94 - MATT ABOUZEID - Institutional to Individual: Asset Management to Full Fat FP

TRAP LIVE26 tickets on sale here: https://www.therealadviserpodcast.com/

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

• Topical Titbits
• Meat and Potatoes: Matt Abouzeid: From Provider To Planner
• TRAPist question from Stefan H
• Culture Corner

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

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:07

Matt, welcome to the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, T, T, please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the trap team to discuss. Also remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes. Doing all this really, really helps us, which means we can do more to help you. Now, let's head over to the studio for the latest pile of trap you

Nick Lincoln: 0:44

yes indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 94 of the ruin advisor podcast. Trap My name is officially Nick Lincoln, and joining me, as ever in the digital studio of doom are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Alan, the storyteller, Smith Carl della voce, the voice widger and Andy Ultra heart, Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of that absolutely nothing, so let's start unpacking it straight away with some more hanji review reads or read from my Very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain.

Andy Hart: 1:18

Heart, thank you, Nicholas, if you're, if you're, if you're not watching this on YouTube, Nicholas has got beautiful white shirt on. Looks like a bank manager, right?

Carl Widger: 1:35

Okay, so tread carefully

Nick Lincoln: 1:39

bank managers, just to run things called banks, younger listeners, viewers, listeners,

Andy Hart: 1:44

viewers, Okay, moving on. First, older

Nick Lincoln: 1:46

viewers, and it looks like the black the black tray man who should swing through windows in the Alps GTX. Anyway, go on.

Andy Hart: 1:54

Okay. So let's get cracking people. Let's keep this on track. So the first review is five stars on the Apple podcast platform. Jack McHugh, seven out of five stars, a long overdue review as a financial advisor in the wild, wild east of Singapore, where commission kickbacks and product selling lives on in full force, this outstanding podcast is a lifeline to the very few who do real financial planning, and has even inspired us to create our own band of merry men and women to exchange ideas and help rescue as many as we can from the evil clutches of the commission hunters. Thank you for giving up so much of your time wisdom and banter. You are making a difference, not just at home, but globally. The trap Academy is a master world class training for a global industry sorely in need of it. Back to you, Nicholas, that's from superb.

Alan Smith: 2:48

We know that's that's Jackie McQuillen. Nick and I met over, yeah, fantastic, very full of energy. Is Jackie, and she's absolutely flying the flag for proper financial planning way out there in Singapore. So thank you for that. Jackie. Yeah, she's,

Nick Lincoln: 3:07

she's a force of nature and great, great fun. And yeah, absolutely in the in the Wild West, she's doing her bit wild east, try and ameliorate some of the agony in the joke, keep us foreign climbs. Okay, so let's, let's put a timestamp on episode 94 with topical tip. It's just a roundup on trap live. It's happening on May the 13th. It is the event in financial services. I don't actually think anybody would dare put an event on at the same time in the evening. Would they in the City of London? They'd be lunatics who would do that? Because no one would. Because this is the event. It has pretty much sold out. If by the time this gets down your lug holes, chances are, if you go on the trap website, the real advisor podcast, calm. It might have sold out. Have a good like, have a click, but we literally are there any left? It's like a handful. That's the end of that in the show called show notes. Hold on the links there, where we're meeting up, who meeting up with what we're doing beforehand. And he says something to me, again, it's really good. Really helps the flow.

Andy Hart: 3:58

We're no longer flogging, I do I've got it earlier on in this episode.

Alan Smith: 4:05

I've got to position it for the audience. Please stick with us to the end. And he's just literally got off a plane from Alicante Carl, get in at 5am this morning from Malta. I'm still away. I'm in France. I've just come off a ski slope, and Nicholas Nick Nicholas would resplend it in his bank manager shirt is in North Watford, but he's got a thumping headache, so that should be a great episode.

Carl Widger: 4:29

And the funny thing about this is the two boys had a pop up off each other about how they appeared, and the only, the only person looking anyway, remarkable if you go on YouTube, is Alan Smith, who is resplendent in his ski gear from his ski chalet somewhere in France, but the two boys felt that it was important just to knock each other down a little peg or two.

Nick Lincoln: 4:54

Move on. Move on. Okay, let's start off. Let's put a timestamp on this in this episode. So. And we are leading off with you, story teller, I just

Alan Smith: 5:04

want to briefly announce we are launching trap track. Trap track is a it's a survey. It's we want to get the understanding. Are we told you about this? Look, there's loads of scrappy

Andy Hart: 5:22

version one on what may it is.

Alan Smith: 5:25

This is, this is what we are doing. Trust me, it's we need to know this. Let's face it, there's lots of kind of reviews and surveys on the marketplace, a lot, a lot, you know, some quite reasonable, some quite decent, but as far as I'm aware, they're all put together by industry consultants, people who have gone out and asked various advisors and constituents and participants in the marketplace, and we felt it was about time that we really got a pulse on what was really going on in the lives of real financial planners and in the art TRAPPIST audience. So over the next week or so, if we get our act together. So maybe the next week or two, we are going to be sending out a brief survey. Take you less than five minutes, probably more like three or four minutes to complete, because we really want to get a sense of what's going on, what the issues, the opportunities, the challenges, and really got to get a feel for what's going on at the heart of the trap community. So this is going to be a review and a survey, and the results will be published in advance of trap live, and we'll be sharing them with the community and hopefully finding out if there are sort of core themes that are troubling people, that are people finding interesting or challenging or particular opportunities, we'll be able to share them with the audience. So it's from real life financial planners, for real life financial planners, and so stand by please. If you haven't already subscribed to our email list, our newsletter list, go to the website, which is Nick www.podcast.com, real advisor podcast.com pop your email contact details in there and stand by just to get a brief survey so that we find out what's going on at the heart of the trap community. I thank you.

Carl Widger: 7:11

That's a great idea. I'm glad we all decided to

Nick Lincoln: 7:15

do that 17 years ago. Time to percolate the top of the year. Well done, smoothly. Well done. Thank you for doing that. Okay, let's go on with well more Irish shenanigans.

Carl Widger: 7:28

This is a classic. So we have a, what we call the cab the criminal assets Bureau here, and it was set up I don't know, is it 15 or 20 years ago to basically go after gangland criminals who were like stashing all their cash. So you'd have heard of the kinahans, those kind of guys. So anyway, they came across this guy in the Dublin mountains back in 2011 and they didn't like the look of him because it was half two in the morning, so they stopped him in his fancy car and said, and he had 2000 euros worth of cannabis, hardly like a worldwide drug kingpin, but they took him in, and then they tracked him down that he had lots of different houses, and he went to all these lots of different houses, and he had all these cannabis grow houses, right? And this is back in 2011 now he was making something like there's a little part. I put the link in the in the show notes. So there's a little podcast that you should listen to. It's a brilliant, brilliant story. So this guy was well ahead of the curve, though, because he was buying Bitcoin with his ill gained profits. And they caught him. He the landlord in one of the houses realized, Oh, Jesus Christ, this guy was using it as a cannabis grow house. So cleared the place out. Unfortunately for our friend, who had bought 6000 Bitcoin at that stage, which was worth between 40 and 50 million it's now worth 360 million euros. He had put the codes for his wallets in the top of his fishing rod, which was which was then brought to the jump by the landlord, which was then brought to so they tracked it to some waste management, yeah. Very like, Well, wait here the end of this story. So anyway, they realized this has been incinerated. So this was, Oh, my God, this has been going on for years and years and years, but, and he had even broken out his wallet to 12 different, 12 different wallets, and they're all worth between 30 and 40 million here's the really interesting thing. It's a brilliant story on its own, but the really interesting thing with Europol, they have cracked the code to one of the wallets. Now, how do you do that? I don't know, but apparently. Without codes. You weren't supposed to be able to do that. They're confident they'll be able to crack the codes to the other wallets also. So this being a place where, you know nobody can ever hack it or can get into it, obviously, if the, if the, if the authorities now have found ways to hack into it? Well, people with less good intentions will be able to figure this out as well. So I wonder, is this something that will have a deep impact on the cryptocurrency world? Okay? Definitely gonna listen

Nick Lincoln: 10:39

to that interesting, a guy whose product went up in smoke, so his profits go up in smoke, but maybe not.

Carl Widger: 10:44

Yeah, and the guy, because he was, he was only done for 2000 a small amount of cannabis. He was, he's been in and out of jail, so he's now out of jail walking around. Come on, Jesus Christ, I've got three or

Alan Smith: 10:59

400 million kicking around somewhere.

Carl Widger: 11:01

Yeah, yeah. Apparently he's very depressed about it. They alluded to that in the podcast as well, but he Yeah, classic

Nick Lincoln: 11:09

psychology thing, isn't it? You know, if he'd never had that money, he would never felt as it bad. He doesn't. He never actually had it, did he really? But he's lost it now, and it's just just like, oh my god, yeah. I mean, it's like, well, it

Alan Smith: 11:21

will be, it will be into, I will check that out Carl, because, as you know that that is one of the sort of core attributes of Bitcoin. You hold it in your own private wallet. Yeah, and it should be impenetrable. Fundamentally, you'll have your own seed phrase. Seed code of random you say, is written as codes done, but they've, if they've written them down, they've found them. That's the difference. I haven't found them. But you say that the the sort of the police have effectively able to crack of all the there's whatever that is, some ridiculous trillion, billion to one chance of you getting the the right words in the right sequence in order to crack that?

Carl Widger: 11:59

Yeah, I think on that the Irish guard II were honest enough to admit that it was Europe had found, found a way to to open the wallet, and that they're confident that the other ones

Unknown: 12:12

can be okay. Interesting.

Carl Widger: 12:14

Just, it's a brilliant story, but just, you know, the the security of Bitcoin perhaps in question, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, well,

Alan Smith: 12:25

that would be that, cough candidly, that would be front page news. That would be if the whole sort of Bitcoin ecosystem security system is under threat due to the endeavors of the Irish and the European police.

Carl Widger: 12:37

That now that's a much bigger comment right there. So would it be bearing in mind who controls the news?

Alan Smith: 12:44

Oh, don't know if it's if it's crackable, which one of the main points of it is impenetrable? It is, isn't

Andy Hart: 12:51

it? Smithy?

Nick Lincoln: 12:53

Yes. Two in the weeds of this stuff.

Alan Smith: 12:56

I mean, anyway, sounds like a good story. Sounds like a Yeah.

Andy Hart: 12:59

Classic still huge,

Carl Widger: 13:01

wizards on clouds, Nick, yeah, yeah.

Nick Lincoln: 13:04

But the guy was a beekeeper. I mean, he had ambitions, given that

Carl Widger: 13:07

much he prizing. He was an award he was an award winning beekeeper.

Nick Lincoln: 13:13

Always seemed very busy. You know, the hives weren't always active, but he was always doing something. Yeah. What does what is the accent over the I do

Carl Widger: 13:28

ask me a sports question. Rd, it's, I don't know. It's a i Father. It's called, they're called fathers. So rd is how you pronounce that.

