18 - Critical Non-Essentials

that the most useful. This podcast is the conference without the boring conference. Well done, gents. Finally is T mostly fivestars prices content for financial advisors. These fellas are doing the job properly. Thank you for giving up your time to share your experience and knowledge. Back to you, Nick Lincoln.

interesting. But I've just noticed, I've noticed in the in the trade press and the trade media, how annuities have suddenly come back into into an all they're trying to make notice come back into some kind of Vogue. Given the recent unprecedented the quick run of base rate rises. Obviously that's had a positive effect on on annuity rates as well. And you certainly people are coming out of the woodwork now, just because annuity rates aren't as

abysmal as they once were. And now they're just plain awful. Every third article seems to be from someone saying oh yeah, annuities should come back into the discussion with clients. And even things like critical yield now should be revisited as they are really up people not so I just did some digging around 63 year old female, single life annuity 10 year guarantee, the best rate I could find was 6%. So you got 100 grand fund, you annuitize it you're going to get six grand a year before. Before

Tax. All these articles, by the way, they never mentioned index linked annuities. So I'm assuming they're just talking about level and you're just index linked annuity, the same female clients 63 years old, escalating at 5% annuity, the yield is 3.2%, you'd give up 100 grand to get a starting taxable income of 3200 pounds a year. And that's the best one I can find. And this is when rates are supposedly better than they used

to be. And just for interesting comparison purposes, the crossover time never seems to change that that escalating annuity takes 14 years to catch up with a level one. And it's a full 25 years before Mrs. Miggins is actually better off in the round. She's received more income, who wants more income at the age of 88. Anyway, so I think we're just talking about level annuities because index linked annuities are waste

of time. You buy an index linked annuity all these people say now they should come back into the fall when I just checks inflation depending on which measure you RPI. There's a website I looked at 13.5% The the increase in RPI from this time last year to now you buy level annuity, and you are guaranteeing yourself a decline of income of purchasing power, which is anything that matters of double digits and that's

locked in some other markets. We have a temporary decline and you can wait for that for the for the opponent advanced regime. You buy a level annuity and you are screwed. Very, very simplistically, six grand annuity after 30 years of inflation at just 4% You've lost two thirds of the purchasing power of your money. So please spare me the annuity stuff with annuity rates gets too close to double digits then I might just be interested But the world has

moved on. And the longer that we talk about these things, and what real risk is, the longer we understand that actually investing for 30. For 30 years for three decades, which is a bog standard, typical retirement, the safest thing you can do is to own the great companies of the world and not to buy a fixed income. A fixed income is a fixed outcome, and it's poverty by design. There you go. My thoughts are, then if you want to add anything to that, Andy, he might have something to say,

Financially, it's a very bad deal in terms of the yield and loss of capital, etc. But just for simplicity for this person that's not very financially savvy for this income to just trickle in, over the next 20 years during sort of a key period of this person's life. So that's my first point on annuities so that they have a place, but financially, usually, it's a bad idea. But then in terms of lifestyle and ease and

simplicity. Sometimes they come into play, but yeah, in terms of retirement planning for us and our clients, it's, yeah, generally, I agree with your points, Nick, just to take the yield of the footsie OSHA and the footsie 100, which is a bad proxy. But just to give you an idea, the yield of the footsie all share at the moment is 3.39 and the yield for the footsie. 100 is 3.51. So if you just said, Look, I'm just I'm happy with my 3.3 and a half percent, but your golden coins are going

to come back to you. So you buy the share certificate for 100, they'll pay you a yield of 3.5%. And that yield, because it's the return and the profits of the great companies of the UK increases every year with inflation actually outpaces inflation long term. So there are other alternatives, but then they'll sell but Andy, there'll be volunteers that, you know, be volatile, but at the end of the day, don't look at the capital

value. You know, the yield is going to trickle in, and there'll be some volatility with the yield and return. There might be some fees applied to it. So it's not pure comparison. But yeah, just looking at it like a dumb alternative. There are slightly Yeah, is available. Yeah, yeah. And at the end, I think, yeah, at the end of that period, you still have the capital growth of the footsie or show the footsie 100 or whatever? Yeah, I know that.

Yeah. Anyway, that's, uh, any final points on that, Nick?

got a lot of family support. And to say that I will guarantee you for the rest of your life, you will get this amount of income and the all the other things pale into insignificance. And they haven't maybe you haven't got children, maybe they haven't. There's so there are circumstances and I agree the few and far between. But there are some circumstances where an absolute locked in guarantee is worth something, even if it's from a peace of mind viewpoint and nothing else.

just is what it is. I think it's incumbent on us to try and bring people on the journey with us and take your time to try and explain, you know, the differences between investing in the great companies of the world versus any of these guaranteed capital guaranteed products are guaranteed income products. So, yeah, I yeah, they're they're mostly terrible, aren't they? But they do exist. And, and the flip side of it is that, why do some advisors recommend them?

