101 - LISA JOHNSTONE - How To Buy a Financial Advice Business

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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

• Topical Titbits
• Meat and Potatoes: LISA JOHNSTONE: How To Buy a Financial Advice Business
• TRAPist question from beloved TRAPist Lee Denham https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-w-denham-lifestyle-financial-adviser-awpetr-certltcp-adv-dipfa-fsre-cemap-cefa-98070b2b/
• Culture Corner

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

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:11

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

Nick Lincoln: 0:47

Yes, indeed, dear Trappist. Welcome back to what many people are calling episode 101, Theani Uno of the Real Advisor Podcast. Te era a per tra. Joining me as ever in the digital studio of Doom are two of the other three horsemen of

the Apocalypse: 1:09

Andy, Ultra Heart, and Carl the Voice Delavocy Widger.

Carl Widger: 1:15

Hello. We

Nick Lincoln: 1:16

have a stand-in for our long-time Trap Pack member, who's currently imbibing some alcoholic cocktail on a beach somewhere in Turkey, and that is Lisa Johnson. Lisa, welcome to the Real Advisor Podcast. We'll we'll have a bit from you in a second, if that's okay. So, episode 101 of the Real Advisor Podcast. We've got to get it undergoing, cracking on. Time is flying by. Ultra, give us a high NG review read in your normal inimitable style.

Andy Hart: 1:42

Well, welcome, Lisa. Thanks for joining. I hope you've got a mountain of stories taken over from Storyteller. Trying to keep the excitement down,

Nick Lincoln: 1:49

Andy. The scales are going to

Andy Hart: 1:51

play. You can imagine the faces on the barman when they see Smithy rocking up, thinking he's got a couple of weeks of all-inclusive. By the end of it, they're going to be absolutely excruciated with him. Right. Okay. Moving on for a review this read this week. It's quite long, actually, Nicholas. Six out of five stars, chaps. 100 episodes of asking for reviews. It's borderline criminal that I haven't done one before, given the value I've had for this podcast. I joined my dad's business in 2016, signed the deal to take over in February 2020. Timing wasn't my strong point, and the Trap crew have had a huge influence on how I've taken the business forward. In the early years, I was an avid listener to both Lick and Andy's podcasts, and then came Trap, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. When I joined in 2016 I was devouring knowledge and content from everywhere, and already loosely thinking along the lines of you chaps, but your work gave me the conviction. I was on the right track to, and we reap the rewards to this day. Track 520 26 was superb, and what I admire most is that you are unapologetically yourselves. You don't try and please everyone, and that's exactly why it works. Only tiny gripe, Nick. Annuities aren't the work of the devil. We've recommended quite a few recently because they were absolutely the right thing to do. Thanks for everything you've done for me, my business, and ultimately our clients. Keep up the great work, learning, sharing, and I love the community you guys are building in our own little world. Back to you, Nicholas.

Nick Lincoln: 3:19

That was lovely. Did that chap or Chapet wants to keep it anonymous.

Andy Hart: 3:22

No, it's Ross Taylor. He sent it to me on WhatsApp, and he's going to upload it to the Apple Podcast platform on his wife's Apple device because he's a bit of a widow like you, Nick, and has got an Android.

Nick Lincoln: 3:35

You mean he's in the vast majority? Excellent stuff. Thanks a lot, Ross and well read out Andrew. I'm going to go for lie down now. That was super exciting. So we do have an honorary member of the Trap Pack here today, a trapet. We're very lucky to have her here, Lisa. Lisa Johnson from VWM Wealth Management. Lisa, for the beloved Trappists, give them a quick 60-second taste of who you are and how you got here.

Lisa Johnstone: 3:56

Okay, so I'm Lisa Johnson from VWM. I'm lighting director there. I took over the firm in 2019. I've been there for 15 years. I worked up from power planner to advice to director to leading a management buyout, and we look after 140 families and sort of half split between Glasgow and London clients.

Carl Widger: 4:21

Lisa, Lisa, you forgot the the most important piece of information is that you're Irish. Oh yes,

Lisa Johnstone: 4:29

I have noticed that the Northern Ireland flag has been absent in your in your in your pack today, so I'm here to fly the flag.

Carl Widger: 4:37

We're fixing that today. Happy days. Well, you're very welcome, and look forward to we're we're going to talk a little bit about the management buyout that you led a little bit later on. So I think that'll be very interesting to all of our listeners and viewers.

Andy Hart: 4:52

And Lisa is one of the Lisa is one of the star speakers at Humans Under Management London. So looking forward to that talk. And I've known Lisa for many years. A cracking advisor on. In person, so yeah, welcome to the podcast, Lisa.

Lisa Johnstone: 5:02

Thank you. Thanks, guys.

Nick Lincoln: 5:05

Okay, good stuff. So, quick shout out at the start of the show to our friends of the show Vanguard. As we mentioned on the previous episode, we are doing the Tough Mudder. I'm presuming that's the correct name for I got the name wrong last time. Yeah, Tough Mudder, and some of the Trap Pack are taking part. The link to it is in the so-called show notes. Do do enter and join. You can enter as an individual or enter as a team. It's quite hard work. I understand. I'm already sort of regretting doing it. Right, putting on top of the toes.

Carl Widger: 5:28

How's the training going, Nick? I was at the gym

Nick Lincoln: 5:30

this morning. I did 40-five minutes on the treadmill. I just about barely managed four miles, but I had a proper sweat on when I came off. So there you go. Yeah. How about

Carl Widger: 5:40

lifting very large Scottish men over walls, like how no, I'm going to pay for that, but I'm

Nick Lincoln: 5:45

going to bring a team and click my fingers and they will they will throw that Scottish bean bowl into the next pile of mud on my behest. Right, okay, there's some sporty thing going on that Andrew wants to talk about.

Andy Hart: 5:56

Yeah, there is a wild cup going on, and it was a great game last night against Argentina. England did really well to win three nil, so now we are we're in the final. So yeah, looking forward to the final against France. Obviously, that's not the case. We are recording this before the mighty semi final against Argentina, but yeah, on the day this comes out, we will know who's in the final. In terms of tomorrow night is France versus Spain, and Wednesday night is England versus Argentina. The game against Norway was painful. The Mexican game was superb. There's been some absolute cracking games in this World Cup. We're at the final final week, so England are still in there. I'm assuming you've watched almost none of this, Nick, or none of this. I

Nick Lincoln: 6:39

watched seven minutes of YouTube highlights of the Mexico game.

Andy Hart: 6:42

Brilliant, Carlos. You may be involved.

Carl Widger: 6:45

You've missed nothing. Worst World Cup ever. And Scotland. Scotland won it. Their fans were superb. Closely followed by the Norwegians. And we should now move on.

Andy Hart: 6:59

Lisa, thoughts on the World Cup?

Lisa Johnstone: 7:01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Football, football mad in here. Everybody, all the kids in the street. So we're all up to one in the morning watching the game on Saturday night. Yeah.

Andy Hart: 7:10

How were you?

Lisa Johnstone: 7:12

Yeah.

Andy Hart: 7:12

Oh, awesome. What do you think of it? Painful.

Lisa Johnstone: 7:16

I think I've watched quite a few games of this World Cup, and I think that the sort of style of football and kind of-I know it's not there for entertainment, but it's rubbish. I haven't really haven't seen too many games that will be saying this is a great game of football. Not not great.

Carl Widger: 7:31

Couldn't agree with you more. It's been absolutely catastrophically poor, worst one ever. And I've watched everywhere I come because I was

Nick Lincoln: 7:39

not at all not at all biased by England's progress in the 70-nine. No, no, we're not bitter

Lisa Johnstone: 7:43

about not being in it at all.

Carl Widger: 7:45

No, we're not. We're not. It's all World Cups are boring. It's what everyone's afraid to lose. They never great. No, no, to totally disagree. What about like when I was growing up, like the the the World Cup with Platini in it? What about the World Cup with Maradona in it? These were just inspirational times because there was much. It

Nick Lincoln: 8:02

was a cheat. The chill. No, there was much fewer.

Carl Widger: 8:05

There was much fewer teams in it, so it wasn't all about money. The biggest one was and the games, all the games mattered. There was so many crap games in this that didn't matter, and then there was crappy teams getting through to knock out games and putting you know everyone behind the ball. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. And the Donald Trump

Lisa Johnstone: 8:23

thing about the U.S. player-I mean, it was crap before, but now it's just a-it's just a joke.

Carl Widger: 8:28

Do not get me started. But absolutely, Lisa, thank you for bringing that up. Absolute joke. Like, oh my God, they should be ashamed of themselves. It's almost like being run by

Nick Lincoln: 8:38

corrupt organization from the top down, isn't it? Okay, let's move on from the World Cup and go on to so, Lisa. You have you know we talked about these ideas exchanges over the various episodes. I know Carl's got one off the ground in his neck of the woods, and Andy, myself, and Alan belonged to one in London, and he still does. You've got something similar happening.

Lisa Johnstone: 8:57

Yeah, so we have one in Glasgow that I think a few people actually had contacted Alan from Trap and other people. Just obviously that that that we know, and so we have one in Glasgow, and there are probably about I think about sort of about 12 of us at the moment. But I just wanted to highlight it. So Thursday, the third of September, it'll be breakfast meeting, sort of eight to 10. So if anybody's listening and they're sort of Glasgow, Central Scotland, Edinburgh area, and they fancy coming along. Just get in touch, and I'll give you the details.

Carl Widger: 9:26

And is that is that is that open to new members, Lisa? And and have you decided on what a what a membership looks like, or are you just? I think there's some people. Yeah, I think

Lisa Johnstone: 9:35

there's some people maybe at the moment sort of more towards the business business ownership thing. But I think it's. I think we're sort of generally just quite happy to have you know advisors in general and to to make it pretty open because I don't know if you have this in years, but it's quite hard to get dates to suit everybody and

Carl Widger: 9:52

yeah.

Lisa Johnstone: 9:53

So I think it's going to be quite quite less, but it's always really good. It's just that sort of trying not to make it too formal and too structured because. Was actually the best content and chat just comes from sort of sitting around the table and people having you know a bit of a chat about whatever's you know annoying them that week or whatever. So do do you have yours just pretty open, Carl? Or I remember you whatever you did yours like first was just coming along to the pub and it's whatever. So

Carl Widger: 10:18

yeah, that's how we started it, and then we kind of had a formal, more kind of formal setting, and there's been a little bit of chat around. It's become very informal. Honestly, I like it that way. I think we kind of just chat about what's happening and whatever. But there's a few members would like it more formal, and that's okay too. So I think that's kind of on our agenda item for the next meeting is to you know do we get an outside chairman and that kind of stuff. So different opinions, but um, but yeah, so it's interesting. You know, you'll eventually fall on the what works for the group. Yeah, I think

Lisa Johnstone: 10:54

we just try for an eye and probably

Andy Hart: 10:56

get. Yeah, no, Oz is very formal. I mean, it's been established for I think about 30-540, years. So obviously, we're coming at it from a slightly different angle. We get we we meet on the second Wednesday of every month, apart from August, and we know the dates for the every single date for the following year around about September time, and we meet keep it simple from about eight till 11 on Wednesday morning, so that's just pretty much blocked out. I mean, obviously, the one of the successes of a great club is commitment, and we have quite a strict commitment rule. I think you can miss maybe maybe two a year, and then otherwise you get a bit of a slap on the wrist. So commitment, I think, is key. The dates being known, you know, in advance as much advance as possible, I think also helps. But yeah, obviously you got to find your feet with with with with new clubs and find out what works in different cities.

