.jpg)
Hoxton Life
Welcome to our Hoxton Life...
Our podcast takes you inside Hoxton Wealth, where we’re changing the face of international financial planning. From breaking career boundaries to crossing borders, Hoxton Life is your exclusive guide to what it truly takes to succeed at every stage of a financial planning career.
At Hoxton Wealth, we see financial planning as more than just a profession—it’s a career journey. The Hoxton Life podcast brings together the voices of experts and real-life financial planners, sharing their experiences from every stage of the career pathway. Whether you’re joining with no prior experience, growing your business, or planning your exit, we offer firsthand stories from those who have lived and thrived in the world of international financial planning.
At Hoxton, we call this the pathway—a roadmap that takes you from starting out to becoming a fully qualified financial planner and beyond. Every episode brings you closer to understanding what it takes to build a successful career, with insights from those who have already walked the path.
This is our life. Our Hoxton Life.
Tune in to find out how you can join us in breaking boundaries, crossing borders, and shaping the future of financial planning.
Hoxton Life
Podcasting and Content Creation at Hoxton Wealth - with Sam Oakes
In this special episode of Hoxton Life, Jacob steps into the presenter role to interview Sam Oakes, Head of Creative at Hoxton Wealth and Founder of Financial Planner Life. Sam reflects on his extraordinary career journey, from founding and running Recruit UK, a financial planning recruitment business he led for 16 years before exiting, to creating Financial Planner Life, a platform that has reshaped how financial planning careers are perceived and promoted.
Sam’s overarching mission is to ensure that financial planning thrives and becomes accessible to all. He shares how Financial Planner Life started as a marketing tool for his recruitment business and evolved into a creative platform that attracts talent, educates the profession, and raises the visibility of financial planning firms. His 2025 plans include hosting live podcast events, expanding Financial Planner Life internationally, and continuing to help firms elevate their brands through podcast- and video-first marketing strategies.
Sam also reflects on the challenges and rewards of relocating his family to Dubai to join Hoxton Wealth. He candidly discusses the emotional journey of leaving behind a home, adjusting to a fast-paced city, and finding the right school for his daughter. Through it all, Sam’s family’s support and trust in his vision fueled his confidence to make the move.
Sam explains why Hoxton Wealth is the perfect fit for his intrapreneurial spirit. The firm’s innovative culture, focus on collaboration, and commitment to raising standards in the international financial planning profession align with his vision. As Sam puts it, “I’ve found my sandbox at Hoxton—a place where I can play, create, and make a real impact.”
Key Topics Covered:
- Sam’s Career Journey
- Founding and running Recruit UK for 16 years before exiting.
- Building Financial Planner Life as a recruitment marketing tool and evolving it into a monetized creative platform.
- Ensuring Financial Planning Thrives
- Sam’s mission to make financial planning accessible to all.
- The role of Financial Planner Life in attracting talent and bridging the advice gap.
- Relocating to Dubai
- The emotional journey of leaving the UK and relocating with his family.
- Adjusting to Dubai’s fast-paced lifestyle and finding a new home and school for his daughter.
- How the move aligned with his professional ambitions and opened new opportunities.
- Why Hoxton Wealth?
- How Hoxton’s intrapreneuri
Ready to start your international financial planning career?
Hoxton Wealth is looking for ambitious individuals ready to take their careers to the next level. Whether you're interested in international financial planning, compliance, client servicing, or marketing roles within the financial sector, we offer unparalleled opportunities for growth and success.
Don’t miss a beat! Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch full podcast episodes featuring insights from those that work for Hoxton and some of our special guests and partners. Stay connected by following us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X for more exclusive content.
Curious about our career opportunities? Visit our website to explore open positions and learn more about joining the Hoxton Wealth team. Your journey in international financial planning starts here!
For sponsorships, partnerships, or media inquiries, reach out to us
What I did instead was, from the side of my desk, built the Financial Plan of Life podcast. I saw an opportunity, and the opportunity was a talent shortage. Now, when that happened and I went through everything with my recruitment business, that hit me hard mentally because selling a business and leaving something that you've built for 16 years, it's like it was like losing part of you, your identity. You know there's that picture of me on LinkedIn and we're all sat in our bags outside the house that we worked so hard to get and we're about to give all this up. We sold everything, rented the house out and we're off to Dubai.
Speaker 2:What's the good and the bad? I mean, there's always going to be good, positives and negatives, but how did you adapt to that and how is it going?
Speaker 1:Good question. I need an environment. I need the boundaries in the environment, but I need the space to be entrepreneurial and that's what I found at Hoxton and that was one of Chris's motivators. He wanted to build the profession out here in Dubai. We should be collaborating. It's not the Sam Oak show, it's the Hoxton Wealth show. You're connecting Hoxton Wealth visually throughout the whole world, but there isn't one wealth management company that are creating that content and bringing it to life through content.
Speaker 2:And that content is there forever. So today, tables have turned and I get to talk about your journey and you know we've got our Hox and Life podcast and you're busy filming and videoing with all of our all of the people that are already within the business. But you know, I was very involved when you came across and I thought it'd be quite exciting and you came up with the idea that let's find out a bit more about Sam and how his journey came across and what we've done so far and and what you're going to do. So it's quite exciting. Shoes on the other foot. So I don't know how you feel about this, but it's. It's fun for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I'll tell you what it feels a bit uncomfortable, yeah, Well, I'll tell you what it feels. A bit uncomfortable, yeah, Because I'm exposing myself. You know I'm, I'm putting myself out there and it's not something that I've ever really done. I haven't had many people interview me and, um, it's interesting to see what it's like when the shoe is on the other foot. But it does make you feel a little bit nervous, it makes you feel a little bit vulnerable.
Speaker 2:But I'm going to lean into well, I'll try not to, but you better try not to take control of the situation because we know, you know normally that's your, your forte. Yeah, exactly so, obviously you know you. You came over, uh, initially and and you came over a little bit and I remember when you were over I was kind of chatting away with you and you're talking about coming over and taking the role, and next thing you took the role, came over again and I was like so you're going to bring uh Kerri-Ann and Isabella across? And you were like, no, it's all right, they're happy with everything. I'm going to go and get everything sorted, which you did, to be fair to you know you got moving on it, but I suppose, firstly, how was that, you know, coming across from the UK? Um, completely different uh environment. How's it gone so far?
Speaker 1:Right, so we take it back to the start. The reason why I came out here really it was a I was at recruit uk. Um, I decided to sell recruit uk internally and that's now being looked after, so it's still running. It's a financial planning business and we'll get into that in a bit.
Speaker 1:Um, I decided to come out here because, chris, I was talking to chris about creating a podcast partnership with the financial planner life and I kind of expressed that I wasn't 100 sure I was happy on my own with the financial planner life. I wasn't really. I didn't know whether or not I wanted to run a business on my own and I had ambition, ambitions and aspirations to actually build a financial planning business. I always thought to myself crikey with what I know and my network and what I built in respect to the financial planner life and the brand that I have. I thought imagine if I partnered with a financial planner, could I build a really great business? I got a really good understanding of the market. I've seen so many different financial planning firms. I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. I've seen the ones that have the best career development frameworks, the best marketing, the best technology and I was thinking, with all that information, definitely I could come into the financial planning place and smash it and I visualized things and I visualized that really deeply. Now, a couple of months before that, I actually sat down with Jonathan, jay and another financial planner who I can't name, unfortunately, but I'm in the process of trying to get them across and we all sat down and we discussed it and it was so close to being done and then we're not talking like small amounts of money either. It was decent levels of assets under management, good quality um, qualified financial planners who absolutely love what they were doing and they could buy into the vision that I had and I was really, really excited about it.
