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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
How to Become a Financial Planner in 2025 – Trainee Pathway Explained!
🚀 Want to become a top financial planner?
Too many people rush into advising without the right skills, client base, or long-term vision—leading to failure. That’s why we created the Hoxton Wealth Pathway Programme, a structured, three-year, salaried journey that sets you up for success.
In this episode of The Hoxton Life Podcast, we sit down with Chris Ball (CEO) and Jacob Hall to break down how the Pathway Programme works, why it’s different, and how it’s already producing some of the industry's top advisers.
🔹 What You’ll Learn:
- The biggest mistakes new financial planners make
- How our 3-year programme prepares you for real success
- The importance of prospecting, technical knowledge, and client experience
- Success stories like Ravi Singh, who built a thriving career through the Pathway
- Why this salaried programme is different from self-employed academy models
- How we’re actively hiring right now—could you be next?
📌 Apply Now
🎧 Listen to Ravi Singh’s success story
💬 Join the Hoxton Life community
If you're serious about a long-term career in financial planning, this is the place to start!
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.
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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!
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You are not going to earn a million pounds in your 20s. Where you will start to earn a million pounds is in your 50s, if you rush these processes generally.
Speaker 2:What happens is, they'll do quite well and they'll rush. They'll step up to the second stage of being an advisor and then they'll plateau. Nothing good comes quickly.
Speaker 3:It's tough, it's horrible, it's hard. That's what essentially an apprenticeship actually is. We're not coming in, you know. Don't come in and expect to be wrapped in cotton wool. We expect you to come in and we're going to train, develop you and push you really really hard to be the best version of yourself that possibly be.
Speaker 1:We want people to look at it and go it's not for me, Because if it's not for you, then it's not for us either. This is what we expect and this is what we ever stop prospecting and growing and learning that the day you stop is the day that you will really start to go backwards. And I cannot emphasize that more.
Speaker 3:Hey, chris, jacob, welcome back to the Hoxton Life podcast, and today we're going to dive straight into the pathway program. This is our trainee to superstar financial planner program. It takes three years, okay, okay, but let's give the listeners a real insight into what to expect. It is very different. It's very unique. I've had the privilege of being able to see lots of different trainee programs, especially across the uk. I'm especially impressed with ours. But first off, just give us a bit of an overview. Um where, what have you done so far with the pathway? It's not brand new. And also, what are we doing this year?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think. Look, we started the pathway program because what we realized was that all of the successful people within our business um, successful, but I mean advisors that are that are able to take on new clients, advisors that have the most amount of AUM, advisors that are very good with their clients actually all started off in a similar role, which was previously what Jake and I would have had our previous firm named as a what was called a coordinator, so it was a business development manager and it got us thinking that, actually, if we looked over the top 20 people in our business, that's, I think there was two that didn't start from there. So it became quite clear to us that actually, if we wanted to make the business scalable and to be able to sustain the levels of growth that we're doing, we have to have new advisors, new talent, new blood coming in, and we either do that by recruiting people that are already financial advisors so you know the age old going to poach them from other businesses, which obviously offers value in itself as well, but the only way that you can truly scale to something huge would be to train them and build them in-house. Now there's two reasons why that's really good.
Speaker 1:First reason it's really good from a company point of view because we get a lot of time from them at the start and we can really mould them into what we want to be that age-old saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks, whereas with these guys we've got them very fresh normally not, or hardly any industry experience, and they're coming to us with an open mind and wanting to learn. There's other things that we'll go through, which you know, characteristics that we really look for. But really I suppose it's great that we can give back and give people opportunity that maybe didn't have opportunity before. But as a business it's super important for us because we are building the next jakes, we're building the next chris's, we're building the next tommy's um, you know all the people through it I think some people look at the training and development of the next generation almost being like a charity thing.
Speaker 3:You can see it on linkedin a lot. Everyone's like we should be supporting the next generation and absolutely 100. We should be supporting the next generation. Right, it's great that you see financial advisors offering mentoring, their time to support people, but what they really need and one thing that I've noticed is they need a clear, structured career framework. Right, they absolutely need that discipline, they need those boundaries, they need the expertise where somebody can hold their hand and take them through the whole process. Now, there's always been a kind of lack of understanding of timescales when it comes to trainee programs. You guys at Hoxton us, we sat down and we worked out that three years from joining with, say no experience to being ready to become a financial planner was a realistic timescale. Jacob, why did we come to that conclusion? I?
Speaker 2:suppose just on what Chris was saying, then I suppose the first thing is we want people to come in now and start with Hoxton, and they can start from any walk of life, as long as they've got the key traits that we need right. If you rush these processes and I've seen it we've allowed people to rush a process and generally what happens is they'll do quite well and they'll rush, they'll step up to the second stage of being an advisor and then they'll plateau, whereas what we've looked at is the people that did the best in that program are the ones that did it for longer. So Ravi I know we've had him on the podcast Ravi was in that program for four or five years. It wasn't the program we have now, but it was a program. He stepped up and hit the ground running because he learned every part of the process all the way through. He didn't just learn how to find clients, he learned how to process business. He learned how to do applications. He learned the para planning side of it.
Speaker 2:So when you become an advisor you're so much more rounded and you can only get that with time. You can't rush that because it's experience that's gained from doing, not from reading, so you could read every book under the sun, but you won't get that on the ground experience and you also can't inundate them with too much at once because you bring someone let's take a young person like alex japp, who's just started with really young, 18 years old. If you try to push him through the first part, which is prospecting, to the next part, which is the advice process, the next part, he wouldn't intake that information and ingrain it in him. We want basically want them to learn it, so it's second nature before they move to the next phase. So it's that longer process to make sure that when they hit the ground of an advisor, they hit it running and there's no limitations to how fast they can grow let's talk about Ravi.
Speaker 3:He is a success story and again, what I want people to understand is you didn't just pull the pathway out this year. This is something you've been working on, fine-tuning and developing over the last few years and Ravi is somebody who's gone through that process Last decade. There we go, the last decade right. So there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of experience. No-transcript financial planning. Ravi, I think, was three to five years yeah, and it was five. It was five years, which sounds like a huge amount of time to to to be a training financial planner. But if anyone's listened to this episode, go and listen to Ravi's episode as well, because Ravi will tell you that's exactly the amount of time that he required and he's an absolute superstar within our business, absolutely nailing it right now. So if I was to look to anybody within that business it was a blueprint for success of following a structure it would be someone like Ravi. So it's well worth sort of mentioning.
Speaker 3:If anyone's thinking I haven't got, I haven't got that time, I want to do it now. You know instant gratification. We all want things straight away. Don't fall into the trap that within two years you're going to be a financial planner. There are plenty of academies out there, but they'll take you one and in two years they're expecting you to be up and running, running your own practice. I mean, it does feel a little bit scary when you look at it that way in my eyes. What do you think it does?
Speaker 1:and I think the issue that you have now is with younger generations and I'm sounding like an old man, but everyone wants everything now, like there's an entitlement and there is a. I want it now. I deserve it now. Give it to me now. And you know, look, I always use the example of delivery. You can try if I go on there and I there's two, there's two places that I can order food from, one slightly subpar to the other, I will always choose the quickest one. So, even if it's slightly worse, I will choose quick, I will choose time. And Bezos said people or customers, clients and this comes back to everyone in general is two things they want is things for cheaper and things quicker. People will never want things slower and they will never want things more expensive. So we live in an age now where everything is quick, quick, quick, quick, quick and people think that that's how it should be.
