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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss
Links referred to in the show:
Take part in the conversation! We want YOU to suggest topics and questions you’d like the Trap Pack to answer. The best way to do this is to ask them here.
Help us to help you! The more followers we have, the more we can do stuff going forward. So please:
Welcome to The Real advisor podcast, T R A P trap. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the truck team to discuss. Also remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes. Doing all this really really helps us which means we can do more to help you. Now let's head over to the studio for the latest pilot trap
Nick Lincoln:yes indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 23 of the real advisor podcast te R A P trap. My name is Lincoln and joining me as every other three are the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Call the voice Woody Allen the storyteller Smith and and the heart Now gentlemen We have a show pack full of absolutely nothing. So let's start on packing it straight away with three high energy reviews from the review Meister Mr. Andrew Hart.
Andy Hart:Does anyone else on the trapeze team want to share with the listeners why we were laughing when Nick Lincoln just came in then? Are we going to not John professionals,
Nick Lincoln:we're going to know John because we're not talking about and we agreed that for your joints
Andy Hart:Okay, I'll continue with the reviews. The first review is from pure and rustige invaluable for new entrants for the to the profession five stars. I found this to be gold dust as a new entrance. The field is fun, informative, and it shows how you can take the profession seriously without taking yourself too seriously. I particularly value that there are four hosts with four sets of views for me hearing competing ideas and challenging one another is what sets this podcast apart. Six out of five stars just make sure to grab yourself a very long drink. The next review has been left on YouTube like and subscribe as they say this is from at Stuart Mullen nine nine to to how you guys haven't watched from the start to Episode 22 already. I can only say that this is excellent. Kinda like the grand tour for finance. I know there's four instead of three hosts so I won't say who I think to as a 53 year old punter, not a finance professional. I can only say that the content is very thought provoking and it has a real nuggets despite the glib reference to a certain other program. Very valuable stuff to a pre retiree, but also put a baby at any stage of their financial journey. I look forward to many more episodes love that delivery style. Considering I think this is aimed more at professionals. I'd say that this is the best personal finance podcast out there. Certainly in the UK. Thank you five stars. That's from Stuart Mullin. 992. Back to you boss.
Nick Lincoln:Wow, brilliant review.
Alan Smith:Great reviews. Ashley
Nick Lincoln:Stewart has left a question for us, which we will come onto in a future episode where a trapeze question he's actually a pilot. So he really isn't a different feel to us. Wow. Right. Okay. Typical
Unknown:tip proper professional.
Nick Lincoln:appropriately. Yeah, exactly. Mr. Witte. Mr. widger. Eu 2023.
Carl Widger:Yeah, so I spoke before about I think one of our very early on episodes, maybe even the first one. We did future you last year. So future you guys have spoken about this an awful lot. And when we get together, it's kind of one of the main topics of conversation. It's like, what do we how do we guide ourselves along with our clients in terms of, well, you're motoring along at a million miles an hour running your business or you're a senior exec in a in a multinational. The day comes where you either sell your business or you're retiring from the multinational what happens next, because money tends not to be the issue in terms of what happens next. So we decided last year we do future you, which was all about I suppose getting yourself future ready. So making sure that you had all your ducks in a row in terms of what did the third act look like? You know, what were you going to do? So you're gonna have all this time now and what did it look like for you? So last year, we put on a two day event in the Armada hotel in Spanish Point and County Clare an absolutely beautiful spot. And we had phenomenal feedback from the attendees. But we got some real feedback too. So straight up, we got some I'd prefer if we had this, I'd prefer if we had that. So that's kind of adjusting our agenda this year. So this year, we have different speakers coming along. We're going to do more Believe it or not group activities, because last year we did a there was an option on the Tuesday morning second morning to do swim in this sea. So the Atlantic Ocean boys, no matter what time of year you're going to do it it's going to be freezing cold but low loads and loads of people did it. And then the other option was to do yoga. And then people were saying, well, on the first day, as usual, and we've mentioned this so many times, what people got most out of the event was talking to kind of peers, people that hadn't met before. So they would have loved a maybe a group activity to kind of break down that little bit of awkwardness at the start. So we're going to go for a walk. We're thinking about doing a bit of chair yoga, would you believe during the day, we're thinking about doing meditation, Nick, you would absolutely love all of this. So anyway, we're putting it on. Again, I'm so excited about it. My colleague, Susan larches, is kind of leading the project from our point of view, we're gonna limit it to 50 couples. So we always want the partner, spouse, whatever it might be to be there as well. Because obviously, you know, a business person or a senior exec deciding from for themselves, what they're going to do is pretty pointless. You need the people, your nearest and dearest with you. And we find a lot and we are going to do workshops on this this year. This, these are the kinds of topics that tend not to be discussed amongst couples, which that's just life, isn't it? Because life kind of runs away with you. So yeah, future you is happening on the 11th and 12th of September, there is a link to the actual agenda, the speakers, that kind of stuff in the show notes. Interesting. Last year, two advisors came along, right. And that's totally cool. So we don't mind if you're an advisor in Ireland listening to this and you want to come along. This is, I promise you there'll be nothing about Metis Ireland selling their wares. So yeah, so everyone is invited along, but limited limited to 50 couples. So excited
Alan Smith:to ask a quick question. A couple of questions. Yes. I remember Yeah, I think it was episode one, the proper, proper episode, one that we did after the intro episode, which was called remember correctly calls big events, big events. That's how long ago it was, it was coming around again, obviously, I remember we talked about the price point for this reminders, what sort of what do you charge for this event?
Carl Widger:So it's 1000 euros plus VAT. I assure you matters, Ireland will not be making any money out of this flood, I suppose obviously, we have to pay for the speakers. We you know, the hotel is beautiful. And everything is covered amongst that, you know, what we're encouraging people to do is, if you're running your own business, I think it's a valid business expense. And what we found, which has been really good, and we have a couple of people coming from various companies, the big corporates are more than happy. Everyone is looking to keep their best people. So if you have a 50 year old, who's now thinking about, what does it look like in 5678 years time for me, I think the corporates are more than happy to cover the fee. So we have had a couple of corporates did it last year, and they're sending different people this year. So yeah, the price doesn't seem to be a problem.
Alan Smith:Is that is that per person or per couple
Carl Widger:per capo? So and interestingly last year, we I think we had, I think we had 70 odd people there. 74 I think to be precise, I think we had four or five people came on their own. And I know two of those are definitely coming back with their partner this year. So yeah, it's it's 1000 Whether you come on your own, it's 1000, whether you bring your your partner, and we really, really, really can't stress enough that this is for the dual. This is for the partnership,
Alan Smith:and what's the ultimate sort of commercial reward for Metis? Are you winning new clients as a result? Are you sort of embedding existing relationships? What do you hope to get?
Carl Widger:So yeah, as I said, we don't we definitely don't make any money. It's a fairly significant cost for us right after we've paid for everything. But having said that, did we get new clients out of it last year, we definitely did. And that would have more than made up for the loss that we made on the event. But more it's, it's our commitment to, you know, talking about stuff that's, you know, outside of just the money. So if you're a real financial planner, if you're a lifestyle, financial planner, for me, this is massively, massively important, and this is a passion for me. So that's, you know, part of the commitment if we keep turning up and doing this kind of stuff. I think people will start to believe that our messages are true, that we have integrity and that you know, these are this is actually a passion. You're never ever going to get sold a pension fund when you come in here. This is about lifestyle financial planning.
Andy Hart:Got a couple of quotes and a call. First one is very basic. You call it the third act. I'm quite a fan of that. Would you call the previous two like school years working is then retirement years just just interested on that?
Carl Widger:Well, I have to give credit to Geraldine Murphy who has spoke at the event last year and she's speaking again this year, she's actually going to run some of the workshops, she came up with the term third act. I absolutely love it. We've been using it an awful lot. You know, like the previous one is, is the one that we're all here and it's the one that we all know that we it's your working life. And I don't think you can necessarily break that down between your stages of your career. So do I have a name for it? I told Andy it's the one we're all in and it's it's where the vast vast vast majority of our clients are in
Andy Hart:final question, any of our listeners flying over from Norway that I get a discount?
