TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

91 - ROHIT VAISH FROM SATURN: AI: Revolution or Ruin for Financial Planning?

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 91

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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

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Unknown:

Steve, welcome to the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the 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 here, yes,

Nick Lincoln:

indeed, dear trappers, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 91 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. My name is indeed Lincoln, Lincoln and joining me in the digital studio of doom, as ever are the three other horsemen, Alan, nearly beaten by Wales. Smith Carl, not bad. Widger and Andy,

Carl Widger:

right? Nicholas, I've enterprises, what a fabulous weekend.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, congrats, Carl. Although it wasn't too difficult in the end, was it not great again the week before? I mean, we got it. We have to talk about this. You forced me to talk about it, Mr. Hart, a couple of weeks ago with Scotland's inauspicious start in Rome, but we made up for it with the only thing that Scotland really ever want to win in the Six Nations being the Calcutta cut for the fifth year out of the last six, five out of six so far. And even the one game that England won was only about one point. It was very lucky. So it's been a good tournament for us so far. Good win against Wales. Fantastic comeback. So exquisite play by genius.

Carl Widger:

This is framing. This is Genius framing. You're right.

Nick Lincoln:

I've got a drop somewhere of a barrel being scraped, but I can't find it.

Alan Smith:

Just look at the table. That's the facts.

Carl Widger:

I am so looking forward to a match that is coming up soon, and it is England against Italy.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, a couple of weeks in Rome, right?

Carl Widger:

Good. I gotta, I'm gonna refer back to it lots.

Nick Lincoln:

So apologies. I will say, well played Scotland against us and well played Ireland against us both. England were very poor, but those, both those teams, played really, really well. And what can you do? You got to suck it up. We take it.

Alan Smith:

Andy, Andy, what are you this week? Now? You Scottish, Welsh, English. Scottish this week? Yes, good boy. Little bit of Welsh.

Nick Lincoln:

Little bit of Welsh. Okay, and for our non rugby fans, that's already tuning out, okay, let's get the show on the road, and let's do it as ever with another high energy review Read, read out by my very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain, heart.

Andy Hart:

Thank you, Nicholas, this is from James Brown from need financial planning. Having been told about this podcast by a fellow advisor a few months ago, I am officially hooked. Love listening to you all, and always nice to hear some of my internal thoughts being echoed by four titans of industry, I felt compelled to finally write in after hearing Carl's beautiful dedication to his dad and family. Having lost my dad in 2021 and inheriting his firm after only working with him since 2015 I know all too well the impact of trying to run a business while simultaneously losing your idol and role model. He would have turned 67 today. People will tell me how lucky I am to have what I have, the firm, the business income, etc. But to echo Carl's sentiments, I just missed my dad. Keep doing what you're doing, guys, it's bloody brilliant. So you were trapped live. Back to you.

Nick Lincoln:

Nicholas, thank you, James. Wow. What can you say? What can you say? Yeah, lovely. Thank you James. And thank you. Well, I'm sorry that you've gone through that hardship, but it happens to us all in due course. Okey dokey, keep do keep the reviews coming in. They can't all be as heartfelt as James, but anything we get is great for us. We are thin skinned ego maniacs. It's not a good combination. So we need reviews to keep us going. Okay, otherwise, we just lose the will a little bit. Okay, let's put a timestamp on episode 91, of the real advisor podcast, trap, just to give an update, guys and girls and those in between, tickets for trap live are going like very warm comestibles, as they say, and the ticket office holding Bob's at the door. Yes, Bob, Mr. Lincoln, down to 18 tickets. 17. Down to 17 tickets. Bob tells you for the ticket office. So please get to the real advisor podcast, calm. Book your ticket. You do not want to be on the 13th of May sitting somewhere just having the worst attack. A FOMO when you could have just come along to this event. It is people talk about community, right? Providers, talk about community, fostering community. I know of nothing that comes close to trap live in terms of meeting the other Trappists. For advisors. By advisors, it's hard to describe it till you're there. We've got a great venue. We're going to put on a great show. It's going to be a great thing, networking opportunities, shits and giggles, and we'd love to see you all there. So have a look. Just to add to that Nick,

Alan Smith:

a big TRAPPIST trap fan Chris Emil is flying in all the way from South America, Chile. He's coming in from Chile, and he will be hosting a sort of pre trap, live drinks, sharpeners before the event. So and he will, will post connections. But anyone who doesn't know him, reach out to Chris emotte, e, double M, O, double T, find him on LinkedIn, jetting in from South America. He's founding

Carl Widger:

the trap ultras. Yeah.

Alan Smith:

But, but I think the point being is, as Nick has eloquently explained, it is about community. It's not about us, for jokers, talking nonsense on a stage. It's about people getting together, having a glass of something cold, and chatting about life in general and business. So it is a real community event. Look forward to seeing you then,

Nick Lincoln:

great stuff, great stuff. Can't wait. Really excited. Less than three months now, and it's just, it's just racing by, right? Okay? Topical tidbits, wodge,

Carl Widger:

yeah, so let's all try and have an adult conversation about this. So keyboard warriors, down your tools, please, the bitcoin price volatility of the last number of months. I just thought I'd talk about it not let's not go there as to whether Bitcoin is a good investment or a bad investment. But let's talk about it from the point of view of being a financial advisor and having your clients invested in something that you have recommended. So if you're like me, old enough to remember the financial crisis and some of those dark days when we were looking at 30, 40% temporary market decline, it was. How hard was it back then, to keep your clients in their seats? And I would have learned so much back around then in terms of, well, having an investment philosophy, being able to tell a story, tell the story when things are good, but back then, I suppose I didn't have that skill set in terms of trying to keep clients in their seats. And I suppose my point here is, you know, for those who are gone totally and utterly all in Bitcoin, you may well say that, Oh, well, Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin is going to, you know, bounce back, even though it's kind of half the price that it was only a short couple of months ago. That's all well and good, but are your clients? Are they in it for the long haul? Are Bitcoin investors in it for the shorter term? I don't know the answer, but I did look at some of the numbers. Three months down, 23% six months down, 42% I'm doing this for a reason. Year to date, down 26% one one year down, 31% and two years up 30% but if you look at those figures over two years and five years, so the growth numbers, it still has quite significantly now, underperformed the s, p5, 100. So you'd want to have a really good story to tell your clients as to why you told them that they should go all in on it. I do think that most advisors have been pretty good about this, and they've just said this is for a small portion of your money. And I'm not saying that that's wrong at all, and it's just the people who are, I suppose the most vociferous about this when I look at it, and the people who slag me off when I talk about it, you know, they're saying, Oh, it's all in, and I'm gone all in and Bitcoin or whatever. Well, you're kind of reeling now, and you have a choice to make, and your clients have a choice to make. So look, I have spoken about it. I have spoken about it in positive terms. When stripe, you know, went into the kind of crypto payments world and bought that company, talked about Coinbase, so is cryptocurrency here to stay? And people are going to immediately go, oh, he totally confused cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, right? I'm not, but I'm saying I'm putting them all in the one large melting pot. It's going to be bloody difficult to say why you had your clients all in on Bitcoin, if you have done so, diversification, my friends. Is your friend. What will work in the future is what has always worked in the past? In my view. Do. Sorry, Nick, I kept on speaking there, even though I did see your hand raised.

Nick Lincoln:

No, it's okay. It's okay. Thank you. So I don't want to make this into a is it a good investment thing and incur your ayah, yes. 2008 nine. 2002 1000 to 2003 and the various blips in between, when the great companies were plummeting in value. We earned our corn, and we learned the scripts to say, and they are scripts, right? You have to have a clear, coherent message that you can convey with confidence to your clients in those absolute, panic stricken moments, as you might well expect. I haven't got any clients anywhere near Bitcoin, okay? If I did what scripts would I be using with them? Because with the great companies of the world, we know what we're going to say, the companies haven't changed. The market's just pissing the bed. This too shall pass. The great companies will still be the great companies tomorrow. We know Mr. Mrs. Client, that longer term stock markets are driven by earnings. It's an amazing correlation. And the company, the earnings of these companies, are going up and up and up all the time this too shall pass, and the share price shall revert to correlating with earn as ever with Bitcoin. What have you got? Same story? Yeah, yeah. What have you got? You haven't got the same story. You haven't got earnings per share. You haven't got great companies. You've got wizards on Cloud. You're looking for the bigger fool to buy something from you on a promise that he or she can then sell it on for more money. And that's why I think it'd be really, really difficult to stop people bailing out. And also, we haven't got 150 years of market prices to fall back on. We don't know where this thing is going to go. It could go through that. It could absolutely go, you know, gangbusters. But we can't say that. And we can't if it does, we can't say, we won't be able to say why it did it. It just did so very, very difficult. And I imagine the unadvised section of the Bitcoin community, which must be the vast 99% of the money in it, yeah, I reckon there'll be a lot of people who are trying to come out of it. I guess thereby

Carl Widger:

is the problem, you know, and I suppose what you're talking about, Nick really, at its core is, have you got an investment philosophy? Have you, you know, Alan talks, yes. Have you got it written down? And have you, and can you say, Yeah, we stuck to that. Now, over the last 10 years, 15 years, you know, over a very long period of time, we haven't decided, Oh, Jesus, that Bitcoin. That sounds like a good thing to get involved in. I'm sure everyone is getting involved in that now. So let's change our investment philosophy. So look, it's, it's, it's a harsh lessons learned. I read a kind of a funny interview by in one of the business sections here, and there was a guy speaking about Bitcoin, and said, I you know, he sold out a Bitcoin. He bought a little bit of the in the early days. Sold out to buy wedding presents. He said they were the, they were the most expensive wedding presents of all time. And then when I went back up, I got back in, and then it crashed again. So it's made a fool of me twice, you know. And like anything you know, the person in it, for the, for the for the fast book to you know the too good to be true merchants, right? That's exactly what it is. It's too good to be true. Real investors stay the long game. Speculators are not investors.