Carl Widger: 11:53

Yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 11:55

just that's great stuff. Just so you know, the so-called show notes, the link to your Scotland Ideas Exchange on the third of September has now got the Vanguard Tough Mudder one against. I don't think I did that, so you might need to put the link back in.

Lisa Johnstone: 12:07

I didn't put a link in, so that's not me either.

Andy Hart: 12:09

That's you, Nick. It's definitely you.

Carl Widger: 12:11

That was probably Andy again.

Lisa Johnstone: 12:13

Andy was in the sheet after me, so I'm going to blame him.

Nick Lincoln: 12:15

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. As long as it was fault. So you don't. There's no link. If they want, if people are interested in that, or you just not.

Lisa Johnstone: 12:21

No, just contact me. We have like an up. We have a WhatsApp community group, so if people want to to join, if they if they contact me, okay, hit them

Nick Lincoln: 12:28

up. Great stuff. And the best way to do that is via your LinkedIn profile.

Lisa Johnstone: 12:31

Yeah, that's perfect.

Nick Lincoln: 12:32

Okay, great stuff. We'll put a link to that in the show. So cool to show. Okay, Wadge, what motivates you?

Carl Widger: 12:39

Yes. So this was this was surprisingly good. So I was I I was away with a bunch of people from my new employers and NFP in Birmingham for a few days, not last was it? No, the week before last. Yeah, and part of this was we had to fill out one of these personality questionnaires. Now nobody ever fills out a personality questionnaire and goes, "I can't wait to go through the couple of hours that it's going to take to tell me that I'm a red. But, but this one was a little bit different. So, this one is from a company called Full Potential. I think I'm right. I'll have to. I'm going to read something here now. But basically, it's a it's a fairly detailed questionnaire that you go through to find out actually what motivates you. So, what are the motivating factors? And they've broken them down into broadly kind of three groups of three, so nine different factors. And it's to try and get, I suppose, you to understand yourself a little bit more, and and the things that don't motivate you, because if things that you know aren't big on my agenda, but they are in somebody else's, that can that can lead to perhaps not the best engagement between those two types of people. But my main one was spirit. So let me just read out the spirit. Seeks freedom, independence, and autonomy to make their own decisions and apply their own discretion. Motivate them by sharing the company vision and goals, delegating responsibility, clarifying objectives, avoiding micromanagement, and creating clear boundaries to give them the freedom they need. They hate bureaucracy. Support them to understand their values and clarify the vision for the life and work. It was just funny because clearly that's that's you that's not someone you describe who should be bought by a much bigger company and then go and work for them. But I think it's it's interesting for me and for the the folks that I'm working for now and with now for me to understand that, but also for them to understand it. But I thought it was a it was a really cool take on these kind of personality tests. We've all you know done those other ones and the 360 reviews and all that kind of stuff. But I thought this one just focusing in on what motivates you because when it'll give you what the the your main motivating factors are and. And scored them. So mine was a little bit low on that particular one, the Spirit, and obviously that's because I'm trying to figure out well how do I work in a much bigger corporation where here too far I've been just calling the shots, making decisions whether they were right or wrong. I was just making them, and and we were driving on. So I would say if you're running a team of any size, really, I think you should get onto the fullpotentialgroup.com and potentially have a looking look at running this because I think it will open everyone's eyes to how they engage with each other a little bit more. I thought it was really, really good, and the guy that delivered it for NFP was really, really engaging as well, and he made it fun and he made it interesting. So yeah, just thought that this one was it was a a kind of test or a whatever that I hadn't heard of before, and I loved the idea that was about you know what actually motivates you, which intrinsically is what are your beliefs, what are your values, that kind of stuff. So really interesting piece of work. Probably helped that I was not hungover doing it. I wouldn't have liked to have been hung over doing it. So yeah, you need a you need a fresh head and you need an open mind to do any of these things, I guess. But yeah, really good. Highly recommend it.

Andy Hart: 16:20

Do you think the management of the new company just orchestrated this whole exercise to get under the bonnet and work out who you are, Carl?

Carl Widger: 16:29

I think they knew already, Andy. I think they kind of said that. You can do this

Andy Hart: 16:33

at your next offsite, Nick.

Carl Widger: 16:35

Yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 16:37

I I did a personality test, didn't I? About three years ago, I came out as extraordinarily disagreeable, but very high in conscientiousness.

Carl Widger: 16:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but it was really good because there, there, there are like there's kind of three broad categories, and the the the green one, the people one. I'm I'm low on that, and look, I like that's not news to people who know me really really well, but I have to work with that, and and it's like there's 1111 part of it here. I have the I have their card, the defender, right? And it's a and lots of people in. There was there was 25 or 30 people in the room. There was lots of people who who had this as their highest motivating factor, and and in the session we were doing, it's like you know, well the the the the spirit and the defender may clash. That's actually good to know. It's good for me to know that when I'm going talking to somebody who's who's a peer of mine, and we're trying to get something done or something across the line. That I'm coming across it from a much different angle or a much different perspective. But also then for me to understand the perspective that they're coming from. So it was definitely. I've done loads of these over the years, and I think this one was the best one I've done. And I think smaller businesses tend not to do this because they feel that this isn't. You know, that's for big corporations. I think small a small team would actually benefit more than a big corporation by understanding this because a small team needs to be nimble, agile, and agreeable. That we're all rowing in the same direction, and we might actually end up getting there kind of different ways. And I think it would it would fast track a lot of the you know the the the forming, norming, storming. That storming piece would be much much easier, much more easily overcome if you all had these pictures almost stuck behind your desks. And I'm not suggesting you do that. I'm being a little bit facetious, but understanding each other's motivations and what motivates you, what drives you, what are your values, your beliefs. Yeah, I think this would be really, really good thing to do.

Andy Hart: 18:39

I was going to say, Carl, what's the strategy going forward? You've just got to remember what everybody was from in the room, or you'll revisit it, or they'll collectively share something that lists all your different colors. Like, what's what's the yeah the go for? So

Carl Widger: 18:55

that's actually a great question because you get this really really brilliant report from it, and it and it outlines like what your what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are. But it not only does that; it tells you what are the things that you need to be careful of, what are the things that you need to work on in order to get better. And there's no point in doing this and getting this information and just kind of throwing it in the bin. You know, I'll be. I'm going to share it with my with my own team, and you know, just let them know that this is these are the kind of things that that you need to be aware of when you're dealing with me. And I and there was talk about doing doing this for the wider team. I think it'd be I think it'd be brilliant. I I I I don't know how much it costs, so I hope it's not a. I'm not sending everyone to a website that's going to cost a fortune, but you get a little video with your report. The whole thing was just super slick, super helpful, and and much more focused and user friendly than any of these that I'd done before. I would highly recommend it.

Nick Lincoln: 19:59

Okay. Interesting. The full the full potential group.com I can't see all the prices on the group.com

Carl Widger: 20:04

Yeah. So,

Nick Lincoln: 20:05

Lisa, have you done one of these sort of psychometric things in your term? Yeah, we've done

Lisa Johnstone: 20:09

lots of them. There's a good article. I think it was in the New Yorker by Simon Sinek, and he referred to these tests as the astrology of the office place. I, you know, it's a lot of rubbish. But then he sort of concedes later on in the article that it might not actually be very good to put people into boxes, but it forces you to think about how you communicate and you speak and you ask of others to do things. So the test might not necessarily be particularly good, but as Carl has said, it's made him think about how he approaches things, what motivates him, and if you can do that. It's another perspective. So if you can get another perspective outside of yourself, that's very helpful, particularly whenever you are leading teams.

Carl Widger: 20:50

Yeah, and and just just to to emphasize a point that and kind of what you said there, there's nine different types of individuals, but they'll give you three, so I I've got my three kind of just listed here. So you know you do have it it putting people in a box. I agree with that. That that's that's kind of nonsensical because it depends on the day of the week, doesn't it? How well you slept last night, whether you know whether you had a good weekend or whether the sun is shining or so. It's like there are I have three main motivating ones, but then I have kind of one or two that are much lesser down the line for me, and I have to be careful when I'm dealing with those individuals. And none of this was wrong. None of it was wrong. The bad stuff that it said about me was entirely correct. Yeah, I think that's what's

Lisa Johnstone: 21:37

good about them. It forces you to remind yourself of your faults, and then think actually what you know.

Carl Widger: 21:42

Yeah,

Lisa Johnstone: 21:42

get yourself back on track for dealing with them because I think I'd be like you, Nick. I'd come out as disagreeable and impulsive and want everything done yesterday and all that sort of stuff.

Nick Lincoln: 21:51

Yeah, but when I did it, Lisa, I didn't. I thought that that is me. That is that God. It's like it's like someone that opens up the you know opens you up your personality. I thought that is fair enough. But being, you know, the disagreeability thing is not necessarily a bad thing because people who are too agreeable just get bullied from bully from push from pillar get pushed from pillar to post, right? And they never sort of say, "No, I'm not doing that. And so, obviously, you've got to moderate it to a degree. And yeah, I and you know, know thyself. You know, we never really know know ourselves. So if we can get a bit more insight into ourselves, and then maybe just try and be a bit more empathetic to other people who have different characteristics. It can only only be a good thing. So I'm I'm quite a fan of these things

Carl Widger: 22:28

and and self awareness, Nick. Like that is the key here, right? If you if you become more self aware, it can only make you better personally and professionally. And I hate coming down on the young folk like I do sometimes, but the the people earlier in their careers, they do not have the level of self awareness sweeping generalization coming up. They don't have the level of self awareness that is required to be successful into the long term. I really do believe that. Obviously, that's not the case for everybody, but it tends to be much more inward looking than you know how how am I perceived to you know my my colleagues and my friends my family all that kind of stuff so so yeah know thyself couldn't have said it better Nick brilliant

Nick Lincoln: 23:16

okay okay thank you so moving on because we're already at 23 minutes in episode 101 of the Real Advisor podcast, T R A P Trap. So Peter Kyle is apparently the business secretary. I'm not sure I've heard of the guy before. He's another one of this administration who are saying they want to force UK pension funds to invest in the UK in UK listed companies. You know the the and it's all sort of nicely nice to you know, but that's a nice pension fund over there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it, kind of talk. And he said last week he told UK pension funds to get off their high horses and invest in Britain or be forced to do so by law. The UK's biggest asset managers should feel a patriotic duty in making Britain a success. Well, two points about that. This must be the most unpatriotic administration in the history of of our country, and then the previous one was no good either. But secondly, fund managers have no. What is he talking about? Their duty for fund managers is to maximize returns within certain risk parameters for their members en masse. And there's again, it's this thing that we have a problem. The UK stock market is dwindling. It's you know 30 years ago it was 12% of world cap. Now it's three under three and a half percent. I mean that's a terrible decline. But rather than address the underlying causes for that, hey, let's bully, let's bully fund managers into divesting assets into UK companies, the vast majority of which earn their money overseas anyway. So this whole thing about the it, it's I just find it infuriating. And as ever, we don't address the underlying issues. We have this gaping wound of companies not listing and fleeing this country, and we put little bits of sellotape over the wound rather than thinking, how do we get this nasty gash, and how can we stop it happening again and getting worse? So I just I'd find this. Maddening, and I don't know if you guys have got any opinions on this.