Carl Widger:Send me a DM Good question. They're
Alan Smith:paying in kroner there's a there's a thing in I think it's just the UK but it's there's something called Third Age third age or third and the Third Age at university Third
Nick Lincoln:Age. Yeah. Yeah, you through University, which
Alan Smith:is focused on this right, this kind of transition from work into retirement, semi retirement and not too much about it or certainly heard. My mother's
Carl Widger:like, Justin, if I could just give you a very kind of overview in terms of the agenda, we have some people who've been there done that and are kind of living their best lives. And the third act, they're going to talk about their experience with a couple of people who transitioned into consultancy, they're going to talk about their experience, but then we touch on stuff that, you know, people probably aren't that that exposed to. So we have a kind of a fitness and nutrition expert, Joe Connor, he's amazing. And everybody always wants to hear more from Joe, we have a psychologist talking about, you know, your, your mental fitness. So it's not just kind of one particular theme. It's trying to get, you know, a broad spectrum of Ted Ted Talks, right. So it's, you know, 2530 minutes from each speaker. And people then have engaged with some of the speakers afterward as well. So I know the speakers have definitely got a few clients out of it as well. So it's all kind of win win for everybody.
Andy Hart:Sort of final point, a bit of a compliment. It sounds amazing. I don't think there's anything like it in the UK, that I can think of the advisors run. I mean, this is a franchise formula, almost, you know, you can run this in major cities anywhere. I remember when I first started working there was a guy that ran these sort of courses in random place like you know, Council offices and you know, places whereas a lot of people were approaching retirement and he used to do on the basis of, you know, help them out with their final salary pensions, but he used to cover quite quite a lot in it. And that was just like a roomful of sort of 1520 people this sounds a lot more sort of organizes definitely pre retirement courses.
Alan Smith:A lot of the big corporates do organize Yeah, totally benefit type stuff Yeah, a day or half a day similar to this but it's doesn't sound anything remotely isn't anywhere near as good as this Yes. All right.
Nick Lincoln:Well, I this sounds to me like this, this this is something that is unique to to Ireland.
Carl Widger:Then also, they'll also see that I was deeply uncomfortable with the content of some who today's Yes, always do the Irish versus UK cultural differences.
Alan Smith:That's an ex way of saying let's
Andy Hart:move on. Now. Let's move on. He's not happy about
Carl Widger:about yoga and meditation. I sang that song recently. And one of my UK counterparts told me to stop singing it I was very offensive. Anyway, look, if anyone wants more information, the link is in the show notes or send me a DM I have tons and tons and tons of UK advisors Lincoln with me on LinkedIn, so happy to share any more details. And as I say, everybody is welcome.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, thank you very much, Carl. So next point of the topical titbits Mr. Smith, the DFA matrix book 2023.
Alan Smith:Yes, perhaps on two rather more mundane issues. The I don't know if you guys have spent any time looking at this dimensional fund advisors we met we've mentioned several times on this podcast in the past, we all use them to one degree or another. They published this thing called the matrix book every year and you can get access to you can get hard copies of it, you can get digital copies of it. Honestly, I'm not somebody that's sort of deep in the weeds on the My new shy of investment. I know some people are wanting to my colleagues are they love all this stuff. But I think it's well worth spending some time to just release their latest version of it. So they've got data investment market data going back to the 1920s across all asset classes, also the shapes and sizes of investments and of course dimensionals big focus is on what they call factor investments, factor investing and so or returns from small cap equities, return some value equities. And there was just there was a ton of stories within them, they thoroughly recommend that you bring this book into client meetings you use it to tell stories is and that was that within the book there are at any time, there's probably half a dozen different kind of narratives. People, for example, talk about real estate or property investing. And it just the unpack the, you know, the hard facts and the figures going back best part of 100 years, dimensional do public, I think we've got a specific webinar on how to deliver this. They're very big on what they call scripts, and sketches, and storytelling, and the and using this almost as a kind of a supplement to help clients really kind of understand and sort of get their heads around, particularly in more recent more recent times where we've had rather more volatile markets. So I'll put a you can I think it's available to anyone if you want access to it, certainly the digital version of it. So I'll put a link in the show notes that wants to have a look at that if anyone's particularly inclined to look at data facts, information going back many, many years. It's worth looking at the brand new version of the dimensional matrix book called
Carl Widger:decaf? Yeah. So it's a brilliant book. It disappoints me every year that it comes out the end of June, beginning of July, when the figures are only up to the end of the year, come on dimension of get get it out earlier. Anyway, it is a brilliant book. And I know we're going to talk about later on, in terms of trying to, I suppose coach clients and you know, making sure that they're, they're comfortable with volatility, there is a absolutely brilliant page towards the back every year. And it has like long term returns if you're in a 6040, or an 8020, or 100% equities. And they have a number that we focus on an awful lot when we're talking to our clients, which is the lowest one year returns. And it's kind of 1985. And, for me, it's really important to focus on that number when we're talking to clients to say, here's the long term average returns, it's I don't know, six and a half 7% for 6040, whatever it might be, don't kill me if those numbers are wrong. But I know up to last year, the last one year return was, I think something like minus 26%. So it's a great tool in terms of coaching behavior with clients to say, this is why we're putting you in this, this is the long term you are going to get what you need to absolutely remember that you need to stay in your seat and do nothing. When we have not if when we have that minus 24%. Year. So it's a fantastic book. And it is been it's getting better. So you know, I've been using it maybe for four or five years. And each edition definitely is a little bit better. So yeah, highly recommend, and thanks for bringing it up. And,
Andy Hart:Nick, you go first.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, and yeah, I mean, I do get a copy each year. I've never used it in front of clients, but quite expensive. And I get it just because I think I need to have it. And I mean, the there's there's quite a bit of copy at the front where they talk about the figures. And that's what I find interesting. But I yeah, I wouldn't. For me, it's not something I'd use in front of clients, but I'm totally wedded to dementia, which as you guys know, and the detractors probably know, me.
Andy Hart:I've lost some as reading that book is the investment information Bible, I believe. And if you're early on in your career, find this book and consume it and go through every single page and try and learn as much as you can from that book. In my early days, I did use it in front of clients with some success. I shared the digital copy with financially investing literate clients and that's again gone down with some levels of success. I know that's probably not allowed. So I'll retract that statement. And then my final point is, isn't the sort of global CEO of dementia we're a close personal friend of yours Alan?
Alan Smith:Well, funnily enough dementia mean Dave I mean, they go back oh my god, we go back nearly two weeks now. Yeah, I had well actually, I did have lunch them about five years ago. No, I was
Andy Hart:on the bloody topical tip. No, it wasn't.
Alan Smith:You have reminded me and we are in topical tip bits which is this is topical. Yes, I happen to be at dimensionals office a couple of weeks ago 10 days ago and I had the opportunity to meet with and is easily
Unknown:grab yourself a drink a very long drink. Story Time With Alan Smith.
Alan Smith:You're a bit trigger happy this morning. I don't know what's the matter with your not your normal self here because So this story however and actually it is important that we don't just throw this whole thing together this is all kind of joined up thinking because when it comes to later on and culture corner have some relevant absolute shambles. So I did have the opportunity to meet with his name is Dave Butler. He's the he's the CO CEO dimensional got co CEOs is the butler who looks after more the advisory side intermediary side of the business and is an Irishman,
Carl Widger:Carl Gerard Gerardo Riley from County Waterford it gives me it thrilled seeing it every single time. It's
Nick Lincoln:good. Yeah, I find him on. He's He's, he's sad. Yeah,
Alan Smith:he is, I think officially the cleverest man in the world. It's just a brain the size of a planet. And anyway, I had a meeting with with Dave and Dave is, you know, I'm pretty tall and they I have got to stand up on my hind legs look up to Dave, I think he's 6869, something like that. He's an ex pro basketball player in the US and and he's a fantastic guy. And when I was speaking with them, and we were chatting about a number of other things, and I was hosted by my day to day contact, Stephen, shout out to Stephen Greenfield. And Steven mentioned the trap podcast because that he had just finished his doing their foundations course, which which Stephen hosts in London. And he said there was certainly a number of people there in the room. And probably the only reason they were there is because they heard of it through this very podcast. So it was quite nice to be sitting in front of the CEO of this global, you know, 600 Billion Euro, half a trillion dollar organization and to be given some kudos and credit. And thank you very much for all the good work that the boys on track are doing, to educate and to help advisors learn more about the art and science of investing. And so as I as I was leaving, I say yo Nice to meet your guys shaking hands and all the rest of it. And I go out to the to the lifts, and then your man Gerardo Riley appears as well. So there's me holding court completely out of my depth for the two global CEOs of this organization. All I was trying to do is get out the building before I embarrass myself and said something stupid. So I think I just about made it through, but they are very appreciative of the good work that we're doing on this podcast.