Speaker 1:With their careers I mean, arguably the people that are the most successful have normally been doing it the longest period of time. So the books of business that we buy now off of retiring IFAs, we're not buying them when they're 30. They're not getting out of it when they're 30. We're normally buying it when they're 60, when they've accumulated millions upon millions of assets over that time and have had a really long career. You could be doing this job till you're 70, 80. I mean, we was going to buy a guy's business. It didn't go through in the end half a billion. He has a team of a uh and it's. He still goes around and sees all the clients himself. Like you could go and do this for a long period of time.
Speaker 1:So this whole need of I need to be up and running right business in six months is absolute rubbish. Um, and it's where people is, where people really trip over to me. That time I stepped up too quickly. I was a business development manager for 18 months and I had this real rush and urge to step up quicker. I think if I'd have had more structure at the start and an understanding of what that structure would have been, I'd have done it for probably a similar time to Rav. I get the need to want to get up and running and earn as quick as possible, but that's the reason why we've structured the remuneration, which obviously we'll get onto, in a manner that enables people to earn well. You are not going to earn a million pounds in your 20s, unless you've hit the jackpot, um, or are extremely, extremely talented. Where you will start to earn a million pounds is in your 50s, maybe in your 60s, and it takes time to do that. Nothing good comes quickly.
Speaker 3:We're in a tricky position, right, because we want to attract more people to the financial planning profession as a whole. But we also want to attract people that have got perhaps some of the skills already in place to transition across into being a financial planner quite quickly you mentioned quite there in your 20s. Let's just make it quite clear we're not an ageist company. Anybody can come in and join us on a pathway program, right, we are not ageist. But there is a kind of correlation between wanting to earn quickly because some people of a certain age, for example, have more responsibilities, they have mortgages, maybe they have a couple of kids. So, making that transition of, say, 40 years old into becoming a financial planner and having to go through the trainee route, this is where there's a big problem in in the profession as a whole. We're not trying to fix every problem that's in the profession as a whole. We're not. What we're doing is we're creating a pathway program to take somebody through it, and what we're really doing here is we are looking for those people that are at the beginning of their journey. We really do want to train and develop somebody from the very beginning, and it's almost better and easier for them and for us that they don't have experience, because, as you said, teach dog new tricks, you know, if they don't have experience then they don't know any different. So then you can start from scratch with them and build those habits, those routines, the things that are going to work from day one, and they're not comparatively looking left to right.
Speaker 3:Well, when I was over there, this is how I did it. Or when I was over there, this is how I did it, which, if we look back over, say, especially the amount of time that I've been here, sometimes those people that come across that are actually coming from, say, other financial planning companies, and maybe they've been in a trainee role there, and they come over here. It doesn't quite gel, it doesn't quite work. The ones where I see it work are the ones that actually come in and don't have the experience. You know, and I, and I like that, I like the fact that that we are doing there isn't and, jacob, you might say, something on that, sam.
Speaker 2:That's really important. So I think the type of people we look for are people that really want to work hard and they're not necessarily high performance straight away, but they've got that in them that they want to go out and they want to because it isn't an easy job, you know, it isn't an easy role, it isn't an easy career. You've got to have that ability to get stuck in and really give us your all. If somebody's 35 years old and they're a hard worker and they, you know they give it their all they're going to be taking a step back to go on to a pathway. To start, you know, at the beginning with us. Okay, and we've seen that recently with people. They come on, they're a bit older, they've already had a successful career and they think that that step back is going to be a lot simpler and they think, because I've already done this, I'm going to be able to speed up the process and actually they convince themselves well, I'll take this step back.
Speaker 2:The pathway program is a salary program that works, but it isn't. It's not going to pay you a hundred thousand pound a year. So if you're going to take that huge step back, you need to understand that you've still got to follow this program. Okay, and that's what you're not going to find a 35 year old high performer that we want to take on to the program. That's going to be able to come back and go. I want to rush it because we can't allow that anymore it's tough.
Speaker 1:It's tough to rush it, it's because, also, you get accustomed to a way of life, so it's very difficult. You might be able to stomach it for six months, but really being able to stomach it for three years, like people underestimate how long time feels when you're in it. We see that with investing. We see that generally with people's perceptions. You thought, yeah, three years, easy, I'll blitz that, but three years is a long time. A lot can change, um, and and you know I'm gonna echo exactly what jake has said definitely not ageist, but we've definitely found it easier to mold people who don't come into it with any, uh, existing perceptions of what it's going to be like it's important to address the elephant in the room when it comes to working for hoxton wealth and especially when coming in on the pathway.
Speaker 3:Um, it is a company that demands quite a lot from people, right and um, I don't really want to shy away from that, hide away from that. I think if someone's going to be coming into our business, you're expected to get your head down, you're expected to work really, really hard and there is a process, there is a structure, there are kpis, there are all sorts of performance indicators to see how you're doing within that pathway. Yes, these things can be moved around and changed a little bit, adapted, and training is putting it. You know the right times to help people get through those, those, those difficult times. You don't just leave them on their own and say sink or swim. It's not that type of culture.
Speaker 3:However, it is tough. Do you want to reiterate that? Do you want to just talk about why? You know why, why, why is it a tough? Why is it a tough role? Why is it a tough environment and why do you want a certain type of person to actually come on into it, and what type of person really? Let's make that clear now so people fully understand it, so they don't waste their time, they're not getting into something that's not right for them. What they can, what they consider to be a trainee route, we want the right type of people coming in.
Speaker 1:No square pegs, round holes, right yeah I think the key, the key trait for me, what makes a successful advisor and we've looked at this across numerous people is discipline. So it's a really interesting concept, because discipline enables you to continue working hard, even when you don't want to, even when times are tough. What you'll see with most things is it's very, very easy to be good at the start, but as time goes past, again it gets harder and harder and harder. So you have to be disciplined and actually I mean this is going to sound a bit we've actually found people that really look after themselves, go to the, have played sports at a high level or whatever it is actually do really well, because they have that discipline ingrained and it's in building them.
Speaker 1:We are looking for people to be on this working 12 to 15 hours a day. We are looking for people that they want to have their life consumed by this. We are not looking for people that want to be working six hours a day working from home. This factored in with everything else they're doing. Like you are for want of a better analogy 100% on it. You know, full, deep, submerged, way over your head into this all day, every day.
Speaker 1:Those people do the best, if you're playing at it or you are not taking it seriously and not giving the time it's deserved, then you're not going to do well, and that's why we're really disciplined with time management. It's why we're really disciplined with what we expect and we set out KPIs and people look at it and go and what we want to be is really transparent with those KPIs, because we want people to look at it and go. It's not for me, because if it's not for you, then it's not for us either. This is what we expect and this is what we will expect for the next three years plus. If you don't want to work at that level, then it's very simple Just don't apply, don't try and make it something.