Lisa Johnstone: 25:05

Yeah, same, and I think the Trustee Act-that's that's the law. The law is already there, and it's to protect the beneficiaries or the members, as it should. Not

Nick Lincoln: 25:43

this is the nice thing about having a technical person on the show who knows what she's talking about. Because what's it called? The Trustee Act. Make make a note, gents, the trustee. Yeah, we're going to look it up off. No, it's a very good point. But they'll just try and what they'll do, Lisa. They'll just, they'll just, they'll just unlegislate that, put something else in its place because they got the power to do it, right? Yeah, not good. But it'll be

Lisa Johnstone: 26:02

like the Isa thing. You know, how do you place it? How do you, you know, they're finding that, you know, we've got this real idea, but actually we didn't ask anybody who knows what they're talking about, and oh, it's not going to be very good or easy to implement. So the UK investment thing would be exactly the same.

Nick Lincoln: 26:17

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, Nick, we

Carl Widger: 26:20

somewhere in the the slate for today's episode, I actually have an article in about this. This is now being proposed in Ireland as well, so I saw it. So sorry, I see a link. I didn't read your one, so I might just kind of jump in and talk about that now. Yeah. So the Irish Association of Pension Funds, and this was the third article that I had read about this topic, whereby only 3% of Irish pension funds are invested in Irish assets, which is probably even a little bit much, right? And they're proposing that we increase this. the The Irish Association of Pension Funds are proposing that we increase this to perhaps 5% which would only be a couple of percentage points. But like in the before the financial crash, we were like way over invested in particularly Irish banks, right? And look how look where that left us. And then we went to you know pension funds became pretty much invested per their index, right? So it was like, well, if the index says Ireland should be less than 1% it should be 1% It's probably crept up a little bit more, but but it's funny. This isn't so we are now mirroring what is being discussed in the UK, but we we don't seem to be doing it from a from a government level. We seem to be doing it from a fund level, which is utterly bizarre for me. Yeah, like for the Irish Association of Pension Funds to come out with this proposal, I'm like, where where's your evidence? Where is your evidence to say that this is a good idea? And and one of the other articles that I read was, you know, well, if we're saying that Ireland is a great place for FDI, right, for foreign direct investment, then we should actually be putting our money where our mouths are. And I'm like, absolutely. That's like conflating two totally and utterly different things. So yeah, I'm a little bit flabbergasted by this. I'm a little bit flabbergasted as to where this is actually coming from. So yeah, a strange one.

Nick Lincoln: 28:25

Yeah, and I'm wondering, Carl. I'm wondering if the Irish government have said to the Irish pension funds,"You, we want this. We want you to front it initially. So, if if you don't push this, we will come in and do it the way the British.

Carl Widger: 28:37

Well, that's the the skeptics might say that that might be the case. Who would I be to comment on that Nick? Oh, you innocent young man,

Nick Lincoln: 28:47

innocent, innocent, innocent. But

Carl Widger: 28:49

yeah, I was wondering exactly the same. Where is this actually coming from? And this is not a good idea. This is not a good idea because if you start the home bias too much, you'll just end up being, you know, like we often say to you know, you know, clients who've got a DB pension fund. They work for a big, huge company. They have a DB pension fund, and they've also got some share options. And then, because they know the company is going to go so well in their few savings, they've also bought the company's shares. Like that's that's the worst case scenario. And as financial planners, yeah, yeah, exactly. And there are other examples as well. You know, like diversification is the key here. People's pension funds need to be globally diversified. They do not need a a home bias. There is no there's no evidence. There's there's no reason for people to have their pension funds with a home bias at all.

Nick Lincoln: 29:48

Okay, agreed. And if and if you're 3% already, and and I don't think the Irish market cap is 3% They want to get a 5% Okay, 5% doesn't sound big, but that's a massive jump. Exactly,

Carl Widger: 29:58

and that in the article that I shared, right? That's they were kind of going, ah, it's only a couple of percentage points. Like that's that's not you know I don't know the Irish size damn statistics. Yeah, it's

Andy Hart: 30:10

a few 100,000 euros, isn't it? At 2%

Carl Widger: 30:14

Anyway, good luck against Argentina.

Nick Lincoln: 30:17

Thanks. Well, I know you're waiting for us. So, Ultra, you've just been to Andy Burnham's conference. It wasn't Manchester, wasn't it?

Andy Hart: 30:25

Nicholas, Nicholas, Nicholas. Okay, so a shout out to the Plan X team who had their. Conference last week. The previous name was obviously Next Gen. They are now flying the flag with the the Plan X branding, which I think is a good name change. Long story short. Anyway, I traveled up there last week after my IX meeting. I traveled up. I traveled up with Sam Slomer, who I know is a Trappist, and we listened to this. Shout out to him. We had a good couple of days up there. I was there. Lisa was also there. It's the second year I think they've hosted it in their Victoria in the Victoria Warehouse, which used to be the old warehouse project in Manchester, which was a very famous club. Anyway, focusing on the event, it was it was awesome. You know, the the vibe in the room was amazing. You know, it's not your typical financial advisor conference. Loads of new people I met, loads of Trappists, loads of old friends, two hot days in Manchester. You know, I can't, I can't praise it enough. It was, it was superb. Shattered at the end, obviously standing and talking for 24 hours. Yeah, brilliant. Absolutely, it's like being

Nick Lincoln: 31:26

back in Basra. I don't know here. Did they mention? Do they do they doing any podcast awards?

Andy Hart: 31:31

Ah, you got the old Next Gen podcast award. I think they did awards. I can't remember. The first night was just total madness. You're a

Nick Lincoln: 31:39

raving reporter. You're bloody useless.

Andy Hart: 31:40

What was it called, Lisa? Bongo Bingo. The first night and just dancing around. And how did you and the team enjoy it, Lisa? Oh, Lisa got sorry. Lisa got a lifetime achievement award. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't know if that's telling her to.

Lisa Johnstone: 31:54

Yeah, it's pretty lovely. Yeah. So, what was your award called, Lisa? And Hall

Andy Hart: 32:00

of Fame. The Fame Award.

Lisa Johnstone: 32:07

Thank you. Yeah. So they put somebody in every year for their sort of contribution to the financial planning community, so I think they started it last year. So it was Pete Matthew and then little old me. So it was great. Yeah, it was lovely. I said some lovely things, and yeah, agree with Andrea. Conference was great. Lots of really good speakers. They've got quite a lot of speakers from sort of outside financial planning, which is good. And I think that that kind of helps. So yeah, really good. Good party the night before, and obviously, I think part of changing the name to Plan X is to you know not make it next gen from the age perspective. It's more of a mindset than a than an age, and I think that that's a good move. But it does it does generally have quite a I think a progressive attitude, as in you know people who want to, you know, get on tech, change all that sort of stuff. So it's quite a good environment to be in for talking to people about what they're doing, because all the members are actually doing something. They are just sort of sitting on their laurels. So it's great, great, great environment, and and great to talk to people there.

Andy Hart: 33:04

Yeah. So hopefully, Andy, have you changed the name? Would you

Nick Lincoln: 33:06

feel would you no longer go? Given that you're into your fifth decade shortly, you think? Yeah, I'm pushing it now, aren't

Andy Hart: 33:12

I? I'm me and Lisa are in between us. You and Carla, the old buggers. But yeah, no, it's it's a spirit and a mindset, next gen. But yeah, changing the names of Plan X, I think, is a good move. So onward we go.

Nick Lincoln: 33:26

Okay, good stuff. So next next on the slate is something that I came across last week. I listened to the all-in podcast, which was a loose, very poor copy of our the Trap Real Advisor podcast. And Brad Gerstner is like the fifth member. Steps in now and again when one of the team can't make it, and he is not one of his tech bros. Okay, so but he's very lucid. He's not too OCD. He's not too autistic. Anyway, he had this idea back in the first Trump administration, for getting these for getting these little accounts set up for all the children of America, and maybe seeded by government money, and it didn't happen in the first administration. But when Trump came back in, he went back into the administration. Brad and said, "We can, I can do this with my software team. We can get the very best tech engineers to roll out this app across America. And it launched last week, and it's become the most quickly downloaded app in in in I think in Apple history, and basically every child in in the USA born from the start of 2026 to the end of 2028 it's going to get $1,000 seeded into this app in their name. It cannot be accessed until they're 18. They're going to invest in the great companies of America and the world, primarily using very very low cost index funds, and it's a great way for people just to a have some money and have the time for it to appreciate. As we know, investing is really all about time and compound growth. And here we've got this thing now with these children of America from all demographics across the board can have 1000 $1,000 invested in their name. They can watch it grow. So when they're 18, hopefully they they understand a little bit about all these names, all these brands that we hear about. They've actually got a slice of it, which isn't the case now. The super thing about this is that this is so easy to top up by third parties. You just QR, you scan the QR code, and if you and you can just you can top this this amount up to the$5,000 a year allowance so easily with a couple of clicks via Apple Pay or Google Wallet, and I think it's going to really change. There's lots to unpack. There's loads going on. Some of the contributions are tax allowable, some are not. When you access at 18, it falls under their IRA rule. So I don't get into too much the weeds about that. But the fact they've done it, they've launched this app, but it's a government app. But because they've had private enterprise behind it, they've rolled this out. It's. Transformative, and Brad Gersner has put $250 into each Trump account for every child in Indiana under the age of five because that's his home state. And the beauty of this is, I think you'll see philanthropy will come back. At the moment, people people are loath to give money to NGOs and charities because they're never sure where the money actually goes to the people it's supposed to go to. With this app, you can just put the money in the accounts of these children, bypassing the children, bypassing the adults. Which for a lot of these kids will be the best thing that can ever happen is not give the money to the adults. And I see it's just it's just it's just the can do attitude. We had a similar thing. You might, Lisa, you're probably too young, Andy. You're no, you're almost as old as me now because you're catching up. Andy and I

Lisa Johnstone: 36:08

are the same age.