and all that kind of stuff. But that would be absolutely the size of

organized, aren't they? And I was just minding my business this guy shout out to me because Nick has he runs by and I recognize this guy. I'm only 1970s and we're we're we're friends.

hoarding. football ground seems to be what he's a. He's a proper job. Yeah, exactly. So he's been in this, this the trap. He likes the banter. And now and again, he picks up the the old nuggets. So it's interesting how, although this is obviously is aimed at the advice community, it's in little ways it seems to sort of leak out and transcendent into the wider thing, which

isn't it? So we are there's a wider audience I think than just financial services folk, which is quite interesting.

the time about bulk booking. So I'm very, very confident I'm going to sell this out, hopefully many months before. But yeah, I've got tickets available the moment go to humans under management.com and follow the links. And then hopefully, you can buy a ticket. I don't have any sort of trap discounts, because we're not that organized here. But maybe next time, we can do that. And then South Africa will be selling I think next week, South Africa is on the 19th of September. So anyway, that's

enough about that. So yeah, if you want to get a ticket, go to humans on a management.com and follow the links and buy a ticket and come along to I believe the premier conference for financial advisors in the UK. I think this is gonna be my 13th show the one in London. So yeah, a well oiled conference machine. Yeah, I want the talks to be worth coming. But yeah, certainly mingling and socializing with your peers is where a lot of good stuff happens. So yeah, that's it back to you, Nick.

bell for Carl. And there might be a Trappist or two listening to this who might think, Wow, this could be this could really change this as this is a great

equilibrium. That I don't know, Colin haven't met him. But I, by all accounts, he runs a very, very successful advisor business up in Cheshire, Manchester, neck of the woods. And I listened to the podcast interview with him. And it's all very good and a fault that you're interested in following a fairly similar path to my own in terms of what he

did and how he got started. But the thing that I found really, really intriguing was right towards the end, and it was, it was titled, The record the elegant, elegant exit, they will record it is he was making the point, he's got his business to such a size, that the only sort of people that might be interested in some of the big nationals and the big consolidators in terms of planning his own exit or partial exit, or, you know, taking some money off the table as a

business owner, and what he has come up with as an idea, which I just thought was revolutionary, hadn't heard of it before, would that it took a rough proxy for a business valuation being 3% of assets under management, which is generally accepted, you know, ballpark as a starting point, in terms of evaluation, obviously, is a lot more to it than that.

But 3% of the assets under management, Collins view was he would retain a third of the business in terms of his own ownership, so he can carry on managing it growing it be responsible for day to day. But in order to kind of de risk his life and get some money off the table, he would sell two thirds of it. So he would sell to a 2% of the assets on the management.

And the people who sell it to was his clients, he would sell it to his own client bank and the pitch to the clients was would you swap 2% of your liquid investment capital to have partial ownership of this business that you know you like and you trust on an ongoing basis. You can you can you will own a part of it. Presumably you'll receive a dividend. You'll have some ownership involvements. And he said the take up from his clients has

been fantastic. So some have said I pay 2% not to have to go and change advisor and find another advisor in nevermind anything else. So I immediately thought this is this sounds really complicated. How on earth do you do that? There must be some FCA rules that make me but apparently according to the podcast, and I'm sure to have a conversation with Colin but the apparently is perfectly able to be it has been done in the past. You can do it this particular

way you do it. And I think all of a sudden that brings in a new dynamic into the sort of business transition opportunities that exist rather than sell out to the highest bidder or to a consolidator. You sell it to your own clients. Of course, they've got skin in the game, they've got interest, it's very much in their interest to refer their friends and to help you grow the business over the years to come. So I thought it

was really really interesting. I know it's sparked the attention Have you guys I know that Andy to start off with, he's got something he'd like to add to this conversation. Mr. Hart

greatest exit. Any owner of the wealth management business can have, that they're taking a massive haircut to what they could get output out in the open market. I know clients might not appreciate that. But hopefully that gets across to the clients as well that you're actually buying this firm at a discount. And also, then you're gonna continue to be clients, the firm owners of the firm. I think it's absolutely genius. Over to you, Nick, and then we'll have Carl

would this work etc, right. But leaving that aside, I think, isn't a just beautiful to have a model whereby it's not going down the road of a private equity firm going to get rich are going to try and get rich are, you know, making the consolidators or the aggregators even bigger. And I remember way back the reason Metis was set up was because the whole industry here was the provider, number one, the pension Company Number one was going to make money, and they made shitloads of money.