Speaker 2:It's not. Yeah, I think the big thing on that is you're at the beginning. The people like in the senior roles the moheens, the tommies they've they've done that hard work, you know, and they've worked those long, long days and they've stuck it in. Looking at them now and going okay, well, I don't see them in the office at eight o'clock at night. They will still be out working because they've got it ingrained in them, that discipline and that hard work's ingrained in them, and you can't just come in and go well, they're not doing this and they're not doing that.
Speaker 2:The program's there for a reason, but also I'm busy, chris is busy, tommy's busy. These people will come in and do training sessions with you. They're giving up their time to help you go forward, along with everything else they do. So they're giving back to all of the trainees that we have and they do that on top of everything else they're doing already. They don't suddenly go well, I'm a trainer now. I'm not going to carry on writing business or managing people. So they've got to build their diaries and manage their time. All you're doing when you're on the program is learning the program. So you've got to show up every day, give it the hard work, because that's really Really the only thing we can't teach someone is how to work hard. You can discipline them and get them used to it and ingrain it in them. You can teach them the rest, but if they don't want to put the hard work in, it's very, very difficult to steer them in the right direction.
Speaker 1:You can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach it to drink, I think. And also, when you start any job or any role in life in general, the first few months that you were there, you want to go over and above. You want people to notice you, like, if the person that comes in and does the bare minimum straight away, what do you think of them? You think just average. The person that comes in and puts himself forward is working the extra hour, is staying late, he's trying to really go the extra mile. You will naturally and I know it sounds bad, but naturally invest more time in that person than than the other person, and I think people miss that as well. Oh, I'm just starting off. Maybe I don't need to work as hard, or I'm just. No, you need to work double as hard as the people that already proven. And yeah, I think people miss that as well.
Speaker 3:I've also think look, you know, if you're coming in in your 20s, right. And let's say, someone comes in, a lot of people coming in their 20s. We're a young business, right. The average age of an advisor is about 31 years old, right? So we've got a young pathway, right. We've got young people coming in. Now, most people want to earn good money, right. Financial planning is a career where you can earn really good money. We're sitting down on a podcast. We're recording it today. So if anyone's listening to this right now, look out for the podcast how to become, how to build a million pound business within five years. If you don't have the right foundations in place, how are you expect to build a million pound desk, a million pound business?
Speaker 3:you can't you can't right simple so what people need to understand in respect of this pathway is the core foundations is setting you up for that future success. So when you've gone through that pathway, you proved yourself within it, you've developed all those disciplines, all those habits, proving yourself. Then guess what? We're going to take you forward and we're going to get you up to a million pound turnover, or a million pound valuation of a business within hoxton. So you become that entrepreneur within our business, and that's when we start to wrap around you how to build a team, how to build the processes, how to retain the clients.
Speaker 3:So, if anyone's listening to this now, I want to fast forward a little bit and think well, what does the future hold? That's the episode to listen, chris, right, great, good. So let's just break down. Actually, before we move on to the actual different years, I want to break down the years and give people an understanding of what's expected okay, so we can manage their expectations a little bit. Just before that, though, look, there's a lot of trainee programs that are out there that are self-employed, yeah, right? Um, let's make it clear what are we offering when it comes to the pathway?
Speaker 1:we are offering a salaried role for people to come in and we we realize that having to go out and ensure that you are taking on clients for the most amount of money for you to be able to live is clearly a conflict of interest. We do want people to go out and take on clients. We do ingrain prospecting, as anyone that's followed me on LinkedIn or anyone that knows our business or worked in our business will know but what we want people to do is go out and do it the right way. In the international space, we see a lot of high commission paying products. That's not us as a business. That's not what we do. Our business model is assets under management and charging a fee to our clients All transparent. If you are just starting off, it's going to be very difficult for you to build that up and operate on that business model unless you've got a decent back book of clients, which, again, if you're new, you're not going to have. So to give people the best chance of being able to survive and being able to live whilst they go through this training, we decided to go on a salaried model with the option to earn essentially a bonus or a share of the fees that they generate over and above which we found really good.
Speaker 1:Now this is the other thing You're not going to earn the money that you will be earning in 10 years time when you start your career. In fact, you're not going to be earning it after three years. It takes time to build this up. The power of compounding that year upon year upon year upon year, especially working you on a fee-based model, is huge. Like the, I've been doing this for. I've been doing this for 12 years and every single long enough 15 years now, every single year that I have done this, my recurring income has gone up Every single year. That's because markets increase over time and that's because I've taken on more clients and added on to that. So if we're looking at it from a pure revenue point of view, you would expect your highest earnings to be right at the back end of your career. But you can't get there if you don't do the hard work at the back end of your career. But you can't get there if you don't do the hard work at the start.
Speaker 1:And what we don't want people doing is quitting early or selling rubbish, which obviously we would catch at compliance anyway, putting themselves in a really bad situation, um, and not being able to live. We want people to be able to focus on work. I don't want them being going out every single night, uh, especially in dubai, which you can do on the piss and, uh, you know, getting smashed and doing whatever else you can do. When you've got lots of money, that can also be a distraction, but they shouldn't be worrying whether they're gonna be able to eat, um. It should give them a stability that they can live. Maybe go out for a beer once a week with their friends, uh, or a glass of wine, uh, a dinner, but it's not, you know, seven days a week, rockstar living?
Speaker 2:no, but that that salary is also important. Right, because if in previous roles or previous companies you'd come in and you would be on a, basically you've got to go out and find business to to live. That means that all you do all day is try and find business. This pathway program isn't just prospecting. Prospecting is the heart of the first year, as we all all know. But while they're prospecting, they need to be doing their exams. They need to be. We have a trainer that comes in and trains them how to do their, take them through the process of doing their level four exam.
Speaker 2:If somebody's struggling because they're not getting paid anything, they're not going to focus on that, because all they're going to focus on is how am I going to make money, whereas actually there's so much more to the pathway than just prospecting.
Speaker 2:It's learning the other parts of the business and we need them to be able to have an income so that they can, they can focus on all areas and actually develop themselves rather than just be chase, chase, chase all the time. But the other side of it is we don't want people to be too comfortable. You know, we want them to have an income, we want them to go out and prospect, but we also want them to to work hard. So we've built this so it progresses year on year, on year, and that's what chris is saying. You're not going to jump from year one to year five, but every year if you do what we say, you come in, it compounds. It's like going to the gym if you train hard you get in better shape. It takes time but it will compound and that that will start moving and it'll get easier as you get go along. But actually you'll set yourself higher targets and you'll just work a bit harder and push a bit further perfect.
Speaker 3:Well, let's get stuck into the different years, and so we've said it's three years. Let's just break down each of those years. So year one we would consider that to be business development, what we like to call prospecting, but also a lot of mindset training in there as well. So, jacob, when you kick things off and tell us a little bit about year one, what should they?
Speaker 2:expect. So year one really is coming in. You've got different people that join join the profession, join the business. You've got people that have got a financial background. You've got different people that join the profession, join the business. You've got people that have got a financial background. You've got people that haven't. At the beginning we really pile it on. We've got to get stuck in. We talk about what the role is. We've written a document which explains the whole pathway and the whole point of that is to get them ready for it so when they do start they know what they're expecting.
