode that I release within the first seven days is within the top 10. Percent globally across all podcast downloads. 10% globally across all podcast downloads. And, interestingly, to do that you only have to have about 450 downloads or watches of your podcast. So the numbers in the podcast world aren't astronomical, but it's an amazing way to build a deeper relationship with your audience and become that key person of influence and you hear me bang on about that all the time on the podcast, don't you Key person of influence? How you can be a key person of influence within a niche? So you're the go-to financial planner or mortgage advisor or recruiter in your specific area. And that's what I did.
Speaker 1:I really enjoyed building out the financial plan of life and I really enjoyed talking to those that are in the profession, those entrepreneurial individuals, what they're doing well, what they've done wrong and I guess of my 180 podcast episodes I built a really good understanding of the profession and, as I've sort of said on the podcast before, I've always wanted to join the profession but I didn't want to become a financial planner. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is I'm not a naturally academic type individual. I do find it difficult to get my head down and to remember information and retain information. I find that quite difficult from a book. Studying was not my thing. I left school at 16 years old. I didn't go to university, I struggled in school.
Speaker 1:I was, I guess, a creative type individual. I was always playing sport, I was always climbing the trees, building the bases. I was always out building community with friends and I guess I wasn't really that interested in academia. In fact I was that guy in the classroom that was probably making everybody laugh and distracting everybody at the back of the room. Report card said very good, very intelligent, but needs to apply himself. You know that was me. I enjoy talking to people, I enjoy building relationships and I enjoy being creative.
Speaker 1:So when I looked at the financial planning profession, I thought, well, I don't want to go in as a financial advisor. What can I do? So it's all about leaning into my experience with the financial plan of life and the podcast that I've built. But not only the podcast, but the social media brand, the marketing that went along with it. I guess I could call myself an influencer or a finfluencer on a micro scale and I sound a bit silly when I say that, but why should I kind of feel embarrassed? I've, I've done really, really well to establish myself as a thought leader within the financial planning profession, not only now for careers, but in the other avenues that I've developed as well. So training and development I've created as well. So training and development I've created the Financial Plan of Life Academy, the first fully independent academy designed to help people join the profession without having to commit fully. By paying 19.99 a month you can jump into a community, start your qualification training straight away with on-demand training and start communicating with those within the community. We've got 75 people going through it at the moment.
Speaker 1:I wanted to be able to offer an easy way into the profession to get started basically, and within that academy. We've partnered with NextGen planners who provide soft skills and practical skills training and, of course, the podcast runs alongside that as an education platform. I think symbiotically it all works together really, really well and some of the people I've spoken to within that academy that have reached out and I've given training and consultancy sessions to talk about how they can market themselves, how they can get a job, they find it really super beneficial. So I'm really proud of that. With 75 people going through it since September, I think it's amazing. So I'm going to continue developing that academy and I want it to be the best independent academy. So I want to bring new trainers into it.
Speaker 1:I want to develop the training community a bit further. So you had Paul Taylor, didn't you? On the podcast and he's talking about amazing stuff that he's doing around sales, basically like how to pick up the phone, how to get in front of clients, how to build that the phone, how to get in front of clients, how to build that process, and it's no easy feat. He did 100 million through cold calling businesses and I want people like that sharing their knowledge within the community, because I truly believe there is no such thing as a free dinner and you have to work hard in any job that you do, so we're going to develop that training and development. I'm also going to bring out the podcast live event, so look out for that.
Speaker 1:Again, working alongside next-gen planners. I love Adam Owen, the next-gen planners Working alongside Adam Owen. They do events really, really well and they are going to help me plan a podcast live event, hopefully in London, and that's going to be on the theme of outside of the box thinking. I want people to think outside of the box within financial planning. What can people from outside of the profession teach us about getting ahead within financial planning? And I want to make it fun, engaging and exciting. So look out for that. Tickets will be going on sale shortly with some further information. And, of course, we've also developed the Financial Planner Live studios. So podcasting videography services for the likes of SJP, foster, de Novo, legal in General with their just covered podcast. So go and check out that podcast. We produce that. We've got the PFS coming up as well with a podcast that's coming out. We're getting stuck into that. We're working with Pympha as well on a podcast episode with Financial Planner Life.