Alan Smith:

Smithy, yeah, continuing this conversation, I like the spirit in which this is being held above board. No, no bun fighting, what have you. But statements of facts are always welcome. I find the whole thing quite interesting. The I don't, I have to say, and I know quite a lot of people who are active in the Bitcoin community, I don't know any, or certainly any advisors who've been recommending their clients go all in on Bitcoin. It's been anything, but that it's been you may wish to have a small allocation to Bitcoin. You may wish to is that sort of conversation that's been held. A couple of other facts worth mentioning. Bitcoin is volatile. Anyone has been anywhere near it has recognized its volatility. So you wouldn't go into it investing expecting it to be anything other than volatile. In the last 12 months, particularly, it's been more volatile than it has been over longer periods. But statement of fact is actually, it's interesting. It's less volatile, for example, than Tesla as an individual stock and I, and there's a bunch of stocks you can shake your head, Nick, but it's a it's just a statement of fact. It's less volatile than a number of s p5 100 stocks. The facts remain that Bitcoin has underperformed the s p5 100 over one year, three years and five years. In recent times, it's been particularly volatile, having said that no one that's owned Bitcoin since it began, no one who's held it for four years, for more than four years, has lost out. So what you're saying is, if you're a Bitcoin investor, albeit for 135, 10% of your allocation, all you're being asked to do is hold it for four years now, equities can't say that. I think equities is 20 years plus, whereby you could say that if you held it for that period of time, you you wouldn't have had a negative return 20 years, looking at buying at the very peak and looking at the when it would have bottomed. So I think overall, you're right. It is going through. The issue that I see about Bitcoin is it's not so much. If people are buying it as a trading asset because they want to get rich, then they are going into it, in my opinion, for the wrong reasons. Bitcoin is a philosophy, and the major philosophy surrounding bitcoin is that fiat currencies, which have the ability countries, as we know, in the UK, in Europe, in the US, everyone around the world, is able to print at will, more and more of this same monetary system create more of something. So you and I, all of us, have got to work for something that someone else can press a button and print billions of so that over the long term, currencies devalue. It does favor companies, because companies assets, when money printing is going on, inflation is going up, those with assets place their money somewhere to get a return. Hence, real estate, property equities tend to do well over those periods. So Bitcoin is a philosophy, and I for one, just to finish off, got I for one, just say as a hedge against the the continued inflation, monetary debasement and loss of purchasing power of currencies. I for one thing, it's not a bad position, and really, I haven't advised any client to invest in it. I've responded to some clients already own Bitcoin and tried to guide them. And I've got a point to say on that one, the next, the next topical tidbit, I don't think it's a bad hedge to have a small percentage allocated to this as part of a very diversified portfolio, which probably be predominantly global equities. That's all I got to say. Yeah.

Carl Widger:

And for me, for just to kind of comment on a couple of points of me there, like that, they it's a hedge if you've got play money, right? Because it is play money for me. And I don't know anybody Alan, who's investing like you said, What was your point there? It's a philosophy, as opposed to an investment

Alan Smith:

effective well, as opposed to a get rich quick. I mean, I know people do pile into it because they've seen the returns that it's had, yeah, but it's very

Carl Widger:

few people, I would say, holding it for four years, Alan, like, like anybody, I know they're talking about the money that they made in a get rich quick scenario,

Alan Smith:

but, but look for that. So I So, I would say they've got, they've philosophically got it wrong, because they've seen it as a get rich quick scheme, yeah, and I don't see.

Carl Widger:

I don't, I don't see, you know, people in playpen territory, having some having an allocation to Bitcoin, I'd be totally okay with that. In fact, if I had playpen money myself, I'd probably do the same, and it would be purely a hedge, just in case, right? Just in case, just in case. It's right, yeah, it works, but that's not much of an investment philosophy either. That's why I wouldn't be, but that's why I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be saying, you know, if I wasn't FOMO.

Andy Hart:

FOMO is a big investment philosophy. It's a big

Carl Widger:

one, yeah, and it's, that's exactly the point Andy, isn't it? You know? And FOMO will make it really hard to sit in your seat, stare out the window and do nothing when you're down 50% and let's remember, right, that it's down 50% so it has to grow by 100% to get back to where it was. I mean, these are, these are big, big, big numbers. And anyway, look, it's a to use your to coin your phrase, Alan. It's a philosophical discussion, really. But, yeah, it is. And I

Alan Smith:

think that's the point, and I think we can. I mean, once you get into down rabbit holes of Bitcoin, there's dozens of different ways you can take it. You talk about, it's a play around energy and the creation of energy. It's about, it is a store of value. Longer term, it's digital gold. I mean, there's some interesting statistics looking at Gold, for example, in comparison with s and p5 100, and s and p5 100 underperforms over the very long term compared with gold, for example. But none of us are piling into gold anytime.

Carl Widger:

But yeah, well, there was a lot of people piled into gold, clearly, because the price has gone up enormously, and digital gold thing, right? So I've heard, I've heard that one, but what were those? You know, the art, but it was digital art. What was all nfts? Nfts, like, that's digital art. So and the coining the phrase, forgive the pun, coining the phrase digital gold is equally as bullshitty as nfts. For me, I think it's different thing altogether, because I think that kind of that has an allure to it, that that's

Andy Hart:

yeah, it's framed wells Yeah, it's good marketing. It's good marketing, yeah, yeah.

Carl Widger:

But it's, it's a little bit like what we're going to talk about later on. You know, the marketing is coming from the holders of the of the investment anyway. Look, sorry I've probably taken up weight. Much time. It's just an interesting discussion right now.

Alan Smith:

It's fair point. Carl noted, we'll come back to this in a year. Move on, but just just, just following, just following that, that's up. I just, I did want to do a shout out, because we do have a number of high net worth clients that own Bitcoin as a hedge, they say as an asymmetric bet. This is the next point, Nick, too. Don't get excited. So I'm carrying on. Is an asymmetric bet. The if it goes, if it went to zero, they wouldn't, it wouldn't kill them. But if it did anything like the returns that is enjoyed since inception, it will make a meaningful impact, even by holding three or 5% we have, as I say, we've got clients who own it, and now that clients who own it and are getting older, there is an issue around inheritance tax and safe custody of these assets. So I'm talking about assets that aren't necessarily held on a platform like Coinbase. You can hold Bitcoin, as you know, in cold wallet, cold storage, there's a multiple different ways that you can actually own and hold it, and that's all well and good whilst you have the keys and you know what, what you're doing with it, but there's a concern, and lots and lots of Bitcoin have already been lost. I'm not just talking about the guy in Wales who who's other half through it, through the trash, but through through accidents, through death, through number of things that that so for anyone, and I'm sure there are, there'll be at least a few people listening into this, whose clients do own Bitcoin, and if you're able, if you want to offer an additional added value service to those clients as you get older, around inheritance tax planning, logging these things, Making sure that there's safety and security involved. There's gentlemen I've been speaking with recently because one of our clients particularly interested in this, I've posted a link in the show notes that Alan Edwards from evoke vault. So it's a nice, modern, sophisticated way that you can hold the you already if they already own these assets and they're concerned about their children, heriting them, or any number of other things, there's a nice, elegant solution. And apparently, a lot of the big law firms are taking this up. Because if you law a law firm writing wills and trusts on behalf of wealthy clients, increasingly, a number of those clients do hold digital assets one form or another, so rather than have them sort of just disappear somewhere, he's got a nice solution for it, as I say, evoke vault and a link is in the show notes.

Carl Widger:

Alan question for you on the clients, the kind of high network clients, who are, you know, buying some cryptocurrency as a hedge typically? How are they doing it? So are they actually buying Bitcoin directly? Are they doing? You know?

Alan Smith:

Well, they're generally buying it through an exchange, through something like Coinbase, or coin corner, or any number of these other exchanges. People are doing it different ways. Some people are setting up monthly contributions, weekly contributions, but they're generally using it the coin base would be the most favored, as you know, an S p5 100 company, probably the largest or one of the largest out there. So they're buying it through that. But then often they will want to move it into their own private Wallet. So you can take it off the exchange and into your private wallet, and that, as much as that is, you know, for less than where, that's what the real bitcoin is would do, because they're removing themselves effectively from the system. They can own it, they can transfer it, they can go across borders. They can do anything they want with it. But you are your own banker. And if you happen to lose those 12 or 24 words, which is your seed phrase, the money's gone. The value is gone. So it's it's great in many ways,

Carl Widger:

but are you also your own tax man in that scenario?

Alan Smith:

Well, you are your own tax man. Anyway, you this country relies on self would you call it self disclosure declaration, declaration? So yes, you are

Carl Widger:

okay, interesting, although you

Alan Smith:

know increasingly that you know the HMRC have recently confirmed that they're getting data from platforms and exchanges, just to make sure that there's nothing untoward going on. But that's a whole other conversation.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, whole other conversation. Just looking at that you made the kind of gold outperforming the s, p over longest time periods. The longest I can find is 1971 which is a pretty good lick. Best part of six decades, 10,000 pounds in gold today be worth 702,000 pounds, 10,000 pounds in the s, p worth 3.6 1 million. I know quite what length period you were thinking of holding gold water over

Andy Hart:

100 years. 100 over 100 years. Nick is 100 to one. The American markets performed 100 times better than gold over 100 years. Recent very different. Recent times, very different.

