TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

78 - Summer Reset: Drift or Design?

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 78

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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

- Topical Titbits
- Meat and Potatoes: Summer Reset: Drift or Design?
- TRAPist question(s) from no-one, but a mea culpa from Wodge!
- Culture Corner

Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks
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Unknown:

You Welcome to The Real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, T, please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the trap 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 pile of trap yes,

Nick Lincoln:

indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 78 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. My name is officially lick Lincoln, and joining me as ever in the digital studio of doom, are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Alan, the storyteller, Smith and the ultra heart and Carl the voice, della vocci wiger, now, gentlemen, we have a show pack full about absolutely nothing. So let's start unpacking it straight away with some my with some more high energy review reads all read from my good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain Hart, thank

Andy Hart:

you very much. Nicholas, uh, obviously got a bit of a cold, but that's fine, mate. We'll get through this. That's referring to you. Okay. So this review is from Jack Jones. IFA, six out of five stars. So he obviously listens. The review is, I can't begin to imagine how many people these four have helped indirectly through this, through the wisdom they share with their audience, genuine thanks to the trap pack. If you work in financial advice and haven't been listening to the trap podcast, you're missing out one of the best, if not the best, resource out there for advisors, part insight, part entertainment, always relatable, whether it's challenging industry norms, sharing practical tips or just making you laugh on your commute, this podcast delivers every time massive thanks to the team behind it. Team behind it. Alan Smith, Andrew Andy Hart, Carl wiger, Nick Lincoln, six out of five stars for me, this should qualify as structured. CPD. Back to you. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln:

wow. Jack Jones, thank you. Jack Jones was, was a 1970s trade union leader, Smith, and I remember the name Jack Jones. Thank you for your review. Dear TRAPPIST, please do keep me coming in. It gives us a real shot in the arm, and it helps boost our rankings and makes us go better on the algorithm on the interweb thingy, me jiggy. Okay, let's put a, let's put a timestamp on episode. Yes, I have got a head cold, by the way, so I if way, so I if my breathing gets onerous, it's just me having breathing problems because my cold. Nothing more nefarious than that. Let's put a timestamp on episode 78 How would you watch? How's your holiday Nick? How's my holiday Ultra? Yeah. Well, apart from the cold, very good. I mean, I'm in northeastern Spain, a little coastal village on the Costa Brava called Begu. The closest, closest city is Perpignan in France. If you've been to the cost most of us, I think, go to the Costa Blanca, Costa del Sol, right? Massive expanses of beaches, very wide, open, big skies. This is coves and pines and cypress trees, and it's Rocky, and it's, it's stunning. I would, I would very much suggest I wouldn't just come in here with a head cold. But you can't always plan these things, can you? So there we go. And you gotta like seafood, their lights on their meat. Here they love, they love their seafood. So if you're not a pescatarian type, maybe avoid

Carl Widger:

but thank you for asking. Sounds like heaven. Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

it is absolutely stunning. You saw the photograph I sent you. It is every, every corner you go around is a new bay with these, just these, these rocks and these trees and this turquoise sea, and it's crystal clear. I mean, you know, snorkeling heaven, if you like, that kind of thing as well. Would highly recommend and Stansted dear TRAPPIST, if you, if you say, wish, okay, let's put let's do this. Let's get this thing on the road. We've got quite a busy slate, even though we're in the dog days of summer. Dear TRAPPIST, we're putting it out for you as ever, the four of us are all pulling it out. What lead off?

Carl Widger:

Yeah, so it's interesting. I suppose there's going to be a couple of times where we're mentioning people that we've mentioned a good few times before. And this is Charlie belello. YouTube video from creative planning mentioned him a good few times before, really, really. If you haven't got on to Charlie belello And Peter maluke stuff, you really should. This is a brilliant video about its charts. You should have on your wall. I think, is kind of what he's what he's saying, but it's 50 minutes or thereabouts of busting some myths, and it's really, really good. And the out at the outset, I suppose the team is investing at all time highs. And if you've got new clients coming in, I It's probably. Probably easier if you've got existing clients talking about investing now, and the best time to invest is straight away. But if you have new clients and you're struggling maybe a little bit with that conversation, you know, should I not wait? It's, it's an all time market high. Well, this video is absolutely fantastic. He's loads of charts, loads of proof as to why you should just take the plunge and go and invest if you're a long term investor, of course, he's got some really cool stuff around you know that the famous adage, Sell in May and go away? And why that's an absolute load of BS. This year is a perfect example of that. It's up 16% since May so but also stuff like, you know, should I invest in meme coins? And he, he's, he has a chat about that. He mentions fart coin. And it's, it's quite it's just a really easy watch with some absolute gold nuggets that I think every single advisor could use with their clients. So cannot recommend this one enough. I really can't. It's absolutely brilliant. So do get on that, and hopefully it helps loads of different advisors in their quest to finish the year really strongly, which we'll be talking about later on.

Unknown:

Good segue, good segue. Thanks, Sandy.

Alan Smith:

He's great for the charts, isn't he a CEO of stuff he publishes. Yeah,

Carl Widger:

some of them are very American. So, like, I watched one recently when I didn't watch it all, because it was of little relevance. It was about the American housing crisis. So like, some are, some are really relevant. Some are kind of more generic and about kind of general investing rules. And look, they are, you know, they extoll the virtues of index investing and diversification. And if that's along the lines of your investment philosophy, well, then, you know, there's absolute gold

Alan Smith:

he works out there, creative wealth,

Andy Hart:

yeah, the relationship, but obviously, yeah, he wasn't. He was an independent. He was content, yeah, obviously, Peter just, you know, I'm assuming

Alan Smith:

he just saw his stuff jump on

Andy Hart:

board, and now they're far together. It makes a lot the

Carl Widger:

detail in his, in his in his videos, which he puts out kind of once a week, there's so much detail in there that he can't be doing anything else except, oh yeah, then sometimes as well. And obviously, we've, we've met your Peter Maloof loads of times as well. Top class guys.

Andy Hart:

Well, I mean, if it comes knocking here, you're going to be listening, aren't you? So, I mean, for Charlie, it's Charlie,

Nick Lincoln:

as Peter mentioned, I think this ratio is out of control. We need to get this ratio back.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, your work. Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, or maybe not. Okay, moving on. Story. Storyteller,

Alan Smith:

yeah, on, I guess a similar ish theme, the one podcast that I listen to, or in fact, watch on YouTube every week without fails. The only one that I never miss is the all in podcast. I think all of us, to varying degrees, watch it or listen to it or just favorite now, it says he doesn't like his politics anymore. We've got a full view of Nick's hotel room. Oh, God, you gotta make the bed. Geez.

Unknown:

Don't zoom in anyone. Yeah.

Alan Smith:

Anyway, people to

Carl Widger:

be pausing, and

Alan Smith:

if you're listening to this, you've got to just check out on YouTube. Nick can literally make it his hotel music anyway, so the last, oh no, the one that came out last week, the all in podcast, again, a theme that's come up quite regularly, because there's this ongoing desire, certainly in the UK. Not sure about Ireland, but I think so about getting sort of traditional retail investors, invested in what we'll generically call private market. So venture capital, private equity, private credit, all that sort of thing. There's, there seems to be this underlying push from, believe it or not, our own government, led by the LED, led by Rachel Reeves, to get sick, you know, large company pension schemes, effectively, corporate hand, yeah, into this market as a sort of and, you know, British private business, there's no question. And we all know there are some outstanding companies which are not listed, not public, publicly traded, and they're fantastic. And we know, you know, the big ones in the US, famously stripe, and there's a, there's a few huge ones that are, but that's, they're the exception, rather than real anyway, the all in podcast is, you know, there are four, effectively, venture capitalists, and they've all, over the years, been outrageously successful, kind of billionaire status. And they were unpacking the data on this venture, venture capital versus public market. Of course, they're talking about the s, p5, 100 and the NASDAQ and public markets in over recent years, 510, years recently, have significantly outperformed these really, really smart venture. Of course, there's always one or two venture funds that just do super well, but your chances of investing in them as a retail punter close to zero. They're for the insiders. They're for the sort of the big boys. Yeah, actual zero Nick Yeah. Not close to actual zero, yeah. And so the more mainstream funds that you might be able to get into based on, and their honest opinion was that the venture game is just different. Now you just get getting into these venture capital, startup funds that invest in, of course, they've had such a great run over the years in the US, with these tech startups that sort of grown huge, had a public listing. And the view was really from these experts, buy the s, p5, 100 and let it ride. You know, that's that was kind of anything else, the odds are so stacked against you. You might get lucky. Chances are you won't, and you will underperform. Not only that, you've got, obviously, a risk a risk premium. You've got the risk premium because in terms of the, you know, exposing your money, your investments to early stage, as yet unproven, but you've got the illiquidity sort of gap in that. He said it used to be your money was tied up for about seven years. You're now looking probably up to 15 years. You're allocating capital, and you can't you want to buy a house, you want to get your money out, you want to do something else, you pretty much can't, unless you sell it in the secondary market or something similar, what you'll pay up that 30% discount on the sort of the price they've got. So just interesting. I thought that the guru, some of the gurus, the experts, the guys who've made their trade in this sector, are saying, you know,

Andy Hart:

cautiously, thought they would have been very pro it. You know, they're marking their own homework effectively. So for that exactly, but

