TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

96 - RORY SUTHERLAND - AI, The Universe, and Everything

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 96

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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

  • Topical Titbits
  • Meat and Potatoes: RORY SUTHERLAND - Life, The Universe, and Everything
  • Culture Corner

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

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Nick Lincoln:

Yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 96 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. My name is indeed lick Lincoln. And joining me in a catastrophic Digital Studio of doom are the three other horsemen, Alan, the storyteller, Smith, Carl della voce, the voice would you and and the ultra heart. Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app absolutely nothing. So let's get it underway with another high energy review. Read out my very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain Hart,

Andy Hart:

thank you very much. Nicholas, today we have one review from Ice and Fire. 78 six out of five stars. These four are introducing the world to a revolution in the industry by promoting proper financial planning focusing on goals, dreams and aspirations, not product and sales. It's a great podcast with a very witty and well scripted format and excellent banter and guests. What more? Back to you. Nicholas, well scripted, if any, if any, thank you. That's a lovely, lovely, lovely review from Ice and Fire seven chair please. To keep the reviews coming in, we love to read them out, good or bad. We last episode, Episode 95 we had a slightly negative review. We were we don't care. We really don't care. Okay, let's get the show on the road and put some a timestamp on the last show before trap live happens. I believe on that note, Mr. Smith, you have a ticket going well, a couple of tickets, actually. But

Alan Smith:

has the gentleman let us know where we are in the ticket sales?

Nick Lincoln:

Brian in the box,

Alan Smith:

yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

Brian. Brian, now, don't do that. Put it away. Come it back in good plan. Yes, it's good. Brian in the ticket office has confirmed we have officially sold out for trap Live, which is not a not a billy bullshit, it has happened. Thank you. TRAPPIST can't wait to see you soon, so good news. So no,

Alan Smith:

fantastic

Nick Lincoln:

if you can't make it and you've got a ticket,

Alan Smith:

yeah. So completely sold out. Thanks Brian for letting us know he's been monitoring the ticket sales for weeks and weeks. So complete sell out in a great location. But of course, as inevitable happens as we get closer to the date, but the time this goes out, it's less than a week away. Life changes. Things go on, and we've had a couple of messages from a few different people who say that they are prepared. They can't make it anymore, and they'd be happy to donate their tickets on a first come first served basis to those, ideally, those who are perhaps a bit kind of younger earlier in their career, who the price of the travel and the ticket might have been a bit too much. So, gentleman called Derek fish, who's an advisor in Scotland, he's got a ticket. Gary abeler, who is the AI, one of the AI gurus around town. He can no longer make it. And young advisor, Sam Luke, he actually bought three tickets, and all of his the three of them can't make it, so that means a three, four. There are five available free tickets, and the only way you can get hold of those is to check out the notes, the show notes for this episode, where the LinkedIn connection details are listed and contact these, any of these gentlemen, and request that you are the recipient of a free ticket. So there's a few free freebies going for those who are quick off the mark as soon as this episode comes out.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, good stuff. Alan, you put the links in there. Yeah,

Alan Smith:

yeah. I am the time you finish this all right? Or it's

Nick Lincoln:

a bit

Andy Hart:

or it's a bit or it's a bit of a challenge. I just need to find them on LinkedIn

Unknown:

and do

Alan Smith:

so maybe do that then.

Andy Hart:

And first come, first served. Get in there.

Alan Smith:

Derek fish, Gary Baylor, Samuel, Luke, good luck.

Nick Lincoln:

These are the hottest tickets in town. These are that so maybe it's good to do some hard work and track them down. Okie dokie, good stuff. And and still, storyteller with you. And, well,

Alan Smith:

you're on a

Nick Lincoln:

solid wave, dream

Alan Smith:

on a on a similar theme. We've been talking about this for a while. We did actually issue the questionnaire for the inaugural trap track 26 which is a kind of, you know, we're trying to find out what's going on in the within the trap community, within the full fat financial planning community advisors, para planners, everyone who's involved, everyone who's the audience, who are the listeners and the viewers of this podcast. So we sent it out. Well, few days ago, really, we have had an incredible response so far. Last time I looked and we checked 364 was the number that I saw of people who have taken and it is just a few moments of your life to sort of tick the appropriate boxes give us a sense check on what how things are in your operation and your business, what the sentiment is, what the biggest challenges are. Our idea is that we'll kind of, we'll look at the the reviews and what people are saying, and we'll and we'll talk about it at. Trap live. Because if there are things on the minds of the audience, then we probably need to give it a good going over. There are, I don't know if you guys have looked at all yet. There are some quite interesting developments, and quite where we asked about, you know, what people's setup is? Are they working in restricted firms, independent firms, consolidated firms, there's quite a divergence of experience and opinions across the marketplace, where people are but more will be revealed on the evening. And so for those who haven't, we are going to put a hard stop on this survey. The date is Sunday. What's the date of the month? Sunday? The something of May.

Nick Lincoln:

10. 10th

Alan Smith:

of May with the last chance to participate. Everyone who participates in this will get full details and a copy of the survey and see how, how their colleagues are getting on, see what, how the market is getting on. So we would really appreciate you taking literally three minutes of your life to click the link in the show notes. We post it on LinkedIn as well. And just give us your thoughts, give us your opinions, give us your views.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, yeah, good, good. Stuff done. Thank you. Next, watch the

Carl Widger:

Central Bank of Ireland joined up with 17 other central banks, and it was led by the FCA. And this is an endeavor to try and, I suppose, manage and regulate, to some extent, the influencers that are out there that are extolling the virtues of various financial products that they're selling. So look, it's quite good to see that there's kind of a cohesive effort against these types of people. My social media consumption is limited to LinkedIn, YouTube and podcasts. So I know it's very prevalent on the likes of Tiktok and Instagram, and I'm not being exposed to that at all. But it is infiltrating, you know, the podcast world. There's definitely lots of stuff on YouTube that you're I'm just coming across because obviously it's coming in via the algorithm, and it's like crazy stuff, and it's okay for people to have opinions and to, you know, give their opinions and stuff, but to be just basically given false facts and making sweeping generalizations is not okay. So it seems the central banks of the world are uniting and they're going to try and get a handle on this, a big job, obviously, but good at the same time, because it might put manners on a few people and make sure that there's much better content out there than some of the stuff that has been put out there. So I thought kind of cool that there's a global effort against this, as opposed to, you know, one small country trying to tackle this on their own. I

Alan Smith:

think that

Carl Widger:

social media,

Alan Smith:

those structures, global struggle, how they're going to do these people are entirely unregulated. What's the FC, FCA going to do to them? It's more the platforms themselves. And, my God, there's just a they're just full of nonsense. Whether it's financial services or political or you name it, it's just full of opinions. It's,

Carl Widger:

I think, I think, really, what you're trying to do is get more more the more famous people,

Unknown:

right?

Carl Widger:

And kind of, you know, clip their wings a small bit when there's stuff Andy

Alan Smith:

Mr. Tick tock,

Carl Widger:

yeah, and he's, and he's putting out great content. Believe

Andy Hart:

is it, what do you consume? Nick, is it still gets to talk. You're on Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, I'm on I'm on face. Gram, I love it, yeah, tweet, Snapchat back, isn't

Andy Hart:

it? I think it's I mean, as you say, it's good that they're having a cohesive effort to try and tackle this, but they're almost fighting a losing battle. You're right. Misinformation and fraud, you know, is part of the human condition, but hopefully they can have a bit of a chance.

Carl Widger:

There was a there was a podcast, there was a podcast episode Andy brought to my attention by one of the trap listeners, a young fella in the north. And I listened to it, and it was like, Jesus Christ, no, this particular one was basically saying, Don't ever go to a financial advisor, because, and I don't mind anybody saying don't go to a financial advisor, because, really, it's up to us to be able

Unknown:

to install, yep,

Carl Widger:

extol our own virtues. But some of the claims that he was making, I'm like, that's just not the case, you know? So, yeah. So, look, I think people make an outrageous claims. Wasn't the famous one? Tom Brady was selling crypto or something, and

Andy Hart:

a lot of people got caught up in that. Yeah, a lot of famous names. But

Alan Smith:

Trouble is, car TX,

Andy Hart:

wasn't it? Ft,

Alan Smith:

yeah. What it was he was behind

Andy Hart:

all that, yeah, yeah. The trouble

Alan Smith:

is, with a lot of these things, that's the more extreme your opinions are, the more of an audience you'll get, the more clicks you'll get, the more ad revenue you'll get. So to say something just day to day and regular is not a sort of a money spinner for a lot of these people, unfortunately, and maybe they can. I mean, nowadays you've got anonymous accounts. You've got literally eight. AI enabled YouTube accounts, which aren't a real person, and they go out and they also, it's crazy.

Andy Hart:

I think something, I think something that's more dangerous and impactful is major national brands and newspapers allowing people to advertise and sell complete junk that then blows up. And I've seen that with, you know, the number one newspaper in the UK. So there's obviously a lot going on the fringes and people that have got big followings, but national newspapers, major brands allowing clear stuff that blow up in the future on their platform. And these, these publications like, let's say, in January 2026, they'll allow mass advertising of total junk that I know is going to blow up at some point in the future, three years later, when it's blown up, they cover the story, yeah, and I think, Jesus Christ, you guys will allow it to win, win advertising your platform, and then you cover the story three years later. So I take snippets whenever I see them doing things that I know are going to blow up, like whiskey investments. That was this thing like two years ago. Whiskey investments all over mainstream publications. They are going to blow up at some point in the future. It's not like, oh, did the whiskey go well? It's a pure frickin fraud. It's a pure share. Whiskey investments have not done well, therefore that product's not done well. No, it's a pure scam. I was expecting returns on whiskey. Sorry. I was

Alan Smith:

expecting a call half an hour before recorded this, and so I took the call on my mobile, and it wasn't who I was expecting. It was somebody selling fine wine, fine wine futures, and he just said something they said, and it's done 17% compound a year for the last 10 years, blah, blah, blah, and it's all tax free, which it probably is if you invest in in wine, and, you know, can we speak to you about it? And I just thought, No one does these cold calls are very, very, very rarely take these calls. You don't do them unless, some people bite, unless

Andy Hart:

they were

Alan Smith:

some Yeah, unless they work. So some people they make, you know, that guy's sitting there making very nice guy on the phone, very sort of polished. He's probably making 100 calls a morning and and some of them are saying yes to it. So it is, it's buyer beware, it's, it's, but it's an issue, but it's never it's not, not going away, despite all the best efforts of the trying,

Carl Widger:

yeah, and the FCA and 17 other countries, I like, look, it's better they try and do something, even if the impact is going to be minimal, because if they save one or two people from it, then happy days they should. That's what they should be doing. Don't just not try, because it's, oh, that's an impossible

Nick Lincoln:

Well, that's, that's true. We often, we often criticize the regulators for being so reactive. And at least here they're trying to get on the front foot. But I do think it's a really, as Andy said, it's, they're chameleons. There's, they're shape shifters, these people, you know. And as soon as you what's the whack a mole. As soon as you whack one down, another one pops up, and then it's but they're trying. The intent is good.

