Financial Planner Life Podcast
Welcome to The Financial Planner Life Podcast. We cover an intimate and honest account of what it’s really like to work in the financial planning profession.
Our guests share their stories of success, failures and learnings, as well as what to expect from a career in the financial planning profession! We host guests at various stages in their careers, as well as multiple roles to ensure that our audience has a variety each week.
Financial planners, business owners, paraplanners and back-office staff all have their own story to share, and The Financial Planner Life podcast is a platform for them to talk about their personal and professional journey. The podcast covers a multitude of topics, from mindset and motivation, health and wellbeing all the way to diversity and inclusion.
We approach each episode with the idea that it is going to educate and spark a conversation within the industry with topics that may not be openly discussed. So, if you are thinking of becoming a financial adviser, or you’re curious about learning more about this brilliant sector, we urge you to give the podcast a listen.
The Host: Sam Oakes is the host of The Financial Planner Life Podcast. since 2008 Sam has been supporting leading national and global financial planning firms in finding the best talent, he was the director of Recruit UK, a 7 figure turnover financial planning recruitment company that he successfully exited in 2024, Sam now works as the Head of Creative for Hoxton wealth, building out podcasts, YouTube and social content for this fast growing fee based international financial planning firm.
Sam has always had a passion for financial services, starting out as a trainer for leading product provider in the UK, he has been in the industry for over 20 years.
He sees himself as a partner to the industry and wants to contribute useful resources such as this podcast to educate those further who are seeking advice and help about how to push their careers forward in this amazing profession.
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Financial Planner Life Podcast
Go All In on Your Niche When Building a Financial Planning Business from Scratch - Rohit Rohela
In this inspiring episode of the Financial Planner Life Podcast, host Sam Oakes sits down with Chartered Financial Planner Rohit Rohela, affectionately known as The Tax Terminator and Architect of Financial Freedom. Rohit shares the incredible journey of building his financial planning business, Finsbridge, and the pivotal role that niching down has played in his success. As a long-time listener of the Financial Planner Life Podcast, Rohit credits the show and its guests for sparking his strategy of focusing on specific client communities—a move that has transformed his business.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
1. The Power of Niching Down
Rohit explains how identifying and committing to specific niches—Indian professionals, dentists, and later optometrists—has elevated his business. By understanding their unique financial challenges, aspirations, and professional journeys, Rohit has tailored his services to provide bespoke financial solutions. He outlines the importance of:
- Focusing on a niche to stand out in a crowded market.
- Building trust through deep expertise in the nuances of each group.
- Forming strategic partnerships with key players in each niche, such as accountants, coaches, and brokers.
2. Transitioning into Financial Planning
Rohit’s path from a computer science engineer to a Chartered Financial Planner reveals the importance of self-awareness and finding the right fit. A people person with a knack for listening and understanding unspoken concerns, Rohit realized financial planning could be a more fulfilling career than his initial tech-focused roles. He discusses:
- His early experiences in compliance and banking, which shaped his client-first mindset.
- How leaving a restrictive product-selling environment led him to establish his own client-focused business.
- Lessons learned from overcoming early challenges, such as financial pressures and a partnership that didn’t work out.
3. Building a Business from the Ground Up
Finsbridge started as a one-person operation and has since grown into a thriving team. Rohit discusses how he scaled his business, including:
- Hiring financial planners with complementary skills and niches, such as optometrists and NHS professionals.
- Training and mentoring new advisors to align with the Finsbridge ethos of delivering bespoke, client-first solutions.
- The importance of having a robust operational backbone, managed by his wife and business partner, Lavika, and their operations manager.
4. The Client Journey: From Vision to Execution
Rohit walks through his signature "Finsbridge Master Plan," which maps out a client's life goals and financial needs. From fact-finding to cash flow planning and implementation, he explains how he helps clients navigate their journey with clar
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And today's guest on the Financial Planner Life podcast is Raheet Rahela, or should I say the tax terminator and financial architect, and today we talk about niching down. Do you know what I really really loved about this episode is Raheet's been following the Financial Planner Life for some time and he took from my episodes and the guests that I've had the power of niching down and he applied it in his financial planning business to great success within the Indian community and the dentistry community. So this episode today we talk about his journey within financial planning, running his own business, hiring new people based on skill sets, not experience and what their background is and what they can specifically niche in. It's a fantastic episode. It's very inspiring. Absolutely love, rohit. I hope you enjoy it. Rohit, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planner Life podcast. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm very good and thank you for having me Absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:That's all right, no problem. We had a lovely chat last week, didn't we? We caught up about your career anyway prior to you coming on the podcast and it was just a really interesting conversation. I think we had a good half an hour, didn't we, of talking. So I thought do you know what get you to share your journey? Because it's quite unique on the Financial Planner Live podcast and let's see if we can inspire some people to make some changes, maybe within their business.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's very kind of you to say. You're equally inspiring and your podcast has been an inspiration for me to come out there and share my story, and connecting with you has been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:Oh, brilliant, fantastic. Well, that's the whole point of the Financial Planner Live podcast is to connect people. I'll tell you, raheem, let's just start with you. Then Tell us a little bit about yourself, give us an introduction who you are and what you're doing currently.