Speaker 2:There'll be a lot of prospecting in year one. It'll be talking about phone manner, it'll be how to deal with clients, it'll be long days in the office, training sessions, things along those lines. We're actually introducing in mindset training this year to the year one part, part of the program and that's come from we brought in um a couple of young people recently that had mindset training and when they're going through and there's ups and downs with the prospecting role, right, you think it's going really well. You book loads of meetings, you think I've got loads of clients and they don't all go ahead and your head can go down quite quickly and the guys that had mindset training were like no, this is just part of the process. It's not all sunshine and roses. It does have ups and downs along the way and having that mindset and that discipline will help.
Speaker 2:Chris will do a lot of work with the guys on structure, on how you should structure your day, how you should follow that high achieving process. I mean, chris has got a process he follows every single day. We all have diary management. You know proper structured training about mainly about discipline.
Speaker 3:Discipline is a lot of year one, chris, you get a bit sick about that though, don't you?
Speaker 1:about your diary, yeah, I do, but then again, everyone I've worked, ever worked with on it, I've helped, I've helped you with it yeah helped you with it. I've helped pretty much every single senior person within our business on how to structure their diary. So it's not I'm sat over everyone all day, every day, going what it's 10 past one. You must be doing this now, you know. It's actually helping people understand that for a lot of people, 80 of their day is a complete waste and they're actually only productive in 20 of it because they don't have structure.
Speaker 1:And actually adding structure can mean 80 to 90% of your day is super productive and you get the most out of it. Now imagine you can get the results that you get. Some people have great results from only being productive on 20%. Multiply that out by four. It's huge. And that's what it's about.
Speaker 1:It's not kind of sitting there with my foot over everyone going what are you doing? I want these many calls and it's it's helping people operate as efficiently as possible. I love efficiency. It's something I try and get out of everything I do, um, even to the point where I will decide what way I will walk to the toilet. If it's more efficient to go one way over the other, and but that's the level of detail's more efficient to go one way over the other, but that's the level of detail that I like to go into. There's not expecting that from everyone, but I cannot emphasise enough how important structure is to being successful in what you do.
Speaker 3:Of which you've proven right, You're still delivering advice to clients. What level of assets and the management have you built over your time, Chris?
Speaker 1:So, as it stands at the moment, I think I'm just over 250 million and, fair enough, I didn't really take on any clients this year. Last year, um, I kind of stopped, uh, taking on as many new clients over that period, um, to focus more on helping run the business. I do still really. It's actually the part of the job I really like. I love that side of it speaking to people, helping them out with problems, putting processes and solutions in place to help them get to where they want, and I think that's really important actually, across the whole management team is Jake is an advisor, I have been an advisor. Tommy, who was running the pathway before, has been an advisor. Everyone has that experience, so it's not me never having done the job and sitting here going you need to do this, this and this, like lived and breathed it for the past well, 20 plus years.
Speaker 3:So you know hopefully we know what we're talking about well, exactly that, and the people in your corner within year one. You need the people who have walked the walk and talk, the talk and the very fact that you are still doing it and you can stand up and talk about diary management.
Speaker 3:You can talk about the things that you've implemented over those years to be able to develop a book that big. It's so, so important and people need to understand that. You've done it. You're doing it still and you're about to pass and train that knowledge on.
Speaker 3:And every bit of feedback I get from people who have gone through the pathway some of these new people that have really embraced that, saying that's one of the most valuable things because you can walk into a business a lot of people sometimes can just hold on to their secrets. You know they'll do it this way. So how I do? They haven't really got the time and energy or even want to train new people, which is why we're in the situation we're in the uk. Right, the very fact that senior people are still continually servicing and winning new business and managing their diary to do that as well. Yeah, it's important to emphasize that to anybody's coming into. You know it's not some trainer who's a failed financial planner and now decides to be a trainer. It's people that are day in, day out smashing it and they're going to get you smashing it. Surround yourself with successful people. You're only going to feel success and that's another key thing, right, that's really really key.
Speaker 2:So again it's just like there may be a regimented, disciplined focused, maybe a regimented, disciplined, focused approach within year one, but it works, yeah, but also on year one, sam. So year one is very much around prospecting. Okay, and one thing that I've learned from working with different advisors and different trading wealth managers is prospecting is the number one thing in our business you can have. You can be the most qualified guy in the entire room if you don't know how to go out and prospect and meet people. Well, you can't give advice to people you can't sit in front of. I say that all the time.
Speaker 2:So year one is very centered. The first part of it is prospecting teaching them how to prospect, how to identify the right clientele, how to speak to the right clientele, how to use the marketing leads that we spend a lot of money generating. And there's no point rushing that part, because when you get to year two, year three and, more importantly, year four, where you start to give advice, if you can't prospect properly, you're not going to see people you know. So year one is very centered around the prospect inside of it as well.
Speaker 1:And people get really lost in that because they're like this whole sales is a dirty word and we're not salesmen. People mistake what sales is. You were being sold to every single second of the day. You're making a choice that you're a buyer or you're making the choice that you're selling. I'm selling you on an idea. I'm selling you now on why, the, why our way of doing this is good, this I'm not sat here with, you know, kind of a briefcase, trying to, you know, door knocking or whatever, like people really get lost in it. And if you can't sell to people which is, you know, the sales training is a big part of it If you can't sell to people, then you will never be able to achieve and have the impact that you want to have on people throughout the rest of your life. Like facts, if you cannot get your point across in a cohesive, proper manner and get in front of enough people to put your point across, so you're a waste.
Speaker 3:You've wasted your talent there's a huge expectation as well around the volume of prospecting that is being done within that role as well. Right, it's not like pick up the phone a couple of times a day. There is an expectation that people are making up to 500 calls on a weekly basis. It's not unusual when I'm in that office and I'm you know I leave at 7 pm every night when I leave at 7 pm every night, that's um.
Speaker 3:There's still people there, especially on the phones, because they're trying to get hold of some of those leads that have been generated from the american market, for example. So you know, it's not unusual to see people work in those 12 hours days. There is an expectation and I want to make it clear there is an expectation that somebody is making up to 500 calls a week. It's not saying you're having 500 conversations because people don't always pick up the phone right. So we spend an awful lot of money on marketing. We spend an awful lot of money on generating good quality, pre-qualified individuals that fit the model of what hoxton is all about. What your job is really within that first year is to educate yourself and to understand what the client's needs actually are and how can I turn that into an appointment for a financial planner, and that's the beautiful part in it. Once you've done that, then you start. The next process is the feedback from the financial planner. Maybe you're along. You start to learn a little bit more about the journey. So it's very, very important. It's time in the game, isn't it? How much time are you putting into prospecting? Because the more time you put into it, the more results you're going to get, the more you're going to learn, the more you're going to progress through that pathway as quickly as possible.
Speaker 3:That is why, in year one, in my head, if you aren't willing to come in and graft, if you went in the army in year one, you're not walking in and having to sit around drink, you know, in the mess tent drinking cups of teas, right, are you? You're out there crawling around in mud getting prepared for war. It's tough, it's horrible, it's hard. That's what essentially an apprenticeship actually is. We're not coming, you know. Don't come in and expect to be wrapped in cotton wool. We expect you to come in.