Carl Widger:

Okay, there's this. There's a starfish story hung up in your office. I believe Alan, but the little boy and he saved one starfish. So there you go.

Alan Smith:

Lisa saved that one.

Unknown:

Exactly,

Carl Widger:

exactly,

Nick Lincoln:

right. Coming back to planet Earth, as this podcast, as this podcast, is bleeding into your ears, feeding into your ears, it will be. It's coming out on Tuesday, sorry, Thursday, May the seventh. And we have local elections in the UK, and they're looking to be, well, they could be very, very interesting. We have an incumbent government with a massive majority, but it's not particularly going that well for the government, and the local elections could well be a sort of semi referendum on their performance to date. And one of the parties that may do quite well in today's local elections is the Reform Party, and to its immense credit, whether you agree with this or not, they have officially said they are going to scrap DB pensions for new public sector workers. Now this is an immense pivot. No political party has ever had the balls to do this. This is completely the right thing to do, and it should have been done many, many moons ago, and it's a brave thing to do, because the public sector in the UK is a lot of people, of voters, and they will be pissed off by this. There won't be natural reform voters in the first place, and I doubt this is not going to get them any votes, but I think for reform to go out and limb, at least bring this conversation out. So the political parties now there's some clear water on this, because this, for me, has been a BMI bonnet for years, that the public sector gets, gets pensions that we plebs us money purchase plebs don't get what these final salary swanks have and a credit to credit to reform. So it's interesting how that plays. I guess reform are taking the view Well, at this, people in this public sector, by and large, aren't going to vote for reform anyway, so screw it. But I think it's just brilliant. They've got it out there as a conversation point. Because if they've got it out there now, other parties may start talking about it and just avoid kicking this can down the road, because it we can't go on as we are with the debt we're in. So I don't know if you boys picked up on that.

Andy Hart:

It's a huge subject, Nick, and there's various points to it. It is a huge future ticking time bomb. Did they say that they're going to do career average earnings nick or just completely remove it?

Unknown:

I don't

Nick Lincoln:

think they went that much detailed on the article. I think they're going to remove it. Think it's been money purchase,

Unknown:

well

Alan Smith:

and it will be

Nick Lincoln:

money purchase.

Alan Smith:

I thought that most civil service pension schemes had already moved to career average, which is still defined benefit, but it's not the actual final salaries. It's based on a career career.

Nick Lincoln:

This is still defined benefit, DB, pension, they're getting rid of dB. So they would get

Alan Smith:

that means that, by definition, they're getting rid of career average. So move into a money purchase. The interesting thing is, what the level of contribution they would suggest money purchase, because it ends up being a 25% off salary purchase, DC contribution then, but

Andy Hart:

that's a finite cost.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, at least you exactly, at least you've capped the future. Okay, well, that's, that's interesting. It's interesting to see how that plays out, because obviously there's a lot

Andy Hart:

of people. Nick, what's your thoughts? Nick, on the public sector earn more, earn less, sorry, generally, than the private sector. Hence, they have,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, that's no longer the case. That's no longer the case, and they've had inflation busting pay rises for the last X number of years, that way ahead of the private sector. So there's two things there. Still you asked this question, Andy, so perhaps I'll finish it. That's the way it works, and then you go again. So

Unknown:

they've

Andy Hart:

had jet lagged, they've

Nick Lincoln:

had inflation busted, inflation busting pay rises. They're basically unstackable. They have no competition. It's really, really hard to lose your job in the public sector. And I'm not denigrating what they would do in the public sector if you're doing it, but it's you have no competition. All right, there's only one civil service, there's only one health system, there's only one estate education system. You've got no competition. And their pay has gone up marked in recent years. And there used to be the argument the pension was that was compensating for lower pay. Yeah, it doesn't anymore. It doesn't anymore. And these people have made through their legislation, DB schemes in the private sector unaffordable. They don't exist for us. Why the hell should they have them get rid

Andy Hart:

that's the key word, Nick unaffordable, and it's unaffordable now and in the future it's

Alan Smith:

going to be it's about the accumulated future liability is the key thing, and because pensions are paid, are index linked as well, those compounding effects of that are just, well, bottom line, country can't afford it. Can't afford any of this,

Unknown:

right?

Alan Smith:

So that's the harsh reality. Will be interesting to see how that plays with the results which are out today.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, just to if I can make one point, we have similar system here

Nick Lincoln:

I was going to ask you, yeah, that's

Carl Widger:

why I don't think nurses, doctors, teachers, are paid half enough, and I think they deserve the defined benefit pension scheme that they get at the end of their careers.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, well, they're paid well here, okay, ultra

Andy Hart:

moving on. Okay. This is a company you may or may not be aware of mellow. I think Alan knows a lady who works here, as I do. They mainly Vicky Hicks. Runs that business. They mainly help businesses sell, grow, sell a new are a new thing that they're working on is they're setting up a new marketplace, online marketplace, I'm assuming, to connect buyers and sellers of financial advice firms called Project exit. It's going to be part of the mellow stable of products. So a couple of points here, mellow help advisors build their business and then sell and exit. And they're also trying to add some more innovation in this space with their new marketplace called Project exit. Any points on that?

Alan Smith:

Well, I do, I do know Vicky. In fact, obviously you'll not have forgotten, on behalf of trap, I was invited to their Christmas quiz, and I won it.

Andy Hart:

You ended up winning.

Unknown:

I won

Alan Smith:

the whole thing, and I got a trophy for it and everything. And I give trap a few

Carl Widger:

individual event. Was it?

Alan Smith:

Yeah, no. What do you mean? I was individuals. It was all the leading celebrities from the industry, was

Carl Widger:

the quiz an individual event, you won. You won an individually on your own.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, that I was representing this podcast. You

Unknown:

weren't

Nick Lincoln:

part of a team at the event, I think is what Carl's alluding to.

Alan Smith:

No, I wasn't part of a team. I was just me. You

Andy Hart:

had nobody to speak to and confirm

Alan Smith:

for a friend.

Andy Hart:

That's

Alan Smith:

sweet. Be true anyway. So yeah, I do know Vicky and some of her team. And, well, it sounds we like innovation. Sounds good.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, exactly. Gain has also joined there, who's also financial services powerhouse, gain of rugby. She's the Chief Operating Officer. So, yeah, they're building out. So if you're in that space, looking to build your business and sell it, I think there'll be a good company to connect with and speak to.

Nick Lincoln:

Okey dokey. Watch Central Bank of Ireland under pressure.

Carl Widger:

Yeah. So on the one hand, we had a good story with central bank. So this is a story, and. It's actually, it's, I don't know, slightly disturbing. So the central bank in 2020 had an application for a controlled function CEO of some fund management. The details are light because they haven't released the names, and that's correct. But anyway, they refused this guy, he was an Irish guy, but he had worked in the UK, and there had been allegations where he had worked in the UK and the central bank basically didn't give him due process and refused his control function, and because he then had this black mark against his name, he couldn't get a job, basically, in financial services at all. And it seems his life kind of unraveled a small bit afterwards, as you can imagine, might so it was brought to the High Court, and the High Court were scathing in their criticism of the central bank that they wouldn't give this guy a kind of an interview and whatever. So look, I just thought worth pointing out, possibly a little bit brave to point it out, but you know that they regulators don't always get it right. And you know everyone is entitled to due process, and they should have given this guy, you know, the opportunity to explain the situation, because I don't think he was actually as involved in the situation as maybe it had, it had been claimed. So there's not a whole lot of media coverage about this. But I think it should be, because, hey, we all make mistakes, and I think the central bank, it might mellow them a small bit too. There's a segue from the last one, but, yeah, it might, it might help everybody, because sometimes regulation, because can become overly stringent, and that's actually not good for commerce to be done, and that's effectively, or ultimately, what we all need, isn't

Unknown:

it?

Andy Hart:

Did the article say that there was compensation pay Carl, because you alluded to this guy's life just basically fell apart. He couldn't get a job, and he's

Carl Widger:

chosen that the article I read didn't I read two articles on it, and neither of them said about compensation. But funny, one of the people who are working in the central bank has now gone in as the CFO of our national broadcaster, and that has been riddled with bad news stories. So here's just another one for RTE, which is just an interesting link, but yeah, no. Andy, I didn't see that anywhere, but I hope that guy gets sorted out, because that's just, you know, you you know, we're all good trying to do our best and get on with our lives and do the best for our families, ultimately. And here's a man who got his his livelihood taken away. He went in to work for an unregulated business, which was fine, so he didn't have to go through the central bank approval process, and they found out about it, and then they fired him. So this thing has just followed him around, and that's not okay. That is not okay.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay. So moving on, Andrew, you have, I mean, we've got trapped live, haven't we, which is the biggest event, but you do? You do something, humans under what?

Andy Hart:

Yes, so I'm deep in the conference organizing, event organizing space at the moment, yeah, putting everything together. So I've got my two conferences later in the year. Humans are under management London and humans under management South Africa. The tickets have hopefully been launched at the time you are hearing this, so you should have been hopefully bombarded by emails from various different sources connected to me. So that's all good. So yeah, London and South Africa. And as always, if anyone makes the pilgrimage from the UK or Ireland to South Africa, Cape Town, you have a free ticket. Obviously, you need to schlep yourself to the southern hemisphere. That's it. So my yeah two conferences later in the year, and Carl was invited to South Africa, but he's got quite a lot on his plate, so he politely declined to come with me, even though he carefully considered it. But maybe more about that trap live. So that's it.

Alan Smith:

Tell me something. Andrew,

Unknown:

yes, why

Alan Smith:

have you never gone back? Why have you never had hum, Dublin, you had one.

Andy Hart:

Oh yeah,

Unknown:

you

Alan Smith:

had had it once. I think

Andy Hart:

we were all there

Alan Smith:

again. Why did you stick to UK and South Africa, of all the places, just a hop skip and a jump across the Irish Sea, you could be in the heart of he he ruined enough lives.

Unknown:

No

Andy Hart:

joke, yeah. Aside, I am up for doing Dublin again. And me and Carl spoke quite seriously about it. And I spoke to various different companies. Each country's got their own various things to consider, but it's just a time constraint. You know, humans under management is technically it? You know, not my main business like as in, they're all sort of in the mix and doing three. Global conferences per year, it would have just been way too much. But no, I'm very keen to go back. Ireland

Carl Widger:

is ready, Andy, and you should definitely do it. Yeah,

Andy Hart:

I know we've spoken about it.

Carl Widger:

There's a ground there's a ground swell

Unknown:

here.

Carl Widger:

I

Andy Hart:

And there's a few key companies that I can speak to, yeah, in terms of exhibitors and sponsors. But we could another thing.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, we

Andy Hart:

take your anniversary Nick

Nick Lincoln:

wellness that also do a Trappy kind of thing. It's not that difficult for all four of us to get out there. Anyway.