Nick Lincoln:

That's just dividends, really. It's just the Combating effect of dividends. Okie dokie, thank you for that. So my ones, my ones right down the weeds. We can go through this without any comment, really, but UK advisers certainly, we know that if you go into flex the excess draw down, you take an income payment via your platform, sometimes that the client gets clobbered with income tax. HMRC, think, Oh, they're taking a one off payment, but we're going to multiply by 12 to work out what their annual income is, and then we'll apply a tax rate on that first tranche at this enormous marginal rate. And there's no way really around it, I don't think. But what I have found certainly with transact, I'm sure, with other leading platforms as well, once that first payment has settled down, the client's been overcharged tax, just put through a one pound gross withdrawal on your platform, and they will get the tax refund back pretty much the same day. HMRC now are very good at issuing a correct tax coding notice once they've taken the amount off. And it works. I've done it twice in the last two weeks for clients. So for clients, wow, cool. Prep the clients, frame them. So listen, the first payment is going to be a bit of a bodge job. HMRC going to take more tax than we think they should do. Don't worry about it. It looks like if we just put through a further one pound withdraw a week or so later, once it's all settled, instantaneously, the money will be back in your account, and it has worked twice. So that's a nice it's not ideal, but it's way better than it used to be where clients had to go to self assessment or phone up HMRC when they used to answer the phone lines, which apparently they don't do much more of. Any more have,

Andy Hart:

I think you guys have not put your hands down. Have transact guided you and said that that's correct. Nick, like there's just this quirk in the system.

Nick Lincoln:

I've done it, mate, I've just done it anyway. Did you not reconfirm it with transact,

Andy Hart:

that that's what you're doing? And you know you found that it's, well, I just you, just because the thing with transact,

Nick Lincoln:

you look certainly with other platforms, I'm sure. But transact, you go on and say, I want to take a pound, and it's before you hit the Submit thing, it says, okay, the amount that actually get paid out is this. And it's, it's a figure like 800 quid, because they bring you forward, and they say it's tax rebate in it. So never speak to anybody. Just teared up. And if it's not looking right, you just don't put the one pound through. But the two times I've done it, the last week or two weeks or so, it's been spot on. The clients got the money the same afternoon, which is, which is really good, and you did a full suitability for the pound withdrawal. That's right, Andrew. Let's move on to the next point, which is one of yours, actually.

Andy Hart:

Nobs, yeah. Nobs, the famous nobs, okay, so my book came out. No BS, money advice. The website is noball money.go. To UK. Just a massive thanks, really, to anyone who bought it. I think probably a few people did buy a few Trappists, which is much appreciated. I hit number three in the personal finance chart, very, very briefly for a few hours or a day behind,

Nick Lincoln:

thank you. Nicholas,

Andy Hart:

yeah behind Mr. Morgan household, my personal friend of the of the show and I was number one on a couple of other lists. So, yeah, huge, massive appreciation. So thank you very much.

Alan Smith:

I'm looking forward to receiving, obviously, some pre order till next to march,

Andy Hart:

not out to march. Yeah, so that's just on pre orders. I do have the physical book sending that to you boys, if I

Alan Smith:

handed that out, I messaged him and I said, Let I could buy it on Kindle, or could buy it on the physical boot. What's best for you? Because I make a bit more on Kindle. So he's managed to negotiate better terms with Jeff Bezos on Kindle. If you're if

Carl Widger:

you're posting one out to me, just don't sign us, if you don't mind,

Alan Smith:

it maintains its resale value if you don't sign it,

Andy Hart:

it was, it was half term last week. So I went away with friends, and I took a few copies, and a guy rocked up. I said, I'll give you a copy. Said, Oh yeah, brilliant. So I signed it dear, put his name in it. He left and didn't take it home with him. I just take it to the pub. The next day, I said, Aussie, you didn't take your book. I wrote Dear Aussie in it. It's quite funny

Nick Lincoln:

the book industry, but I would expect authors to get more of a Kindle keep than with the physical books. The costs are way less, surely, and that's,

Andy Hart:

that's why, yeah, the business, but I'm not making any money from it. People, the people that making money, the book publishers. And you know, Mr. Bezos, so Yeah, certainly not a money making scheme. But thank thanks a lot. Over to you, Alan, have

Nick Lincoln:

you updated all your social media profiles with book publisher, with author, Best Selling Author, Best Selling Author.

Alan Smith:

I've not done it yet. International keynote speaker.

Andy Hart:

I'll wait till it

Nick Lincoln:

comes out. Okay? The Return of the Jedi. No, the return of and

Alan Smith:

then new it is. We're going to do a book review episode when we finally get get access to it. I thought this was quite interesting. Pension annuity sales hit record, record break in 2025, sales growing to 7.4 billion in annuities for the first time ever. And so there's a big story in the newspaper about this big and huge, big volume of annuity sales. The one thing I did think and all this was interesting, apart from it's a Hmm, that is quite interesting, because I know you guys are pretty much anti annuity, but somebody, Marianna hunt at the investment firm fidelity International, said its recent data showed that a 66 year old in good health with a 300,000 pounds pension pot could buy a single life annuity paying 22,440 a year, a rate of about 7.5% now, 7.5% guaranteed for the rest of your life, sounds like not a bad bet. It actually for many people. And I know the circumstances change, and people have got different, different knock off profiles and tax at least. But even so, seven and a half cent guaranteed for the rest of your life. And some people just want to know this will be paid. 22 and a half grand a year will be paid for as long as I live.

Nick Lincoln:

You've given up your capital. What kind of guarantee is that I'd expect at

Carl Widger:

least such a single life annuity as well, isn't it? So, yeah,

Alan Smith:

single or widowed, or whatever it's. Well, the numbers are there this. It's been a record year. Because obviously, that's

Nick Lincoln:

why my hand is raised. That's why my hand is raised. So the Guardian, very conveniently, gave you the purchase value of the annuities, right next, number of billion, yeah, okay, I bet it's not the record number of annuities being purchased. That's gonna be different. The fact that we've had asset prices go through the roof since the last time annuities were any value, sort of pre 2008 that pension funds have gone up. I imagine, imagine the amount of annuity is being sold is nowhere near the record value.

Andy Hart:

That's a good point. Nick, yeah, 7.4 billions of the number, but doesn't say how many 1000s sold? Yeah.

Nick Lincoln:

So, yeah, yeah, yeah. They have a place. They have a place in that round thing under the desk. Okay, Christ, go on.

Andy Hart:

Andrew, as me, obviously, this is very interesting. So the growth rates

Alan Smith:

will be the judge of that.

Andy Hart:

We've already discussed this in our in our group, so don't be leaving me hanging. So the growth rates between the 30 largest investment and mortgage advice firm. So this has been covered by professional advisor, but the headline they went for, which is a bit sneaky, St James's place, loses 43 advisors in second half of 2025 not focusing on the ups and downs of all these 30 large companies. I mean, SJP, have got 5153 and they lost a net of 43 I think there's still some impressive numbers. But a couple of other firms that stood out. And I think Alan, you've gone through this valid path, I think had the biggest increase, which is a network, valid, valid, yeah, so, valid, valid. Bar bloody hell Evelyn. Are on. There a few other people, the usual characters. There was a company that put this together. They are called ISS market intelligence. I think they did a big post on LinkedIn. This is where they've taken this information from another new player. New Leaf is another network that's gaining numbers. Number of advisors, quite aggressively. All of them are generally growing, but yeah, some of them are growing. Gang busters. Did any of you boys look at this? You looked at it, didn't you?

Alan Smith:

Alan, I did. I studied it closely. You did. What this tells me is this is just systematic of what we know was going on. We've talked about this before. Huge amounts of M and A SJP, biggest in the country have been going through their own challenges. We know we've had an ex SJP partner on here who went independent in recent times, you see. So the actual numbers of companies have reduced. Because if somebody leaves a bit, if you work for a firm and it gets taken over by a consolidator, and then your life becomes less good than it was before. Because that's often the way it is. You're getting these breakaways. There is all of us know. We know individual circumstances. We get contacted by various people who are setting up on their own, or two or three of them together. So there's a lot of this going on. But we do also know that it is nigh on impossible right now to go directly authorized. It's a real challenge. So they're going down the network route, valid path. Appear to be the the main beneficiaries of this new leaf. We also know, yeah, so they're so but it so that's not a new advice firm. That's just another appointed rep of an existing so the actual numbers of advice firms are falling because consolidation is going on, hoovering up other firms. And then when you've got breakaways started there are going down the route. And even, like the likes of the SJP and the open works and the M and G's and all these big brands, when their breakaway firms set up, they go down the appointed rep route. So right now is a good time to be an appointed like valid path. They're doing really well, as are some of the others. So it's just, it's an interesting it's a reflection and a data format of what we already know, because we're involved in multiple conversations with

Andy Hart:

people, yeah, confirms our thoughts, I suppose. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

Nick Lincoln:

Keeping it punchy, keeping it going, because we're 35 minutes in. WOJ, you've got some more good fiscal news from your side of the Irish Sea, yeah,

Carl Widger:

so it's funny this one, though. So we've had in the recent past, a new Minister for Finance has been appointed, and we have two kind of parties running our government in Ireland, and the new Minister for Finance has decided to come up with a great idea to reduce the. Tax on investments and to hopefully do away with the deemed distribution so we have to pay the tax after eight years. And this is his brand new idea, and he's very excited and energized about bringing you know, real wealth to Irish households, even though myself and a number of others have been shouting about this for the last three or four years. This is his brand new idea. But not to be outdone, so he's from one party, from the tea shop is from another party. So he's come out and said, after the Minister of Finance was excited about bringing all this wealth to families in Ireland, the Tisha come out said the capital gains tax rate is too high, so we're reducing that as well. I mean, we are all going to benefit massively out of this, I hope, assuming it all comes through through the budget later on in the year and maybe even next year, that there's kind of a, I suppose a program for taxation on investments in Ireland, it will be absolutely magnificent, just a little bit childish for them to be saying that these are brand new ideas when people have been extolling the virtues of this for the last while. The massive, massive one the exit tax came down from it came down to 38% in the last budget, whereas capital gains tax is 33 at the moment. The reduction in that will be really, really good, obviously. But the big, big one is that this eight year deemed distribution, if they got rid of that. So there is no deemed distribution with capital gains, but exit tax on funds there is, and it kind of interrupts the golden rule of compounding. So getting rid of that, I think would be absolutely huge for every wealth advisor in Ireland.