Speaker 3:We're going to train, develop you and push you really, really hard to be the best version of yourself that possibly be. But guess what? We're going to bully you into it. We're going to give you mindset training. We're going to bully you into it. We're going to give you mindset training. We're going to give you support training, all the things you're actually required to do. It leads, right? You're not picking up the phone and calling every single day and going through the yellow pages. It's a well-structured program for you to fit into. But what you need in that situation is discipline within year one right, we would say 110%. Year one discipline head down, get working.
Speaker 1:I think year one. To be successful, you really have to show the three core values that we attest to.
Speaker 1:So, the hard work bit you've described clearly. Yeah, the growth mindset wanting to go out and learn it's great just hammering the phone and maybe doing $300. We've seen people do that and they don't succeed. So it's actually wanting to learn more about what you're speaking to people about. It's wanting to participate in the training. It's taking the advice that jake's given you and other managers, including myself, and actually implementing. So that growth mindset is super important. And the other thing that's clear that you have to do in that first year is not have an ego. You do not know it all. You were starting off. You were very junior in what you're doing. Be a sponge, take it in. Don't come with any preconceptions. Be humble, get along with everyone, try and be part of the team, build relationships with the advisors, uh, and you will do really well. You. You hit those three core values which we see provide success throughout the whole course of your career. You're going to do really well it's very simple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, perfect, and that ego thing. You know the people that are doing the training sessions and, like chris, myself and talking to these guys, I see them sometimes looking you go, are you sure? Well, these people have proven that it works. They know what works. They're not always right, but they know what makes success and how to go out and get success in this business if they're telling you to do it. You know there's a reason. We don't want people doing things that aren't going to benefit them because, in turn, this is to benefit the business. So we're not going to tell people to do stuff unless it's going to benefit them and the business at the same time.
Speaker 1:There's a reason why we put that in place let's be blunt about it we're not going to do it unless it benefits the business. Yeah, we're a business. We we're not a charity. We're not a training organisation. If this doesn't generate revenue and it makes a big fat loss if we was employing everyone, and it was a huge drain we're just wasting our time and wasting the business's time and resource. We want this to work, so we're going to do everything within our power to make it work. This is the next chapter of our business.
Speaker 3:Fantastic year two. Then let's push into year two. So year one very much business development, mindset, prospecting. It sounds to me it's the foundation of what makes a fantastic financial planner. They've learned that skill. They're going to roll over into year two. What should they expect in year two?
Speaker 1:yeah, so, number one, continuing to do more of year one, like that is the first thing, like you don't ever stop doing that, you do not ever stop prospecting and growing and learning, that the day you stop is the day that you will really start to go backwards, and I cannot emphasize that more. But we clearly get that. It's just you know. It's just not just about getting yourself in front of clients. You've got to understand what you do when you're there. So the next thing is about power planning, administration and offering mentorship to, also to the people coming through. So you know, what we want to be able to start to do is develop those technical skills that enable you to become a financial planner. So again, it's going to be super hard work. I probably say actually in year two you have to work harder than year one because you've got more on your plate and you want to start taking on more responsibility.
Speaker 1:But what we're looking for here is is people to start to learn the proper process. So we want people to be able to start to draft a suitability report. We want people to understand a bit more of the administration side. We want them to understand what they've got to do to, you know, comply with the regulatory standards that are set out by all the different regulators that we have to report into. You know, actually, what you can do in the US, you can't in the UK, and what you can do in the UK is different to what you've got to do in Australia. So if you want to operate across different markets, you need to know what's expected and how to process that, how to to process your clients or your prospects into clients.
Speaker 1:So it's that kind of middle phase. So, if we think of this, we've got prospecting, we've got conversion and then we've got retention. So prospecting, hopefully you're nailed off. You're really good at this now and you're rolling. This next bit is the conversion piece. It's great getting a load of prospective clients, but if you're absolutely torching them all because you don't know what you're doing, then that's a bit of a problem. So this is the whole part of this bit which is to build up you've got to be.
Speaker 2:You know this is just as important, as chris said, as year one, year one doesn't stop and this comes on top of that.
Speaker 2:But if you don't know how to move that client along the journey and you're not involved, you're just booking a meeting, you just become a phone booker, you're just booking meetings.
Speaker 2:You've got to be sitting reviewing the meeting notes, sitting with the advisor, understanding why are they recommending that product, why are they recommending that solution, what are they trying to do for that outcome for the client? And if you don't start to understand what the journey of the client is to that process, you'll just be stuck at year one is to that process, you'll just stuck. You'll be stuck at year one. And when you become further down the line, you know, knowing the para planning task, it doesn't mean you have to be a fully qualified para planner, it doesn't mean you have to be an administrator, but you should at least know exactly what's gone into that report, why it's in there and what that, what that means to the journey. Because actually the advice bit really is centered around the para planning report that's built to show the client why are we recommending this? If you don't understand that, you're never going to be able to present it and you need to learn how to present that deeper levels of communication and conversations with the client creates that concierge service as well.
Speaker 3:So the experience the client is getting goes up. You yourself are learning those skills. Within year two you know how to find them. Now it's about building those deeper relationships. But you're also stepping into the role of um. You're starting to step closer into a relationship with the financial planners within the business and they're starting to share the experience at a deeper level because they would like you to transition into taking care of the administration, the power planner. Often in the uk we see administrator power planner than financial advisor. What I do like about this structured program is we do obviously start the hit, the prospecting element of it first, which I think is the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to generating good quality financial planners. Right, but admin power planning is hugely, hugely important and it again it just builds that deeper level of connection, not only with the advisors and the team around you. It gives you the confidence and respect to the technical knowledge. So you feel confident. Qualifications are we bringing qualifications in at this stage?
Speaker 1:So qualifications would have been started in year one as well. But I suppose what we are, you know, we would hope that people would be level four qualified by the end of year two and then we would be more specific with their country qualifications in year three. So we want everyone to be base uk qualified, yeah, and then if you're going to give advice in the us, clearly there's qualifications there, clearly there's qualifications in australia, cyprus. I mean, my goal, my aim for the pathway is to get everyone up to cfp is what I really want. I want the next batch to do the level fours it's then and get their country qualifications and then I want a load of CFPs coming through. Now, it's not because I think qualifications are the be all and end all, far from it, and I appreciate some people struggle with qualifications and others don't. But what I think it shows the client and as a business is we take this seriously. There are levels to financial advice and actually these guys have been disciplined and focused enough in their career to want to train to that standard, which is the heart, you know, which is the gold standard in my opinion. Uh, in financial planning, um, and do it. I mean I haven't done that qualification, but this year I'm going to, because I wouldn't expect someone to do it if I hadn't done it. Jonathan j is, jess is, jonathan brooks is. I know other people in the business are keen to sit in, but qualifications are important. They're not everything, but I do think they add a lot of value.