Andy Hart:

This guy always gigs. Let's move No, I'm

Nick Lincoln:

trying to improve yours further from a very low base storyteller message from Jack party in Northern Ireland.

Alan Smith:

Okay, bear with not quite as prepared for this, right? Jack,

Nick Lincoln:

absolute shambles,

Unknown:

talk

Alan Smith:

amongst yourselves. We've

Andy Hart:

got no drops today. Nick, have we got no

Alan Smith:

drops? Absolute shambles, I

Unknown:

don't

Andy Hart:

think the

Nick Lincoln:

media was working that well, mate. So I'm very low to touch it.

Alan Smith:

Talk about yourself so Jack is

Unknown:

I love that one. Oh, you got all these ready for trend line?

Nick Lincoln:

Right for the love of God, Alan, please go on. Oh, come on. You.

Alan Smith:

All right, so Jack, I'm just gonna read out. I have his permission to read out. Send a message to me via LinkedIn. Hi Alan, I owe you and the guys at trap a long overdue Thank you. I was an advisor at True Potential, working for a firm that didn't even do cash flow modeling, and I hated it when you had Cathy on the podcast, I enrolled in verve, and it really opened my eyes as to what was out there. With a one and two year old and relatively new in the profession, it wasn't a good time to go out by myself. But then you mentioned Paul mccooberry's mastermind group. I got in touch with Paul, and he ended up opening a position for me at his firm. I'm now doing full fat financial planning and making a difference in a real way. Goes on to say Paul's mastermind group, which again, we talked about in the past, is all business owners, but with his help, I've got my own mastermind group, which is a mix of directly authorized and network and employed advisors. Here in Northern Ireland, we're looking to add maybe two to four more to our group, and we'd appreciate a shout out, if possible. And he put his email address, which we'll put in the in the show notes. So that was a kind of convoluted thing, but, you know, I think the underlying message here is, and we've often talked about in the past, mastermind groups. Carl's got his, or he's had his. He's been involved in in Dublin, in Ireland. Of course, we've all been active historically in London. Mastermind groups. Getting together with fellow professionals is a really important thing to do, particularly as you develop your career. So Jack, yeah, and with Paul's group, it is mostly business owners. So there's so good for Jack, he started a different one who aren't necessarily there. Could be employed advisors. Could be, you know, directly authorized people. But if you are in that part of the world, in Northern Ireland, and you want to be part of a group that meets up regularly, shares their best practice and best ideas, do get in touch with Jack. I think the whole thing is a great story. Anyway, him going from True Potential to working at a proper financial planning company.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Well done Jack. Well done Jack and well done Paul. That's, that's a brilliant, brilliant story. Okay, just conscious of time. Okay, so I've only just come across this article because it hit my inbox this afternoon, but we've been, we've been going on about cash skims on platforms for for over the last year. I guess because it is an issue, we all think it's an issue, and we know that one one platform doesn't do it, and it's a prominent platform, and another platform didn't do it and is now going to actually introduce a skim on its cash holdings on its platform. Aviva, going against the we'd have thought the prevailing winds were, is now going to introduce a skim on its cash on its on its platform. And I read the article on city worlds linked to it in the so called show notes. Didn't have time to really read it in depth, but I went to the comments and yeah, basically Aviva doing it, and their commercial view is because everyone else does it, so we're going to do it, which strikes me as being a little bit shitty, to be honest. And the comments on the article back that up as well, but, yeah, I don't know. It's just, to me, a bizarre it just seems that that's a clanger.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, I wasn't aware that Aviva didn't charge a skim, so That's news to me. Well,

Nick Lincoln:

well, they do. They check. They charge 35 bits on cash, which is they, that's how they do.

Andy Hart:

They charge a fee. Fixed skim, quite

Nick Lincoln:

a fit, high fixed skim. And now that now, and if you look at the article that they're getting rid of the 35 bit charge on cash, but they're going to retain

Andy Hart:

interest, yeah, all right,

Alan Smith:

that's, you know, the most egregious ones are the ones who take a skim on cash and charge platform, platform fee, and there's a there's a few of them as well who do both those things. We know. The only company that we're aware of that does none of those is transact,

Andy Hart:

transact. Charge their platform fee, Alan, but don't skim on the cash, so they get the best rate they can get for you. But they do charge their platform fee on it, just

Alan Smith:

okay, but because they get their institutional terms on the cash, as I understand, that can often completely cover the cost any much cash you've got without,

Nick Lincoln:

without drowning in this, maybe read the article, you got chance options. I think the current rate of EVA paying is 1.8 on cash, whereas transact paying 3.69 I mean, it's just a different bloody world

Alan Smith:

once you've got a few 10s of billions on your platform. This is a money spent. It's a money spinner. Jeez, yeah,

Andy Hart:

when those consultants come in and go what you're not, they don't call it skimming on off cash. I'm sure they've got a great internal name for

Alan Smith:

it, margin expansion.

Andy Hart:

We skim off cash.

Nick Lincoln:

We use the casino model, yeah.

Andy Hart:

But the juice. Take a look at that. Look at this. I think I can't remember. I think it's about eight to 10% of all assets on platform are in cash. Anyway, yeah, it's a recurring theme on trap transact are insanely transparent about it, and they're becoming more vocal about it as well, rightly so. Anyway, that's the Yeah, if,

Carl Widger:

if a platform is has a platform charge, I think it's okay to charge if there's money on the platform because that you've just have a platform charge, you can decide, I know. I know. So, so so fair play, and then transact, give all the return back to the client, right? So what? Nick just said that, that, if I'm correct, Nick, that that Aviva, are now not going to charge on the cash amount, but they're going to take some of the return.

Alan Smith:

Yeah,

Andy Hart:

half the return. Carl, sorry, half the return, approximately,

Carl Widger:

okay, yeah. But you know what? I'm kind of okay with that. It's the people who are charging and then they're also taking the interest in the cash those people that that's what the regulator should look at.

Andy Hart:

But the Viva

Nick Lincoln:

will now appear. Aviva will now appear. 35 bips cheaper, you know, and all the platform comparison things, because that's, that's that cost has gone. The skim isn't factored into costings when you're looking at platform. At platform analysis and that kind of stuff. So it's not just the whole book. We're trying to get this. It's almost like commissions, isn't it? Ways we want this transparent world, if we, if I put my clients money on cash, and you're taking 20 bits on it,

Alan Smith:

yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

do you pass through the whole amount? And that's all I want to, you know, just, just give us those figures. Don't charge on cash, but we retain some of the because it's like

Carl Widger:

accepting what you're saying. But if you want to go after the worst, the worst offenders, it's the people who are charging for that yeah, and taking on, sure,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah.

Alan Smith:

But the whole, the whole thing, you're right, it's a bit icky. It's about, how can we kind of fudge the story a bit just to squeeze?

Nick Lincoln:

Well, really honestly, read the article. They're not that subtle. They're saying that we're doing it because everyone else is good doing it and getting away with it. Between

Unknown:

the Lines,

Carl Widger:

did you read the article? Andy,

Andy Hart:

I did call Yes,

Nick Lincoln:

just just then. Everybody should

Andy Hart:

read all links. Put in

Unknown:

two minutes in

Andy Hart:

your experience for our listeners.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, right? Guys, time is temperature. Tempest is fugitive, past us as we speak, right? Very, very briefly, self promotion, very

Alan Smith:

briefly, ironically, in the age of AI and technology innovation, we are AI at my independent advice firm in London, we are hiring not one, but two people. We're hiring a Head of Financial sorry, head of para planning, so a senior, a senior para planner and a regular paraplanner. We're beefing up our support team quite significantly. Things are going in the right direction despite us using all the tools of the trade. We need more bodies on the ground. I think we've got a very, very compelling offer, and I'll post links to it in the show notes. So if you are looking for a change of scenery and you want to come and work at Capital, do get in touch if you're a paraplanner or a senior paraplanner, thank you.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, and I think Carl has a similar kind of message, sir, yes.

Carl Widger:

We have exciting plans, which I'm looking forward to sharing at shop life or recruiting for three or maybe more private client managers in Dublin at the moment. And the link to the careers page on our website is in the show notes somewhere, wherever they are.

Unknown:

Okay, very,

Nick Lincoln:

very good. Okay, just

Andy Hart:

a quick thing on recruitment Maven advisor, actually recruiting four people at the moment. Alan's only recruiting two. Carl just three. We're recruiting four. So we're looking for a head of internal audit. We're looking for a lead financial planner on our sports division.

Alan Smith:

Back to

Unknown:

you,

Alan Smith:

Assistant compliance director,

Carl Widger:

you

Andy Hart:

Regional Director,

Carl Widger:

you 1212, or even to be there.

Alan Smith:

Yeah,

Andy Hart:

right for the name Christ. Let's

Alan Smith:

end recruitment. Recruitment

Nick Lincoln:

plans. Let's, yeah, I did it in 2008 great guy, one of the greatest, one of the greatest guys, one of the greatest. Okay, let's move on. We'll end with you chose this platform. Smithy, you tell us

Alan Smith:

why I'm not. I'm not gonna name and shame. I was just, I was just kind of raising this with those around the table right now, we really are struggling with our kind of default platform provider, just basic, basic stuff, turnaround times, delays. You know, it seems a lot of the work we do, there is a lot of admin involved, despite all the and you can bring all the technology in, but at the end of the day, the people that are the custodians the client assets, when client wants some money out, or they want to do certain things or put money in, God forbid, what's, what's, I mean, I know you boys are just firmly in the transact camp. And let's face it, transact are not perfect. They have we use transact as well. But I'm just, I'm just currently sensing, and my team are telling me they're putting their hair out right now. It really, really is a challenging time. And you would think in 2026 a lot of these issues would be kind of resolved with all this sort of tech opportunities, but it's currently really, really difficult, really challenging on a pure admin front. Any thoughts?