Speaker 1:But anyway, that didn't happen. I carried on with Recruit UK. I had to sell Recruit UK, got talking to Chris didn't want to carry on with the financial plan of life on my own in my loft in the UK right, that was where my business now was in the loft, um and Chris said just get yourself out to Dubai, then come and have a little look and see what we're doing. You know, if you are open and up for change, then then come out and have a look. It was funny because about six weeks prior to that I was actually watching stuff on dubai on on youtube.
Speaker 1:I remember putting a poll out saying is anybody interested in moving to buy what the financial planners actually think? I never thought at the time I would come out here, but there was something in the back of my mind that made me think maybe that is an option. So when it actually came up and chris said, look, I'll pay for your ticket to come out obviously free holiday and I thought you know what? I'm gonna go and check it out. And that's how I kind of ended up. And when I came out here it was very different to what I expected. If you can imagine 16 years of working in financial planning recruitment again, I've seen the good, the bad and the agony in the international space. It's never had the best of reputations, you know it really hasn't.
Speaker 2:No you're right.
Speaker 1:I was really, really unsure and I was kind of a little bit kind of like hmm, am I being blacked here? You know I'm hearing fee-based financial planning company. You know, no, commission, I'm hearing multi-jurisdiction FCA register. I'm thinking this is different. So anyway, I came out, sat down with chris. I've always got on with chris anyway. Chris was on my podcast about four, four years ago. He's one of the first first guests actually. Um, that I interviewed.
Speaker 1:A very, very different business back then to what it is now and the progress he's had is insane. I think that was another thing, because in my head I didn't visualize hoxton as big as it actually is and as organized as it is and as professional as it is. So when I came down, I sat down with Chris and he went through the business and not only that, he introduced me to absolutely everybody in it. So I got to sit down with you, you. I got to sit down with Paul Tate. I got to speak sit down with Charlie. I got to sit down with pretty much all the main players within the business. So so everybody entertained my questions because I had a list of questions and I was very inquisitive.
Speaker 1:It's very much in my nature to turn stones over, because I'm thinking in my head one is this the right company? Do they have the right reputation? And B? All I can think about is how can I sell this company to the rest of the world? How can I sell this company into the international market world? How can I sell this company into the international market? And there were so many things that I was seeing and understanding about the business that got me super excited and I thought hang on, they're onto something here at Hoxton. They are at multiple jurisdictions. They do have in-house tech. They do have the app. In fact, the day I turned up was when you had the wealth flow app party so we launched it on that day, didn't we?
Speaker 1:yeah, I literally walked into a party and just seeing everybody in there and chris delivering this speech, it was like hang about. This is a completely different business to what I thought I honestly thought it would been.
Speaker 2:I had this vision that it was a little bit like like war for wall street, you know, a little bit kind of like boiler room-esque style, I suppose on that it's quite an interesting statement because I've been in the international space now for 12, 13 years and and that impression is there from a lot of people and you know, regularly we, I speak to people, I'm involved in the recruitment process. Some people are looking at you going, but are you and is it really like that? And you know that was why we, we do the same with you, we say come over yeah sit in the office being part of it.
Speaker 2:See how it goes, that's interesting. So then just flipping that back then. So obviously you then went back, took the job and the next thing you were here. I remember the mad scramble finding somewhere to live, um isabella into school, you know. I think you found a fantastic school for in the end and you, which, which was great. How has the move been for you and the family?
Speaker 1:so moving out here, like I said, my wife's my wife is very trusting of my, of my decisions, so she was on board. The only reason she never she was um and an iron about it because her mum's very sick so she was a bit unsure about coming out here, but her mum gave her the blessing so anyway, from that side wasn't an issue. Isabella is such a confident little kid firecracker, you know yeah, firecracker, she is definitely a firecracker.
Speaker 1:That she was. Just let's do this, dad, you know there's that picture of me on linkedin and we're all sat on our bags outside the house that we worked so hard to get right, we built little family home.
Speaker 1:We just came out with all the creature comforts and there's three of us all sitting there on our bags going. We're about to give all this up. We sold everything, rented the house out and we're off to Dubai. So the trust from that was fantastic. So I had the backing of it. So there wasn't any arguments or any concerns or any nagging or anything pulling me back. So I was confident enough to go. Obviously, we got out here. It it is a bit overwhelming. It's an overwhelming city.
Speaker 1:Um, even though it's small, there is this high energy like you, just this energy of like let's get forward, push forward, push forward. And you know, and it is expensive, um, and I was anxious and I was nervous. Money makes me anxious anyway. I just sold a business. Um, I didn't have a huge amount of money in the bank, I didn't make millions out of the sale of my business.
Speaker 1:So, um, financially for me, I had to make the right decision to come out here and to do it in the right way. So I lent into you. You know, you were the individual who really gave me the insight of. You, started showing me around all the different places to live. You showed me the communities. You showed me, um, uh, you know how to get about the city and some of the nice, and you took me under your wing and kind of brought me into your family home and I could see that it was like okay, this, this, this can happen. So then, ultimately, I made the decision that I was going to going to stay and I was going to rent.
Speaker 1:So we ended up renting on on on the Marina. Now you told me not to do that. Right, you said to me you're probably going to regret that because the traffic's crazy and, um, it's expensive and you might find it a little bit overwhelming, and you're right, actually. So I've got about nine months left, I think, of my rent and I think after that I might well take your advice and move out more towards some of these communities I think the funny thing there.
Speaker 2:I mean, when I came here with my my white well partner at the time, we went into a a high rise tower in a busy area, but it was just me and Georgia, right, and it was perfect for what we needed at that point. But as life changes and things move on, your situation changes. The marina is great, right, a lot of the young guys in the office live there. They can walk wherever they want to go and it is hustle and bustle. There's a something a bit more calming about being in a community and a bit more slow paced. That means you can switch off, which is something that you and I both know that I struggle to do, and you struggle to do so when you're in that busy area on a weekend and you're in that busy area in a week, it's very hard and dubai sucks you in.
Speaker 2:You know dubai is fast paced. People come here. They want to do well. It's your entrepreneurs. You meet people all the time got their own businesses, but by living in a community you can, you know, almost just mellows a little bit, which is quite nice, and you're like listen, you can do a year and you can move again. It's not like. You've bought the place yet and you know you've got choices, haven't you? So that's interesting. The biggest.
Speaker 1:You're right, it's like living in um.
Speaker 2:Someone described it as like living in a theme park dubai dubai is a theme park, right, you know, every weekend there's fireworks, and we're just about to head into the December, so you obviously look down the arena. December there'll be a drone show every night. There'll be fireworks every other day, and I don't even know what some of them are for, but it's uh, it is a bit wild. So, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting. So I suppose then it's my, my, I can ask you the questions. So the interesting thing there is finance. You know, I mean I remember speaking and we've spoken about a lot of things over over the time. I've got to know you, um, obviously grew up, you were in bristol. First job was aviva. Yep, I mean, why finance?
Speaker 1:uh, I fell into finance. I was working for cornhill direct as an insurance salesperson. So on the outbound calls, uh, booking people in and selling content um building insurance, uh, and car insurance. I did that and I was doing and I always did sales like I left school at 16 um and I always did sales selling windows.
Speaker 1:Um, I remember got a job knocking on people's doors, like getting signed up to charities. Um, selling like um utilities via daughter. I did have like two years and built a team, completely commission-based. Imagine that, walking around the streets of bristol and pissing down rain, you know, knocking on people's door to try and make a living like it was. It was ridiculous, but it taught me a bit of resilience and so the interesting thing is a lot of people I know that I met during that period are all now either running business or actually super successful. So it's kind of um. It's one of those things I think it creates resilience in you and when you look at when you end up then going into another job and you look at it and go at least I'm not knocking doors, but you know the value of knocking doors. You know the value of knocking on 100 doors maybe 10 of them you're going to sell to and you might make 100 quid.