Alan Smith:

not, I mean interesting. Nick's friend David Sacks was, was, was defending it a bit and saying, No, I think we can, you know, that's the last five years, maybe the next five years. But of course he would. He runs a venture company, venture called craft. But by and large, the four of them were broadly negative on that as a as an investment option for most people. And the last thing I'll say is, as it relates to the UK, I've noticed none about you guys. Andy Nick, but since the proposed rules on pensions, inheritance tax being applied on pension funds and effectively becoming less tax effective, I get a lot of information being sent to me by VCT managers just say, look, ah, guys, we've now we retain this tax friendly thing. So you should forget about pensions. Now pile into venture venture capital, because it's got a tax break. We talked many times in the past on the show about the actual returns just a normal venture in like funds that UK retail investors can get access to and the returns have been less than spectacular, shall we see? But there is a tax break on it. What are your thoughts? Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

well, I think we I think, I think you guys know my thoughts on this. I've been advocating against it, and what Rachel Reeves is doing, and I will continue to do so I've got a very quick point. It's just a, you know, Jason spike in the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece this week about how the university these us again, of course, but the US and universities have these massive, multi billion endowment funds, and of course, chasing out performance, they've put a lot of their funds into these private equity things. Well now, of course, Trump has come along and said, Well, hold on, we're just we're cutting back on your funding. We're going to cut back. If you don't bring in freedom of speech across your campuses, there's going to be implications for you upon the money you get from the government. And this is the whole sort of pullback from this, from university education in the States, because a lot of we know, hundreds of 1000s of American graduates are saddled with enormous debts from universities, degrees where they just can't find any work with their flipping burgers or Wendy's or what have you, or in and out, or whatever it is, and there's a shake up happening. Of course, these universities now are having to clamp down. They're trying to get back into their funds, to get the money out, to keep going, to pay the principals, to pay all the administrators, because that's where the money goes these days. And their funds are locked up in these private equity ventures, and they're finding it really difficult to get liquidity. And this is the big thing. I just think the whole thing is going to be a complete show. Excuse my language, and I hope we pull away from it. I hope there's a change of government before this gets too entrenched. Yeah,

Alan Smith:

yeah. Well, Said,

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, right, Lincoln, I'll be quick on this one, because Ultra thinks this is very boring, and maybe it is. I and maybe it is. I mentioned the FCS, FCA levy a few episodes ago, how mine had gone up, but it still wasn't where it was a couple of years ago. So I put a I put a survey link out to the IFA forum. I mentioned the IFA forum, china.cc/if, a forum got a good response, very detailed response. 12. 12. I'm taking that as a representative example of the UK financial services. Eight out of 11 respondents indicated their total levy has increased since the previous one. However, when compared to two years ago, the levy is generally still down on where it was. So all in all, good news. I won't belabor the point. I just had felt I had to address it as I did bring it up beforehand. And some people, can we blacklist

Andy Hart:

those 12 people for, can we blacklist those 12 people for trap life, 2026, they've shown their colors.

Nick Lincoln:

They are, they are most of our audience.

Alan Smith:

Why would you blacklist them? They were the ones who submitted. They participated. But it said, I mean, I've just, by the way, I've seen surveys go up before, with not many more people. You know, you you know, breaking news, blah, blah, blah. And you look at the sort of small print, this was a survey. Of 15 advisors, or something, small songs,

Nick Lincoln:

entirely self serving as well. And it wasn't particularly, I don't, I don't mind that people didn't, um, didn't bother responding. Okay?

Alan Smith:

I think, I think Andy was right, his judgment. Thank you. Thank you

Nick Lincoln:

very much. Right? I'm gonna trying to edit that bit out

Andy Hart:

unedited. We've only done three Okay, since we started right? And we don't, we don't talk about, you're talking

Nick Lincoln:

about nitrogen. Watch, apparently.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, so nitrogen, uh, formerly risk allies, uh, who's brilliant conference I went to a few years back in Boston, they've introduced an integrated AI note taker. Now I'm not putting this on our docket to talk about this particular piece of tech. What I'm the reason I bring it up is this is, for me, the first sign of real integration. And surely be to God, this is, this is exactly what's coming down the road. So I made the point before that. You know, having dozens of pieces of tech, different pieces of AI, you know, trying to feed into a firm is probably going to cause problems down the line. And I would love to know, I'd love to be hearing from the platform providers, from the CRM providers, as to what plans they have, because I think that might help all of us advisors in terms of how we're looking to structure our technology into the future, because platform providers, CRM providers, who are not looking at this, they will die for absolute sure. This is, this is an obvious, you know, development in the world of financial advisory technology. You know, people used to talk about your tech stack. Well, who's going to be the first to come with their tech stack all in one? And you'd pay a lot of money for that, you really would. So I think it's a huge, huge, huge opportunity. And I know there's, there's the likes of second as the likes of timeline in the UK, you know, people who are really fundamental, who are at the cutting edge of technology, I'd love to hear about their plans, and I'd love them to make them public, you know, and say, This is what we're working on. And that might, that might help you in terms of where you kind of work towards yourself, because, I don't know, trying to, I know Alan was an early adopter in a lot of these things, and I was very much sitting on the fence waiting for it to, kind of, you know, to play out. And I probably still am, to a large extent, albeit you can't wait around forever. So that's why I'd like to hear, I suppose, from from the CRM providers in Ireland, but also in the UK, what's coming, and where do they see it? You know, can you have a one stop shop for a tech stack for a financial advisory firm? Wouldn't that be just wonderful? Is it? Is it coming? Surely, it is. Surely there's a huge opportunity.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, there's many points to unpack there. Carl, I think every company is keeping a close eye on AI, what it will replace. I think Eric Schmidt, the ex CEO of Google, he said, in the next year, I think pretty much all the programmers and developers inside Google will be replaced by AI, but again, so all the enormous companies got an eye on it, but specifically to our space. Yeah, all of them are thinking about it, but things are moving so quickly now that they're not quite sure exactly what to do. And this, we want one firm to we want one company to do everything, one tech stack, full integration. That's always been the case. You know, I've been in the business 20 years, and it's always going to be best of breed. I don't think there's any one company does it all very well. There's not going to be the platform, the CRM, the AI, the cash flow. I know some companies are trying to do it, but I've always been the player of best of breed. You know, I'm going to use my cash flow system with that, my platform of that. I'm going. To use my calendar booking system of that, I'm going to use my AI note taker of that. I'm going to do a store my storage management system is that. So there will be that's

Carl Widger:

not, that's that's not scalable. Andy,

Andy Hart:

unfortunately, it's just not scalable. State of play. It's the state of play. It

Carl Widger:

is a state of play. And I think that's the up there in lies the opportunity. Like, who's gonna like, surely, a platform provider has enough is tech savvy enough to be able to

Nick Lincoln:

well, it's almost saying that the one man band will have better tech going for because they can pick and choose and doesn't want to be whereas the bigger firms are going to settle for something not, not suboptimal,

Carl Widger:

suboptimal. Yeah, or maybe, maybe you could make a solo advisory firm practice really, really profitable, if you know you could get that holy grail. And I know I'm, I'm asking for the impossible here, but, but, but maybe, you know, maybe you only have two different, three different pieces of software that you use in your business. And surely that's coming. Surely we can move towards there. Surely you can find a platform that you know talks to voyant, or cash, Calc, or any of these, you know,

Andy Hart:

the talking will happen, the APIs and integration will happen, but it won't be the platform doing CRMs, and it won't be the CRM doing platforms, and it won't be aI doing platform, etc, etc. There'll be a bit of a mix and a bit of a hybrid. But the current where we are with tech is, I think that the most interesting I've ever found it just before there's been minimal increments of development, whereas now the AI just, yeah, blown up everything. It's, I

Carl Widger:

think that's it. That's a very that's a very well. My point that, you know it, we've really kind of been as you were for the last decade, and now there's an explosion. So what happens? What's the if the explosion is like 16 different software pieces that you have to kind of piece together that puzzle and decide yourself, I'm not sure it's going to help us, and it's certainly not scalable. And I think the solo advisory practices would probably be better off than, you know, bigger firms trying to piece all this jigsaw together.

Andy Hart:

That's always been the case. You know, the leaner you are, the quicker you can make decisions, the less committees you need to have. I mean, it's insane that a friend of mine works at a large platform, and she told me the other day that, I mean working 18 months on this, I think doing, taking tax free cash from a pension directly into an ISA and working on this project for 18 months. You know, it's just like, think of the amount of brain power that's gone into this project that loads of other platforms are already doing. So large companies always just gonna be, yeah, you know, at the back of the pack. But Alan, over to you, my friend. You are the AI tech guru in

Alan Smith:

the kingdom of the blind. The one is King Carl. Just to clarify, what was it the nitrogen are doing. The built in an AI. So risk guys are

Carl Widger:

there, I suppose, like a

Nick Lincoln:

risk profiling

Carl Widger:

tool, yeah. But it's a really, really cool one. And if you, if you, if you go with the the idea here that, well, this is just a compliance thing that you have to do, yeah, well, the Riskalyze one is the best I've seen. I actually asked them, would they, could they bring it to Ireland? And they couldn't, unfortunately, for compliance reasons, etc. I guess they could have, but it would have taken a lot of time and effort of money, and they didn't want to, because the market's too small. But so So risk allies are trying to kind of haven't heard this one. They'll also, they'll also see that I was deeply uncomfortable with the content of some of today's podcast owing to the Irish versus UK cultural differences. I

Nick Lincoln:

i on that on that note, how did Ireland lose the third test when it's pissing down with rain?