Nick Lincoln: 36:10

Okay. Wow. Okay. So back in the early '90s, the clunking fist of Gordon Brown came up with the latest his

latest disastrous idea: 36:16

children's trust funds, in which every child born between a certain date range was given 250 quid cash, and it just sat there, and there was no follow up, and most of that money did languish in cash. There were there was a stocks and shares option, but that never happened, and it just died on the vine. Now, obviously, tech has moved on massively since then, but here's an example of this could be transformative for for millions of children in in the USA, and it gets them involved in capitalism. And I was, I just thought, I'm trying to think of a downside. Now, there'll be allegations of fraud and so forth, but I think it's because there's a it's a marriage between the very best in the American tech psyche, and they are they're streets ahead of us, aren't they? Anyway, getting involved and doing this, I just think it's a superb, and I'd love to have something. This can you imagine how long it would take for a government to approve, to build, approve, and roll out an app? The children would be 30-five by the time it got done. Yeah, just the difference in attitude, and yeah, that's my my view. Any thoughts, Carl? You, I don't know who had the hand raised somebody. I think it

Andy Hart: 37:14

was me. Yeah, no, I did listen to the podcast, and I think it's absolutely superb, Nick. You've summed it up really well. We're not a million miles away from it, though, Nick. In this country, again, we've trial child trust funds, and then that morphed into something else. We do have junior Isas. I think the way that they're going to be a little bit more successful with it. The numbers are a bit more punchy, and they go in automatically, like non-means tested. Every child born, but also, which the regulator never does here, they're almost forcing a default fund that is going to be superb for 90-9.9% of people that invest in it. As in, they're just going for a super low-cost index fund that's buying the S and p5 100. Again, you could get technical and say it's a bit too American-heavy, etc. etc. But they are pretty much, you know, the bulk of the world market cap. So yeah, I think they're brilliant. Obviously, the name of them they said might cause issues. Trump accounts. So some people that are anti-Trump will push back a bit because it's called Trump accounts. I believe that is the official name they're going with. But you're right, it's superb tech. It's superb long-term thinking. It's compounding. I mean, the the switch to some form of pension thing at 18, I think, is actually quite good. Within the UK, we switch it to an ice that they can access fully. So again, they're tying it up longer as well, which is also good from a behavioral point of view. So yeah, massively. Why doesn't every country, in some form, you know, adopt the sort of high level four or five key principles of this account, you know, like ourselves. Yeah, and I think it's brilliant, Carlos.

Carl Widger: 39:26

Yeah, absolutely amazing. Like one of the best. Why doesn't every country do it? Exactly, like you just said, right? It's just they aren't the best ideas the most transformational ideas? Oh yeah, sorry. The simplest ideas, and that's what they've done here. So Nick sent me the All In podcast on Saturday, saying, "I know you don't listen to this anymore, but you need to listen to this. So I did, and I listened to it the first hour of it, and like, I'm glad I don't listen to the All In podcast anymore. It's like you need to be a software developer. Oh yeah, who knows coding? And I thought it was just I was like, oh, what am I doing this and this? And then this this bit came on. I would urge everyone to listen to it. It's absolutely brilliant. That guy Brad, whatever his name is, like he's

Andy Hart: 40:09

small. The

Carl Widger: 40:10

legacy that man is going to leave, and they shouldn't be called Trump accounts. They should be called Brad accounts because he came up with this idea with his kids in 2020, and has been working on it since then. But the simplicity and like how they explained the philanthropy elements that they you know you can turn it over into an IRA and all that kind of stuff. It's just really good, and and it's like how now they're making it easy for the trillionaires, never mind the billionaires, to you know issue shares into these accounts in behalf of all all of the kids. You can you know philanthropists can contribute for kids' ages for their locations. This kind of stuff is just absolutely phenomenal. And in in Ireland, then I I read at the weekend in the Business Post there was a guy called and a Dublin investor called Carl Carl is proposing something similar, like so this will catch on, and a lot of people will try and claim it as their own. This guy Brad has come up with a super slick and simple idea. And it will transform America, and that's what I've been talking about. You know, if we could encourage investing in Ireland now for our kids now, then we will trans. We will make transformational change now for the next generation and the generation after that. But that's what you need to do. You need people with vision in the long term to make really significant difference, and I guess politics doesn't set any of that up for success because you got to get re-elected every four years, don't you? And so doing the doing the long term stuff. But I am I I'll be a little bit careful. I'm going to see my daughter. I have two daughters in America at the moment, so I'm going to visit one of them next week. Yeah, but I am not the greatest fan, shall we say, of the the the current administration over there. But this is superb, and you have to give credit where credit is due. This is absolutely superb.

Andy Hart: 42:09

It was the part of the Big Beautiful Bill, or whatever, wasn't it, Nick? Do you know about that? Yeah. So it was just like a you know paragraph 27 of the Big Beautiful Bill was it? Maybe.

Nick Lincoln: 42:20

Yeah. In the show notes, I put a link. I put a Grok AI link to just sort of summarize the whole thing and explains what IRAs are, what happened to 80, and so forth. But there's obviously loads going on there. But just think they rolled this out in such a short amount of time. Such a clever idea. And they're basically apart from the 1000-dollar seeding from the government, you're bypassing the state, you know, man got to somebody in the street, scan the QR code, or go to his granddaughter's part as they speak to the parents, and oh yeah, yeah, gran, you know, we've still got $1,000 light this year, which and yeah, of course I will, and it's done, and it's just like making. And you can do five, you can

Carl Widger: 42:51

do 5000 to anybody and every year, yeah, you know, like our our limit here is 3000 but as as the guy here in Ireland said, but setting up the account is such a pain in the ass that you know people tend not to do it, and then the money gets thrown into a bank account or a credit union account, so it never gets invested, right? But this is like just simple. Now there is home bias in this; it's S and p5 100 only, but anyway, that's fine.

Andy Hart: 43:19

Fine, yeah, absolutely.

Nick Lincoln: 43:20

I did see somewhere they may they'll probably roll it out to global equity index as well. So, so which which they will do. Lisa, any thoughts on this, or should we move on?

Lisa Johnstone: 43:29

Yeah, just the same. Obviously, that's the problem with the child trust fund. So you're trying people trying to get their hands and things on it afterwards. It's an administrative nightmare, and there was a really good talk at Andy's conference from a girl. I can't remember her name. Is it Rhiannon Go?

Carl Widger: 43:42

Yeah,

Lisa Johnstone: 43:43

Lady. It was really quite interesting around the unintended consequences of setting investment accounts up for kids, particularly if your children end up with developmental challenges or anything that they have, and so she she's working in an advice sort of bubble that's that's very different, and it's really really interesting from the perspective that these kids get to 18, and they can't get their hands on the child trust fund. They might not have capacity. They will all sorts of protection orders and things in place, but it affects their ability to get help from the state from a benefit perspective. She went through some really really interesting statistics about you know how many people actually are affected by those things, and was a much much higher percentage than I thought. And we came back to the office and thought, you know, when we're recommending these guys to our wealthy clients who have got grandchildren, we're not writing anything to say. Well, by the way, you know, if if you end up in this sphere that your grandchild ends up with these challenges, there that's actually going to have consequence 18. So it's not just your child can get your hands on the money, which is where we would have gone before. But the talk really opened my mind to actually there's a whole other world of unintended consequences for having investments for children. I mean, from a saving and investing perspective, you know, the the concept sounds absolutely wonderful, but as with everything, there are nuances and quite dangerous things whenever you are dealing with anything, particularly in the UK, to do with state because it's just an administrative, you know, treacle.

Nick Lincoln: 45:10

Well, yeah, and the argument there could be to strip back on the on the on the state because you tend to throttle everything. Okay, Lisa, sticking with you, if that's okay, you've got AI and the FCA are coming together in a beautiful relationship.

Lisa Johnstone: 45:24

Yeah, it was just it was a report from that guy Sheldon Mills, I think, from the FCA, basically saying I think what we all already know, which is that the FCA are conscious everybody's using it, and they're quite sort of honest in saying, like we can't, we can't really keep up with it, but we're going to recommend to the government that these clothes, etc. etc. should be regulated because the conversations are going on outside of the regulatory perimeter. They don't know how they're going to do it yet or anything like that. But it was, it was just quite interesting that they they're looking at regulating financial advice from that perspective. Just, I mean, you guys have talked about this a lot. There's no human on the hook, so it's quite dangerous, and it's just a probabilistic outcome. It's not necessarily correct. So, it's just interesting that they're saying that they basically don't have a handle on it, can't keep up with it, don't know. They're doing need some sort of regulation of some description, but they've you know they're going to recommend to the government that that it happens, but as yet don't know how. I

Andy Hart: 46:28

mean, we're at the early days at this. End consumers are obviously every single second of every single day asking very in-depth questions about money, finance, financial planning, investing, and currently is spitting out a lot of recommendations that could be argued are regulated. I'm not sure if they're going to be focused on that part of it or more us as professionals using these tools. Probably a bit of everything, but I can see AI watering themselves down massively when it comes to putting their neck on the line. When it comes to specifically investing named investment funds, specifically recommending tax strategies. I mean, probably like everyone on the call, I use it for a lot of technical stuff at the moment, and it's a great starting point. Obviously, there are some holes in it, but it's a great starting point. But I don't know if they're just going to think why bother taking the risk. Obviously, they've got the risk in the financial world. They've got the risk in the medical world. They've got the risk in the legal world. These are the obvious ones. So then people might have to be using specific financial AI solutions. You know, like a skin of ChatGPT that's that's had a bit more oversight within it, but yeah, this area is moving incredibly fast. Probably the fastest we've ever seen a new tech moving. So I can understand why the regulator is being very honest and saying. I mean, probably all of the people that have written this report use it personally, so they know the power of these tools. So yeah, it's yeah interesting. Watch this space, and a lot of the AI-specific companies, Saturn, Advisory AI, Marley, all these types of companies that they'll all be they'll be all over this in terms of trying to interpret this and help us financial advisors navigate it. Interesting.

Nick Lincoln: 48:14

Yeah, I mean, there's never any good idea that the authorities in this country just can't wait to regulate it. I mean, good luck if if you think the FCA, if you think Google or or Anthropic are going to listen to the FCA and moderate their advice. I mean, good good luck. You take it with a pinch of salt. You know, caveat emptor.