And then the intermediary, the broker was number two and way, way, way down the list was number three. And that's why we set up Mattis to try and put the flight number one and the providers very definitely bottom of that list. So I just think this is another way on a very innovative way. I certainly never heard that before, of how to you know, get the clients involved. And as you boys know, I've been big on that as well. So yeah, I think there's absolutely. There's a lot in

this, I'm not sure. I'm sure he's thought long and hard. And I'm sure this is probably a three year project that he's just bringing now and he's putting out the podcasts, I'm sure he's taught all of this through. But would it not be better off to you know, maintain control, and then only serve maybe 49% of the business or something, something like that? That was kind of some of my immediate thoughts on it. But yeah, I like absolutely

brilliant. And don't we need just great brains like this, from people who work in the business who do real financial planning, and I followed equilibrium online for the last number of years. And it does seem to be just a great, great business with lots of innovative stuff coming from them all the time. And here's just the latest one, I love, love, love, love to see this one working. And this to be a model that could be used in our profession down the line. And

ownership base. I think there's yeah, there's lots of women's we don't need to worry about the detail the granularity of it I mean, Colin hasn't done it yet either. But he but he has done it according to the interview on that podcast he's done his research the specific way you do it there's a it's a private placement or something like that, that that's the that's the legal and accounting experts again, but apparently has been done. He's, I don't think you'd

go public. Unless he does. He's sort of done his homework on this so far. So it's a new thing. Anything that's new and innovative in our sector is great, and it's worth exploring worth learning more about so watch this. Watch this. Watch the space

the longevity of it. And of course, if your clients are engaged, your clients are going to that referral machine is going to just be Yeah, you know, go into overdrive. Yeah, I just look, just echo a few of the comments. It's isn't it just magnificent that someone is using their head and saying there is a different way and maybe this is the way forward? Yep.

we wish him all the best. Okay, so Neil Woodford, Neil Woodford who was once as we all know, faded is probably the best active fund manager in the UK, him and Anthony Bolton, maybe that baton has been passed on to Terry Smith, but at one stage he was up there, he was the pinnacle of active fund management. Obviously, it's a it's a it's a cutout catastrophe story for him and his clients and his reputation. The one thing that we you know, your name is your reputation is

everything right? And your name is everything. And once that's solid, it's it's I don't care how much money you've got. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. Mr. Smith, you found an article in that left wing rag the times talk us through it.

23%. Well, their investment. And they've got to, they've got to extract away the money because as you know, a lot of the money that you're talking about a permanent loss of capital, some of the money was invested in small kind of unlisted biotech companies and so on. And it's literally gone to zero in many cases. So this this has been sort of cobbled together as a result of payments and fines and things from the various parties

involved. I don't think any of us on this call were exposed in terms of clients money, it doesn't do the industry any good. He was by by some margin, the most high profile is you saying the investment manager in the marketplace. And this brings me back as well it reminded me that I know that you read it as well, Nick, I read the book a couple of years ago called built in a lie the book all about the kind of the woodfords story.

Great, but really interesting when you know, because we were all active there were all kind of involved then and seeing this play out in real life. And I think for advisors, we come under some pressure, because we will bring on new clients things that will say, Oh, I've got some money. You know, it's in Woodford Reserve that you know, we want to keep that for certain. And we will sort of be saying to them, Well, no, not really doesn't fit with our

investment philosophy. And you had to have a few go into battle. Because our investment philosophy, as we've often spoken about is quite boring. And there's no real star name. And I think as human beings, whether it's in sport, or politics or certainly in money, we like to attach, you know, outcomes to a name, we like a superstar. We like someone he's always done well, she's always

done amazingly well. And of course, they always do until the don'ts and every one of those names, including my dear Uncle Terry. He's come unstuck as well. More recently, his funds have been significantly underperforming, which they inevitably do. So it's just interesting that they finally brokered the deal of yet obviously, it goes to the investors to accept it, presumably will accept it, because there's nothing else to be done. But that is absolutely a permanent full time loss of

investment capital. This is not variable, this is loss.

look after. But yeah, I certainly didn't get involved in recommending any of that guff. The thing that is quite interestingly is Hargreaves Lansdown, are they going to go after them? That's the whole big question. At the moment. There isn't anybody going after them. But there is going to be I think there's a legal firm that's trying to piece something together foggers because they were a huge promoter of this.

And as some individuals at Hargreaves we know who also personal promoters of this which I really really really can't stand Anyway that's it over to call for anything or Nick?

that's a little bit strange. And they were all acting kind of independently of each other. And in the last week, they have decided are they have announced that they're going to launch a company, they're going to jam these three or four or five firms together and call it O'Neill I think. And I was like, Ooh, this is interesting. So what are they going to do? And the first line are that one of the headlines I wrote was they are I read was that they were going to disrupt the IoT Wealth

Management market in Ireland. I am no interested, right. This is this is my bread and butter here. And so I read on and there was loads and loads and loads of media articles on this. And I think I'll share one in the show notes. But like, just if anyone wants to google it, it was in the Sunday Times yesterday and in all the broadsheets last week. So anyway, what are they going to do to disrupt the wealth management market in

Ireland? Mainly two things, they're going to open up investments, all types of different investments to high net worth individuals via a platform.

been doing for the last. You know, it's it's been fairly common for the last five years, but to be you know, I just thought, this is a this is a little bit like, you know, paper won't refusing, like for, for journalists, financial journalist to be putting out there that this is a this is a disruption of wealth management in Ireland, when you know, platforms and, you know, they're, like, one of the things was, Oh, we're gonna have passive funds on platforms. This has existed for like 10 years.