Carl Widger:

What the Irish and British lines? Is

Nick Lincoln:

it? I think some people are quite keen to point out it was an Irish team and they subsequently lost in the pissing down rain. How

Carl Widger:

look we are very, very, very fond of Joe Schmidt. He turned Irish rugby around. We had to give Joe something. Oh, I think it was nice. I think it was nice my old pal Joe. Joe was very, very, very good to me. But meta started

Andy Hart:

up. Did anyone catch the Australia South Africa game? What happened? Australia were 22 nil up and Norby, yes. 22 usually 3822 at the end. Yes.

Carl Widger:

Is not happy. I would that that South Africa camp is not a pleasant place to be at the moment. But

Andy Hart:

anyway, I'll be, uh, heading to South Africa in two weeks time. So, yeah, interesting to see what they've got to say about it.

Nick Lincoln:

Excellent. Interviews lined up with the South African rugby team. Well done, ultra you've surpassed yourself. Storytelling.

Alan Smith:

It's better to cut, yeah, but I'm still, still my my shout, because just clarify, clarifying this Nike, so now they've got this, like, basically, a fancy risk profiler that does. AI notes, is that what you're saying, is that the

Carl Widger:

pretty much, right? Okay, so how do you develop out that plot, you know, that platform to do way more stuff. So this is,

Alan Smith:

yeah, so try, my understanding of this is trying to understand which all the various tech providers in the UK and people that I know and have spoken to, and they've all got their so called roadmap, this is what we're going to be doing. And I was trying to, like, piece that together and work out, if you go into if, sort of the this magical thing existed, Carl that we're looking for, you want to find out early who's likely to do this. There's no guarantee they will execute successfully on it, but you have to understand what people's ambitions are. And I'm not aware of any company who what, who's trying to do that exactly that some are definitely broadening their range of services and options, but I don't think everyone. There are a lot of moving parts in a financial planning company, a lot of different types of technology. You've got the stuff we use for our normal day to day business, and you've got other stuff that any company would use, like, as you say, Andy, like booking meetings or and is now note taking, uh, AI enabled, note taking, a whole bunch of other things. So the crew, the crucial aspect here is, and if, if we're focusing on ai, ai is all about data, isn't it? It's just about having information, having access to all your historical exchanges, notes, meeting notes, phone calls, every the most, the more you've got, the more beneficial it's likely to be. So you need what we're calling our kind of North Star, central source of truth, whatever, where is all the data sitting? And for us, anyway, it is our CRM system. The CRM systems have got they've got first mover advantage, because that's historically where data is kept feedback I've had from some of these companies is that ifas historically haven't been great at keeping, you know, high quality data, there are, there are lots of fields missing. There is information missing. Says a bit. A big part of this is, first of all, get out your data, try to try to fill in, like, the bits which are missing, because it'd be more beneficial. And certainly as of now, everything that you do every day, every email exchange, every meeting, every conversation, should be stored somewhere, because that will just become so beneficial to you as you go go forward. But having been down this road, having tested God knows how many of these different systems. I think I mentioned this before. I think I did anyway, on a previous podcast, we've effectively narrowed it down to three tech that's our tech stack, our sort of core tech stack, excluding Microsoft, or any kind of more generic things, our financial planning tech stack, uh, naming names for us, it's intelligence office, which we've been using for years. Far from perfect, but it's probably the best Microsoft runs most businesses these days, and that's becoming more the central place. Yeah, micro. But you what you want to have, you can have sort of. I mean, we all. We use Microsoft, like for Outlook and email and excel and stuff like that, many different elements to it. Now you're gonna, you're gonna have to configure it yourself, which, and this is the other thing, and we all know, or certainly, Andy Nick, and I know there's a few financial planning companies have kind of tried to reinvent themselves, or in the absence of having really good tech, they've tried to build it themselves to varying degrees of success. I've taken the decision, I'm not going down that route. I'm not going to try to be a tech developer, company, hire engineers and build all that because you need that. I'm familiar with Curo as one of the back office systems, CRM systems, which is built on Microsoft Dynamics, or at least it was last time I looked, and they were always making the play that, you know, we can leverage Microsoft, multi billion dollar research budget, and we just sit on that. But the feedback I've heard from others say, yeah, it's all right. It's not, it's not kind of absolutely game changing. But nevertheless, anyway, so we use IO as our central source of truth. We've been using it for years, so got a lot of data in there, and we're able to now to sort of do a back search for things, prepping for and what would be great talk about time save you. Think of all the things you do in the normal course of events. You prepare for a meeting. Most of us have regular meetings almost every day, certainly every week, with existing clients. And you've got and sometimes we've known them for 10 or 15 years, and there's a lot of exchanges have happened in that in that time. And so you've got to prepare for your meeting and try to remember the last thing, what you said at the last meeting. So what we can get now is we can just a meeting prep note which which summarizes all the key points, the very specific things you talked about the last meeting, what was agreed, and any other kind of lifestyle type events, things which may have happened, and, you know, dates and things they might have mentioned they were, they were going in a big holiday and and it sort of comes up, rather than you said that, that will just save a bit of time every time you go into a meeting. And then going forward, you're building on that data, so we use that. It'll make you a better advisor as well. Yeah, by the way, I was thinking there's going to be, there's, there's a window of opportunity in there, maybe for a year or two years. Is, well, your clients think you're a freaking genius. You know everything about, you know, their inside leg measurement, their daughter's birthday and her boyfriend's name and all, and then eventually they're gonna go, Ah, this is AI, isn't it?

Carl Widger:

Yeah, you didn't really give a shit, yeah,

Alan Smith:

exactly. Your little machine popped up and told you all this stuff, yeah. Anyway, so we use AI, we use Saturn, and we're using timeline and and they all kind of integrate, I don't my belief from what I've said, and they'll, they'll tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that Saturn or timeline have ambition to become a fully fledged CRM system with all your back, back data, that's a very that's a complex offering. Yeah, yeah, it's not the most profitable. If I was, if you're starting a tech business, you might not be creating one of those. But the key thing is, it all integrates and speaks to each other. So we've gone from being me leading from the front as always, and when the sort of Magpie, shiny new object, oh, there's a new one. There's a new one. There's this. Try this, I mean, but it's fine, because we've gone through that and now we said, right of all these various tools and things that we've tried, these probably represent best of breed right now. They they, by and large, speak to each other. One feeds into the other. It's not perfect, but data flow back and forward. So we've got a fairly streamlined tech operation using, let's say, three of the core things, plus Microsoft. And it's a work in progress, and it's it's building, but I agree with you, if I'm projecting forward a year from now, and honestly, we really are seeing significant material gains. And the main thing is productivity and time and and it's a bit, it's a it's a virtuous cycle, because, you know, there's no question that some of our team, and the support team, para planner associates, etc, they've got an extra hour or two hours a day at the moment. And obviously I'm saying, What are you doing with that time? And what it means is, we've got more capacity. Number one, we can and people are. People have always been in financial services and my in my business as well. They always stretch. They're always so busy, so busy. They're always taking on too much. Now people are just a little bit less busy. They're not quite, as you know, running around like headless chickens, which is great. And so they're able to be a bit more creative. They're able to think a bit more about the next client meeting. But more importantly, and there's some people in my team, shout out to Ashley, who's taking the time to then build another level. They're going into some of that Microsoft copilot, which is an existing, you know, Microsoft AI tool, and saying, right, what can it what can it do?

Unknown:

Grab yourself a drink. A very long drink. It's story time with Helen Smith,

Alan Smith:

Ah, thank you. Haven't heard that for a little while. It's good, right? Nick your point. Yeah, I'm done.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, are you done? Are you done?

Alan Smith:

Smith, apparently I was just saying time creates more time, and then you can decide how you wish to deploy that time. And in our case, we're building other internal tech tools using existing technology like Microsoft. So fast forward a year from now, we ought to be absolutely super efficient and lean and flying. So it is a good thing to do. Nick, okay, Matt,

Nick Lincoln:

just a quick one, really. So you mentioned three bits of financial services related tech and you said IO and Saturn and timeline, but surely your platform is the am I being some is actually semantic, but the platform is a fundamental part of the tech stack, and that's right, sorry,

Andy Hart:

80% of the tech stack. Nick, yeah, yeah, but

Alan Smith:

yeah, fair enough it's but it's as Andy calls, it's plumbing, isn't it? The platform just provides custody, trading admin. It's not, it's not adding, you're never going to store you've got client data into, as it relates to their, you know, investment funds, but you haven't got a lot else on it. You haven't got the sort of, well,

Nick Lincoln:

I use, I use my platform as my as my back office system, in terms of just client, National Insurance numbers, address

Andy Hart:

got a lot of

Nick Lincoln:

statistical history. I mean, you could say IO is plumbing really. I mean, that's just a blood it is. It's all this thing of ours, you know, it just

Alan Smith:

happened to be, but there's varying degrees of plumbing. There's ones which are just, you know, pure data. I think things like Saturn, is a bit more, you know, proactive plumbing, in terms of it enables you to deliver a better service, be more efficient. But the other stuff, it is kind of largely commoditized. We should have another chat sometime in the future about platforms, because that's quite an evolving space, isn't it. And we've gone through, and we're going through, you know, a few issues uh, on platforms. But you guys have been loving transact for years, and does what it says on the tin, doesn't it just delivers

Nick Lincoln:

it gives you a detail,

Andy Hart:

stay in the obvious. We're all talking about tech, which is out there. It ultimately comes down to the individual and the company to use it properly. You know? Just because I've signed up to voyant, it doesn't mean I'm producing great financial plans and utilizing the tech correctly. Just because I've signed up to search, just because I'm using you know you gotta, you gotta learn your tech people. People have an iPhone, they don't even know how to freaking send an audio note or send a picture or do anything useful on it. So whatever tech you decide to use, just get really good at using it. You'll be ahead of the pack just being able to use your tech really well. Some people have all the latest tech. They can't use it for fucking love nor money. It's completely pointless.