Speaker 1:I love getting in front of the camera, I love talking to people. I love the career education. I love delivering knowledge that I have to others to help them push their career forward, and I love talking to people, guests who've got that knowledge, questioning them, getting that information out of them. So for me, the Financial planner life and the brand that I've built, it's a business within its own right. I own that business and we are going to invest some money in it and I'm going to develop it further and I want it to be the number one place that people go to when it comes to careers and getting ahead within the financial planning profession. So, first off, thanks to everybody who listened to it, thanks to all the guests that have shared their knowledge, and I can't wait to keep pushing this forward.
Speaker 1:But I want to tell you a little bit about why now I've left Recruit UK. I sold it, ok, that's now in the safe hands of Andrew Nicholson, thomas Barton Howarth, and they're going to be building out Recruit UK as a recruitment company within the financial planning space. So not a bad word to say about those guys. They're doing an absolutely fantastic job and for me, I'm proud to be able to exit and hand it over to somebody who can carry that legacy on, because you get emotionally attached to a business you know and sometimes we can overstay. We can overstay in that business when we know it's probably not quite right for us. So I won't go into the gory detail, but I was kind of almost the universe came along and said do you know what, sam? I'm going to disrupt you a little bit. I'm going to disrupt the business a little bit because I think it's time to move on. And it did exactly that. It allowed me to move on.
Speaker 1:So I spent the last three months just working on the financial plan of life as a solopreneur in my little office here. This is my loft. My wife very kindly turned it into a little studio for me and it did me the world of good actually, because when I sat down on the sofa doing it I really missed the brand, I missed people around me in the office. So creating a little office space for me made me feel like I was in a business, in a startup company, which essentially the financial plan of life is a startup business. So that's what I've been doing for the last three months.
Speaker 1:But the type of personality that I am, I love working with people, I love being part of a team. I love working towards a common goal and I have a huge amount of skills that I can bring to a business and bring to a team. Now, believe it or not, I'm not naturally a business owner. In fact, I get, quite like I said, anything where there's attention to detail, so all the finances, all that kind of stuff. I find that really stressful Processes administration. I'm a naturally creative person, so when you're a naturally creative person, you create loads of things, right. You get really excited about it. And then behind you you get this trail of work that you have to do and I physically can't be the best version of myself unless I'm around people that can pick up those pieces and do a really good job and put the things that I want to be done into action. So I can spend more time in front of the camera on the podcast, developing people, speaking to people.
Speaker 1:I love getting on the phone and networking and talking. It's not unusual for me to have 50 calls in my diary a week where I'm networking with financial planners or tech companies, getting the inside scoop, talking to money, marketing, all those things. I love it. It gives me energy and I learn so much. One tip here, right? If you're not on the phone, on video calls, speaking to people every single day, then you're a financial advisor. You're missing a trick, right? So if you're sitting there and you don't have any business, you need to build a business development plan. Get out there talking to people. Get yourself out there speaking, learning, engaging, networking, generating those amazing referrals. Use Calendly for this. It's such a super tool. You can just send a hyperlink out to somebody and they book directly into your diary. It was a game changer for me.
Speaker 1:Again, back to that poor organisation side with me. Sometimes, anything that I can do to automate the process and hand it over to somebody else to do ie, ai or automation is a winner for me because it allows me to free up my time and energy to be sat in front of somebody and speaking to them or building content such as this. So I am in a world where I'm looking at the financial plan of life, but I'm looking at the financial planner life, but I'm missing being part of a team. Now, deep down inside of me, I've always wanted to build a financial planning business and that could be quite obvious, really, because I know so many financial planners, I understand so many business and I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. I know what works and I know what doesn't work. So for me it made total sense to set up a financial planning business. But I didn't want to run a business Remember, I don't really like running businesses. So it made total sense to me to find a company that are aligned with my intrinsic values and goals. Bring the skills that I have gained through the financial plan of life and my 15 years of working in recruitment and my knowledge and bring that into a financial planning business.
Speaker 1:I met with lots of people. You can imagine I met loads of different people to understand their direction, where they're going and whether or not they're intrinsically aligned with me and my mindset, how I work, my growth mindset. There's a load of consolidation going on in the market and that's absolutely fine. I've got no issues and no problems with that. What it does, it kind of limits the amount of companies out there that are younger. Right, we know we've got a problem with age in the financial planning profession. There wasn't a lot of younger, what I would call energetic, growth-minded companies out there and for me me I wanted to align myself to a business like that. I wanted to align myself to a leadership team that are thinking about what can we do differently? Let's get out there and acquire businesses, but let's get new advisors on. Let's build academies, let's look at technology and marketing, because we're here for a long time, not a short time, and that's kind of how I feel.