This is not new. And yet we're, you know, open up any of the financial sections of any of the papers, our websites that you Want to look at an Ireland over the last week or so? And this is like massive, massive news. And it's like, I got text from clients texting me going. Is that not what we already have? And I'm like, yeah, it totally is. So look, I'm a little bit a little bit disappointed, not with O'Neill or Irish Life, because they did their job

really, really, really well. And they got their, their PR and their marketing machine and it stepped into action, right? But like, it's Come on, guys, give us a break. And it's like, who has the most money? So they're gonna pay all the media and all of that kind of stuff? Yeah.

or something like that. And I realize that no, very, very few people do what we do in terms of the advisory market, the broader advice market, if you were to estimate in Ireland, what percentage of the total Irish advice market does what Metis? Norway? I mean, Metis Ireland do like to do proper planning, used platforms use index use factor based funds, all that stuff, but what percentage would it be? Would it be 10% 20%? Less more?

and hoping for here. And then also they'll also see that I was deeply uncomfortable with the content of some of today's going to the Irish versus UK cultural differences

see. And there's lots of people that I'm talking to No, I didn't really have anyone to talk to about this. I know there are and that is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

been waiting for you. We've been doing this for 20 years, but we welcome you joining the gang The more the merrier sort of thing. So you can make a bit of a joke about it. But certainly a message to your clients you might if it's all over the press you may have read this great word it's it's more sort of backing that we are on the right tracks that a big big organization is finally following in our footsteps

I'm just a little bit disappointed with the ones that I just flashed this out, like, this was a matter of fact that nobody is doing this. And I'm like, you know, anyway, it's, broadly speaking, I would I would definitely weltweit

potatoes ready. So we're going to launch off this episode episode 18 is meat and potatoes. I think it's Mr. Smith, you're going to talk to us about critical nonessentials, my friend.

Sir Clive Woodward. And the following year 2004 CLIVE Woodward wrote a book about the whole journey that you went on the book is called winning and frankly, you can't do any better as a coach than win the World Cup with the team under your tutelage and guidance. And to Clive Wood was an interesting character. If you know much about him, Clive Woodward's own career straddled the amateur era and a professional era. So Clive Woodward did have a bit he was in business. He was he had a

job. And he was very senior in Xerox, if I remember correctly out in Australia. And so we learned a lot and I'm a big fan of the kind of the crossover between what you can learn from elite sport and what you can bring into business and vice versa. And Clive Wood was encompasses a lot of these

conversations. And he taught he explains obviously, the journey he went on with the England team and he took it over as coach it was in a run by these dusty old men in blazers that, you know, rugby HQ down in Twickenham.

And, and what is some of the innovation that he brought in his original source of inspiration having us living in Australia with at the time and I've mentioned this in a previous episode was a guy by the name of paddy Lund, who was a dentist of all things and He was he was kind of almost suicidal, this guy running his dental practice. He said, All I'm doing is gonna be inflicting pain on people on a regular

basis. I don't enjoy it. And you can't get anyone to pay their invoices you're chasing, but then it was just really really a poor experience. So paddy Lund closed his dental practice for a month reinvented the whole thing the entire client experience from start to finish changed everything and you know, fast forward be came almost a celebrity dentist, he didn't advertise anywhere. But he the waiting list to sign up, he charged more than anyone else. And he became a hugely six a

huge success. And a lot of the focus was on very, very small what Patti Lund christened critical non essentials. So all these things individually by themselves, it was so not essential. But if you added them all together, they were critical to the ultimate success. So wouldwould takes a lot of these ideas into the onto the rugby field and the whole rugby environment, and starts making a few small but really important

changes. So a couple that I remember, for example, players would go on to all the player away matches and players which share rooms at the time. Yeah, so you would get some players that would you know, some are sort of early birds up at the crack of dawn, and some stay up late at night. So that your sleep was disturbed. And they thought well, aren't we are we supposed to be a world class elite sports team can't we have is the budget not big enough that everyone can have their own

bedrooms for goodness sake. So that was one thing. They also had the studied a lot of the results and they noticed that England often England rugby team at the time often started the match really well. They'd be up at halftime. And then they go trudging out the second half, they often lose matches in the second half. And so just a small psychological change was the It seems strange nowadays, but they just they change strips at half time. Instead of going back out with your muddy rugby shirt on.

You've got a brand new kit and you so you're mentally convincing yourself you were starting to match you were you're playing two games today starting to match all over again, as just a result of doing that they'll win ratio went up, they were losing less games in the second half. And the last one that I'll say there was dozens of these things. The last one, you guys are old enough to remember the old is going to cotton rugby jerseys that were just you know the kind of get

wet. So they get covered in the struggle behind cotton traders. Yeah, cotton trees, but they were made. And so the looser they studied videos of these and players we're getting there, we're sort of running away. But then we get caught someone we grab this long, trailing piece of cotton cloth instead of pull them down and they'd be tackled.