Alan Smith:

No, that's that. The amount of people I've met before who've said, you know, name your software provider or x is absolutely shit said, you know, do you know how to use it. You know how much time you spent learning? Yeah, not much. And so people are very quick to blame the technologies too expensive. And what they do is then they dump it, dump it, and then they go and get a new one. Because, as I've always said, I have been to countless tech presentations about all the amazing things it can do, and rarely has ever delivered on what I just saw as a presentation, and it because they say, Ah, yes, that's that's coming, that's on the road map, that'll be q1 next year, and blah, blah. And then, yeah, it kind of never is. So it's very tempting to look at your incumbent, your existing tech stack, and say it's rubbish because I haven't learned how to use it, and then go to a presentation of someone else who's saying our new shiny thing is even better?

Andy Hart:

Yeah, advisors are lazy. They're constantly looking for shortcuts. But

Nick Lincoln:

unfortunately, let's move on down the slate and sort of segue in naturally, because when you come to sell your business, you need to have data that is clean and valid and easy for the purchaser to go through with as you as you negotiate your exit price. One of the people who's very good at that is a close personal friend of the of the show, of course, Rob Stephenson, I understand Smith. He's got a new book.

Alan Smith:

He has, Rob has is, it's only been 10 years in the making, because I remember speaking to him a decade ago, and he actually says this in the book. He started, everyone talks about writing a book. So he started writing. He sat down, he said, he explains it sort of very eloquently. The opening of the book, he was on holiday in Spain or somewhere, SATs down and writes the sort of first few lines and said, Oh, this book will be finished in no time at all. 10 years later, he has finished it. So Rob just created or published a book. It's called the exit playbook. There is, I think be fair to say that every business owner exits their business at some point, one way or another, whether they sell it, whether they retire, whether they give it away, you will exit your business. Rob, to my mind, is the number one go to expert as it relates to financial services, financial planning. And he talks much more about just, you know, growth and succession. You don't have to this is not necessarily about a big, massive exit and sell, but every every business should focus on growth, and every business needs to have some sort of succession plan at least outlined. So Rob has put all his best ideas of his entire career into a books called the exit playbook. It's quite interesting. You'll like this Carl because it's he published. It is that it's an e book, and he's published it online, and it's 100 pounds to buy. And I thought, and you can get a you could get a discount. And I thought, he's my mate, yeah, I could probably get the discount code or something. But I thought, no, a workman is worthy of his hire. He should be paid, you know, despite the fact he's a close personal friend of mine and the show, you should pay full ticket, full price for everything, and buy it and support people as well. Anyway, I bought it because it reminded me Carl, when Andy published his book.

Andy Hart:

I have bought Rob's book. I bought it with the with the 20 quid discounts I paid 80 quid yet support other advisors when they're launching new content ideas. It's 100 paid PDF. I'm sure it'd be great. I haven't read it yet. It's not hugely something that I'm going to be doing imminently, let's say, but I'm obviously interested in

Carl Widger:

it. Back you, though. Andy,

Alan Smith:

yeah, let's talk about your book.

Carl Widger:

Your but your first book was, well, it was, it was, it was, yeah, it was a good effort.

Andy Hart:

In fairness, here, I know how long it takes.

Carl Widger:

Did you? Did you say you're gonna write another book? Yeah. So the first

Andy Hart:

book I wrote was called The Five Minute money message. It was more like a notebook. Was my new book, which is there was a week missing in August. Yeah,

Carl Widger:

have August.

Alan Smith:

To be fair, he shipped it. You mean, you bought it because we support

Carl Widger:

I was the first one to buy it. I was the first, and

Alan Smith:

I clicked through and I flicked through and I did not buy it came apart on my hands. You were

Andy Hart:

trying to get part of the cut part again. Carl, so you're on the front foot. Now, that's the problem.

Alan Smith:

But anyway. But anyway, anyway, right. Come on, stick to it exactly. So Rob has written this book. I have read it. I read it in pretty much one sitting, because. I like all that stuff. I need to understand how the whole game works. And it's brilliant. And anyone who's got ownership or plans to run a business, you should absolutely buy it. And not only that, it's it. It points you to his website, where there are countless tools, templates, downloads, things that you can use. Rob's effectively doing proper, full fat, comprehensive financial planning to financial planners, you know, begin with the end in mind. And this is a strategy. This is how you do it. So,

Carl Widger:

overall, good guy, too. So, yeah, good, good

Alan Smith:

guy. And great content, and a great

Nick Lincoln:

book. That's it. He's okay. He's okay. Rob, great stuff. Okay, there's no link to that, by the way. Smithy in the show notes, yeah, have you got one to put in?

Alan Smith:

Yeah, I'll put I'll pop it in.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, thanks. Okay. Next thing, can't even

Andy Hart:

copy and paste that guy,

Carl Widger:

our tech guru, sorry, Nick Go ahead. Stop

Alan Smith:

interrupting Nicholas balcony

Nick Lincoln:

out there. It's about an 80 foot drop into the scene. I'm just constantly and I'm just contemplating running over and screaming, hallelujah, right? A close personal friend of the show, Phil Bray, has come up with their new concepts. Well, I think it's new. There may be something I thought already, but I don't know, and I just thought I'd mention it so we all know. Most of us charge on a per diem basis, percentage of assets under management. And perhaps sometimes we come up against clients where there just isn't significant, investable assets to to levy a fee that commensurate for your time and the value that you add, and so you politely disengage from the referrals. And that's that's not ideal, because maybe, you know, we are outgoing people. We want to help people even, even if they're not right for our business models, we still, we would like people to would like people to find homes. So Phil Bray has set up this directory of people that work for clients with smaller assets under management. So these may be IFA firms that have a fixed retainer model, who are just more comfortable working with lower assets under management, who maybe charge more for the financial plan and aren't so bothered about getting the client on board after that. And I just think it's an excellent resource. If you go on there, you can register with this if you're one of those kind of advisors, especially if you're sort of a lean, mean, hungry startup, and you just want to get in front of clients, and you want to talk about financial planning, and you're going to charge for the plan, as opposed to charging so much on the invested assets, register yourself with Phil Bray. It's a publicly available directory that either the public can find and or you as the advisor. If you've got a referral that's not the right fit for you, you can just point you can go through this list and find someone in that referrals geographical area, or maybe a firm that you know and trust, and just say you should try these people out here. They will work with you. I'm sorry I can't for various reasons, but these people might be right. So this is a growing list as a link to it in the so called show notes. And I think so a really good move by by one of the one of the good guys in this thing of ours. So well done to Phil Bray of the yard stick.

Carl Widger:

Great idea.

Andy Hart:

He does do a good weekly newsletter. So go to the yardstick agency website and subscribe to Phil's weekly newsletter. I think it comes out on Friday. Some good marketing tips on

Alan Smith:

there as well. So I think I I normally give, give them to Andy, the ones that don't fit us, and then he rejects them. Sometimes we get then give them to Nick. I

Nick Lincoln:

still never get anything from Andy, so I'm just not feeling through to the bottom of the pile. That sounds

Alan Smith:

wrong. It is. I think it's a great idea. Remember, we spoke about this in the past. There was quite publicly, I think it was a city wide article A little while ago saying that advisors, as a result of, you know, costs going up and everything else, some advisors were clearing out existing clients. So it's no longer affordable for us. We can't service you anymore. And there's certainly, and that number, in terms of, let's say, assets under management or revenue, is seems to be getting increasingly higher. And the sum at half a million, for example. And you know, you think about the number of people in the UK or Ireland who've literally got 500,000 pounds of investable yeah, there's, there's plenty of them, but there's not, there's not that many, particularly in the we have, we've had a couple of inquiries recently, and they're classic Henry's, you know, high income, someone earning 300 grand a year or something, but not, not a great deal of investable assets. We've got a minimum fee level. We don't have a minimum assets, but we've got a minimum fee. And I just honestly, just would not be, we couldn't add significant value net of the fee that they would we would have to be charging them. So there, I think, let's say, is the list, Nick, I haven't seen it yet. Is the list like publicly available in as much as you can see the people who have subscribed? Yes, yes.

Andy Hart:

Well, in ideal world, you just direct the client to it, and they would click on it and say, Scotland, remote, right? Fee charging,

Nick Lincoln:

and then out in time, if it gets traction. There's about 25 firms on there already. If it gets, you know, a few more, I'm sure, right? So Philly loves this kind of stuff. He'll do

Alan Smith:

it. No, I think what's important to be able to do is the sort of people that the I'm just I've got recency buyers, because it's happened about three times. The last 10 days. What they want is a, they want a financial plan bill, kind of almost as a one off type thing, which we don't do. So I, in other words, I'd need to, I wouldn't want to just send someone off to this list, and any they go, Oh, we don't do that. So it'd be interesting to go the next level of what services these other companies who are on the list provide? Do you offer comprehensive financial planning? Will you build a cash flow? Can you do a transaction or a one off thing? Can you do, you know, to understand the nuances, because you don't want to just send people in a world Goose Chase and find out that the the other people don't do what it is they're they're looking for anyway. That's my only feedback on that. But it's a great idea, and it's, it's a good list.

