Hoxton Life

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work – Building a Successful Financial Planning Team

• Hoxton Wealth

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In this episode of the Hoxton Life podcast, host Sam Oakes is joined by Kareem, a partner and financial planner at Hoxton Wealth, and Georgia, a paraplanner on his team. Together, they delve into what it takes to build a thriving financial planning practice. From understanding the power of delegation to navigating career progression, Kareem and Georgia share how their teamwork and Hoxton Wealth’s intrapreneurial model have driven their success.

Key topics include:

  • The journey from BDM to financial planner and paraplanner
  • Challenges and rewards of letting go and trusting your team
  • The evolving role of paraplanners in international financial planning
  • Building a “practice within a practice” at Hoxton Wealth
  • Career development, including Georgia’s studies toward her Australian financial planning qualifications

What You'll Learn:

  • How to effectively structure a financial planning team for growth
  • The benefits of a supportive, intrapreneurial model
  • Tips for aspiring financial planners and paraplanners
  • Why teamwork and shared goals are essential for success in financial services.    


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Speaker 1:

How hard is it for you to let go? Or how hard was it to let go and start to actually look at your business Instead of it just being you? It's starting to be a practice, george is laughing.

Speaker 2:

I am a control freak.

Speaker 3:

I put my hands up and I say out loud Some days he'll have meetings at 6am, some days he'll have meetings at 10pm. So making sure that those call hours where he can spend time with his kids is set aside for him that makes such a big difference.

Speaker 2:

There's a lot of people that I've worked with over the years who wouldn't necessarily be great BDM's, but would have been fantastic advisors.

Speaker 3:

I contact everyone weekly who we're doing business with, so they hear from me at least once a week. I'm never not in their emails.

Speaker 2:

Her work break inside and outside of the office is why she's so successful as a power partner. There's a to-do list that needs to be done by a certain timeframe and it means I'm working in overtime. She'll do it and she's brought me to the business to be sure that we continue to deliver the ones that there were had to probably give up a lot of their time to help me.

Speaker 3:

Looking back now, I feel like I must have bugged them so much for because you just got, you're coming from nothing, like I had no idea what I was doing, so every single thing I was doing was new.

Speaker 1:

So, corinne, georgia, thanks so much for joining me today on the hoxton life podcast. How are you well? Thank you, I'm well. Yeah, it's been. Uh, how are you?

Speaker 2:

very good dream team on the sofa yeah, I thought I thought it'd be good for us to kind of, I guess, sit and explain what we do together, um, because when we spoke previously, I, whilst I'm involved in the business on a day-to-day basis, there's a lot more to the business just myself. So I thought it'd be value in having georgia and as well explaining kind of what we do so yeah, perfect.

Speaker 1:

I think we just introduced what it is that you do and what you're doing. You know what your position is here at hoxton.

Speaker 2:

Well, first, so I'm one of the partners of the company um. I started out probably about 12 years ago as a relationship manager um, worked at a number of different firms and kind of worked my way up from yeah relationship manager to partner um. So being with chris and the team for about five years now, yeah, um, and currently just working as an advisor and supporting the management team overall fantastic.

Speaker 2:

So your responsibilities in the management team and you're a financial planner yes, less so kind of responsibilities over the last 12 to 18 months, but more so kind of financial planning. Um, moving forward, what do you enjoy the most? I do enjoy the financial planning. Um, I was speaking to georgia about this yesterday. The kind of area of the business that I really like is when a client comes to me and says Kareem, look, here's a problem, fix it. Or, alternatively, a kind of complex tax issues or anything with complexity and financial services. I enjoy. I enjoy going away doing cashflow modeling, wealth flow modeling, should I say, and also just running through the mechanics of clients' situations. So, yeah, that's my kind of passion when I work with clients, brilliant and over that five years have you seen a massive change in hoxton huge, huge, huge, huge.

Speaker 2:

So when we actually initially joined um, it was very much kind of a small, close-knit family, I feel like at the time, um and we came on board so there's myself and four or five other advisors uh, integrated really well and we've just grown significantly. Um, the assets on the management have gone. I think we've probably gone from maybe two to three hundred million to over two billion now. So it's been a really, really interesting journey. But yeah, I mean we've grown massively. We've got more and more regulated in different jurisdictions. So chris and the management team are doing a fantastic job, just kind of getting us to where we need to be yeah, and this l tip that now is now in place.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you excited about that about that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's definitely exciting. I think it's a way of rewarding everyone in the business for their hard work Because, like I said, my business is not just myself. There's four or five people within the team and that's pretty much every advisor in the company. So I think it's important Everyone's rewarded for their hard work and everyone's got an opportunity to participate, which is exciting, right, you?

Speaker 1:

got into the profession as a client relationship manager. I suppose for people listening that would be somebody that's really picking up the phone, smashing the telephone, generating client opportunities. Was it that type of role?

Speaker 2:

yes, it was. So I was a bdm initially, started out 12 years ago. I was actually a bdm for one of the other partners of the business at the time. Yeah, so I moved over, I worked for him. I wasn't very successful for the first 12 to 18 months I think it was very early on.

Speaker 2:

Um, I've been lucky enough to work with a lot of great managers and mentors and very early on one of the mentors sat me down and said look, from a sales perspective, you're going to have to outwork everyone else because you don't have that kind of level of gift to the gap as you do. Because it was quite an open sales floor and I was around a lot of people who were very, very seasoned veterans veterans in sales. It was my first sales job at the time, so my work rate just kind of continued to increase to ensure that I could compete with others. So, yeah, it took me a while to kind of get started and get up and going, but my yeah, I guess persistence with continuing to work hard was what got me through Fantastic, so a team of you actually moved across to Hoxton five years ago there was probably seven in total.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, five years ago there was probably seven in total. Yeah, um, yeah, seven people in total that joined, and we didn't initially just join as well. So when we'd moved across and we operated as kind of sub-entity for some time, yeah, just to see and test the waters, kind of see how those relationships were formed, see how chris and the team operated, and the intention was to continue to do that for a year or two and within six months the synergies were there. Um, we liked the way chris operated and, yeah, we just kind of fully merged and, uh, and came across brilliant. Why did you?

Speaker 1:

pick hoxton out of interest. You must have looked at the whole, the whole market out here. Why? Why hoxton?