Speaker 2:So I'm a bold financial planner, sorry, so I call myself an architect of financial freedom effectively. An architect of financial freedom effectively. Okay. So what I do is I make people look into the future and imagine what their ideal life looks like, what financial freedom means to them, how do they derive joy in life, and help them shape their journey, as far as money is concerned, to achieve those objectives. That's, in a nutshell, what I do. So I'm out there every day with my hammer and chisel and my thinking hat, talking to people, trying to read their mind and giving them a blueprint, which we call the Finsbridge Master Plan at my firm, which helps them navigate their journey in life by design, rather than just walking through life by chance, which is not ideal because we only live once. Life is not a rehearsal, so we've got to have a clear plan and have a clear strategy to achieve it. That's what I help people do.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Tell us a little bit about this blueprint and talk us through that. Did you design it yourself? Is it something which is off the shelf? Tell us about that.
Speaker 2:So it's something that I've designed, but I've taken inspiration from a lot of people. Paul Amson is considered the founder of financial planning in the UK and then I've taken inspiration from a lot of leaders in our industry, people like Andy Hart the track podcast is quite good your own podcast, which has brought in lots of luminaries in the industry. So I've taken inputs and learned, read a lot of books and then distilled it into my own approach and that is. We'll talk about our niches a bit later. That is tailored for each niche differently because we are all on a different journey. But depending on the profession or the kind of career we are on, the journey can be very different. So take a footballer, for example very different journey. Take one of my niches dentists, doctors very different journey again. So whilst the ingredients are the same in terms of your life goals, okay. So defining when do you want to make working optional? So exchanging time for money is the journey we are all on. When we start working Early enough in life, when we've still got the best of health, wealth and happiness, we should be able to reach the magic number, which means we've got enough assets investments, pensions, other assets, businesses, whatever that continue to give us income for the rest of our life. It's not to say that you're just sitting there doing nothing, but you have the freedom and the choice to do other things which give you joy, which are for the heart and your soul. Ok, fulfillment, which we talk about, and joy Right, let's face it, everybody wants to go travel the world.
Speaker 2:But there are other passions learning new languages, giving back to the community, teaching or, you know, benefiting unprivileged kids or older people. Whatever it is that gives you happiness. It's about finding the freedom. And then people care about their family. So if you have children, it's making sure that their future is secured, their education, getting onto the property ladder for them, your own goals you might want to have holiday homes. So, whatever your objectives are, we map it on this life map, if you like. So I'll take my example. Let's say I'm 42 now, okay, I want to attain financial freedom by the time I'm 60,. Let's say Okay, so I want to be able to from 60 to, let's say, 100, if I look after my health and my mental well-being, then I should get to 100.
Speaker 1:So it's making sure that for those 40 years I can derive the income that I need. That's what it's all about Fantastic, great stuff. So you use this blueprint in every single one of your meetings then, do you?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Coming from an industry which was about selling products, so that's what the old school financial advisors used to do okay, back in the old days, with the banks and so on. I've now moved to an environment where, for every single client, the conversation first starts with having the plan and then, once the plan is agreed upon, you know exactly what you want. Then we do a reality check where are you now, what's the gap to financial freedom? Okay, and how you're going to get there. Then we build in the individual elements pensions, isis, vcts.
Speaker 2:All these are tools in my toolkit which I can pull out and put in the right place. So I come from an engineering background computer science, engineering and I use what I learned to effectively do financial engineering, and that financial engineering is putting the right tools in the right place to help my clients attain their objectives. So once the plan is ready, then we know what tools we need to build and then guess what is important the best plan in the world will fail if you don't review it and you don't hold your client accountable for achieving those objectives. It's a bit like fitness. Why do you have a personal coach? What's going to make you get up on a cold great morning like this one here in the UK and and go and work out okay. So sometimes you need that external accountability, that coaching, to remind yourself what's the end goal and what you're working towards. The journey is very important.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So how do you keep your clients up to date with it then? Do you just do check-ins with them? Accountability check-ins? Do you use apps? What are you using?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Apps? Not at the moment we're looking in that direction, but what I've designed is a very personal service. So when clients come and work with us for the first time, we go through a three-stage process. The first stage is fact-finding and goal-setting, so knowing what we want to achieve and where we are now. Then we go through cash flow planning, so putting in all the investments, pension savings which for most people are, let's face it, spread all over. So putting it all into one picture, which I call an asset map and it's spread all over. So putting it all into one picture, which I call an asset map and then putting together a plan and a report and we begin implementing it.
Speaker 2:Then life happens, people miss certain things. So we hold an accountability meeting 90 days after the onboarding, okay and then we have six monthly check-ins. So every six months we check in to see what's changed in their lives, in their objectives, how the investments performed and how their goals changed. And we make sure that everything is tiered and they're doing what they need to do. I'm doing what I need to do and we are on track.
Speaker 1:So engineering background, what got you into financial planning and what was the journey up to running your own business then? Very interesting.