And so you know, Woodward did, I can't remember it was it Nike or Adidas or one of those is that those were the early days of what became sort of that sort of shock skin type material, really shiny, smooth material that rugby players and they were to do this day. So again, small thing, but if you add and as I say there was lots of them, add all those sort of small things together. Compounded you tend to use because, as we know most at elite sport, there's often a few points between winning and

losing. So the compound compound effects of that. And then, of course, a few years later, some years later, very famously, Dave Brailsford, to a very very underperforming GB cycling team. And this is all covered. Have you ever read the book called favorite atomic habits by James clear is covered in that Great Britain cycling team was absolutely hopeless. By the 2012 London Olympics, they absolutely dominated the sport. I think

they won 12 gold medals. Then as a result of what he what he called, it wasn't critical nonessentials. It was marginal gains. So marginal gains small but effective. And that that's all been very, very well documented. So could we take some of these ideas into our own

businesses? And can we improve the client experience in order to make the difference between whether a client becomes a client or not whether they stay with you or not whether they refer and recommend you, because it seems to work in elite sport, if you pay attention to the small things, you know, some bigger and better things happen.

I'll pause for breath there, we're happy to share some of the some of the ideas that we brought into our team has as a result of reading that book live Woodward book years ago, and started to implement into our financial planning practice. But then I'll pause for breath and invite anyone else to come and share any thoughts you've got. Okay. Well,

go on for a couple of days. And there they kind of put put on shows it's really, really, really good. So that's the first point at the Riskalyze conference that I was at in Boston, Horst should say, spoke at it, and he was the founder of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Group, and he's a German guy, and he's still got a really strong German accent. And when he started off his talk, I was like, not sure how this one is gonna go. It was phenomenal. He's a really genuine guy, a guy who's you

know, I just love here. and stories from people who have been there done that, and the Ritz Carlton after all are known for and still are known for, like the ultimate ultimate service. So, you know, I think the point here is that there are things we should do, and you should do them. Because after all, you need your clients to really, really value the experience, however, go back to a phrase that was mentioned earlier on by one of you guys, you need and want your clients

to know like and trust you. And, and to get to know you and to like you, you need to give them a really good experience and experience that has been thought out and experienced that you've put a bit of effort into, or a lot of effort into. And to make sure that you know, I remember talking to a marketing guy, Tony Frawley, who helped us to design the very first Metis logo. And he was like, you gotta take your, you know, when your client is coming to see you. Where is

he gonna park? Now let's walk the journey, he made me walk the journey, right, and here's where he's gonna go. And our whole thing here in this office is every part of our office looks like this room, right? We have white class tables, or else you know, just just white boardroom tables. It is what do we not want it to be, it can't ever

look like a private bank. So we've no mahogany tables, nothing is dark, it's all bright colors, we're trying to, you know, get across that whole feel of nice and relaxed, but at the same time really, really professional. And we've talked through Exactly. You know what happens when someone you know, to give them parking just before they arrive in? You know, what happens when they when they come in? Who who's going to be in the

room to meet them? And then who comes into the room, how they get their coffee, and I copied some stuff from Alan and Alan sending out his coffees when I was in capital was absolutely amazing. With the Capitol logo. We still haven't done that Ireland, right? I'm not sure if that would

We're just can you put them into a complete package? And make it you know, something? That's a really great experience. And, look, there's lots of things that and I'm very interested to hear Ireland's right, because he's obviously put some thought into this, right. But I saw a post from Stephanie bulgan on LinkedIn only last week, and it was relevant to this right? And it was like, how can you make your client meetings, like a Michelin star experience? And I'll put the link in the in the

show notes for that as well. And that's what you're after? And it's like every touchpoint How can you make it, you know, 567 star experience. And that's what you should always be trying to do. And you know, I'm always challenging the guys here, how can we make it better? How can we make it better? And when you think you have a nailed, then it's you know, let's go and look for other ideas. So I'll bring in somebody else. And I'd pause for breath now.

often. So I try and keep the hassle factor for them down to a minimum. So for example, my if I book a meeting with you and you're coming to see me I've got a meeting place in central London a meeting place in the burbs, I send you a link, it's got everything on there, the sat nav that that you need. I've got a 45 second video that when you arrive, it shows you how to get the front door and what buttons to push. You know, that's a video that took me sort of five minutes to film and two minutes

to edit. And then that's sort of there forever. On my clients big birthdays. So zeros and fives, I've got a spreadsheet. So when they're 60, or 55, or 75, they'll get a copy of the time from the date that they were born from historical newspapers.com. And that's something that I'm a big fan of if they've been a client of mine and they've gone through too big birthdays and they get sort of a Fortnum and Mason's basket. I try and do as many links to the stuff that we repeat all the

time. So I've got a link to my sort of investment options. I've got linked to the joining process. I've got a link for what the annual planning meeting looks like. A hidden links on the website. There's obviously scrollable and browsable on any sort of browser that they Use? Yeah, cuz it's just stuff that we repeat all the time. I've spoken before that I'm available on WhatsApp. And if it's a couple, we've got a group together, I just want low friction for them to contact me.