Andy Hart:

Are they thinking about scrapping it, totally Carl, or just reducing it? We don't know.

Carl Widger:

They're saying scrapping it, because what like? What's the like? What's the alternative, if you keep it, do you make it all 10 years? Team? Just, you know what? So just think, make it kind of, yeah, it's still there. It's only just a little bit less shit. So I really do think that they're, they're going to get rid of this, but I watching the politics play out. And this is funny, and we're going to benefit from the point scoring against each other to make sure that they kind of are seen to be front and center in these new in these new measures. But they're all talking about this 100 and 70 billion in on deposit in basically, Irish families have that amount of money in deposit. The banks aren't giving any return. I think the return that they're giving them overall is about point 2% a year. So obviously the banks are creaming that in, and they're saying, Oh, well, what have we invested all this money and created wealth for ourselves? And if anyone doesn't believe me, well, I shared, I did an interview with Pat Kenny so on, on live radio, national radio, about this. And I probably say it every second episode on trap. So I've been, I've been banging on about this for ages and ages. Finally, it seems that this is about to happen, and this now we can start creating legacy stuff in our country. We can start creating wealth ourselves. We're not dependent on the government, because we will not always be in the great position that we're in. There was a report last week that 44 over 40% of our corporation tax take comes from three companies. Three companies. Imagine if any of us had a, had a had a business where and go, Yeah, Jesus. If one of those guys left, you know, I'd be right, be rightly screwed. You'd be going, well, that's a terrible, terrible business model. So it is a terrible business model. So we need to do lots of things to try and fix that, and one of them is by allowing us to create wealth for ourselves in this country, which finally, it looks like we will be able to do.

Alan Smith:

Could you get your man, your finance minister, to have a word with ours, with Rachel, because this side, because Ireland seemed to be, as you keep reminding us, thriving as an economy. Well, someone needs to understand that lowering tax rates can often actually lead to higher tax revenues. Yeah, we don't seem to understand that in the UK right now.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, and they're saying basically that that's a, you know, that that's one of the reasons so the capital gains tax was 20% it went to 40% they brought it down to 33 and they're saying that the capital gains take at 20% was much higher than it is a 33% because people are kicking, yeah, yeah. So it's like, this is obvious stuff. This is like, get, let's get, let's get investment moving. Let's allow Irish businesses to scale here so they stay here instead of bugging

Nick Lincoln:

off to America. Well, sadly, Carl, what's what's obvious to the Irish is not obvious to. British presently, yeah, sorry about that, boys, yeah, by the way, all comes around. What goes around comes around, okay, yeah.

Andy Hart:

This is just very more more, more grim news when it comes to people managing their finances. It was an article in the Times, but the company that did the research was company called Spring, I believe there's some sort of cash advisor, cash management company. Basically 87% of the UK's current accounts pay no interest as of November 2025 so that's the information came in some time ago. So there's basically 325 billion hell dot zero interest rates, and a lot of them have high balances as well. So a lot of them are over 10,000 pounds, and a lot of them are over 100,000 pounds. So again, we are trying to do all we can with incentive, strives, behavior. We're limiting the amount that the young ones complain to cash ISIS. They were trying to direct them to investment isas. They're trying to fiddle around with some other some of the other incentives, to direct the money to the UK into certain type of asset classes. We're trying to promote and invest in culture. But as I said on last week's Two weeks ago show there is so much marketing activity going on at the moment with investment platform directly and if the corporate marketing firepower can't change people's behavior, then we are slightly in a bit of a problem. So hopefully it does slightly over time switch people from savers to investors. But switching from a saver to an investor is a big mindset shift, and not everybody can do it. So yeah, just a load of cash paying naught percent. And it's potentially worse for businesses as well. We all run businesses in the UK, we know that business balances are normally higher than personal balances, and they pay sweet FA in actual fact, we pay them to pay us nothing on our money. There are various ways we can find better returns, but it's a lot more jumping through hoops than it is for personal individuals. So there's probably close to a trillion pounds paying, you know, no money, no interest on cash in the UK. Over to you boys,

Nick Lincoln:

well, our work is never done. I think you just said it there. But it'll never change. It'll never change. That's, that's not that. That's, I think it's the

Alan Smith:

point, though, and we probably alluded to it before. I do see that as a great kind of prospecting opportunity, really, for business owners. Because there is, I, what did I see the other day? Two, 30 billion or something. There was, you know, hundreds of billions are in SME bank accounts, much of which is not, it's just sort of, it's not day to day money, it's long term. I've got a bit of surplus profit. I'm not taking out the company now, because they're gonna get rinsed once again on tax. So leave it in the company earning zero inflation. And by the way, there's a whole other thing there on inflation. Don't, don't use CPI figures when it comes to business owners. Business, if anyone running a business knows, once you add in your salary costs, your energy, your regulatory costs in our line of work, and a bunch of other things, I did a calculation a while ago that inflation is more is more like eight or 9% in SMEs, UK, SMEs, and you're if you're getting bugger all, I mean, doesn't take too many years of compounding, it losing 8% of real value to get wiped out. So I think it's a great opportunity for advisors to open doors with because there are but we know just very simplistically, the likes of transact offer a decent rate on corporate accounts, corporate investments. There's a bunch of other things are available also. But if I was a business owner, someone reached out to me and told me that those facts, I'll be open to a conversation about how to not have my money just melt like an ice cube in front of me.

Nick Lincoln:

Interesting. Okay, okay, I'm staying with you. Ultra Yeah, three of us, yeah, sure.

Andy Hart:

This is something that I have mentioned before, but I'm gonna mention it again because I write about it in the in the paper at the weekend. This is all about this making tax digital. So from the sixth of April 2026, this year, if you're a sole trader and run a relatively small business, but your revenue is over 50,000 pounds, and you're a landlord, and the revenue of your property income is over 50,000 pounds, or you run a sole trader business, Anna and and you're on landlord, and the grand total of your turnover goes over 50,000 pounds. Your life is going to be turned into very different tax reporting structure. Currently, you keep everything, typically, you keep everything in a shoe box. Once a year you pull the shoe box out, give your plastic bags and shoe box to a bookkeeper and an accountant. They knock something up, then do a submission. It's all changing. You need to have digital accounting software like Xero, a free agent. You need to submit every quarter to the revenue so your so your reporting requirements have gone from one a year to five a year, currently at. 50,000 pounds. Next year, April 2027 it's going to go down to 30,000 pounds. And in April 2028 you're going to go down to 20,000 pounds. This is hairdressers, massage therapists, taxi drivers. It's going to be millions and millions and millions of people paying loads and loads of additional costs for accountancy software for a start, 20, 3040, quid a month an accountant to look after it, the submissions to be done every quarter, it is insane. So again, it's more landmines for small business owners to navigate. It's more reporting requirements that the revenue is going to do something with, or not. I don't really know. I mean, I'm personally caught up by but I've got an account and I got accounting software, so my life's going to be changed by about, you know, 2% my accountant, I'm assuming, is probably going to charge a few extra pennies. But, you know, I'm already geared up for it and ready, but a lot of people are not over to you.

Nick Lincoln:

Nick, yeah, my points to what end to what bloody end? They're still going to get the same amount of tax back. They're just going to be keeping their eye on us four times a year, or whatever. Yeah, leave us alone. I read an article I can't remember. Maybe smithy, you posted in our chat that some of the DLCs are gonna have less reporting schedules than some of these smaller, you know, like the guy with a buy to let and the girl with a hairdressing business. But something else over here, we're reporting more to HMRC on a more regular basis. They're massive, massive if single entities, it's just like, if, piss

Andy Hart:

off, if you, if you run a sole trader that is that registered like I do, I've now got to do nine reporting events a year. I've got to do make tax digital every quarter. I've got to do a VAT return every quarter, and I've got to do my official return. Do my official return nine. It's just administration help. There was, there was some one property Nick that brings in 21,000 pounds a year. You're now caught up by make tax. Did sorry, when it comes in in 2028 so it's just hell.

Alan Smith:

There's, there was a report in the papers of the weekend saying that there's a significant amount of people on that sort of on the cusp of those earnings, who just say, You know what, I'm going to can it. It's just not worth it for the money. Once again, once I paid my tax, it's going to stay at 20 grand a year. Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm just going to count it. I'm just going to, I'm going to claim some benefits, I'm going to get state pension. I'm going to retire. Yep, yeah. They don't seem to think

Carl Widger:

through genuinely, don't think we have any of that in Europe. Yeah.

Andy Hart:

Okay, good. Well done. Okay, so, I mean, just to make it advisor relevant, just be on the front foot a bit with some of your clients. Sort of got caught up by this, because I don't think some people realize how you know, onerous. This is going to be Nicholas.

Alan Smith:

It reminds me of, you know, you're in auto enrollment was brought in for pensions and but if you had any, it started off with, you know, it was the biggest companies, 500 employees and 100 and then it now is, as far as I'm aware, you boys, correct, quite seamless, wrong, but it's no, but it's now, if you've got one employee, yeah, so I knew, I knew, I've known clients that have got, like, a nanny or a housekeeper or something. It does a few up, but they're, but they're a proper employee and and they've got to auto enroll them into a pension scheme. Now it's just

Nick Lincoln:

a traffic chapel to enrollment scheme. Yeah, we should look forward to that. Happy days are here. Again, not happening. It's all done by a salary.