Speaker 2:So this brings me to where I was brought up in Delhi, india. So India is effectively a continent in a country, and each state has its own culture, its own way of life, food, all of that. But one thing is common that unites us Indians and that's the pursuit of excellence. So this is hardwired, this was hardwired in us right from childhood that you have to do either accountancy, engineering, law, medicine, something like that. So I figured out that I was a very logical, analytical person. I love to learn about physics and how things work and mathematics. So computer science was the rage at the time. If you remember, technology was a theme worldwide when I was growing up late 90s, early 2000s so that's what got me into it. I got into a reasonably good university, delhi University, and did my computer science engineering from there. But then reality hits you when you get your first job. Ok, so I'm not saying that coding is bad, but it wasn't for me, right. So sitting in front of a computer and just coding, it was a faceless job. And what I really enjoyed when I pursued my engineering and then MBA was the people side of things. So I realized that I was very good at communicating with people. But more importantly, I was good at listening and understanding what was being said. What was being said and, more importantly, what was not being said, asking open-ended, probing questions and helping people see what they really meant okay, what the gist of what they were saying was. And this skill I thought could be applied into something more useful, where I could be more productive. So what could I do? I could have been a software salesman, selling you software products or something. I could have gone into management, but I fell into financial services, and how that happened was.
Speaker 2:This takes me back to 2006. So this was the period when financial services was seen as a fantastic field. We were in this phase of boom worldwide and that attracted me to London. So I used to work for Citibank at the time and they gave me the opportunity to visit London and work in London for a couple of years. That was really interesting because London was seen as a financial center still is worldwide. So I came here.
Speaker 2:I thought I'll do a couple of years, but when I worked here and also back in India, I realized that this is what I really enjoyed. I could have gone into corporate banking, but helping make big, you know, helping big corporations that already had lots of money, make more money. Did that inspire me? Now, what inspired me was making a real difference to people's lives. Okay, and it's.
Speaker 2:It's a funny thing I say this today, but I was ahead of the time in terms of having a planning-led mindset and genuinely caring for my client's best interests. So, in an environment where it was all about selling products and telling your line manager why you did not sell to a particular client X number of investments, mortgages, whatever, whatever I felt very uncomfortable in that environment. I learned a lot, but the one thing which I would have done better if I could go back is going to running my own business my own way much earlier in life, because I can. I've built the journey in my own way and the last six years, what we've achieved at Finsbridge. But hopefully that answers your question. Sorry, we digress a little bit.
Speaker 1:No, that's okay. So, finsbridge then, so you, you're a, you're an appointed representative of another, of another firm, you're not directly authorized. Just tell us about your business, tell us about your business, the size of your business and how you kind of structure that business, because I think people would be very interested because you are self-employed, you are running your own business, but let's just talk about how you structure that business. Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:So before that I want to give you some context on how Finsbridge came about. The vision, okay, yeah. So for the first five years of my working life in the UK I was in the bank assurance sector and I worked for organizers like St James's Place. That was a fantastic learning ground, okay, but the dissatisfaction I had was I was restricted to the products which these organizations offered, which were not always in the best interest of my clients. So then I thought what could I do next to make a difference? So this was the time when RDR, or the Retail Distribution Review, came in the UK Commissions were abolished for investments in pension products and a lot of mis-selling had happened before. So I got a really good opportunity with Ernst Young to move into compliance. At the time we were doing section 166 projects for several well-known banks. So this was about learning the lessons of what went wrong when mis-selling may have happened, and trying to fix the problems going forward. So that really brought me very close to the regulator and also I became really mindful of what client outcomes look like and what damage can be caused when clients put their trust in people who don't always give the best advice or care about them genuinely.
Speaker 2:So then I moved into HSBC, which I'd worked for before. That was my first sort of organization I worked for in the UK, barring Citibank, which was a short stint. So I learned a lot in compliance role in Europe. Now you know that Europe, certain countries, are way behind UK in terms of compliance. It's pretty much Wild West. So I had to take standards which HSBC had in in the UK and then hold and coach and monitor these guys in different European countries like Malta and Greece, which you'd call fringe countries for HSBC. But it was a very interesting role. And whilst I was doing that for HSBC and then Fisher Investments, which is an American investment firm with a presence in the UK, again I learned a lot. Fantastic firm and we did certain things to improve things from a compliance point of view. But that made me think what do I want to do next? I'm 38 at that point, you know. So I was motivated to take the risk and start my own business, which had always been at the back of my mind by Lavika, who is my business partner and life partner. So she helps me run everything in the background. She's the head of operations at Finsbridge. So it started as a one-man army.
Speaker 2:I spoke to a friend, akash, who used to work for Aegis at the time. So he suggested why don't you consider Aegis? Because I was talking to networks. But then I'd heard stories about some networks being good, some networks being not so good. So when I met John, who is the MD at Aegis Financial Planning, I realized that he's a genuinely nice person who puts a high degree of trust in people, in the people he hires, and gives them a lot of autonomy to run their own business the way they want to, whilst obviously ensuring that they are compliant and they're doing things the right way. So that's what I was looking for.
Speaker 2:Uh, whilst going da directly would have been a big jump, okay, being with uh ages, who was going to take care of compliance requirements, provide uh decent support in terms of administration, in terms of uh reconciliation all the boring stuff that financial planners don't want to do but important stuff at the same time. So I had a compliance background. I could have done it, but I would rather spend my time with clients. So that was the vision. So we started as a one man army, and behind me was there's a saying, isn't it? Behind every successful man is a woman. Full credit to her. I had doubts, okay. So I started this business, uh, with a business partner actually, but that fell through in three months because, uh, the chap fell in love with somebody in Brazil and, uh, you know, that took him to Brazil. So obviously he uh realized it wasn't for him three months down. So guess what I'm thinking?