Andy Hart:

Nick, do you want to go

Nick Lincoln:

nothing really to add? I mean, we've all built businesses now around the platform, and if one or two platforms, normally just one within a subsidiary platform, for certain cases, certain client profiles, and if your main platform isn't working, it's like a key member of your team is just not on. Boys coming in late is, whatever. It's just not, it's just not pulling his or her way. It's, it must be a matt. I mean, I haven't had that experience. I can't imagine what it is like. And I know that, you know, when you try and mass migrate clients from one platform, that's a big exercise in itself, disruptive, and clients get a bit nervous about it. But it shouldn't be happening in 2026 we've got all this bloody tech, you know, everything, everything should be slick. It should be a tech enabled process. Andy,

Andy Hart:

yeah, the platform is insanely important. And also, client demands in 2026 are pretty high. As I get clients send 50 grand into a pension. They WhatsApp me as the money landed, like

Unknown:

10

Andy Hart:

minutes later, because that's how the other platforms are operating potentially. And then I've got to manage their expectations. It will take me a day or so to confirm, then I'll send you an email to confirm it's been invested. I thought if I dealt with one of those horrendous platforms that you may be referring to, Alan, it might take two or three weeks to show on the client's pension, and they're thinking, I need to tell my accountant now, we need to invest it. The markets are moved.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, so

Andy Hart:

you've got your own team members tripping you up. You want those platforms to just work? So again, I'm fortunate that, yeah, that my main platform does just work. And I spend a lot of time every day on there making sure the money's in the right place, the cash has been invested. Because again, you hear lots of things. I had an advise the other day. Talk to me about a platform. We went to the rebalance. It didn't work. Now he owes the client five grand or something. So, yeah, there's real life implications, yep, real life financial implications of these things not working. There are other times, yeah, there are other times when a client needs X 1000s of pounds, they've given you enough preparation time, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, transact. Which is platform, mainly, you can get the money within a week. I always tell clients from you, telling me you need the money to being in your bank. Assume a week. Some platforms take absolutely ages. They get down a hole, and they'll say, you can't call us back for a chase for 14 days. You're just sitting in no man's land, no person's land, for 14 days, and you chase it, and they say, oh, you know the signature, it doesn't quite match the one we had from 19 years ago. And you go for, yeah, okay, we've just gotten

Alan Smith:

it. That's exactly like when you've got clients, and clients do need money out to meet certain liabilities that they've agreed and they're giving you three or four weeks notice for it, and then we're failing to deliver because, yeah, that's unaccept you won't do it. It's it's a real issue. Just last thing, Carl, I mean that you've often talked about platforms. In Ireland, there's very little competition. I know that secular going in there to give a bit of competition. But do you ever, ever have issues like this and have sort of admin, money in, money out, administration?

Carl Widger:

Honestly, no, honestly, no.

Alan Smith:

Well,

Andy Hart:

consider

Alan Smith:

yourself lucky. It's,

Carl Widger:

yeah, it's really, it's really good. There's probably half of my team going, he doesn't know what the hell's going on in the background. And he was like, I'm on transact all day, and I'm moving them. I'm like, I wouldn't even know how to log in. But anyway, that's probably a good thing for everybody. But no, I if we had problems, I'd know about it, because I'd hear be here, not about it. So

Nick Lincoln:

yeah,

Carl Widger:

right. Andy, things really, sorry.

Andy Hart:

A logistical question. Carl, if a client emailed Metis Norway tomorrow and said I need 50 grand out my X, Y, Z account, how quickly would that money land in their bank? Five

Carl Widger:

working days.

Andy Hart:

Okay, so similar to us, yes, that's weak, because it's the five working day

Unknown:

thing,

Carl Widger:

because never get it, because that doesn't exist. But anyway,

Nick Lincoln:

okay, 41 minutes. 41 minutes in, boys, so that's a very good topical time, time tidbits and putting a timestamp on episode 96 so I think it's time that we moved over to the meat and potatoes of the real advisor podcast. This is where we take a subject and give it a damn good thrashing and or we have an interview with some of the more interesting figures in and around this thing of ours. And for this one, we've got a humdinger. I don't think he needs much of an introduction. Rory Sutherland, a very, very good speaker a wide range of subjects he can opine on. And he had the task of corralling Mr. Sutherland for this one, trying to get a financial services slant on it. So we hope you do enjoy it. I give you without any further ado, Mr. Rory Sutherland,

Andy Hart:

so Rory Sutherland, the man, the myth, the legend, the ruckus maker, the storyteller. Welcome to The Real advisor podcast trap. You have spoken a couple of times at my conference, humans under management in London. It was greatly received, very,

Rory Sutherland:

very big fan.

Andy Hart:

Good. Thank you very much. Welcome to today's show. The theme we're going to focus on today is AI and its impact on professional services. We're going to try and stick to that brief. You are also a client of a financial advisor, so experience the financial advisor process. So where do we start? AI professional services

Rory Sutherland:

also absolutely convinced that, and actually, the evidence of the auto enrolment pension

Andy Hart:

is

Rory Sutherland:

clear to see that there are major, I think, or in some cases, fairly minor, legislative changes to the design of pensions which would make an extraordinary difference, both to people's participation in these things, but also to actually overall wealth throughout people's lives. And one, one problem I always have talking about pensions is I'm an absolute advocate of pensions. I'm absolutely delighted that my children now have some form of pension, even though they're only 25 at the same time unconscious of the fact that to some extent, life is back end weighted that to some extent, too much wealth and disposable income is probably concentrated in certain parts of society at the tail end of life. And one of my one of my proposals would be, I think people should be allowed to take their student loan, as it were, and do what they want with it, not absolutely spend it on higher education. And one of the things I think is important is what you what we actually need to do is redefine wealth in less narrowly economic terms, and effectively find a relationship between wealth and opportunity. Now a large part of opportunity doesn't require that you spend money. It requires that you know that you have funds to draw on. And therefore giving young people it's a sort of lump sum equivalent of the guaranteed basic income. Giving them some upfront cushion in their lives would make a spectacular difference. I'll give you a very simple example of this, which is, I think, quite telling. The first time I went to the United States was 1993 and by that stage, I was kind of like a higher rate taxpayer. Just about I was, what was I? 2829 something like that. And all I can remember thinking when I first went to the United States is, I'm really glad I never came here when I was skinned and that wasn't because it's expensive. The United States isn't expensive. It's just the United States is absolutely terrifying as a place if you can't draw on $3,000 when you need it. And so there's a wonderful idea by the Canadian business writer Roger l Martin, who proposes that instead of giving everybody 12,000 tax free every year out of their income, you should, instead front end weight it so that, in his proposal, he's Canadian, the first 200 and something $1,000 everybody earns in their lifetime is tax free, after which you pay tax on nearly all of it.

Andy Hart:

Sure.

Rory Sutherland:

And so. So there is, there is a, you know, inordinate fan of pensions. I also think they need to be rebranded and reframed. You know, there are a whole load of psychological factors here. You know, are pensions all about retirement anymore? Or do you sell them as the ability to work part time later in life? Which might chime much, much better with, a younger audience. For example, it's very difficult to envisage when you're 23 the idea of retiring, it is quite easy, I think, to envisage the idea of actually, I think most 24 year olds probably like to work a four day in fact, most people would like to work a four day week.

Andy Hart:

Yeah. Back to specifically on AI. Rory, how do you think AI is going to impact professional services like it already is. What's coming down the line? How should we adjust? How should the humans adjust? What are you seeing on that?

Rory Sutherland:

I think that it will patently affect decision making. You can expect the fact that AI is used very heavily as a second opinion. This is something doctors will have to face to an inordinate degree

Andy Hart:

for both ends of it, clients and the professionals, not what's happening at the moment?

Rory Sutherland:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, not everybody. I think some people are fatalists. Some people will go look the best policy is not to get down in the weeds of complex decision making. It's to go with a professional opinion and leave it and by the way, in some ways, the obstacle that the investor community always faces is actually choice blindness, people being blinded by the headlights. In other words, I'm the last person to propose. I'm generally fairly libertarian, but there's an element of me which says that if there were only one pension, we'd all compete to contribute it more and more. What happens is the choice architecture of pension provision, saving and investment in general is a goddamn disaster. If you look at retail sites, you know, if you look at Amazon, if you look at eBay, any of those entities, what you'll see from the design of those sites is they make it quite difficult for you to find page two of your search results. And what Amazon knows is that if you search for a toaster, and you've got to choose between 15 toasters, you might well buy a toaster. Once you get to page two and you've seen 30 toasters, you're out of it, you're not going to buy anything. And consequently, I think there are two corresponding interpretations here. One it makes choice easier. The other one is it makes choice yet more difficult. Because one of my arguments with financial advisors is actually get yourself a financial advisor, even if they aren't that good, because their value is a bit like the value of a coach in personal fitness. It's not that they get you to do something perfect, it's that they get you to do something at all.

Andy Hart:

Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

by the way, the other question with AI is, one does the whole polarity of the business reverse, so that you effectively ask your AI to assemble a package, in other words. In other words, do you literally have effectively financial products created by the end user, rather than existing financial product effectively being sold to a user? Do you actually find that the whole polarity reverses? That's always possible. Does it make the discussion of this territory more intelligent or more stupid? Absolutely no idea. Probably both. I'm old enough at the age of 60 to try and view technology, not in the way we view football teams. And this was one of the best advice I've received from a talk given by the guy who's actually the AI advisor to the Commonwealth, who said, most people tend to actually approach AI as something like a football team. You have to love it or hate it, and approaching it with what you might call a balanced mindset is really, really important, because it's one of those things, which is, you have to learn to be with technology. You have to learn to be a bit equivocal. And you know, an example would be, you know, a technology like Airbnb. I have to acknowledge that at one level, it's absolutely magnificent. It frees people to spend time in homes and places and discover communities they never would have otherwise discovered. And I also have to recognize that if you're a 35 year old in Barcelona who wants to buy or rent a flat. It's a living nightmare. What it does to the whole business of intermediation is interesting. I would argue, from an anthropological perspective, that estate agents and personal financial advisors are not going to go away to the extent predicted by techno optimists, and that's simply because any decision of significance and a house or a major investment or savings plan basically both fall into that category, requires some degree of human encouragement to get you over the line loads and loads of people for age. Have been proposing that we buy cars the way we buy books on Amazon. And the question is, they're not really commensurate decisions, because if I buy a book on Amazon, it doesn't turn up, or it's a shit book. It's annoying, but it's not a catastrophe. On the other hand, if I'm buying a house or if I'm buying, you know, a major savings product, or indeed, a reasonably expensive car. I need some degree of human reassurance, and you might even argue performative salesmanship. I want someone to make an effort that's commensurate with the importance of this decision.

Andy Hart:

Would Tesla go away? Would Tesla push back on that? Because you can buy Teslas on apps, and they arrive, you know, automatedly, and

Rory Sutherland:

it's

Andy Hart:

an unusual car company,

Rory Sutherland:

I would argue that this is absolutely what you'd expect technologists to do when they design a car company, and they sold a huge number of cars because it was very good car. They do have showrooms, by the way. You can get blue water just down the road, and you can go and test drive one and have a look. They haven't attempted to make it purely a kind of remote decision. I think they would have sold a lot more cars if they'd actually had some sort of dealer mechanism. It's complicated, because the car dealer used to make a lot of money doing servicing and repairs. And electric cars are rather kibosh, yep. And by the way, human psychology varies enormously. I think I'm one of those people who tends to be a bit of a investment fatalist. There are other people who are investment micro managers. My contention is, is that most investment works through a compounding effect over the longer term, so endless tinkering costs more than it gains. And my argument is the signal to noise ratio is quite good over the long term and appalling over the short term. And therefore, if you get down in the weeds financially and are one of those people who's endlessly anxious that X may be underperforming y by one or 2% over the last three weeks, it's actually a bad mindset to have in order to invest

Andy Hart:

Sure. How do you think new companies coming up with financial AI chat bots trying to service large numbers of younger individuals? Do you think people will be attracted to these types of solutions? What's your thoughts on them?