Andy Hart:

We could get a SAS and buy bitcoin through it.

Nick Lincoln:

Oh, my God, Bitcoins, future values,

Andy Hart:

future onion. Let's get let's

Nick Lincoln:

get, let's get some order here. Order, order, order. We're gonna lead off with our final topical tidbit, which leads to a very nice segue to the next part of the show. But to get us started, it is storyteller.

Alan Smith:

I just wanted, yeah, to tee this up this. It was, it's been a while since we discussed in detail artificial intelligence a i But there's been some events in recent times that have suggested that we should probably bring it back onto the agenda, and we're going to take a deeper dive in a moment or two with a thoughtful conversation, I hope. But yeah, I don't know if you guys saw there was a couple of things just last week. Everything seemed to blow up and or in the space of a couple of days. And there was a piece of technology launched in the US, I think Carl's going to give it a bit more detail, which kind of seemed to do the job of a financial planner. There was an article that was written that seemed to just go viral across all social media. Got hundreds of millions of views and people and all the investment companies in the UK, in the US, the share price absolutely created and fell significantly. So I'm just going to bring it, sort of attacked different industries, didn't it? And over the last like couple of months, well, it went through information services. Was. Down, and then the other thing, management. But, yeah, you're right, because all these SaaS companies, all these, you know, all these businesses that do software as a service, they've had their share price really hit hard, because you're seeing well, all these things that you spend 50 pound, 100 pound a month on, you can just have created for your own personal version of it using all the latest versions of AI. And I think this specific thing was this, the article, which went viral, was an AI software engineer. That was his business, is what he did. And he said, right, it's game over. Because even my business is out of business because this AI is now is doing this recursive training. Is training itself. I'm out of a job, and I just find it this is really, I did a LinkedIn post about it, got a lot of attention and people, and obviously I'm taking a positive stance on it, but you could take the alternative, and it is quite interesting. I mean, Carl, you had a look at this piece of technology that's launched in the US. I did.

Carl Widger:

I follow these guys for a good number of years now, and they've been funny because I was like, I loved all the stuff that they were coming out with. I think they started just just prior to covid.

Nick Lincoln:

Actually could tell the listener who you're referring to,

Carl Widger:

altruist, so Jason Wenk, I think is the guy's name could be wrong on that, but I nearly sure I'm right in that. But they bought, they actually bought in hazel.ai, is it our IO or AI, yeah, yeah. So, but, but they, they didn't bring anything forward around that time when I was going, this all sounds amazing, and I'll tell you why I put this in, right? So, so my point in the in our show notes is, is Hazel The Holy Grail, right? And is the holy grail what we would have spoken about before, which is like doing your financial planning, your CRM, your platform, your your your meeting notes, your review documents, you know, doing it all in one package, right? And then it seems like hazel is trying, at least to do an awful lot of this, and has a bit of tax planning in there as well. Now, from what I could see, it's only US based tax planning, right? So for me, I was like aghast that Hazel comes out, and they launch it, and then SJP and all the wealth managers out there, all the share price dropped, because little old us have been talking about this for ages, that this is surely coming. So like, I have said, you know, and we've all agreed that, yeah, that's the Holy Grail. Don't think anyone is really doing it, yeah, well, surely that's been worked on. So, like, is this groundbreaking AI that has just hit the news? It's absolutely not. So that's that's from Hazel but, but surely Hazel and its likes will be, there'll be loads of them now coming out, and we'll all be deciding, well, which ones do we go with so many new coaches? And you know, do we pay 20 euros a month, or do we pay 200 a month to get the premium version? And is it worth it? And blah, blah, blah, to bring our, you know, our voyant looking at this, our platforms, looking at this, whatever, right? Bring it all together and make it easier, and then allow us do the real financial planning, which is a softer skills so this, this doesn't, I'm totally an island side here, right? This just gives us loads more time to absolutely smash it in terms of the value add, right, to get, to get, tie everything open and, like, even I could see, like, you know, how our financial planners, our client service folks, will be so excited to use all of this technology. I don't think this is like, oh, jobs will be gone. I think this is like, you know, if you're doing real financial planning, this is like, this is the holy grail. This is what we should be going for. The article, the post that went viral. Allen, right, I saw kind of a tongue in cheek. Hey, I'm a hot dog owner. I've run hot dogs for the last 20 years. You wouldn't believe what's going on in hot dogs. At the moment, you should just go out and buy a load of hot dogs. You know, there was an element of that, and I lost the will to live reading it. I thought it was, yeah, far too long for my little brain. But, you know, there

Andy Hart:

isn't, there's good. I think it's worth reading it, people good, or where I have an opinion on

Carl Widger:

it, yeah? Well, yeah, but yeah, I don't know it sounded like the, you know, the guy extolling the virtues of his own services or whatever, but I guess were we to talk? That's the word of this podcast every couple of weeks. But yeah, that's there's good and bad with AI. I really can't I was scratching my head. Am I missing something here? We're not talking about that this was surely coming. And can

Alan Smith:

I just, I just want to chip in here on this call now, and something I'm always acutely aware of, or actually have to remind myself of, and without. Wishing to sound like elitist or arrogant or anything else the four of us, we've been talking about this sort of stuff for years, and we operate in a bubble, though. I mean, Andy Hart knows this more than the other three of us here, but we are a unique part of the advisory community. I'm telling you we I mean, last time I asked Andy this very same question, he estimated was about 10% of the financial planning community do what we call full fat financial planning, really comprehensive, in the weeds, cash flow, modeling, all that good stuff. A the significant majority of financial planners in the UK do like investment advice, basically bad investment. Consolidate funds, you know, you consolidate your pensions, all that sort of transactional stuff that doesn't add much value. Yeah, and charge, let's call it 1% a year for the privilege of doing that now. Yeah, those people, I do believe, are under threat, just just on a fee compression. I'm not saying they're gonna lose all their clients, yeah, but they're good again. There's an

Carl Widger:

article I shared as well. Alan is in the show notes, which is, it was in the Irish Times, but it was actually was actually a Financial Times article, and it was like, hey, chat GPT, create me the best portfolio possible. He gave his everyone should definitely read this if you're in our business, right. He said, I'm 53 I've got 700 grand. I want to grow to a million. I want to see what chat GPT, like give out. Now it's possibly far too complex for what we would give, however. And here's the big however, it's not far too complex for what a lot of the private banks or the big wealth managers would give. That's exactly what they would give out and chat GPT just gave him, in 30 seconds, exactly what he would get when he's in sitting around the mahogany table feeling a bit stupid. So, so yes, there, there's, that's probably a very fair point Alan, that what we do and what to be what the managers do is not the same.

Alan Smith:

And are they? They're opening up in Ireland big time as well. Aren't they? Open? Ai, chat, GPT, yeah,

Carl Widger:

so there's, so there's, there's swings around about, yeah, open. Ai, got a building for 500 new jobs in Ireland, right?

Nick Lincoln:

Somebody referenced an article with the hot dogs. Is the hot dog article

Carl Widger:

in the links? No, no. I could have made that up, but I read it. Okay, the

Nick Lincoln:

long ask is the Sherma one, right? Is that the moment talking about yes, right, okay, right, which we didn't reference particularly well in that piece. Okay. Well, we're all using AI to different degrees in our business, but we're all advocates for it, and one of the leading financial services focusing brands in the AI market is a company called Saturn. And that takes us neatly on to the meat of potatoes of episode 91, of the real advisor podcast, as you may have noticed, dear TRAPPIST, when we have guests on, it, is sometimes a sub optimal experience. It certainly is for us doing the recording here, and it may often be for you as the end listener. So we've reconfigured our meat and potatoes. What we're going to try and do going forward as much as we can is have more one to one or two or one interviews with people, where we can really get to have a detailed conversation with people without lags in the recording, without all four of us sometimes over talking the interviewee, and this is our first go at it. So with no further ado, let's head over to to poor Rohit vaish, who was interrogated by storyteller.

Alan Smith:

Good luck. Alan. Hello, Rohit, welcome to the real advisor podcast trap. Good to see you.

Rohit Vaish:

Hey, Alan. Yeah, lovely to be here. Thanks so much for the invite.

Alan Smith:

Well, thanks for dropping in. Object we want to discuss, which is those magic two letters A i artificial intelligence as it relates. Now I've got, I got a few questions. I want to run past you and get you kind of feeling for what's going on right now. But amazingly, and you'd be surprised to hear this, but not everyone knows who you are in the financial planning community, or indeed, who Saturn AI is. So let's start by giving us a little bit of background, your own background, and the organization that you are working with cool.

Rohit Vaish:

So I'm Rohit, a co founder of Saturn. Prior to founding Saturn, I was in financial services, so I worked at Bank of New York Mellon for four years, mainly behind Excel spreadsheets, very limited time in front of clients, but doing a lot of analysis on markets and kind of products that would sell to our actual advisor community. Since then went on to work in and found a couple of different startups, and then when I met Amal in London, my co founder, one of the topics that kind of resonated with us was financial resilience, and in particular, this thing around the advice gap. And so we started to speak with advisors, and that was probably around August. 2023 when we started to speak with advisors about their pain points and things like that, and we launched our product in Jan of 24 since then, we've grown our team to 55 and we are across 650 advice firms in the market. Currently, around 9000 advisors use the platform. And obviously there's a lot to come in terms of both depth of our service proposition and breadth in terms of market. But really today, we kind of focus on a couple of different things. So efficiency is a core tenet. We know that advice in general is inefficient. That shows up in the cost of advice being pretty high, and compliance is an incredible burden for advice firms, and that shows up in how many compliance related activities firms have to do on an annual basis, and how many of their core workflows are positioned around compliance rather than the client experience. And so for us, it's about kind of enabling firms to remain compliant at all times, but really focusing on delivering an exceptional client experience. And so that core tenet drives our product roadmap. It drives how we interact with businesses on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. But yeah, happy to get into more details and go deeper, if that's the direction you'd like to go,

Alan Smith:

yeah, that's, that's a great summary. So effectively, you have decided to, I mean, there's, I don't know how many 1000s there must be of AI companies that have sprung up over the last couple of years, but you have chosen, in your wisdom, to really focus on that vertical called financial planning and try to solve those problems, as relates to people working in that profession, both for the businesses, advisors teams and ultimately, for clients, right? That's exactly right. That's what you do. Of all the things you could have chosen, you've chosen financial planning, yeah.