Speaker 2:That was what it was like, you know, but you had to keep on going but in, in, I would say, in any profession that you do, you know, whether you want to say it's sales or not sales, it's financial planning. I mean, financial planning essentially is financial planning. But to get to that financial planning stage you've got to be able to prospect that famous word prospect we always talk about and essentially that's sales. You know you've got to know how to go and find the people you know and the resilience you're talking about. Resilience is, I would say, one of the number one traits that that make people successful, especially in this profession, because you can keep going. It's, you know, you get a lot of rejection, yeah, but if you've got that resilience, that that pushes you there. So then you bridged across, then into aviva, and I think you became a trainer. Was it right? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I went I. So I moved away from um because it cornhill uh insurance. So I did that for a fair few years. Um left there and then joined aviva. At that point I kind of had enough of sales. I was quite young, I had enough of seven. It really negged me out. It was like I wasn't really into it and I was always partying and stuff at the weekend. So then monday, tuesday, wednesday, you're absolutely like feeling rough and trying to do outbound sales when you're rough was horrible. So I thought you know what I'm gonna. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into finance but I'm gonna get into, like, customer service. And actually I I've cut my seat in customer service.
Speaker 1:I really, really enjoyed it and at the time it was started, when it was on the telephones and I was talking to financial planners and they were phoning up about pension products, investment bonds with profit bonds and all of that kind of stuff. So I was like answering those questions, answering questions of clients, and the training and the development there was fantastic. So I learned a lot about investments, I learned a lot about pensions. I learned a lot about protection. They had a joint venture with the royal bank of scotland, so it's quite good and obviously there's career progression within there and I never really had access to that. So I started, um, uh, training to be like a team leader. So I became a team leader and then I moved into the actual training department. So I kind of really enjoyed creating the training sessions to try to educate. You know, 18, 19, 20 year olds coming out, coming out of school or college. You haven't got a clue about how, what bond is, what footsie is, you know all that stuff. So I created these like really fun training sessions that I would then train them on. So when they went out on the telephones and had to speak to people, they understood exactly what it was they were talking about. So I did that. I quite, I quite enjoyed, um, the training aspect.
Speaker 1:But there was so much limitation, working for a larger corporate, that, however hard I started working out the career progression side of it and it wasn't really going anywhere for me. I, however hard I worked in that role, I wasn't earning more money. So of course, you know I was, I was craving money again, I was craving to control my earnings and that was when I thought, well, what about recruitment? You know, recruitment in, in, in bristol is everywhere. There's so many recruitment firms and I was quite late to it. I was 27 years old.
Speaker 1:Most people get into recruitment quite young but I was 27 years old so I remember I was at a pub and I'm stuart, who was um at the time was the owner of recruit uk, which at the time was a name on a piece of paper because it was a an appointed representative of another company called viridian that worked with all the banks and they did all the financial advice and personal banking and mortgage advisor and bank manager recruitment. Anyway, he went across the table, heard me talking about wanting to earn more money and going once getting recruitment, said when you come over and work for me. So anyway, that weekend, went in there, offered me a job out of aviva, straight into recruitment, straight into the bloody um banking crisis oh nice, good timing, good timing yes, all the clients like we literally looks like Stuart.
Speaker 1:He'd hired me and then his face went white when he realized that loads of the accounts that we had were shutting down so there was no vacancies coming in. And because Recruit UK was an appointed representative for Viridian because Viridian were like the business developers, they weren't a business of business developers Now I was given. I remember thinking like well, what am I supposed to do? But I had this idea in my head anyway that it's hard graft, it's hard work. I wasn't going in there to be like what we call a resourcer. I was going there to be a recruitment consultant, a 360 recruitment consultant.
Speaker 1:I got given like one which was chelsea building society. It was like this part-time role in the back end of nowhere and they had trouble filling it. Anyway, I put my heart and soul into that absolute heart and soul until I smash, smash, smash, smash, heart and soul, and I ended up placing something. I think I made about 1500 pound fee, so bonus wise, I don't think I even made any bonus, but it really got me excited about the chase and the hunt and helping and finding and I was really, really into it.
Speaker 1:I turned that account into like over 150 grand account in a year wow it became really evidently obvious that I was good at the customer service, I was good at sales, I was good at building the relationships and I had the right mindset for it. And then I was offered a 50 share of the business. So, because it was obvious I was doing well, a couple of people walked out the door and I think they thought well, let's keep sam, let him 50% of the business.
Speaker 2:So I suppose that you were then placing people in all different roles within finance and I mean I've seen it in you, even though you've gone down finance plan of life and you've obviously spoken to all these people, but you still get a lot of enjoyment out of that, and that enjoyment I think. I mean I'd be keen to know really. I mean there's different types of recruiters. There's recruiters that want to fill a role and then there's recruiters that believe in something and they want somebody to join it because it's a big belief which I know with JJ, with Jonathan Jay, with JJ was a big thing for you and you know he came on board and has been a great attribute to the business. I mean, what led that? Was it purely about getting the right people in the right place and then watching them grow?
Speaker 1:I class myself as quite a high empath and I would class myself as somebody that wants to help people. You know I definitely like helping people. I get a sense of achievement when I can help somebody and it makes me feel good. It doesn't make me a people pleaser or anything along those lines. When somebody has a problem and they're stuck in life and most of the time people have a problem around careers right Getting ahead they struggle to push ahead within their career.
Speaker 1:Now, when you're a recruitment consultant, you have the luxury of being able to talk to lots and lots of different people all the time and you get to question them how they got forward, how they got over this. You know's that person, you know that the market out there actually will pay that person more if they just put their head up and actually have the confidence to go and see some other, some other interviews. So for me it was always about helping people and digging deep into the reasons why they're stuck in a job that they didn't actually like and for me it was solving problems the funny thing you said there okay and it's, it's I think I got this from maybe chris or yourself over.
Speaker 2:But people will sit in a role, you know, although they want to be doing something else, because they're too scared to tell you that they want to go there. And something I ask on when I'm doing one-to-ones with people on a regular basis, I'll always speak to them like what's your plan, what's your journey? Because I mean, we've got all of these offices all over the world. We're going to continue growing and opening more offices. And just from asking that question, I found out that there's certain people in the business that want to go to the US.
Speaker 2:A young guy actually said to me this morning um, would I be able to go to Australia for 12 months? I've always wanted to go to Australia and work and it was really interesting because actually I'm looking for somebody to go to Australia to go and do that role. It was like, well, god, if I hadn't asked him, maybe he'd have gone somewhere else. So you, you were fixing problems that you know were there, which is what, what's enjoyable about it. So the recruit uk thing went. It went big right and you did. You start financial planning life when you were at recruit uk, or did that come?
Speaker 1:yeah. So recruit uk was a big small business so it was like I think the peak amount of people we have is about 25. Okay, um, and it was super niche. So we stopped recruiting into bank assurance because of the crash. And then we looked at the ifa market um, that was predominantly self-employed, so we started to develop ourselves in that space. Um, so we went into that space. Now I then again like I saw an opportunity right and did I enjoy being a recruitment consultant? No, did I want to be on the phone, smashing the phone all the time where, like, at the end of the year you have to start again. You have to start again, you have to start again. I, I have a bit, I have an enjoyment about building something. Now, recruit UK wasn't mine. I I took 50% of it, didn't like the branding, didn't particularly like what it was, but I was kind of stuck in it. That's a story for another story for another day. That's a lack of confidence thing within myself to actually move on.