Nick Lincoln: 13:39

I'm just trying to learn Spanish, so I've got an interest. Okay, right? So here we are. Oh, this is good news. This is, this is, this is good news. And storyteller once again,

Alan Smith: 13:49

yeah, I'm not sure if it is good news overall, but this, this is the kind of breaking news that in the UK, the regulatory environment looks about to change in that the regulator, the FCA have, well, they've announced a consultation paper, as I understand it just announced last week, and there's lots, there's lots to unpack in it, but one of the key things that springs out is that they're going to do away with the need to do an annual sort of suitability review. You remember, I mean, it's been on this podcast many times in the past, some large organizations, SJP, being the main one, got kind of came unstuck somewhat for not doing or not being able to demonstrate or prove. They've been doing annual suitability reports, and they sort of patched that up and fixed that issue and paid out where was necessary. And it appears that the regulators now are saying, Do you know what? You don't need to bother doing it at all. So it, on one hand, I see that is positive. You're no longer compelled to do this sort of annual suitability report. That is the suggestion. So you and the and the idea is you would do a review, review suitability, you know, update whatever you want to call it sort of as and when. Whenever you decide is most appropriate time on a per client basis, which, in principle, that's okay, maybe, but I've got an issue with it. And the issue I've got is that there are so many things that are just taking our firm that we go through in an annual basis, and you check people's you know, whether they've got the ability to increase their isa allocation, their capital gains tax position, their pension arrangements, and each of these are a kind of, often, it's a use it or lose it type thing throughout a 12 month period, or within a tax year, there's portfolio rebalancing, and there is this kind of suitability test. There's just asking, you know, are you still employed by that company? Are you still eligible to make these contributions in the same way? So at the very least, you know, in our opinion, we'd still need to be checking in in order to deliver, continue to deliver, comprehensive, forward looking, full fat financial planning. I don't see how you couldn't have some sort of 12 monthly check in, and what concerns me a bit. And knowing this industry, and I use the word specifically, as I do, knowing this industry, often it goes to kind of lowest common denominator, and you have companies that will just say, we can just do the minimum. So we, in theory, can charge ongoing fees and say we're going to review this client every few years, or just or when the client requests it, which is going to be never. And I'm just a little bit concerned that this the really sort of, I think, the emerging professionalism that we now enjoy, particularly in the UK, due to some, you know, pretty stringent regulations over the years. And I think we are the best regulated financial services industry in the world now, I think that has most, most well we are, but as it but as a result, we've got a very robust system and encourages people to engage with advisors, to invest and to save more so than they might do in other parts of the world, let's say. And I just think, I think it's potentially a recipe to be taken advantage of all I'm saying, What do you think?

Nick Lincoln: 17:37

So I'll be confusing two things. It's the end of the annual suitability requirement, where you got to prove the products that remain suitable. It's not necessarily the the end of the annual review is, I know they often, they'll have a lot of that will overlap, but I, I mean, the annual suitability thing is that is a complete load of Horlicks anyway, isn't it? You know, every year trying to justify the products that the clients have got. My man, I barely do it once you're on a platform. You're on a platform. So if they're getting rid of that on its own, that's good. Yeah. And your point about sort of clients with, you know, the tapered annual allowance, right? You've got to look at that every year for high earners. You can't, you can't you can't just walk away from it, but you just segment those clients out and make sure, let's move at least send an email to these clients saying this, we need to have 510, minutes just to run through the numbers with you, to avoid you paying tax and so forth. But I think a bit of a looser, looser approach to it is something to be welcomed. And then they know, they know what they're paying.

Alan Smith: 18:30

It looks like it's been proposed that they're going to do away with any sort of suitability report. Again, I might have misread this, but in this a city wide article, I posted a link in the show notes, but towards the end of the article, it does say that they are probably going to do away with even just suitability reports for protection products. So, you know, you got to, you know, you got to write some suitability report justifying your advice. You know, understand the client situation. Client situation, what the challenge is, what the solution is, and saying you won't need them at all anymore. You just sort of set up a life insurance policy for somebody without the thoughtful, you know, recommendation, I don't know.

Andy Hart: 19:06

Andy, yeah, this is, this is a directional change. Regulation was getting tighter and tighter, and now that seems to be getting looser and looser. Yeah, there's a few elements to this. So it's the annual suitability of the products, As Nick said, and then the annual review or annual planning meeting, they do get sort of merged into the two at most firms, but it's not that clear exactly what's going on. And I've got a follow up point where they're going to try and again, simplify the advice rules for pensions and investments. And a key element to it, there's some boring detail, put a link to the FCA, but they're saying advisors now need to have sufficient information, not necessary information. So again, there's another little chink. There is also a, yes, it's semantics at the end of the day. But I don't know. I don't know how one is looser regulation than the other. And then the other thing is, they're going to stop this long stop when it comes to advice via the ombudsman. That's a separate point when, when that comes a bit more clearer, we'll mention that as a point. So yeah, there's a few moving parts of it, but they're just consultations at the moment, so we don't know exactly what will be the result of them, but it seems like there's going to be less ongoing administration for advisor firms to deal with. I'm I'm taking. The view, if you're charging ongoing fees, you provide an ongoing service, and as an absolute minimum, you have an annual sit down with your clients. You can't just charge 1000s of pounds and leave up to the person to come to you. So yeah, the good firms, I don't think this change will impact them that much. They'll still stick to what they're doing it, you know, it seems to be working. Nicholas, back to you.

Nick Lincoln: 20:51

No, okay, that exactly. And just, just to confirm my point, absolutely, I wouldn't want to have a client relationship where there wasn't an annual touch point, just from my own peace of mind. So I know that the client's okay and I'm okay if they defer a year or two, that's fine, but this thing of every year having to justify the products they're in, I mean, for the last eight, nine years, in my follow up email to clients, I say literally, we somehow came to an implied conclusion that your products remain suitable. There's no way to actually prove it, but let's play the game on to the next point. And that's what I've said forever, because it's just a complete way. So if they get rid of that side of it, that's That's fantastic, but you're, as a business owner, you're insane if you're not reaching out to your clients to get regular planning meetings carried out, because things happen over time, and you'll be the one on the hook if the client ends up in a place they didn't think. They're going to be they're going to be so right. Watch, give us some good give us some good Irish news. Come on.

Carl Widger: 21:41

Just the ombudsman complains. Yeah, this is too, probably a good enough follow on point from this where I suppose our regulation is only, you know, becoming more professionalized over the last, I would say, 20 years, to be fair to them, right? It really has. We're still behind the curve, as we're going to hear in our meat and potatoes later on, where in terms of RDR and that kind of stuff. However, what I would say is, and this may be a relevant point to the last point that has been made. So the Ombudsman has come out. The Financial Services ombudsman say that the number of complaints is like up, you know, exponentially over the last few years. Now, a lot of them, it does, if you delve into that, a lot of them are motor insurance claims. So that has nothing to do with financial services, right? However, there are, there are a lot of people now keeping, I suppose, their advisors accountable, and if they're pissed off, or if they have a reason to complain, they are going directly to the ombudsman, having read the report, most of those cases are actually thrown out. But, but like, I can tell you, if the threat of an ombudsman claim from any client is like taken very, very seriously in every single financial advisor's office across the world, I would imagine. So, yeah, it really does demonstrate a maturity or a growing up of this, of this business here, and I do think to just to link it to your last point, like, if people aren't doing annual reviews, but there are more and more people out there acting really professionally and making sure that this has become the norm. Well, then competition should sort it out. I appreciate that might be a little bit of a wooly argument, but, you know, people doing it really well. It's good, you know, for their clients, their clients will will be chatting to their peers down in the pub and on the golf course and wherever else, and they'll go, oh yeah. Well, my guy comes to me every year and we do a review and blah, blah, blah, and sometimes we have nothing really to talk about. So look, I'm encouraged by the fact that this kind of keeps us all accountable. And then there was another article. The second one was the I've spoken to you about black bee before, and the guy, the founder has, kind of, he's done what, it seems a lot of the people who've run these firms and kind of come up against, you know, the the authorities, they've kind of, he's just shut down. And they've said, right, you're coming to the High Court, and we're going to grill you on the high court. Now he is his next step. Then would say, Okay, I'll represent myself. And, you know, kind of frustrate the high court process by saying, I don't really understand, because I am representing myself and that kind of stuff. But look, I think the more of this kind of this kind of stuff that happens, the better. There was a there was a program Irish people would know about, um, custom house capital. And there was actually a deep dive program on RTE about the Custom House capital debacle, the more the spotlight is shown on these kind of shady operations, um, allegedly shady operations and the bet, the better for everybody, because people then will be able to for themselves compare and contrast. Well, what does full fat financial planning and index investing and having my annual review? How does that compare to, whoa, if I invested in this German property fund, or this other property thing, or tracker bond, or whatever it might be. It'll give people, I suppose, a Terms of Reference to go by, and I think it will. It can only help the entire profession. In here, because there I am, been like, I'm meeting lots and lots of people now who are in Ireland, really doing it and really doing it properly. And loads of great people there really are. And I would have said, when we started this podcast, I would have been a little bit disparaging about the numbers, that we're really doing it. There are loads now, and they're all, they're great people, and they want to do it right, and they understand that it, number one, adds value. And number two, you can, actually, you can make a proper liver note of this. You really can,

Nick Lincoln: 26:49

sorry, I'm clicking on the clapping thing. Andy, and it's just not working.

Carl Widger: 26:53

So just trying to whisper something to me, going, that's not really gonna

Alan Smith: 27:00

work, clapping like a seal.

Andy Hart: 27:03

There's hundreds of firms now in Ireland that are doing full fat financial Island. Brilliant, brilliant news for the consumer. Yeah, don't know if

Carl Widger: 27:11

there's hundreds, but, like, we are a small market, definitely 10. You know, well, there's more than there's, there's, I would say, yeah, there's at least 50 firms doing it properly. I think now the big impact,

Alan Smith: 27:23

there we go. Okay, yeah, let me just add something on the this ombudsman thing. We've had the Financial Ombudsman Service in the UK for I don't know how long seems like forever, and the used to be the case. I remember, I used to go to these mastermind groups and what have you would hear tales of people being under investigation by the ombudsman service. And that sort of the view was, look, if you get a false complaint, just get your checkbook out, because they pretty much always just upheld the client's objection or complaint. I think that has evolved.

Andy Hart: 28:03

Even if it doesn't hold up on point number one, they'd find a separate point that wasn't even claimed by the client. Yeah, I think, I think

Alan Smith: 28:11

that's true. Did we? I can't remember if you mentioned this on the podcast before we've certainly chatted about it, because there was one that came out. It wasn't that long ago. That long ago where, won't mention the names, but the client of an advisor had, I can't remember, it said a globally diversified portfolio, of which 8% was in emerging market equities and these and the client said, Oh, the portfolio has gone down, temporarily fallen in value, therefore it was too high risk. We're gonna have to move on. Therefore I shouldn't have had any of this kind of crazy esoteric out there, emerging market equity, which, of course, we all know, diversify us portfolio is perfectly reasonable. The Ombudsman upheld it and said, Yeah, you should have taken the clients risk profile as being balanced to cautious, and not held any of that clients those sort of assets in the portfolio makes absolutely no sense.