Speaker 2:

that was five years ago yeah, I mean, we actually went to the institutions. So when we were looking to move and we sat down with a number of the institutions, said look, if you were sat on this side of the sofa, who would you be having conversation with? And there was probably three or four names mentioned. We vetted each of them. Um sat down with chris several times, kind of understood where he wanted to take the business and they were ambitious, kind of yeah, ambitious goals right at the time. We get to x amount of billion and we're going to do this, this and this. And in the industries you're probably aware, there's a lot of people who over promise and under deliver and that's why we agreed at the time okay, we'll integrate, but not fully and we'll see how things go. And he was delivering everything from licenses that he's promised in getting. He managed to retain them from the assets under management, from the support. So, yeah, that kind of two-year time horizons when we were going to review things and move across.

Speaker 1:

Actually I think it was done and wrapped up within six months did you visualize it would grow this much, that the business would be in the position it's in right now? Did you, when you were five years ago, did you think, okay, that sounds like a good, lofty ambition. Did you think you would ever be as big as this and as popular as this?

Speaker 2:

no, no, I mean it's. Having worked with chris for the last five years and seeing how much of a dedicated business operator he is. I've not worked with a CEO like that before. I've never come across an individual with this kind of grit and his hard work, and I didn't know that he'd be able to take the business from where he is currently so where he was previously to where he is currently, and he's a fantastic operator, got a great management team and he's continuing to grow the business and he's continuing to grow the business.

Speaker 1:

Georgia traditionally out here in the uae in the international space. Kareem mentioned that when he first got into financial advice he worked as a bdm. It was always heavily focused on right. You're in. It's like sales, sales culture, sales mentality. Isn't that something that you subscribe to? Are you into that kind of high pressure environment at all?

Speaker 3:

um, not in the same way. I don't think, not in the like. You've been on the sales, right, you've seen how the guys operate, they. They work under very different circumstances than I do. I would say the same level of pressure maybe is still there. Like I still have to get stuff done on a time frame, like we still have goals to hit, but not in the same way as having someone sort of be like, right, this is your, your stats for the day, this is what everyone's expected to do.

Speaker 3:

Like I'm not, I'm not measured against somebody else doing the same job as me. That level of sort of like competitive pressure isn't really there for me, which is something I'm not particularly. That doesn't really drive me. Like I suppose if you look at people that do the same job as me in the office, you know like you've had only on the podcast before like people in the similar role, we don't really operate on a competitive basis. It's more like we help each other, we want each other to succeed. That side of it like doesn't really work for me and how I operate okay.

Speaker 1:

So like the traditional trainee wealth manager route into Pathway isn't something for you, then that's not something that you were like turned on by, if you like, as a career. It was like that seems a bit too much pressure perhaps.

Speaker 3:

I think it's just that that doesn't impact my day in the same way that it would for other people that really thrive off of that, like someone telling me oh, this person's doing this, and that doesn't seeing other people succeed. That does drive me to be better, but I'm not. I don't look at it from a competition basis where I think, like in sales, that's kind of something that's maybe a little bit key in terms of like you'll see someone doing amazing. You're like I want to do 10 times better than that person, or I want to do X amount more business than that person, whereas for me it's more that might inspire me to do better or work a bit harder, but not to beat them. It's just more I like to take in what I see around me. So, like from a sales perspective, I don't think I work my brain doesn't work in the same way as that.

Speaker 1:

Right, okay, cool, let's talk a little bit about the job role that you do.

Speaker 2:

So currently, as power planner, I sort of do, would you say, like majority, the behind the scenes stuff, I'd say, involved in every part of the business. Um, like your traditional power planning role from the international market doesn't really exist, so we're kind of designing. I mean, chris was the first person to have a power planner and now everyone does um and it was eye-opening seeing what he does. But George is involved, involved in every element of the business. It didn't happen overnight, so it did take time for me to relinquish control and kind of baby steps to get to where we are.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, hands down like best decision I've made and it's definitely added a lot of value no-transcript relationships and yeah, the way I normally describe it to people that don't really know what a power planner is is sort of like the finance version of apparently, because everyone kind of knows what a paralegal does. Like you kind of do a bit of everything majoritively. I would say it's more less client facing generally. I think between us like it's become more client facing over the years, but majority of my day is spent like dealing with okay, we've got this, this and this to do today. How best do we do it? Who needs to be doing what? Where does this stuff need to be? Okay, we've got this and this coming up. What needs to be prepared? Where does it need to go? Managing sort of expectations and making sure that clients are up to date and informed with what's going on, make sure they all get their weekly updates, make sure all of their sort of internal documents are up to date kind of a bit of everything okay, have you got aspirations?

Speaker 1:

then become a financial planner yeah, at some point.

Speaker 3:

Um, it's not like something I've got set in stone as a time frame right now. Um, I'm relatively young for the financial services industry, so I'm not really in a big rush. I'd like to. I'm in a good position where I have the great luck that I'm really learning off so many people in the office that you've met a lot of them, like people like Chris, jake, everyone on the floor. There's so much to learn. I'm not in any rush to sort of cut myself off from that and step out on my own just yet.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I agree to sort of cut myself off from that and step out on my own just yet. Yeah, and I I agree, like why, why rush becoming a financial planner? You know when you don't need to, if you can soak up all that information, get all that training, and when you feel comfortable and it feels right, that's the yeah, for sure, I think it's just.

Speaker 3:

It will be a natural progression. Yeah, 100, we'll know when the day is, whenever it comes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, look at ravi. Ravi took five years, didn't he? He's doing? He's doing exceptionally well now as a financial planner, but he took five years. He stayed in that that bdm role, if you like it, for five, for five years, because he wanted to make sure that he was at the right time for him to to move across, when he knew absolutely everything about the processes, the organization, how to structure his day, um, for him it was massively important that he felt comfortable in making that switch. I think there's so, so much emphasis on the fact that the idea that, oh, if I'm a financial planner, then all of a sudden I'm going to earn more money, it's not, all of a sudden you're going to be doing a hell of a lot more.

Speaker 1:

And if you don't have the groundwork and the framework and the processes in place, when you move into that position all of a sudden you're not just spinning 10 plates, let's say you're spinning 20 plates and they could all fall down and it can be incredibly stressful. What are you doing around your study then? Are you sort of thinking about niching Because we're in an international financial planning business, multi-jurisdictions, we've got licenses in lots of different countries Are you thinking about niching down specifically Georgia in any way?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so at the moment I'm doing an Australian graduate degree, which is something that you kind of moving forward, I'll need to have to be able to operate in Australia. A lot of our business is based over there. It's a part of our business model that I kind of run a lot of that from the sort of getting everything sort of going, making sure the business is going through. That's kind of my thing that I sort of take on. That's what I enjoy doing. I enjoy the Australian side of things. So that's what I'm focused on at the moment. Obviously there's other bits and bobs US, uk, europe. All of those will come with time but, as I said, I've got so much time to get them all done. I'm at the moment Australia's the focus.