Speaker 2:Uh, in COVID has happened early 2021. I'm saying I can't do it anymore, let's go back. And in those moments of truth, you actually either go forward or go backward. And I went forward. I had faith. So at that time I exhausted eight to nine months of savings. I'd saved 12 months worth of my expenditure. I was 8 or 9 months expenditure down and, fortunately for me, my faith paid off. So that's one message I'd give everybody looking to start any business, including a financial planning business have faith. You will have ups and downs, especially in the very early stages. You will have doubts, but just keep going and you will crack it. So that's what happened.
Speaker 2:We started to grow rapidly, clients started to put faith in me. We started niching down, which we'll talk about. So I started as doing everything for everybody. But then I very quickly realized, learning from the people I mentioned Andy and a few other financial planners Pete Matthew of Meaningful Money, and then listening to your podcast, which is started around the same time, learning from the brilliant people you talk to that niching is very, very important. So I did that Fast forward to this year where we decided to expand the team. So I got to a point where we built a good amount of assets in the management and we knew that we had a certain recurring income coming in. That's the key in this business that clients work with you for a lifetime, so you do a good job for them. Over time, markets do their job, assets grow and therefore your income grows with it, so your interests are linked with the client's best interests and when I reached that point where I thought I'm ready to expand.
Speaker 2:We took on two new financial advisors. One of them is now working Gaurav, is now operational in the business. The other one, sri, is doing his qualifications and he'll be up and running from January. They also took on an operations manager, natasha. She's absolutely brilliant and she works with Lavika to make sure that the show runs in the background. So the engine behind our organization and our growth is two wonderful ladies.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's the business now, and our focus is on doubling our assets in the management in the next two years, but not in a way that we are just treating getting business as a primary goal. It's about growing slowly but in the right way, doing the right thing for our clients, really, really looking after them, and this is what every single client tells us that, rohit, you've made a big difference in our lives. You've helped us retire many years earlier. You've helped us protect our children's future. Unfortunately, there been a couple of cases where I've done life insurance for clients after convincing them, and then the worst has happened. So imagine what difference that makes to people's lives. So it's these things which, to this day, 15 years on, I'm really passionate about what I do because of the real impact it makes to people's lives.
Speaker 1:Great stuff. Well, let's talk about one of the most impactful things then. So it sounded like you were going through a bit of decision making as to whether or not you stop or you can continue to go forward. You had faith to continue going forward and and it paid off. I totally understand that.
Speaker 1:I've been in positions where I want to throw the towel in numerous times and I think when you run a business is it goes through your mind daily sometimes. You know, you think what am I doing? You know it's crazy. Um, a couple of things I want to pick up on here. We're going to talk about niching down in a minute.
Speaker 1:Okay, because I think that's really important, because, um, it sounds like that was a pivotal moment in your career when you started to think well, actually, I don't want to be a master to everybody, I want to be a master to some, so that we're going to talk about that, and I think niching down is a very, very important topic, especially for those thinking about either building their business or starting in a profession. So, like, where do they start? It's really, really difficult to choose the right pathway. But also, as well, you obviously hired a few people into the business and you've got aspirations now to double the assets. Now let's talk about that a little bit doubling your assets under management, growing your business. How are you approaching it? Is it based on hiring more people, or is it better processes, or is it creating marketing? What's your mechanism for doubling up your AUM and why?
Speaker 2:Sure. So let's start with the niching point and then we'll come to the strategy behind growing the business. So for the first year, I was reliant on leads coming in from my introducers. So the typical journey you take accountants and solicitors, introductions from family and friends, and online resources like Unbiased, which worked for me to a point. But then I realized that my conversion rate was probably about one in four, one in five, and no matter how much I improved my skills, I found it very hard to distinguish my services. How were they different to any other IFA down the street? And it became sometimes a race to the bottom in terms of fees, which I didn't want to do, because I know what my services are worth, and this is another piece of advice I give to everybody. Starting out is never underestimate yourself, never undersell yourself. You know what you're worth, you set your fees and you stick to it. So then I thought about how do I differentiate myself? So I started thinking about the segments of people that I knew a lot about. So a lot of my friends and family are into the medical profession. So the key problem that we are trying to solve is for people who love to delegate their money management, because either they do not have the expertise or they do not have the desire to do it or the time to do it. Ok, so two or three of these are met in this segment, right? Dentists, doctors you imagine their life with the NHS and running dental practices, know a lot about these people, what their journey is, for example, either staying an associate but improving your skills, like becoming an implant surgeon or cosmetic surgeon or something like that, or going down the route of having your own practice and then exiting it. So I then started to study the ecosystem from where? What are the forums where I can get traction? So it was about a Facebook group okay, which we created, and then it was about showing up. So there are various shows, like the Dentistry Show in Birmingham. There's one down in London. So reaching out to them again, that's another lesson Never be afraid to reach out to people and explore and implement your ideas, because often they are here, but they need to be executed to where you can see the impact. So I tried various things. I tried LinkedIn marketing. It was too much time and did not show the results, need to be executed to where you can see the impact. So I tried various things. I tried linkedin marketing. Um, it was too much time, uh, and did not show the results. Uh, in the niche I was working for real time events where I tied up with, I developed relationships with coaching institutions that coach dentists, train them on various things like implants, patient journey and so on, and brokers that are involved in the purchase and sale of dental practices. So that allowed us to create a winning combination, ok, what I call a symbiotic relationship, where for them, it was clear that with our help, the dentists or doctors would see what magic number they need to hit, and then these guys can work with them to increase their profitability, to get them to learn more profitable skills, right, and I would work with them to handle the financial aspect save tax, invest and then eventually sell your business at the value you want. So that's where I started. That's, that was my first niche, if you like. The second niche was, I thought you know where do I come from?