Andy Hart: 29:02

Me and you Nicholas were speaking last week about the logistics of the end of year, any year, tax, end of tax year, and all the to in and fro in with CGT calcs, doing top ups, switching money around. It's still quite labor intensive. The humans are involved. The platforms are involved. AI is not replacing us in relation to this at the moment. Anyways, how did you find end of tax year? Nicholas, was it a simple one or a bit of a challenging one this year?

Nick Lincoln: 29:36

I think, like you Andy, you know, kind of do things through the year. So I had one client on April the second, which is the Friday, wanting to Bax money over to my platform of choice, and we did it all, and the platform got the money, and we allocated it all out. And I checked online today, and it's all done fine. So that's good. It doesn't help that it falls over a bank holiday. You lose two working where we lost two working days, and this one just got but it's fine. It's fine. I mean, the CGT thing is a movable feast, and you've got to you've got to be more careful. Now, with the allowance, what down by 80% what are the masses? What was 12,300 now, 75,000 pounds a year. You know, you just little people paying a little bit of capital gains tax, yes, but yeah, so fine. All good. All good. You know, I wouldn't want to, yeah. I imagine some IFA firms, especially firms with multiple our eyes and big client banks, are doing loads of stuff for tax year, and it must be an absolute nightmare if you if you've got a platform that's old, old style, yeah, horrible.

Andy Hart: 30:25

And then it's still a load of shifting around that we got to do now, obviously, when the new tax year starts, pensions the nicest, basically. So yeah, I just found it quite challenging this year, so I'm pleased it's sort of over, and all of the financial mots are pretty much done, and now we can just focus on the servicing for the rest of the year. So, yeah, interesting. Okay, good stuff.

Nick Lincoln: 30:46

Okay, and on to still, well, still with you. Ultra and quickly on fun Smith.

Andy Hart: 30:53

Quickly on fun Smith. So we have mentioned Mr. Terry Smith, a few times on this let it go podcast, we focused quite exclusively on him during our active versus passive discussion last week. Anyway, fun Smith, have an annual general meeting a little bit a little bit like what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger used. To do in Omaha, Nebraska, they do it in London, and it's hosted by Sky News business presenter. I've watched it for the last few years. I do find it interesting. I obviously I'm not an investor, nor are any of my clients, but I find him as an individual, quite compelling, and I like his stories, and I like how smart he is when it comes to investing. So I did watch it, and I did enjoy it. But a few things to know, he normally gets a lot of laughs. He got zero laughs this year. It was a very frosty reception from all of the investors in his fund. Obviously, he's had five years of underperformance as every active, active manager does. He had lots of points to justify the underperformance. You know, surprise, surprise. You know, we've heard this story before. Yeah, I just thought it was quite interesting. So if you're into business, business stories, how to analyze businesses, then I think it's well worth watching it.

Carl Widger: 32:11

So if you're, if you're, if I'm a client of his, and I'm going to the AGM and he's underperformed for five years. Yeah, he'd be very,

Andy Hart: 32:19

very annoyed. I'd

Carl Widger: 32:21

be even more annoyed to see a Sky news presenter up there who has been paid a fortune to present the AGM. Do you know like it's just good money? Seems quite he seems

Andy Hart: 32:31

quite genuine. I can't remember what his name

Carl Widger: 32:33

is, but I don't care if he's genuine. If he's a high profile dude, he's going to be costing a lot of money. My point is active, but that guy's

Andy Hart: 32:41

That's an assumption. We don't know the way he talks. He's like a he's an investor himself. All of his family's money is invested himself. He almost, you know, does it because he's just a huge fan of Terry. But again, we don't know the specifics of the payment, but it's done on quite a budget. Carl, it's in just a, just a Hall in London. It's not, it's not razzmatazz or anything like that. And then they ask, you know, direct questions to the fund managers. They're very open and transparent in terms of being connected to that to their investors. As I say, I found it interesting that not one of his jokes got a laugh previous years. There is 1015, 20, cracking jokes, cracking stories. It was very flat and dull. I mean, obviously we do not know if this is going to be an ongoing thing of permanent underperformance, knowing how these things go there. There might be a bit of a reversion to the mean, but we don't know anyway. Okay, so worth watching for

Nick Lincoln: 33:37

a few reasons. Worth watching some some flat and dull. Okay, that's good to know. Now there's the next point on the on the slate was, was storyteller, but I think he snapped. He was teetotal today for this session. Good, Good lad. It's half past four in France when we started recordings. I think he's snapped and gone for an apparel spritz or something. So we're going to carry on without him until he comes back into the show. So we're going to go down the slate, and it's another one from for you Ultra the protection CPD podcast. My God, you are, you are knocking out the exciting stuff today. Yeah, this, this

Andy Hart: 34:05

will be good news for a few people. It's a very practical, topical tidbit. Let's say there's a lady who's very prolific in the protection space, Catherine Knowles, and she runs a podcast called The protection podcast, the practical protection podcast, and it is CPD accredited. So if you listen to one, you can then email her company and organization, and they'll email you a CPD certified, accredited, structured CPT certificate, which you can then obviously submit. And again, I think they changed the rules on the requirement for us to have X amount of hours that were purely protection or protection focused life insurance contract type stuff. I believe they backtracked on this again. But still, I think it makes sense to uh, up your knowledge on certain areas of protection. So it's worth checking out this podcast that is a free resource for financial advisors.

Carl Widger: 35:03

But this is a little similar to what you said a few episodes ago about the, you know, upskilling your knowledge around Debt Solutions for your clients like you can't ignore this stuff, and you know, you need to know about developments and that kind of stuff. So look to get something like this, obviously, for free, and get

Andy Hart: 35:23

this free, yeah, it's a huge back catalog. Carl, I think there's, how many seasons are there? 12 seasons, everything possible you can do with, yeah, sorry, season 11 she's on at the moment. So that's such a deep resource. So it's, it's mind blowing what they've put out there. So, and

Carl Widger: 35:41

that's pretty niche, 11 seasons, and that nice topic, there is an expert, if ever you're looking at one, I mean, they're about half an hour length

Nick Lincoln: 35:49

looking at them, but bite size. But that's, yeah, that's to a Jesus Christ. I couldn't imagine finding enough content for one series. Then I'm not Catherine, as you said. Is this is her, absolutely her thing.

Carl Widger: 35:59

But that's, that's like, that's like, this podcast. People going, but how do you think up of things to talk about every episode? We don't know. We just do. It's just, I guess the topical tidbits kind of inform a lot of the rest of the show. Because whatever is topical, well, let's just go into. Talk about it. By the way, Alan has just text me. He's frantically trying to get back in but I don't, okay, okay,

Nick Lincoln: 36:23

well, that's fine. We can crack on. We can crack on without him. We don't, to be honest, we don't miss him, do we? Right? Oh, our newest sponsor. Watch their rapid rise in Ireland. Yeah, it's

Carl Widger: 36:33

funny, isn't it, that we've, like, we probably didn't mention revolute that much, but we've, I think we've done three episodes now where they've been, where they've been, spoken about an awful lot. I just thought there was one or two of these. Stats were unreal. 80% of adults in Ireland have a revolute card, like if anybody, as we were joking earlier on about the bank manager and people not knowing what banks look like or whatever, right? But if anyone you know has any question or doubt at all that how banking is going to be done in the future is not the way it's done in the past, and that big banks with their branches and all that kind of stuff go on.

Andy Hart: 37:13

Andy, why is that so high? Car, was the banking system totally shite compared to Revolut before it came in, like decent standards of banks, of payment process, you know, companies like Venmo in the US, they're enormous, because the banking system is so archaic, is it? Was it a little bit like that the adult population?

Carl Widger: 37:32

Yeah, the bank apps. So we, I've spoken about the pillar banks, and there's only three left. Everyone else buggered off and after the financial crisis and their apps are absolutely useless. They're revolution now, yeah, in that article that I've shared, revolute have said, Yeah, but, but the vast, vast vast majority Alan is texting me again. The vast, vast majority of customers do not use revolute for as their standard banking app. So 80% of people have have Revolut. They're they're transferring, for example, from AIB of rank of Ireland into Revolut to then make some payments. And revolute are inverted commas. Not happy about that and that. They want to change that. But they are moving into the mortgage market here. They have done some great work in terms of making savings products available at much cheaper rates, that kind of stuff. The impact will be seen. Bank of Ireland last week announced that they were investing 1.6 billion in IT and AI, etc, etc. So they are getting on this. The banks have come together, and I forget what they've called it, but they've done a some kind of direct payment service that you can use, which I haven't looked at. I think they're so far behind. They're like five years behind Revolut and that I don't even know why the bother doing that, but they are. The banks are retaliating. And is it a bit late. One of the one of the banks is Alan, hi, one of one of the banks is for sale, and it looks like it's going to be be taken by a big multinational Bank, which will be great, because that would bring in some some competition into the space. But what revolute have done, and they're doing business cards and business accounts now and all that, and making series in rows of 33,000 businesses on their books in Ireland, it is just phenomenal. And I remember they were, they were regulated in Lithuania or something at the start. So everyone was like, Don't put more than 20 quid in your revolute account. Bastards over nithuania are gonna so it was like, literally, you know, you know, if you know how to pay some your kids, some money or whatever, right? But, uh, but I think, you know, everyone realizes this is a serious, serious contender now, and they match all the regulation that's required. And it is the way forward. They're like bank branches and all that, like, just forget about it. Not, not, not going

Andy Hart: 40:03

to be around. Revolute might be one of the biggest banks in the world in the future. Again, that's a pretty crappy prediction. I need to give you a timestamp, but they're certainly headed in that direction. I mean, they're enormous now, but you know that they'll be one of the one of the top banks in the world. You know, they're certainly a bank of the future.

Nick Lincoln: 40:21

Yeah. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you, and thank you to our sponsors. Okay, now, Smith, you're back with us at the moment, teetering on the edge of cracking up again, judging by the quality of your video, we missed your point on advisor data. Do you want to quickly go through it in case you'll break up again?

Andy Hart: 40:35

You can turn your video that might help.

Alan Smith: 40:37

I tell you what. That's what I'll do. Okay, what I'm going to do, because I'm such a such a professional, I'm going to link two points together. Nick, so the point that I was going to refer to was, again, another paper produced by our friends at seckel secltek mentioned them before we know Dave Ferguson, good guy, big friend of the podcast, Seco, produced a paper which I just thought was worth pausing, pausing on and and reading, because the paper is titled again, linked to it in the show notes. Whose data is it? Anyway. Now everyone is getting there's a bit of a frenzy going on about these magical letters AI. And AI only really exists and does well for any any of us or any business if you've got access to high quality data. And you know, I look at our company as an example. We've got quite a lot of data going back many years in our own kind of silo, and our SharePoint and share drives and what have you. But we've also got data held in our CRM system. We've got it in risk profiling tools. We've got in cash flow tools, and we've got it in a bunch of other sort of random places. And people talk about the, you know, the techies talk about this, these magical three letters, API's, you get an API, and you get you, you get your data back and forward. Well, there's a lot more to it than that. API's Some work better than others. Some work seamlessly. Most don't. Most is data one way and not the other, and some are restricted in terms of the amount of data you've got. So the raise a very interesting point during this kind of ongoing frenzy towards embedding AI tools and technology in your business, and that's the biggest question that the paper asks. The paper doesn't give an answer, but it suggests that all of us should perhaps be doing a big bit of digging to really identify where the data is held, who actually officially owns the data, and do you as an advisory firm, have access to it without any friction or issue, and encourage people to read that and then begin to ask themselves some questions and speak to their kind of the various providers and places where your client data and your business data is currently held before I go on to the next point. Carl, you've you've raised your hand

Carl Widger: 42:53

just quick one Irish advisors, sit up and take note, second are coming to Ireland in the very short term.