And then the moment they contact me, I'm obviously totally on top of it. So yeah, I've given a couple of ideas got a few more, but back to Alan to share your list mate.

kind of soft furnishings. low lighting is designed in my mind anyway as the going up market coffee shop. So it should be a sort of boutique hotel style. So no screens. No, it's not doesn't look like a business office. And that is designed to be for those initial informal discovery meeting conversations, tell us about your life. Tell us about your background. So we everyone

can relax during that. And then we go for the next part of our our sort of client onboarding process, we go to a different room, and people can now of course, COVID, blue, all that up the water, and we kind of everyone went on to zoom. And a lot of our meetings are still on Zoom. But increasingly, we're coming back. And I think the importance of controlling your environment, I think that is is

really valuable to us. In my mind, why wouldn't you do these things, because once you put a lot of bit of effort into it, you can rinse and repeat every time. So it's worth spending a day, a week, a month and say, what else could we could we do? You're right, we invested years ago we invest because I remember going to offices and my broker consultant days and you get some crusty cup of coffee and an old

mug or something like that. I thought why wouldn't you just invest in good china, invest in a high grade coffee making machine like bean to cup coffee making machine. And you know, so you can do cappuccinos and lattes and all that sort of stuff. And you're right call it you know, when when you go to Costa Coffee or something, they do this coffee and you have to ask for a cappuccino to do that little sort of coffee bean or something on the top. And I thought, I wonder where you get

those things. You google it go on Amazon and you can get one made with your own logo. Everyone's got a logo. So you might as well put a coffee shaker. And I'll tell you pop that down in front of a client and Iced Cappuccino. We've got these glass coffee cups, and it's got the logo on front. Whether you might be you might come across as a bit twee or a bit naff, but I've certainly had many as a person say, Well, if you pay this much attention to

how you make coffee. I don't I don't really understand what you do with the financial stuff. And

or a couple. I'm always imagining that walking down the street or going off for you know, for lunch together or something and they're gonna say that was pretty good was there that was interesting that was gonna like to have this so small as another small thing in there we will I know because some of those initial meetings de la are quite long. There are a couple of hours long. So we've got a timer there after 60 minutes. Somebody else comes in just politely knocks on the door.

Anyone have any other refreshments? Or do you want to take a comfort break now? Oh, that's actually I wouldn't mind using the Luna or Asha. Wouldn't I would love another coffee. Yes, thank you do it. Just think about it in advance. And so it's systematic spontaneity is the word it sounds it looks like it's really spot spontaneous, but it's systemized. We know what we're planning. It is repeatable. And I'll tell you,

it works. And the and the last thing I'll say on this for the moment, so that's the kind of ensure onboarding. I'm a big believer in this concept that I call it the first 100 days, the first 100 days of any new professional relationships are so important. I'm into the lifetime value of this client relationship. I want them to be clients of ours, hopefully for a

decade, and more. The work you do is like any relationship actually, the work you do at the front end, the investment you make at the front end will pay dividends after time. So having things are shoot, I should say when we're going through that initial onboarding process, we give them a gift. And it's just a simple gift. It's a book and it's usually as the Paul Armstrong book enough as an

early stage. Now there's something really important about that one thing is a gift there's a law of reciprocation people like a gift. People don't throw a book in the bin even if they never read it. They're not gonna chalk it probably or sit around a nice little inscription in the front because because that that book. It's not the best book in the world, but it does articulate pretty well, kind of what we do and how much is enough and the value of

financial planning and so on. So you give them a you give them a gift. And often people will come back to me said, I've read that fantastic really, really articulates it well. So you're building a relationship, you sort of, you're building it over time. And when someone comes on board, they get a welcome pack, they get a letter from me, you know, says you know, grant, but people quite like that, you know, handwritten notes from as

they get us, the guests. And actually the last thing I'll say, we'd also give them if we've done the, you know, the research where we know what their hobbies and other passions know what they're interested in.

When they have come on board, we will often give them a kind of a coffee table type book as well, if if they're passionate about golf or something 100 best golf courses of the world or they love sailing or they love whatever it is a nice coffee table book that sits in their lounge or somewhere that they can. It's just part of the building a relationship and the first 100 days of the off when we first engaged with them. That is memorable. That is people

will talk about that. And it's more than going to get from you know, the proverbial private bank down the road who really care about that care about their money.

funny story. When I first was setting up the phone lines for Maven advisor, I obviously never want to answer the phone, I never want a phone to ring in my office, all of my clients who have got my badge number, my mobile number. So but I've got a public number that people can call, oh 203 number or whatever. And we were sitting there saying oh, how are we going to answer the phones? You know, again, that whole question how do you

answer the phones? And we said well what the rich do we said we don't know what the roots do let's call them so we called the Ritz to see what they how they answered the phone. And they were like hello the Ritz how how may we be of service that's what the Ritz said hello the Ritz Good morning the Ritz how may we

be of service? So if you call Maven Advisor Now that the saying that they have to say on the screen in front of them, these people that work in a large call answering call center is that like Good afternoon, Maven advisor, how may we be of service? You've probably noticed that it's quite it's it's hard to say that I've struggled to say that. So you call Maven advisor and someone goes Hey, good afternoon Maven advisor how how can we be of service and I'm like, freaking do it like that?