Speaker 1:Really, I didn't want to go into a business that was exiting. I wanted to go into a business that was ramping up, so I went out to Dubai of all places. Now I'll tell you why I went out to Dubai because I've been getting on really well with Chris Ball, who's the CEO of Hoxton Capital, and I've been observing the financial planning profession for quite some time. One of the things and one of the opportunities that I've seen is this cross-border advice, the ability to continue servicing a client, regardless of where they live within the world, and I think that's going to be a big thing. The world's a small place now. People move around, so the ability to continue servicing clients and giving them tax advice and financial planning advice based on the country they're in, how they're moving around, pension transfers, property tax all those things were really, really important to me.
Speaker 1:So I went out to Dubai and I was not expecting any kind of job offer. I wasn't expecting to go out there and consider moving to Dubai and, if I'm honest with you, I always thought Dubai was a bit of a kind of plastic city, you know, a bit fake. That's my interpretation and my impression of it and I'm kind of not gonna lie here. I had a bit of a funny taste in my mouth in respect to offshore advice based on all the things that I've heard over the years. But when I went out there and I met Chris, I met Jacob out there who's a sales manager, I met Alan who's part of marketing, and I met the app development and technology team and I actually got into that office there at Hoxton.
Speaker 1:I was blown away by the energy within that business. It was an energy within financial planning I haven't come across before. So I spent quite a few days with them. Now I had the beauty and the luxury of being able to almost role play with them live. So I got to sit down, interview loads of people. They didn't really interview me. I interviewed the people within the business and got a real understanding of who they are, what their values were, how enthusiastic they are about growth. Remember that growth mindset for me was really, really important and over a kind of couple of day period, it became evident to me that they were a company that were innovative, they wanted to grow and there was that entrepreneurial spirit from Chris but an intrapreneurial spirit from the team around them. I love that because I'm classing myself not only as an entrepreneur with the likes of Financial Planet, life, etc. But as an intrapreneur.
Speaker 1:What can I do for a business? Internally? Have I got the freedom, the flexibility to bring my ideas and my experience to that business, and it became very clear that I did. One of the things that were really important for me as well was being agile. I need to be able to communicate really quickly with somebody and make decisions really quickly. I'm not in for sitting around and waiting, and that's not because I'm impatient, that's because time kills deals, people. If you've got an idea, get on with it. I had an idea for this podcast yesterday. I put out on LinkedIn that I was going to do a solo podcast. Right, I got it this morning. It's the first thing I'm doing because I want to get things done.
Speaker 1:Hoxton, chris Ball especially, is a person and a business that get things done and want to move forward. So all my ideas I brought to the table, whether that's an educational platform, that's right financial educational platform that ties in with the app that they've built and you'll love this. They've got an amazing app that they give all their clients for free, brings in all their assets, everything worldwide, including property and crypto, and everything into one place. They've got this thing called wealth flow within it, which their clients or new clients they don't even have to sign up to hoxton can start doing cash flow forecasting, and they've spent so much money on this and so much app development I think it was like 25 people in their app development team so I was blown away by that app and instantly my brain's ticking how can I use this as an educational platform? How can we then partner with an educational expert to put Hoxton on the map and to answer the questions that are being asked on an international basis from their target clients or their existing clients or introducers?
Speaker 1:So straight away, there was an amazing opportunity there and as I started to explain my thinking around it and my knowledge around it from where I've been working with financial coaches, education experts it just got me super duper excited. So that's one area I'm really excited about getting stuck in with hoxton and again, where our values, uh, align, um, well, actually, we got. Well, we've got the financial plan life podcast, haven't we? We know that's a platform to be able to create brand awareness within the uk, um, and abroad. Actually, now, um, I have six to eight thousand listeners on a monthly basis. It's a top 10 apple podcast. Um, I appear in publications. I've got a really good social media presence, so I have a platform ready to go. I've got a background in recruitment, so why not take the Hoxton culture and promote that on the Financial Planner Live podcast? So that's exactly what I'm going to do. You're going to start hearing about what it's like working in the offshore market, whether that's Australia, the USA, the UAE, and you know.