Nick Lincoln:

Good stuff. Good stuff. Uh, Ultra, ah, kelsa priest, another massive wealth management firm, throws in the towel.

Andy Hart:

Yes. So we did speak about this. We spoke about this a couple of months ago when Aberdeen were looking to sell their financial planning on. They've now successfully sold it. They've sold it to ask Scott Lloyd, who are a large, sort of consolidator, acquirer. According to the numbers, it seems like a good deal for Ascot Lloyd. It doesn't sound much they've bought it for, but it's going to add 6300 clients and 3.6 billion of assets under management. And a quick run of that through a calculator says that that's around 571,000 per average client, which I'm going to call as not correct on those numbers, but that's what's been published. So yeah, Aberdeen, I think it's a great acquisition for ask Scott Lloyd, Aberdeen have done the heavy lifting? Aberdeen have got the funding. They've bought firms. They've done a roll up, they've got it to a place they've then started to lose money. So they've shifted a liability Ascot would have probably picked up for a decent clip, and then hopefully now they're going to fix it, turn it around, make it profitable. But yeah, someone else has gone out and done all the buying, selling contracts and the mess, and then they've sort of potentially bought a finished article. But it's never that easy, is it? There's always a lot of mess underneath the floorboards and lots of other stuff going on. So that's that article. And following on the same publication, professional advisor have done another article set saying it's entitled, was Aberdeen financial planning arm ever going to work? I mean, lots of larger insurance companies have tried its own. Have tried this over the years. We've all seen this historically, they don't work, but sometimes, every so often, they can work. So, yeah, interesting that Ascot Lloyd bought them. It's been a 10 year waste of time. They originally launched. The company. Name was 1825 which was the founding year of standard life. I think you were working there at that time. Alan, yeah, that's the full story of the Aberdeen financial planning. On any points,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, any shares in Standard Life, slash Aberdeen, or whatever they're

Alan Smith:

called? Yeah, I don't anymore. It's been a disaster from start to finish. They've never made a profit. They've lost money every year. They've sunk unlimited millions of shareholder money into something which was destined to fail from the beginning in my in my opinion, it's Christ I mean, look, I've been on both sides of that those type of organizations and the culture and everything about it, if you are as they are, FTSE listed business, it's just very, very difficult to get in the mindset of proper financial planning. I mean, there's stories I could tell you that I wouldn't say publicly, I won't, but it was just, yeah, Nick, now I'll tell you offline. I think I've told a few. It's just it was always just destined to be challenged. It's just so difficult culturally, you know financially, the financial planning is such a personal business. It's not like institutional asset management is highly impersonal. It doesn't bloody matter. You can do you can show me never the bloody Twain, and they will. And it's just and what happens is what happened to them every time, as you say, Andy, they did a roll up and they bought about and actually they started off in terms of the firms they were buying, started off pretty well. They were paying kind of beneath market averages, but there was the some firms wanted to align themselves, because they've been using as well standard life at the time, they had relationships with them, so they bought who's the bar? I can't remember, but a bunch of like, good on average, good, good firms. But then they impose their culture into these good firms, and all the best people left, because that's what happens. It's one of the few industries around the world where the assets can just walk out the door. You know, if you've got a contract, after six months, the assets and the clients walk out the door. So it was always going to be a challenge, and it's ended where we all knew would end, back in the arms of a, you know, financial advice business in the form of Ascot Lloyd. So there we go.

Nick Lincoln:

There we go again, case or and this story will come about again in about five years time, but the different brands selling another failed financial planning on, okay, watch creona. Yes, it's ongoing and very worthy story, yeah.

Carl Widger:

So look, just, I'm going to mention we're doing the 5k fun, run again in Limerick, in aid of cleaners foundation. So I just said, I Well, if anybody wants to travel from the UK, or any of the Irish listeners, you want to come to Limerick, you can, you can register. But look, that's not what, not why I decided to add it to the docket today. It's just in terms of, here's an idea that we had, and here's how any advisory firm could do this to kind of build your profile. So last year, my colleague Ronan quely, mentioned to me we should do a 5k Fun Run. Because they do lots of them in Dublin. They have one big one in Galway, one big one in Cork, and there's nothing in Limerick. We should do it. So in fairness to Ronan, he took this, he ran with it, and last year we did it for cleaners foundation. So we covered all the costs. Cleaners foundation got all of the money that was that was raised, and we got just short of 100 people at it. But one of the runners last year was a guy called Steven too from a solicitor firm called MHP sellers, and I was having a coffee afterwards, Steven, he said we wouldn't mind getting involved in that with you and maybe making this much bigger. So we've kind of come together. So it's the metas Ireland, MHP sellers, fun, run around Limerick. We've got a nice bit of media coverage on it. The Limerick Chamber of Commerce have got behind it. We're hoping to get kind of 200 people at it, create a bit of a buzz. We're selling it as kind of a business to business thing, a networking thing, a connections thing. We're going to cover all the costs, and then it's only 25 quid to register, so that all of the money then goes to cleaners. But obviously we're raising, yeah, we're raising awareness for cleaners as well and but we're going to raise awareness for our own farm, and MHP sellers will raise awareness for their farm. This does not cost a fortune. There's obviously Ronan will tell you, an awful lot of organizing goes on behind the scenes, but it's beginning to take off. It's beginning to get a good bit of traction. Any firm can do this. And it's, it's your first port of call. Here is, how can I give back? What can we do to help, help a really good cause? And then you leverage off that yourself. So look, it's, it's good business, but at the at the core, the reason why is, is a really, really, really good cause.

Andy Hart:

Lovely Ultra. That's that's superb call. I just want to know what time you're going to do your 5k mate, gonna do a public stamp for your 5k time.

Carl Widger:

So on my 50th birthday, I did 26 minutes and 17 seconds. If I run this one in less than 35 minutes, I'll be doing very, very, very, very well. That's

Alan Smith:

what we call progress.

Carl Widger:

I was, I was not going to do it because my back is killing me, as you boys know. And I was on the I was on the radio, and the guy who was interviewing me said, and, and Steven was with me as well. He said, I'm clearly guys, you're going to do the run. And instead of going, No, I'm not going to do the run because I was embarrassed. I went, Yeah, yeah. So now I've told everyone on live radio that I'm doing it. So yes, I have to do it. It's on September 11, so I have loads of time to lose that too. So that's really good call. Well done. Yeah, any firm? Okay, do this. Just think outside the box and put yourself out there

Nick Lincoln:

somewhere. 54 minutes in, we've got two more items on the slate. They both storyteller, I think,

Alan Smith:

yeah, very, very briefly, I said, I mentioned on the last episode, I think young guy called Max Sullivan, who had, he was, he was, he was working for a large for a firm that had been part of a consolidator that bought up loads of other firms, and he'd left to break away, joined valid path, set up his own firm, and was happy. And he was just saying that trap had been a big influence. So I mentioned it, gave him the shout out. Followed out, he subsequently sent me a message after that episode, after our last episode, went out saying hi again. Alan, thought you'd just like to know that several advisors have reached out to me that are in similar positions and want to break away as ifas, this podcast is a powerful thing. I thought I'd just give that a shout out. I think that is fantastic. We tell the story of of Max, who just could no longer be in an organization, who put the private equity owners first and the clients last, and decided to do his own thing, gone down that path, and then we mentioned it. It's like again, a virtuous cycle, because then bunch of. Other advisors feeling exactly the same. Check him out online and LinkedIn or whatever. Get in touch and say, How did you do it? And he's he's helping them and coaching them through and so I do think we are witnessing in real time, sort of shifting sands in our profession. There is this huge, kind of just big roll up, scale up, private equity, back to consolidation. And it kind of relates back to the previous story about 1825, and Aberdeen and everything else, is that a lot of people just don't want to work in those organizations. They don't, and now, if there are, if there are exit ramps, and there's pathways to go and do your own thing, where you are in control of your own destiny, yes, it's higher risk, and it's, maybe it's a bit more difficult, certainly in the early years, but people like Max have proven it can be done. And I'm sure if anyone else missed those episodes, that last episode Max be more than happy to have a chat with you, because he's he's passionate about it. He wants to share his own journey and help others to do similar so

Andy Hart:

they'll never be the perfect time to do it. The perfect time to do it is, unfortunately, immediately, just get the younger you are the set off less kids. Perfection is the

Nick Lincoln:

enemy perfection. Well,

Alan Smith:

exactly. But if there are now, like a small cohort of these people, and of course, you have got, we mentioned it before as well, Haley and The Verve team, they've got a an incubator type thing with there's, there is plenty of support around. But if you can speak to somebody who's maybe six months, 12 months ahead of you on the path, that's really helpful. And people are so giving of their time. They want it. They want others to to thrive in this so if it's on your mind, you know, take some action today. I would suggest,

Nick Lincoln:

well, good, Ryan, the last one thing on the slate, come on. Final

Alan Smith:

thing, just a shout out friend of the podcast, Brett Davidson. Brett Davidson, if anyone doesn't know him, there can't be many people who don't know him. Brett Davidson is a sort of coach consultant to the industry. It's been a while straight talking Aussie as he calls himself, Brett Brett's got a band, I think they're called the King rats and bets. Brett's band is playing a gig on the 17th of September at the hope and anchor. Hope and anchor a very famous place to have live music in Islington in London. So 17th of September, I'm going to go along. I'm gonna take my son along to be a few of us going along. So if anyone's in the area on the 17th, go along, see Brett's band playing live, and have a few beers and have a good night out.