Andy Hart:There we go. Now nothing happens by accident dimension and that was probably strategically planned Allen. Slick operation probably was. Yeah.
Nick Lincoln:Location. You said I was trigger happy with the storyteller drop there. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Right. Okay. Moving on. Oh, me. Good. Personality Test. I did a personality test. I don't know what that is, though. No, it's coming. It's coming this morning via Amazon computer said no. Computer said no. I did a test call and the links in the circle Show Notes understand myself.com. And I just I was trying to get the other three horsemen of the apocalypse to do the same test. But of course being the disagreeable buggers, they are none of them have done and on that point I scored in the bottom two percentile on agreeableness. There are there are five traits. And what's it say people that hold on a second?
Alan Smith:Right, he was the bottom bottom 2%
Nick Lincoln:people who paid people high in agreeableness a nice compliant nurturing kind a very trusting and conciliatory as people who were low or not so nice, let's is worth pay for is now stubborn, dominant, harsh, skeptical, competitive and an extreme even predatory. However, they tend to be straightforward, even blunt, so you know where they stand. And I would just like I'd be interested to know what other advisor traits are. Yeah, the sort of the five traits I was in the bottom. Two 2% are for agreeableness I was high in extraversion, very high in conscientiousness, low in openness and high in neuroticism. So I'm all over the shop really you got you got to talk to
Alan Smith:your disagreeable neurotic
Andy Hart:are 98% of my openness
Carl Widger:oh we know
Nick Lincoln:we do to 5.5 to minus and three five points and three other extreme I think I am relatively open
Andy Hart:raised ideas ever and you shoot them down for about five months and then you you embrace them on the six month and you
Alan Smith:don't permit your own. So you've done it I haven't really you haven't done it yet. Have you wish you'd do it I'll do it. I'll do it later. Yeah, share the results
Carl Widger:I'll do it yeah, we can't we will never
Alan Smith:compete with Nick I know for sure before you do it call we will not be in the bottom 2% In the same way as Nick is a bit of
Nick Lincoln:a trial it you know I think it does depend to a degree on the mood you're in when you do it that will that will influence but I didn't try and be honest. I wasn't trying to just give silly answer to get silly scores but I don't mind actually reading through I'm noticing a bit more detail. I think being being disagreeable has has a lot of benefits and, you know, seven marriages in, I think it's working for me. Right? The next thing we have, who's the next one that talks about? It is Mr. Smith again. So the Schroeder's advisor pulse 2023 report.
Alan Smith:Yeah, okay. This is just something that apparently Schroeder's obviously we're a major player in our sector. And I think they do this two, or perhaps even three times a year. I just saw it for the first time the other day, so took the opportunity to read through it so Schroeder's survey, I'm not sure it's not the biggest sample set, but it's certainly in the hundreds of advisors and asked them, you know, what are the key issues? What are the what's on their mind? What are the debating? What are they concerned with? And I just And again, I posted a link to it in the show notes, couple, a couple of a few things, I'll just share, which some are obvious, and some are slightly surprising. So the the first thing was, that there's a lot of this concern out there about capital loss about clients, and advisors advising them discussing loss of capital. And that, you know, in terms of all the conversations that we have, that's I think that's even concerning that that's a big issue. Yeah. And I'm always reminded of that, what's the what's the Nick Murray, saying about capital loss, the permanent loss of capital in a well diversified portfolio is a human achievement, or which the
Andy Hart:markets are incapable incapable.
Alan Smith:The markets cannot have permanent loss and a well diversified a human folio. A human certainly can. So the very fact that that's a big concern right now is a concern in and of itself. Second thing is, obviously, cost of living crisis, et cetera, is, is sort of looming large. And something that I think Andy mentioned last episode, but what the reason I get this as well, we're experiencing as well, this, whereas the client themselves might be doing, okay, there is issues around helping family members, so the family member is suffering, you know, or can't afford their rent or the mortgage or whatever. Then the you know, a lot of our clients are looking to withdraw capital to support family members that was, you know, had increased significantly recently. You like this one, Nick, the interest in sustainable sustainable investing has fallen precipitously. Only seen percent of clients are currently asking for are remotely interested in it as follows come on what the what the percent was before, much, much higher than now. And interestingly, the reason that cited is because investment performance has fallen away for sustainable investing. So if you look back a couple of years, all the sustainable and a lot of the Sustainable companies or those which were considered ESG, or the big tech companies weren't the were a lot of the a lot of those companies were predominant in it. And so therefore, maybe people weren't quite so interested in the sort of the basics around ESG investing, but more the fact that there was having some good investment returns. Do you want to come in there, Nick?
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, I was gonna say it's fun, isn't it? When people have got real concerns, like maybe helping out family members or helping out in the sales because of inflation or when they're worried about a real thing, such as a war in Eastern Europe, all these wolky things just fall by the wayside down there. People don't really give a Shi t call and then we're back to back to Anna.
Carl Widger:Yeah, there's another reason for that, I think. And that's I think people are a lot more educated these days. Because information is to hand I think the whole greenwashing by the fund management industry has been exposed. And I think when, you know, rules and regulation and criteria are put in place and funds either tick boxes or they don't that's another reason I think that it has just fallen behind.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, let me just close on this and back back to when I mean That and the fact that these massive main Vanguard are pulled out of this ESG nonsense in terms of the these these conferences they go to and so forth, and anything that's involving BlackRock, just just treat with with Ultra care. And Larry Fink, this Blackrock CEO, who is the main driver, this ESG crap. You know, look, look where it's coming from each time and back to you.
Alan Smith:Yeah, exactly. Two more brief points. As we know, consumer duty is looming large. It's due to be implemented at the end of end of this month, actually, end of July 59% of advisors say that consumer duty will or has forced them to change their pricing model pricing structure, particularly around their ongoing recurring fee structure, which I think was one of the key issues that the regulator was wanting to explore that not everybody needs an ongoing paid for. Service. So if 59% stayed where they are, they have changed or the process of changing their fee structure doesn't say to what, but that I found quite interesting. And last but not least, of course, currently, I can't have a whole episode without mentioning those two magical letters. A AI, interesting, only 8% of the advisors surveyed expect to use any sort of AI tools within their practice in the next 12 months. As an as it extends out to three to five years, obviously, those numbers go up, but only 8%, which I think is pretty small. Expect to be using any sort of artificial intelligence in their business. Well, it shows you it is yet is yet to be sort of mainstream
Andy Hart:any stretch. I think they're already using it but don't realize, anyway, let's not focus too much. And maybe, maybe, maybe,
Alan Smith:yeah, that was it. There was a few other points in there as well. So that was the Schroeder's advisor pulse report. And again, I posted a link to it. And it was a lovely, Carl, quick,
Carl Widger:quick question, Alan. The we don't have consumer duty, as you know, but we'll probably have it in a while. Is there any indication at this end that the fees are going up or going down as a result of consumer duty hours?