Speaker 1:Now what I did instead was, from the side of my desk, built the Financial Planner Life podcast. I saw an opportunity, and the opportunity was a talent shortage. I raised, you know, an older population of advisors, a huge amount of them retiring and not enough career education out there. So from my years of talking to financial planners helping businesses grow, helping people move on, I'd learned a lot. Planners helping businesses grow, helping people move on I'd learned a lot. So for me it was like well, wouldn't it be great if there was a podcast that was actually sharing the career journeys of those that work within the profession, one it will help those within the profession get ahead because they don't talk to each other. No one was talking to each other. You had a lot of financial advisors all sitting at home, all self-employed and nobody really connecting or asking each other questions. And on another note as well, well, if I raised, I raised the profession, if I brought it up, could I be the recruiter to the profession? Could I attract new talent into the profession through content creation? And that was my overarching big, shiny goal really was can I make a positive impact? Can I solve the advisor gap and therefore help reduce the advice gap. So that was my big kind of purpose-led mission and that was what I did.
Speaker 1:I just set up a podcast. I was on one. I was on one called the Recruitment Rollercoaster with Hisham. I sat down on it and he asked me about my career, about running a recruitment business, and I thought again. I was like God, I can definitely do this, because once you've done it and you're really nervous and anxious, you come away from it thinking like wow, that was so fun, like I really enjoyed it. I got buzzed from it. So.
Speaker 1:So I thought, took that experience that I had. I took the experience that I had of running a recruitment business, the people that I was connected to, and then I thought to myself, how can I, how can I use this to my advantage? Well, it becomes the marketing wheel of recruit uk. So me phoning up a company and saying hey, can I, can I recruit for you, was no longer hey, can I recruit for you, like the 20 other people who have just tried to call you. Hi, it's Sam from the Financial Planner Live podcast. I'd love to interview you about your career in financial planning because I'm trying to attract new people to the profession. Would that be of interest to you?
Speaker 2:Direct access to the candidates. That's the way it works.
Speaker 1:Straight into clients, the straight into clients. Yeah, the hardest part about recruitment is actually getting like good quality jobs on with good quality clients right and building that trust. Now, when I did that and I brought them onto the podcast itself now they might actually have got candidates directly and a lot of people did so. I was literally giving them free promotion right about their business. But what did it do? Is it built trust between me and the profession.
Speaker 1:So no longer was I in hindrance because people always say our recruits they're bastards and you know they're a necessary evil, they're like a state agent sorry if you're in a state agent, but you know if that was how we were kind of treated. So I had to build that trust. But being able to bring them into my world, being able to ask them questions because I'm helping the profession, they saw me in a different light. So all of a sudden I became this key person of influence. There was a help and not a hindrance. I wasn't trying to rip them off, I was trying to help them but that's interesting really.
Speaker 2:I suppose, before we dive too far into finance, family life, you know, obviously you were a business owner, yeah, right, and I suppose when you're a business owner, you know you get off and then it what happened. You came over and you ended up, you know, coming down the route to be employed. I mean that's a change, right, and we've spoken about this, so obviously I know things around that. I mean, there's obviously negatives and positives of both. Right, and Chris is a driving force and we all know that and that's why we're all building and growing. I mean, how's that been for you Moving from a I run my own business to I'm now employed by someone and they now make me accountable. What's the good and the bad? I mean there's always going to be good, positives and negatives. But how, how have you, how did you adapt to that and how is it going?
Speaker 1:good question, um, and I think it's a it's more of a positive than it is a negative, and I'm not just saying that. You know it really, really is. When you run your own business, you're, you're spinning multiple, multiple, multiple plates and you're dealing with lots of different people, lots of different emotions. Um, you're trying to build a culture, you're trying to build a business, you've got business partners. You're trying to deal with the tax man. You're trying to do it. It's, it's, it's, it's quite, it's quite tough, right, but it's fun and you learn a lot of skills, more skills, and you actually give yourself credit for because when you're in it, you're comparing yourself to all the rest of the businesses that are doing fantastic. You don't realize that actually, when you're in it, you're learning some serious, serious skills, right?
Speaker 2:but you end up doing things that you would never expect right. So you go in thinking I'm, I'm running the business and before long you know you're fixing the window or there's a leak in the roof, and because it's yours it, you know it's. It's a really important thing. Like Hoxton for me, is a really important business to me, and Chris has been a friend of mine for a long time and I'm really passionate about it. I want to see it grow and scale. I've learned things in different departments that I would never have ever known about, and that's probably the same for you with Recruit UK, I guess.
Speaker 1:What it does for me. I respect a business owner like you wouldn't believe, because I know how hard it is and I know the sleepless nights that you have. I know whatever you do to help people, I don't think they ever see it because inherently most people are selfish, right, they're kind of thinking about themselves and employee mindset is is often very, very much like that, and that's okay because when you're an employee, you're a hired gun and you don't have to work for any company.
Speaker 1:You can go and work wherever you want to work, right, you don't owe them anything because it's an exchange, it's a contractual agreement to come in and earn a living for a specific amount of money and you deliver a level of service. That's like a contractual agreement. So I get it right. Contract like a contractual agreement, so I get it right.
Speaker 1:But for me it was like because I had that understanding of how hard it can be to run your own business, the ups downs, the never, never anybody patting you on the back for doing a good job, right, I had a huge amount of respect for people that own businesses. So for me, when I come into, like hoxton, I look at chris and I understand. I look at him and I think flipping hell to get to this level is insane, right, and I can have an empathic level of conversation with him and a level of understanding where I appreciate the level of energy and effort that he has put into it to get to where he's got to and how hard that actually is. So one of the things I've noticed, coming on an employed basis, is that I've brought my self-employed mindset into somebody else's business, right, which, like I just said, is great. Now I'm not, I can, I'm not going in there and thinking I can do things better, right.
Speaker 1:But you cannot help it when you've run your own business. You can't help but tinker. You can't help but look at all the areas of business.
Speaker 1:Now you notice me yeah I've talked to everybody in that business. Yeah, from the day I walked in there I would talk to everybody. Talk to the cleaners. I talk to everybody because I want to know exactly what that culture is. I want to know how that culture works. I want to hear what that person's got to say about that side of the business. And I can't help but do that because in my mindset, that's what I am. I'm thinking about the security of the business. Where are the? Where are the holes in the bucket?
Speaker 2:what can, what can we do, to think, and you know there's that, that's the empath, empath side of you as well. You know, I'm, I'm, as you know, we're quite similar and if, if, you care about people and you, you show a, you know, you show people time and you spend time with people, it's amazing how much more you learn about, about what you're doing right. And I mean Chris is obviously Mr Structure, mr Process, and he's done a fantastic job of it. And I am, I would say, a little bit similar to yourself. I mean, I have 45,000 ideas on the way to work on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:I come in for a morning meeting with Chris and I've got 27 of them that I want to present at the same time and he, like, brings me back, brings me back, brings me back, and he says, well, that's the one, yeah, go off and do it. And since that's happened to me, it's been great for me. And obviously we're doing the same together now with, with everything that you're doing. And you know, I think the structure probably helps as well. I mean, I'm sure that's something that helps you and that's that's one of the benefits, right?
Speaker 1:so coming coming into to hoxton, having access to um the leadership team, having access to chris, who's run his own business, and reporting directly into chris, right? I think what people often forget when they're employed is they have access to some really experienced people. Use them, because it's part of your package. I have access to chris. If I was to pay to have access to chris and for him to hold me accountable and to challenge my thinking, um, and to listen to my ideas, it would cost me a fortune to get a coach an absolute fortune. So one of the things I'm instantly respectful of is people's time and I'm instantly respectful of their knowledge and their experience, and I want to soak that up as much as possible. So that's a value add when you've been employed and you can't afford to get these coaches and everything. So we weren't flush company, right?
Speaker 2:well, it's just you, isn't it? You're sitting there going like, and you sit there and when times get hard, I mean it's funny. You said something before that made me think about this, but I mean my, I think. So I spoke about my dad before.