Speaker 1:

It's really interesting, isn't it? Because out in this international space there was never really a admin to power planner, to financial planner, uh career framework yeah, it was never really out here.

Speaker 1:

So it is quite unique here. I think, at hoxton wealth. When we're starting to see it, it reminds me like in you they're like little mini practices. Yeah here, right, so you're a financial advisor, you treat your business within a business and then you hire into your business. So if you need an administrator or if you need a power planner or if whatever it is that you might need, you will actually, out of your own income, pay for that individual to join your practice.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So essentially you're kind of, you're building a practice. Do you sort of see yourself as a power planner, practice manager? Do you get pulled into lots of other areas? Georgia?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think since I mean, how long have we been doing this now? Two and a half years in this role We've gone through a lot of changes as a team. We've had people leave, people join, we've maybe made some mistakes. We've sort of built. There was a period where it was just the two of us so we had to do everything between the two of us every bit of admin, every bit of like client relationship. There was no one else for us to put any of that stuff on.

Speaker 3:

So naturally, from that point to now, where we've now got a relationship manager, we've now got an admin, that kind of process went less from all being on him and being on both of us. So I kind of do take on a little bit more, probably, of the management of the day-to-day of them, sort of just take a little bit off his plate. That's part of kind of what we do as a team, like I'll take stuff off his plate so I'll just make sure that everyone's in the right place at the right time doing the right things. It's not my place to sort of tell them what to do and when, but just make sure that everyone's kind of on the ball if there's someone else to check in with they need something. It's not all on him to manage everything every day do you see a big benefit in that huge, huge?

Speaker 2:

I mean and again it's it's great for our business, but it's also great for georgia's progression as well because, as mentioned, kind of like, I went from a bdm to an advisor and I've done every job in between. So initially, when I was a bdm, I was doing application packs, I was doing suitability reports, I was doing review packs, and all these key parts of the business make you a better advisor. So, like you said, ravi's been doing it for five years as a BDM I was similar, I think four to five years and it ensures that you understand every element of the business, but you understand how it relates to clients as well, because ultimately, that's the objective right To provide fantastic client service. And in order for you to understand how to do that, you need to understand what's actually going on internally and the documents you need to provide and the reasoning for them. So it's a lot of learning, uh.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, from my perspective, it's a huge benefit of having someone who can not manage the individual team members but as an additional kind of voice, an additional person to speak to. Sometimes I'm good cop, sometimes she's good cop and we kind of we play off it very well. But yeah, it's definitely a huge, huge benefit of having someone in the team. Yeah, you can take that responsibility, and it eases my my personal life as well, which is great so what impact has it had on your personal life?

Speaker 2:

when it's you spinning all the plates yourself, there's a lot of pressure, right, and I thrive under pressure. However, I've got two young daughters and I want to try and spend a little bit more time with them. When I mean, you're in dubai right, you know what it's like with kind of pickups and drop-offs, you want to be actively involved, but you've got client meetings, you've got to be kind of being pulled from pillar to post, or if you've got team meetings, so we manage it. Where I can still work, um, I can still work, but an evening shift, but in between I'll go and do the pickup or I'll do the drop off and it, yeah, it has a great impact.

Speaker 2:

I think georgia will be the first to say I'm in a lot better moods generally when I'm spent some time with the kids during the day or during the week, um, and it eases the pressure within the team as well, because if I'm stressed and I'm pent up, like naturally I don't take it out on georgia, but she can. She can feed off that negative energy, whereas if I'm positive, I've seen the kids, like I saw them this morning, I'm in a great mood. This week's been great. I've been spending a lot of time with the kids. Yeah it. It feeds into the team. It feeds into that team morale, so everyone's generally in an upbeat mood.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, absolutely georgia. Would you echo that? Have you seen a change since he's let go of perhaps some of the tasks that were eating up his time, energy spending more time with his family?

Speaker 3:

massively. You can tell. You can tell when he's not seen his kids a lot or when he's been sort of just working non-stop and doing nothing else. It's he's not very good at um hiding how he feels, so it's very easy to tell. Unlike that, that vibe is like not, it's not the best right when you're trying to work with someone and I'm trying to say, okay, I need to get this and this done, but he's got his head in a million one places and also he's trying to make sure that he can get home and see his kids.

Speaker 3:

I'd it if, taking four or five hours out of his week, blocking that out out of his diary and saying, right, nobody can book this, nobody call him. If possible, like, let's just leave him be for these few hours a week. If that makes such a big difference, it's massively worth it for us to, for me to just maybe do a little bit extra work, or not even necessarily always extra work. Just make sure that nobody's sort of not bothering him. I don't know how to word it properly. Like, just make sure that that's his time, right. He can really take time out of his day. That doesn't need to be after 5.30 because we don't work in that industry. It's not 9.30, 5.30. It's some days he'll have meetings at 6 am, some meetings he'll have meetings at 10 pm. So making sure that those core hours where he can spend time with his kids is set aside for him like it, makes such a big difference yeah, creating boundaries, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

and having that kind of well-being, I do it in the morning. So when I wake up at five, I try to uh. Between five and seven I don't look at my mobile phone, I don't look anything to do with work, so I'm not getting up and the first thing I do is look at my phone. Yeah, I call that like my well, my couple of a couple of my couple of hours of well-being, my time. So I'll go out for a run, I'll do the gym, I'll do my prayers on the balcony. I, I, I try to, I try to connect with myself. That's good, you know, it's a nice. And when I don't do that, yeah, I know what, I know I'm off. You know, if I go for the coffee, first of all, as opposed to do that, it destroys my day because, like, I'm sort of scatty and I'm all over the place, because I haven't had that kind of chance to just ground myself.

Speaker 1:

So I think ensuring that you carve out in your day time for you that is purely with you, or with your family or whatever it actually is whatever the most important thing to you is, then I think it adds a huge amount of value. And when you don't do it, you recognize it and you think, oh my god, that two hours is worth six in the workplace yeah, you know it has such a positive impact.

Speaker 1:

Um, letting go, though, because a lot of financial planners they tend to be quite focused, right, how hard is it for you to let go? Or how hard was it to let go and start to actually look at your business instead of it just being you? Yeah, it's starting to be a practice. George is laughing, I am a control freak.

Speaker 2:

I put my hands up and I say at the start of the process I was a control freak and it was because I I'd done every element of the business myself and I knew how I wanted things to look or I knew how I wanted things to be presented to clients, um. So if I had different presentations, I knew how they needed to be made up and having someone else in the business which I could rely on. But it was baby steps, right it was. It was difficult at the start but so glad I. I took the kind of leap of faith and now, yeah, we are where we are, um, but it started off kind of small tasks and now we're on, like I said, kind of all elements of the business, but it was difficult at the time.