You're gonna say good morning Maven advisor how may we be of service but they don't do it. So find my number on the website and call that number it will cost me a quid to receive these pointless messages. But yeah, that's that's how it should be answered. Yeah,

We went through, we modeled a few scenarios we had, we had a bit of crack with it, and then it's like, you know, looking forward to coming back. So

what to expect. What we do is we sit down for an informal conversation, we invite you to, you know, share your thoughts and ideas. And you give them you can either I mean, we don't be could do a short video, you could do a personalized one nowadays take two seconds on

loom. But you do want to put people's you know, I'm in a net, you're looking sort of disconcertingly there, but there's, I've certainly had situations where clients, so often, the less financially involved spouse, who said I was really nervous about coming in here, they think they're going to be grilled about their sort of investment expertise or something and just say, it's not about that at all, we're going to talk about life, and family and values and the future. And

so it's very relaxed. You tell us what sort of you want a coffee, you want a tea, do all that sort of thing, just to just to sort of prepare people for it and reduce that nervousness. And often and yeah, as you say, maps and directions, you know, our office is where it's central, but it's there's a, it's a bit tricky to find the actual office address and someone comes in,

bit flustered. 10 minutes late, give a calm down, you know, nice, oh, you know, the water, fresh water, lemons, limes, ice, all that stuff, small things might, but it all adds up. And that's so that's in summary, critical, non essential small things, but you do 1020 30 of those. And the experience is just entirely different.

And then that was that if they passed it on in the future, if do you Nick?

permission. So I have to do it on an advisory basis per client something over the next 12 months saying that we've got these four funds, we're

replacing it via one fund. But I'm telling my clients via a very short three minute loom video where we outline why we're doing this what the rationale is, and in that loom video, there's the dropbox link embedded in the video because you can do that with loom which is really nice to embed a link, they click on that and opens up a hidden page and only one of these hidden pages on my website where the key facts document is now they can read all that crap to their to their to their eyes

glaze over. And then they give consent, very easy main I consent to this switch those hit submit and I get an email from my audit trail. I've got an audit trail now that they've they've looked at the key features documents, they've given their consent and is done and I can just crack on with it. We don't have a back and forth and email chain, there are ugly attachments. It's just about making making it as easy for the clients to do what they need to

do. And I'm really on a massive drive to simplify everything to really get stuff down to an essence now I put a tweet out last week didn't know why. Paraphrase tokens, token token tokens poem about the ring, you know, One Ring to rule them all and in the darkness, bind them. And I said okay, so one plan to guide them all three pots to fund them one fund to fill them all and in the simplicity mind

them. And that's I'm I'm on this Mega Drive now, basically, you know, three pots one, fund one plan your life, let's do it and getting rid of all the extraneous crap, which I've never really had much of any anywhere, but I'm really getting it simple, stupid, you know, just just, it's so antithetical to what everyone expects. And I'm kind of thinking yeah, well, that's that's got to be right.

And so, and I don't think any I mean that using the loom video, and I know you do, Alan, but I know that less than 5% of advisors use loom creatively or in that kind of way, you know, but hey, they just want to print stuff off and send it out in the post. Oh, what can you do? Okay, listen, we're out one minute or so one hour and Nine minutes 70 odd minutes in so I think we should get along to the she's always there on time this posted

at the door. She has a bulging sack and it's course full of our TRAPPIST questions the questions that you dear TRAPPIST audience submit you can do that via the link in the SoCal show notes or go to our Twitter handle at advisor, podcast and the pins link there. In the pin tweet, there's a link there to do so as well submit a question. Any question doesn't matter. Give us your name. We will come to you. We're getting through them all. And let's have a look at what we

got. today. I'm gonna take quite a long, long letter, we struggle with the opening for this one. This chap hasn't or this chap or this chap s hasn't given their name, for reasons that have become clear. Love the show? Seriously. It's great. I'm a huge fan. Thank you very much. And I want to remain anonymous at the moment please. I'm a Chartered Financial Planner has been part of a large multi tide network not SJP for a long time. And considering starting my own small boutique IFA firm as a one

person business. Basically, the question is, for the various outsource parts of your business and the Nick, who should I be looking at? And what do I need to do to ensure I've got everything covered software systems services? Anonymous, can I just refer you to that? I put out a 10 minute loom another live video a couple of months ago with my tech kind of workflow and all the tech I use it's it's it's concise, it's punchy, it outlines exactly the process I use for clients.