Speaker 1:The other things that we want to do during year two as well is show them the technology. So, as you know, we invest a huge amount in technology. We really want them to start understanding how they can harness that for the clients that they're working with and utilize that wealth flow which is our cash flow modeling tool, um, the hoxton wealth app, which they can get an aggregated view of all of their assets, all of this stuff. We really want to start weaving that in so, when they become an advisor, they can they can take it on uh, they can take on lots of clients. I think that this is another thing as well. So I actually read an article yesterday on why are financial advisors not trying to take on more clients? What's the optimum level? And it was a range between 150 and 250. I want people to be able to take on 1,000 clients, okay, because that increases their income and it also means that we can help more people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the only way that you will be able to look after a thousand clients is harnessing technology you will not be able to do that if you can't and building a team underneath you. Which comes a third point we get them to start mentoring year one students because what we realised you can't do this on your own. Jake has a team. I have in my personal team that help me look after my clients. I've got eight people like, if you cannot work in a team and you cannot build that relationship up, you're never going to be able to build the team to look after the thousand clients. So gathering the technology is great, but you do see, you need to start learning those team building skills and we start teaching that and bringing that in in year two as well.
Speaker 2:That mentorship bit is is absolutely huge. So three of the guys that are in year two, year three we introduced this this year. Last year we made them team leaders and it's amazing they took on extra responsibility. They're sitting down with five, six guys on a daily basis, helping them on a day-to-day basis, giving them that real close feel. It's built the team out but it's also they've got better at their normal job just from. They're educating the guys on what to do and it's reminding them and it's bringing their levels up because they want to lead, because because they want to show that well, I can do my job and I can do this as well. And those three guys we've got ollie jack and uh tom streeter they've stepped it up another level and I was a bit worried. I was like, oh, if they they slow down on the prospecting or the other side of it, and it's like they've taken it on the chin and they've gone, let's do it. And they're leading from the front.
Speaker 2:The big thing that Chris touched on there is not everybody can manage a team right, but if you want to grow your business and you don't want to be a one-man advisory with 50 clients, you're going to have to learn to manage people. I used to struggle with it, you know, and I used to struggle with it, you know, and I used to struggle having the hard conversations of managing a team, which we get people to do as well. They've got to understand it's not all sunshine and roses. You've got to drive these people and push them, so that mentorship piece is actually a bigger thing to them than they know, because when they become an advisor, they need a paraplanner. They already know how to manage it.
Speaker 3:They understand that team thing Iron sharpens iron right, sharp iron sharpens iron right.
Speaker 3:And I think when I think I love the fact that you've put the mentorship side into as early as year two I think it's hugely important one as well, because it gives you that verification that you are learning, you are moving ahead, because that person who's just walked through the door hasn't really got a clue and they are looking for that person around them to be able to guide them.
Speaker 3:When you and when you end up starting to mentor and coach someone properly, you start to see the huge benefit of how far you've got, which is great, makes you feel a sense of achievement and you're going somewhere and sometimes it's really hard, right when you're working, um, so it gives you that sense of achievement.
Speaker 3:I love the fact that it ties in with the fact that you're then developing the skills to be able to build a team, which, when we go back through this how to build a, you know how to be a millionaire business it's all about building those teams. It's having that team around you um to do, to do it, and teaching that as early as possible is is really, really important. And also, mentorship is always kind of like you think mentorship, you always instantly think looking up, you know you're not looking at that person, you just walk through the door and how that can teach you the skills to be able to develop yourself further. So hugely important in an area that I think often gets missed but, as you've identified, it's just hugely valuable to somebody's self-confidence and career progression.
Speaker 1:You're never going to be able to hit your progression and hit the levels that you can if you can't operate in the team. Yeah, it's never just you. Yeah, which?
Speaker 3:is strange, right, it's never just you, yeah, which is strange because it's never. That's never been expressed within financial planning. Since I've been working within the profession, I've never heard people talking about building teams and building those skills and it's vital, and the people that I see within hoxton wealth because it is that entrepreneurial model. It is about building teams internal right. So if someone's out there listening right now, they're just thinking I've got a financial planning business but I'm struggling at building a team.
Speaker 2:Well, that's why you don't know how to do it, so if you come into our little ecosystem.
Speaker 3:Actually we can, we can help you, we can help you build that team.
Speaker 2:We're good at recognizing what people are good at and what people struggle with, right, and if let's take content, some, yeah. So you came in and set up all the content for us, right? We probably could have fudged our way through and tried to do it, but it wasn't a strength of ours and it was something that we didn't know how to do, so we brought someone in that knows how to do it Within a team. You might need a content director. As you get bigger, you might want to add extra things to your business that aren't strengths of yours, and taking strengths of yours and taking your time off the road to go and learn how to do something that isn't a strength may take you a lot longer. So when you can employ someone to come and help you with it, get them to do it for you, get them to do it with you, and also you will then learn from them by doing it together as a team.
Speaker 1:It's that platform to be able to offer your skills off, isn't it? I think, that's what we built really well. So we've got the technology. We've obviously got the marketing. Um, we've now got the social marketing, which we didn't have before, which, you know, like to hire you, you're not cheap one thing, one.
Speaker 1:Thing but but this, you know, what we're doing here is is not a cheap activity to do that on your own. I mean that's you're starting to. You're starting to ratchet up the guys that have come in here and spoken to you. We've helped them do that and they would probably never have had that opportunity or thought about it themselves. But the exposure that they've got off that to clients, to others within the business, elevating them and pushing them to do better, is something that's really really important and it's important that you're around people that want to see you grow so many people. You recruit as a power planner. You stick as a power planner. You recruit as an admin. You're, you're an admin. You can't be anything else. You're in my compliance team. In my compliance team. The amount of people that have chopped and done different things throughout the business has been has been huge.
Speaker 3:It's been remarkable where I've, where I've walked the pathway of content creation. Okay, I spent years not really making a great deal of money out of it, right, one of the things I have done since I've been in hoxton is educating especially the young people that come through that look at social media and think that that's the way you're going to make money is, if I put a load of content, loads of leads are going to come to me. I can assure you that's not how it works. Right, right, content creation and putting things out on social media is an addition to and if you put 100% of your eggs in one basket, I've seen people fail, fail, fail. I would have failed if I didn't have a recruitment company paying me an income to get financial plan of life off the ground. So, which goes back to having a strong team right, and building a strong team around you. So what I like to do very early on is just to manage their expectations. You may see lots of content going out for some of the people in the business, but they're not spending their whole time doing it. Here's a strategy to do it, to tick that box. It's going to add value to you.
Speaker 3:But if you haven't got the fundamentals of year one, year two and year three in place, then you are going to fail because you're not doing the prospecting, you're not generating the clients and you're not bringing that income in. You're not learning the fundamental basics of building the business. The content creation will come and we love it and we love creating content. The more that we do as a business is only going to support you deep down anyway, because byproduct of that is you're going to have more exposure as a brand, but we will actually work with individuals around it and manage their expectations. So I think that's a really important thing to to push in here. Not many again programs out there do actually focus on the social media side and having people in the business with experience in that it's fundamental. I think it's really really important. Yeah right, great. So let's push into year three. So we're looking at full client engagement, relationship building and sort of preparing for that independence. So stepping away from a pathway program.