Rory Sutherland:

This will be much slower, because in order to make those things really meaningful, I think you will probably have to give them access to your own finances.

Unknown:

Yep,

Rory Sutherland:

and over time, mechanisms will arise. Just as if you have a Monzo account, you can now actually connect it to your credit card accounts to get a single view of your own finances. My observation is that people, not unreasonably, are, at the moment, fairly paranoid about doing so. And one of the things I think you'll find is that the investment in AI has probably leapt ahead in some way of people's propensity to and even ability to change their behavior, I would argue that maybe Apple is playing a blinder in being one of the few big tech companies to adopt a kind of wait and see strategy. I'll give

Unknown:

you

Andy Hart:

often Apple's stance,

Rory Sutherland:

yeah, yeah. They're actually, in many ways, not an innovative company. They still haven't got a folding phone, for example, and they were once, of course. Now I would, I would argue that there are certain aspects of AI which, to me as a marketing person, seem critically important, which haven't yet been finalized or haven't yet bedded down, one of which is, what's the interface? Do we talk to it? Do we wear spectacles? I mean, you know, in another five or six years, the whole thing could go up in the air because, for example, connected specs or something similar become the default mode of interaction. We also don't know to what extent people have an appetite for engagement in this in all parts of their life. Now, some part of AI people will end up using because to the extent it's been imposed on them. I mean, a lot of the tech firms are partly justifying their own investment in AI by effectively almost mandating AI use for their users, or making it an obligation, not an option, so that they can then produce impressive statistics which show to what extent AI is transforming their business. And there's an element to the whole AI thing, which is a bubble and a self fulfilling prophecy. There's also, I think, an element to corporate behavior where AI has become a self fulfilling prophecy. Companies are desperate to cut costs because they've lost the ability to innovate. Therefore they need a plausible story to explain how they can cut staff costs without actually affecting the value of what they offer. Yeah, and AI is a very, very convenient smoke screen to inject. Well, what if you, if you reduce the size of your call center by 50% won't that mean that? And you go, no, because technology and companies have been playing that game for 25 years, and it's time that investors got a bit more skeptical. But unfortunately, once they've told that story, it becomes self fulfilling, even if they discover they can't actually remove their call center or that actually, AI, makes the complexity of interaction so much higher that you need more call center staff, not fewer. Once they've told that story to the investor community, they're almost obligated to go through with it.

Andy Hart:

I mean, the upfront investment is enormous. They're going to have to recoup this somewhere down the line. So in terms of how they're going to price it, what the tier is going to be, the thing that is quite interesting consumers who have never subscribed to any tech product and have always used the free option, a lot of them have subscribed to the chat GPT, $20 a month. Once they realize the limitations of the free version. That's a shift in consumer behavior. I know businesses are usually ahead of the pack, and we, we subscribe to everything. You know, straight off the bat, consumers take a little bit longer to do it. So how do you think the AI companies are going to price this and sell this to professional services firms, which most of us are, you know, the information economy.

Rory Sutherland:

This is, this is where I get very depressed, okay, because the correct and better way to sell it, if you're a techno optimist, is this will make what you do so much better. However, that's a slow and indefinite sell to the procurement function or the finance department. So they will, almost certainly, for reasons of expediency, sell it on the basis of cost cutting, they will pay a bit of lip service to of course, it's human plus AI, which is the perfect combination. But when it comes down to the hard and fast financials, they're going to sell it on the basis of cost cutting, because that's immediate. Goes straight to the bottom line, and it's generally fairly what you might call definable, whereas being better at what you do is generally a deferred gain. Now, I would argue that some family owned and founder led companies with a very strong culture will actually adopt AI for the purposes of enhancement simply being better at business, but the majority, I think, of large corporates will be pressured into buying it on the promise of its cost cutting potential.

Andy Hart:

Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

it's very, very interesting this, because what AI can do and what it ends up being used for are not the same thing necessarily. Now, one thing I've seen that's very, very exciting, which I think is potentially fantastic is AI informed telephone call center work. And there's a company called Voice stack, which is part of care stack, which effectively works with dental receptionists, which is an interesting one thing I'd recommend everybody in your business is go and look at parallel businesses which aren't financial services, don't benchmark against other financial services companies, because you'll end up trapped in a kind of convergence quagmire. Go and look for inspiration from places like dentists, which are highly commercial by the way, you know, go and look at dentistry and see what they're doing really well to differentiate themselves. And this company voice that fascinates me, because effectively, what it does is it scores and trains call center staff or receptionist, in some cases, sometimes on the fly, to make them much better faster. But it's also intelligent enough to say, I see your thing interested in 15,000 pounds worth of cosmetic dental work. The next call should probably not come from the receptionist. It should come from the dentist herself, for example. In terms of problem solving, I mean, this is why I asked that question about the interface, because how many times would we phone a company not go to the website if we believed the call would be answered in one second, we wouldn't have to go through a whole rigmarole of security checks, it would simply recognize our voice. Okay, when I want to talk to my wife, I ring her up and I don't go to her website, but that's because she answers the phone immediately, and she doesn't ask my address, postcode, email address, and tell me that calls are going to be recorded for quality control purposes. So one of the things that may happen is it actually brings the telephone back into the forefront, oddly, as a medium for communication.

Andy Hart:

Yep, yep.

Rory Sutherland:

I agree by basic here, but I'm going to make it. I'm going to defend myself here by saying that there are so many knock on interconnected effects of all this that the only correct response is speculation, rather than what you might call definitive prediction predictions. And also, there are always second order consequences for these things that nobody anticipated. You know, I didn't you know when email first arrived. I thought it was brilliant. And one of the interesting things is that. People react very differently to things when they're an option versus whether they're an obligation. I think that the people have been predicting the disintermediation of real estate agents and financial services people for ages. My argument, in their defense, is anthropological. If you went to buy a house for I don't know where you live, what constitutes an expensive house where you happen to live. But let's say you were looking over three quarters of a million pound house and the estate agent,

Andy Hart:

so be a one bed flat. Rory,

Rory Sutherland:

it'll be one bit of a flat. Yeah, of course. You don't want your clients to know where you live, but if they said, Yeah, the key's in a lock box, go and have a look around yourself, right? You'd kind of go, come on, dance for me. Monkey Boy, I'm thinking of spending serious money here. I want a tap dance. Now, my only explanation for that, I agree it's in some sense economically irrational. Why do estate agents often have to be a bit posh? It's because, even if you're not posh yourself, there's a kind of anthropological value for having some sort of posh show over the age of 45

Andy Hart:

or Fox. Is that right?

Rory Sutherland:

Yeah, yeah, take, take you around and make a bit of a fuss of you.

Unknown:

Yeah?

Rory Sutherland:

Because if you don't do that, and I only explain it in these terms, it feels wrong, and I've occasionally this started as a bit of a get out of jail card for the ethics of marketing when people were saying, But marketing is unethical because it changes what people would normally do and makes them make worse decisions. And my argument was, in certain settings, it's impossible for the human to perform to make a decision, unless you perform some sort of marketing rituals in advance of it. So I'll give you a perfect example of this. Okay, if I turn up to buy a second hand car at your house, and you haven't even bothered to clean the car, and it's full of shit, I don't know what your car's like. It might be immaculate, but I turn up to buy your second hand car, and when I turn up there loads of empty coke cans in the back. Now I know I'm going to clean the car. I know at one level, this is irrelevant to the value of the car, but I'm not going to buy that car. And if you can't be bothered to get out of bed to show me around it, but you just chuck me the keys, I'm not going to buy the car. So there's a bit of me here. I'm not being a behavioral scientist here, I'm being an anthropologist, which is that fundamentally, there seem to be necessarily preliminary rituals, what you might call economists okay in a sentence, economists don't understand foreplay. If, if you asked an economist okay to describe the purpose of sex, it would entirely be around either orgasm or jacket and

Andy Hart:

reproduction

Rory Sutherland:

because, because that's the transactional component of the sexual act. But fundamentally, as human beings, we require that act to have some sort of meaning that goes beyond mere fluidics and hydraulics. I hope. Okay. And consequently, we are probably varies by gender here, but I won't get any more specific. I'm not Andrew Tate, okay, you know, but there are some form of preliminary activities which are necessary before the exchange of fluids can take place. And in the same way, I think, I think that's true of certain intermediated professions. There's also the fact that, of course, the intermediary has, in a world of imperfect information, the intermediary has a value. Let me explain Okay, and this is a perfect way to explain it, wedding planners, right? A wedding planner is undoubtedly an expense. You could plan your own wedding. The only problem is, you know, deep down that the florist is really terrified of disappointing that wedding planner, because the wedding planner buys a fuck load of flowers. Top client, right? This is exactly the same when I'm in Paris and I need to get a taxi to the station, to the Eurostar. I do. I actually don't even get new but I get Ogilvy to book the taxi because they're a big enough client of the two monopoly taxi for their duopoly taxi, the taxi is going to turn up if I book it myself as a fucking, fucking worst beef one of taxi, it's not going to test guy. Mr. English money, no, not gonna happen, right? And in the same way, you have a wedding planner, partly because they can put the fear of God into their suppliers in a way that you can't. You're probably only getting married once, and consequently, a florist will even make a loss on your wedding in order to keep the wedding planner happy, whereas with you, it's a different matter. Oh, they have reputational skin in the game. I'm not suggesting they don't care, but there are a whole load of reasons for intermediaries. It's the consolidation of information. You probably have some clients who are quite like me. You probably have a load of clients who are totally unlike me, but just by the law of our. Averages, you'll go rory's A bit like so and so, so and so. And you can draw on that kind of information.

Andy Hart:

Yes, that's one of the huge values.

Rory Sutherland:

So one thing we got to watch is we got to watch this business where everybody in nerdville, everybody in management consultant Ville, and everybody in kind of econ Ville, is obsessed with stripping transactions down to the minimum and optimizing for efficiency.

Andy Hart:

Least friction. Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

least friction. You know, least, least transact, lowest transaction costs, because there's an opportunity. What those people do is they get the credit for the cost saving, but they never get held responsible for the lost opportunity. And the example I always give is self checkout in supermarkets, right? It's brilliant. Look, we've reduced the number of conveyor belts we have. And look, you know, we all these machines. They don't need to be paid. They don't join a union. They don't need to be paid. People are swiping their own shopping.

Andy Hart:

Yeah? It starts off with 10% then it goes to

Rory Sutherland:

20% closed.

Andy Hart:

Yeah.

Rory Sutherland:

Two things one, my next door neighbor won't go to Waitrose and Seven Oaks because she's pissed off by it. Now, no one who installed all those machines is taking the hit for that.