Andy Hart: 48:30

Yeah, but I can see them pulling it back. I can see the AI companies not wanting to take the risk. They're basically providing regulated financial, legal, and medical advice every single day to hundreds of 1000s, maybe millions of people. Well, they'll

Nick Lincoln: 48:42

just change the verbiage to say this is guidance. You know, this is not advice. Just, just like

Andy Hart: 48:46

the banks, like you know, you've got to say yes 16 times before you send money to your mum. Yeah,

Nick Lincoln: 48:53

I mean, on that. So on that subject, I have. So I use Saturn, as I've mentioned on Trap a few times Saturn OS, which is an advisor directed advisor focused AI package, and it's internalized the whole of the HMRC statute book and the tax legislation and the whole FCA handbook. And I've just I've now signed up for the full Saturn OS package because I am a literally like like Andrew, I'm a I'm a literal one man band, and I'm just now using this this software now, just to second guess what I'm saying in meetings, am I missing stuff out to look at my suitability reports, and Saturn is going to have the ability to write suitability reports in my star, so in the Nick Lincoln, God help my clients sort of mantra. So I'm I'm I'm I'm all up for it. I'm I'm embracing it, but that is as Andy said, that it's Saturn, and and other ones are available. Is an AI focused financial services focused AI, and it's not something that Joe Public will want to access unless they can access. And you've got to pay. The subscription is fairly hefty, but I think it's something that I'm. I just I've just got to do it. I don't want to be left behind by and and the Roit and the team are in there. They're doing great guns. So that's a little business

Andy Hart: 50:00

idea, Nick. Maybe Saturn could have a little plug-in where we could all we could all access the Nick Lincoln style of suitability letter, and we could just do it as a. I think I think the world and the galaxy would be a

Nick Lincoln: 50:12

better place if that was the case. I think it'd be transformative. Okay, listen, we're coming to 40-nine minutes. Shoot me, so let's just crack them. We've got a few more items on the slate of episode 101 Theeniuno of Tierra Appe trap. Let's move on quickly with Terry Smith's latest blame the index funds. Yes.

Andy Hart: 50:31

So a few people came across this.

Carl Widger: 50:33

Bring it on.

Andy Hart: 50:34

Terry Smith launched his fund in 2010 Fund in

Nick Lincoln: 50:36

2010

Andy Hart: 50:39

had a great early start, as many people may know. Apparently, still head ahead in terms of the numbers from

launched. His mantra is: 50:46

buy quality companies, don't overpay for them, and do nothing. We'll come back to that in a second. The fund at its peak was 29 billion. Now it's down to 12 billion. He's turned over, according to Abraham's link. There's a link to the latest half yearly letter, and there's also a link to Abraham's article on LinkedIn, doing what Abe does best. He says the funders turned over their portfolio by 50-2% in the first six months. You know, and. His sort of message, Terry

Smith: 51:17

the index is misbehaving, and index funds have broken the market. From his perspective, yeah. So, and his last AGM, just to confirm or to reiterate, his last AGM was was was flat because the underperformance was you know huge compared to what what it has been, there was no loss. There was tension in the room, and it's probably just going to get worse and worse and worse. I think a lot of people do have again back to your diversification, all your eggs in one basket when it comes to you know investing. I think a lot of people would have maybe as maybe close to their life savings in the fund Smith account, that's how much they believe active management. That's me just reading between the lines. But yeah, there's a couple of articles, the the main letter, and obviously Abraham's article as well. Anyone on the fall of active management? Carl, you're outspoken in this space.

Carl Widger: 52:16

I am, and rightly so. The last time we spoke about him, do you remember some some dude who loved him said? I I said that he sounded a little bit arrogant, perhaps. And your man's comment back was, "Listen to yourself. Who's the arrogant one? Right. So, not the Colhab's garage. So I looking forward to the next. Did I say that or Smithy? No, I I think I said it, but somebody wrote in, and anyway, the trolls being trolls. The YouTube,

Nick Lincoln: 52:49

I think it was a YouTube comment, wasn't it?

Carl Widger: 52:50

Yeah. So yeah, look, like the index is the index has broken the what was the like I mean yeah the index has broken the

Andy Hart: 53:00

market because the the traditional ways of how you used to invest and the flow of money and because indexes were so big but blah blah blah but if you're such a

Carl Widger: 53:07

genius and you can foresee what's coming well well you just go the opposite way

Andy Hart: 53:11

where you went yeah of course

Carl Widger: 53:13

yeah yeah exactly and um but the remarkable thing about this is that the fees that he's still charging out of that fund is a 12 billion fund. He's a very, very, very wealthy man who's getting wealthier and wealthier by the day, yet underperforming year after year after year. I just can't get my head around the fact that people are still enamored and leaving their money there. I, I again back to something I said earlier on. There is no evidence that this has worked in the past, and there is no evidence that this will work in the future because it won't.

Andy Hart: 53:52

Correct. By the end of okay,

Nick Lincoln: 53:55

I'm gonna Lisa. I'm going to ask any of you. I'm going to ask you all the time because you you haven't got the ability to raise your hand. So, Trappist, I'm not picking on Lisa. Making sure she's included.

Lisa Johnstone: 54:04

Just the same, nothing to add. Okay, cool stuff. Nonsense and etc. That was fine.

Carl Widger: 54:11

That's a much better summary than me, actually. This is a lot of a lot of nonsense. Yeah, I love it.

Lisa Johnstone: 54:16

A lot of rubbish and get out. If you've got it, get out, Sarah. That's all I've got.

Nick Lincoln: 54:20

Well, okay. Well, well, quickly on this because people do like the stuff in the weeds. What's your what's your investment proposition at VWM, Lisa?

Lisa Johnstone: 54:27

We're Albion users, so evidence based, and we have discretionary investment management powers for executing the portfolio, so that's more of a administrative thing. We used to have our own in-house portfolios and just sort of moved more and more and more towards indexing, and then went completely that way with Albion. I think with 2022 something around then, but we had had our own portfolios in house from 2007 and so it was partly risk management thing. But the discretionary investment powers for us are sort of removing the hassle. So we've got institutional custodian who doesn't have illustrations. There are no application forms. It's sort of more of an adult adult environment. So we get away from all the crap that's in the retail space, and we've got discretionary investment powers, but it's more about executing the stuff on behalf of the clients. They don't have to fill in forms. It's not about a crystal ball discretionary investment management because it's just the Albion portfolios that we're doing. But we're trying to remove the hassle from the clients by having the discretionary investment management permissions.

Andy Hart: 55:35

If one of your friends asks you in a pub, "How do you invest money, Lisa? If I gave you my life savings, what would you do with it?

Lisa Johnstone: 55:44

I feel like I'm in an interview, Andy. Well, no, you're just getting a very,

Andy Hart: 55:48

very technical answer about the nuts and bolts about the plumbing behavior.

Lisa Johnstone: 55:51

Well, I would just, I would just go through. Same as you guys, just I would probably simplify that down into just buying the market and and the principles of diversification and maybe use our friend Terry there as an example of what not to do and what what happens if you put all your eggs into crystal ball gazing that sort of stuff.

Nick Lincoln: 56:10

Okay, good stuff. Thank you, Lisa. Right, Waj, inflation nostalgia. I'm not sure you can have in. For inflation, but going woo me.

Carl Widger: 56:17

No, you can. You can. There was a great article in the paper. I loved it, and it was about looking back at 30 years ago. What what was what were we spending our money on, and then the effects of inflation over time. And it was just really cool because 30 years ago, it was my kind of. I graduated from college in 1995, so 96 was kind of my first full year out in the workforce, should we say? And I remember how little I earned. I remember how happy I was, and I remember what I spent my money on, which was basically drink and nightclubs. It just was, and you

Nick Lincoln: 56:55

waited the rest.

Carl Widger: 56:56

Yeah, yeah, but it was yeah exactly, and the other I had to buy some food here and there or whatever. But it was but it was a great great time in my life. I loved college and I loved my early career, and it was just superb. But the the the nostalgia was kind of going what what kind of almost it was reminding us of Oasis and the biggest album that year was"Jagged Little Pill" from Alanis Marset, and I just loved being brought back there. But like on on all the things that we spend our money on now that didn't even exist, and I suppose the bigger story here is, for example, streaming your iPhone. You know, were you buying records at the time, or CDs, or whatever. You know, I was collecting all those, and sure, now we all have everything in our pocket. But it's it's. I suppose the bigger story here is when we're thinking about inflation, we're thinking about the the a basket of goods and the cost of that basket of goods. But actually, what that basket looks like now versus what it looked like back then is life is our lives will transform again in the next 30 years, and we forget that sometimes not not only about our life you know we we we are I think well at least we should be cognizant of inflation and the the the how it erodes the value of your your your money and all that kind of stuff, but actually we should we should also think about you know what you're doing now might be completely changed in 30 years time and and I think the power of AI however different it was from 96 to 2026 from 2026 2056 I don't know we'll probably all be living forever at this by 2056 It is personal robot subscriptions. Yeah, well, exactly. Or will we have a cure for cancer? Will we have a cure? You know, like we don't know what what what what the world is going to look like. But be

Lisa Johnstone: 58:54

assimilated assimilated into being a machine,

Andy Hart: 58:57

yeah, yeah,

Unknown: 58:58

Borg,

Carl Widger: 58:59

yeah, exactly, yeah. I forgot actually, Lisa. We had a long conversation about that. You're into all that sci-fi stuff, aren't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a really good

Lisa Johnstone: 59:07

show, and it was about 10 years ago. I think it was Horizon or something, and it was about people with you know fake limbs and things like that. And the guy who was working on it made that point that there'll come the point when your fake arm or your fake leg will actually be better than your human one. So people will go out to get cosmetic surgery, and it will be to be better, you know, in your skeleton, in your muscles, and things than than the standard human being. And at what point does that become, you know, unfair? What time, you know, what are the sort of ethical considerations about that? But that was his sort of long-term fear as a prosthetic sort of surgeon using technology that it will become a designer want rather. It will become better than the current human

Andy Hart: 59:47

version. Yeah,

Lisa Johnstone: 59:48

yeah. You can you can be a better runner, you know.

Carl Widger: 59:51

Yeah. So what what does the Olympics look like in 30 years time? But they had

Lisa Johnstone: 59:54

one of those recently in Las Vegas, where they you're allowed to take all the EPO and everything as much as you want, and see how you do. Did they only break one?

Andy Hart: 1:00:03

They only broke one world record, Lisa, didn't they?

Lisa Johnstone: 1:00:06

But it's interesting. It is interesting. Yeah, but but

Carl Widger: 1:00:09

but all the athletes were kind of washed up, so they were all fellas and girls who were at the end of their careers. So it's like okay, well, clearly they're not going to break too many records, no matter what they're taking. But if you put the the the superheroes now on all of this stuff, where would it be? Like the the Tour de France sure is the perfect. You all

Lisa Johnstone: 1:00:28

you guys after you do the tough manner, that'll be your next. Are you following the Tour de France this

Andy Hart: 1:00:32

year, Carl? With that new young, I might. You following the Tour de France this year with that young guy?

Carl Widger: 1:00:38

I'm not. No, no. There was a there was an inverted comma as Irish guy with an English accent called Ben Healy did well in it last year. I don't think he's doing so well this year. But no, I don't I don't follow that. Who

Nick Lincoln: 1:00:49

knows what the future? As as Yogi Berra once said, predictions about predictions are really hard, especially about the future. I think off the top, by the way, I might need some prosthetics.

Carl Widger: 1:01:00

I just can't. Like we have to get our heads around. How are we going to throw Alan Smith over a wall? Like this is like easily, easily. This keeps me awake at night. We're all quite tall, aren't we? We're all

Nick Lincoln: 1:01:11

quite big units. Yeah, yeah,

Carl Widger: 1:01:14

yeah.