Speaker 1:And there you go, out the door, you're on your own, off you go yeah, well, I think that one of the things that we've started to do as well now a lot more is and this is the beauty of operating internationally and remotely at the same time is to be able to record the meetings. So you're not just going to get exposed to clients only in year three, far from it, because you'll be able to watch meetings pretty much from year one. However, what you will start to do is be a lot more engaged. So you will start to do things like fact finds. We might even get you to start to do a few reviews with an advisor. You will sit on more client meetings and, towards the back end of it, you will start to do first meetings and things. So you can see, you've started to get momentum.
Speaker 1:The snowball's started to build up. It's not like doof there you go, six weeks of training on your bike, off you go. So this is, this is the putting it all together and piecing it. Um. You know conducting the fact finds, preparing the suitability reports, presenting them with an advisor to make sure that you aren't messing anything up and or or. Um, you know putting the client in harm's way. Everything is clearly checked, but it's giving you that, um, it's giving you that chance now to demonstrate your skills.
Speaker 2:I think in in year three. What we want is is everybody to have gone through, not just when I stepped. Up to an advisor, okay. So let's take me as an example. I'd never sat a client meeting, wow. Okay, I'd never really done a fact find. I I did two weeks of training, I'd done some, obviously, things along the way and I'd been a little bit integrated. There was no process like this. I want these guys to have done sat on 50 client meetings by the time that they step up, whether that's a review meeting, whether that's an application pack meeting, whether that's a first meeting. I want these guys to have done fact finds for clients, gone through a fact find on their own with a client so they know.
Speaker 2:A fact find takes a long time if you do it properly and if you don't know how to work your way through our digital fact finds. We have a digital one. You'll be clunky. You need it to be almost second nature as well. So in year three it will be sitting X amount of this type of meeting, learning, presenting that back to people, then also saying well, what would you advise the client based off this meeting you've just sat at?
Speaker 2:When you've sat with the advisor, what would you, where would you see the advice around this? What do you think is the right outcome for the client? Obviously we're then going to go through that and discuss it. But it's about that end of year three when they tip off and it's like you're out on your own. You're not on your own because actually you've done it all the way through. You're actually already ready to go. Almost we're kind of holding you back right at the very end, ready just to let you go and and do it without you walking into your first meeting and going. Well, what do I do here?
Speaker 1:you know, this is much harder than I thought it was you know, because it is.
Speaker 2:It is much harder than people think. People think we just go and sit in a meeting and the client instantly wants to take advice from us and they walk out and go, yeah, great, and then we do the application back, we send it to them and then they're a client. Yeah, it's a lot more to it than that and you know sales being a dirty word. You know you said that before we.
Speaker 2:I listened to dan's podcast the other day and dan was our finance director. I mean, dan is a super, super intelligent guy. He did all of his qualifications while he was doing his finance director. He came to one of our conferences, stepped up to an advisor and he did struggle. And he said on the podcast I struggled because I didn't know how to sell the solution in the right way. And he actually had an experience with a client where he he gave him really good advice. You know he presented it and the client went with somebody else and six months later came back to him and said I bought this product. It's not right for me, so I told you, don't buy that.
Speaker 2:What he realized then is that because someone was better at selling that solution, he actually ended up. The client actually took the wrong advice because he couldn't sell his solution in the right way. So it is selling. You've got to educate that client as to why you're recommending it. You can't just go this is what you need and this is why you need it, and they go, yeah, great, thanks, mate you've got. You've got to make them realize that you know. Um, so yeah, it's really getting that that sales training with the clients using the sales and advice got to make them realise that you know. So, yeah, it's really getting that sales training with the clients using the sales and advice together to make it work, you know, make clients understand.
Speaker 3:Having really ambitious people join a pathway programme that has three years attached to it, how do you stop them from wanting to run?
Speaker 1:ahead. Well, I think, naturally, people that are motivated want to go quicker um, but I think again, it's this transparency at the start. So we've got this uh pathway document now that we circulate. I mean, if you read that, you listen to this and you're still trying to tell me that you should be, you know, becoming an advisor in six months, like we've obviously gone wrong and you've obviously not listened or read what we've said for you to do. So it's very frustrating because when you're younger, time does not go quickly. It feels like it takes an age.
Speaker 1:But actually setting these foundations initially is not To the point where we've had people say to us can we step up after a year or so? And just so and just tell me I said no and ultimately they've left um because of it. It's it's as simple as that. We're not going to be bullied into um, letting people go before they're ready, because it will put us at detriment, detriment as a business. More importantly, it'll put our clients at detriment because you are not ready to start giving advice. Don't care if you've been doing this for 12 months. You should never be in front of clients on your own um and you know, ultimately it does them a disfavor as well, because what happens is they quit. Yeah, uh, they get pissed off, they get annoyed, they you know, and then, and then they and they end up quitting. So we have we cannot say this enough that it is you need. The time is the most important thing here. Yeah, yeah, absolutely great.
Speaker 3:So getting that client experience is fundamental. It's really, really important. We're in a situation where we can um, if you like, put them in an incubator to be able to actually sit with them observe. All the things you need to do when it comes to things like competent advisor status is to make sure 100, 100 that they are ready when they leave that three-year pathway program and it's three years is a minimum.
Speaker 1:It's, if you need to be on this for five years, happily sit there and hold your hand for five years and help you get better. Ravi, prime example, like, if you look at it, ravi, should you know, r? Ravi would probably say, oh, I could have stepped up six months earlier, but I I think that's prime time for you. Then actually going out and, you know, fleeing the nest, as it were. Um, if you were feeling like, oh, I probably could have stepped up six months earlier, then actually you're probably in a really good, uh, really good position then to to do it. Yeah, you shouldn't be like I think I'm ready. You know, if you're thinking you're ready, you're not brilliant.
Speaker 3:Well, I like that. And no one's in the background pushing you over that edge. Well, you've three years now. Time's up, off you go yeah it's just not like that.
Speaker 3:Is it perfect? So there isn't. There is that continuation. So look, year three, we get the gist of it. Right. It's about this client you're back, the client experience. You're sitting in front of clients, you're learning those skills and there's no point in stepping up into the role of a fully fledged financial planner, right, if you don't know how to do that. Now you kind of alluded to the fact that that the pathway can be extended. But let's say somebody's ready to go at three years, what should they expect from that? You know they've done three years. What does the briefly talk about what the next phase would actually be for them? What's the? What happens after the pathway?
Speaker 2:Look they then basically they're doing it. So you think about that last year three. They're already doing it. They're sitting client meetings Towards the end of year three. Take Tom Streeter, for example. Tom now is sitting first meetings. He's sat on first meetings with Tommy he. He's now starting to sit his own first meetings, ready for when he comes to the point of stepping up, or stepping into phase two as we would call it, where he actually goes out and manages his own business.
Speaker 2:But that again is a managed role. Okay, there's a manager there that sits over the pathway that basically will still sit down with them when they come back from meetings, go through the fact, find, talk about the outcome. So it's very much a bit more of year three. They carry on prospect prospecting for themselves, but you're kind of doing it for yourself. You're building your own client bank at that point and that's where the real fun starts.
Speaker 2:Really you do everything you did in year one, everything you did in year two, everything you did in year three and you're now doing it all together in year four and you're going out and building that book of business and that client bank for yourself and taking responsibility for it. You know it's a bit more of you take it on your own and we give them a little bit more freedom to go and do so, but you still have a managed pathway. Again, that is a salaried role, so it's not like you step away from the first three years and suddenly you're on your own and right you're on the old fee split model. It's a salary, you know a salary.