Andy Hart:

No. Second

Rory Sutherland:

thing is, you can't do a big trolley shop. If you're made to made a self checkout, you can self scan, but a lot of people don't do that. And it also requires you want to do a big trolley shop and not use a conveyor belt. You've got to do quite a lot of forward planning. You got to take a load of bags along. You got to put them in a trolley. You got to get the scanner. You got to log into the dump, especially when

Unknown:

you

Andy Hart:

got screaming kids with

Rory Sutherland:

you got a screaming kid. Now, theory, a load of people are going to do that. In practice, they don't. Okay. Final thing, it's a lovely little mantra this. It doesn't count as cost cutting if you're making your customer pay the price. And a lot of companies have taken the credit for cost cutting when what they're really doing is outsourcing work to the customer. And one of the things that you can do as a financial adviser, and I really mean this, right? Okay, don't you don't tell Justin this, because it'll offend him. But 30% of his value is filling in forms of shit,

Andy Hart:

yeah, with professional form?

Rory Sutherland:

No, no, I hate to say it, right?

Andy Hart:

Yeah, great at it.

Rory Sutherland:

But the extent to which, A, you do it a lot, B, you pre check it. Okay, now and see, you know, Adam Smith division of labor, right? Fairly simple, the form filling bit, I mean, literally, it doesn't sound like a brilliant advertisement to for financial advisors to say, we fill in your forms for you.

Andy Hart:

But people hate filling forms, so it is

Unknown:

a good

Rory Sutherland:

advertisement. Certainly hate it. They're not confident at it. They

Andy Hart:

throw away huge benefit.

Rory Sutherland:

It's a huge benefit right now, interestingly, I won't ask Justin this, because it would offend him the next time I buy a car, by the way, this is a whole industry in India. Did you know this? And it started because a lot of people didn't speak English, and the forms were in English,

Andy Hart:

yes,

Rory Sutherland:

absolutely massive. Now, an Indian friend of mine. His parents were coming to an Indian wedding in the UK, and they had to fill in a load of visa forms. And they said to their son, look, can you use your credit card to pay? I can't remember what it was like this, you know, a few 1000 rupees to the form filler. And he said, I'll do that for you. Don't worry, because I can do that here. I'll do it online. Bit of a problem, because now eight of the other relatives got in touch with him and said, Can you do our forms too?

Andy Hart:

No good deed goes unpunished.

Rory Sutherland:

It goes unpunished. Now, the interesting thing, I think, is that the next time I buy a car, I want to outsource that to somebody else. I do not want to go through that. But I bought the car on the company, Daddy, Daddy da, I don't want to go through that shit ever again, because it was two days out of my life, by the way. Now I've got to prove I'm not Pablo Escobar and that

Andy Hart:

every time to

Unknown:

every

Andy Hart:

bank,

Rory Sutherland:

every fucking time. You know? Yeah. I mean, we need some sort of identity thing that says this person isn't a money launderer and they're not wanted by the Fair the banks are the worst for it, business banks.

Andy Hart:

Oh, my God.

Rory Sutherland:

Oh, by the way, I tried to apply for an American Express business credit card. Okay, I'm there. Here's my 200 fucking quid a year. The forms arrive. I'm not finding this and this, by the way, it's not just the effort. There are a couple of other things, but he makes this is important to do with pensions, by the way. This is the weirdest thing of all. Okay, it's really, really

Andy Hart:

got a delivery. Rory, sorry, mate.

Rory Sutherland:

Oh sorry. No no, no. Don't worry. Don't worry.

Andy Hart:

Sorry, my friend, the usual Amazon daily delivery.

Rory Sutherland:

No, don't I got one to collect. Actually, one of the best things the government's ever done is that passport pre check. So that's actually royal mails, but sorry, it's the post office. That passport pre check thing,

Andy Hart:

life saver,

Rory Sutherland:

absolute life saver, right? And you're a professional form filler, and you think it's pretty good. Now, I know it's beneath all our dignity to talk about all these things, because we should be talking about, you know, what the Fed's doing. You know, long. Term projected interest rates. But one of the lessons I've learned through being a marketer is that really trivial things have huge effects on human behavior, not because they actually necessarily convey costs, but because they convey meaning. And one of the things I've always argued to the anybody who'll listen about pensions is I always ask the question, if you ask anybody, if you suddenly had 100 grand windfall, what would you do? Very few people say, I put some of it in my pension. Now that is a massively tax efficient thing to do. What they'll almost certainly say is our property, that, by the way, is your biggest competitor. Your biggest competitor is not other financial advisors. It's the fact that property has served as a proxy for long term saving and retirement planning for too many people, for far too long, and it's falling off a cliff. Mate, absolutely,

Andy Hart:

it's

Rory Sutherland:

tanking.

Andy Hart:

The Golden Age ended, you know, 15 years ago, and it's been a slow death since then.

Rory Sutherland:

Well, actually, also worse than that, it's not being reported. You know the news media were massive. Well, yeah, in

Andy Hart:

circles,

Rory Sutherland:

yeah, yeah, in your circles. It's totally universally known. My daughter works in property. It's universally known that new build is a total drug on the market, but the mainstream news media should be talking about it. But weirdly, whereas they bigged up property prices for 30 years and treated it as an unmitigated good news story, they're comparatively quiet about the fact that thought you buy to let portfolios just tell us see you through. Think again.

Andy Hart:

Every year rolls on, there's more regulation. Back to your Airbnb thing, Airbnb in the in the UK, now in the UK now has been limited to 90 days a year, even if you bought a very expensive Airbnb, because it could do 27 days a year. Now you're limited to nine. It's just there's no good news when it comes to property. Literally no good news. But

Unknown:

yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

well, there is good news, because if you're young and you're wanting to buy property, you might now have a chance. We've all got to remember swings and roundabouts. You know absolutely If, on the other hand, you thought that your inheritance or your own house was going to cater for your retirement, you better be a bit wary about it. And one of the probably one of the best financial products you could buy is probably Lifetime Care insurance to protect your inheritance. And I think you guys should sell that quite assiduously. You could actually sell it as inheritance insurance, because, you know, my parents were extraordinarily kind to me. Both of them died very quickly, extraordinary act of generosity. I mean, obviously not a bad way to go either. My father was 93 you know, he went from fine to dead in four days, you know. But it's also financially extremely generous.

Andy Hart:

I mean, we obviously know the long term trends, people living longer, people somewhat living unhealthy lives in the last 510, years of their life. Do you think the advances in AI and medicine are going to make this problem gigantically worse? Planning a 30 year retirement might turn into a 40 year retirement, a 50 year retirement, which plays into the hands of long term Financial Planning and Investment Management. Investment Management. But my God, is this going to be a societal issue that we need to address?

Rory Sutherland:

It'll be very interesting. I mean, I think the biggest thing, I suspect, actually, no, no, sorry, I'm sure that AI will lead to a few medical breakthroughs. I mean, Google are trying to,

Andy Hart:

trying to trying to fix every disease

Rory Sutherland:

you know, and also it will be, you know, it will be decisive in a few areas which we yet cannot predict, obviously genomics and genetic medicine and so forth. What I also hope is, I think we haven't had an industrial revolution in knowledge work. And genuinely, I think that so this is, I'm not entirely this sounds ridiculous, but when the doctors went on strike, productivity in the NHS went up. That is not suggesting for a second that junior doctors have bullshit jobs or they're wasting their time. I think that bullshit jobs thing was actually a misdiagnosis, in a way. I think what it means is that actually we're deploying people very, very badly in terms of, in other words, our our individual. We're looking to solve problems at the level of the individual, but most problems are actually institutionalized at the level of the organization. I mean, your business, in some ways, is a very good business, because it's a lot of very small businesses, for the most part, which I think operate quite intelligently. I think once you reach scale, all sorts of weird bureaucratic frictions emerge, not least defensive decision making, which every single person's behavior is completely rational and in line with what they're incentivized to do, but level of the system, it's very often counterproductive. I mean, everything from high speed two to Lucy, let be is basically an example not well with the Lucy. Let me case I think two of the people involved, or maybe three of them. Are actually stupid. I won't name them, okay, but actually the bigger problem is the institutional problem of we're not actually, we haven't evolved for large scale decision, organizational structure. I just don't think the capacity to understand it is there in our brains. I think in teams of 150 teams of 10, I think we can kind of work out what makes sense once you reach a certain scale, we what we'll often try to do is we try and scale everything. And some things don't scale. The relationship doesn't scale. I want the same financial advisor. I don't want a level three, you know, operative,

Andy Hart:

yeah.

Rory Sutherland:

And so understanding, if AI, can actually understand what you might call actually, was actually called cybernetics better than we can and actually say, look, the whole way you've structured the high speed two proposal is a recipe for disaster, regardless of the talents of the individuals involved.

Andy Hart:

Yeah.

Rory Sutherland:

And say, for example, actually a project of that size needs an Elon Musk dictator figure in order to make it happen. Because, if you try and do it with a load of nerds from some management consulting firm, and, you know, it's basically, it's going to be a catastrophe. Think, I think ultimately, we could get somewhere and so that, you know, maybe in healthcare, the really big thing is that you could, I genuinely think you could make the NHS inordinately better and more productive without actually apportioning blame at any individual level. Although they're, you know, I'm sure they're poor, deeply flawed individuals. It's an organization like any other. But the real problem is the design of the system. I'll give you a perfect example of that in microcosm. I think it was Walkers Crisps who, at one stage, paid potato farmers by weight. Their biggest expense was obviously energy in making potatoes into crisps. Because the potato farmers were paid in weight, they would spray their potatoes with a hose before delivering so that a large amount of Walker's energy costs was effectively evaporating liquid which had been added at the point shortly before delivery.

Andy Hart:

No, the humans didn't do that. Did they?

Rory Sutherland:

No, no, because each person

Andy Hart:

No, of

Rory Sutherland:

course, doing something individually perfectly,

Unknown:

right? Of course they did. Yeah, yeah.

Rory Sutherland:

That's how it works. And I think what you might call that syndrome, that's obviously an easily comprehensible one, but I think

Andy Hart:

I thought you say they were putting sort of heavy objects in the in the trucks, and, you know, additional

Unknown:

they

Rory Sutherland:

tried

Andy Hart:

spark said, Actually, we get caught out with that one. This one is a temporary one, and it's a it's a blameless crime.

Rory Sutherland:

We see, I actually worked at the Ribena factory where we had deliveries of black currants. I was a forklift truck driver, and it was patently obvious that people had hosed down the trays. Because you can't blame a lorry, because it could have been rained on. You see, you have plausible deniability.

Carl Widger:

Yeah,

Unknown:

yeah.

Andy Hart:

To the specific professions. So just just taking lawyers, financial advisors and accountants out of those three, who do you think is potentially the most disruptor of all? I don't know about you, but I'm hearing anecdotal stories from friends, family, clients, people, self representing themselves in courts, using AI to push back against large organizations. So this is going to create a lot of extra work for the legal profession, people self representing.

Rory Sutherland:

It's the fundamental requirement in any large scale transaction that there's someone who is blameworthy.