Speaker 1:What was super important to me, though, is that any offshore company that I've worked with had a UK footprint, and they held themselves to a very high standard, and you can't get much higher than the UK. Hoxton have an amazing presence in the UK. I went along to their St Albans office. It's beautiful, it's a fantastic office, and when I sat down with Chris and we talked about the growth opportunities in the UK, his eyes were alive. He already knew it and he was already out there acquiring businesses, retiring advisors and creating these opportunities across the UK. We started talking about where can we open new offices in the northwest? Could we do it in Birmingham, london? Can we get a flagship office going? And instantly I knew that Chris's ambition around developing a UK proposition a strong one that advisors wanted to work for again aligned with me, because I know what advisors are looking for and we want to create those opportunities for advisors. So you're going to hear more about that through their stories. When I interview Chris as well, we're going to talk about what it's like to be an advisor at Hoxton and what the future looks like, not only for those in the UK but for those that also want to go out, say, to the UAE, to their flagship office over in Dubai.
Speaker 1:Now you know me I'm passionate about the next generation of financial planners. So academies was hugely important Utilising my financial planner life academy. But what can we do on an internal basis at Hoxton? They've already got something called pathway, and pathway is where you take somebody with no experience through a process of getting them up and running to be a financial planner. So essentially, you call it an academy, right, we're going to fine tune that academy. We're going to bring some new training and development into it. And what I love about it as well right, they understand that to join an academy self-employed is a massive risk. So it's an employed academy. So we're really looking forward to building that out in the UK, helping people through their qualifications, their training in the development experience, giving them international opportunities to work as a financial planner. That, to me, aligns again with my values, my aspirations and my goals as a business.
Speaker 1:They love marketing. Alan Turner heads up marketing there. They do loads of events. They generate so many leads into their business through digital marketing. They spend over a million quid a year on it. I mean there aren't many companies in the financial planning space that it. I mean there aren't many companies in the financial planning space that actually invest in digital marketing, and that to me was like bang on. You know you're generating leads for people that join your business. That's huge. You're creating huge brand awareness. That's amazing.
Speaker 1:They also have that understanding that marketing isn't a quick fix. Win right. Look at me with the financial plan of life three and a half years, right, life three and a half years. Right, in that three and a half year period, I'm now head of creative for Hoxton Capital. Can't believe it? Absolute dream come true. They understand that it takes time when it comes to marketing. It takes time to build brand. It takes time to build a lead generation system. They understand that fully and that, to me, is important because there isn't no quick fix in this game. People give you an idea that if you pop a post out on LinkedIn, you're going to get loads of clients. That's why 75 percent of advisors on LinkedIn are not making any money, simple as that. Because they don't know how to. They don't know how to use social media to actually generate inbound inquiries Some do. Kerry Griffith is coming on the podcast soon inquiries some do. Kerry Griffith is coming on the podcast soon.
Speaker 1:She talks about her niche of multi-millionaire women divorcing CEOs and how she uses social media to generate clients. What I love about Hoxton they've got a whole department dedicated to that. That then feeds into technology and that, to me, is just, you know, a game changer. I've met all these individuals. They're all brilliant little personalities with all these different skill sets. Love the fact that they're also doing partnerships and events, getting people turning up to their events internationally that then turn into clients or introducers, an area of development I'm super excited about. Obviously, I'm bringing the Financial Planner Live podcast in, but we're already talking about what can we do from an events perspective, how can we make it really exciting, really different? I love looking at the likes of timeline, next gen planners, their events, how they're standing out. They're not doing anything massively crazy in my eyes, they're just doing things differently and standing out. I've got some amazing ideas around that, and so does chris and the team there at hoxton. They're behind it. They entrepreneurial, they're visionaries, they're innovative. They want to break the mold and the stereotype of financial planning, and that, for me, is super exciting.
Speaker 1:Chris started this business about six years ago that is kitchen counter with his wife. His wife pushed him into saying why don't you set your own business up? I mean 1.6 billion under management within that time. Setting up a UK proposition. Oh, by the way, I've got something very exciting coming to the table in respect of the UK. I've been in the background working with Hoxton over the last month and I've got some really interesting people that are going to be joining me at Hoxton, so really keen to announce that soon. So do listen. Yeah, but 1.6 billion within that six-year period.