Speaker 2:My dad had a restaurant in north wales for 40 years and some days he'd come, he'd come into work and he'd be in a foul mood and you know you get the brunt of it and you think you drop a plate and suddenly you get, oh, it's like, oh my god, but it was the 75 000 other things that were going on in the background that you didn't know. As a business owner, because you're the person that holds all the flack and the person that's got to deal with it. Right, and you're right. I mean, sometimes I look at Chris and go what do you really speak to? To find out what you're doing. And we all know he goes and gets coaching and things like that. But it's good to have those people. I mean, I bounce ideas off you. I'll bounce an idea off Charlie. You know I've got some same thing.
Speaker 1:You've got the time right the word that I love is entrepreneurialism.
Speaker 1:Okay I'm an entrepreneurial person um, do I want to run my own business on my own? The answer to that, mate, is no, even though every day I think to myself I could do this on my own. I could do this on my own because that's the way my brain works. Sometimes, doing it on my own is hard because of the type of person I am. Yeah, I, I, I I'm undiagnosed adhd. Um, I, I have a million and one ideas you and I are are very similar and I need structure. I, I need to be. Do you know what I need? I need, I need, I need an environment.
Speaker 2:I need the boundaries in the environment, but I need the space to be entrepreneurial and that's what I found at hoxton bit of both, a bit of accountability, bit of structure but at the same time, be able to go and do creative things and go from there right.
Speaker 1:I crave accountability, yeah, yeah some of the most successful things I've done to change myself in my life was when I've been held accountable by somebody and it's had a massive.
Speaker 1:I gave up alcohol right because I was held accountable by somebody, because I went through a 12-step process yeah, I had to then train somebody else through it, which kept me accountable, kept me accountable to the group when I had to turn up every single week. Do you think I wanted to walk into an aa meeting every single week and say hello, my name's sam. I'm an alcoholic. I did it because it held me accountable and I consistently did it all the time. And as I went in there and I started to see myself develop, I started to be able to help other people around me and I started to see the person who just walked through the door, who didn't understand what affliction was going through, going on, and they didn't understand that they could actually get better.
Speaker 1:And that's how I feel when I'm in a work environment. I enjoy being in the boundaries, I enjoy having mentors, I enjoy listening, learning and leaning into people and I respect their time. And it's like and that's the word intrapreneurialism and like for me it's perfect, because that's the type of person that I am and I'm not. I wouldn't say, you know, I fought really hard because, because there was an element of me that was like am I giving up? Am I giving up on my dream of being able to build and run my own business? And I say, sam, you ran your business for 16 years. It was a seven-figure turnover company. You built a podcast. You still got a podcast and now you're going to use that podcast to your advantage, working in partnership with hoxton wealth, which is an international financial planning firm. Sam, you're still a business owner, you're still an entrepreneur, you're still you're still doing it that's the funny thing there, isn't it?
Speaker 2:because obviously we launched our alt tip last year, which, well, this year, sorry which is obviously a share of the business going back to the people in the business, and the point behind that is that, technically, everyone's a business owner. Yeah, and you're right, do it. Doing it on your own when it's good is amazing, right, because you're running it, you're out in front, everyone's looking oh my god, look at sam, look what he's done. Yeah, when it's bad, it's bloody awful. Yeah, right, it's horrible, you know, and you start there on your own because you're still left, still on your own, and nobody comes and puts their arm around you.
Speaker 2:And that's what I've noticed. I mean, last year there was change in the market. Obviously, you know everything went on with with pensions. We were quite a pension focused company and we're all sat there, you know, in in the boardroom going how are we going to do now? And when you're having a bad day, there's someone there next to you, that's that maybe he's having a good day. That picks you up, and you and I quite seem to go the other way. So when I'm having a bad day, you're having a good day and you pick me up and and I think that's the benefit of being in a company as well right, and you know, everyone's moving towards the same goal and everyone, the big thing that we're we talk about is we, we all know what the goals are. It's not like we've got Chris, has got his goals and you've got your goals. Everyone's heading towards the same one. Yeah, um, which is good, but yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:So employed financial planner life I mean, I did not understand how big financial planner life was until, you know, you came over and met. You started listening to the podcasts. I think I've learned more about financial planning in the uk from listening to your podcast than any book or any exam, than anything I've ever done, because you you can only learn financial planning from hearing about it and case studies and listening to what you do. A textbook can teach you the the process, but it can't teach you everything else and you're the tool you've created there. I mean, I use your podcasts with people in the company. So somebody came to me recently saying they wanted to niche into something. I said well, and she's a female planner. And she said I'm really interested in divorce and you know what happens with that and you'd had a podcast with that camera griffith, yeah, who specializes in people divorcing ceos and I was like multi-millionaire ceos, multi-millionaire ceos, listen to that. She went off and listened to it. She's like that's what I'm gonna do yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's hundreds of videos, which is exactly what we're doing right now, right, with the hoxton life podcast. It's when we're recruiting people or we're speaking to people and they say well, what's it like? You say, well, there's 24 videos online. Now go and listen to all of them. You'll know what every single role is like. It's pretty incredible really. It's education, yeah, education, career education.
Speaker 1:There was no financial planning, career education, and someone had to step up and do that and I felt it was a problem that needed to be fixed. I didn't think the profession was going to fix it. I think it had to be fixed by somebody who specializes in careers and it had to be somebody from outside of it. And I saw the gap, I saw the niche and people are trying to follow me and you know there's a few that have come out now, um, but you know, I pioneered it and I and I led the way. Um, I want to go back to like another reason why Hoxton right.
Speaker 1:Well, chris is a visionary. He understood what the financial plan of life was and when I pitched to him, look, why don't you have the Hoxton life? Why don't you have this? And this is how it is. You know your, your your most valuable talent, attraction, asset is your staff. It's the people within the business, because they're relatable. Someone might watch a great episode but jacob, but now I'm just like jacob. Jacob's done really, really well. You know, maybe, maybe I can do well at hoxton.
Speaker 1:You know they might hear the person who's been really struggling, self-employed, to hit that. You know they hit the ceiling of 20 million and they can't push through it and they're thinking, well, how am I going to do this? They really wanted to do it, so they left and they joined hoxton. We built a team around them, that entrepreneur type individual you know, you might hear about, you know the um, the plans for the future of the uk and the amazing things that we're doing and the type of person jj is and the type of business that he wants to build in the uk. And someone goes. I've been waiting for somebody like that to come along. The fact that you're a very young business and we are a very young business. Nobody out there is really as young as us, right, and I was like that's so unique. So there's so many things that get hidden and when you bring it to the surface and you show it, you don't realize just how powerful the people within the business are.
Speaker 2:They're hidden away a lot in a lot of companies but it's funny you say that because I'm talking about finance, but in life again and we go back to that. But we obviously you came on board. Yeah, you know, we then started doing a few podcasts and then, you know, I was on the podcast and different things. I mean I've had people come for interviews quoting things I've said on the podcast right and the next thing.
Speaker 2:I've got people like my mum saying oh, I met a financial planner the other day. She knows who you are in north wales because she listened to a podcast that you put out. So you know, we blew up on the on the uk stage and which has been amazing because obviously it shows that we're not just some international financial company. You know, we are across multi-jurisdiction, which is what we're trying to create, and it's kind of opened up this whole new world which is obviously going to develop further with the hoxton life and the financial plan of life as you continue to do your events and grow it. But it's amazing how people can relate to it. You know you can listen, as you just said, and you can.
Speaker 2:That was me or I can do that, or it wasn't actually that easy for that person. You know I've been here 12 years, right, and the first four were pretty bloody tough, you know. And now obviously I've got clients and I manage people on that and people look at me oh God, he's got it good. They don't know all of that stuff that you know you went through and you know that comes to the surface of these things. It's really really, really interesting.