Nick Lincoln:

Excellent, good stuff. Okay? And that with the typical Thank you, leads on to the what many people call the meat and potatoes of the show, because we although that, we're all going through it right. It's the summer kind of recess. We're just taking time off to recharge. We're on holidays with our loved ones and sometimes with our other cells, our spouses as well, just just sort of putting the world back, back in order, getting our minds mentally, mentally set up. But then September comes back, and you're back into the same old, same old, and talking about Austria piss. Mr. Davidson, friend of the show. He has a very good weekly email that he sends out the link to that will be in the so called show notes. I know that watch got and gets that email and thinks a lot of Brett Davidson, watch. What are you going to talk to us about on the back of that email and your general thoughts on recharging and gearing up for the next 12

Carl Widger:

months ahead? Yeah, people, I've met Brad Davidson once in my life for a very for about a 15 minute chat. People are I mentioned him so many times on this podcast, people are going to think Brett has compromising pictures of me or something like that. But it's not that. It's just, as we said before, it's like he reads my mind. And I got this latest email, and I think the title of it was something like time for a reset, and I spent the summer going to festivals. I've been to Greece with my youngest daughter. I was away with my other three daughters as well, and there's been lots of fun times and relaxation. And now it's back to business. And this email was just perfect timing. And it was about, I suppose the theme of it is like, are you just going to drift now into September, like you normally did, and you going to drift and just get really busy? Because it does get busy, doesn't it, this side of Christmas, certainly over here, we've tax deadline, that kind of stuff. And then you'll be kind of into Christmas, and then you'll be planning for next year. Or do you take a moment and go right? How do I get really intentional about making some big decisions here? Now the big decisions might be about short term goals, and that's what I've decided they are going to be. So I'm getting really intentionally busy, but busy for to finish the year really, really strongly with medicine, with the team at Metis, we had a board meeting last week, and senior leadership team meeting as well, and it was that was the focus. So that was the theme. It's like, right? Let's not get too carried away, because you can, you know, we've spoken about AI and all those other bigger plans, and the more. Medium and longer term goals or strategies, but for us, it's right we set out really, really, I would say, robust targets at the start of the year, we're on track, but we will need to finish the year really strongly to make sure that we actually hit all of those targets, and how, what a great position we would be in if we get to the end of the year. Haven't absolutely nailed all of our big targets. So for me, it's, as I say, getting intentionally busy. We're doing a lot of client of our a lot of events, I would say. So we've kind of, you know, smaller stuff and some bigger stuff. We do have our client advisory panel meeting coming up in September, with the Dublin Chamber of Commerce dinner. We have a couple of client events. We have, I'm actually hosting the ideas exchange group in Metis in November, so bringing them into the office to show them around. And we're also aforementioned cleaners foundation. We're actually the main sponsors to their annual Christmas ball. So loads of stuff coming up. And, you know, I suppose it's, it can only come from me in terms of, right? Let's decide everybody at Metis, what are we going to focus on now, from here home and from here home, it's right, how many new families can we bring in, do financial plans for and do great work. And it's that that, you know, normally I'd be more medium to long term focus, but it's like, I think it will just just set us up for an absolutely amazing Christmas and then into the new year, if we go and nail what we thought was probably impossible at the start of the year, and we're on track to do the impossible, and that will be absolutely amazing for us. So it's just interested to hear what you guys are thinking about this. Maybe you're not thinking about it at all, and maybe cruising into September is what you're going to do, or, I think Brett calls it drifting. Are you going to drift? So who wants to go next? Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

sorry, you had your hand raised Ultra from previous to hadn't lowered it. So I suspect you to go, sorry, so you might as well go, Andrew, take advantage of the fact you raised

Andy Hart:

a hand. No, you go. Nick, we want to hear your drifting stories. Can't wait. Yeah, I'm a drifter. I mean, my life's a big drift.

Nick Lincoln:

Some would say towards the rocks. I say Bob, Bobby, gently on the on the other gentle ways of the Med, yeah, I don't really, August is quiet because, you know, I block out my diary, and you know, I'm married presently to TLP, who's out there somewhere on a on a Sunday, hotel going north. No, no, she's not leaving because she's very excited. She's booked. She books a beauty treatment for later on. Apparently, she's going down to the spa to get a facial, which is looking forward to. So I know she's hanging around. Are you not having one Nick? No, no. I need an internal I need everything done. I need

Alan Smith:

rip it all out and start again. Just start again.

Nick Lincoln:

Leave the ears. The ears are quite good. Everything else is a write off work backwards from the So, no, I don't. I don't. I mean, you know I say with Ultra my business has certain cadences. So yes, September through to November is relatively busy because I haven't done much in August and again and again, February to April can be busy because that's just how Christmas time, it slows down, then it picks up again. But it's not a conscious effort for me at the start of September to think, oh, you know, let's go again. It's just I plod on at my same pace, and I don't have the same you're obviously card. You are. And this is a, this is a compliment. You are very metric driven, and you're very target driven. And I know you love it, and you've got that very swish back office mi system that you use to track how all your guys and girls are doing and all you want, and you review it, and I think you're quite you're on it. You know you're not. You don't, you don't shy away from having difficult conversations with advisors that are producing and then more power to you. Obviously, my business is not that way. I have, I do have a plan. I mean, I wouldn't say I am drifting. I mean, Brett might say, it's true. I'm not. I know where I want to be. I've always said, you mentioned the phrase I use all the time. Storyteller earlier about begin with the end of mind, you know, my entire business is built around it. Then I know exactly where I need to be at a certain point in life, and I'm working towards getting there so that for me, that doesn't involve stopping completely in August and then going, shit, let's bloody nail it again in September. No, because that's, that's, you know, I mean, I'm reading Jeff Bezos his biography, which is written a few years ago now, I think before he was divorced, actually, and it's very interesting. And Jeff Bezos says, we don't think in one or two year plans, that's, that's, that's nuts. We think in 20 year plans, you know, we would. He, he thinks so far down the line. And he and that's, that's one of the reasons he hates all these analysts who make short term predictions around his business. He says, we just don't get the big picture. He's a big pitch. And I'm not comparing myself to Jeff Bezos. I mean, we've. Have hair issues. That's about as far as it goes. But I do. I do have a long term goal, but I don't, I don't chunk it down into into 12 months. On beautiful wise, you

Andy Hart:

both got beautiful wives.

Nick Lincoln:

Thank you very well. I can't speak for his, but I certainly do have a beautiful wife. And between us four, between us four, she'll be seething because I've left her she she wants

Alan Smith:

to see on holiday, leaving her

Carl Widger:

alone. Told me, before we went live, that you were haven't been great company on the holiday thus far, because you've had your cold. So she's obviously, this

Nick Lincoln:

is true. This is true. What's the norm? The normal, the normally famous Lincoln, levels of patience haven't quite been

Unknown:

I was gonna say that's

Nick Lincoln:

my view on this, but I know Brett is very much on this, and I'm not disagreeing with them. I think for certain business models, absolutely use the summer months to recharge. Just think and then get back on that horse. Get back on the saddle and bloody. You know, crack on. Yeah. You

Carl Widger:

should read the email, though, because it does say to take some time to step back and decide what's appropriate. And you know, like the email goes into a lot more detail than I've described, and I've taken, you know, just a little piece out of it, but there's a, there's an awful lot more in there as well. So I did read

Nick Lincoln:

it. I mean, it's very it's very punchy and bullet point. And then there's a link to Brett's sign up page in the in the circle, show the so called show notes, by the way, dear Trappist. Just to let you know, these are a thing of beauty. You know, we don't put the show notes in each episode when it comes out, because they're gone forever. But there is a central resource of all the episodes from, I don't know, a couple of years ago now, and every link is in there. And we've had some advisors say this thing's like a Bible to them, because you can open up this Google Doc or just Control F or whatever it is in your Mac and search for the phrase you want. So maybe it is Fnz. If you want to hear horror stories about Fn, you'll find every link that we've ever talked about Fnz in those show notes. So it's a resource both worth leaning on, and if your compliance person asks Yes, it is totally structured. CPD smithy, let's do you and then we'll close up on this with Ultra. So we'll go from a big, a big, big boy,

Andy Hart:

a little boy thing I did, put my hand up. But that's fine. Do

Unknown:

you want to go hand down? You

Alan Smith:

don't talk. You put

Andy Hart:

it down. Completely pointless. I actually forgot about it until this little hand go up.

Alan Smith:

No one see. We're the only ones that see the hands Nick on YouTube

Andy Hart:

or anything. So I put my hand up, and then, anyway, I

Alan Smith:

didn't say this is on YouTube. Yeah, okay, oh my god. So how was that? Are you going Ultra?

Nick Lincoln:

You know, my patients are wearing thin, and now you're making just

Andy Hart:

let me keep it brief, okay, so, yeah, soon as Carl away most of August with my family, with my girlfriend, with my kids. Spent two weeks in Spain with about eight kids, and got back last Friday. So I'm just about recovered, but it was a fun and games. I think we're quite you have your humble brag out of office on. I actually have the only time of the year I have my my, oh, on is in is in August?

Alan Smith:

Does it say I'm spending time with my family?