Nick Lincoln: 1:01:15

Right. Let's. Come on, we're nearly an hour. Jesus Christ, nearly an hour. So, just quickly to close off, I went to an event hosted by Dimensional Fund Advisors to attend the daily closing of the London Stock Exchange at Paternoster Square near St Paul's last week. It was fantastic. I didn't. I'm so out of touch. I just don't follow this. I didn't even realize the London Stock Exchange had moved from Old Broad Street. They'd moved from 2004 to Paternoster Square. So I'm glad I checked the location. Really, I mean, interesting. I mean, one day we'll go to attend the final closing of the London Stock Exchange because everyone was buggered off. But this was just the daily close. Good event, really good event. We went to this great Madison rooftop, a short minute, a short five-minute walk away. So just quick thank you to Sean, Salima, Martin, Lucas, and the gang. And I bumped into the Trappists were there, coming up to me. Just really nice, the normal stuff that you guys have experienced, Andy and and Carla, trap events. Bumped into Paul Clueth, who's a who's a smart cookie, and we were talking about the IHT and the pensions thing coming in next year. I know Paul's done some really good research on that as well for his clients. So thank you to DFA. Right, and on that note, meeting Trappists and having a nice time. Just want to promote the Trap Forum. It's off the ground. It's been it's a bit quiet because none of us have put much time into yet, but we will get it going. Best part of 70 members now on the Trap Forum, so if you want to come on board with something a bit different and get your get a different slice of Trap, a slightly different way, come onto the Trap Forum. We got things planned for this. It will be it will be a thing, and it will be a really good thing. So it's going to empower some of the chaos and some of the mumbling in the background from Andrew. Go on.

Andy Hart: 1:02:37

How do they join?

Nick Lincoln: 1:02:40

I just heard they join. How do they join? How do they join in the so-called show notes?

Andy Hart: 1:02:44

Okay.

Nick Lincoln: 1:02:46

Yeah, which I haven't put in yet, but I will put in. Right. Okay. So we are now almost bang on at 70-one minutes. Good grief! We're going to move on to what many people call the meat and potatoes of episode 101 This is where we take a subject and/or a person, or we take a subject and a person, and give them a damn good thrashing. And the damn good thrashing in this episode is going to be administered to our trapet, standing in for the storyteller, Lisa Johnson of BWM Wealth. Lisa, you're going to tell us how you got to be where you are with your company, the route you went down and so forth, but we're going to start off with a conversation that's going to be inspired by a question from Watch, which is a sentence that's never been uttered before in the history of humans.

Carl Widger: 1:03:27

Yeah, no, look, I just thought when Lisa agreed to come on that you know this is a topic that, well, obviously I've gone through a lot of this thought process over the last couple of years. I did speak to Lisa about what Lisa had done with her business in terms of there was a there was a an owner founder that Lisa and I think her business partner bought out and bought out over time. So obviously that's that's one way of you know a business. business owner exiting their business. Obviously, I've done it a different way, and then there's the consolidators and whatever. But I think it's a very interesting story, and I think a lot of people will be very interested in this. And there's a couple of kind of key aspects along the line. But Lisa, if you could just bring us back, I know, like at the at the outset, you said that you started in this business as a power planner. So maybe just bring us from the journey from paraplanner to you know where you were just before you decided this is a good idea and this is a great business. I want part of it.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:04:31

Yeah. So I did financial services degree at university and then rocked up to firm in Belfast, I worked there for four years, so I was quite different in that you know I arrived and I was kind of like planning to be there as a career. And at that time, I think there were only three universities did that degree, and everybody else in in the office had come in from banks and insurance companies, that sort of traditional route, and thought, well, what do you mean you plan to be here? Because everybody else that I ever met just kind of sort of fell into financial planning through,

Carl Widger: 1:05:00

you

Lisa Johnstone: 1:05:00

know, whatever. So, did four years there, and then I went. I got my chartership. So the charter thing was quite new. Got that. Went traveling for a year with my then boyfriend, now husband, to see if he was up to the job. And then

Carl Widger: 1:05:15

you just interviewed him for a whole year.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:05:18

I'm sure he was probably interviewing me. I don't, I don't know if he puts up with me, but he does. And so he's from Scotland, and he is a childhood friend of my business partner. That's how I met him. And then traveling was over, and I was like, right, well, one of us is going to have to make the move here because I'd been in Belfast, he'd been in Scotland and I'd already been in Scotland, so we just thought, right, well, I'll go there, bigger city, more opportunities, etc. etc. So it was down to my last couple of 100 quid in Buenos Aires and flying home and applied for a job, and I had the interview with Ken. He gave me the job offer in the interview, and the rest is history. I had another. I had another interview, and to be fair to Ken, he said go and see the other people. But I just had a good feeling about him, and so that was that. And I started power planning with him in 2010 and about I think about a year in, I'd done a very technical pensions roll. The last firm, and about a year in, he sort of said, "Well, Lisa, would you like to do some work with no advice and seeing the clients? Because I would have done all the meetings with him, basically from the first day he was introducing cash flow modeling to the clients. So the first year I was there, every client meeting was building new cash flow model, presenting that, and nobody else in the firm could do it. I learned to do it, and it was one of those sort of sink or swim things because you're in front of the clients and you had to get it to work. So nobody asked; just had to learn myself. But it was quite good because after a year of it, I was like truth, truth expert, like which was very good for for later because I was really really immersed in it. And we were also moving to institutional custodians, it was a bit of a baptism of fire for the first year, but it was really good learning. Ken, really great guy, really great presence, very entrepreneurial guy, great sort of mindset about business. And I would have been a real technician, like I was a real geek. And he decided that. Remember him saying to me quite early on, at least I wish I had half of what you have at like 29 that you can do the technical stuff, but you can speak to people as well. And he was a really really lovely guy and very very inspiring, great mentor to me. I learned so much from him, and if it wasn't for him, I'd probably still be a geek in the cupboard under the stairs. To be, to be honest, I don't know, but he was really, really good.

Carl Widger: 1:07:42

I very much doubt that. But listen, just just give it just give us a sense of how big the firm was at that stage. How many people were in the firm? What kind of? I

Lisa Johnstone: 1:07:50

think there were probably about nine people in the firm. There were there were quite. There was another business partner of Ken's. He was kind of exiting, but he had about I think he had about 4045 maybe 50 million under management. By the time we did the MBO, that was 127 It's 240 now, and yeah. So I just he asked me to be advisor, and then whenever I was that was a year in, and then I was just about to get married, and he said, "Well, can't have you being below the husband, so we'll promote you now to the director and give you this pay rise and all this stuff. And he was really insistent that this must be done before I got married, because he's very he's quite a passionate sort of advocate for if you see somebody who's got talent to you know, to push them on. He was really good at that,

Carl Widger: 1:08:39

yeah.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:08:40

And so did that, and then we just sort of continued doing the meetings together. But I was doing the technical stuff. He had done technical stuff for years, and he had had enough of it. He was sick of it. He hated doing pension calculations. Just said, I don't want to do anything as crap. And then he said to me,"This is absolutely amazing that you love this, because he would just come to the meeting, conduct the orchestra. I would be doing all the cash flow modeling, presenting all that, doing all the techy stuff, and I was learning then by osmosis from him about how to have client conversations and deal with difficult conversations. And he was just absolutely phenomenal at that. He was-I've never met anybody as good as him in that, and he was absolutely brilliant, so really great. And then he is quite a sort of wanted to be walking the walk rather than just sort of talking about things that he would say to clients about if you've got enough, you can go, and all this kind of stuff. And he just wanted he started thinking about going. We were strategic coach business, so he did a lot of that, and a lot of strategic coaches actually put me under a bit of pressure for what is your actual plan, and that's something that I've found whenever I'm talking to lots of business owners about the MBO, is that a lot of financial planners they have no business plan, they have no plan to get out, they're just going to see whatever happens. Yeah, like

Carl Widger: 1:09:57

Nick, like like Nick, like I I find that you know bizarre. But but then yeah, who am I to be judging anybody? But but I hear you, and or a lot of people kind of want an exit at some stage, but don't really know how this is going to happen or what I'm going to do or whatever. So so so you got married, you're now director, and you work for a few more years. And Ken is saying, "Do you know what? It's probably time for me to exit stage left here. So he's he's a little bit like me then, right? He's kind of going right. Okay, I have options, or or were there any options? Was it just the natural progression here, or the natural next step is for you to take over, or how did those discussions occur?

Lisa Johnstone: 1:10:40

I think he just started to think more and more about what will I do, and he he wanted to get an answer to that. He didn't really want to sort of sit around and think, well, it'll work itself out in time. So, he was still authorized at this point, wasn't that keen to be, and then knew that I would probably go off to have a family, and was probably hoping I was not going to have like 10 children. So being

Carl Widger: 1:11:03

Irish and all that, yeah. You can say that, Carl. Yeah, I just said it before you did.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:11:13

So I went off to have my first child. I had pretty short. Maternity leave because in the UK it was the first year that you could do shared maternity leave, and so it came in in the sixth of April. I was my daughter was born at the end of April, and my husband was working for quite a big corporation at the time. And basically, the HR department didn't know what to do with it. They were just like, "Oh, we don't really know how to interpret this. We'll just pay you as if you're a woman, and I was like, that's great because I'm not getting paid, so you're you're off, you're off with Emma. I'm going back to work, so it was great. And then I had another child in 2017. When I came back after having Emma, Ken was like, right, we need to sit down here and have a have a conversation about you coming on board as a shareholder. So I borrowed some money to buy like a tiny like 1% or something off the company, but it was really important to Ken and to me that you had some sort of financial commitment, some sort of skinny game. And again, with the MBOs, there are lots where the takeovers require people to go out and borrow money. There are some that are sort of vendor finance, where you're rolling on the the profits and things, and ours ended up being a percentage of profits deal. So there are all sorts of different structures and things you can do with that. But then Ken's quite an impatient person. Whenever he had decided he was on that track, that was it. And he said,"I want to get deauthorized. So he was off deauthorized, which was a big thing actually, because we weren't a massive firm, and he didn't. He didn't ever. I don't even think we discussed this. We never had this conversation of, "Well, at least he runs off with all the clients. He didn't, you know. He obviously must have trusted me not to. But it's another thing that I get asked all the time by people who are wanting to do this, but they don't. They're frightened to do it in case that happens. And I always say, well, you kind of need to find out if the person that you're thinking about doing this transaction with, you need to find out are they up to. So you need to be giving them stuff they don't know how to do. You need to be giving them clients, and you need to be making an environment where they don't want to leave. Because the worst the worst outcome is not that somebody you know leaves your company. The worst outcome is you hand over to them and they're not the right person. You need to find out. Need to find out you know pretty soon.