Speaker 2:India. What are the common traits? Okay, that Indians have so working very hard, studying, then slogging when you're working, right. So we are known worldwide to work hard. The work ethic is fantastic, but what is lacking? Enjoying life, maybe, for a lot of us, right, that's why you have higher incidence of things like heart attack, diabetes. Right, we don't look after our fitness. As well as some other cultures. We work very, very hard. We don't have a clear vision of what we want to achieve and we put too much faith in just one asset class property brick and mortar. Okay, that's the cultural thing. So education is required to tell them that, look, there are better ways where you can have better diversification, the greatest companies of the world. So that was my other niche, ok.
Speaker 2:So I started with groups such as there's a very well-known group called Indians in London on Facebook. Then there are other groups of Indians locally, like Indians in Reading, indians in Woking, right. So all these surrounding. I joined these groups and they have their social gatherings. I started going to them just to attend and see what's going on and then telling people about what I did. Now, because of the success Indians achieve in the UK, their income is much higher than average generally and therefore they are at a level where they have a greater problem, which is paying lots of tax, and a lot of them are stuck between do we go back because India is a booming economy? Do we stay here? There are pros and cons, so helping them with that decision is also the pros and cons, because we do have relations with a company in India that offers wealth advisory services there. So that's the niche I created.
Speaker 2:So we have two very important festivals. One is Diwali, the festival of lights, and we have Holi, the festival of colors. So again, using these festivals to attend the congregations and spread the word. So that has really worked well for me too, because I'm Indian. I can speak the language Hindi, punjabi, whatever. I can understand the psyche of how people am Indian. I can speak the language Hindi, punjabi, whatever. I can understand the psyche of how people think and I can educate them about the things which are lacking in our culture, which are looking after your health and fitness, having a clear goal and a clear plan and, the most important thing, not taking life too hard, not working too hard, balancing things and then eventually aiming at financial freedom fantastic, great stuff.
Speaker 1:So niching down into two to suit two areas, okay, great. Well, let's just go back. Let's go back to dentists a minute. Okay, you mentioned about, you mentioned about facebook. You mentioned about linking in with key people of influence who also serve dentists. I think that's a hugely important thing to do, because if you've got five people around you that all have a network of dentists but they all offer different solutions and different services, then you can bolt onto them and say, well, here's how I can add value to you with your audience, and vice versa, I can introduce people to you once I've added value with financial planning. So let's just break this down for people that don't know how to really attack a niche and to build a niche and to start to actually dominate it, because it is a bit worrying, it is a bit scary, putting all your eggs in one basket. Let's break your process down. Let's start with dentists first of all. Where did you start?
Speaker 2:Friends and family. So I had three very close friends, a couple of cousins, who were dentists. I spoke to them. I said to them look, I'll treat you to a beer and dinner one Friday evening. You tell me really what's your journey like in your career, what are the challenges and, in respect of money management, how good or bad are you? Or what makes you wake up at night? How good or bad are you, or what makes you wake up at night. So I learned a whole lot about them being frustrated with the NHS dentistry, trying to do more private business or upskilling or thinking about whether we start a practice. We don't start a practice. So I got to list the problems.
Speaker 2:Then I started doing my research on which were the people that could solve the problems which I couldn't solve. I can solve the tax problem, I can solve the investment strategy problem. I can't directly give them coaching on the clinical side or on the skill side. So I then found the people who would do that. So the first port of call was their accountants, because obviously when you're talking to a business owner, their accountant gives them advice on tax and compliance side of that, but they don't give advice on investment. So that's, that was the first starting point. Then, through the accountants and through some of the dentists that I worked with, I got to know of coaches which would coach them on improving their patient journey. Uh, you know, a bit like using instagram to have those wonderful smile pictures before and after, right.
Speaker 2:And so I built relationship with them. And guess what? If I met an associate who told me that, look, I'm planning to start a practice here. You go talk to this person. Okay, I'm not happy with my accountant. He's not really a specialist, doesn't give me good service. Go talk to this person. I'm looking to sell my practice in a few years. I don't know how to shape up what it's worth. Speak to this broker, okay.
Speaker 2:So I then became a one-stop shop for solutions. Because, guess what? Financial planning is very different to a lot of these relationships, which are transactional and limited in terms of their scope in time. Barring it's coaching, maybe all right and account, but some of some of them can be transactional, some of them can be one-off, right. My engagement with my clients is at a much deeper level, and it needs to be at that level. So this is something I learned early on you're a financial coach first and an advisor or product recommender, if you can use that term, later.