Speaker 1:I've seen the pipeline. It's huge. They've got acquisitions, new advisors coming on board. It'd be two million by the end of sorry two billion by the end of the year. I've seen the growth plans and the aspirations of where they want to take this and I'm on board with it. I can see it definitely happening. So what we're doing and I'm coming in also to build a podcast I'm thinking the financial planner world an international podcast, again for educational purposes, creating content off the back of that. That then feeds into marketing strategies, both social YouTube paid for and I'm really excited about that and again bringing those people within the business onto that podcast to raise their profiles, to create social media marketing.
Speaker 1:These types of things aren't easy, you know. It sounds easy but it's not easy. You need somebody like me in the business, a creative. You need somebody in the business who's confident, who wants to get on camera and do the things that need to be done to raise brand. So the very fact that they're trusting me with that is music to my ears. It's like fuel to my fire. So I've got the podcast, youtube, video content. This is all going to be very high end as well. We've got events I'm getting involved in. We've got the financial plan of life that I can use as a platform to really give them brand exposure.
Speaker 1:So I think what you're probably going to get from this okay, and what I wanted to do today was to come on and give you an insight into why. Why have I left recruitment? Well, I've sold it. It's no longer interesting to me. Why have I kept Financial Planner Life? Because it's a brilliant brand. I'm never getting rid of that. In fact, I'm investing money, pumping money into it to build it up, to make it even better.
Speaker 1:I want to be the go-to place when you think financial planning. I've got some other big plans around it as well, which I don't mind sort of telling you now, because if I think it and speak it, then it will come true. You know me, that's what I believe, but I want to build a media company to rival the likes of your money marketings, etc. I've seen a bit of a gap in the market and it's kind of a bit of a print publication, online magazines etc. When you look at it, it doesn't feel very modern, does it in the financial planning space, and someone needs to come in and develop it further, and I've got some really good ideas and some people around me that are keen to get stuck into that as well. One of the things I really love also about Chris and the team there is that they're willing to look at the financial plan of life and bring that in-house. How can they use that? How can we use that? Can they invest in that themselves? What can they do to help that grow and to help build more awareness for the financial planning profession as a whole?
Speaker 1:As I said, I'm going to continue working with other firms on the financial plan of life because A it's important to me to share knowledge. We should all be sharing knowledge and helping each other. The profession is so small that we shouldn't be scared of sharing ideas. We should be inspiring each other to push ahead and I want to continue that think tank mentality and the sharing of knowledge for free. It will never be paid for the podcast. It's got to be free knowledge. So I'm really keen to do all of that. Things like partnerships I want to continue to build out. So if companies want to come on, do a special feature, a bit like Fossa Nova or SJP, I'm happy to do that. I've got no issues, no drama with anybody coming on and doing that. Obviously that's paid for, but that's where we come in handy with the Financial Panel Life Studio sale and we go and do the videography, the podcasting, the recording and all that kind of stuff. So that is where I am.
Speaker 1:I'm in a company that a growth mindset that are international that was massively important to me. They have a UK presence and growing Hugely important to me. Academy massively important to me. That have a UK presence and growing hugely important to me. Academy hugely important to me. Training and development hugely important to me. Marketing, branding and technology hugely important to me. Financial education hugely important to me. So I am super stoked to be joining Hoxton Capital as the head of creative and I am living proof that the Financial Planner Live podcast, a careers-based podcast for the profession, does create job opportunities for those that aren't from the profession. I was a recruiter and now I'm head of creative for a firm that have over 300 staff and multi offices across the world and that came through hard work, dedication and putting myself out there. So anything is possible.
Speaker 1:When I hear people say they can't get into the profession, you can if you put energy and effort into it. If you're a financial planner, power planner. If you're somebody that wants to join the financial planning profession and you've got the right attitude, okay. Maybe you're coming to the end of your career as well and you're thinking what can I do? You know what, what opportunities are for me at the moment? Maybe you're somebody who wants to go international but you don't want to leave your clients behind. Maybe you want an exit right now. Maybe you want a cash event. Maybe you want I want to sell my book but continue working on a on an employed basis. We've got flexibility in so many options employed, self-employed.