Alan Smith: 43:03

Okay, yeah, that's good, good news. I think for the Irish market, they're certainly

Carl Widger: 43:09

very from a competition, from a competition point of view, like it is really good news

Alan Smith: 43:13

in terms of like, custody, trading, a platform, a modern digital platform,

Carl Widger: 43:17

pricing technology, you know, like all of the above, this is really good. More more competition with serious players in our market is just going to help. It's going to help the advisors, but ultimately, see it's going to benefit the clients. That can

Alan Smith: 43:31

only be good. Well, it sounds like competition is increasing in Ireland, with Revolut and now sekel coming in, in here, whether this next company come to Ireland or not in the short term to be decided. But I just wanted to flag up, you know, I seem to get, you know, contacted by multiple different new emerging companies in the world of AI as it relates to financial planning. And I just want to do a shout out to a company called obsidian. Again, link to the website obsidian os.com so they're another new entrant to the sort of Advisor Platform AI enabled world. And it may you know, so they are immediately competition to a number of other incumbent players that we all know, and they've got a quite a different, interesting model, as much as they've got a platform that will deliver a lot of the kind of process that advisory firms will have, and they're making a particular play, and also custody and trading. So they're building their own trading platform as well. They're a bunch of people, X, revolute, funnily enough, and ex JP Morgan, if memory serves. So they're putting so they're another challenger brand. They've got some backing. They've raised some money. No, I don't know here. Here we are in 2026 this feels like 1998 or something. In the Internet revolution, there was any number of.com companies were set up and were established. Not all of them made it. Some were huge successes, and are the companies that we know and love today, like the Amazons of this world and others. I personally think there's enough business out there for all or most certainly, if you're good, if you've got good technology and it works and it's reliable, that I think it's not, this is not going to be winner takes all that. There's going to be one company that's going to dominate the kind of AI support systems in advisory firms. There's going to be more than one, and I think some will complement each other. Some will work in conjunction with each other. Some will be direct competition for existing significant players. But again, as you were just alluding to a moment ago, Carl, competition is good, and it's better for us and the advisory teams. And so encourage people check out obsidian. OS, yeah,

Carl Widger: 45:43

I'm it's an interesting point you make. There, Alan, about, you know, back in the pre internet, or when the internet was just taken off, and all these companies were raising money, and it was obviously the.com boom and crash I watched on your recommendation, bit conned on Netflix there recently. And you know, if ever you want to know that, you know, people can just, you know, ride the crest of a wave only for that wave to come absolutely crashing down. So for me, it's a it's a wait and see. As you know, for a lot of these AI businesses, because saying that you're able to do something and actually delivering it for sure. Bit the Bitcoin boys that in that program, it's a really great watch. It really is. They had a great idea, how can you actually go and spend your money, but they had no tech at all. They just had one idea

Alan Smith: 46:37

behind this. Are you talking about Bitcoin on Netflix? Yeah, yeah. I've had the guy on my, my other award winning podcast, the guy he was, yeah, it's worth checking out. Yeah. Ray Trapani. Ray Trapani, Have we got time for a quick story?

Nick Lincoln: 46:56

No, no, we haven't.

Alan Smith: 46:57

Yeah, I've got a banger. I feel like I've said it before. It's like, what's Andy? It's like, going for a beer with your granddad. But this was one I watched that I came out a couple of years ago, and I watched it one evening, and I just thought, oh, he'll be good character to get on the podcast. So like I often do, I just see if they've got any social media profile, and he has. So I sent him a message. It's like Friday night, 11 o'clock, I go to bed, send just watch the film. Amazing. I've got a podcast. Love to have you on the podcast. Woke up next morning, he's replied, yet delighted, happy to do that. Went, ah, brilliant, getting the podcast. So we have a bit of back and forwards to schedule the date and the time. And the time. And he said, I can only do this date and that date again, that's I said, Yes, fine. And he said, Look, because I will record it at home. I've got young kids at home, and I don't, you know, the making noise, can we wait till they go to bed? And I said, Yeah, fine. He said, nine? Can we do recording at 9pm again, it's bit late, but yeah, fine. I'll do that for you. So I'll just sit around and do an evening podcast recording. So I said at 9pm and then it was all scheduled to go. And the day before, I've realized it's 9pm New York time, where he lives, 9pm in New York City, which is two or 3am UK time. Oh my God, what do I do? I'm gonna have to cancel it. But every now I thought, now I'm gonna have to grit my teeth and go through with it. So I was it was it was the days I used to record from my office so that I saw I came into the office. I brought a little kind of sleep sleeping bag. I was going to get a bit of Cape, go lay down and sort of wake up about one or 2am and do the pocket in the end. Of course, you can't get to sleep. I'm just sitting there all evening. And eventually I get on it. It was about 3am when I recorded the podcast live. It comes across. You wouldn't have known it otherwise, and it's funny how you just get yourself up and ready for it middle of the night. So that was a funny story. So you should check out. It's actually a really good is the most popular of those of my podcasts I've ever done, because obviously he had, he had info. It was infamous, and he had a lot of interest when that, because it was number one in Netflix charts for he didn't go to jail. He didn't, well, that's another story. We've done it because he, apparently, he just shopped in his mates and sort of managed to do a deal with the feds and got out of it. But very interesting story, but I think it's a bit, it's a bit much Carl to compare someone who were frankly, out and out criminals around the running in the bandwagon of bitcoin and cryptocurrency with some of these nice AI startups in London. They're not quite the same sort of thing, but I sort of get you points. Okay, all right,

Carl Widger: 49:33

I wonder, is there technology behind all of these businesses. I'm not commenting on the one that you've brought up today at all right, because you bring up new

Alan Smith: 49:42

I think they're pretty legit, but who knows?

Carl Widger: 49:45

Yeah, but so, so were those guys, the Bitcoin Guys, guys, but they couldn't get the tech together. So is there going to be a whole load of firms who are saying that they can do X, Y and Z, and they just can't deliver. I don't, don't know, but I would guess yes will be the answer. Only time will tell. I'm not commenting on your firm at all. There are so many. There are so many, not all.

Alan Smith: 50:11

Yeah, lawyers note, we are not commenting. Carl is not commenting. He's got casting aspersions in any of these AI startups at all. No. Move on.

Andy Hart: 50:22

I think we're just getting started with the AI wave. I don't think we've seen anything yet. So, I mean, yeah, there's going to be a shed load more companies in this space. Yeah, there is going to be created over a weekend. It's going to be crazy. Anyway.

Alan Smith: 50:36

Moving on. Nick, all right. Nick, wake up next.

Nick Lincoln: 50:41

I'm awake. I'm awake. By the way, the URL is rubbish. This is not a legal thing. I read it as obsidianos, so they

Alan Smith: 50:47

need to work on that obsidian OS operating system. Yeah, no, but

Nick Lincoln: 50:51

I read it. You read it as obsidianos? Okay, okay. Heart. Vanguard investors cleaned up.

Andy Hart: 50:57

Yeah. Yeah, this is an interesting one. Vanguard, obviously, we're big fans of them. They're partners in trap. But anyway, that's by the by this was sent to me by someone. It's a morning star link, and the It's entitled, Vanguard investors cleaned up. I'll just read you some very brief stats from this. So. Yes. On December the 31st 2016, Vanguard funds and ETFs held around 2.9 trillion in net assets over the next 10 years, those funds and ETFs gat gathered about 2 trillion in net inflows. So starting off at 3 trillion, 2 trillion has gone in. They currently sit at 9.9 trillion. Yeah, that's five. Thank you, Carl, and now they're sitting at 10, which is also five. So Vanguard investors have Vanguard the company has created an additional 5 trillion for long term, disciplined Vanguard investors. So started off at three, two has gone in. This is the whole thing that I try and get across from my clients about contributions and returns. It's very important in your early career as an investor, or early part of you, but your beginning time of being an investor is to focus on your contributions. Your contributions should do the heavy lifting. This is what I say to clients all the time. Later on, the returns will come. But if you get a 50% return on 10,000 pounds or euros, who cares? Your life's not changed. You get a 50% return on a big number, you know it's meaningful. So initially, it's all focused on your contributions. Long term, the returns will come so and the reason why Vanguard have produced these slightly punchy numbers, because they have more disciplined investors. They're not shipping in and out active fund managers, net inflows, net outflows. They just have net inflows. You know, as in the last 10 years, about 2 trillion going They start. They were starting on a 3 trillion base, and the markets have returned 5 trillion in the last 10 years. That's why I call the stock market magic. That 5 million has been created out of nowhere, and now that could be spent on real things with real people and real families that can put real people, you know, through education that could buy real houses. That's why the stock market is the closest thing to magic on the planet. Over to you.

Nick Lincoln: 53:24

Nicholas, Okay, final point on the topical tidbits. It's closing off with a very quick point from storyteller who turned this video off.

Alan Smith: 53:32

I usually bring this hang on. Yeah. I used to bring this up every year. Watch is the timeline. Timeline produce a whole series of charts and graphs every year. I always see Nick roll his eyes because he's not a chart man, but a lot of advisors like to use them in client conversations, client meetings, particularly during periods of choppy investment markets. So they update them every 12 months, they've just, yeah, they've just produced their latest 2026, charts within them, I can't remember. There's a dozen or more. There's some absolute gems in there. Link to the timeline charts is in the show notes. And as always, a brief video explaining how you use them from His Royal Highness, Abraham,

Andy Hart: 54:18

great link in the show notes. Back to you.

Nick Lincoln: 54:20

Nicholas, okay, good stuff. Okay, so we're coming in now. Was it 53 minutes of absolute, absolute gold dust? So let's close off the topical tidbits and move on to what any people call the meat of potatoes. The meat of potatoes. Alan, for the spontaneous interruption,

Alan Smith: 54:38

go on then the love of

Nick Lincoln: 54:39

Christ. Oh, oh,

Matt Abouzeid: 54:43

yeah, nothing else on

Andy Hart: 54:45

your mind? Alan, no, no.

Alan Smith: 54:48

There's a lot of things going on here. I'm trying to keep her. I mean, you think in France, it had modern technology, but there's some, if you dig deep, there's some gold in this, in these podcasts. But sorry, were you moving on to the next thing? Because I was going to say, wait a minute it. No, seriously, all joking aside, there is some other news about a well known Irish financial planning company. I certainly I saw something in the news last week. You tell me to be already talking about this? Mr.

Carl Widger: 55:18

Widger, well, there's I. I wouldn't call it news. I would say there's been some media coverage and reporting about a financial planning firm in Ireland being acquired. However, at this point, I would not be in a position to comment on such inaccurate reports that were in the media over the last week or so. The most important thing for me is that our clients know exactly what's happening, because we've told our clients exactly what's happening, and if there is proper news to share at any point in the future. I will, of course, be only too delighted to talk about it on trap.