Alan Smith:No, I think there's, there's there's more sort of conscious thought is given to because the historical was just a default, but you know, it was it was three plus one Repatha asked the question, three plus a half three plus one. Now what now? What service do you want? So I think there's a bit more focus, which is the right thing to do. And, you know, any sort of commercial enterprise needs to understand any proposition. And I think that that's that this is one of the key as, as I mentioned a minute ago, it's one of the key things you can't default, to automatically charge a recurring revenue model for an annual meeting that the client doesn't want or need, they really wanted a piece of work done for them as a one off piece of activity and whether you choose to do transactional work or not, it's entirely up to you. Okay. I think that's what I just said, a little bit more conscious thought given to pricing is coming to bear, which is, which is the right thing. Okay. Andy,
Andy Hart:that's a good subject for a future show transactional versus ongoing. So let's, let's park that. We'll come back to that about you, Nick.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, but I think it's also I think this these things, all intellect don't, then this thing of ours, I think this is about it's about filtering and having an onboarding process, you know, and if you if you've, if you're very careful with the vetting of people, you bring on board, you shouldn't have problems down the line, which we'll come on to the meat and potatoes. But also you bring people on who fit your service proposition. This is what I do for all people all the time. And if you don't want this, you don't get on the boat, you don't come on, you're not you're not part of the squad in the first place. So once again, you know if you know what you stand for, and what your service is about, offer that to people, and they either take it or they leave it, okay, but if they come on board wanting that service, they pay for that service. So what was my thing? Oh, yeah, it's kind of regret. I didn't say my company around was last week. So I've had the joy of the double headed joy of doing my regulatory data, which I could because I'm high in conscientiousness, or I'm just neurotic, I just need to get it done. I hate stuffing in my intro. So I got the email from the FCA today and I did it this morning. If I did somebody yesterday done my reg data as a one man band Thank Heaven for things such as zero and free agent. And I managed to do the 12 month year end reg data on formerly Gabriel still awful, I did it in about an hour and a half. And it's just such a such a nice thing to get off my off my off my my shoulders. But without having an online accountancy package to there for me, you know, it'd be an absolute nightmare if you got Colin Allen, you know, with maybe multiple cost centers in some cases, or certainly multiple ri eyes and KPIs all over the place. And I dread to think what it was like But of course, I've also because it's my comm started my company year now I've had to go through all my compliance documents as well. I've done that this morning since 630. It's just three hours cracking on through this stuff, most of which is complete. I know why we I know why certain people think we have to do it. But I'm a one man band. I'm having to vet myself and say I'm fit and profit and all this other stuff. It's just like it's so Orwellian. But now I just closed the sort of thinking part of my brain down when I do this. Don't get upset. Don't be disagreeable. Just just do it and nail it. And I've done it. But so Wow. 12 miles. Well, well,
Alan Smith:well done. The I went, obviously I haven't had to do one of these for years. Thank God because it's twice twice a year right yet to do this. And it used to it would take you an hour and a half. It used to take me three days off a day. Well, I started off in two best part of a day when I first started to do them. They first brought it in. I got used to it a bit. That thing is you've got all these different sort of data reports and they've all got to sort of cross reference each other. Yeah. So you hit the button and you do it and it goes 9.6 74 doesn't match point 12
Andy Hart:The error is it just says you got an error and you got to find it. It's just really
Nick Lincoln:take a lot longer if I ever had a complaint because thankfully and I'm putting myself in a complete mess Trying to get one here. But I've always been able to say, Have you had any complaints? No. And then, but if you've got a complaint, this thing goes on for like war and peace, you know that. It's just never ending. But so so that would be, you know, that would be hours of your life wasted.
Alan Smith:Whilst we're on this, Nick, I don't think any of us had this. But there's another sort of data requests come out just last week or two weeks ago from FCA and was about retirement planning.
Nick Lincoln:And can we just can we just not you does Andy and I had a thing, WhatsApp back and forth. So please don't mention this because none of us have had it yet. And if we just met the gods at six questions, we know people spent five hours on it, but we're not gonna mention okay, it's like, we don't just planet didn't mention
Andy Hart:Oh, is Scottish Play, Nick. If you've got the wrong reference here? Yeah, exactly.
Alan Smith:Not Hamlet, you clown expect a phone call from FCA to do your?
Nick Lincoln:Absolute shambles? Right. Okay, you've done the typical titbits to death have we not? What about the last one? And show notes we've noticed the next month? All right. So I think we should go on to what many people are calling the meat and potatoes of the show. And this was a subject raised by the festival, Mr. widger, the voice on a subject of dealing with his words, dear travelers, problematic clients, red cards, yellow cards, or just human nature. So SimBin or sending off human nature? Or is it part of our job to deal with these people in the way that we think appropriate cardio lead off, and we'll all have some input into this subject? Because it's a big one. Again, it comes back to making sure you got the right people on the bloody squad in the first place. Go,
Carl Widger:does it? Yeah, we talked about this quite a bit. And I would I look, I laid off by saying I would be mad as Ireland will be much less draconian than Nick Lincoln, or Andy Hart. And I think Ireland will be probably more aligned to me, but I'm not going to second guess, where everyone was going to come from. So my starting position here is, as I've told the story loads of times before I was a product setter, so I was I know which best pension fund for is for you, blah, blah, blah. And then I transitioned, when I saw that I had to read financial planning, lifestyle, financial planning. So therefore at that time, I had to transition my entire book of clients across from the old way to the new way. And that took a long time. And some were happy to come across and do financial plans and kind of, you know, bought into, okay, this is this is different, but I get it. And I'm loving it. And it's fantastic. But others used to still come in 234 years later, let's talk about the returns. And how did my fund do? And my mate, Billy donor, the pub did better. So can we move and all that kind of stuff, right? So therefore, I would see it as part of our job to coach to cajole to help clients to, as I would say, see the light and see, you know, look, it's let's focus on the financial plan, as opposed to the investment returns. And we spoke about the dimensional stuff earlier on, or whether you want to do Vanguard or whatever funds you want to put them into. That's the driver for the returns that we have assumed in the financial plan. But that's all it is. And we need to focus on the financial plan. So like, there's a couple of there's a couple of scenarios where Yeah, I would, I know Andy talks about the yellow cards and the red cards and each for themselves, but I suppose you guys had a chance when you were setting up in your own to, I suppose you were going straight into this real financial planning. So it was possibly I'm not making assumptions here, but possibly easier for you to decide on who you'd bring on and who you wouldn't. But we still get people in who say would have been recommended from somebody who loves the financial plan. And then they come in and they want to know well what did what did your funds do last year? Now for me? That's not that that's just part of our job that we were gonna say, Okay, I hear you. I'll just show you what kind of returns you should expect. But you know, what happened last year that you before is absolutely totally and utterly irrelevant. So for me, that's a client with a particular issue or a particular pain point. And we're going to just bring them through the process and hope that you know, by seeing the financial plan that they're gonna go oh, okay, this is a lot different and I get it. Read cards for me are rudeness to me are to tends not to happen. But rudeness to people on the team. We've had very few instances of it. But I'd pick up the phone. So sorry, that's unacceptable. Do you know what? When I've done that in the past, which I think is mean, probably three occasions, I've two of them certainly just explained where they were in their lives, we're having a difficult time. And we're more than happy to apologize and move on. And, you know, still clients, no, but some people are just not very nice. And you don't need that crap in your life. So I would say, yeah, that's, that's, that's a definite red card. One thing that you guys have said before a lot is people who split investments, say, Okay, I'm gonna give, you know, if I have a million quid, I'm gonna do a half million what matters, and I'm gonna do half a million with the corporate in Dublin. That's not a deal breaker. Because you know, what, we ended up getting it all anyway. So for me, you know, where we're happy to, you know, kind of prove our points because it is sometimes difficult for people to, you know, get what the whole experience is, after one meeting, it might take two years, which are, you know, to ATMs and maybe one EGM, to say, you know, what matters are actually offering the best value. And then to elaborate on that point, I suppose, is if people are very, very, very focused, that that is a problem. So, I would say to the rest of the team here and matters, if someone has just have it, you've delivered the plan, you've added your value, and they're still talking about fees, don't get too hung up or excited about that line, because they're probably going to go with the lowest fee. But if you have someone who's splitting the investment, and they're talking about fees, and for whatever reason, the other firm does, delivers better returns, which of course, that other firm are not delivering better returns, because the market is just doing its thing. And then they're gonna go with the cheapest fee. So I would have, you know, massive red flags out for somebody who's just speaking about fees when you've clearly delivered your value. So that's kind of one issue that we just keep a very careful eye on, because I don't think that business is very sticky. But like 95% of the new clients that come in, are coming in, because they've been referred by somebody else who's had a real financial plan, and they're going, that's what I want. And the business is our business. And I know, all of you guys as well, ours is really, really sticky. So our persistency rate is massive. But as we've grown, I'd be honest to say over the last couple of years, we have had a few losses. And you know what, that just is what it is. And it's it's, I still take them all very personally. And for me, that's I think that's a good place to be because I'm like, Okay, how do we lose the client? Why do we lose the client? And how can we do better to make sure that that doesn't happen? Sometimes you find that, well, this client was very, very focused, or very, very return focused. And really, it wasn't a great fit for us at the outset. So we do try, and our website is, you know, trying to, I suppose, softly rule the people out who, you know, don't align with our values, but we have our values, we know what our values are. And that's what we're going to deliver, you know, over and over again. But I suppose if I can be, you know, just put into one word, we're commercial about this. And we're, we're trying to, you know, run a really good business at serious value to our clients. But we're not going to be turning people away all the time, just because they don't say exactly what we want to say in what we want them to say in the first meeting.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, let's, let's have Andy, you. So you may be responding to a point by column, maybe you just want it because I know this is a big area for you. And then when you've spoken, then we'll move over to Alan and then