Speaker 1:Do you know? What's really really important as well Is that you don't spend your whole time trying to build a podcast that has all the big hitters on it. Yeah, because you know people get bored of the fact that everyone's a big hitter. Look, people love to understand and know that someone's built a business like Chris Ball from 36 million to 2 billion. It's an and people are intrigued and they are interested about that, but not everybody relates to that.
Speaker 1:Someone might be, you know, a female working on her own as a power planner and she's in a business where the predominantly the team are male and they're not investing in her career development. But she's real aspirations to be an advisor, but they're just not investing in her. So she listens to an episode with somebody on the podcast. He's gone through that exact same thing and it gives her the confidence and the amount of messages I receive daily from people who say like I've got into the profession or I've pushed forward because of you, I've gone self-employed because of your podcast, and I just want to say thank you. And that's the thing, right, real stories, real people, and it has to be relatable. I had a lady come on yesterday, right, unbelievable story. Grew up in kyrgyzstan. She's like plays this kyrgyzstan national um guitar type thing. She's like the only person in the uk that does it. She uses it for events yeah, to create networking events right.
Speaker 1:She, you know her english is incredible for the fact that she self-taught herself to then pass the qualifications when she didn't speak english. You know her journey from having she spoke about an alcoholic father in Kyrgyzstan and her determination to push forward and push forward and now she runs her own financial planning practice. And I was like, look, it wasn't the most free flowing of conversations, if you like, because of the English, but I had to bring her on because I had to show people that financial planning is for everybody.
Speaker 2:But you, you know, you said that there you put the big hitters on right, all of the people that you'd consider to be big hitters or the the top people. They all started somewhere right.
Speaker 2:I mean, like I started as a business development manager, got given a phone yeah, it was a mobile phone. We didn't even have a landline, you know it was. So we're currently and you're interviewing all of the younger guys in our company. In five years, seven years, ten years, they will be doing what I'm doing and what Chris is doing and what you're doing and you know all those sorts of things I mean, and it's incredible.
Speaker 2:But I mean, obviously the funny thing was we talk about the content and you know, chris, and what we did. I remember we had the conversation when you came over and Chris said we need to get content, we've got to do content. And then, you know, the conversations happened and we were looking at it going. You've spent four, five, six years was it building financial four, five years, building financial plan of life, and that would have had challenges along the way. You know, I mean, tell me what, when you started it, obviously you had this great idea. I can almost guarantee it didn't just go ding, ding, ding, ding ding. I mean, what challenges did you face? You know, setting up a podcast, it must have been, must have been tough yeah.
Speaker 1:So I started off with this idea that I would do it face to face, high quality and all of that, and then lockdown hit. So I was like, damn, what am I going to do? Um, anyways, I thought, well, I'm going to have to do something. You know, we know, what it's like being the mindset that I am yeah instantly catastrophized everything's over, going to lose my business, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Right, I just um barked on a journey of giving up booze and all that kind of stuff. So I was like, oh God, I don't need this right now. So it was like, well, I could either. There's probably a LinkedIn post out there somewhere. I have to find it soon. I put it out.
Speaker 1:Amazing businesses were set up during the toughest times, right, and I'm set today I'm announcing the financial plan of life is going to be one of those businesses. You know, I'm going to take this hardship which is shitting myself, I'm going to lose my business and all of that. And I just hyper focused on financial plan of life. So I set myself up in my office. I put my gym stuff in there as well weights and all of that kind of stuff and I lived in the office and everyone else is working from home, right, I was a business owner. I wasn't getting paid any kind of money from the government. I had to, I had to, I had to graft, right. So I thought, sorry, I'm gonna invest all my time in that. So, peter kamalafay, from the conversation of money, it was recently one really good friends of him and now he's moving out to dubai.
Speaker 1:It's amazing yeah, because he started his conversation of money at the same time as I did. He was one of the first people who helped me set up online wow my first first guests as well. So you have to think like well, how am I gonna, on a very small budget it's very small budget how am I gonna do this online? I had to buy the bloody podcast mics. I had to buy the cameras. They look shit. Um, I had to. How am I gonna edit it so it looks really good?
Speaker 1:so you go through all these processes, using fiverr and all of that and working out it all and I'm writing all the notes myself and um editing the episodes myself I had to do absolutely everything right and it's a drag and I didn't earn any money because all I was focused on was financial plan of life and it wasn't making me any money right.
Speaker 1:But I was trying to convince everybody in the business that this is the marketing wheel that's going to make us popular. It's going to make us massively famous. You know, everyone's going to know who we are because of this podcast, no-transcript, the aspirational money that I wanted because I had to. I had to literally work for free, if you like on the financial plan of life for so many years and that's hard, really hard, when all your currency is is likes, comments, shares, impressions and views and messages, and you have to trust the feedback of an audience to realize that you're going places in this happening and that something later on the line, down the line, will pay you dividends. Because if you put good out, the whole point of me was like right, if I put goodness out there, goodness is going to come back to me.
Speaker 2:If do good things for people, it always comes back around. I mean, it's it's like any like guys starting off in our, our pathway program, right, yeah, you know, some of them after six months are looking at me going god, this is tough. Yeah, you know it's tough, right, and they want to quit and they want to throw in the talent. It must have been, you must have had their moments with financial plan of life and I imagine it with just you doing it, with no, no support. I mean I never.
Speaker 1:I pushed you through I never wanted to throw the towel in with financial life.
Speaker 1:I wanted to throw a towel in my recruitment company yeah multiple times I wanted to pull away and just have the financial plan of life myself, and there was an opportunity for me to do that at one point. I brought in the guys who were running the recruit uk and I kind of said, like this is what I want to do, and I kind of convinced me to stay a year longer and then within that year shit hit the fan and I had to sell the business yeah, um, and I kind of wish I had the courage at that point to have gone away, because my intuition was telling me that it was doing well, because after about three years I started winning clients.
Speaker 1:So I created the financial plan of life academy which was dedicated to training and developing new people. So I did that. I started doing events and speaking at events. I started to actually monetize my podcast by partnering with companies saying come on my podcast, let's talk about the careers within your business. It will drive new business to you. So I started working with Legal in General. I set up the Financial Planner Live Studios. So I started doing videos and podcast services for companies like Legal in General, St James.
Speaker 2:Place Foster.
Speaker 1:De Novo. So I was kind of like, wow, this is working. So in my fourth year I think it worked out as something like I turned over just over 200,000 quid and the last month I left Recruit UK, right. So I had to pay a pretty chunky old tax bill. I did 100 grand in one month, bloody hell. But I had to stick into Recruit UK to keep Recruit UK up and I'm glad I did it because it kept jobs for people, right. But like you, right but like you can imagine, that was tough and that was hard.
Speaker 1:Now, when that happened and I went through everything with my recruitment business, that hit me hard mentally because selling a business and leaving something that you've built for 16 years is like it was like losing your identity. You lost my, lost my identity, even though I held on to recruit a financial plan of life, which I love, because the biggest fear for me was I was going to lose financial plan of life in this whole process because it was underneath recruit uk and blah blah. So I was like that screwed me up, right, my brain was a bit frazzled and a bit fried and everything like that. So that was the hardest part was coming up from there like, how do I raise myself back up again? And it was just a sole belief that, look, I believe in financial plan of life, I believe in what it was going to do for me, and I went back out to the market on my own and I had to see what my worth was and I stumbled across chris that's funny.
Speaker 2:that isn't it, because the I was just about to say the same thing. The reason why financial plan of life is a success is not because it's not because it you know, you've got people coming on there and people speaking. It's's because you genuinely, genuinely are passionate about it. You believe in it and, like you just said there, you made no money from it for years but you believed it would become good. And having that belief and want thing, I mean, that shows through and you couldn't have the enthusiasm you do if you didn't want to do so. It was like you know. It was fun. Yeah, it was like you know.