Alan Smith: 56:06

Okay, so it was just early stage speculation right now about meta science.

Nick Lincoln: 56:11

Excellent, excellent. I think we could

Carl Widger: 56:13

draw a line under it. There can't be Carl. No comment

Nick Lincoln: 56:15

to make on that. Okay. Okay, and we look forward. We look forward to hearing the whole story in due course when you can Okay, let's move on now, at 56, minutes into the meat and potatoes of episode, absolutely four and well, this is a good one. Well, I enjoyed this one because I was doing it. That's always nice when you're in control. As you might have guessed from my character, this meat and potatoes with a guy called and it's not even playing this bloody thing. Jesus wept, the meat of potatoes is with a guy called Matt Abu. Say, really interesting story. I'm not going to go into it here, because I'll talk about it in the next in the in the meat potato section, lots of financial planners making the leap from firms where full fat financial planning isn't being done, just setting up their own businesses. That's brave in itself. Matt abazaid Story takes it to the next level. So without any further ado, I give you Matt abazaid, yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, the meat and potatoes of this episode of The Real advisor Podcast. I'm super excited about this one. I can't speak for the other members of the trap pack, but certainly for me, the best thing we've got out of this, this whole trap experience, for me, is hearing how many people we've inspired encouraged to take up full financial planning. And normally that's from advisors who are working within the advice firm, within the advice chain already, but they're working for firms that just pay service, lip service to financial planning. It's not done, and it's certainly not done full fat financial planning. And those advisors then go out on their own and start up their own firms, which is incredibly brave and the right thing to do. But the story today takes that onto the next level. So I'm talking today with Matt aberzadov and together a new financial advice firm that's been set up in the last 12 months. I'm not gonna talk much more anymore, other than to say Hi Matt, thank you for joining us.

Matt Abouzeid: 58:05

Thanks for having me absolute

Nick Lincoln: 58:07

pleasure, my friend, absolute pleasure

Matt Abouzeid: 58:09

show so very excited to be here. Thank you for

Nick Lincoln: 58:11

having me on my absolute pleasure. Tell the dear TRAPPIST who are listening and watching how exactly this handsome fella became the person we see and hear today. Give us your potted life story.

Matt Abouzeid: 58:22

Potted life story. Okay, think of the tube map. Northern Line. Go all the way down to Morden. That's where I grew up. Okay, so grew up there, went to school there. Dad's from Egypt, moved to London in the 70s. Mom's from Manchester. One of three brothers went to University of Bath, studied pure maths. That was my, that was my kind of like, big step my big step forward. Nick, serious degree. Always loved maths at school, so I'm going to do pure maths at university. So I did that, and then I always wanted to work in financial services. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I I ended up working for two American firms. Actually, I worked for a big American firm, a big S and P before Vanguard, but I joined vanguard in 2010 that was, that was probably one of the best things I ever did with my career, and it was just the most amazing time to join that company, because it was just coming into the UK, and the UK was going through this amazing change at that time, as you know, RDR was just about to happen, so Vanguard came into the market and was really able to challenge the status quo, and commission financial planning was just yet to take off. Around that time, people weren't using index funds, so Joy Vanguard, 2010 worked at distribution, did lots of different roles in distribution. Might get into that if you want, ended up working in wholesale. So I was running a big wholesale book, looking after pension funds, insurance companies, doing lots of different things. It was really cool, because I just got lots of things on my desk that would anything sort of weird, wacky would come to me. So I was even working with the sovereign wealth fund of Ireland at one point, with the NTMA right and then left Vanguard about a year ago, just under a year ago, to set up my own financial planning business with my now business partner, mon eat, and we're about six months in, and that brings us right to where we are right now.

Nick Lincoln: 1:00:22

That's, that's just incredible. Just Just so you know, and you're too young to done O levels. It took me three goes to get my maths o level. So a maths degree would have been they're just words to me. It means nothing at all. It's just beyond comprehension. It was a lot of equations, that's for sure. My God, I couldn't, I couldn't even do long division, which may ideal for financial planning, right? But I'm proof that maybe you don't have to be that numerous. Okay, right? So 2010 you joined Vanguard as RDR was happening. I wonder if the two are linked. I wonder Vanguard kind of thought this is the moment to do it, but that's a conversation for another time. Maybe it's just good fortune that the Vanguard happened to Vanguard happened to launch their their offering in the UK and

Matt Abouzeid: 1:01:02

ramp it up at that time. I think looking back, it probably was a big element of luck. Yeah, Vanguard came to the market 2009 and then RDR was 2012 Yeah. And there was a lot of hope it would go that way, because if it. If it didn't, if it hadn't, it could have been a very different story for vanguard

Nick Lincoln: 1:01:21

in the UK. So there was a lot trail commission onto those lovely, clean, fun, big change

Matt Abouzeid: 1:01:25

in business model for that, for that Jack, but

Nick Lincoln: 1:01:27

Jack Bogle, when he was still alive, they might have flown over and strangled some people, even though he wasn't involved. But it did happen.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:01:33

And I had three years at that time, I was I was working in the IFA channel, and I was sort of driving around the country, and there was only a small team I came in. I was employee number 19, so it's a tiny team of us, and I was sort of driving around the country, speaking to ifas and RDR hadn't happened. So people were not using index funds. People weren't really doing financial planning. People were choosing active funds that were paying 3% plus a half. You remember those? Yeah, yeah. And that was, it was, it was really hard graft for a couple of years at least. And, you know, but there was a subset of the market that were way ahead of the curve. And we were talking about what was going on in America and Australia, and we were saying, Guys, look at what's going on. Like financial planning is the way forward. It's better for the clients, better for you, it's better for your firm. So we had two, three years of that, and then ding, RDR, happened, and the whole, the whole industry just changed.

Nick Lincoln: 1:02:29

I guess you probably had your stand up at the IFP annual conference, and that was about the only place we were

Matt Abouzeid: 1:02:37

the outcasts. We would turn up at asset manager events, and like Schroders and energy, they'd all be hanging out, having a great time, and they'd be like, Oh, it's bad smell in

Nick Lincoln: 1:02:45

the room, amazing. Okay, so you spent 15 years at not just any old fun group, you know, but bloody Vanguard, you know, obviously Friends of the show, but Vanguard, I mean, as about as good as you can get in that, in that, in that field, really, 15 years in a massive organization, and then you decide to walk away. Tell me the story behind that?

Matt Abouzeid: 1:03:04

Well, getting into Vanguard was dream come true, and spending 15 years there was the best thing I could have ever done with my career, and I just wouldn't change any of it. And I had 15 years there, 15 amazing years. I mean, Nick, I can't remember if there was ever a bad year. So it was this most incredible journey. And I was there through all these different sort of eras, if you like, because the early era is the one that I just described. There are pre RDR and RDR, but when that changed, I mean, it just went off. And so I had five years working in the IFA channel. Loved every minute of that. I then had five years working with wealth managers. So I had to go out and work with rathbones and brewing and Casanova and that, that crowd. And then I had a number of years working with banks. And then, as I mentioned, I was doing sort of more wholesale stuff, but I worked with DIYs, robos and the whole lot. So I had this amazing, like, you know, mix of different types. Yeah. It was really, really, really interesting for me, because I was always being stretched, always learning early on as well. It really felt like we were having huge impact in the market. We were challenging the status quo. We were talking about making investing more fair, lower cost, more accessible, all these things. So it was a lot of fun. I got to a point, though, where I got to a point I just sort of turned 40 so, 4142 saying I had a midlife crisis or anything, but, but I did start to think to myself and ask myself, like, what do I really want to do for the Next 20 years of my career? And I was really thinking about that, and I what I realized was, yes, I was really passionate, passionate about asset management, but actually I just became more passionate about financial planning, and I realized that's where I want to be, and that's what I want to do, and that's type of work I want to do. And some of this came from earlier in my career, where I was on the road going around the country, campaigning for financial planning, campaigning for, you know, a more simple way of investing and the two combined. But what happened Nick later in my career, I was responsible for distribution in Ireland, and I was going to Ireland a lot. And in Ireland, I was doing a lot of work with financial planners, brokers, and again, I was really campaigning there for full fat financial planning, because there's still a mix. In Ireland there is some really, really, really high quality

Nick Lincoln: 1:05:51

financial well, you know, you you listen to the show, don't you? And you know that Carl is out on a limb there? Yeah, you know, he is so far ahead of the curve. And they haven't had their RDR, they haven't had their come to Jesus moment yet. It's, it's unbelievable.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:06:04

And I listen to him, and I he says things that I, you know, feel very strongly about. And I just he's a big advocate of that. I'm a really big advocate of that. So I was in Ireland in probably about two. Years ago, and I was doing a speaking event, and I was talking about the merits of full financial planning, not selling products, not sort of fun picking, saying, Look at this way that you could do it. And I was doing the event, I was chatting to a guy afterwards, and he was telling me all about if it's his business and we're having a great chat. And at that moment, I just thought, I'm going to become a financial advisor. I'm going to do it. And I was in Dublin, at this hotel in Dublin, and I just thought, I've been thinking about this so long. I am going to become a financial advisor. And I came back off that trip, and that was it. I just thought, that's my future. I still love asset management, but what I realized as well is asset management on its own is quite limited in terms of the impact it can have to solve human problems and change people's lives. Combined with financial planning is immensely powerful. So I just thought, that's where I want to be, that part of the value chain, if that's what you want to call it, as you think about that platforms and manufacturers and asset managers and advice, and I just been around the houses in the industry. So I'd, I'd had this really sort of rare vantage point of it, of it all, because I'd worked really closely with rathbones, with Casanova, with financial planners, with quilters, with Yeah, with the DIY platforms, with the robots, with all the DFMS, with all the these big private banks as well, like I was looking after the relationship with Goldman Sachs, with Citi, UBS, HSBC, Barclays, Coutts, and I just looked across the piece, and I thought, what I want to do, where I think the biggest lever for changes is that type of financial Planning where you're sat at a table with a family, and you're just talking to them about them their life, where they want to be their problems, how you can solve their problems, and that type of approach. And that's what I was just genuinely, really excited about, and what I wanted to do. But I think the other thing for me as well Nick is I wanted to build my own business as well. And I was thinking about that long and hard, and I had spent a lot of time in these big businesses, building business, bringing in business, and building the business. And of course, you never do that alone. You're part of a big team, and you get a lot of support. But in distribution, especially in those senior roles in distribution, it's you. You're really on the hook. You're designing the strategy for that market segment that you're in, whether it's wholesale or what have you. And you just pick up loads of skills along the way. You know, you work with other people when you take things to market, marketing, product, corporate strategy. I just thought, I'm ready. I'm ready to set up my own business. I'm really passionate about financial planning. You know, I've seen across the industry all the different business types. I really had a really clear vision of what I thought was an outstanding value proposition, independent, full financial planning, sensible investing, sensible fees, focus on a specific client type. All the things that you guys talk about. And I think for me, the cherry on the cake was I found an amazing co founder to do it with, and we're so aligned in how we see the world and how we see the industry and how we think about investing. And I've just got huge admiration and respect for money and what she's achieved in her career, and to have her want to do this, two of us together on this journey, I just thought, right, we've got to do it now. There's no excuse. You're both