Rohit Vaish:

I mean, just to, just to give you a little bit of a it's a personal anecdote, but I think it relates as to why we started here. So obviously I as a my heritage is not from the UK. I was born and brought up in Manchester or Wigan, though people don't know that, but my family immigrated here, so my dad when he was nine, and my mom when she was 19. And my dad, being the hustler that he is, he founded a business when he was 14 that he basically didn't really have any idea how the UK financial system worked. He was going to have children, and he wanted them to go to great schools and get access to opportunities that he didn't have. And so he was very fortunate, actually, to have a kind of triumvirate of service people, so accountant, financial advisor and a lawyer, and those three amongst them basically enabled him to set up the family finances in a way that not only positioned him for long term growth and success, but also enabled him to give me and my sister opportunities that he could have only dreamed of. And when we distill it down, like omel has his own personal anecdote that relates him to this mission. When we distill it down, financial planners are the trusted financial service authority for many clients, 8 million clients across the UK today and families and we don't believe that globally, that is scaled enough. So today, 90 million people access financial advice globally. We think that should be at least 10x that. And that's not to say that all of that should be humans doing 234, meetings a year, but everyone should have access to trusted financial planning advice. And for us, when you look at the UK in particular, and you look at other adjacent markets in the Commonwealth, there are a huge number of regulatory challenges that firms have historically solved through adding people and adding process and bureaucracy that in this moment, and obviously last week's sell off, is an interesting reaction from the market, but in this moment, I think it's more pertinent than ever for us to focus on the future of human led financial advice and how we can enable that to be scaled across many more people, across many more sectors and parts of the country, people who haven't typically had access. And I think technology forms a core part of that. But technology has never been the magic bullet, and so we would always say that this human led advice is going to be empowered and augmented through technology, but it is not in and of itself. Technology is not, in and of itself, the solution to all problems and ailments. Interesting.

Alan Smith:

I love your mission, and thanks for sharing your personal story. I often find that people who are really driven come it comes from something personal, obviously, your your dad's backstory and your own family. I'm wanting to take this to a wider audience, because you're right. It's still an exclusive offering, really. Financial Planning of any description is, I think the numbers, about 9% of the adult population in the UK have a financial will pay for financial advice, leaving 91% without access for one one reason or another. Now you just mentioned, and this is the key thing. This is why I want, wanted to have it, have you on and discuss this, particularly at this moment in time, because all of a sudden, as you just referred to very recently, a couple of things happened across the marketplace, and everyone started really paying attention. The startup, Fintech startup in the US altruist, launched a what looks to me like a very valuable but relatively straightforward tax planning tool. Haven't looked at it or tried it, and at the same time, I don't know if it was related, but I'm going to take the view it was. There was a post went viral across all social media from a software engineer, someone who's running an AI business in the US, and he just said, everything has changed now, because AI is now finally broken through. It has now got to the level where these models are so advanced that they're training themselves. Is, I think they call it recursive. So they're all development and training, and the whole thing is speeding up super quickly. Now those things happened, I think, one day, and then the following day, all the major wealth managers, asset managers, fund groups in the UK and a lot of them in the US as well, the share price, relative, share price is absolutely crashed. SJP fell, AJ, Bell, Aberdeen, all the usual suspects, and across the pond, Raymond James and a bunch of others as well, the share price fell quite a lot, and literally, well, 10s of billions in the UK and hundreds of billions across the US were effectively wiped off the share prices. And that was the market's immediate sentiment to some of these new breakthrough developments, some of the commentary that's out there in social media and some of the conversations that seem to be happening pretty much on a daily basis. So and then, obviously, ever the opportunist I posted on LinkedIn about that, my take on it, I don't if you had a chance to see that, but seemed to be very popular. Most, most people were in agreement with me. But my take on this was in summary, and I will post the link to that LinkedIn post in the show notes, if people haven't seen it, was, this is amazing. It's fantastic. I see it as really positive and see it really as good news. But if we've got anything to go by and as history is our only real guide that we've got, every time there's transformational technology throughout history, more opportunities, more work, more types of jobs are created. Yes, there's disruption, but there's a future level of abundance that is much greater than it's ever been in the past. That's my that's my view. Obviously you might say I've got a vested interest in that being the case, but just love to have your thoughts, observations on all that activity, share price activity, my post, and anything else you think is relevant to this conversation,

Rohit Vaish:

yeah, so I think the sell off is a pretty instinctive reaction from the market that says and signals. So the signal, rather than the noise, that we should take from it is that there are going to be shifts around business models. There are going to be shifts around kind of the underlying structure of a Financial Planning and Investment focused business. And the way you'll see those structural changes happen will be through income statements and balance sheets and how some of those historic costs start to get repositioned and re put into growth activity, because you don't need that level of cost to be kind of ingested by the business. I think that you're absolutely right. And I think Alan this actually speaks back to a few conversations that we had at the very beginning when we first were introduced to each other, which was your belief that we are entering a golden age of financial planning. And I think you said that on a couple of public facing videos too. But my my view, and our view at Saturn is that, yes, there is an opportunity, yes there is risk, as is always the case when the internet came to be it repriced a number of businesses that relied on High Street. Reprice a number of businesses that relied on more shop front rather than online service delivery. That's 100% true, but what remains in our minds is that human beings will always trust human led advice much more in those pivotal moments where it comes to me sending my children to the right school or university, me paying for my parents to get the care that they need as they move through the ages. That is not going away. That has been true since the shamans and the Oracles back in ancient Greek, in ancient Greek times, and that is true today. Why are financial advice businesses and financial planners in particular, so valuable is because they are the tribe. Source for financial related activities. And our view is that those who modernize, those who adopt this technology, will steamroller those who don't and those who cower in fear. And ultimately, I think as business owners, financial planners and directors of these businesses need to be very open to what the business model change could look like, notwithstanding the fact that on the front and on the face of it, there will be human to human led advice. At its core everything else around it is the things that we need to look at. We need to understand, where does the value sit for me and my business, and how do I use this technology to take out some of those non valuable elements, and to add more value to my clients, if we look at the cost to serve in the UK, it's around 2000 pounds a year for an annual review client that you serve once that is incredibly high, and 70% of that is human related admin. Now imagine if you take that human related admin and condense those costs not to 70% but to actually only 10% or a fraction, at least of the cost to serve. You cut down the cost to serve. That's not to say you have to reprice. It's to say that now you can reallocate some of those resources to being more valuable. A financial guide to your clients. And what do we mean by that? Well, what we mean by that is, if you look at Hazel, there's a funny story about Hazel. Hazel were in our Y Combinator batch in San Francisco, and they were called time. They were acquired by altruist in June of 2025, and they called their AI note taker. And some of the other solutions that they had Hazel and now, obviously, what they've launched is a tax planning solution that, as you say, is relatively simple, but what it speaks to is that people don't understand markets. Don't understand the value of human led financial advice, though it will remain, consumers will not move away from human led financial advice. What we as an industry have to think about now is that we have to think about, how do we adopt and adapt to this technology in the way that we operate, in our processes, in the way that we serve clients. Can I go from giving my clients 234, touch points to being to having a scheduled touch point once a month? Perhaps they don't value it. Some might say that's too much, but imagine all of the things you can start to do with access to this compute otherwise known as artificial intelligence, that will enable you to add parts to your proposition that have not been possible before. That's how I would encourage people to think. I would encourage people to think in a similar way to you, optimistically about what we can do for clients and how many more clients we can serve. What types of new proposition can we launch for client segments that we have not previously served, that those would be the questions that would be running through my head. And I think, by the way, the market sell off reaction is basically a sell off reaction to being kind of confronted with this world changing technology and distribution, but still unclear as to where that money goes. Right, the markets will kind of probably normalize over the next two to four weeks, because people will start to kind of get used to the news that AI is here, and AI is taking a leap forward. But the true repricing will come over the next five years, in which business models will have to change and adapt. Rather than being kind of focused on the cost base, we can start to think about value and add to the value that we as an industry provide.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, very interesting. Now it strikes me that as we have moved, and I'm if you've been in this game for more than a decade or 15 years, as I obviously have the it's an industry. What has happened is we've moved from a sales industry to a service profession. And the majority of the work that my colleagues do, and I think most financial proper, financial planners, and the people that tune into this podcast air full fat, financial planning is servicing existing clients. Most businesses are, you know, spend 80, 90% of the time probably looking after existing clients, attending annual planning meetings, follow ups, preparation and what and what have you. But if you break down the actual, as you say, is 2000 pounds, arguably more, in certain parts of the country to service an existing client. A great deal of that is repetitive, administrative gathering data from various places, uploading it into various spreadsheets, charts, presentational graphs, following up PDFs, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. There's lots of kind of moving parts, right? And as data being extracted from multiple different sources, strikes me that that's that's a potential big win, if you can really distill down the core aspects of this, which most people call or everyone's got a version of it an annual planning meeting. So I'm going to prepare very, very well for it. I'm going to do the delivery of it in, ideally in person, human to human, and then I'm going to do the follow up, and it's the prep and the follow up. If we can really shrink that down, make it super efficient, high quality, highly personalized, I think we can that. That's a significant win. Would you agree? Is there things going on at Saturn to help with that?