Speaker 2:So that's how I slowly built this ecosystem. It took me a year and a half to really get the traction, and then I recorded a few podcasts with a dentist who effectively had an interest in finance, so those became very, quite popular. Then the events we did gain certain amount of traction. So slowly you start getting seen as a thought leader in the space, and the more you put yourself out there and this is a lesson I'm learning from you slowly, the more you put yourself out there, the better it is. So I've stuck to the offline world by and large so far. I'm just starting to explore the online world, which, of course, is a one-to-many reach. So so does that give you an idea on the answer?
Speaker 1:so yes, I just want to kind of dig a little bit deeper on it as well. So about a year and a half before you started to see a return on your investment of time and networking, when it really started reaching that what's the word?
Speaker 2:that trigger level where I felt that, yeah, I was getting there, but it's a trickle thing, you know, it's not going to just you turn on the tab and it's not going to happen like that the difference was being felt, right. So as I was doing more activity and as I was meeting more people, I was getting more referrals. Okay, that's where it started with. And then people test you out, don't they? Then they collect feedback from a couple of people they referred and when they say that, yes, you've done a good job, that's when word starts to spread. And then I became much better at asking for referrals. So I've always been a person who's been very humble Okay, so I don't like to talk about myself, but then I realized that it can be done in a way that's still humble, but it encourages people to share their experience, their good experience and the difference you've made to their life with other friends and family and then help spread the word. So actively asking for referrals is very underrated, but that's been probably one of the most effective things asking for referrals via the introducers or asking for referrals via the clients that you service
Speaker 2:directly introduces, of course, but that's probably a third. I want it to be more word of mouth. Okay, word of mouth spreads very in different ways and people are very curious. They assess you by looking at you across multiple platforms, multiple ways. They do their assessment. So if somebody has told, let's say, a dentist, friend of mine, I've done a good job for them, they tell somebody else who is also a dentist or a doctor that look, this guy is good, he understands our world. You should have a word with him. So already that client or that prospective client is coming in to talk to me with a degree of trust. Okay, but what they'll also do in today's world they'll go into the website, okay. They'll go on linkedin, they'll probably check facebook, they'll check for reviews. So if these things aren't, then your impact that you could make even before you see them is a little bit less.
Speaker 1:So your online footprint, then do you position yourself as the financial planner to the dentistry industry. Very much so.
Speaker 2:Dentists, gp partners, business owners and Indians. That's our niche, okay.
Speaker 1:And guess what we are building.
Speaker 2:New niches with the two new people that we've taken. So we've built sector expertise into optometrists, lawyers, barristers, and we're also creating a niche in people who are coming up to retirement Interesting.
Speaker 1:So your strategy for growing your business is to hire new financial planners, but for those financial planners to actually come in and hang their hat on a niche Now, are you thinking about those people's niches before they actually join, or are you hiring based on their influence within a specific niche combination of?
Speaker 2:both. So both of the guys that have joined Gaurav and Sri, they come with their specific niches. So Sri, for example, has a partner spouse that works within the NHS and the other person coming in Gaurav his spouse works for a big corporate. Okay, so this big corporate has many employees who are six figure earners, who have a 40, 45 percent tax problem. That's a problem we can solve. So he's introduced, or he will introduce, a new angle where we can go into these corporates to half a day workshops on the art of financial planning, on the importance of tax planning and things like that, and that gets us away. That's a captive audience sitting there. So they've brought their own niches.
Speaker 2:But I've introduced other niches, like Optometrist, for example. So that just came about with a lovely client of mine who we did a good job for. It came through an online inquiry, but when I saw his challenges and the way we solved them, they were similar to dentists in that they get franchise arrangement from the likes of Boots or Specsavers and then there is an exit value to the business. It's quite a stressful job, there's lots of competition from independents and so on, and they don't want to be doing it forever. So guess what Dentists have? The same thing Bending down. You know this and that, and then the risk of injury and everything like, and with age your dexterity reduces right. Challenges are similar, solutions are similar. You just got to tailor the language that had a little bit.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about these hires then. Are these hires that you're? Are you, is it homegrown talent? Are you bringing people in and training them from scratch, or are they financial planners that have transitioned across your business?
Speaker 2:I'm. I have quite an open mind. Scratch, or are they financial planners that have transitioned across to your business? I have quite an open mind. So far it's been people that have got experience of financial services but, as it happens, both of these have got experience in asset management but not advising private clients. So they've worked with financial advisors like me, you know, in a BDM capacity or managers of BDMs handling a region or whatever, but they wanted to be financial planners to make a real difference. So they're not new to the financial advice world entirely, but, uh, they are new to the profession as such that you do new to the actual job role.
Speaker 1:But they understand what financial planning is okay, interesting, so does that not worry you when you take these individuals on and you employ them? Or you do you employ them or do you have them as self-employed?