Nick Lincoln: 1:09:51

a Vanguard, aren't you, or were but

Matt Abouzeid: 1:09:53

yeah, we were together at Van Gogh for seven years, and we worked very closely together. So I was in distribution, but when I was sort of working with the big wholesale clients, when things got really, really technical, or you were facing off against, you know, like a sort of CIO or an analyst, I would bring in money, she would do, like the macro in the markets, and all the really, sort of fine, detailed stuff. So we worked a lot together, so we spent a lot of time together. We knew each other really well, but she just brings something very different to the business that I wouldn't have had had it been just me. So I, I saw all these things, and I thought with her involved with us, doing it together as co founders and partners, the sum of the two of us could be really exciting, really cool. So let's just, let's just throw caution to the wind and go for it. And that

Nick Lincoln: 1:10:41

was, it's great that she's, she's doing this with you, and despite the fact she knows you so well,

Matt Abouzeid: 1:10:45

I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

Nick Lincoln: 1:10:47

Very interesting. Your point about having the epiphany when you woke up in that gutter in Temple Bar in Dublin and you had that moment, it happened. It's a light bulb moment. I remember it happened to me. I had a Paul armerson seminar back in 2008 and he was talking about cash flow modeling and lifestyle financial planning. And I was on this train to Kenton Olympia for the money market, money marketing thing they used to have every year there. And I thought, I can, mean, I can do this on my I can get on my app. I wasn't making the same kind of jump. You. Were making in an advice firm, but they were never going to do full fat financial they weren't rogues, but they were just three. Pass a half right pass a gold score. And it just hit me like this, this ray of sunshine, oh, came from the skies and said, Lincoln, your path is on your own. Go forth and set up your business. So that's that's fascinating. One of the beefs of the track pack and is the fact that many financial planners, Matt, call themselves financial planners. They have every quality qualification under the sun, but they actually pay lip service to financial planning. It's something they might do if a client asks for it, because the client might have heard about cash flow modeling, and it really is a B, certainly in my body, I'm reading from the line to him. I'm guessing that you saw a lot of financial planners who called themselves that but weren't doing it because you're very passionate about putting planning. The plan comes before

Matt Abouzeid: 1:12:04

everything, right? Absolutely, it shouldn't be anything before the plan. It can't be, to me, that just doesn't make any sense whatsoever, that you would start with a portfolio or a product. Yeah, you have to start with the individual, the family. That that's the key bit is like really understanding, what are you trying to do? Where are you now? Where you where do you want to be, and how can we get you there? And let's, let's look at, let's do some modeling. So the first thing we always do with clients is model. So use a cash flow model to look at. Let's have a look at the path, and then let's have a think about what we need to do to get you there. Like it's such for me that feels like such a logical sequence of doing it. And actually, every time we've done that with a client. So we did a presentation meeting a few weeks ago, we had to be booked in two hours. I thought was only going to be an hour. We took the whole two hours. We spent an hour and a half on the cash flow model, and honestly, we spent, I swear to God, Nick it got to the end of the meeting. I thought we haven't spoken about investments. Said to the client, do you want us to cover off what the investment strategy? It was really funny, because I'd had all my meeting notes of like, this is what we're going to do. We're going to do this investment. We had a deck about the investment strategy money, and I were there, and the husband and wife were there. I said, sit down. And we were just having a chat. And it was like, I want to spend 15 minutes just, let's just have a general chat. How are you they've been through this big life transition. They'd sold their business, says the wife, how you feeling about everything? I know this must be a big change and big responsibility. Now you've got this money. And so we had this lovely chat, and then said, look, let's just have a look at we spent a lot of time building this financial model for you. We just want to show you a few different scenarios. Just really show you bring this to life, what this could look like. And we spent a lot of time talking about that, and you could see they were so engaged. They were so interested, it totally made sense to them. So we've gone well over what I expected the hour. We were deep into the second hour, and I just thought, I haven't even mentioned the investment strategy is really bad at me. Yes, do you want me to cover the the investment strategy said, Oh, go on. Then, just because I see him looking at his watch, is like, we've got to go now. Said, he said, five minutes gone, then they're

Nick Lincoln: 1:14:19

already sold by that stage, Matt, because you give them a damn good listening to. And that's what most people crave, you know, just if you want, if you want, if you want better answers, ask really good questions. And obviously, if you've gone that far into the meeting, and the investment thing hasn't even come up, and that's kind of as you allude to on your website with Monique, you know, it's, it's the investment, the financial plan is the beautiful the beautiful car that's going to give me to be and so many advisors focus on the bloody fuel they're putting in the car doesn't really as long as you've got the sensible asset allocation that is aligned to the plan, it doesn't really matter. Now I've got to ask I'm putting on the spot, because we haven't checked on this, what's your investment proposition and together, who are you using? Come on.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:14:54

So what we've done is we've laid out our investment philosophy, as opposed to the specific product that we use. So we're not because we are look with the way we see it is we're fully independent. So we we do look at the whole of the market all the time. So our investment philosophy, you're probably not going to be surprised. Nick is all about sort of like, you can describe it as buy the market, keep fees low, hold. Simplest way to describe it, yeah, love it. It's about, yeah, it's about strategic asset allocation. Is about global diversification. It's about taking the right sort of risk and the equity market risk. It's about, it's about good you know, it's about being in the market, not trying to time the market. It's about straightforward asset classes. You know, we have to start everything with a very high degree of skepticism to get through the gate, whether it's private equity or ESG or, you know, especially in

Nick Lincoln: 1:15:51

this thing of ours, where there's so much crap, you know, from the inside,

Matt Abouzeid: 1:15:55

I've seen it from the inside Nick and like and part of my job at Vanguard was to when I was in wholesale, it was to go out and build relationships with other asset managers, because a lot of those asset managers were building multi asset funds, and they wanted third party funds in so I was running relationships with a lot of the other asset managers. Managers, you get to know their approach to fund, picking and building portfolios. And look, the one thing I will say is what you really need to understand about a lot of the asset managers is the incentives. The commercial incentive is really powerful and is really, you know, the commercials in these business these businesses are businesses. They they have to gather assets, defend margin and react to market demand. And you know, naturally will have a bias towards things that have a good marketing story, good sales story, good commercial element to them. So for us, now that we're financial planners, we have to have a very high level of skepticism when we're looking at things that we might use. But we've laid out in a document our investment philosophy really clear, really straightforward, plain English, really easy to understand. As I say, you could distill it down into one simple sentence. So go global, buy the market, use index funds, keep fees low, hold there's more to it than that. There's a lot of detail in there. But essentially you could sort of like, like as a sort of Twitter line that that that's kind of like how I describe it, in terms of the propositions that we would use. We want to use things that are most aligned to what we believe in, because there's things that we believe in very, very, very passionately, very strongly. Through years of experience and working in an asset manager and working with lots of other professional investors, and look, there are some absolutely cracking propositions in the market model portfolios, multi asset funds that give you global diversification, strategic asset allocation, really sensible fees. So without naming names. I can name. I asked the

Nick Lincoln: 1:18:00

questions, but a bit of a half volume, I expect you to come especially Evidence Based Investing, right? You're buying global capitalism. Just exactly, always

Matt Abouzeid: 1:18:09

look at the date. If you're ever in doubt about anything. Just look at the data,

Nick Lincoln: 1:18:13

because the numbers don't lie. Crunch the numbers.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:18:15

Crunch them. Look at the data. There's some amazing report. There's some amazing reports out there that are very empirical, numerical and you could just look at what's going on, and you could it gives you a good sense of that. Do we want to use these things, whether it's active funds or tactical asset allocation, or we've got some private equity in there now, and that's going to diversify the public empty and all these sorts these, like, you know, these. That's, that's the industry, isn't it? It's look at you.

Nick Lincoln: 1:18:47

I throw in the screen, drop you don't even blink. Alan. Alan normally passes out when I do that from the shop. I want to move on to some stuff that's gonna get into the weeds. But I know the younger Trappists listening to this would just love to soak this up. I know you're very passionate about that. We're very keen on the independence badge, as opposed to restricted badge, which is massive for you. And you went down the network route. Talk me through that.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:19:09

Which one independent or network?

Nick Lincoln: 1:19:10

No, the net the network route, yeah.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:19:12

So the network route. So we look, we did look at the going directly authorized, but it to be honest, it's expensive for startup, and it's a really long process. The application process I was being told would take nine months, and if you don't pass, you just have to restart it again. Yeah, I've heard that. So we really considered that. We really liked the idea of being directly authorized, you know, the view, the freedom that it gives you. Ultimately, though, we just had to be a bit dogmatic about it. And the most important thing for us is so like we had designed our proposition, we were very confident about what we wanted to be financial advice business, not DFM or wealth manager or family office. We want to be in independent financial planning business. We're really sure about investments and our fees and things like that, and who we're going to serve. So next thing is right. How do we actually, like do the plumbing and get this thing to market so directly authorized with one route network was another. Spoke to a lot of networks. There was some networks I thought, really like these, they we can be independent. So for me, that was a real, like sticking point. I don't want to be feels are closing in on me six months in or 12 months in. So in a way, with all of them, it is a bit of a leap of faith, because you're being told, Look, we're going to allow you to be independent, and you have to take a view on it, or you have to make a call. And ultimately, we chose New Leaf. We we really, really like new leaf. They were saying with with those guys, what I found was it's kind of like less formulaic in terms of their approach. Because there were some networks, it's very formulaic this.

Nick Lincoln: 1:21:03

Well, I think, I think, I think the newer networks, such as New Leaf and valid path, Valley path, ultra valid path, they're not, they're not your dad's network. They seem to far more flexible and fluid and. Height, and they're not like 1000s and 1000s of ROS they might change if they get to that kind of size, but they're definitely more flexible. Just to put that, your comments into some perspective, there in Episode 92 Matt Ultra mentioned Mel Holman of compliance and training services cats, and she's actually saying she does help firms do direct authorization applications. And actually it's got a lot better recently. So there is, yeah, but I the horror stories use it about nine months then, then if you screw it up, you get back to square one. That definitely was a thing. So I totally get while them, while you went down the network route.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:21:51

I think it'd be such a shame if people couldn't, if they continue to make it harder. I think the I think that should be a viable option for firms, instead of the only option, really, is network. Sorry, no, that's fine.