Speaker 2:

Relinquishing control has it had a positive impact on the profitability of huge yeah practice massively because if you look at, if you look at the like you said, we're multi-jurisdictional right, so we operate in so many different parts of the world. Let's take australia for an example. In my opinion, it's probably the most highly regulated jurisdiction that we operate in and that is a full-time job within itself just managing that australian process, focusing on it as a core part of your business, and we have a large amount of assets under management in australia. Without george's hard work, knowledge and experience and her being able to commit time to jumping on the compliance call, speaking to the australian, I wouldn't have time to do it, along with all the other areas that we focus on. So things like that massively increase the profitability of our business yeah, love it.

Speaker 1:

In the uk, some of the most successful uh practices outside of like um, like people who set up a business yeah, whether they're ars or whether they're directly authorized the most successful ones was a financial planner and the power planner yeah, so they come in together. Or a financial planner and a really strong operations manager who also does power planning yeah, those are the. That's the best combination. So I think when you look out here and you think, well, why aren't people doing that? You know, why aren't? Why isn't there? As it gets more and more technical, you know more and more, more and more compliance issues and everything like that. And we've got multi-jurisdiction, we're going into more jurisdictions. It becomes really really quite um, it's an organized job.

Speaker 2:

You have to be super organized yeah, and I think when we like I said, chris was probably the first person that I knew of to have a power planner, and me, moheen at the time we're talking about it more like just seems like a lot of money to be kind of putting aside towards an additional resource, like you could do it yourself. And then we started utilizing that power planner a little bit and then we're like hold on, this actually frees up a lot more time to do do better things, um, and we continue to kind of grow into that model. Now, if you look at it, I couldn't imagine the business model without a power planner. Um, there's just so many more regulatory requirements globally that you need someone on your team to fight your corner with you and to continue to kind of grow your business. So I think that that role has evolved massively.

Speaker 2:

The international space hasn't caught up with the uk model, where power planners are a lot more common. Um, but it's definitely a key part of the business and it's not just business processing, it's client relationships. Um, so my clients having an additional person to speak to in my absence like my pet peeve is if you email someone and then you get an email back, I'm out of the office for a week and there's no one else to contact and there's no one else that you can reach out to who understand who you are. So my number one rule with clients is you'll get a response within 24 hours within any query that might be a case of look, it needs to go to tax or it needs to go to legal, it needs to go to a different department, but we'll get back to you and we collectively ensure that happens with all our clients.

Speaker 1:

Georgia. Do you find when you, when clients are then handed over to you and you are delivering, that I would class it as like a after advice service or part of the process of the service? Yeah, do you feel that you have a different type of relationships with the client that kareem might have? Is there things that you recognize, or opportunities or different types of discussions do you have? Do they respond differently to you?

Speaker 3:

I think it definitely depends on the clients some of them he's had for years and I'm always going to be kind of just the paperwork girl for them, which is fine. They've they've grown used to him, they trust him. They don't want to speak to anybody else, and sometimes a lot of them maybe they only want to speak to him once or twice a year, in which case they don't really feel the need to don't speak to me that often. We don't really have much opportunity to build a relationship. It's more of sort of like an email relationship. They know who I am, they see emails that reply to it. That's kind of it. I would say more so probably with the clients that we've onboarded whilst I've been working with him and some of his sort of existing book. You do definitely build.

Speaker 3:

I would say my relationship is probably a little bit more casual with them as opposed to professional. I'm not the one delivering the advice and they know that, so they can kind of respond to me a little bit differently. Also, I contact everyone weekly who we're doing business with, so they hear from me at least once a week. I'm never not in their emails. It's constant, or it's phone calls, or it's organizing this or that, or actually we need this doing or that doing, or how's this going for you? And naturally you learn things about them, like they're going on holiday this week or their daughter's having a baby. You learn these little snippets from conversations that maybe he's not got time to have with them, that I'm having on a regular basis, which creates a little bit more of a rapport for me to have with them. And then I would say, when you know, when you're doing fact finds and stuff, my approach is probably slightly different than his.

Speaker 2:

His is kind of a lot more I do miss info on fact finds and that's my pet peeve. Like I'll go through a fact finder, she'll come back to me and say you've missed this, this, this, this. There's a lot more thorough in certain fact find instances than me.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, which just means it's sort of. I'll maybe niggle a little bit more at points where someone would be like, oh, it's kind of just like this. I'd be like, okay, but what is it actually? Or okay. And then I might think, okay, I've just had this and this, so I can maybe like put two points together and go well, you know, maybe previously, like, for example, you used to have a property and now you don't, so where's that cash? And they might have forgotten to tell me about it, or they might have invested that in something else and forgotten to mention it because to them it might not have spoken to them for six months. So for them it's a new normal, but for me it's a change. Whereas that can start a different. I can go and come off that call and go, okay, so now actually he's got this, this and this, this changes the situation. Is there anything we can do there? And then we might have a discussion off the back of that and then, going forward, it might open up a new opportunity.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, very empathic kind of different type of fact find, different type of relationship. You're opening them up into other opportunities that might be happening, problems they might incur. You're probing, you're pressing a little bit further just to get that full information out. Do you deal mainly with men, or is it men and women?

Speaker 3:

Majority of men.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, do they respond well to you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, most of them respond pretty well. I haven't really had any bad experiences speaking to anybody. They're normally pretty open.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what I love about here about the power planning role as well is it is more kind of like client facing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Whereas in the UK a power planner would tend to you know his report, get that done and the financial advisor goes out and sees the client right, whereas out here the power planner within the international space is very much involved in the whole process and with the client.

Speaker 1:

So you start to really embed in it and it's a great ground, I think, for learning. When you get a power planner, four years of just sitting there doing reports and they've never been in a client meeting, for instance, right um, or listened into a client meeting or spoke to the client they're. They don't have the confidence, especially if they want to become a financial planner. It's a lovely route in and it's a great exposure and you start to pick up and learn about different nuances and different client as you're doing, different areas where you can start to probe and understand the process quicker. And also, obviously you've got this attention to detail as well. Because you're power planning, you want to make sure every bit of information you've got is right, because clients are going to come knocking on your door and say what's this nonsense you know? So it's kind of it's good for you, isn't it? It's a good training ground, I guess, to then think with yourself right. Well, when I do become a financial as well.

Speaker 1:

What we're going to see here is that when it comes to replacing yourself, for example, maybe another power planner comes on board you'll be able to articulate that power planner in a way that maybe kareem doesn't with you, because you've done both sides of the fence.