Speaker 2:I've chosen the self-employed route. Ok, and I'm not worried in the contrary, actually, I like it because then I've built a certain culture and a certain journey which we want Finsbridge clients to go on. Ok, we have a certain standard of excellence and looking after our clients' best interests. So I'm not saying that a person with prior experience couldn't come in and fit in there. It's possible. But in my mind it's much, much better to bring in talent which is taking a fresh start and I can coach them. It takes longer because it's a learning curve, but ultimately you are much more likely to see a journey that they give their clients which is very, very similar to the journey that you want Finsbridge, as a brand, to give all of its clients and that's the challenge, isn't it? On a new scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%, and I like your approach. You know, since joining hoxton wealth, I've really noticed that their homegrown talent, if you like that, has gone through their version of an academy which is called the pathway. Yeah, some of these guys and girls are exceptional and they've never worked in financial planning before. They're just following a very strict process of training and development and one of the things they do is they get them on the telephones very, very early on in their career to call up clients that have shown an interest in financial planning services and they phone them up and they do fact finds with them, they try to establish a needs-based approach to advice, then introduce them to the advisors and they go through the whole process and they manage the relationship. So there's all these beautiful things that they're doing very early on that they've never done before. So it's a lot easier to train somebody who's never done it before because they don't know any different. So you can really condition somebody positively to work a certain way that works.
Speaker 1:So if you've got people in the business that have done really well, like you, for example, right, you've done really well within your business.
Speaker 1:You've trodden the path, haven't you? You've gone through the jungle, you've used your machete, you've cut everything down, you put the candles down so you know where you're going, and now you can turn around to people that join the business and say, look, here's the evidence, this is what I've done, this is how I've done it. Now I'm going to teach you how to do it now realistically. It's going to take you this amount of time and I think one of the things that people really, really crave right a they crave a plan, but b they create. They crave a realistic time scale to achieve the goals that they need to achieve within their career framework, and financial planning always lacked good, strong career frameworks with realistic expectations. One of the chaps in the office, ravi. He has taken a good four to five years right, four to five years. Now he's a financial planner, but he took four to five years to get there. He's under 30 years old. He'll probably do 15 million this year.
Speaker 2:Fantastic.
Speaker 1:In his first year and you think to yourself wow, brilliant, but that's the structure and the process and the development and the discipline that he has gone on that journey and he wasn't in a rush to try to become a financial advisor too quickly because he wanted to learn the ropes. So let's just go back again, okay. So these individuals that have come on, they come from an asset management background. They're now sort of looking at their, their niching, their niches, okay, um. So do you? How are training them? How are you getting them through that process if you're really busy yourself? Raheem?
Speaker 2:So it's all about good time management. So we designate Fridays as our training days and dialogue days. Okay, so I should also not forget to mention Natasha, who is our head of operations, and she runs the show in the background, but she also comes from a legal background. Ok, so we have a side to our business which is legal in the sense that we deliver wills, lasting policy, so everything that's needed to do estate planning, preserve the wealth for multiple generations. So we all pick up areas which we want to focus learning on.
Speaker 2:So, to begin with, for the first couple of months, it was about doing role plays and observing me in meetings, because I, what I wanted these guys to do was to observe what we, what I did and what the finsbridge journey, what the ideal journey, looked like. But then I encouraged them to develop their own style. I didn't want them to ape my style, because that doesn't really work. You have to be your authentic self, right? So they learned the skills. Then they practiced these with me in role plays and then we started having client meetings with them. So I would just sit there and start the meeting, introduce myself and we still do that because they're only a few months in. So I would just sit there and start the meeting, introduce myself and we still do that, okay, because they're only a few months in. So we start the meeting together. I introduce Finsbridge and what we do, and we always position it as a strategic advisor and a service advisor working together. So I'm the strategic advisor to the client and Gaurav and Shree are the servicing advisors. So they never feel like they're on their own and we've got two minds working instead of one to offer the client. And then what they've learned is the research and the operational side of things. So doing your cash flow planning, putting together illustrations which Natasha does and then going back to the client to seek answers to questions which have remained unanswered, so they can actually deal with a lot of that work and learn, both the client facing side and the back. And and you improve incrementally, right. So as they improve, they take on more and more responsibility, they develop into niches and they become more and more autonomous. That's the journey, nice, okay, so it's still early days, but uh, it's showing the right results. We're very happy with the way.
Speaker 2:Uh, gaurav, who's already done his qualifications, has grown. He's already acquired four or five clients and that's been just a couple of months and three guess what has clients under his belt even before he's formally started trading as an advisor. So he's done with me, conversations with introduces. He's based down in the southwest, which is is a really good area, underserved, I believe Exeter, plymouth, down in Cornwall, you know Dorset, that sort of region, and there are huge numbers of people. You talk about accountants, you talk about estate agents dealing with people downsizing, moving away from London. So that's where he's found his niche and we've taken on some really, really good clients. We've given them very good advice and guess what? They were working with the likes of what I mentioned product sellers. Right, they'd be. A couple of them had been working for years. They had never, had never had a financial plan in their life. I take on so many. I don't know how anybody can do this job without a financial plan, without a cash flow plan.
Speaker 1:Very interesting, so mainly offline stuff that you focused on. So what would you say is in the pipeline to further enhance your business development and niche domination?
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's funny you say offline. When I talk about marketing, it has primarily been offline, okay, and it's worked well for us, but it's a one-to-one, isn't it? Whenever you're talking and trying to influence, you're influencing one person or maybe a small group. If you're doing a webinar, okay, so we have done webinars occasionally, but what I haven't done yet you can talk about it being my new year or new tax year resolution after april next year is to start something regular. We already have a very good newsletter that delivers very good value, but that's text. Primarily.