Speaker 1:You still get some of the revenue as well, but you're building and compounding all of the time yeah, I think it's um, I think I think the next, the next part, is also a bit scary as well, because you'll you'll no longer feel like you've got someone's arms around you, kind of you know, like you, now you've got to go and do this. So play time is over, and some people that really excites them, and other people are naturally a bit more worried about it, and actually what we see is sometimes the people that we think are the most ready actually aren't, and I think it's having an honest conversation with yourself at that point as well, which is am I ready? Am I ready for this? Do I really want to do it?
Speaker 1:And going from there, it is tough. Nothing is ever easy. It's always much harder than people think it is to go out, start taking on clients and actually do it really in practice, all day, every day. The best ones, like Ravi, it will be seamless, and like Declan, it will be seamless. Others, it will be more of a pain. But ultimately we're here to help people get through that, like the, the, the hand-holding although we said it kind of doesn't really. You know, we're always here, we're always offering advice, we're always there to push people forward and they go on to this next phase, which is much more accountability. I would say is the next phase. So you're being taught and the next stage is we're going to hold you accountable for what you said you're going to do. Okay, fantastic.
Speaker 3:So for anybody listening to this, they're thinking right, brilliant, you know, I go through the pathway, I go out, I become a financial planner. Can we just give them a little bit of an understanding of what the actual future could look like for them in respect of building a book of business underneath Hoxton? What's like a long-term, dare I say it incentive for starting the pathway? And really we are a all the way through type business if you can take them with no experience all the way to actually exiting. So let's just kind of touch on that before we end the podcast and give them that kind of long vision of what. What can they expect if they successfully go through the pathway and become a fantastic financial planner with us? I?
Speaker 1:think there's kind of two options, isn't there? So some people I mean before it was like one option, which is you become an advisor for a bit and then you really want to become a manager and start managing the team of advice and stuff and actually what we found out is is that it doesn't work like trying to. Most successful advisors actually just want to give advice, and the reason why they try and become a manager is they think they can earn more, and that's the wrong way to look at most things in life. You shouldn't do things just because of monetary benefits. You've really got to like what you're doing as well. So there are two ways, though. So we still offer management for people that really want to become a manager, and you have to want to manage. It's not I think I can earn more by doing this. It's why are you doing this and making sure that they have the correct mindset to make sure that they can manage and lead effectively?
Speaker 1:What the option that most people now go down to is starting to build out a book. So they start to build out a book of business for Hoxton, so they will get typically, they will come off of a salary and they will go on to more of a fee split model salary and they will go on to more of a fee split model, which is where we will split the income with them, um, and they will be able to you know they'll be to earn off the back of it. What we do at the end let's fast forward is we then buy the income back. You've done a great job for us. You've built up this income within our business. Your exit is we will pay you x times for this income at the end. So not only have you had savings along the way, not only have you probably been saving into your pension and all the other good stuff, but now you've got this nice capital event, which we'll come on to on our on our episode at the end. Plus, if you've been really good, we'll have offered you eltip, which is the long-term incentive plan, so you have an equity package within the business as well.
Speaker 1:Like you're walking away with seven figures. I mean that's super exciting, but that doesn't happen in your first five years. That happens after 15, 20 years of you growing at this and working hard. But there are not many businesses that you can leave or no, I don't know. Hardly any, apart from what we do that go. Well done j Jake, really good job. Thank you very much for your hard work. You've done a good. Here's a multiple of the amount of income you were bringing in to send you on your way. It just doesn't happen. No one. If you're on a 200 grand salary at Microsoft, they don't turn around and go there. You go Three times your 200 grand. Thanks very much. Bye.
Speaker 2:I suppose in. I mean, which is the whole pathway that we chris has built and created with the team around him. There's other things to bear in mind in those interim gaps. So you step up, you can become an advisor, you start working on a fee split, you know, I know there's people in our business that want to go and move to switzerland. I know there's people in our business that want to go and move to the us. There's a young guy in our in our office that's built up a really good book of business, wants to be in the US. So we're now facilitating that transfer. He's probably going to go to Mexico or somewhere like that first, then across into the USA. So when you build your own business revenue and you build up that team around you, the world's your oyster. Really. We're opening offices all over the world and if people want to move and go to different jurisdictions, we can help facilitate that. If it's right for the business, obviously it'll be right for them as well. But if it's right for the business, they can go. We know that about people because we speak to them, we take an interest in them. If I didn't know that somebody wanted to go to the us, who's and we didn't offer that as a facility. Who's to say he's not going to, he's going to stay at hoxton, he might to another business. So it's about knowing our people and supporting them at the right time to go forward. I also know that people want to be managers and they say I really want to be a manager, being a manager.
Speaker 2:As Chris has said, historically if you were good at writing business, you became a manager. Typically, that wasn't always the best thing for people. If you want to manage people, you normally have to take a step back. You have to work long hours because you've got a client bank to manage already and you're trying to manage people as well. You've got to want people to do well and you want to give back to do to do so. But we try and recognize what people want to do and if it's right for the business and it's right for them, we then can can facilitate that going forward. So there's there's so much that you can do in that interim phase.
Speaker 2:Because you take Ravi I mean Ravi's 30. Okay, he's already building a decent book of business. He's not going to sail off into the sunset of 35 and stop giving advice. You know he may decide he wants to go and open an office somewhere. He may not, but we need to know about that, and if we, if, if it's good for us, then we'll all work together and we'll do it together yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 3:So people have listened to this podcast now. I think we've been very thorough around the expectations and what the pathway is is all about. So hopefully someone might come to this podcast and think right, that's something that I'm really interested in getting stuck into. So with those individuals, I'd say go to our website. Yeah, sign up. You can go to the recruitment page. There'll be a section there. Um, we've got a fantastic internal recruitment team, uh, headed up by oliver gorman, and there'll be a whole process to go through, of course, to be selected to the pathway. It's not something we're we're hiring for every single month. No, um, it's something that we are hiring for and we'll be building year on year, on year. So if this year is not right for you, maybe it's next year, no problem at all, it's going to be there, it's going to be getting better. The first point of call take yourself to the website, register your details there and then someone will come back and qualify you and tell you more about the pathway program.
Speaker 1:I think there's two other things as well to add on to that. So one's, the community, the hoxton knife community get involved in that, because we really want to see people like. We will use that community to offer the course in first, probably before we let everyone else know we're in the open public that we're offering it. And then number two is to make sure that you read the document. So once you get through the first stage of interview, you will be given a document that is super, super, super important that you read that, because that details out everything we've said and more on what to expect Brilliant.
Speaker 3:In relation to that hoxton life community.
Speaker 3:You'll find that on the school platform yeah um, and there'll be lots of exclusive content for you. It's a great place to be able to really dig deeper and understand exactly what's required of you, of hoxton extra content in there as well, and you can get instant feedback on your questions. So 100 get to that community and um find out more. Definitely perfect 100. Thank you so much guys for sharing the pathway and um really, really looking forward to welcome the next year's superstar delegates. Thanks very much. Thanks, son cheers.