Speaker 1:I want to talk to people. One of the key things that's really important to me right, I'm always going to put my recruitment hat on. Okay, one of the key things for me is getting to know you, what you want, because there's no point in me saying you know you're a square peg, here's a round hole. Let's try and shove you into this business. Don't work like that. I'm so interested in the core of somebody. What gets them up in the morning, what gets them working, what gets them excited, and I believe if I start there with those types of questions, we are going to build an amazing business with really creative people doing the jobs that they love in the way that they want to do it, because we're going to create a culture of innovation. We want good people on the bus coming along for that journey.
Speaker 1:So if you are somebody that feels they can add value, wants a conversation with me about Hoxton and a future at Hoxton, you're welcome. Send me a message, let's talk about it. I've got a fair few people that are messaging me at Hoxton and a future at Hoxton. You're welcome. Send me a message, let's talk about it. I've got a fair few people that are messaging me at the moment and are keen to join. I can't promise everybody can join, but we can certainly have a good conversation. At the very least, you're going to walk away with a bit of a better understanding of where you are in your career at the moment, perhaps what it is that you actually value and what it is you actually want. It's amazing how many people in the financial planning profession are holding on pushing down their ambition, hoping that it's going to get better. You need to make it get better and I'm here to help you make it get better, and maybe Hoxton's a home for you. Like I said, I'm going to share more information about Hoxton over the next few months, of course, you're going to learn more about this wonderful business, why I'm there, what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:On a final note, I'm moving to Dubai. So why am I moving to Dubai? Because that's where Hoxton's head office is and that's where the magic happens. There's a huge amount of energy in that business, very different to what I've experienced. Dubai is like this energy of creativity, innovation, networking. If you're going to Dubai to live, you need to be damn sure that you're going to do your job well and you're going to earn a living, because there's no dole system right, there's no benefits in Dubai. It is a country dedicated to people excelling, and I felt that as soon as I went there. Even the people that I'm talking to that are out there. At the moment, I'm already building a network and everybody wants to help you or can you help them get ahead.
Speaker 1:And for somebody like me, who's high energy, who thrives off of that environment, it's super important that I move my family right and I'm moving my family. We're selling our cat. We're selling our dog. It's quite sad actually. I love Winnie and I love Darcy. We're renting out our house here. We're making the move. I've got to pay for my daughter to go to school over in Dubai. Okay, I wouldn't be doing that if I didn't think it was the right thing for me. So for me, I have to be in that environment, because it's the environment that is going to help me grow and I'm super stoked for that.
Speaker 1:There's also other benefits of living in Dubai. Like I said, schooling is amazing for kids. It's really really safe. It's really clean as well. Mate, it's a city right with beaches. How cool is that? You've got a beautiful marina. You might have seen my photos a little while back, right, right in the marina.
Speaker 1:So I'm looking out here on this marina, two minutes away. I'm on the beach and I just think like, oh my god, you know, I want to go to work, I want to go to the gym and then I want to go to the beach. You know, calisthenics on the beach go for a nice run. Hour and a half away is abu dhabi. That's pretty cool, right, it's about 120 miles and I was already thinking what could I do? Like a bike ride, maybe a bike ride from Dubai to Abu Dhabi to raise money for talk club. That's another thing I'm going to do out there. Talk club. There's no talk clubs out there, I think it's one. So I'm talking to talk club at the moment, about getting talk club out in Dubai and that will kind of help me with my mental fitness personally. But anything I can do to raise awareness around men's mental fitness, especially in Dubai, where maybe it's not as prominent talking about mental health, mental fitness who knows? But if I can kind of go out there and spearhead that and help the charity grow out there and also help men work on their mental fitness and women actually, because it is now fully inclusive, then that can only be a really good thing. So anyway, I've rambled on.
Speaker 1:Hopefully I've given you a bit of an insight, because a lot of people are asking me, they're interested, why, what am I doing? I just want you to know that that's where I'm at and right now I'm loving it. I'm loving life, I'm super stoked and excited and you can tell from my voice, you can tell from what I'm talking about. It just naturally rolls off my tongue and, um, I want to share it. I want to share this journey to inspire people, but to also attract people. It's a big part of why I'm doing it. You know, I'm not gonna lie when I turned around on my video yesterday and I said it's gonna be the number one international company. My mission is simple make this the number one company that people want to work for and work with, and that's my mission. I can't wait to get stuck in. Any questions, drop me a message. No-transcript.