Nick Lincoln: 1:13:14

I mean it's clear that you and Ken formed a very strong bond at that interview stage where he offered you that you know something you know and we talk on the trap a lot about how important intuition is and it's not something you can run through a psychometric test and it's not something you can analyze but your gut your gut is really powerful and that's that's something that seems to work incredibly well there and incredible relate business relationship that you two you two had

Lisa Johnstone: 1:13:36

yeah yeah he was he was really good. He was great, and he was a great delegator. That's another another thing I think that if you're giving your business over, you're making that transition. You have to be really good at that. You have to be willing to to give it over to other people, and that was what 2720 So we started talking about it, I think then he's just said he's going on holiday in 2018. That must have been in June, and from I joined the company, then he started taking all the summers off and everything. So he was getting a very strategic coach esque lifestyle because that's a big part of that. About you know blending your life, we use a low we use loads of strategic coach stuff in the business, which is really good for conversations with the clients. He just said, "You know, what do you think, Lisa? We just kind of get on with that whenever I get back from holiday. Because he he came to the realization over time that if he didn't do it until he was 60, by him he had the money out, you know, he could be 6566 67 and he said, "I don't really want to be living my best life at that age. I want I want it now, and I've got enough money to do it now.

Andy Hart: 1:14:39

So, Lisa, did you want to expand on what strategic coaches? A lot of people listening to this won't know what. Yeah, so

Lisa Johnstone: 1:14:44

strategic. Yeah, so it's a it's a basically a coaching program by a guy, Dan Sullivan. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Who's a Canadian guy, and I think at the time we were doing it's probably about 20 grand a year. It's not an insignificant investment, but it's basically a set of tools and a forum for structuring the strategy around your business. So it's forcing you to get out of the business and work on your business rather than in the weeds of all the day-to-day stuff, and it makes you have a lot more focus on the bigger picture.

Andy Hart: 1:15:17

Yeah, I haven't done the official strategic coach course, but I've consumed a lot of Dan Sullivan's information, read a lot of his books, listened to a lot of his podcasts. He's an incredibly smart individual, so if you are listening to this and that sort of piqued your interest, then do check out Dan Sullivan. He's got some amazing content to share.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:15:34

Yeah, and they do do free workshops from time to time, and they are they are very good. So I think the strategic coach was definitely pivotal in Ken's mindset of right. I actually need to make my life happen now rather than wait for it.

Carl Widger: 1:15:48

Ken sounds like me. I get the whole like when you're on the track and then you're like getting patient and it's like oh come on can we just do it? And then I suppose the flip side of that is that if he's taking all this time off, and he's still a major shareholder, but you're doing effectively most of the work, that there's a potential there for conflict. You know that that that could create tension between you. So do you know what? He probably was right to try and accelerate things. Yeah,

Lisa Johnstone: 1:16:15

I mean I would. Probably at that time I was probably still very technical and very probably not business minded enough I would say and I mean I would just want Ken just to get out of my way to like have the work done and so he's off doing all the strategic stuff would come back and fill in these and I want to do this project that project and I said okay just give me that and we'll you know get that done you know, and that that worked well for us. And I think you know, I still speak to Ken quite a lot, and he he he said something really nice to me actually recently. And he had the business running from 2001 and he said at least it wasn't until you came in 2011 that I really got somebody who was going to make an impact and affect change. And he said to get somebody into your business who can affect change is really, really hard. And now I am a leader. I get that, but I didn't get it at the time.

Carl Widger: 1:17:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100% So when he when he came back from his holidays, then in 2018 did you sit down and say we're just let's let's just get this done, and then build build a deal that was going to kind of he was going to be paid. And did you? We won't get into prices and all that, but but but in terms of the deal, did you agree an overall price, and then agree how it would be paid over a period of time, or just in just in general terms? I'm not asking you for the details. In general terms, how was it structured?

Lisa Johnstone: 1:17:38

So you set up a new company which buys the shares of the old company, and there was another Shell, the investment manager, who's still there, who's who'll be be retiring in the next sort of year or two. Then Graham and I were the the people who were sort of buying buying the company, and just sat down with Ken and went through his cash flow model to see well, how much do you need? How much do you want? And what we discussed, I would say, I felt was more than what the company was worth. But I took the view: one, it was a great opportunity, and two, if he didn't get what he wanted, he would stay for another two years to get the profits out anyway as the main shareholder, and then we get you know the difference. So it wasn't going to you know it's going to be the same round figure anyway. Like you'd might stay for a couple of years to get more money out, oh, and then we'll do the same deal at the values. Was like, well, what's the you know what what's the difference? Just get on with it and take it for the opportunity that it is. And so we did that. I pushed back about the price at one stage, and so I think he got too much. He thinks he didn't get enough, which means he's probably about right.

Carl Widger: 1:18:42

Was fair value. That's a win. That's a win.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:18:46

So I mean, I think I've spoken to lots of people afterwards who maybe do consultancy work on these deals and things like that. And when we were doing that wasn't such a thing. There weren't all these sort of you know mellows and all the others, so you didn't have that help. Our tax advisor helped us quite a bit, and but not specifically for financial planning businesses. So whenever I have talked about it, I've had a few sort of you know Chatham House rules, speaking with a group of people who are wanting to do it, and maybe be people from various organizations, and I get up and I say, "Well, we had no warranties, we had no guarantees. He said this number, I said, "Right, okay, it was on the truth model. Away you go, and it's all worked out great. And they're all sitting there going, "Oh my goodness, how could you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So risky and all their efforts.

Carl Widger: 1:19:31

Jesus, I've just sold to a big corporate. It's like we have all the warranties in the world, we were arguing over warranties for months.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:19:39

Well, I took the view that so I'd been the power planner by the time we were doing the deal. I'd been the main power planner in business for eight years. So for any screw ups, they were going to be mine.

Carl Widger: 1:19:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know,

Lisa Johnstone: 1:19:49

I don't know.

Nick Lincoln: 1:19:49

Yeah, you knew where the bodies were buried. Yeah,

Lisa Johnstone: 1:19:53

because I'm so perfect. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so that was to sort of just have a bit of confidence in your own abilities, and I think I went to another lawyer and got them to like sort of read the agreement. Said, oh, I think you should put some, you know, guarantees and some warranties, and I said, no, I just want you to read this legal thing and translate it for me to tell me, you know, am I getting screwed over here? I'm not really interested in the warranties. I mean, now you would just put it into Chat GPT, your claws, whatever. It's so funny how time has moved on because that wasn't an option for us either. You got the big document and you're reading it. I'm not a lawyer. I can't read legal clauses very well. I was like, what actually does this say? No idea. Just sign up and hope for the best. And honestly, that's what it is.

Carl Widger: 1:20:32

Yeah. Well, well. Look, but there's a lot to be said for just doing business with someone that you trust, and just say, "I choose. Do you trust me? Yeah, move on. Yeah, but the lawyers don't allow you. They don't allow that to happen anymore. And there was so many times during our deal that I was so frustrated. I was going,"Look, in in real terms, what's the risk here? Oh, it's like tiny. Well, then why are we arguing over? Just just kind of move on. So I love that you did that, Lisa. And you know, I love that it's amazing to hear of a of a mentor mentee relationship that that so much trust was built up over time that this deal was made possible, and that you know you still probably have a a little bit of a an over and back about the price and whatever. But but. Ultimately, everybody has won because Ken has got to lead his best life. Yeah, you've taken on the business. You've you've you've driven on the AUM massively. You're clearly very very successful. You're you're winning awards within the profession. You know, so it's like you know it's been a win win win for everybody. Yeah, it's

Lisa Johnstone: 1:21:35

gone really away. I mean, the the team's great. I mean it's not it's not it's not easy. It's been really hard. I mean you know sort of you know being very honest that there are lots of good times in it, but I mean a lot lot of it has been really hard. Like it's been a really steep learning curve because I was running whenever we were doing it. I mean this is how naive I was. It's like well you know I'm running all the financial planning anyway. How hard? How

Carl Widger: 1:21:58

hard can it be? No idea, honestly.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:22:01

No idea at all. Not a flippin' clue, honestly. So naive, and then looked around. Ken's not there. It's like, oh, who did he? Directing. What is a director? I had been one, but it was just us talking about strategy and the, you know, what you know all the HR stuff, and then I think I've spoken about this in talks and things quite a lot. Like we were only a year in, and COVID happened, and the office manager at the time, she like she had just left the business. So at the time, we had about I think our turnover would have been about maybe like 1.21 point 3 million. So all this money is coming in, and then obviously money's going out. I don't know what it is. I don't know how to bookkeep it. Don't know anything about it. Office manager's gone. Markets are down 30% Staff are all on their last nerve because they're watching people in hospital beds in Italy. My two kids are home from nursery. We're building an extension, and people talk about the time. Oh, what did you do during COVID? And I'm like, I just about survived it. Just about. But now, if anything goes wrong, it can't be as bad as that. So it's good, you know. It's good to have a real like shit experience pretty really early on, because everything else becomes relative.

Nick Lincoln: 1:23:09

That's exactly you're forged in that fire. Just I'm just conscious of time, Lisa. During the whole process, was is that one thing that you'd wish you'd known beforehand, or one thing you'd change.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:23:19

I think I just what I've said there. I didn't have any appreciation for how hard it is to actually run a business, and all the people issues that come with that. And I mean, the accountancy stuff and all that. That's I mean, that's easy to learn. It's just sort of technical stuff. But I didn't appreciate how much of a steep learning curve, the leadership part would be, and it has been really steep, and still, still lots to learn.

Nick Lincoln: 1:23:44

Okay, so that's amazing, amazing insight. Thank you, Ultra. Let's finish this off.

Andy Hart: 1:23:48

Yeah, a couple of questions, Lisa. Keep it simple. Did you basically pay more because the funding options were so on your side, you know, if you had to pay cash, you would have driven a harder bargain. The fact that a lot of the funding was coming from a beneficial in your favor is-is-is that how you squared that

Lisa Johnstone: 1:24:11

one? Yeah. Well, ours is a percentage of profits, Dale. So 90-5% of the profits go to Ken until he gets the figure we agreed, and I think at the time I I was probably quite worried about my ability to drive profits because I hadn't done tons and tons of business development. Ken had done that. I'd done some. I think looking back, you know, I've I've done much more of that than what I probably would have thought at the time. No, I don't think I don't think it affected the value. To be honest, Andy, it was just what did Ken need? It was it was like proper, you know, truth cash flow modeling driven, and it was it was it was more of that.

Andy Hart: 1:24:48

Okay, my final question is: Have you finally paid back Ken? And was that your best financial day of your life?

Lisa Johnstone: 1:24:54

Not yet. October. That's my theme.

Andy Hart: 1:24:58

Clever party in October.

Carl Widger: 1:25:00

We'll have. We'll all be there.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:25:02

We'll all be there. There's there's there's cash and things there, so we've got to work out. Like Graham and I and and and David, the other the other sort of two shareholders are sort of work out how and where we want to do. Where is

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:11

Glasgow? Glasgow's Yeah, you're going to be

Andy Hart: 1:25:13

rolling in October. You have a lot of new friends in October.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:25:17

Well, will you think that, but like Corey, you'll know this. That you then, like, we want to move offices this year. That's going to be expensive. I want a new advisor, and that needs another power planner and administrator. So the money's already all out the door. Don't ever think about how you're going to grow. Yeah, yeah. Like you know, it's like clear

Carl Widger: 1:25:31

clearing your mortgage, and then you go. Now we'll have to do the bathrooms and the kitchen. Never end.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:25:39

Definitely have to think about how to how to celebrate.