Carl Widger:

I got it. I said the video. I got it. It said, uh, I'm I'm away most of August. If you have my mobile number, you can contact me only the the inference being,

Alan Smith:

see you in September? Yeah, no, it's not a humble brag. We've seen

Andy Hart:

a few of them, but they're becoming less and less these days. The humble there's still a few out there. We're very fortunate, or I'm very fortunate. I run my own business in this business of ours. August is very quiet. People are away, but, you know, businesses still go on. And also December, I've also found very quiet. So I generally block out the whole of August, and I block out December from sort of December the 15th onwards. So that's all good. I have all the money planning meetings early on in the year, February and March on. The financial planning business for me, September starts with an absolute bang. So I'm flying off to South Africa for humans under management Cape Town, and I'm also working very hard for humans under management London in November. So my second half the year really explodes. I also have servicing issues with or sorry, servicing requirements with my existing clients, but I'm not heavy on new client work and annual planning meetings in the second half of the year. Yeah. So I think it's good that Brett's made us all be a bit more intentional with it. We all do calm down in August, generally, most financial advisors and then ideally, hit the ground running in September. And I think in the email, he mentioned that September is an equivalent of another January. We all will start January hard. We should. We should think of it in, you know, two parts, hit January hard and then hit September hard. Let's say I think I've been doing that anyway. Um, again, my year is quite predictable. I wake up on the first of January, and I've pretty got, pretty much got, a good idea of everything that's required within that year for. That's just the businesses that I run and the dates that I have in the diary. Nick, yeah. Nick, well, it's good you don't press the bar. Alan, over to you.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, I wake up in January and I know everything, everything

Andy Hart:

I know how my years scheduled out. Nick,

Alan Smith:

yeah, not always go for always.

Unknown:

Andy, the ultra club of Darren Andy. He knows about everything. Andy can't be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart. Andrew Hart, oh, painful. Alan,

Alan Smith:

very good. As we've said before, Brett Davidson is very clear that he's deep in his niche sector, because he does write things that all of us just kind of quietly nod and go, Yeah, got it. That's, that's a good you know, it's, it's often not something that's brand new, you never thought about, but it's really timely reminders I had I hadn't read that. Thanks for sending it around. I will read it. The concept makes a ton of sense. We are, it's very interesting, being in the sort of business that we are with a kind of structured, recurring revenue model, you can, with a reasonable level of predictability, predict your revenue in January or pretty much every year. Tend not to lose too many clients. Tend to grow a bit every year, so it's predictable, and therefore, yeah, at least and then. But it can be easy to kind of take your eye off the ball and just kind of drift a bit, because, you know, you show up, you meet clients, and life goes on. So it takes a level of intentionality, assuming that growth is part of your ambition. And I don't know any businesses that intentionally want to stay the same or shrink. So everyone should be talking about growth, but growth does take intentionality and execution. You can't just talk about it. You got to do certain things. And it's quite timely for us. Like all of you guys, I've spent quite a lot of time off over the summer, and really did chill out. I find it quite difficult. You know, we talked in the past about kind of blending. Do you sort of keep in touch with the office? Do you keep up with your emails, what have you? And I tend not to nowadays, let the whole thing go and sort of just chill out. But we're now, at the end of August. We're now sort of back and getting in amongst it. And so we have looking back on it. In our in my business, we spent quite a lot of time this year, early part of this year, you know, I've talked about the tech stack and a bunch of other things, and kind of operational, operational excellence. And we've is, it's easy to say, quite hard to do. And you've got people and structures and processes and a bit of, a bit of a sort of rearrangement. And we have, we've kind of re energized the plumbing in the business, the operational structure, with with the intention of our number one ambition is growth. So we've just had an off site, a team off site. We went and, by the way, you should, we should go to this we went away to a winery, a vineyard, winery in England, a place called Balfour wine estate. And it was brilliant. Did it went there last week, whole day there, you know, we had a team meeting there. They've got all facilities set up just about an hour out of London, just near Tunbridge Wells. And a beautiful, sunny day, had our meeting agreed our our plans, and who was going to do what between now and the end of the year, with the ambition being about continued growth. And then we had a nice, long lunch and enjoyed all the various wine tasting so that was good, good place to do. But the point of the story here is that, you know, Brett's right, and we're all right. We have, we my firm. We've done a reset. We've done it literally last week, and we are like coiled springs waiting for the rest of the year because we built the building blocks. They are in place, and it's now just up to us to execute. So, yeah, I think it makes perfect sense.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, all right, I'm, I'm conscious of time, and he's 75 minutes in. I think we're giving them. We happy with that meaty potatoes. It's about as good as it get. Kind of, yeah, it's good enough for August. Okay, cool. It's a

Carl Widger:

bit weak, but it's summer. It's summer

Nick Lincoln:

TRAPPIST, when we're knocking this stuff out for other podcast. I don't know about you, but the podcast on my phone are pretty much dried up. There are the repeat episodes or Greatest Hits,

Alan Smith:

yeah? Breaks, we don't take a

Andy Hart:

race. We'll just, we'll just have a chat riff, yes, schedule,

Nick Lincoln:

yes, please. We'll all have out of offices and just not speak to other for a whole month. It'd be bloody

Carl Widger:

Jewish. Maybe have a junior trap or something like that. Have a couple of kids on or something. Anyway,

Nick Lincoln:

okay, even, even in Spain, post is tracking me down, and she's got the hotel room door now at room tiento Alcor 108, for you peasants, but her sack is not her sack is dry. It looks like someone has emptied the sack. There's nothing in the sack. Ah, well, this is interesting. So this might be a time for a bit of introspection. We have a reputation the Track Pack. We have a reputation of being outspoken, for speaking our minds, and we shoot a bit from the hips. Sometimes we don't see. Seek offense. We really don't seek offense. We don't look to piss people off, but it's a live, recorded show. We've done 17 episodes. We're all quite punchy, we're all quite egotistical, and sometimes we say things that don't quite land, perhaps the way we do, and it's a little not a mea culpa, but what is probably the most conscious of all of us of not offending people, which is a low bar. Well, don't as a metal Tell us. Tell us your story for this episode.

Carl Widger:

Yeah. So, so I got an email last week, I think, from John O'Driscoll, who I know of, but I actually haven't, I don't think I've ever met John. Maybe I have, probably, after making things worse. Now John runs, John runs a firm called blueprint financial planning, and I know the reputation of John's firm is that it's an excellent firm, and he does, he does things the right way. So John wrote me an email. He took some time to write me an email, and he said that episode 73 I'll do a bit of quoting here, left a sour taste. He said. He goes on to say that the inference that small brokers may not be on top of compliance is, in my view, both unfair and inaccurate. And then he went on to say that the Range Rover remark struck me as unhelpful. Now, to be fair to John, right, I've just taken some quotes out of the email they sent. The email was very well put together. I obviously

Nick Lincoln:

enormous. What was the Range Rover? Quickly? What was the right

Carl Widger:

give us so So, I suppose the context here is the episode 73 was about, we were dealing with a question about, you know, RDR was in the UK. Should we bring in RDR in Ireland? Or, what's your thoughts on? You know, should they reverse RDR or whatever, right? So I was, I suppose, the first comment was that I made a flippant remark, and I suppose I have to hold my hands up here, big time that I said something like I have listened back to it, so I'm going to paraphrase here probably I said that. Well, I don't know how the solo advisors can complete all of the compliance that we are doing, because it's just enormous the amount of compliance that we do. But John makes the point really well that you know, kind of, how dare you say that, because I'm doing it, and I know loads and loads and loads of other solo advisors who are doing it immaculately. And it's a fair point, and I shouldn't have said it. I do think that there are too many one man firms in Ireland, and I do think not all could be doing it one person, for me, but for me to, you know, do a broad brush and say that it was unfair, and I apologize, and that's all I can say. Like, look the the Range Rover remark was, you know, about banning commissions, and I made the point that, you know, a small practice with 20 or 30 million can just take 5% and then take it again and again. And that's a direct quote from a client of mine, so I did not make that up and but having said that, when you throw out a remark like, Why do all financial advisors drive Range Rovers? That was the comment that the client made to me. Now, when I say, then repeat something like that, that's kind of a salacious headline, so I shouldn't have really said it either. And it was, it was a bit loose for me when I look back at the date of it, right? It was, it was out on the 19th of June. I was in the middle of a highly pressurized environment. Of my triplets doing

Unknown:

well, watch

Carl Widger:

their leaving cert results. So are they're leaving their exams. So I was probably a bit cranky at the time, but look, I have, there's just generally a couple of points to just, first of all, say, John, you're entirely right. I have told John I'm going to address this today, so I've got his permission to to mention his name and stuff. But I suppose the beauty of trap is, I think we have done maybe three times in 78 episodes. We have edited something out. Is that correct?

Nick Lincoln:

Roughly? Yeah.

Carl Widger:

So we don't edit, you know, at all. We shoot from the hip. We're all fairly outspoken. And sometimes, there have been other times that I have said things on traffic. Oh, Jesus Christ. I shouldn't have said that or, you know, but look, I think it is, it is the beauty of it. At the same time that we we are uncensored. We do say it. And look, the last thing I'll say before I let you boys kind of have your your tuppence worth, is sometimes this is a stupid thing to say, an enormously stupid thing to say when we've liked well over 300,000 downloads now, right? But it feels like I'm just chatting to you boy. Is and and then it gets a little bit, for me, a little bit loosey goosey. And especially when there's things that I'm very passionate about, I might say stupid things that would be okay in a pub environment. And then I say them on this environment, forgetting, of course, that there's going to be, you know, how many 1000 people downloading it, who are all advisors. And I know there are tons and tons of really brilliant solo advisors. There are two on this show, so for me to discount them like I did was not fair, and I will be doing my best not to make these loose comments, but at the same time, hopefully it won't

Alan Smith:

censor me said

Andy Hart:

Carl sounds like a politician's apology. No,

Nick Lincoln:

it wasn't that wasn't, that was that was Ultra your hands raised. Please tell me raised it properly.