Andy Hart:yeah, just a couple of points just to keep it going. Maybe we need to get a jingle for Carl, pour yourself a drink. But that was a good intro. Carl. Thank you. A couple of points. Carl mentioned one about it, he that you do take it personal again was said to me many years ago, I feel a drop coming here said to me many years ago, don't get personal and business. But it's very hard not to get personal and business and I get very personal and business and every so often I need to take a bit of a step back and think a bit more commercial about it. The other point you mentioned is when you lose a client or when a client mainly when you lose a client. And a lot of advisors confide in me about this. I always say to them just sort of journal what you could have done better or you know, what, what would you have done in hindsight, when I say journal, I mean just like write it down some key bullet points was the initial communication. You know, a little bit off was the first meeting you could have asked further questions, you know, just just analyze your work like you would do in sport or something like that. I think that really helps. And also it gets off your mind and off your chest and they feel a little bit better about it. So that the two points that you mentioned you Yeah, now specific points here, yellow and red cards. But Nick mentions it quite a bit is the onboarding process. We're qualifying them, they're not qualifying us. Certainly if you have a established business with an amount of income coming in, you're not desperate as such. So you are qualifying them. They're not qualifying you. But then so for example, I asked him quite a lot of high level questions in the initial onboarding process, I have then an initial discovery meeting a lot has now been sort of discussed at this point. I then issue them off first 12 months, which is a document I've created for him premium, but also have it for Maven advisor. I'm just trying to constantly set the tone. But let's talk about specific yellow and red cards. So the biggest red card for me is disregarding my advice. You know, if they're going to ignore my advice and do anything, which is financially self destructive, to me, that is the biggest red flag. You know, there is and I have disengaged, I've been sacked. So I've lost five clients in my working career, I've disengaged four on ones disengaged me. They were all guys, they're all men. We're all in this ego battle with them about various different things. But I journaled the one that I lost, and then obviously, the other four I disengaged, mainly because they disregarded my advice and doing things that I didn't want to do, and not taking the advice on various other things. So that's that point, I'll move over to some of the other guys. And we'll come back to other a couple of yellow red cards. So who's next?
Nick Lincoln:Let's go with Mr. Smith are in New York, you are muted.
Alan Smith:Yeah, we'd be much more in line with with call on this. I think the initial point, the world which the we occupy a particular world, which is actually relatively unusual across the landscape of personal finance, tons of our thought process, our long term nature, the fact that we we build a highly high quality investment engine to fuel the financial plan we'd be but we focus less on the investment conversations over time. So I start with the premise that it's our job to educate clients on an ongoing basis. And I don't, we don't throw yellow cards and red cards around because 364 days of the year, they're getting bombarded with the opposite message. And so you know, they're only human and every now and again, they say, What about performance? Or what about something else? So over the years, we haven't disengaged with, I think not not many clients at all. I do think it's our as I say, our responsibility you have mentioned before, another thing is, some people call it lifeboat drill, or a fire drill or something like that, that you we you tell cars already mentioned a version of it earlier on on this conversation is that we tell clients, this is what will happen, the markets will go down, you'll have a down year, you'll have an all you can do is keep reminding them of that we did disengage with the client about a year maybe it may be best for two years ago, because I remember because they continually wanted ask you what are you doing best? What are you doing about that? And it's quite a difficult conversation to have when markets are all over the place? What are you doing about it? And the answer is nothing. We're doing absolutely nothing. That's a tricky one, really, because there's not there's very few other things in life and in the face of, you know, changing circumstances, you know, emergency panic, however you want to describe it? And the answer is to do absolutely nothing. Now, I start off by saying that's our fault. If the client is asking us that question in the first place, it is our fault that they haven't got it, they haven't understood it isn't good enough with our onboarding process. I'm quite keen to consider there are there are different types of clients treating all clients the same is a recipe for disaster. So what we've done, what we've tried to do in the past, we probably could do better at this as well is almost segment clients into when you're when you're on board. And you do a risk profiling questionnaire, anyone your vast majority of people sit in the middle of that sort of standard bell curve. But there are ones who are very much out to the edge of it who say that I'm really it does worry me when markets with markets are volatile. So they should be kind of ring fenced and said in the events of anything volatile periods, we should be more on the front foot with our communications. And the other part of that segmentation is clients that have been with you I would say less than two years less than three years possibly. Because if you've got a client one sort of end of that spectrum, who's who's really told you that do tend to get a bit skittish a bit worried about investments, and they've been with you for a year, then we should be in the front foot, we should be more proactive. It's not their fault that they get worried. You know, and for us to say have this sense of arrogance that well, you know, the very fact that they sent you a polite email saying you should be doing anything right that's it red cards get off. No. So we don't do that. We don't do that at all. But there is one one thing that we did God I mean 10 years ago, that's just worth sharing because I don't know if it's ever gonna happen to any any of you guys. We taught you know, my, we've called like you we were not doing full fat Financial Planning Day One. We were doing traditional financial advice. is recommending the best funds. And I think we built a business and early stage business on exactly that, then we saw the light. And we shared the light and our vision with a lot of clients, and majority of them got it. But a certain percentage didn't do. And in the UK, of course, we had our retail distribution review, we all kind of transferred across. And what that meant was, we had to create a very clear client value proposition and fee model, we're no longer getting paid commissions in a traditional way. So over a period of time, we built that, and we took it to our our client base. And as I say, the vast majority will engage with it, we're happy to, you know, to sort of sign up to that new way of doing things. But a certain amount of our clients didn't and a certain amount were, frankly, not commercially viable for us. And that's a, that's a tricky thing to come up against, because clients that you've taken on early on, it's not again, it's not their fault, that they're no longer in terms of that you know, that you are, you're kind of lost making on them terms of the service, the service proposition you want to deliver to them. Because that's the way we do for every client means that relative to the fee, you pick up from them, you're going to lose. And we try to nudge fees up into into a place that that was commercially viable to us. And we got a bit of resistance. What we ended up doing was carving out quite a number of clients, quite a few, you know, several dozen clients. And we package them up, I mean, we effectively we sold them to another firm. Now I package this up as a sort of a bit of benefit to them in as much as they could, this other firm was happy to take them on an ongoing basis. And we no longer could, but I'll tell you I'm I'm still I get quite believe it or not, I'm quite human quite emotional about these things. Because I, I never want to part company in a bad bad terms with a client. And despite us doing everything and doing it really, I thought really well. And our communication was high quality. We talked about building a strategic partnership with this other firm who could serve them better than us. Guarded I get a number of really kind of harsh phone calls from clients saying you've fired us haven't you fired us? And I said, No, no, we haven't fired you. We've introduced you to a firm that sort of better suited to look after you know, I hear that. But you've got you've got rid of us and tell you, Alan, we were there from the beginning. And it's not very nice. So we did we kind of did do a mass red card number of clients and it's still rankles with me. I don't know, I don't know what else we could have done because those those clients were not engaging with the service proposition that we then decided we wanted to offer. They didn't want to do it there were commercially non viable. So I think we did the best thing, but it was really difficult. I wouldn't encourage I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to do that again, which means that we are far more focused nowadays on taking on new clients, in as much as we hope they'll always be clients of ours. And we're never going to have to go through that process again, we will disengage because they are not commercially viable. Or they don't like what it is that we we deliver. So that was a salutary tale to anyone else. Now. Nick Lincoln has been sitting there quietly, for sure he's got views. And
Andy Hart:he's the goat of red cards.