Speaker 1:It was fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was like when I you know, when Chris set up a business with Hoxton, you know he believed in it and he stuck at it and I'm sure he's had tough times but and he still believes in it, and we all do. And it's like financial planning the thing I love most about financial planning well, it still is, but you know that that makes you warm. It means that you've done a great job. Now my role's changed slightly and now I'm helping advisors. I'm still working with clients uh, my client bank but you know I get more enjoyment out of seeing young guys come through pass an exam than I'm doing. You know, if you've got that belief, it'll always go far, and you've.
Speaker 1:You've really proven that with what you've done, right yeah, and and chris attended me quite recently because I've been um. I said to him I'm money motivators. He goes I don't think you are money motivators and I was like am I motivated or am I not money? I want to earn good money right um, I'm security motivators I want to feel secure um, and I want to do what I want to do.
Speaker 1:I want to enjoy my job okay and a byproduct of me enjoying my job is I help people.
Speaker 1:It has a knock-on effect and I feel like what I do with financial plan of life and now what I'm doing with hoxton is that again, there is a bigger picture at play here financial well-being. So for me, if I do a good job, if I attract more people to the profession, if I help hoxton win new clients or attract new advisors, a byproduct of that is that I'm going to help people who are suffering perhaps with their financial well-being, which happens in whatever. It's non-discriminatory. You have millions of quid, but you could still be massively stressed out by things, right, or you could have no money, right. If I can create something that has a knock-on effect of helping people, then I'm doing a good job and that's my byproduct is I'm doing a good job if I can earn a few quid off the back of that? Yeah, fantastic. And if I can do that in a space where I can play because I love playing, yeah, I'm a creative I love I love playing and I found my sand pit.
Speaker 1:I look at hoxton as my sand pit funny, funny.
Speaker 2:you're in the sandpit, I'm in the sandpit. There you go.
Speaker 1:Bang on. So when I look at this and I think to myself I wanted to be a financial planner. I didn't want to be a financial planner, but I wanted to grow a financial planning business. To be able to come into one and start being able to play and have the autonomy and the freedom to do that and to be trusted to do that was really, really powerful.
Speaker 2:And that's so important, right, you know, you just hit a couple of nerves there. A big one of mine is we're in Dubai, right, yeah, dubai can get hold of you, grab hold of you, spin you around in a whirlwind and chuck you out in a real state, and that financial well-being actually links into mental well-being. You know, it's the international financial space didn't have the best name. You know, I regularly see posts on social media saying I don't speak to a financial planner, they're all crooks. Yeah, you know, that's great if you know how to budget, you know how to invest, you know how to save. And I would meet people I still do meet people, right, and they've been here 10 years, um, and you, you sit down with them and you know it might be through a social circle and I'll say you know, they say what did find out?
Speaker 2:oh, financial planner. Oh. And then you say, well, how's your financial planning going? They said, well, actually I've not taken any financial planning because everyone over here is crooks. I said, oh, so you're managing to save? Well, no, actually I've not saved anything either. Oh, oh, okay.
Speaker 2:So that advice that you're reading on social media actually sends you the way, and that's why I'm so passionate about this.
Speaker 2:You know what we're talking about, what we doing, and you showcasing the company so people can see who we are and see that we do good things.
Speaker 2:Because actually those people that get deterred and you know that financial well being is a big thing you know they could be sat in the house worrying how they're going to pay the rent and how they're going to leave the country, and you know that comes into that mental side as well, which is which is quite frightening. So I think what we can do with this podcast and with your podcast and what you're doing with it's incredible is is showcase what we we do and how we help people, and I suppose over time we can give education, and I've always believed that if you give enough away for enough free stuff away, it'll all come back round. I mean, I sit a lot of meetings and I know there's not going to be any business there, but I still take the meeting because I want to help the people. It's a fine line. You know you've got to. You can't go too far otherwise, because your time is your time is your money.
Speaker 1:But you know you do a lot of that, which is which is really admirable the beautiful thing about like a podcast this is what I was saying to you guys as well like okay one is that you are contributing to attracting more quality talent to the international market so we can turn it into a profession. The world is going global, people are moving around. Hoxton isn't a Mickey Mouse company. They're a quality financial planning company. If I understand the financial planning market right, I wouldn't go and join a Mickey Mouse company. There's plenty of offers that I had from companies that wanted me to come on board right. I chose Hoxton because it's unique. It is insanely unique from the training and the development that you give brand new people. Teaching them actually how to pick up the telephone and interact with clients is like something that they don't do in the uk to being able to take somebody with no experience all the way through what I would consider to be a career pathway, to be able to sell your business on an internal basis and exit the profession with an l tip in place.
Speaker 1:International market regulated heavily. You had four of the regulators come in a couple of years before I even joined and you pass that with flying colors. I mean there might have been a few sweats going on, yeah, but you pass the flying colors. There was nothing there apart from a load of people on the outside trying to neg me out as to why I shouldn't join, and I was like you haven't got a clue, and the very fact you're trying to neg me out makes me think you haven't got. You haven't got a clue and you're mickey mouse and I had a couple of offers and I turned them down because of the negativity towards it, and not once did chris actually try to sell to me not once. And nobody in that business tried to sell to me, not not once.
Speaker 1:Now, the things that we're doing and what I love is you are open to my approach. You are open to be open, transparent, and that is hugely important. It doesn't matter if a client stumbles across this, it shouldn't matter. They should understand who they're working with and the great work that we're doing, the contribution we are making to the financial planning profession to be able to educate others as to why they should come out here and what to look out for and what a great career actually looks like, and that, to me, was really important, and that was one of chris's motivators. He wanted to build the profession out here in dubai. We should be collaborating. It shouldn't be competition. We should be lifting each other up, and that was massively important to me because that was totally against the grain of what people were telling me it's funny, isn't it?
Speaker 2:you know I will never bad mouth anyone because, well one, I think it's a sign of weakness. I think you know you want to say well, you know, I don't know what those guys are doing over there. You want to sell what we do and how we do it and how we're going to take it forward. So Hoxton Life. Then I mean, obviously, the journey started. I mean these, you know, the podcasts are just amazing. Where's it going? I mean, I know you've got these grand ideas. Are you going to give everyone a little bit more about how you see it moving?
Speaker 1:Well, interestingly, budget time so.
Speaker 1:I've just worked out my budget for the year, which is amazing for somebody like me, because, you can imagine, I'm in my own recruitment business. It was month to month, so to be able to plan for a whole 12 months is insane. It's pretty hard to do as well, though, isn't it? So for me, it's about building a creative team, right? So I want to build a creative team. I want to start having a YouTube specialist come on in. I've got Julia, who's doing a fantastic job in social media for me at the moment. I want to improve upon her skillset and train and develop her even further, because she's going to be indispensable. She's that side of me that I struggle with, which is the organization and all of that, and she's freeing up that ability for me to spend more time in front of the camera, behind the camera and creating content, and that's where we're going.
Speaker 1:Hoxton Wealth is an international business. It's a financial planning business, and it does an amazing job for both clients and it does an amazing thing for advisors. Now how can I make that even more obvious to everybody internationally? Well, for me, it's about making content more accessible, so we're going to create content around how we help clients. We're going to put that onto a brand new YouTube channel specifically also looking at the expat community. That's one of my goals for the next 12 months. I'm playing around with some of those ideas at the moment so we can bring people like you on. It's a process that we've gone through right.