Unknown:

Yes,

Rory Sutherland:

or you could phrase it another way, which is a fascinating phrase, which has been used in marketing without anybody going, what does this really mean? Reputable or reputable tech, yeah, but the reason I said reputable is because it's capable of being reputationally enhanced or damaged. So I'm relying on, if you are my financial advisor, I'm relying on your sense of shame and your reputation and your ability to acquire new to clients, you may be a bit more frightened of me as a client, because I'm a bit famous, and therefore, if you stiff to me, the potential I would have to damage you would be higher than for a random punter, but that is effectively a reputational calculus. Now, if you have a machine, you can obviously program it to avoid certain things. Nonetheless, it doesn't have a sense of shame. And this is why, a very strange thing, okay, I suspect, you know, tend to buy cars locally, and the reason is because I live in Seven Oaks, if I buy from a garage in Kent. I can make their lives a bit awkward if they screw me over, right? If I go and buy a car from a, you know, ex in Glasgow, you know, I'd have to spend half my life on social media, you know, demonizing a Glasgow car dealer. It's a bit more difficult, and consequently, they're a bit more scared when you take in a say. Car to a reputable dealer, by the way, the first thing they do is move it somewhere completely different than the

Andy Hart:

country.

Unknown:

Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

it's really weird.

Andy Hart:

You have been famous as saying, create surprise in business. Any stories for financial advisors?

Unknown:

Yeah,

Andy Hart:

create surprise.

Rory Sutherland:

There's a guy only just discovered, and his name is right. Can I do you mind if I google something? Yeah, it is worth knowing. So here's a bit of a source of inspiration. And he's clearly bonkers, by the way. But I love the guy. I only just discovered him by accident. I mentioned the fact that you could read the wonderful book unreasonable hospitality. Will Gadara,

Andy Hart:

reverse benchmarking and reverse

Rory Sutherland:

benchmarking. I'll mention that there is a guy, God, Australian dentist called, have you come across him?

Andy Hart:

I think so. Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

yeah, okay.

Andy Hart:

His name, it's an odd one.

Rory Sutherland:

Yeah, he's got a really odd name. It's something like pad, yeah,

Andy Hart:

Paddy Lund.

Rory Sutherland:

Paddy Lund, you've got it exactly. And he has a wonderful detail called, see knees, which are critical non essentials.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, he was a

Rory Sutherland:

very interesting guy paddy land. I think we ought to, if you, if you can get him, actually, for humans under management, he'd be, I think he'd be great fun, because he was running this dentist surgery, and he was kind of bored with it. He wasn't making much money, and it was all tedious. And he basically decided to go, you know, shit or bust. And the first thing I think he does is replaces his receptionist desk with, like, a$7,000 cappuccino machine, top of the range, Italian barista thing. And he now only gets paid. He then only got patients by referral. He basically just went completely all out. But his concept of the scene, he is very similar to will gadara's idea, very similar to what I christened the reverse benchmark. Yeah, find an area which everybody else is neglecting. And I can guarantee, by the way, if you offered a form filling service, which is you want to buy a car, just give all the shit to us.

Unknown:

Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

to be honest, you could underperform the market for 15 years. No one care. I shouldn't be saying this. Should I on

Andy Hart:

the flip side of critical? On the flip side? No, it's a great idea. It's basically a concierge service for financial and life admin that most people try and steer clear of. So the opposite of critical, non essentials, relatively recent term I've learned, I think it was on a podcast you're on. I think the hungry podcast, silent irritants, things which just slightly NAG and irritate people, but they're not annoying enough to mention it. So any silent and irritants on the professional services?

Rory Sutherland:

So I have a name for these as well, which is, there's a famous phrase in marketing which is always used, which is, unmet needs,

Unknown:

yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

and to some extent, you know, a senior is, is a highly exaggerated form of an unmet need. You take something that nobody thought they wanted, and you kind of double down on it. My opposite of this is met unneeds, which is things people do that nobody actually wants, and you're absolutely right on friction, the whole idea of friction, but I think friction now, okay, I'm going to get, there's a fantastic woman you must invite to humans under management. And I'm trying, I'm basically just trying to make her famous, because I think she's brilliant. She's called Carla groom. She worked for quite a few years. She's just left the department for working pensions, and she was the person who did all the work on all the work. Is very unfair, but she did a lot of the work and a lot of the decisive stuff on what you might call auto enrollment,

Andy Hart:

auto enrollment, which has been a huge success,

Rory Sutherland:

huge, huge success. Okay? And I said to her, I said, I've got a theory, right? And I said the level of opt out was even lower than the most optimistic people, I think, expected. And some of that is auto. It's a default. I don't have to do

Andy Hart:

anything great framing.

Rory Sutherland:

There's also the implicit thing, which is, if someone's making something automatic, it can't be a terrible decision, right? You know, if someone's actually making something in my company and making it automatic thirdly, because it's low friction, it creates low anxiety, I'll come on to

Andy Hart:

this

Rory Sutherland:

fourthly, and perhaps, and I said, my theory is this was much more decisive than anyone realized. There's social proof, which is I fundamentally feel comfortable having the same pension that all my colleagues do, because if anything goes wrong with it, I probably wouldn't notice, but some tragic nerd in the finance department will. And so there's a company I work with called herdify, which looks at this precisely, the extent to which behavior is highly contagious, and we feel comfortable doing things that other people do just automatically. And it's perfectly sensible, evolved human psychological property. Nothing, nothing ridiculous about it. It makes absolute sense that we copy each other and so, you know, that's how we learned before we could speak.

Unknown:

Yeah.

Rory Sutherland:

Know, do what that guy?

Andy Hart:

Mimicry. Yeah,

Rory Sutherland:

mimicry. Okay. And I actually suddenly realized, I'll give you an example. The Now, one thing you could do with financial services is you could, but I automatically feel comfortable if, if 76 people in my company have this pension, and I'm the 77th very few people feel anxious. The only reason I bought an electric car is because my brother bought one first. Suddenly, if you'd asked me, why did you buy an electric car? Go blah, blah, blah, performance, saving and quietness, comfort, okay, but actually, if my brother hadn't bought one first, none of those things would have mattered, because I wouldn't have been courageous enough to buy an electric car. Now, the problem with finance, a bit, is there are products which are very visible and hence very, very social, alcoholic drinks, one of the most extreme, okay, if you don't believe this, next time you go to the pub with your mates, order a pina colada, okay, you will experience actual pain, right, in not blending in with everybody else, right? I'm not, you're not allowed to explain. It's part of a psychological experiment. Actually, most people, if it weren't for social No, that's too extreme. 20% of people, if it weren't for social pressure, would drink Bailey's all the time.

Andy Hart:

Yeah? Contagion effect.

Rory Sutherland:

Now there are other products, Hemorrhoid Cream would be at the other end of that spectrum, which are non visible. They're not consumed visibly, and we don't talk about them, okay, generally. And the problem with finance in the UK less so in places like India, where people are very open about it, finance in the UK is closer to Hemorrhoid Cream. Now, if I had a mechanism where I could actually see anonymized data on my social graphs, own investment wealth, and I could compare myself against people in my peer group without needing to know who they were, that would be a very, very potent thing to create. It'd be really interesting talking to this company, heard of that wonderful guy called Tom ridges. His team basically were a lot of Cambridge epidemiologists who just looked at contagion in a broader marketing sense. And so that that element of the auto enrolment was much more important, I think, than people anticipated, which is, well, you know, most people have one of these pensions. If I don't have it, I'm the weirdo. I'm the person ordering the pina colada, whereas when only 6% of people bothered with the company pension, you felt like the person ordering, you know, pint of Bailey's please.

Andy Hart:

I'm sure the opt out now are single digits, not

Rory Sutherland:

I think it was 11 to begin with. They thought it would be 25 and it turned out to be 11. And I think you're right. It's down to single digit.

Andy Hart:

And a few people did opt out immediately for it, for unknown reasons. You know, Dad, uncle, mother, brother, and then they realized they were the ones left out, and they thought, shit, I'm gonna get back in as soon as I

Rory Sutherland:

can. By the way, 1112, 13% of people should not so actually, I would argue the enrollment rate is 100% because a significant majority of those 11% their husbands or wife is a financial advisor, for example, yeah, you know or or they're massively in debt. That you know, perfectly legitimate thing to do under certain circumstances. If you've got a stack of credit card debt, maybe you shouldn't enroll just yet. But the other thing that, the low friction thing, is doubly important, because if I want to top up my pension. I have to write a letter, write a check, post it somewhere. Okay, I don't get any confirmation that it's been received. I've then got to wait six months to check my pension statement. Remember that I paid in 5000 quid, and check that they've credited me and credited me the necessary tax adjustment. The point is a that's difficult to do. I don't even know where my checkbook is. But that's not the only problem. It's not only difficult to do. It's also because it's difficult to do. I automatically think that I shouldn't be doing it. You shouldn't be this feels unnatural. This is good.

Andy Hart:

Feels good to be easy.

Rory Sutherland:

If it was good thing, someone would have made it easy for whatever reason. You probably know this. I told this to a bunch of pension people up in Edinburgh the pensions conference,

Andy Hart:

if I gave you 1000 pounds today,

Rory Sutherland:

put into your pension up.

Andy Hart:

He's got some weird app,

Rory Sutherland:

Goldman Sachs. It was working for Goldman Sachs was the only guy who knew how to do it. Yeah. Now that was, I ought to be clear about that was eight years ago. The figure would be higher now. But those the audience consisted entirely of people, working

Andy Hart:

professionals. That should be the ideal people to do that. I mean those decisions you mentioned previously, just explaining that. I call them six figure tick boxes. So this is an ultra enrolment thing. All you got to do is tick this one box. It'll be a six figure tick box in the future. There's a few of those six figure tick boxes here, there and everywhere. I'll go back to a previous point. You mentioned. Money is a thing British people don't talk about their great financial advisor is something they don't talk about. So this is, this is a scale issue in our business. Is there anything you could recommend financial advisors to do to get clients to be more proactive with referral? Ring.

Rory Sutherland:

Just send me a form and put two stickies on it and tell me to sign, genuinely, just just, the fact is, we, I'm so sorry. It's not going to go because, but this is really important. Okay. What is difficult? There was a bank which was asked to effectively benchmark its queues, a length of its queues, against the other banks in the town. And everybody was busily going, Oh, we've got slightly shorter queues than HSBC, right? Versus nine. And one guy said, brilliantly, he said. He said, I'm not going to do that, because my customers don't go to the other banks. They go to Tesco. So I'm going to benchmark my cues against Tesco. Now, what we got to remember is we live in a world where, in some things have become laughably easy, like Deliveroo, okay, and other things have become more difficult. And so you actually have a double whammy effect, which is, not only is this intrinsically difficult, but it's almost unimaginably difficult compared to other things I do. And so there's another great question, which I'm going to give away, and I wish I could credit the person who told me, and I wish I could credit the company who did it, but it was an online retailer who, when people bought, asked them the question, what nearly stopped you from buying this product? And they realized they don't have data on non customers, because the non customers aren't customers, so you can't ask them why didn't you buy? But their closest approximation to that was asking people who did buy. Was there anything that nearly stopped you?