Nick Lincoln: 1:22:03

It's fine. I should say which? I mean, this is a great show. We're 25 minutes in. I don't even know where that time has gone, mate. That is absolutely amazing. Okay, I ask an obvious question here, because I'm sure that Trappists are screaming this one out, okay, you went from having zero clients to now having clients, yeah, where? What are you doing to attract clients? Where you getting them from? Are you niching? Three questions there. Sorry, ask them quick.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:22:24

Yeah, we have, you can see our website. We want to work with business owners. I can go into the reasons why if you want. But in terms of finding the clients, we're six months in now. We've got a really healthy bank of clients who are on board, signed terms of business assets on platform. So when you

Nick Lincoln: 1:22:47

first went to these clients, your first client, you've got no clients. You've got no history in this thing of ours on the advisory side that I mean, Jesus Christ, I give me palpitations. Think I

Matt Abouzeid: 1:22:57

know, I know, honestly, leaving Vanguard was the most terrifying thing I've ever done, because I just thought this could just be the biggest, most embarrassing disaster ever. But one client, honestly, Nick we sat people say to me, if you've got an office, have you got this? You got that? One client we met at Costa Coffee, and honest to god, I described this to you. We sat outside on these plastic chairs. I didn't even have a website at this point, and we were just chatting. My friend introduced me to him. He was just selling his business. We were having the loveliest chat. And I think, just be real, just be authentic, just be open, just be vulnerable, if you need to be but just be you absolutely. And I was just telling him about us and our background and what we had done and who we'd worked with, you could just be really honest, and I could see he because he said to me, he could see, like, the investment background. He said to me, do you do pensions and stuff? And I said to him, Look, we do the whole thing. I said, we could we do everything? And if there's something really, really weird, wacky, we have a team of people behind us who are like technical experts, who help us with if there's something really, really like niche and honestly, outside that cost of coffee, sat on those plastic chairs. We weren't even inside because we had to sit outside because we want to have private chat. And he said, Great, we shook hands and and he was talking to a at the time, a couple of private banks as well. So we were up against a couple of private banks, and honestly, I was literally doing cartwheels down the street afterwards. I can only imagine, because it's people you buy into the person, provided you've got the credentials, like? The credentials of the table stakes, right? Everyone listening to this now has probably got the credentials experience. Just show that you care, show that you're real. Just show, I think, that the number one thing is sit to them. Look, we will always be in your corner. 100% you don't ever have to doubt that we have 100% got your back, you your wife, your kids, and we will fight tooth and nail to give you the very best always. You know, it's less about we're going to use this pension. We're going to use this proposition,

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:05

they don't care. They don't care people by people, right? They warm to people they feel they can trust. They warm to people consistent in their tone and language. They're warm to people that express some vulnerability. Okay? And you can have the swishest office. I mean, Christ, you somehow landed this, this client sitting outside on plastic chairs at cost of coffee, because you

Matt Abouzeid: 1:25:25

were yourself, yeah, and, but in terms like the question, like the wider to answer it. So I guess, like, more broadly, what are we doing to get clients? We're just working really damn hard all the time. And it's one of those jobs where the harder you work, the more you will succeed. And it's like, what's the same? 95% perspiration, 5% can't remember. Yeah. Inspiration, yeah. Just work as long as you start, start with get the proposition right. Get the proposition right. Get your proposition right, something you're really proud and passionate about, because that really comes across in every conversation we have. You know, why are we independent? Why do we do financial planning? Why is the investment proposition the way it is? All of those things you can, you can they can really feel the passion. Get all of that stuff rocks. Solid, and then just work really hard. And so we're out. I mean, the one thing I've really learned since leaving a big corporation is, I mean, it's a really humbling experience. Firstly, because you come out and you like, you know, everyone sort of panders to you a bit in distribution, because you're bringing in the money, and everyone's, yeah, what do you need? What do you need? And now go speak

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:37

to employee number 19. He's a big cheese in this firm. Well, it

Matt Abouzeid: 1:26:41

was, and then now you got like, look, I've got nothing around me. You got no clients. Well, you know, I'm just doing everything myself. And so that is very humbling. But what you really, what I've really realized, is your network is so valuable to you. So if you're like a younger advisor on listening to this now, the one bit of advice I would give anyone is build your network and really invest in that. Because a lot of our clients, like our social network and professional network, a lot of our clients have, well, they've all come from introductions, haven't they from we've not really, I feel a bit of a cheat in that we've not really taken the business to market. All of our business, all of our clients, have come from introductions, from

Nick Lincoln: 1:27:31

friends, because, like, mixes are friends of friends, like mixes with like my friend, and exclusivity sales. You know, it sells rather, it's, it's, that's a really good cache you've got there. If that's the case, if you're not, you don't want to, you don't be wreaking desperation, right? You and people will come to you. Just do good, and the business will come in. Matt, we've got to kind of what. I mean, we could talk forever. I mean, you're so busy. I know you're busy, I don't keep up too much more of your time. You're so busy you can't even come to trap Live, which basically is a kick in the teeth. But I still like

Matt Abouzeid: 1:27:59

I've got clients I need to get in Nick we're just out of the woods, but only barely. Like, I've got

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:05

one question I want to wrap up with and ask this of all my victims. Matt abazaid, if you were a cheese, what cheese would you be and why? Oh, what cheese?

Matt Abouzeid: 1:28:13

I mean, I love extra strong cheddar. I could just put that on absolutely everything. Absolutely love it. So what do I cheddar or Greek feta? Slightly salty, slightly

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:25

salty, but gets the job done. That's that that strikes me. It's been in the abazaid DNA, definitely. Yeah, I think so. Right on that note, my friend, that's 31 minutes absolute as I cough to death, dear Trappist. I hope you enjoyed that we could, we could have stretched this out for two or three hours that Matt has obviously got a whole story to tell. Here. We've just scratched the surface. Brilliant journey, mate. So, so just full of respect for you and what you're doing and what you and Moni are doing, crack on. We'll have you back on the show.

Matt Abouzeid: 1:28:54

Obviously. Nick as your story progresses, massive fan of trap. I think what you guys have done with this podcast is just absolutely brilliant. Listen to it all the time. I laugh. I love it, so just keep going.

Nick Lincoln: 1:29:06

Absolutely love it. Thank you, mate and they before we recorded, you said I was your favorite member of the trap pack, which I do appreciate. Thank you. Joking aside. Okay, let's head back to the studio Doom and the latest pile of trap. Carl, what do you think? Yeah,

Carl Widger: 1:29:27

I loved it. Fair play to him. He's a very bubbly and energetic guy. You can tell that kind of straight off. And he's he's so enthusiastic and passionate about what he's doing. Fair play to him. Huge leap to leave a firm like Vanguard and go and do it all on your own. IO, obviously, with his part with his business partner, but I loved, loved, loved the fact that he spent 15 years with Vanguard, and he had to come to Ireland to get his inspiration to actually set up his business. Most people come over from the UK, and they get a hangover in Temple Bar, and then they go home. Matt came over, got inspired by talking to the great financial planners in Ireland, and went home and decided to set up his own business. So Matt, I wish you all the best mate, I think based on that interview, you will have no issue at all. I also want to just focus in on one thing, right? Because there's a lot of talk around though, how is how you get your next client, and, you know, hot marketing, are you doing or whatever? And he just said it straight out. And this has always been my go to and I've always said this to you guys, it's just hard work. It's just working your ass off. And at the start, it's going to do just what it takes. That's what you're going to do. You're going to do what it takes to get your business off the ground and make sure you go and get as as many of the right types of clients that you can. And you know what? If some of the clients you get early days are maybe imperfect for your business, for me, that's okay, because it's just hard work. It's graft, and you can sort that down the line. This guy will be a huge success. I look forward to following his journey, and we should definitely get him on I was going to say in a year's time, but, but this episode has been so kind. Past traffic. It's highly unlikely we'll still be going, but if we are, we should

Alan Smith: 1:31:21

sponsorship withdrawn. Yeah, he was so inspired Carl, he went to Ireland. He thought, if these people can do it, anyone set up his own firm. I know Matt quite well. He was our guy, who's our broker rep guy for quite a few years. And I just you kind of, you know, when you sometimes you meet people, you think he's destined to great things. Matt was absolutely was that what I find is quite interesting. And Matt has, he won't mind me saying this. He's he and I sort of shared a few we met a couple of times quite recently. Put it this way, I don't think this will be the last of people moving from traditional asset management into financial planning. What we're seeing already, you know, a lot of the particularly the big active managers, you can tell by the share prices, obviously, there's a sort of structural move towards indexing and passive funds. Therefore those companies are cutting back. And also there's a lot of people, as Matt was explaining, he likes to be closer to the actual end user, the customer, the client, the actual investor. And I do think you were going to see quite a few more people coming from the large institutional asset management companies are moving in in some sort of role, either setting up their own businesses or joining existing financial planning companies. He's the first to watch what I think will be quite a few over the next couple of years.

Andy Hart: 1:32:46

Andy, yeah, similar to Alan. I've known him for 15 years. Yeah. Matt is is a class act. I've worked on quite a few projects with him. Been to many events with him. I'm sure he's going to fly. It's very brave setting up your business when you have a cushty job in asset management. And I wish him all the best. Yeah, it was interesting. Back to Carl's point. He basically just said, I just talk to people, and I myself and I get them, you know, on board with our journey, which seems to have worked quite well now, yeah, we'll see how, as and when the business develops. If that strategy is is the only strategy he's he's going to be using network. He lives in London. He's worked in London for many years. He's got a good network, so he knows, hopefully, a lot of the right people, but, yeah, can I? Can I just

Carl Widger: 1:33:39

make a point? Yeah, just make a point on that Nick sorry, I know you have a point to make. Like, I'm not saying that. It's a really well made point, right? You can't scale the hard work just just going and grafting it right? That's that's going to be really difficult in the long term, but, but it's not to underestimate that. You have to give it this absolutely everything, from the word go, and this is not easy, you know, because sometimes people think, you know, I've set up my proposition and it's beautiful and my website's beautiful, and where are they? How am I going to get the clients? It's like, yeah, get off your ass and go out and meet them. He got his first client on a plastic chair outside Costa Coffee, right? You just got to get it. Get out there, you know, get get out on the streets and talk to just, just get as many meetings as you possibly can. That's how you're going to get a business off the ground.

Andy Hart: 1:34:31

We've all been very nice to Matt. Does anyone want to address the elephant in the room, his logo, his name of his company, and together the famous Amber sand. Nicholas, you're a fan of this logo

Nick Lincoln: 1:34:46

as much as you are. Andrew diplomatic, it's con.

Andy Hart: 1:34:51

It's controversial.

Alan Smith: 1:34:52

The logo. Can you get that on his website?

Nick Lincoln: 1:34:55

Domain used to vision, financial planning, and that was V 2v, F, p.co.uk, for the last 20 years, I would say V for Victor number 2v, for Victor. Foxtrot papa.co.uk, have you got me Bangladesh?

Andy Hart: 1:35:13

Though his website, I believe his website is and A and D, isn't it? It is, no, it's

Nick Lincoln: 1:35:17

a hyphen, though, as well, isn't it?

Alan Smith: 1:35:19

You get an ampersand on a domain name. But hey.

Nick Lincoln: 1:35:24

So my hands raised the points that have made that the hard work thing, he I think, because we've got relatively successful businesses, but the hard work was done a long time ago. We kind of, maybe we forget it is bloody hard work. And Matt made the I was gently, probably, Matt, you know, your massive trap family, you come into trap live and say, I just don't know if I can do it. And this isn't, this is an evening gig that we're holding here. But he's, he's, he's that busy, he couldn't commit to coming. So hopefully he'll come. But if he doesn't come this year, I'm sure we'll see in the future years. Great guy. I met him a couple of times. I really warmed to him. Some people just got that thing. You know, he's bright, he's energetic, he's a great communicator. And if you're starting up in this thing of ours, considering making the jump from whichever part of the process you're in, listen to that. There's gold dust in there. I could have gone off a much longer. I sort of cut him

Carl Widger: 1:36:09

short, yeah, you could have that just says it all you really could have. And I think people would have been interested to hear more, because it was really engaging. Fair play. Great interview. Well done, Nick. Thank you, fellas,

Nick Lincoln: 1:36:19

thank you. Right, okay, let's crack on. So we're now go on. Andy, I'll just

Andy Hart: 1:36:23

say he's also got a co founder. So again, it's interesting to hear his thoughts on that, because you don't have to just go it alone. You can go it with someone, which I think is has got a lot of merit.