Andy Hart:

No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna confirm what Colm you've both said. Nick so strap trap is obviously four strong, opinionated individuals, you know, unfiltered, off the cuff. You know, we speak for hours every year. You know, during that we're going to say things that may seem a bit harsh. We're going to say things that are probably factually incorrect, maybe mean spirited, but that's just the nature of, you know, doing work in public, you know. And we can't address every issue that people have concerns with, but obviously we do read all the comments that get sent to us, all the questions, queries and concerns. But yeah, I think that is its beauty, the fact that it is unfiltered, it is off the cuff. We can speak freely, and every so often we're going to drop the ball. I think people know that anyway, and obviously some comments are going to cut deeper than others, but we obviously need to keep that balance right. And obviously the more the show grows, the more we get support from other brands. We have to, obviously, again, juggle that situation. So, yeah, yeah, that's another story. We Yeah, we will offend people. It's like comedians, though they do a whole sketch of 100 jokes, and then the person says, Yeah, I liked 90% of the show, but I didn't like the 10% that was talking about fill in the blank thing they've got a problem with, you know. So there will be subjects that we discussed, like solos versus large firms. That might be a being someone's bonnet. We might discuss active versus passive. We might discuss fixed fees versus ad valorem. You know, there's always going to be the thing that they get angry about. So that's just the nature of

Carl Widger:

it. Can I just jump very quickly before I switch, like, just to say, right? I people have had a goal me and on Twitter or x about other stuff, and really I didn't think I should address it. So this is not like I could have just buried that email and never replied to John and not said anything, right? This is not a it's, it's not party political apology. Andy, it bothered me. The email bothered me. And the reason it bothered me was because he was right, and I do need to do better so,

Nick Lincoln:

and I really do need that. That's when you know, that's when you know, yeah, yeah, I was absolutely right. I'm just conscious of time. Mr. Smith, did you have something pertinent to add? Or you're quite happy to say, No, for once, we've covered the TRAPPIST questions. I don't need to interject.

Alan Smith:

No, I have something to add. All I would say, though, all I'm going to say is, these are just our opinions, not necessarily facts of life, and we are all entitled to our own opinion. We're not entitled to our own facts, but it's just an opinion, and we'll make I'll say something which is my view on the world, and someone else will say you're wrong, and they're entitled to have their opinion, and that's it. But I think your point is well made. Your point is well made. Carl, after all these episodes, my God, I'm surprised we haven't had a few more emails like that over the years. So it was bound to be one eventually. It was good that he called you out, and it was very good that you acknowledged it, accepted it, made it public. We draw a line, we move on. Always, we get

Nick Lincoln:

better. All right, lovely, lovely stuff. Okay, right. So we are at 83 minutes in. The software has yet to crash. I'm talking, let's move on to what many people call culture. You

Alan Smith:

Oh yeah, scrolling through, scrolling through, scrolling through. I thought, sure it's not me first, it's not me. Oh, it is. I have got two quick podcasts worthy of your attention. We've it's mentioned many times in the past, and they are a bit hit and miss, but so this is a very good one, Diary of a CEO, one of the more recent ones, where he got Daniel priestly, Alex hermosi and Cody Sanchez on. Now, I don't know you will know all or some of those people, but all three of those, plus Stephen Bartlett, are just big in the kind of business, building entrepreneurial huge social media followings, all written books, all got YouTube channels, all the rest of it, and they had the three of them just to discuss and debate, kept basically how to grow a business. How to win customers, how to market your services, you know, any range of things. It's about two and a half hour long podcast. Wherever you are on your business journey, you would do well to invest your time, to watch, listen, consume that podcast. I thought it was excellent because of the caliber of the people that were showing up and discussing it. And interestingly, bit like us, they didn't all agree with each other on everything, which was good as well. So that's worthy of your your attention. And now that we've talked as well, the second one I've got, as we've talked about resetting for, you know, the rest of the year, and we're talking about business growth, there's a great podcast. I don't know sort of thing that you might know about Nick You know, Barron's in the US, yeah, barons podcast. It's, well again, it's very American centric, and talking about 401, k's and our eyes and all that sort of stuff. But every now and again is a really good one. So there was once a couple of months ago, I put a link in the show notes. It's a guy called David Newson, and it's titled proven Ria. In other words, IFA marketing strategies for 15% organic growth. So this was a guy who was working at he's worked for a few of the big, big RIAs. He's now doing his own thing. And again, I just thought it was really, really good, the detail he goes into about how to create and execute on growth strategies to pretty much be assured of 15% organic growth compounded every year. It's a great podcast, great conversation, well worth listening to

Andy Hart:

Barron's advisor. Smith, yeah, there's a few on there. Oh, they're

Alan Smith:

not Barron's Yeah. Byron's advisor, the way forward is the title of the podcast. Yeah, Baron's advice, or advisor with an O Anyway, check about, check them out.

Carl Widger:

Next, Next, Next, go, go to go to Berlin for two days, get the train to Prague. It's a five hour, amazing, five hour train journey, and spend another two days in Prague. I brought my three daughters. We saw everything in both cities. It's a lot of walking. Both places are class. The Germans don't do nice, polite service, though, unfortunately, you'd love them, Nick, they're just like you. I

Nick Lincoln:

went to the walking holiday to Bavaria about three years ago with with TLP, and they're very efficient. I mean, the food's bloody awful. There's no one ever says, Oh, I'm famished. Let's go out for a German

Carl Widger:

the beer is sensational. Absolutely,

Nick Lincoln:

they're very like sort of dystopian. I was wearing the sort of red corridors just painted red.

Carl Widger:

I did a chat GPT give me an itinerary for two days in both places, and we pretty much stuck to it. It was amazing. So it was brilliant. Yeah, do it? Okay.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay. Good stuff. Good stuff. Very good. Me next. Okay, so in the in the UK, the SCA has kind of relented a bit on Bitcoin, isn't it, and it's now allowing retail investors to invest in Bitcoin via Etn, exchange traded notes. I remember Exchange Traded notes about 15 years ago when they were first launched by a lot of things. Just, you know, you soak it up, then you just go. So I listened to a podcast on the many happy returns podcast, which I just kind of dip in and out of. But one of the hosts, I want to get his name here wrong. I'm sure you can grab me, Ramin, nakisa, or nakisa, don't know mate, he's spoken at hum,

Unknown:

Oh, that Guy.

Alan Smith:

Attention. Were you ramen?

Unknown:

Nikisa or Nick, he does not know.

Nick Lincoln:

Anyway, there's that podcast talking about this, this, this relaxing of the legislation, and hey, retail investors can invest in Bitcoin via et ends. It's like, oh my god, what a shit show. ET ends are promissory notes, where you lend money to a bank, the bank then takes that money and invests it in an underlying bucket of securities, in this case, will be Bitcoins. So it's an extra layer of risk, because you now got credit risk on Etn, so you're a retail investor saying you

Andy Hart:

give, you give your money to banks. Now you apparently don't own the money. There's a whole, whole, whole movement.

Alan Smith:

It Nick, carry on.

Nick Lincoln:

There's part of the fact you've got wizards on crowds now you've got credit default risk thrown in with these etns. So I just think lunacy, and they mentioned in this podcast recently half an hour or so, is because it's decent, if you want to get up to speed on the difference between ETs and et ends, which I needed too. They mentioned that the FCA said the reason we're not making these available via ETFs is because of our own legislation, which we've yet to update. It's like Jesus Christ. I mean, whatever you think about Bitcoin, we are so behind that getting into it. You know, there's potential, if you believe all this, there's potentially billions that UK investors could have accessed in terms of profit, or millions, hundreds of millions, which is a billion. So I'm rambling anyway. It's a good podcast. Listen to it.

Andy Hart:

Me to finally close the show. It's another Diary of a CEO, another Diary of a CEO recommendation podcast, YouTube. Manish pabrai, who I'm a big fan of, he's a massive fan of Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. He's written some great books over the years. He's a one one person hedge fund manager in the US runs a very lean business run on the Buffett parks, fee structure, sorry, the Berkshire Hathaway, original partners, fee structure. Anyway, check it out. He's a very smart guy. Doesn't do that many public interviews. MANISH provide on the diary of the CEO. That's it over and out. Play the tune Nick.

Nick Lincoln:

All right, superb. 90 minutes in. Thank you, dear TRAPPIST, for your time. As episode 78 comes to a close and slides around the you bend a father time, please do leave a review on your podcast app of choice also, likewise with YouTube, Like and subscribe. Hit the notification button so every time one of these episodes slides out, you'll get told about it. Until then, until the next time, take care out there. Adios to our beloved TRAPPIST from the trap pack, and we will see you on the other side.

Unknown:

Bye, bye, goodbye.

Carl Widger:

Nick, is there a reason you're bare chested

Andy Hart:

midway through you must have been sweating through

Nick Lincoln:

the first one. No, no, I wasn't sweating. No, I'm gonna race out and make up time with Penny. So I thought

Carl Widger:

I just wizards and clouds coming from the bear chest to do to the baseball cap and the shades on

Alan Smith:

live on live on TV,

Nick Lincoln:

authority, right? We're still recording this, by the way. So, oh, sorry. I.

People on this episode

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Nick Lincoln

Host
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Alan Smith

Co-host
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Andy Hart

Co-host
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Carl Widger

Co-host

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