Nick Lincoln:I really am not the goat of reg I am the goat of onboarding. I think I saw I was thinking about this while for the last two hours while the rest of you have a speaking. And I think I've sacked one client one day this week, Nick, whatever, it's a word doesn't matter. I've sacked one client. I've had people leave me not not again, maybe three or four. But I've sacked one non client since 2008. And it was for a combination of reasons. But I would think that's probably because I am just very careful. I'm a broken record right i i started off as an IFA in 2001 working for a firm where they just couldn't say no. And they'd be they were jack of all trades, though they were master of none. And and you know, one minute the directors will be doing a personal Equity Plan for 6000 pounds. The next minute they'd be doing setting up a group pension scheme over here for x y Zed limited, and then they'll be over there with an endowment for Joe and Belinda. And it was just constant. And I thought this is insane. You have no you have no ideology or you're just you're just an enormous bucket and just stuff is slipping in here. And you need to have a filter so I've always been really keen about the onboarding so I've never had a situation where I've had to sack disproportionate amount of people though, the one clients or the customer wife I sacked they were perfectly fine and we got on actually as people surprise surprise we did but recurring thing that got under my skin, always on about the fees always on about the fees. Okay, so that was a little just tick, tick, tick tick tick in my neck. And then the big one, which Andy is the same as theirs, they just got disregarded my advice, they needed some money they wanted to for whatever I think repay some buy to let mortgages and and they had ISIS and they had personal pensions and whatever but but but but I said okay, well you're going to take the money from your ISIS okay for these Isn't that they said, No, we want to take up my pensions. And it was just in transit. And I thought, okay, you're listening, you're nuts to do that, that's just there's no reason to do it, you're gonna screw up your inheritance tax by so doing it. So that was the second thing after the fees. And the third thing, they were very tech poor, and they were the one clients, I had to send stuff in the post, you know, Royal Mail, yellow flag, email by this, they didn't send emails to their to one of their children. So they could then print them off. And then so and then the other said, this is just not working. And I got rid of them.
Carl Widger:Can I just can I just sorry for interrupting? You know, just ask to maybe this is getting into too much detail. But I'd be interested to know, how did you let them go? Did you meet them? Did you write to them? Or what was that conversation? Like?
Nick Lincoln:I sent them an email, and then they'd never read it because I'm too afraid to have these confrontations. But then I sent them I sent him a letter. I sent them a letter saying this is this plane is not working. I'm resigning the account of the exact words I use. Thank you. Thank you for your customer over the years. I wish you all the best going forward. And I never never heard anything back. Turned off the taps of the that there was funds networked on that day turned off the advisor charging and moved on. And they're not fighting for me. They will do about 5k in fees. Yeah. And advisor charging a year. So they weren't they weren't they weren't penny ante people. And they were they were in themselves reasonably pleasant. But they're just too much. It was just too much and it just broke broke the camel's back. Yeah.
Andy Hart:Another couple of yellow cards just to get the juices flowing. Yeah, I think you alluded to it, Nick. Yeah, sending instructions rather than seeking advice. Like this is what we're going to do. It's like, no, no, this is what we're thinking about planning on doing. Are there any other alternatives we've not thought about, you know, I'd like your input and he rather than saying we thought about it, and here's the answer. So for me it's it's a it's a it's a strong yellow when it's sending instructions rather than seeking advice. the rudest thing that Carl mentioned. I mean, there's zero tolerance for that. So you know, rudeness demands abuse towards me staff, anyone, that's just immediately gone. Isn't it? Yeah. We've alluded Yeah, so that's a given that we've alluded to it, where it's like sharing links to investment articles. And have you thought about this? I know they're human and they might do this every so often. But for me, it's incredibly insulting. You know, it's like sending Gordon Ramsay links to friggin recipes and stuff saying you know have you thought about this is that I live sleep and breathe personal finance and investing
Unknown:and the the hills recap of Darien Agni. He knows about everything. Andy can be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart.
Carl Widger:In the Age Andy of instant information on constant information, is it not just human nature for people to go? I was just wondering about this bearing in mind that they're there, they have a little information. Like I Yellowcard because someone sent you an article, like when I
Andy Hart:say yeah, like I'd call it's just, it's just a mark on their file. I don't go here's your first yellow card, be very careful. I mean, sometimes I do just just tongue in cheek, so they understand what's going on. I think it's rather insulting Carl, I literally been very personal finance and investing, I spent 1000s of hours thinking about discussing, you know, reading research in listening to, but if there was anything to happen, I'd be on the front foot, you know, communicating with them. But again, it is all back to the onboarding process, as Nick said, to make it very clear to them about this. A lot of my clients come to me from the content I create so they know sort of my my message anyway. And a lot of them say, Andy, I was concerned about X, but I just had your voice in my head saying Don't worry about it and just move on. That's fantastic. Your point Carl, about you know, bombarding of information. Again, it's frictionless for clients now to send grenades into our into our practices. As I often say, a client can literally parked their car in the car park at the station, on the way towards the station, 30 seconds, I can write you an email, it's gonna ruin your morning and it's taken them 28 seconds to send that email. And they just think it's a passing comment like Oh little bit concerned about this and you're like, Whoa, what is this a complaint now we're gonna get go with this, we've got to speak to about this do want to check their investment portfolios or what they originally investigate, you know, who's the advisor looking after it's just the loan friction is obviously a blessing and a curse. A couple of other red yellow flags, I mean, not taking out the right insurance. You know, if it's very clear, you need income protection. If you get hit by a bus, you and your family are in a bad situation and you're not willing to spend, you know, peanuts every month, like I'm going to negotiate on maybe to the following year, and then maybe you get a third on the third year if you're not taken out for not valid reasons. Again, I don't want to be co pilot to a financial sinking ship. You know, we've seen the, the outcome of the wrong insurance or not, not any insurance in place. Yeah, so that's another one for me. I mean, the one we can discuss is splitting an investment portfolio gone
Alan Smith:I'm literally just about to ask you that in terms of what you do call said that they would do we historically have done or we've learned to our cost now that is just, it's it's just a nightmare to do that. We'll give you some money and and someone else, I'm still I can work with, you know the concepts. I think we talked about it here before the family fortress and the investment playpen. If you want to take a small amount of money and go and dig around with it yourself, or your little hedge fund, or whatever it might be got yourself out, but no, we're gonna give you half we're gonna give this other big national brand half as well. And we'll see who does best we'll compare them next year. That's a red flag from day one. So we will do that we have done so
Carl Widger:give you give you a scenario. Most of our clients come to us because they already have existing portfolios. And someone has said, you need to talk to these guys. They do it differently. So we do the financial plan, and someone has 500 grand in a trading account. But there's a clear and defined need for appear to say, which is a pension pot here. And we'll do the pension pot for them. But we won't insist that they transferred the five the other 500 grand across to us No. So that's more than the scenario that we get. But what will happen is a year two three in there you go, can you just look after that thing as well. So that's really more our experience. But I don't I don't tend to get people coming in with, you know, 5 million quid we're going to give you two and a half. And we're going to give them two and a half. But what hasn't happened? Yes. Did we take the business? Yes. Have we won the rest of the business? Yes.
Andy Hart:Yeah, we've all had different experiences of this over the years. Yeah, I'm very strict on this. I've been sort of Nick married in this. It's all about the wood and wood, an army general look after half an army and split an army, you know, there's no chance you're going to win any battles, there's no chance you're going to win any wars. I think it's a sign in my opinion of a weak advisor who's willing to do that on the other side. So if there's another army general in the mix, and he he or she goes, Yeah, I'm willing to take half and I don't know, I'm not willing to take off. And when I say I'm not willing to take off, I think that shows more of my character. Look, I'm all in on this with you, or I'm all out on this with you. With this one says I don't mind doing half and I'm quite strict in it. That's my opinion on it. And we've heard other people. So Nick, over to you.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, I think we can probably just tie a bow on this unless you guys disagree with me on it.