Alan Smith: 1:36:33

He's got complimentary skills and the last thing Steve is he's got an investment philosophy, and I think that's really important as well. It doesn't matter what it is, but when you start a business, you need to have something that you believe in, and you repeat to every client that you see. Build an investment philosophy.

Nick Lincoln: 1:36:49

Yep, repetition is the mother of all learning. Okay, so this must be the second what, 93 minutes in. Now, one hour, 33 minutes into this, to this, what many people are kindly calling an episode full of absolute, absolute shambles. There we go again. That's working,

Alan Smith: 1:37:03

absolute shambles.

Nick Lincoln: 1:37:05

Okay, it's time for TRAPPIST questions. I know it's time for TRAPPIST questions because I can see it. My doorbell post is sacked. The sacked lugged the bulging sack. How I say that? Lug the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up the drive. And this is the chance in every episode where we answer questions from our beloved Trappist. If you want to submit a question, click the link, the pin tweet on x, the pinned X on tweet. It's in there. There's also a link in the circle called show notes. We do get through them, do them all in order. This is a question that's probably been asked before, but we're going to give it. It's due. Stefan H, whoever you are, you're not on social, so we can't, we can't look you up and check if you're a real person, but I'm sure you are. Stephan H says Hi all. I'm a relatively new advisor. Four years in two years fund picking two years post dimensional course and trap good stuff. I currently reluctantly work for a network with no true passive fund range, rather an NPS of indexes, Q Nicks are drop. I'm not sure what do this, because nothing's probably working, and I kind of just give it a go. Okay? I haven't the means to go on my own, nor the influence to change the network's proposition. My question, slash confession, is, can my conscience be clear in delivering proper financial planning, but with funds I don't believe in? So if that's okay, I will quickly go first on this. If I read your question, right, Stefan, you are using an NPS of index funds. If that is the case, you're halfway there. I mean, the more dark way that you're 95% there, agree, don't sweat it. Don't sweat it. I think, yeah, most you're way ahead of the curve, of most, of most, most advisors in the UK. If that's the case, yes, you haven't got full control over the indexes, because the NPS tells you which ones you're gonna go into. But my God, you're halfway there, as long as you're doing full finance doing full far financial planning and using index funds in whatever form and the asset allocation is in, mainly the great companies of the world. That's everything else is window dressing. Andy, you're going to probably nod along and say yes to that. Yeah, yeah. I agree with that. I agree with that. Yep. All right. And anyone else got anything to add for Stefan, okay, Carl's giving a thumbs up. For those listening, Carl is giving a thumbs up. Okay, right? Let's move on then to the next section of the show. If I can find the culture corner, this headache of mine is not getting any better, by the way, anyone cares, but let's do it. Culture corner. Okay, I'm going first. So we mentioned Abraham triple n, the Nigerian number ninja, and his his charts, his wonderful charts of things that happened in years gone by. And every year he has another year on that's what, that's what it is, just another year on a chart with the same things on there. Advisor, 3.0 soapbox. Episode Five is his podcast, and he, this is just him and another advisor, a guy called Matt pitcher, who is a close friend of the show, and he does listen to trap and Alan. And I know him, and Andy knows him through the meetings that we. Alan likes to go to in London. Good guy. And the first half of the show is a bit heavy about the bloody Dimps and March. This is Staunton, these guys who look at equity returns, and it's Abraham's kind of thing, looking through numbers. And this year, whatever, blah, blah, blah. But then the second half of the show, Matt goes into a tirade against lifestyleing funds. Really interesting, and especially for Andy, that's like a it's a red rag to a bull. And Matt does not hold back. And he, what he says, is really, really good on that. And so well worth I think I listen.

Andy Hart: 1:40:13

I cover that extensively in my book. Nicholas, have you? Have you listened to my book yet?

Nick Lincoln: 1:40:16

Nicholas, have I listened to your book?

Alan Smith: 1:40:20

You know the answer to that? Andrew, you can ask him. Every week on this podcast, you're gonna get the same answer.

Carl Widger: 1:40:27

I have also, no, I appreciate the support.

Andy Hart: 1:40:29

Appreciate the sport. Listen. I'm reading it though, Andrew, I'm

Nick Lincoln: 1:40:33

reading you anything coming right next as you're struggling today. Storyteller, I will cue you up.

Alan Smith: 1:40:38

It's, you know, I know I see it. I'm back in the game sort of

Andy Hart: 1:40:43

next time to find out what this is now.

Alan Smith: 1:40:46

Interesting one. An app is called bevel, B, E, V, E, L, bevel. App, did any of you see this stuff that blew up over the weekend with whoop, you know, the fitness band tracking data thing called whoop. So we've just done a big fundraiser. So they're now valid at $10 billion not a small business, but they have just issued sort of legal proceedings against this tiny, micro, little startup called bevel. And I've never heard of them before. And so I check them out, and I go online, I think. Hmm, this is really good. Downloaded it to my phone. I've got an Apple Watch. Linked it up to my Apple watch. It's, to my mind, it's 80 90% as good as whoop for a fraction of the cost. Are you familiar with the concept of the Streisand effect? Nicholas, you're the most intelligent one here. Yes.

Nick Lincoln: 1:41:34

Her mansion was, she didn't want to mention photograph and put out there. Put out there. And everyone then reposted it because

Alan Smith: 1:41:41

she said she didn't want to be out there. So, so same thing. So I've never heard of bevel app, and then I did hear that a big company like want to sue them and tell them, and what they were saying is they're kind of their style, their fonts, the way they were reporting data. You know, you get data on these apps and whoops and various others. It's generally kind of circles and charts you done, you know, your sleep was 88% or whatever. I don't know how they can claim any sort of ownership over that. Anyway they did. And there's apparently legal proceedings. And so this Streisand effect, because whoop have just made a big song and dance of it that all those 1000s of people have said, What's this bevel it is? I bet they must have had 1000s, 10s of millions. Of downloads now. So anyway, so I've been checking three days in, and the data is really, really good. And I'm on a free trial right now. I think you end up paying, but it's a fraction of what you pay for. Whoop. Otherwise, if you've got an Apple watch or one of the other watches that tracks your data tracks you sort of, you're walking, you're running, you're sleeping, and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, I think so far so good. If you haven't got it already, download and check out bevel app. Link in the show notes. I thank you.

Andy Hart: 1:42:45

It's the same when the black cabbies in London protest about Uber and they said, What you protesting about? There's this new app on your phone. You can book a taxi. It's half the price. It comes twice as quick, and the cars beautiful, you know, they the Streisand effect. They highlighted that. You know, in the next six months, the black cabs are absolutely decimated because they they were protesting, yeah, so be careful who you protest against in business. Okay, moving on to my final culture corner. It's the big interview with Michael O'Leary. I believe this was on Irish television, and I watched on YouTube, randomly. I'm a big fan of Michael O'Leary. The business goes, Michael O'Leary, the founder of Ryanair, sorry, the guy that still Ryan

Alan Smith: 1:43:28

CEO of Ryan

Andy Hart: 1:43:29

CEO, yeah, yeah. 4% of Ryanair. But he took it from what it was to, you know, I think they do about three and a half 1000 flights a day. And he goes into loads of different stats about the business, which I found fascinating. I actually listened to it on a Ryan airplane, which was ironic. Look it up, Nick, it's a good interview. 45 minutes. Michael O'Leary, the main man, and the lady who was interviewing was quite interesting. She was obviously trying to get a few get a gotcha moment. So again, it's I like those interviews where where the interviewee is very much on the back foot and is a bit, little bit nervous of the interviewer. I didn't know if you saw it, Carl or a fan of him, or any thoughts.

Carl Widger: 1:44:13

I didn't see it. And I don't have a culture corner this week. I've been a little bit busy

Nick Lincoln: 1:44:19

with no, it's no problem. It's no problem. And I mean, Michael Leary, if you but good luck. If you're trying to get a gotcha with him. You gotta

Andy Hart: 1:44:27

be on your game. He's a smart guy. They've extended his contract to, I think he's gonna finish now when he's 71 you know, back to this do you retire? You know, have you had enough? Do you have enough? Do you have enough to do? Is that there's, I'm hearing a lot more people unretiring as well, which, again, is a bit of a movement. They think, no, I've got it nailed. I've got enough money. Got enough to do. Six months later, they're like, This is hell. I need to get back to work.

Carl Widger: 1:44:56

Yeah, he's having, he's having, like, internet spots with Elon Musk. Get any more exciting than that, I guess, like, Bring it on, happy days.

Andy Hart: 1:45:06

Yeah? He said that gave, gave him a load of business from it. Yeah. He thinks Elon

Alan Smith: 1:45:11

Musk another strides and effects people going, who's Ryan here? Who's this guy? There's quite cheap flights. I think I'll book one.

Andy Hart: 1:45:19

Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of Ryanair. It's basically a tech company that ideally gets you there on time,

Unknown: 1:45:27

and you get, you

Nick Lincoln: 1:45:29

get what

Andy Hart: 1:45:34

you pay. British Airways is diabolical. British Airways, you can check in. It's 24 hours before destination. You're in the destination, busy and stressed, you've got to check into this shit app, say for the second

Nick Lincoln: 1:45:49

for the budget airlines podcast, EasyJet is better than Ryanair, but Ryan is good. Easy jet is a step up. Okay, right? Episode,

Alan Smith: 1:46:02

yeah, come on, put us out of our misery. On Island,

Carl Widger: 1:46:07

that was amazing. Nick, wasn't it? That was a really great episode. Did you enjoy that?

Alan Smith: 1:46:11

Nick, we finished. Yeah. We finished. Yeah. Well, he's

Carl Widger: 1:46:17

got to get back to the bank. Have we stopped?

Nick Lincoln: 1:46:19

Don't, don't leave the bloody thing. Okay, dear TRAPPIST, thank you very much for persevering with this load of trap. What a load of trap this was, and it has slid down the E Bender for the time, hopefully never to be seen again. Wash down, push down with lots of toilet paper, probably backing up in an hour's time. Get the plunger out and really make sure this never comes back into your life. Leave a review on iTunes. Six out of five stars is mandatory. Like and subscribe on YouTube, please. We're well over 1000 subscribers now, when we're coining it, we got in 10 quid last month, and then we're looking forward to splitting that. That's a pint and a half in London. Okay, until the next episode, it's adios from us. We'll see you on the other side. Take care of the Trappist. We love you.

Carl Widger: 1:46:56

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Everybody,

Nick Lincoln: 1:47:02

Sweet Mother of Mercy, fucking mess, you're.