Andy Hart:

Superb? Okay, my friend,

Rory Sutherland:

thank

Andy Hart:

you. That's superb. I'll send you an email separately about the lady you recommended as a potential speaker. Thank you very much. Over now, color groom, I'll

Rory Sutherland:

put you in touch. Absolutely.

Andy Hart:

Thank you very much the real advisor podcast. Thank you very much, Rory, see you

Unknown:

later.

Andy Hart:

Very good. So very good. Well done, Andy, well done. Well

Alan Smith:

done, Andy, that is not an easy task to corral Mr. Sutherland into your questioning. But you know, great, great conversation, I just want to say because it reminded me when I was watching it and listening to it honestly, one of the highlights the last few years was that lunch we all had. Remember that when we went we sat in the sunshine in London with Rory, sort of spontaneous

Nick Lincoln:

Devonshire,

Alan Smith:

yeah, yeah, probably the best pub in London. And it was sort of last minute thing. We sat on the rooftop in the sunshine, and to have, I don't know what it was, two and a half hours of just Rory being Rory and just exactly as he is on any podcast. And anytime you see him speak, you got him just speaking at you for two and a half hours. It was, it was a brilliant experience. Remember that?

Andy Hart:

Yeah, when I first booked the table, we were sitting in like a crappy table on the first floor. We said, We got a few people coming. Can we sit anywhere else? They said, not really. We've just got the rooftop.

Nick Lincoln:

It's a nice day.

Alan Smith:

Sun was shining, wine was flowing, yeah, Rory.

Nick Lincoln:

Rory turned up. Said we were drinking wine. I don't really want to drink wine. I've got to talk later. And had a glass of Zinfandel. This is very good Zinfandel. This is very good Zinfandel, I might

Andy Hart:

have another glass of Zinfandel, yeah, he wasn't drinking for three hours before his talk. No,

Nick Lincoln:

very good. Yes, always interesting, always interesting. And any insights you gleaned from your time with

Unknown:

him,

Andy Hart:

I mean, I've consumed so much Rory Sutherland content. So, no, it was great to try and focus in on a bit more of the financial services element. And AI

Nick Lincoln:

he tried,

Andy Hart:

he's he's also a client of Justin king so often. So it's great that he works with a full fat financial planner. So I hear very brief things from Justin and also, Rory speaks very publicly about it, his relationship. He basically decided to work with Justin kings yet, because he had a good zoom setup. You know, we all because covid was, was a bit of a leveler, or not quite covid, basically, you work at a super fancy private bank in central London. You know, plush carpets. Go to the 13th floor. You know, the perfect coffee during covid. You're in your third bedroom. There's no status purchase here. So we were all leveled, you know. So Justin King has got an amazing zoom setup, and that was one of the reasons why he chose to work with Justin. It's along with various other things. So over to you. Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, no, we're no Justin. I think it must have just been the zoom, because he's got no other qualities,

Andy Hart:

really has he love you too, Justin, but

Nick Lincoln:

we are. We are one hour 45 minutes into this is a marathon monk that's a long, long, long session with the southern so we're going to skip the TRAPPIST questions for this episode, for episode 96 and we're going to go straight on to culture corner. When I trigger this drop, it might not mean drop, it might not make a sound, so just bear with me and I shall wink at you when we can go on.

Carl Widger:

I've two. First one very quick shout out to a guy I shouted out about last episode. Ben Felix was on Diary of a CEO this time. He's just a great communicator, and he's really understated. He's not, there's no pass as about him. He's probably the opposite to Rory Sutherland. But, yeah, it's really good stuff. But the one that I did, so I didn't want to leave that one go, but, but, Nick, you have to cut to help me with his, with his name, Shama

Nick Lincoln:

Chamath probably put the kettle

Carl Widger:

on. That's the guy he's doing. So he's doing these series. He's trying to sell some course or something. So he's loads of YouTube videos out at the moment. So he's got a like his a 13 minute long kind of intro into this stuff that he's selling. And I don't agree with all of it and and, but a lot of it, I'll give you the main points in a second, but I went on to the his investment lessons video after this one, and it's just plain wrong. So I'm not telling you to watch all of his videos, but I think there are some key lessons in this first one. He says some stuff, like, don't ever have debt and whatever. And I'm thinking, but if I was never, did never have debt, and I wouldn't have a house or a car. So, you know, it's easy for the billionaire to say it, but for the younger people, and I know we've lots of younger people, right? It's about, you know, he says, For the you guys have said this to me before, you know, for the younger folks, you need to be on Broadway, right? So he's going, you need to go to a big city. You need to go to where it's at right, and that's where you'll you'll then be ambitious for opportunity, not necessarily for money. So just get yourself into those opportunities. And he says work life balance is just a load of old crap, and that if you're in a flow in your life, then you're just in the flow, and you're just doing stuff, and that's how opportunities will abound. I think that's really, really important. And then last point, and sorry for going on a bit, but the number one trait of being a success, or of successful people, is resilience. I could not agree more.

Nick Lincoln:

I watched it and I thought it was really good, and the lesson I took away was just never stop working. He sorry, probably put the kettle on. Does not need to work, all right. He's a billionaire. He works because he gives him purpose, I think, and he says he makes fun by always pushing forward, keep the motor going, stay in the arena and push forward. He worked with people who were a little bit older with him when he was younger, working and they stopped working at 50. Says, I can't believe it. Why do they do that? They still have so much to offer. I had a Zoom meeting this morning with a client, client and son. The client is 93 the son is just turned 30. Okay, so work that out in your head as well. The dad is still working. Doesn't need to do it. He's got all the energy of a 70 year old or someone 20 years younger than me, because he's working and he just keeps he likes, he likes, he likes the purpose. He likes to getting out of bed for a reason. So I kind of, when I watched the trauma thing. It kind of tied him with

Carl Widger:

that. Yeah, he even, he used a phrase that we've mentioned a few times that these guys who he used to look up to, and now they're not in the arena anymore. Yeah, the Man in the Arena talks about

Alan Smith:

being the arena a lot. He gets a lot of true he gets a lot of criticism. Chamath does because of his his style. I've watched these. There's a few of them now, isn't there? Isn't there's three or four. I think of these short 413, 50 minute videos, if it's the same one, the one I saw, he was talking about just being so relentlessly focused on your goal. And he talks about people like Jensen Wang and Nvidia and some other just absolutely focused. And I gotta say, and I was watching that, and I was thinking about, and I think all of us, to one degree or another, are versions of this. If you want to be good at your craft and at your profession, you've got to really understand it. You've got to read books about it and listen to podcasts and go to events and really understand your industry, find out who the good people are in the industry, and copy them and meet them and and you're either going to, you're going to be really successful, or you're going to be, you're going to be a kind of journeyman. You can always show up and be a job. Have a job as a financial planner, and you do okay. If you really want to be good, you've got to immerse yourself and be relentlessly focused on your craft. I saw him to talk about that. Yeah, I'm just

Nick Lincoln:

conscious of time. I'll do my one very quickly. The in good company with Nikolai Tangen, Jamie diamond, just whatever you think of the guy. And, you know, corporate banking, he's, he's very good value. It's a 38 minute listen. He's, it's a live show that he recorded with Nikolai. And just just, just give it a listen. He's very direct. Don't agree with as you, as you with Chamath. Watch. I don't agree with everything, but not that Jamie diamond. Lose your sleep over that. But in the round, as a man from that they can be very bland. People from that sector. He is not a bland listen. So listen to that

Alan Smith:

one. And do you I know him? Well, not Jamie, not yet.

Nick Lincoln:

Ultra

Andy Hart:

Nikolai, yes, I know you're in a rush. Nick, yeah, no,

Nick Lincoln:

no, we are in a rush for our listeners. Behest,

Andy Hart:

okay, just be quiet. The Jamie diamond interview is superb. I. I agree with pretty much everything. Jamie diamond says, agree you cut me off. You watch. No, no, it's a strong recommendation for that Jamie diamond and Nikolai Tangen interview. It's, it's very well put together. He's been trying to get Jamie on the show or live show for a while. Watch it. It's brilliant. Okay, my culture corner is totally unrelated, but it's my show, and I'm the biggest shareholder, so I can do I want. Is called the town podcast from and it's James Cameron, the director, who is the film director, who very rarely does interviews. It's a two part interview. He goes into his whole creative process working with studios. He's, I think he's done sort of top three of the top five grossing films of all time. So it's a good insight into the brain of James Cameron. Strong recommendation. Smithy, close us out.

Alan Smith:

Close you out with David senra. David senra, it was the creator of founders podcast, which we've probably mentioned this in the past. I really, I really liked founders, but he would just read all these books, loads and loads of books about successful people, and then he would sort of give his view just a kind of solo monolog to but a very, very high quality. But he's now pivot. He's still got that founders podcast, but he's got his own podcast, which is more of a traditional sort of interview style on video, video, and it's just called David senra podcast, and he's interviewed already a lot of really interesting people. The one that that I listened to the other day is, you come across this guy, Jason freed, or Jason Fried, Jason freed, 37 signals, base camp and all that. I just think he's a really smart operator, because he obviously, he founded a tech business, and the idea, if you're in that world, it's all about scaling and getting to a billion dollar, multi billion dollar valuations, becoming a unicorn. And he's just disputed all that. He's never taken any funding from any VCs. He built it, bootstrapped it, gone, and just kind of operated in a way that was the antithesis to the traditional tech companies. He's just got a nice way, a nice way of thinking that you don't have to be this multi billion global business. It's all about the job you do, the work you do, what it gives to you, what it gives to your customers and your team. And I think there's some good lessons in there for anyone growing a financial planning business. David senra,

Unknown:

okay.

Alan Smith:

Podcast,

Nick Lincoln:

thank you. Thank you. And it's ever links to all those culture corners are in these so called channels. Okay, so there we go, best part of two hours on this one. Hope you enjoyed it. TRAPPIST, there we go. Episode 96 has come to a close and is being flushed down the U bend of Father Time. Do leave a review on your pod app of choice. Please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. That way you get notified when another pile of traps slides out. But in the meantime, dear TRAPPIST, we're going to see some of you on May the 30th of trap live. We really cannot wait for that. It is sold out. We spoke with Brian. He has confirmed that cannot wait to see you. But until then, until the next episode of trap. Take care out there, and we'll see on the other side, guys, I want to click the outro. You won't hear it. I'll tell you when it's finished.

Alan Smith:

We heard it. Nicholas, see you at trap. Live

Carl Widger:

a marathon session.

Nick Lincoln:

There we go. That was micken

Alan Smith:

Sutherland.

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Nick Lincoln

Host
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Alan Smith

Co-host
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Andy Hart

Co-host
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Carl Widger

Co-host

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