Carl Widger:I can't leave that one hanging out. Right. So no,
Alan Smith:he did. You said you're a terrible advisor call.
Andy Hart:He said he said no call we've we
Carl Widger:know he wanted to tie a bow on it. So he doesn't have an opinion on this one. So if you don't mind, I'll reply to your comments. Right. Great. All right. I think that's when you're in the business of growing a firm, these, these scenarios tend to come up a bit, do they come up often? No, they don't. Now, what do we ever propose to a client that hey, look, Mr. Client, it would be absolutely okay, if you split that and gave it the other half to the other investor, to the other investment firm? Absolutely not. But if it comes to where that line goes, Look, we are totally new to this, we don't really know what we're doing. We really like what you're doing. But honestly, you know, we're thinking not having all the eggs in one basket, a bit of diversification, and we're just trying to protect ourselves because I hear everything that you're saying. But would it be okay, if we split this, you know, our that we left our existing portfolio with the with the with the other house? You know, is that weakness? Or is that commercial? For me? That's not weakness. That's, that's just us doing your thing. And to repeat, which I've noticed that three times we end up getting all the business anyway. So, you know, we're more than comfortable to do it. And I think if you're in the business of growing and expansion, you know, I think you're just gonna have to suck it up. Sometimes.
Andy Hart:All your points are valid May I spent at least four or five months trying to take on a new prospect client, 4 million quid everything was then agreed last meeting, vague or LMR last minute resistance. So they said actually, we're going to keep two with the existing provider who's an absolute DFM sharks, and we're going to put two with you. I literally just said, all the best and just walked out. So yeah, I'm super strong opinionated on this. But yeah, oh, cool. All different opinions. But to your boss, you know,
Alan Smith:I've just, I've just thought of a situation where we had really we disengaged from a client 80 months ago. And we did it face to face with a husband and wife in a room. And again, it was just, it was just awful. wife was crying. It was just a mess. It was the conversation and actually It was 5050 in terms of the blame, because we should never taken his client on this. This is pretty big ticket clients, pretty, you know, revenue wise nothing else. But what they wanted us to do. We couldn't we really couldn't do it. It was just a man. It was just a massive offshore complexity and trusts and all sorts of stuff that we sort of said to us and Andy Hart phrase in a derogatory sense, we'll give it a go. We'll give it a go. What you know, how difficult can it be? And it really was much more complex, very, very difficult. Yeah, it was just, it was just awful. And so that's another I suppose all roads lead back to Mr. Lincoln, as always Mr. disagreeable, and in your commercials one thing, but turning down and credit to you. And if you turned out a 4 million pound client, or in this case, a 2 million pound client, if you're gonna get half of it with a view to winning the other half down the line? I'm not sure I'm either I'm half half and half between, you know, all credit to you. And also you're not commercial at all, you know, you have still 2 million pound clients that you could have won across over the next year or two. I think, the ultimate in conclusion, it's client by client prospect by prospect. We've got our value proposition, we've got the things that we won't stand for. I think we're all in agreement that, you know, rudeness, and just kind of downright being sort of negative or or ignoring our advice, or kind of question
Andy Hart:Are these constantly.
Alan Smith:But but there's a lot of gray areas in between a lot of black and white, I suppose. But no, I think that's good conversation. Really all backs back to you, Mr. Chairman.
Nick Lincoln:Okay. Okay. Just to clarify, just just just to draw a line under this, just just to repeat, I've only sat the one client. So I might have this reputation of being disagreeable, and maybe I am, but I haven't, I've only sat one client and I didn't particularly enjoy doing it, but I didn't feel better for doing it. And the second thing, I think that we have a lot of younger Trappists younger advisors who are in a sort of storming and forming stage and they've got to be very commercial, I get that. But if you're ever, ever at the point with with a client relationship, anything every time you see his or her name on your phone, or an email in your inbox, and your heart sinks, as soon as you are able to financially get rid do not become a goal do not 20 years look back and with 350 customers in your client bank, of which a good 90 or so don't like you, and you don't like them because you haven't given them the time. Or the effort or or you just don't just just get in the habit of recognizing that you cannot be all things to all men. Okay, down that road. Lies misery. Talking of misery. I see our post post is at the at the front door. She's She's, she's she's grumpy, and she's holding a bulging sack of practice questions. Now listen to your traffic. Do you know now? How to do it, but I shall repeat myself. There's a pinned tweet at advisor podcast if you click on the link in the pin to YouTube and leave an inane question for us to answer. And we will get through them. We're catching up. But we still got loads of unanswered question, but we only have so much time. So without any further ado, I think I'm gonna cut the Trappists off and pull the first one out of the sack. And this is from a Darren Bill key who's on Twitter as at Darren Bill key. A large part of real financial planning undoubtedly includes cash flow, planning, lifetime lifetime cash flow forecasting. I'd like to hear a big debate about the tools you use, in cars and Alan's case, whether all of your firms use the same tools or different ones per advisor or pour oil per client life stage, and what type of assumptions you each use and why. I think there's a big debate around this area. Clearly, there's no right answer. So how would you each approach this with your clients? Well, I'll just just lead off and then we can we can make it a big debate all the way one hour, eight minutes. And so myself, Carl and Andy, we are we are very much committed to voyant not saying it's a good or a bad thing, but we're totally immersed and buoyant. And we are in as much as you can love financial planning software, we love voyant and have very little few issues with it. Right, I'm gonna go to call in terms of how do you across Metis Norway? How do you roll out the assumptions to be used? Because you've got multiple advisors? How do you how do you handle that?
Carl Widger:So everyone uses the same systems, they use valand. Same funds, we have preferred providers list. We have an investment committee that meets so they they decide what everybody gets. So no two clients are treated differently. But our financial plan, of course, will be will will be much different in terms of the assumptions that they use and vote. I'm not going to actually tell you what they are because they don't know. But I do know that we have very conservative growth rates for investment fund growth. And again, our financial planning team meet undecided that and there are very, you know, we were contemplating, you know, do we make different assumptions for inflation now or whatever and they came to the conclusion, but why would we do that? because we're, you know, long term financial planning, inflation will be around this amount over, you know, multi decade investing. So we're comfortable with that. But we do kind of bring it up and talk to clients. Look, we've used this assumption for inflation. However, it hasn't been out for the last couple of years. But but you know, over the long term, this is what it will be. And anyway, we have a conservative growth rate for our investments. So yeah, everybody gets the same experience the same service, obviously, different advisors bring different styles to it. But I think that's super, super important. If you have a lot of advisors because it would be it'd be a business nightmare. Never mind a compliance nightmare if you had everybody doing the wrong thing.
Nick Lincoln:Okay. And it was your finger raised, and I'm just having a fit. It was
Andy Hart:finger raised. Obviously, this is my specialist subject, I'm going to bore people with it. Yeah, whenever you're using a multi decade compounding machine, be very careful, you know, with great power and all that and all that jazz. So I would recommend using simplistically cautious numbers, the three most important numbers in any financial forecasting tool are is your inflation number, what returns you give to cash and our cash drags against inflation, and then what returns you give to investments and pensions, my investments and pensions outpace inflation, and very much outpaced, outpaced cash. That's the fundamental principles without telling you the specifics. Over to you, Alan.