Speaker 3:

You know, hopefully I'm a little bit of a control freak as well, so it'll be it'll be a tricky transition.

Speaker 1:

When that time comes yeah, so it feels like a bit of a partnership. Then do you guys spend a lot of time outside of work, or yeah, yeah, yeah, we, yeah, we do, we do.

Speaker 2:

Um, I do feel like as part of any kind of working business relationship, you do need to spend kind of time inside and outside the office. I think I don't think coming in at 8, 30 and even at 5, 30 and expecting someone to be committed to your personal business and growing your business is is flawed. So you do need to spend time inside and outside and just understand each other right, understand each other's ambitions, understand where they want to be, their goals, their targets, and then you can kind of start to build around it and and focus on the business more. So, once you understand kind of how you both complement each other.

Speaker 2:

Especially, I'll tell you, especially over the last 18 to 24 months we have to be, we have spent a lot of time together. But 18 to 24 months we have to be, we have spent a lot of time together. But that's both in and outside the office, which allows us to kind of continue the conversations because, like, if you're, if you're, speaking about business consistently in the office and then outside of the office is it's closed. Having conversations outside the office, new ideas pop up. We might be having a few drinks on a friday or bite to eat and then actually we need to do this, this and this, and we'll implement the following week. So it is important to have a relationship where you spend time inside and outside the office, in my opinion.

Speaker 3:

I don't know if georgia shares that sentiment yeah, I think from from my perspective, it's probably more so like how do you really buy into somebody's business unless you know them? You have to sort of know their goals, they're what they want to achieve or what their end point is, how you fit into that. And also, as you said, it's a it's a personal business, right? These are, as you said, many businesses within a bigger business. So whilst I'm working at Hoxton, I'm working in his business that he's spent time building up. It's important for me to have a relationship with him where I understand how much time and effort that's taken. I think that is the only way to really impress on someone how important the job it actually is yeah, it's a deeper connection, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

I think it has to be as well when you're not necessarily if you're looking at kind of, I'm going to be a paraplanner for a year or two and then I'm going to go out and be an advisor. But we're like george is a young paraplanner and still very much learning on the job like I still class myself as a student as well, so I'm still learning as I go and it gives her the ability to become an advisor on her own, on her own time frame. So there's no pressure like next year you need to be an advisor. It's a case of okay, well, let's continue to learn, let's continue to develop you as a paraplanner, slash advisor, slash practice manager, and it relieves her of that pressure of okay, well, I need to become an advisor on set date because she's still doing very, very well as a power planner. So I think it's important that you guys have what power planners in general and advisors have that relationship to understand where each other's strengths and weaknesses are and build upon that yeah, it's always kind of historically as well been.

Speaker 1:

You know you would go off and be an advisor and run your own desk if you like or your own business, whereas this is very different. This is like. This is partnership. Yeah, this is teamwork. I mean, when you think about the future of working together, do you think about you can, do you feel like you're going to grow the practice together? For example, do you think about hiring multiple different planners and building like a practice within a practice? Do you, do you think that way? Or what's the? What's the? What does the future look like for you guys?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I mean during our counseling session last week we were running through today. We had we had a lot of conversations afterwards and it was a case of kind of I'd always envisaged it as georgia's part of the team for as long as she wants to be. Yeah, so there's no pressure to stay within the team if at some stage she wants to move on and kind of develop her own team herself. But there'll'll always be yeah, there'll always be space for Georgia within the team. I'd like to support her as an advisor, as she supported me and as my mentors supported myself when I was stepping up as well. It was a lot of handholding, it was shadowing meetings.

Speaker 2:

So at the moment it's a case of kind of a mini three-year plan which is get the qualifications, get some assets under management under her belt, get the qualifications, get some assets under management under her belt, get a comfortable taking on clients, and we'll kind of reassess it as we go. But I'd like to think as a core team it's a very good fit for her. It allows us to kind of operate all over the world and she's got a great relationship with my clients. My clients feed off her energy Collectively. We provide great advice. So she's an asset to the team, so I'd like to keep her within the team as long as possible. However, she's not chained to a desk, like if she'd like to operate solely herself and take that leap of faith. Then, while we can still very young right from an advisory perspective, so that support network's there for as long as she needs it yeah, fantastic, obviously, having a female here in the uae as well.

Speaker 1:

I think they're very limited, isn't it? There isn't a great deal of female advisors out here, very, very few. So I think, do you see that as an opportunity in the UAE? Do you feel like, oh, I could really establish myself as a leading female financial planner? Do you feel like you want to step into those shoes? Have you got ambitions for that or not really?

Speaker 3:

I wouldn't say that as like a main point of focus for me in terms of that doesn't really make too much of a difference to my goals and I think that's just mostly because financial planning in general there isn't a lot of women. There's not a lot of women anywhere. Hoxton's maybe a little bit better with numbers, but it's still majority, not especially on an advisory perspective. There's very, very few female advisors. That's just going to come with the territory. But I don't think I've ever felt any difference in my job or my role because I was a woman or because I'm like because I'm not a man. So I wouldn't say it's ever been a massive thinking point for me from my own personal progression as a perspective. But I guess that just comes with it. That's probably what's going to happen. There isn't many females out here doing this or advisory, so I guess it will just come part and parcel.

Speaker 1:

I suspect there's probably a lot of planners listening to this podcast episode now and they're thinking now about taking on a power planner. What advice would you give to those financial planners to make sure that the transition is nice and smooth? What would the first six months be like if you were to take on your own power planner?

Speaker 3:

I would say try and make sure you're as organized as possible yourself at first, because what you don't want to do is waste the first quarter of having somebody with them sort of cleaning up and having to just get everything in gear. You want to be able to sort of jump headfirst in. I would say try and be a little bit less of a sort of control freak if possible, like you have to be willing to give up some of what you do. If you're going to hire a power partner, if you're not willing to do that, there's no point because the job's kind of redundant if you don't let them take things off your plate.

Speaker 3:

Um, but I think just generally just be like you just need to be ready for it. You need someone who's gonna be able to really take on half the responsibility so you can go out and do whatever it is that you're best at. If the behind the scenes stuff is not what you enjoy doing, then maybe get a slightly more administrative mind of person and if that side of things you're really good at and you actually want someone to come in and look after your clients on a daily basis, because actually you want to spend a little bit less time doing that, then focus your sort of hiring on that aspect of your business that you really want someone to help you with yeah, no, I love, I love that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, don't panic hire, because someone could panic hire and say oh my.