Rohit Vaish:

Yeah, so I completely agree. With you, Alan, I think one of the core mission for us, as I said at the beginning, is to increase the number of people who have access to this brilliant service that this industry has provided for many years. And when you think about what a financial planner does at the moment, like you say your annual planning meeting, preparing for it. I know at Capital, you guys are very focused on holistic financial planning. I think some firms haven't been able to offer that because there is too expensive or they don't have the right tools and the right technology. I would say that what tools like Saturn should be angled towards is, how do I as a financial planner get closer to the center of that family's life, family's financial life, in particular, and what are all of the peripheral services around that that I need to start providing to my clients to ensure that they are receiving the best of me and the best of my expertise. The annual planning meeting is a great opportunity for you to check in with your clients as to how things are going and what's happening in their life, whether it's positive, negative or in between. And the tools that we're building will have built and deployed. So quite a number of firms now are using kind of our annual review meeting, kind of workflow, the tools that we're building are really to take out some of that fatty admin that exists. We want the industry to provide a better service, not saying that it's bad, saying that it's actually really good, because clients keep coming back, and NPS scores in this industry are very high. Somewhere in the region of 85 to 90 is the NPS score of a financial advice client. And so we're not saying that it's bad, but we're saying that if you remove all of the admin, you could become more integrated with that client's financial life. You could provide them with more opportunities to achieve their financial goals and well beyond. And we need to start thinking of as you said, that world of abundance innovation accelerates us towards better advice. And so whilst the market will move and repricing will happen, Jeff Bezos has a great quote, which is, markets in the short term are like a barometer, but in the long term, they're a weighing machine. And a weighing machine is kind of this long lasting thing. A barometer moves every day or every hour. And so what we need to start doing as an industry is focus on the core we are at our core service professionals who help clients. Go from A to B. Help clients go from pre retirement to retirement. Help clients go from retirement into their later years, where they can hand money down to their kids, provide all those opportunities that they need. That is our job, and we as a technology company are in service of that. So if we're not building the tools that are going to help you do that people should hold us accountable to it. But I promise you, all of our roadmap is designed around this kind of admin process that exists to put the financial planners more at the center of their clients financial life.

Alan Smith:

Absolutely spot on. And I remember one of our early conversations with your co founder of my conversation with Amal and and he was just saying so the way that he envisaged it, the service, the experience proposition is ultimately, it's like two old friends meeting for a cup of coffee and a conversation. That's the the essence of the client relationship we get. We kind of know each other. We're having healthy conversations, and we're using our intellect, our knowledge, our wisdom as advisers and consultants to sort of join the docs whilst everything else, all the technical aspects, the admin, the compliance, is being taken care of to a super high standard, which in turn enables better quality conversations, longer conversations, more frequent exchanges, conversations, meets Up, cups of coffee, Zoom calls whatever it needs, which creates that kind of emotional glue that makes the whole thing worthwhile. And frankly, that's why most people come into the profession, is to do more of that and less Excel spreadsheets and compliance reports. Let's face it, so we'd love to hand all that stuff across to Saturn and firms like you now I'm conscious of time because I know that my co host on trap mr. Lincoln will be getting edgy because we're pushing up against the time limitations. Just a couple of just very brief things as we wrap up. It was very apparent to me from when I posted that on LinkedIn and some of the feedback I got that there are, there are people on various different parts of the journey. Some people are pretty deep in the weeds and have been sort of pretty active with AI and development in the advisory space of the last couple of years. And others literally have done nothing. They've taken a look at chat GPT and thought too complicated. What's your advice to somebody who's definitely very early stages, recognize that there's a technological revolution happening, but doesn't quite know at this stage what the first step is that they should take. What should they do?

Rohit Vaish:

So I think it's this is always the way that I would approach change the way that we approach business building or product building, is identify the core problem. It. Musk on a podcast recently, he frames it. He always looks at solving the limiting factor to either getting another rocket into space or kind of growing Tesla in terms of number car, number of cars. I think it's the right way to think about it. As a business owner, think about what is the limiting factor for you to providing that amazing experience to your clients, or from growing from 100 clients per advisor to 120 if that's the metric that you view as success, I think have have an idea as to what the kind of limiting factor is, and then look for solutions out in the market that are going to help you solve that limiting factor. And so that's really how we designed Saturn from day one, was around the core pain points that advice businesses have for us, it's always around data, and so data and compliance are two things now, maybe to certain people, that sounds a little bit jargon heavy, so let me distill it. Ultimately, the reason why an advisor takes 60 minutes to do a set of notes, or a power planner has to have several conversations with an advisor to write a suitability report is because they don't have a shared source of truth when it comes to data, they don't understand that client to the depth that they need to to be able to write that advice. Now the core product that we would develop is a data capture tool, a suite of tools that enable you to capture data, convert that data into some type of usable asset that can be used by the team. So that team could be support staff, power planners, financial planning assistants, advisors over time, or compliance people. But ultimately, that source of truth, that primary source of data, needs a place and needs to be captured. And so we would say that, that when I look at advice businesses, and obviously we work with a number of them, that's for us, the core issue that we see at the heart of everything, all inefficiency comes down to access to data. And then off the back of it, you can start to power workflows. So you can start to do your suitability reports utilizing AI. You can start to run file checking. You can start to run advice, quality observations. You can start to do all of this wonderful stuff. And then, if you think about what Hazel has launched in the US, and kind of the types of tools that will enable you, as an advisor, to do more with that client's information, you can then start to run different scenarios off the back of it instantly with that information that you have. But until you have that core source of truth, it's going to be very difficult, or it's going to be erroneous. If you start to run workflows off the back of kind of half truths or 70% factual information. And so for us, it's always been about make sure that the capture of that data is happening at primary source, and then move it through different workflows. And if you when we solve these problems, we start to see huge amounts of efficiency. So there's a firm I was speaking to not that long ago, probably a couple of weeks now, who using our annual review tool. They've cut out 75% of the time that it took them to do an annual review, so they've been using meeting notes for quite some time. They added this functionality on, but we've worked with them to design their workflow to be ready for AI now, business like that is not going to get steamrollered by an AI like Claude or open Claude, or any kind of generic tool. What's going to happen is that business is going to be able to take on a number of additional clients whilst not reducing the quality of service for their existing clients. And that, for me, is the core. And then we expand out the types of services that advisors can start to bring in house as well. Fantastic.

Alan Smith:

It all sounds very positive, very optimistic. There's no question there is a technological tsunami heading our way, and it just seems to be getting bigger. You and I have been speaking for a couple of years, and pretty much it seems to me that it's speeding up now. It really is broken through as the as the guy was posting on social media, the software engineer guy last week, and you're either going to ride the wave like the firm you've mentioned, or you're going to get bowled over by it. And most of us want to be atop of that wave, riding it to success. Rohit, people are tuning into this who just want to learn more about you, learn about Saturn. Where do I send them? Where should they go to learn more about Saturn?

Rohit Vaish:

So our website is obviously a great source of information about some case studies that we've kind of put on there. And the product suite, if you want to get in touch directly with me, it's Rohit at heysaf and.com and there's a kind of booking form on our website as well that will enable you to speak to one of the team if you're looking to kind of explore the tools that we have and get started. My message for everyone who's tuning in would be, we're at an inflection point in the industry. I feel you called it a golden age probably a year and a half ago. I think that golden age is coming closer and closer, and I think that what we need to do as a business is position firms to be ready for that golden age and for all of these kind of capabilities, with security, data, privacy, and all of those things in mind, but focusing on excelling and improving that client experience. So we're super excited here at Saturn, the 55 of us, and it will grow to 60 next week, I'm sure. But we're really excited about the future of this industry and about where we as a firm. Can take our partner firms.

Alan Smith:

That's brilliant. Rohit, thanks so much for coming on trap and sharing your wisdom. Cheers on the best.

Rohit Vaish:

Thanks so much, Alan. Take care. See you.

Nick Lincoln:

Really good. Enjoyed that car. What do you think?

Carl Widger:

Yeah, I thought it was really good. I thought Alan for a change, let Rohit speak. I guess it was really good. I actually, you know, let's go back to he's talking about AI, right? But actually, the part that caught me the most about the interview was when he told his own backstory. Yeah, love the honey. Made it personal. And it's kind of, this is a mission. So, so hey, there you go. We're talking about AI. We're talking about, you know, how can we bring AI forward? But then, on the other hand, we're going, Hey, this is, this is personal, actually, this is a personal mission. Yeah, for me, guys, this is the only way forward for doing these interviews. I think we got ALA, got a lot more out of Rohit than we have ever gone out of any other guests trying to fumble around and who's next and, okay, what's going on, gaps and all that. So well done. Alan, really good. Thank you so much.

Andy Hart:

Ruiz, yeah, well done. Alan, superb interview. You're quite good at that. You should maybe set up a podcast or something.

Alan Smith:

Oh, you're so funny. You raised your hand. Oh, that's that was it? That's your point.