Alan Smith:Not a lot else to add on on the projection numbers. To some degree that I mean, ours are set we mentioned before we retain the services of Albion, Tim Hale and his team, and they helped work capital market assumptions long term. And they've been the same for years. I think we've adjusted them down recently. But yeah, it's the relationship between inflation and capital markets over the longer term. And caution is important word. And in terms of the tool and or tools, people get quite kind of excited about this about voyance or cash cow or whatever. And I would just say, Ken doesn't really matter. Whatever tool works for you. I mean, we were, I've got the oldest, along with Lipitor is the most longest established firm on this podcast. And so when we first adopted cash flow modeling, I don't think voin existed in the UK a common when it came to the UK, but it only existed but we were we adopted what was then called Presswood. Truth created by the late Paul Etheridge, who was kind of considered to be the sort of grandfather of cashflow planning and financial planners, gender interviews. Now, well, I met him once, and then I did a joint presentation with him, which was, yeah, well, he kind of showed me, he showed me the ropes about how to present an IP conference. But that's a whole other story. But so we, we learned using that tool, and honestly, we didn't feel the need to change it dramatically is quite a comprehensive financial planning tool. More recently, I've seen new tools come come to come to the market. And a couple of our younger advisors were really keen on cash cow, because cash cow was considered to be a sort of a quick and dirty version, you could do a sort of high level financial plan, you were never going to, it wasn't granular you weren't going into detail. But if you're dealing with a younger client with some of our younger team, we're doing sort of peer group people and maybe the 30s or 40s, it was seen it was deemed sufficient. And so we've, we've been using that. And we've been using timeline as well, that was that was initially designed, there are people who are just going into retirement wanted a lot more granularity about the projections and using the sort of various tools that timeline offer. So we've got a project on at the moment to streamline because we really, we really need to just sort of get our selves behind one one tool because you know, the answer is right now we use three different modeling tools for different reasons for different clients. And I think we probably need to streamline it more than we are doing at the moment but overall, doesn't really matter. Is it something that you're familiar with you can deliver you can use competently gives you the results helps clients understand where they are trying to get to, I wouldn't get I wouldn't get too excited understand what I mean by and probably have got the vast majority of the advisor market from what I gather everyone I know, uses voice and must be a decent tool. We've never got around to using it.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, all right. I think we've given that sufficient depth. Again, 7575 minutes. Okay, we've got three more questions. These are all joke ones, so you don't really need to respond. The first one is from Bill one who's on Twitter as Bill anyone. So you can guess what he's like why do you spend so much time talking about client outcomes? Can you not focus on how we can make more money from our clients if you'd like I'd be happy to appear as a guest or send you my company brochures as a parody account, old old school kind of thing. The next one too though. These are genuine This is from Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen, who is on Twitter at Lewin and VO and a question for Andy please decorating my windows and I was just wondering if I should consider the John Lewis Roman blinds or the Dunelm cream shades, yours in eager anticipation. And finally, Karen Foley is on Twitter at Karen Foley. Could we have a track special on the IKEA wardrobe design system? Perhaps the guest panel of experts from the financial services industry sharing their experiences with this magical software and in Andy's world, the IKEA wardrobe design thing is is magic. And you referenced it about what three episodes ago and
Andy Hart:yeah, I did just to pick up on your first sort of joke What a big one is worth following on Twitter, you know, the jury's out of who is behind this account. Some very funny tweet. So so it's worth following in the Twitter handle was Bill at underscore n underscore e underscore w a n n for one. So yeah, definitely worth following that. The final point is like the IKEA gate, is you didn't even let me finish my story. The whole story was IKEA offer this service, not you go onto their website.
Carl Widger:Finish the German
Andy Hart:you do a zoom call with an Ikea wardrobe expert. They build it all in front of you and you don't have to do anything. It's all free. And then they email you the specific outcome of the call anyway, to advisors. I know I've already used it. So put that in your bloody vapes. Anyway, back to your boss.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, very good. Well, let's move on without any further ado, to what many people call culture corner. And we'll lead off Mr. Hart with your more perfect podcast.
Andy Hart:Yeah, I'll absolutely love this podcast. Probably my favorite podcast at the moment is made by the people that make radio lab if you know about Radiolab, it's called more perfect. And it's all about the Supreme Court in America and how influential this court is. They've got nine justices that have been our belief elected by all the presidents. And the things that they discuss are incredibly sort of nuanced things around sort of religion, artistic expression. It's an incredibly insightful and interesting podcast, if you're into sort of story narrative podcasts, I recommend you check it out. It's called more perfect. They had a load of episodes previously. And then they went sort of off grid, or they just closed the podcast down for about five or six years. But now they're back with a new series. And it's incredibly eye opening. So yeah, definitely check out the podcast more perfect.
Nick Lincoln:Great stuff. Voice the John McEnroe documentary.
Carl Widger:Yeah, absolutely brilliant. It's on Sky documentaries. So it's a two hour documentary on John McEnroe. And it was just look from a from a sporting point of view. I really, really enjoyed it. But more from the kind of personal story point of view and where he was he was I actually didn't realize he was as successful as he was in his earlier career. But then it was like, the guy who was clearly the best player in the world had everything and everything kind of went pear shaped because he possibly had his priorities a little bit mixed up. And that John McEnroe? No, he just came across as a fantastic guy, clearly complex individual, but he was kind of talking about learning from the mistakes that he made in his earlier life and where he is now and where he sees himself and it just fitted I thought just beautifully into our whole third act discussion is really really, really well made. Just yeah, I loved it. But I think not only sports, people should watch it. It's it's very, very interesting. And there's funny parts in it too. So yeah, World War Two World War Two watch.
Nick Lincoln:Thank you. Thank you for that. And if you haven't got Scarlet such as me, you can get it on YouTube and Sophie will be at the polar subscription or Apple TV it's like two pounds 50 and I will watch that because just the just the just the promo, which I did see on YouTube of him playing with a wooden racket it's like a different game, you know if he had if he had the gear, and of course he's left handed which makes him just one step closer to God. Thank you for that car, storyteller, and other sporting related documentary air.
Alan Smith:Just before we do Nick, do you want to as one sporting theme Do you want to talk about cricket so ashes sorry Alan, you're
Nick Lincoln:breaking up there for less So Alan. I do not know much about Australian cricket full stop that I have. I have a word for them. We don't
Alan Smith:say Don't say I won't say I won't write back on. I I read like I've read a lot of sporting books over the years and watch documentaries that intersection of sport and business and kind of what we can learn in business from sport and to some degree or vice versa. Coming slight I think this has been out for quite a while but I've only recently seen it. It's the film called Air Ayar which is actually now free and available if you've got Amazon Prime. And obviously it's the story about it's not so much about the kind of the the Michael Jordan story. He doesn't really appear in it at all. It's about the whole story behind Naik getting him signing the contract to get what is now obviously you know a multi million billion dollar business which is unlike Air Jordan shoes and all that sort of sporting range that went went along with it and of course, back in the days when when Jordan was just finally was first coming through the college basketball scene is going to sign pro contract the NBA the big thing was who was going to sign them up for your added ass we're by far no sorry Converse believe or not converse with the number one basketball shoe manufacturer at the time added asked for a close second and NyQuil nowhere they were running shoe the run basketball game at all. And it's a really compelling story. And without giving the game away, I think there are lessons to all of us if you're pitching for a new clients, and you're up against what would appear to be sort of bigger, better, more well resourced organizations, how this guy Sonny Vaccaro, who was the kind of the agent the guy working for Nike, how he pitched and what he actually did to obviously you know, it's a known thing that Jordan eventually signed up signed for night which was the you know, the sort of the, the kind of the Dark Horse if you like the less favorite in the race, and eventually signed up but what he actually did to pitch to them to speak to his parents is a really really interesting story well worth watching cold air the Michael Jordan film on Amazon Prime
Nick Lincoln:Okay, excellent. I think in the interest of time, we'll Oh, Andy Now you raise your finger brilliant crack on
Andy Hart:total random point. I'm keeping a list of words that Alan Smith pronounces at the most Scottish and the two I've got the front run as a recurring and the other one is food. Yeah, so we'll keep this tally go. Because believe it or not, it's Scotland recurring food proudly.
Alan Smith:Only half half Scottish half Welsh.
Andy Hart:Scottish. Welsh. Yeah, I'm a mongrel.
Carl Widger:We should probably we should probably just say today that the giddiness as as a result of the fact that the four of us met up last week. We just leave it at that but we'll leave it at that in jokes that our wrap up room
Nick Lincoln:it happens that wrap for this episode. Thank you dear Trappist. For your precious time on this show. Please rate us and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. But until the next time from the trap pack, it's an EOS and take care of their folks. Goodbye. Bye