Speaker 1:

God, I hate doing this, like operationally I'm rubbish and I've got things here, there and everywhere. Because when it comes to actually bringing somebody on and not being able to articulate what the process actually is, that that person needs to actually do, it's going to be really, really hard. So you're pan and you expect that person to come in and just just because they've got that experience, all of a sudden they're going to take over and change the way that you think as a financial planner yeah, and I think even like the way georgia came on as a as a power planner.

Speaker 2:

It wasn't. It wasn't she was hired as a power planner. It was a case of she was a bdm. Um, I was involved in the kind of initial interview stage with her and then she formed part of my team and it wasn't working as a bDM kind of advisor relationship and there was an awkward conversation that had to happen. It was similar when, but when I was at a BDM for like two or three years, a manager pulled me in and said look, is this job really for you, because it doesn't seem like you're enjoying it. And we had a similar conversation and then we mapped out the power planner. I didn't know at the time that I needed a power planner as as much as I did, and we naturally kind of progressed there.

Speaker 2:

But she's done a fantastic job of kind of adapting to the role. It is demanding, right, it's a lot of stress. I'm sure she's had a lot of sleepless nights because of cases that we've been working on or the complex stuff or changes in regulation. Remember there was a time she had like sleepless nights because she was waking up thinking about the Australian business process, literally and it was getting. It was. It was seriously stressing her out, but we've worked out boundaries and ways of ensuring that she's less stressed, um. But when you look at that progression, there's different ways of picking out people who have talent and may not necessarily fit within that bdm role, who could be form other areas of the business, whether it's a power panel, whether it's support staff, client servicing, um. I do think the industry is evolving massively as well in the international space.

Speaker 1:

So what advice would you give to a financial planner then? Who's thinking about you know they're at this stage now and they're thinking about taking on a power planner.

Speaker 2:

I would highly recommend. It depends on the stage. They are right. So if you're just kind of starting out as an advisor, I wouldn't recommend taking one straight away. As soon as your assets under management justify the cost associated with a power planner, definitely take one on. But do spend time working together first. So kind of test the waters a little bit. Start with some kind of small tasks. Make sure you spend a hell of a lot of time inside and outside the office with them. Like the worst thing I could potentially have done is given georgia 20 tasks to do, not checked in with her until the end of the week and said have you done them? Um, and expected them to be up to my standard. So like a lot of hand holding is required. But I mean these are relationships and expected them to be up to my standard. So like a lot of handholding is required. But I mean these are relationships that are going to be formed for five, ten years, right like there's a space for within the business indefinitely.

Speaker 1:

So it's worth a lot of time from an investment perspective, but the output you're going to have, yeah, it's going to be second to none it's always been kind of bdm straight financial planner out here, yeah, in the uae, do you think there is like this missing piece of the puzzle in the career? Journey that it should be BDM to power planner to advisor.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, agreed, because when I look at this there's a lot of people that I've sorry.

Speaker 2:

I was going to say there's a lot of people that I've worked with over the years who wouldn't necessarily be in great BDMs but would have been fantastic advisors, but because they weren't successful as a BDM, they probably went back to the UK, moved back and that was their career done in financial services, but would have been fantastic advisors. However, the power planner role allows you to get the same level of exposure, progress, earn money whilst you're learning and then, when you're ready, step up as an advisor, and Hoxton supports you through that. We for qualifications um, essentially, you've got great people around you. We don't operate in silos, right? So I'm in the office, I'm doing my meetings on the floor, and so is every other advisor, which gives individuals the opportunity to learn if they want to. George, what do you think?

Speaker 3:

I think definitely because, like from my perspective, I did the sales bit. I wasn't very good at it. That probably would have normally just been the end of the story. Thank you very much. See you later. This opportunity has let me learn so much more, and I feel like in the same way that if you go straight from BDM to advisor, there's a bunch of stuff missing that you don't know. You don't necessarily know all the sort of processes that behind the scenes, you just kind of know this is how I get stuff done and you're going to be relying on other people to do that. So I feel like, from that perspective, sometimes and it's not with everyone someone like Ravi, for example, he put a lot of time and effort into learning those processes for himself.

Speaker 3:

So that when he did decide to take the step. He was ready, but a lot of times I feel like there is a little bit missing, whereas for me I feel like I've got so much time to learn the sales part of it and as I get more and more familiar with different processes, different products, I think learning the sales side of it is easier for me from that perspective because when I'm, for example, like talking to somebody, I can explain exactly what's going on. It's not. The sales aspect is maybe a little bit different than people that are really good at sales would do it, but I can still learn that I get it.

Speaker 1:

So you're more of a theorist. You want to understand how things actually work before you then feel confident to go out and actually ethically sell your services. Yeah, massively.

Speaker 3:

I'm a very black and white person. I need to be able to say this this and this is what's going to happen. This is, and this is why you should do it, and that's sort of my that's my approach.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's my approach, yeah and there's a certain type of beast out there that doesn't really you know. They just understand what the problems are and they think right, I'm going to hyper focus on that. I know what my job is, my job's to call through all these leads that hoxton are generating, me turning stones over. I'm going to ask them about this, that and the other, because they've downloaded a 401k document. They just kind of like, they just know what, they know what they're doing, and and some people are built that way and some people aren't Some people need to know the ins and outs of everything first of all, and would prefer a softer landing, if you like. It's not even a softer, though, is it Because you're having to deal with more complex problems, but you're kind of exposed to a warmer type of relationship? Perhaps Is that why it's nicer for you.

Speaker 3:

I think my way of thinking is that I need to be able to plan for every eventuality, right, so you might think that you're sitting a meeting, that is a certain product might a pension transfer of x amount, and that's kind of it simple. But I like to be able to know that okay, but if they say actually one second, I've got this, or this is actually a query that I've got, or actually I'm resident here or I want to move here, and I want to know that I have all of the knowledge to be able to actually answer those questions, I don't like not knowing what's going on. I don't like feeling like I don't know what's happening yeah, I gotcha.

Speaker 2:

That's definitely fair because I mean, even with the cases that we're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, georgia handles a lot of the reports and we will have, we'll have questions, we'll brainstorm individual client cases, so I'll jump off a call. Right, the client's got this, this and this, and georgia will be like we need to do X, y and Z, and I may have a different opinion and we'll have a discussion about it and essentially we'll work with what's best for the client. But having that extra kind of oversight on each individual case does help. Previously, I'd speak to other advisors around the office Okay, what would you do in this scenario?