Nick Lincoln:

Is it okay? Let's move on. Let's move on. We're now 90 minutes into this show, and we haven't even done the the, the, whatever we call it, next segment, the TRAPPIST questions questions. I can see that you've been thrown by this new setup. Pull the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up my drive. You want to submit a question to us? Trappist? Please do so via the pin tweet on X, via the pinned X on tweet and or in the link, in the so called show notes, a permanent link where we do get these questions. We do order them in chronological order. And I think we're through to September of last year. And this is quite a good one. This today's episode by hook or by crook is somehow coalesced around the idea of AI. Bit of AI in the topical tidbits. Lot of AI was with from Saturn in the meat and potatoes, and some AI in the question from a chap who I believe, as I opened up his letter is called, let's have a look. Chris Raynor, Chris, he's on LinkedIn, so his profile being the so called show notes. Chris Rayner asks, leaving this as an open question, given your extensive experience, what are your thoughts on the Microsoft report that put personal financial advisors in the top 40 jobs to be impacted by AI? And I'll go very quickly on this. We did kind of address it in the tail of the topical tidbits. And I'm trying to acknowledge my own biases on this. I might have an enormous blind spot, maybe we all do. So I'm cognizant of that, but I don't think it should affect, as Carl alluded to, it shouldn't affect what we do, because what we do is very much human. It's emotion driven. And I think AI creates the chance to add massive value by streamlining the more automated parts of our business, the more sort of tech Info LED Side creates more time for the human contact where we can just reinforce our message to people on a one to one footing. That's, that's, that's me, me gone. No one's raised their hand. So I presume

Alan Smith:

I would just, I would just add that these be like Microsoft or whoever, they don't really understand it's the trouble. Don't understand the job or the role. What I would say is, and it's, this is a pretty hard hitting comment, but the traditional, the traditional role of a paraplanner, what we call a paraplanner, in my opinion, that's done. That is gone. It's just a matter of when, and it'll come sooner, rather later, as somebody who sits down and take and takes information from a written note or a spreadsheet or something interprets that and understands it to the same that that role is really going to fundamentally change. You'll still, for the time being, you'll still need people doing quality control and checking things, but there's no human can do that better than a machine. So that traditional role, I think, is gone, but the actual, the real job of a proper financial planner, no, that is now going to be enhanced, as we've already alluded to.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, I mean, I'm equally excited and equally petrified about what's going to happen with AI, so I can't call this one yet, but we certainly can't get overconfident. We can't, you know, assume that there's not going to be a huge amount of disruption Yeah, because at the moment, we are all utilizing it ourselves. We know clients are and we're sort of at that sort of hybrid sort of stage with it. Financial Advisors is always on the list of jobs to go whenever new technologies comes out. So far, that's not happened, and we've been safe, but, yeah, this, this new iteration of software and technology. It's going to be interesting. But commission, commission, maybe I'm the only one who, during my career, might lose my job through AI, as in, you boys might just be lucky enough.

Alan Smith:

We'll live across the finishing line the next decade. He's alive,

Andy Hart:

waving at me, saying, Sorry, Andy, enjoy your last five years on the old rock and roll.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, it might also kill your software salesman role, because, boy,

Unknown:

yeah, that's true

Carl Widger:

software training, but now that is important. Like, look very quickly, I think it is right to say that the financial advisor role will it be one of the most impacted? It definitely will. It's just, I think there's, there's really good stuff coming. But you to your point earlier on about the, you know, your, your HMRC is saying that, you know, if you're over 20 grand, you have to do all this reporting, right? Sure it is going to get to a stage. You just talking your phone and say, Hey, do my tax return there, you know? So, yeah,

Andy Hart:

immediately, done anyway, yeah, yeah. So time HMRC

Nick Lincoln:

adopts that AI will be onto the next iteration. There'll be something replacing AI as

Andy Hart:

as a thought, as a thought experiment I do. I think if digital and AI get so great, will I ever get rid of my accountant? No, I'm not going to get rid of my accountant. My accountant can use software, you know, in the back end, in the front end, it can mean it can streamline his work and his his workflow. I'm still never going to get rid of my accountant. I'm still gonna have a human that I call up to talk about things, discuss other things, you know, the human side of it, this,

Carl Widger:

for example, like saying I'm a best selling author. That day is gone. It's like talking to, you know, hey, write me a book on

Nick Lincoln:

top three selling authors

Andy Hart:

in one chart in a online trading

Carl Widger:

times got right in at the end of where that's going to be that's going to matter. I think

Andy Hart:

I'm just going to be producing horrendous books Carl, in five seconds, aren't they? I think we're good even now, when you, when you, when you text someone on WhatsApp, this had a lot of deep thought, you've got to make it look like not AI. So this weird thing going back

Carl Widger:

completely, but this is what we're being told, is that AI won't look like aI anymore. It's going to look like it just, you know,

Alan Smith:

the best. Over time, over time, we get better and better, because it's all just built on data, just but, by the way, there's a bunch of things that we might come back to this again, but my my team are because we've all got data in our businesses, the ability to extract, and every day you get more data. And so in time, in I don't know, in a year from now, we're going to have communications that are going to be every bit as kind of real and human and eloquent as any of us are.

Andy Hart:

Just sorry, just a bit of a side story. I am we. We sent our first humans under management premium feedback survey to all of our members. So anyway, we've got 100 replies back. It was very, very detailed data that we got back. We threw it into Claude and said, you know, basically, tell us what we need to know and all the things we need to improve. My God, the spreadsheet that it created, and literally five minutes. It's insane. It would have taken a team of 10 people to go through that and hours and hours and hours. I know everybody's got stories like this, but, but wow, see it in action, and when it produces this stuff is phenomenal. So I would,

Alan Smith:

I would encourage, and I would say this, encourage people to read the LinkedIn post is one of my better ones recently, because I do make the point you just made. Andy about accounting, I pay through my company, our accountant a five figure sum, but I could get zero, or whoever to do it for a couple of 100 pounds. But Paul, my accountant, is a, is a strategic planner. He's a thinking partner. He's we, you know, we, you know. He's just, he's a thought leader, and we discussed these things, and he's worth every penny. And by some weird coincidence, I met him about two days after. I didn't think he was even on LinkedIn. I even on LinkedIn. He said, Oh yeah, I saw you. I saw your note the other day. Oh yeah. But this is the point, if somebody was and is a basic bean counter accountant who just filed your taxes, I yeah, I don't know. Well, I wouldn't be paying premium fees for them. Book. I wouldn't be paying premium fees for them. I want, maybe I still want a human to just to double check before I submit it to HMRC. But those things will change because you boys with your Tesla's and your self driving cars, you, I mean, they used to not me, those two. Yeah, those two. But remember, you know these self driving taxis, Ubers and what have you. They used to have a driver sitting alongside in the car, and then they had it controlled with a control center, and now they don't have anything, because they know they are safer than any human being. So that will come in fullness of time. Interesting times, okay?

Nick Lincoln:

Nicholas, right. Time is we're being very flabby with time on this episode. Rock it up. Good question there from Chris Rainer, thank you for that, Chris. Hope to see you at trap live, where you can interrogate us. Furthermore, okay, let's come on to the last designated segment of the show, which many people call culture corner. Okay, so friend of the. Show. Good man. Justin King, excellent salesman for Cissy. He tapped me up on the last day of the Ciss conference discount, which was a last week or so ago. And yes, I'm going now to the city conference in Windsor. And I think you're going Ultra. Can't comment about Alan's not going and Carl, you're more welcome. But I'd be very surprised if you come to that. And one of the speakers at the CI event is a guy called Matthew dicks, and he's talking about storytelling, the power of storytelling. And really good episode of Matthew Dick's been interviewed by Shane parish on Shane Paris is the knowledge project, just how important is to be able to communicate. Well, the things you should look for when you have a story. You know, some of it's obvious, beginning, middle and end, but how you throw out an interesting start and then you work back to how that start originated. And he's got a book out as well, which is on my Kindle. So thank you Justin for roping me into sissy, and thank you for getting me to, inadvertently to buy that book by Matthew dick so, but they're well worth the things. That episode, it goes on for 80 minutes or so. Okay, the next item is unattributed, so I'm gonna guess it's Smith.

Alan Smith:

Oh no, that's I'm the next one. Dan, I thought that was part of your, part of you, one Google thing, although, no, okay,

Carl Widger:

no, I thought so. I did not put it in.

Alan Smith:

Will ignore that. We'll ignore that and go on to my, my proper one, which is keeping up with the tradition and all our, all of our focus on being corporate athletes. Athletes, corporate athletes. I know that Carl's just come back from his training regime down in the Indian Ocean, doing some head lifting down there. I'm sure, looking forward to seeing you in the flesh. And Carl, I've just invested in you see these guys, this body pod for human health is like it's a scales, but it does these. It's got metal handles, and it tests all your all your data, all your numbers that people used to go in for this DEXA body scan type thing, cost of fortune. But this, you can just do it in your home. It's a body part. It just tracks all the data and therefore encourages you to have a healthier life. The one thing I will say, if the

Carl Widger:

weight, if the weight, reading, isn't depressing you enough, this is going to absolutely just nail

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, and you can do it every day just to get extra depressed. I mean, I quite

Alan Smith:

like the fact that my, my, what do you call it, somewhere or something, that my age according to this is less than it actually is in real life. So too, it's about the only positive thing I could see. But it's, I think it's pretty good. Actually, I shall be using it on a regular basis. Next body pod, next

Carl Widger:

Matthew McConaughey on the High Performance podcast. Hadn't actually listened to high performance podcast in a while. Matthew McConaughey, I just think he's brilliant, really, too. I've gone down YouTube holes looking at much Matthew McConaughey his videos. He's there's loads of little short snippets. And if you've got a teenage son, I would recommend that you get him on to Matthew.

Alan Smith:

Good stuff. I think I saw done well, I just had my teenage son watch Wolf of Wall Street,

Nick Lincoln:

our 40 okay. Do the meat of potatoes as a segment doesn't mean we should make up for it, but just

Carl Widger:

No, but it was so much fun today. Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

okay, right. There we go. Dear TRAPPIST, I think we're at the end of the show. So episode 91 comes to a close. Please buy a ticket for trap if you haven't they are going. They are seriously going. It's going to be the event in financial services live podcast recordings happening in May. It's a very niche area, but it'll be the event of that type the best of it. So they buy tickets in Bitcoin Nick You could buy any any Far Eastern country. So another part of track slides down the U bend of Father Time. Please do leave your review on iTunes. Leave a six out of five. Take

Alan Smith:

care. That was a long one. That was good. I.

Head Shot

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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