Speaker 1:Your confidence has gone up because you've come on my podcast. Now you're sitting here interviewing me, right? Tommy came in a couple of minutes ago. He sat down on this podcast and I started asking him questions about what problems he's solving for his clients. I had Dan Abbott come on about tax. I'm doing that for a reason to build confidence, so I can create snippets to give back and you go, wow, that's some value add. Now, if I'm doing that, then you're going to buy into the channel. And if you buy into the channel, you're going to want to get in front of the camera and you're going to want to start answering those questions that are going through the head of our target clients and our clients. So we want to be able to create content that's adding value. So that's one of the things I'm going to be doing next year is working with the wider business. It's not the sam oak show, it's the hoxton wealth show, and I want everybody to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that I'm especially excited about is I did a little documentary you might have seen it with mike yule yeah, it was awesome and I went over to france and I created a mini documentary about his journey and his story because I wanted to bring to life the international financial planning career. And he was over in france. Now I want to do that in every place that we've got advisors, so I want everybody to see each different location, how different each location actually is, and the fact that there is an advisor there from hoxton wealth delivering financial planning to the expat community, and how connected it can actually be. Let's take that one step further.
Speaker 1:What I want to do is create advice videos to that person talking about the advice that they're given, not just their career and where their career is actually going, and then I want to entwine into that testimonials. We can use testimonials off of the website, right, trust pilot. We're in a day and age at the moment where people aren't very trusting anymore of reviews. Now, if I can create videos of testimonials of clients that we have helped in a similar vein that I did with mike yule, I think we've got something incredibly powerful. When you're doing it here, you're doing it there, you're doing it in this country, this country, this country and the advisor story and your vice story and the client story and you start to bring them all together, you're connecting Hoxton Wealth visually, audibly, throughout the whole world, and I don't think there's one company out there that's doing it HSBC have got that but there isn't one wealth management company that are creating that content and bringing it to life through content, and that content is there forever, so we can start to use that content in so many different ways. Right, I'm using my Financial Planner Life Studios team, the great videographers that I'm using right to create awesome content for me and for the clients that I work with. They're coming on board to help create that, and the aim of the game, for me as well, is that if we're going to use content, if we're going to create content, we're going to repurpose that content. So we're covering every single social media site. We're repurposing it into articles and blogs and everything.
Speaker 1:Now, that doesn't come easy and that's not cheap, and the very fact that Chris yourself, charlie, can see how that investments work and you're believing in me that I can do that has fired me right up. So that's what I'm excited about. I want to create. You can't move for Hoxton Wealth. You type something into google. It comes up. It could be a video, it could be a blog, it could be a social media post on instagram, tiktok, linkedin, a linkedin newsletter, an audio podcast, a youtube channel.
Speaker 2:That's where I'm going with this so interesting, then I mean we're coming towards the end, so we'll have to uh thing. But two things then. The first thing if you were flip it back the other way, I'm a young financial planner now. Okay, You're very passionate about content and everything else. What would be your three tips for me about building my brand? You know I want to go and build my brand and I know you're very, very passionate about this. What would you tell me to do to go out and build my brand in the international space?
Speaker 1:To build your brand in the international space.
Speaker 1:I would try to pick a niche. So I'd look at a niche audience, somebody that you might connect with and understand the problems and the issues that they might have, because perhaps you've been solving those for your clients. I start talking about those problems that I'm solving and I start to build that persona of the client that I'm looking for and I share content. Build that persona of the client that I'm looking for and I share content around that. This is what I'm doing for my, for my clients. These are the types of problems that they're experiencing. Um, these, are you experiencing these types of things, right? So then I might create some very short video clips. I might just talk into a camera for an hour about all the problems that they're experiencing.
Speaker 1:I'll send that hour-long clip over to somebody on fiverr right who's pretty good at editing, editing videos and if anybody wants to know anybody like that, give me a shout um, and they'll turn that into multiple clips for me and I'd start to push video content out. I would turn those subjects then into articles and I would hyper focus on linkedin. Linkedin is networking on steroids. Your clients are living on linkedin. I get myself a sales navigator and I start to look at the types of clients I'm looking at based on their earnings, who they work for. Where have they been? Have they ever been in America? They probably got 401k. I'd niche, niche, niche, niche, niche, niche create content that is niche, niche, niche, niche, niche.
Speaker 1:Now, I wouldn't just put content out there and hope for the best, and it will come to me because I can tell you this right False economy Creating content and putting it out on social media is not going to make you wealthy. Trust me on that one. I did it for a very, very long time. People need to be contacted and the funny thing is you contact them and they go oh, I've seen your content, sam. God, it's like talking to you on the podcast, listening to you all the time. You know how are you. I'm like, yeah, good, like I used to think about sam oaks oh, I knew you and that was powerful. So get yourself out there solving problems a help, not a hindrance. Don't sell, sell, sell, sell, sell all the time. Right, think about the problems that you're solving, put it into easily digestible, bite-sized bits of content and make sure that you're giving away and you're not coming across as spanky or you're trying to take from somebody.
Speaker 1:Right, and use linkedin. You know, I bang on about the 2010 five method all the time. Right, 20 connections a day, um. 10 messages, um, uh, sorry, 10 comments, likes or engagements and five messages. If you do that every single day and you're super laser focused because you can only add 100 people a day anyway right, if you're super laser focused, you're going to start building that audience up Now as those people start to engage with you and they start liking your content.
Speaker 1:Those are the people that you need to start sending messages to, you need to start introducing yourself to, because they're fresh and they're new and they're engaging with your content, and they'll start to see that for a couple of months sorry, a couple of weeks after connecting with you, right? So that's the kind of thing that I would do is, don't just push things out and hope it comes to you. Use linkedin messaging and be really, really specific on the type of person that you're targeting, but back it up with content. So when they go who is this person? And they actually start to see your content, they go well, do you know what?
Speaker 1:yeah, I will pick up the phone to jacob and it does work.
Speaker 2:You know, you've you told me to do it and it's's amazing. It's just gone a little bit like that. So you know, I get more feel a little bit popular almost, so it's quite a thing, so it's good yeah.
Speaker 1:It makes you feel popular.
Speaker 1:You become a key person of influence you stand out. One of the things I would absolutely say as well is don't shy away from showing your true colours. Don't shy away from showing who you are. Right W be authentic.
Speaker 1:I've talked about all sorts of things from me sharing. When I put a post out about giving up alcohol it was year five or something like that the amount of people that were related and got messages and said your post has inspired me to give up drinking alcohol. You know, when you talk about it on the podcast, when you talk about your mental health struggles, your work you do with talk club, you know I aligned myself with a charity that dealt with men's mental health because it was so, so important to me. If I had a platform and I had the I had the opportunity to be able to share a solution to a problem that someone might be experiencing, then it would be really wrong of me not to do that so and and that's something again that I've been talking to chris about I want to bring into hoxton next year I want to.
Speaker 1:I want something that aligns to the business, that's adding value to the people in the community around us, and I think well-being, mental health, is a big deal over here in the uae and I think it's something that we should absolutely be promoting, I mean we definitely will and someone we've spoken about, really, but it's a thing.
Speaker 2:But well, hopefully everyone listens right to the end so they can hear your key, key traits and key points. We'll have to short purpose that one and get it out there. But, sam, it's been, uh, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've actually quite enjoyed it, mate and uh, hopefully I wasn't, uh wasn't too rough on you mate, you were quality.
Speaker 1:I think you know the whole point and I said this at the conference, didn't I? I said this hoxton life is not my podcast, it's not the sam oak show. So, again, you being able to interview me shows me that a little bit later on down the line, you're going to be doing a fair bit of hosting on this podcast, because it's our podcast, it's not my podcast and this is what it's all about. So, again, we're creating culture through podcasting and video and you're part of that journey.
Speaker 2:It's not my show well, you, you helped us get there, but for sure. So here's to 2025 and where it'll take us. Yeah, I can't wait, mate, it's gonna be pumping.