Carl Widger: 1:25:43

Yeah. Well, do like do celebrate because it's a it's a it's an immense moment. And look, congrats to you. And I I think congrats to Ken also. And it's a it's a brilliant brilliant story. And I know there's lots of people asking you loads of questions about it. But huge congrats. And just keep reinvesting into the business because that's what will pay dividends in the end, in my opinion.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:26:03

Yeah. Very well done.

Carl Widger: 1:26:04

Congrats. Pretty great story. Okay.

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:06

Lovely. Listen, we got to crack on because I can see at the front door. I can see the post. He's hauled the bulging sack of Trappist questions up my drive. Dear Trappist, this is the section of the show where we take a question from one of our. Love a Trappist and answer it. Give it a give it a good look going over. Some of the questions have been asked before, but that's okay. It's okay. If you want to leave a question for us, do so on the pinned tweet on X or the pinned X on tweet. Also in the so-called show notes, we do get to them. They're all going in chronological order, so we're always a few months behind in catching up. Let me open up this one. This is a this is again another decent envelope. This is a nice thick Manila envelope. It's quite sticky. I'm having to structure open it again. A lot saliva from this chat. This is from who says from Lee Denham, who's on LinkedIn. His profile is there. Lee, and this comes back to you actually, Lisa, and truth. So this is quite nice time. Lee says or asks, excuse me. Many thanks for the excellent podcast, and hope my question is not too politically contentious. Clearly, at least three of you are big fans of Paul Armisen, who advocates use of the Presswood Truth cash flow modeler for his lifestyle planning advice. Yet you use advoyant. Why? Well, I'm going to take the prerogative here as the as the world's greatest moderator of going first. Thank you for that, Calicanus. I don't think it's a secret. Paul Armstrong is not advocating the truth software anymore. He was at one stage, but that's that's that's that's long in the past. Yeah, we are fans of lifestyle financial planning, and I came across it via Paul Armsen. I'm a big fan of him, mr. Marmai. I use Voyant because I think it's the I think it's the best. It's a it's it's objectively better than Truth is good, but Voyant is objectively better than the other brands that are out there. And I know I know people who are coming to Voyant from other brands. I don't think people are going from from Voyant. It's like the active passive debate. You know, we we all know loads of IFAs have gone the active to passive route. I don't know what has gone back. I know lots of IFAs have gone from cash flow modeling tools to Voyant and have never gone back. But Andy, this is this is definitely your your thing. What what do you say to that question? No,

Andy Hart: 1:28:03

I'm I'm not going to speak too much more about it. I mean, obviously, yeah, Paul Armsen is a lifestyle financial planning coach and consultant who has banged the drum for lifestyle financial planning and benefited lots of advisors and lots of families. Originally, he was selling Truth software. Did you ever use Truth at all, Nick? Did you use it for six months or a year or anything?

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:21

Yeah, yeah, I used it for about a year. They threw in IFP membership as well, which was quite nice little tie up. And so I did use it for a year. And used to come on a CD, and updates would come on a CD-ROM. It was CD-ROM based for a long, long time. And they kind of threw with gritted teeth and screams went to the cloud. Lisa, I'm trust. I'm you're still with them, I presume? Are

Lisa Johnstone: 1:28:38

you? Yeah, but we're starting to use I/Os cash flow modeling. So we have done a bit of a recy around the market, and we are IntelliFlow users, and it is great because the clients can update their fact finder comes into the process. It's it's a we're we're kind of moving now to be instead of trying to get the best of everything separately is like well what what what are you willing to compromise so you've got it all in one place and you're not double keying all the time so a little a little bit of that I think Voyant looks great so I'm my own financial planning Jonathan Gibson does does that and he uses Voyant so he's sort sort of shown me his his stuff and it looks lovely. It looks much nicer than Truth, but for the very, very wealthy clients, the tax stuff is not as good as Truth. That's my two cents one.

Andy Hart: 1:29:26

I know we're a little bit pushed for time, but Carl, what's what's what's NFP's thoughts on Voyan and you guys moving forward? Are they are they keen on it? Because I think NFP UK use VoIN.

Nick Lincoln: 1:29:40

Oh God! I love that we disguise you're so often. I never leave it on trial.

Carl Widger: 1:29:47

Yeah. Well, what if that's a contentious issue for me? It's not. No, we're using VoInt. They already use VoIN, so we'll. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Okay. I I I I I think though that this this particular part of our business is going to be transformed like we don't know over the next couple of years. And to Lisa's point, there has to be the a full service model that we can all use based around AI. It's coming. It's definitely coming, and I know of one or two plans I have mentioned to you boys where this is. This looks like this could really happen, and I think that will transform our all of our businesses overnight if it comes through.

Andy Hart: 1:30:32

Bring me on, okay? But Lisa, I'll

Carl Widger: 1:30:33

definitely be talking to you offline about what you guys have have been doing, and I'll share what we've been looking at as well.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:30:39

Great, thank you.

Nick Lincoln: 1:30:41

Look at this. I'm going to play it now. There's an Irish connection. It's just out of control. And

Carl Widger: 1:30:46

they'll also they'll also see that I was deeply uncomfortable with the content of some of today's podcast, owing to the Irish versus UK cultural differences.

Nick Lincoln: 1:31:03

And every time we play that, we get demonetised. So the pound that we're coming to us from YouTube is oh Nick, don't do it. Which that's actually a

Carl Widger: 1:31:12

fact.

Nick Lincoln: 1:31:13

That is actually that is actually a fact. Okay, so listen. Price on the bike. We're at 90 minutes 4500 55,400 seconds into this episode of Traps. Let's move on to what many people are calling culture. Okay, so me I've got two back to back. The first one is the Masters in Business podcast with Barry Ritholt. Some of them are good, some of them are not. This one he has an interview with Carl Richards, and I know we know Carl Rich's story inside out, but it's a really nut. They're just they're obviously close friends, and Carl Richards is about as relaxed as I've ever heard him on this podcast. You just get to see a different side of him. If you don't, you're not going to learn a great deal, but you're going to see a different side of two people who are big, big in this thing of ours. Give a listen. And the second mention to the BW in the No podcast, their most recent guest on that was a fellow trap pack trapette Amelia Powell. She comes across really well on that. Really good interview, Amelia, and enjoyed your time on that. That's me done, Lisa.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:32:06

Yes. So mine is the Netflix documentary about Martha Stewart entitled Martha. So really good story arc from her being a model stockbroker. So she was the world's first lifestyle influencer before the era of Instagram, etc. And she was also the first female self-made billionaire in the U.S. Was a really interesting story about her rise, then about her listing and her then insider trading scandal for which she was imprisoned. Like all these Netflix documentaries, it's sort of told through her lens. You've got to make up your mind yourself whether or not she's telling the truth. But I mean, she was a stockbroker and she did go to prison, so it's not looking too good on the. I didn't do it, but anyway, her her profile then sort of you know obviously took took a bit of a tank around that, and then she has kind of risen from the ashes because she's kind of making marketing innuendo stuff with Snoop Dogg, which is quite interesting as well. It's a really good story and and a good sort of story arc and very relevant to finance. Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 1:33:10

thank you for that. I might we I canceled our Netflix subscription about three years ago, but there's a Kylie documentary on Netflix that TLP wants to watch, so I might have to sign up again. If I do that, I shall watch the Martha documentary. TLP

Carl Widger: 1:33:20

wants to watch. She

Nick Lincoln: 1:33:24

does. I know. I think. I think. I. I think Kylie Minogue is a yeah. It's a talented artist, right? Carl, you're next on the slate, and I'm going to tell you that because you haven't got the slate in front of you. The second mountain by David. The second

Carl Widger: 1:33:34

mountain by David Brooks. Yeah. So I didn't have a culture corner the last time out because I was endeavoring to focus on this long, big read. This is a little bit like Man's Search for Meaning or Icky Guy, which I've mentioned before, and it's something that I'm-I won't say struggling with, but trying to figure out myself. And it's-it's kind of about once you've maybe had a little bit of success in your career and maybe you're at the very old age that I'm at and just trying to figure out well what does it all mean or what do you want it to mean. So it challenged me. I didn't love it all. Some parts of it I found were a little bit boring, maybe, but some some parts of it were definitely relevant. If you're, yeah, at similar age to myself, and maybe you've had a business exit or semi exit like myself, this is a good one, and I would I've tried to take my time with it, as opposed to this would be one that I might have tried to rush through before because some of it challenged me a little bit, but it's a good one. I think it's well worth a read or a listen.

Andy Hart: 1:34:46

Okay, finally, me is the Gary Stevenson documentary that was on Channel Four called"How to Get Filthy Rich. The influencer guy, Gary Stevenson, you know I'm exposing myself to conflicting ideas, people that I naturally disagree with. You know we all agree with his concerns, but obviously his solutions-that's where the the issues arise. He was also on the Diary of a CEO with Daniel Priestley. It's superb. I recommend you watch it. Daniel Priestley dealt with him very well. Daniel pieces a class outfit. Gary Curlingson documentary. Check it out. I'd just like to say thank you for Lisa coming on today and bringing down the average age. And Nicholas, I see. I see you're wearing a blue polo shirt like myself. Carl, you seem to have gone with navy, even though we told you to go with bright blue. But it's okay, no problem.

Nick Lincoln: 1:35:39

Okay, and now you can tell that ultras dedication is is wearing off, and he's trying to extend the right. So let's just bring this back into the world of reality, dear Trappist. Thank you, go. Episode 101 comes to a close and slides down the U bend of Father Time. Do leave a review on iTunes or your your app of choice. I know Pocket Cast now. You can you can certainly leave a star review out of five. That'd be great. But six out of five stars is mandatory. Like and subscribe to our burgeoning YouTube channel where we don't get any money because I play tracks that demonetizes every time, much to Andy's annoyance. So take care of that. Thank you very much to Lisa, as Andy said. We'll see you guys on the other side. Adios and goodbye from the Trap Pack, including. Lisa Johnson, goodbye.

Andy Hart: 1:36:19

Goodbye, goodbye. Thank you, Lisa.

Nick Lincoln: 1:36:23

Where's the outro? Keep talking. Isn't the weather nice? Bollocks. No, come on, England. Come on, England.

Andy Hart: 1:36:31

France in the final. France in the final. You were doing so

Nick Lincoln: 1:36:36

well, Lucy. I was so it's bloody hot in here, wasn't it? All of our

Andy Hart: 1:36:40

rooms have just gone up by 12 degrees since we started bloody recording. Yeah, right.

Nick Lincoln: 1:36:46

I'm going to stop that now.

Lisa Johnstone: 1:36:47

Wow, it's just nice here.