During the annual planning meeting, cycle, there'll be a link to that in the so called show notes for compliance. I use a firm called the compliance department. I've shared I use simply because since since 2008, but basically they just they don't get it they don't get small lifestyle financial planning businesses, that's for sure. So I use the compliance department. Andy, do you have any tips? Or are we covered that question?

an advisor. But can you maybe give and this is directed more to Carl and Anna, I guess, can you maybe give some examples on where tasks between these roles get blurred? And how to avoid such crossover? Thank you. So basically, clear delineation on the delegation. One of you to have fun with that.

operating model. But in but they're keen to understand some of the granular details now, I'm going to go back to your point before Nick about simplicity. You we can sometimes try to overcomplicate things, it's not a bad thing, if people do you know from time to time might do someone else's work is not or I'm a power planner, I never do this or I'm an advisor, I shouldn't do that. We should all it should all be quite a quite a fluid experience. However, there

are some core activities. So the need, you need to just unpack everything that you would do from the first moment you see a potential client all the way through to annual planning meetings, and so on, and work out all the specific tasks that are expected to be done and then work out who does what, of course we understand. It shouldn't be really a hierarchical structure, but administrators in our experience are less experienced less

qualified. Our paraplanners which we call associates are chartered financial planner level, their level six, they are more experienced, they are more technically competent on average. And so they tend to do more complex work. Our associates slash paraplanners are usually if not always in client meetings, which is a slightly different thing. So the power planner role is like a

quasi advisor role. The power planner sits in the middle is involved administrative tasks, is accountable and responsible for the work getting done for that pod. And the reviser obviously is leading on the on the in an ideal world the advisor just as the advice going back to what we said at the very beginning, listen to Colin Lawson at equilibrium talking about his team work. They've got

9080 or 90 staffing. I think we're at staff and eight advisors, they got 10 to one ratio, for sure their advisors are only seeing clients do nothing else. That's great. That's taking it to some extreme much more than we're doing at them. wins. But I think that the the answer to the story is worker, everything needs to be

done. And from a commercial profitable viewpoint, you want to delegate to the person that can do the job to the level of competence and satisfaction for the client and for the business. And if that is an administrator, paraplanner or an advisor, that's how you get it done. But it doesn't matter if there's a bit of crossover along along the way, it's good to everyone learns each other's roles and responsibilities. Okay, Carl, do

Friday. Like these aren't long meetings there. It's not we don't have to talk about 400 cases like these are our meeting this morning was 20 minutes. And I don't know how long the meeting on Friday was. But I guess it's just to make sure that everybody knows exactly what's happening with every single case, right? But it's like you do not yet okay. And it's like tick, tick, tick, tick. And then they just bring me through who needs to watch.

And if I need to come in on one or two cases, which is all it normally is, then I'm updated on that. I'm tasked to do it. And everyone knows what they're doing. But yeah, I agree with everything.

and he said, huge amounts. He's got about 35 years old, huge amounts of success, personally and professionally in his line of work, and he's now yeah, he's written a book, where he's got a new book coming out. But the current one, which has been out for a little while is called $100 million offers 100 million offers 100 million dollar offers, as you'd see, interestingly, the beginning as a cold is called $100 million. Because it's got I'm just thinking my mind is the dollar

sign. So it's not said 100 million offers that sounds like you've got 100 You know, there's a monetary thing right you got

the onion. Interestingly, and I go this is a quick sidebar is that he says at the very beginning of the book, he prices, his all his content, books, everything else at the lowest possible price that the platform through which you buy, it will accept, in Amazon's cases 99 cents or 99 Pence, he says I would really encourage you to buy this on audiobook as well as the, you know, the written book or the Kindle book, because the brain takes in

things in different ways. And it will, you know, the information will seep into your brain far better. And they said I'm not doing this to make another 99 cents I do it for free. But the platform won't allow me to do which is quite interesting, which is perhaps price subject for another time because you

guys are big into audible. Well, that's another big and I usually just read books usually written digitally anyway, it I think it's a fantastic book and there's so many applications to our work because he talks about the comp you know, making offers to your you know, your clients or prospective clients a combination of pricing and, and how you pitch for value and the use of guarantees and naming your products and services. Lots of practical ideas, tips and hints that would apply to many

people listening to this. So, big shout I would recommend Alex Horne Mozi and his book, whatever it's called.

Netflix film that's come out. I don't know what the name of the film is called. But do you search? It comes up it's sort of feel good. It's called

a few. It's different chapters, it's, I recommend listen to on Audible, because it's interviews from David Rubenstein, who's a famous sort of private equity investor with the Carlyle Group. So he's a he's a wealthy billionaire himself, and he interviews lots of famous investors. It's a sort of, yeah, a journey through all the different types of ways to make

money in the investing world. I recommend definitely checking out this book and don't read it what listen to it on Audible if that's your favorite platform. Next. Oh,

your precious time. Come on, Addy. Mumble behind me so I had to start again what you're saying