Speaker 2:

But Georgia's knowledge now is at a stage where we'll have conversations, especially about Australia, about client cases. Why are we recommending this or what are we doing for this? And it was only a few days ago. I've got quite a complex case in Europe and I was like this is what we need to do and it's like a 20, 30 minutes discussion. Okay, but why are we doing this and why would we do it like this? And it's important to have someone asking those questions because the client will and I need to justify it. So it's a great addition to the team when necessary.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, look past the fact that it's an extra cost and the fact that it's going to free up a load of your time 100% yeah, and it's going to add more value.

Speaker 2:

The value added to clients on a daily basis is second to none. Like you said, everyone's getting an email once a week. There's someone that that functionality to your business for a client is great, right? So all my clients will email both of us. She'll respond to certain emails, I'll respond to others, but having a point of contact from a client perspective is fantastic.

Speaker 1:

That knows the client as well. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 2:

I mean, the last thing that a client wants is to kind of have to contact I'm away for a week I mean I'm rarely off, but let's say I'm off for a week is to speak to someone. They don't know about their circumstances in any given point. We're probably dealing with 20 ongoing cases which there's a history behind which georgia knows inside out. I could test them and say, right, what's going on with this? And sure, this is the last update. We track it. And, from a client perspective, being able to speak to georgia and say what's going on with this and she knows exactly where things are is second to none from a service perspective. In my opinion fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know, here at hoxton we do train people up, don't we? We train people up as trading wealth managers. We train people up as power planners. There is a huge amount of resource here that can be used for advisors that are thinking about joining us and want to tap into those power planners or administrators or that support that's actually there. And so you kind of start thinking about your business as a practice. And what can I let go of? You know, do I need this control as much as I think I do? Why do I think I need this control? What am I worried about if I let it go?

Speaker 1:

More often than not, when we do address those things and we let them go, it tends to have a very positive impact on our life. I don't know about you, but sometimes it frees you up, doesn't it Like? All of a sudden, you feel this kind of freedom and you're like, oh, it doesn't take long for you to fill that freedom back up again with other things. But that's growth, you know. And then you'll get to that point and you'll be like, oh, I've got to grow again, so you've got to bring somebody else on to free it up. You might need a marketing person, you might need another power planner, you might need another administrator. It's just how businesses grow.

Speaker 1:

But what's great is you've got the blueprint here. Yeah, one of the things I've definitely noticed about hoxton wealth is that everybody shares. You know chris man at the top, still delivering advice to his clients, but building a practice himself and everything that he's learned, everything that he's done the blueprint is shared with you guys and girls. You know it does get implemented across all the different types of advisors in the business and that's really, really important because you need somebody who's done it. You need somebody who's been there, got the t-shirt and have been successful and can tell you the pitfalls, the things that work, things that don't work, and often you think about it, you go, I don't know about that, it's going to cost me a load of money but, you've got to trust the process and this is it, especially when you look at chris right, incredibly successful, successful individual.

Speaker 2:

And the great thing about chris was when we first joined, he was still doing his meetings on the floor. I was sat one side of him, he was sat the other and we were still learning. All three of us were just learning off each other and having that exposure to that very early on. It was a case of well, it's working for him. This is how we do it. He's given us all a blueprint, right, and it's a case of well, you can tweak it slightly, whether it's focusing more on X or focusing more on Y or these are the hours that you're doing, but the blueprint's there to be successful within this, within this. Yeah, it adapts over time and regulatory things change, but everyone's got a framework and that's why, when I look at advisors coming into the industry, I do think the framework's there.

Speaker 2:

The only thing that can really go wrong is your work rate, because if you've got a proven framework, you've got a company that can deliver from a regulatory and licensing perspective. What can go wrong other than the amount of effort that you put into it? Ravi's a fantastic example, right. He outworks everyone else within the company outside of chris, I'd say, and that's the reason he's so successful. He puts the hours in um and that's why he's he's at where he is today yeah it's a simple case of he outworks everyone else around him.

Speaker 2:

He works through a process as well, correct? And do you know what, similar to georgia, right like her work rate inside and outside of the office is where she's sorry, why she's so successful as a power planner. It's the fact that if there's a to-do list that needs to be done by a certain time frame and it means her working in overtime she'll do it like, and she's brought into the business to ensure that we continue to deliver you do sound like a very caring person.

Speaker 1:

She cares about you and she cares about your business. Yeah, do you sometimes have to kind of check yourself, sometimes a little bit, and give yourself a bit of I don't know time and boundary? We talked about, yeah, kareem, we talked about picking his kids up. Do you give yourself that space to relax and and to kind of have space for yourself if you're getting a little bit stressed out or you're not that type of person, do you thrive in that sort of environment?

Speaker 3:

no, I feel like at the beginning I was really really bad at that. I would just be on 24 hours a day, which was not good for me. It was I was still learning stuff right. So stuff that doesn't really stress me out anymore would stress me out then and it would send me into an absolute spiral and it would just be like constantly just get to Friday, get to Friday, get to Friday. Now I'm a little bit more conscious of, I'm still kind of available whenever, which I mean not everyone will agree with.

Speaker 3:

I personally feel like where I am in my career is not really the time to be working 8 30 till 5 30 and sticking to set hours. It's a time for like really learning. So if there's an opportunity to jump on a call or just speak to somebody, I'll do it, but doesn't matter what time it is, like I'll be there, I'm willing to do it. And also, his hours are not 8 30, 5, 30. If he's taking three hours off to go and see the kids, then he might want to work till eight o'clock, which might mean a team's call at eight o'clock.

Speaker 3:

That's fine by me, but I just do little things. So like my notifications are off on my phone for my work stuff so I can still check it. But if I'm not on my laptop it's not an immediate thought. I'm not waking up and seeing team messages from someone in the uk who's teams me after I've maybe finished for the day, like just making sure I've got a couple hours, like if we're just eating my dinner. My phone's not flashing with an email because clients are everywhere clients will email us at any time of day.

Speaker 3:

They don't mean to interrupt my day, but you might do, and if it's something that I need to get done, if I see it, I can't ignore it. Yeah, if I see like it's just a quick thing, it might take 20 minutes, I'll just do it. Then and there which I'm trying to be a little bit better at making sure that I'm not actually on 24 7 and my weekends are like my weekends how do you?

Speaker 1:

manage that, though, like having clients from one side to the other, because that is a problem, isn't it like for when you switch off? Because, like, is there a set time of the day that you respond to certain clients at certain times? Do you? Do you organize your diary so you're only dealing with australians? How does it work to keep that organized? Because that would stress me out, I think, because I just be honest, mind you, I'm on all the time anyway. I'm one of those people I have a difficulty in switching off I'm on all the bloody time.

Speaker 1:

My brain's always active. As soon as I wake up, I'm active. You know, it's before I go to bed, I'm active. So it is difficult right?

Speaker 2:

because I've got clients literally all across the globe that are operating from kind of america, from the us, canada, all the way over to australia, so you're dealing with every time zone possible. Um, from a call perspective, I mean I was in the uk last week and I was having calls at like three, 34 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 2:

And it's it's difficult because certain things need to be done, so you just need to kind of wake up and do them Right and then you may have calls till 10, 11 o'clock at night. Some days I mean my earlier days as an advisor I was doing calls at like two, 33 o'clock in the morning just to accommodate around clients. Be emails there that I'll need to respond to, but I will, as long as they responded to within 24 hours. As long as it's not like a bereavement case or something that's going to be like have a negative impact to a client, like from a performance perspective or this like something that's super urgent, we'll work on it straight away. Um, but generally, as long as it's within that 24 hours, there's never any issues for clients so let's look to the future then.

Speaker 1:

So what are you guys going to be doing together to supercharge your practice and make it a super success in the next couple of years?

Speaker 2:

the plan. I mean, there's different. I guess there's different things that we're going to be doing right. So we've obviously got there's other members of the team that are actively involved and again we are reliant on them to kind of assist with the growth of the business. So it's difficult, right, because it's quite funny. About maybe about a month ago we're having a meeting, and usually I'm bad cop, um, and the meeting was kind of I was talking about performance and I was talking about a few different areas within the business, and this is when I realized georgia was really bought into the business. It was a case where she said something. She was speaking to one of the other guys in the team and it was a case of look, guys, for you, this may be a job, but this is my career and that's powerful right.

Speaker 2:

And it was kind of I'm reflecting on that, looking at, well, it's not her job anymore, it's actually her career. It's okay. How can we map it out where, as vested as georgia is, um, get them in, as incentivized to grow the business as much as georgia is and continue to grow like we've got a magic number I won't say the magic number of assets under management and a magic number of clients, but I mean georgia's doing a degree, she's doing fantastic with that. That will help us continue to grow the australian business. We're operating all over the globe, so just much the same. I mean, this year has been a very hands-on year because we didn't have an admin at the start, we didn't have a relationship manager at the start, so georgia was doing application packs, I was trying to generate and speak to clients for referrals etc, etc. So it was a difficult start to the year. Um, we both pretty much worked through. I mean, how long were you off in the summer for?

Speaker 2:

about five days yeah, it's like we've both pretty much worked through the whole year. She took five days of in the summer. I worked through um, so it has been a lot of plates spinning this year to kind of get to where we needed to be. I think next year it'll be much the same, probably a few more holidays. I'd like to think, um, but just more support from the kind of relationship management team to get us to where we need to be. So it's less hands-on from us. We've managed to get get a great admin, so our admin's lifting a lot of the weight off our shoulders as well. So just to continue to develop the team, grow the team where necessary and continue to service our clients as best as possible we do a lot of additional work for clients, more so than probably a lot of advisors in the industry to continue to focus on those relationships with clients, understand their goals and objectives, and continue to on those relationships with clients, understand their goals and objectives and continue to grow those relationships with them.

Speaker 1:

It's a very intrapreneurial, yeah way to look at it, and that's what I love about hoxton wealth. It does kind of like scratch the itch of those entrepreneurial individuals that don't want to go it alone. So you become intrapreneurial, you group, you build your business within a business and then together you're experiencing that, whether you're a power planner, practice monitor administrator or the financial planner, you can build that entrepreneurial spirit across the team. Like you say, it's kind of getting the buy-in of your team to be able to help it grow. Are you all pulling in the right direction? It's really really super important because, um, if you don't have that in place, someone can drag it down it's difficult.

Speaker 2:

It is difficult finding that. I mean, we experienced it at the start of the year from an admin perspective, um, and it was a mistake that we both made. We we'd lost an admin, so he'd moved on and we hired another admin. And I think chris's rule is look, if they're not the right fit, immediately just get rid of them. Um, it's quite a harsh rule when you're kind of trying to fill someone out a little bit. But we noticed pretty early on I mean, how many, how many weeks? Would you say a week, two weeks, not even a week and it was.

Speaker 2:

We both interviewed them. Like we both kind of interviewed them once, twice we run through kind of the the test and if we thought, yeah, great fit, and came on board, and it wasn't, and that was a hard decision because it was a case of georgia had been doing a lot of admin tasks that she shouldn't have been doing right prior to that lady coming on board, she'd come on board and it was a case of right. Well, if we do cut the cords, this needs to be filled from somewhere. And it was a huge commitment to her saying look, it's fine, I'll continue to kind of help out and assist when a lot of people would have said, look, kareem, it's just too much work, like I can't deal with this stress. So she does deal with stress fantastically well. Well, and having someone who's bought in as much as georgia in, it's great, great lovely.

Speaker 1:

So the future is all about connection. Yeah, incentivizing the team working together to grow the practice to the magic number. Yeah, um, I also love the fact that you guys are talking about that. You know someone come over from the uk. They're a financial planner and they're used to having power planners work with them. They're going to love it out here because they can start to develop a power planner that's going to support their business. They're already in that mindset. They're kind of a little step ahead.

Speaker 1:

So there's in there's in there's uk based advisors that have built a book of business that want to help come out to the uae and maybe focus on also growing business out here in the gcc. They can do that by carrying on the model which they're used to, which is having an administ, you know, having the power planner in place, and that power planner perhaps can be then upskilled to then help them become an advisor and open up new opportunities and win new business through the existing client relationships. So it is a good model. I love the entrepreneurial model. It's not usual out here and yeah, but it's happening it has to happen and it's it's progression, right.

Speaker 2:

So, like you said, it has to happen. And again, george was probably one of the few power planners maybe three or four in the office at the time, right, and it was wasn't isolated, but you probably had one or two in the uk, like there wasn't a huge amount of power planning resources in here. Now it's great because this there's a number of them, right, so they help each other, yeah, which is key, because if you're kind of just one power plan, I mean it was probably difficult for you at the start, right, georgia, as it wasn't a huge amount of other power planners there yeah, the ones that there were had to probably give up a lot of their time to help me.

Speaker 3:

Looking back now, I feel like I must have bugged them so much for because you just got, you're coming from nothing, where I had no idea what I was doing, so every single thing I was doing was new. There wasn't a lot of. There was a few core people that I definitely took up a lot of their working day just sitting next to them being like can you just check this? Have I done this right? What do I do here? But comes on, leaps and bounds right, someone will do that to me, I'm sure, soon they will indeed, we're guessing, guys.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much for sharing your hoxton life on the hoxton life podcast. Thank you for having us wish you all the best. Thank you, cheers, thanks.