Speaker 2:I want to add video. Okay, um, and I've taken inspiration from you. I I listened to a brilliant podcast that you did, um, and that was about how you got started. Was it from the bedroom, your parents bedroom or something like that? Yeah, so that's how you start and then you keep doing it, you improve, and then you take coaching and, uh, work with people like yourself to do it even better. So that's what I would consciously work towards to have a go to develop some skills myself and then. So I think video works really well. The important thing is not to do too many things at the same time as well, because then you can just get digressed, and taking coaching from a person who's done it successfully is very, very important.
Speaker 1:I think I think what's really powerful for you is this okay, you've developed a need. Let's look at dentists first of all. Okay, so you've got this niche. You create a podcast. It's about serving dentists. You've got an introducer network. You've got some skilled people around you that all do different things. They become guests on your podcast, right? So they're all talking about different things that dentists are thinking about and dentists are probably searching. So you've got your topics.
Speaker 1:You're then able to use those podcast episodes for social media content and you're then able to use those those podcast episodes for marketing content as well. So you might want to create a, an email system, where you've got eight episodes that will go through the journey of somebody in their dentistry career, and part of that would be financial planning, part of that would be accountings and part of that would be marketing your business to the point of selling your business, right? So all of a sudden, when you start with that podcast I call it podcast first marketing you start with that podcast. That podcast becomes your piece of content that you can then repurpose in multiple ways. You can set up your linkedin um uh, social marketing strategy.
Speaker 1:You can set up linkedin newsletter articles. You put it out there, you put your name next to it and every single time someone searches for you, you've got that level of authority because you come up, you come up on youtube, so you take that video and you'll put it on youtube. The algorithm, yeah, and you're just constantly, constantly out there and you're hanging your hat on that niche as being the expert within it. But it's all about also bringing people onto the podcast that are also. It's all about also bringing people onto the podcast that are also experts, you know, and also bringing your clients on, perhaps clients that have gone through a part of the process so they could be dentists themselves and they've taken some financial planning with you or they've. They've come on, um, they've been, they've exited a business and you can talk about some of the ups and the downs and the in the realities and the stresses of exiting a business.
Speaker 1:So it's it's not a tricky thing to do yeah, it's really not a tricky thing to do and it's one of those things that, if you're doing it in the offline what I call the offline world, which is, you know, a fantastic way to generate business and to build trust is to do it face to face. No denying that right. And next year for me, I'm going offline to face it face-to-face no denying that right. And next year for me, I'm going offline to face-to-face and creating events and things, and that's my thing. Next year I want to bring that. Ai can't get me then, can it? You can't take away somebody on a face-to-face basis, so you've got to kind of do it the other way around, but bringing it into this world. What it does is it takes you from speaking to 10 people a week to speaking to about 2 000 people a week absolutely that's.
Speaker 2:That's the aim, so, and you don't have to do the talking, it's the social media apparatus doing it for you it's like.
Speaker 1:So if I, I did some stats a couple of days ago, right, I think it's 80 hours a day, 80, so you need 24 hours in a day, but continuous listens and views of the content that I put out is 80 hours a day. So whenever I'm sleeping, whatever I'm doing, what I'm right, this second somebody is watching or listening to a piece of content that I've got and it's powerful, it's really, really great, and the repurposement of it just just adds completely another value and it doesn't break the bank. It's just about. It's just about process. It's about thinking about the process, like, well, how am I going to approach this? How am I going to develop, how am I going to develop a process to create the episodes, distribute the episodes and just be consistent and yeah, that's the thing being consistent, being regular, yeah, and that's what my focus is on.
Speaker 2:So I want to improve, uh, our client journey and processes and make them more efficient. Working with Natasha for the first three months of next year and when we go past the busy end of tax year in April, that's when I really want to put down my focus on what you just mentioned podcasts and then repurposing content and inviting people, because people love to talk about their journey and other people can get a lot of inspiration. It'll be very boring if it was just a monologue from me, right, yeah, but it's about bringing different stories, which you do such a great job of the thing is as well.
Speaker 1:They then share it with their followers, which are relevant to you. So as long as you've got topics that, if there's six topic like, is a dentist always gonna search for financial planning? No, the dentist gonna search for how to scale their practice. Yes, how to do marketing for dentists yes, yeah, you know they're gonna search for those things. But as long as they're on, they're coming to you and it's a pod and you talk and they're like who is this guy? And they look at it, they go, oh, he's a financial planner. And you drop in financial planning.
Speaker 1:At every episode that you're doing, it becomes a, a no-brainer in my eyes. I love the fact that you're niching down and I love the fact you've got the confidence to do it, but what I also love the fact is it takes time, right, you. It doesn't. It doesn't happen overnight and I think people give up really, really quickly because they want those quick and easy wins. Um, I didn't make any money for years off a financial plan of life. I really, really didn't. And then all of a sudden, I did, and a lot. So it's kind of like you've got to go through that process and you've got to kiss a few frogs and you've got to kind of be consistent and persistent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to. We've had to let go of a few clients who just wouldn't get our message about staying invested and staying consistent. But you educate, educate, you inspire, you share stories and then you get to work with people who match your wavelength, who sing from the thing him she does you perfect.
Speaker 1:Therefore, value the lessons you give them and you start to enjoy life a little bit more because you become an expert within not only financial planning, but you become an expert within another ecosystem and the funny thing is the people within that ecosystem. They're not as they are in their little world, they're doing their job right. So they don't know everything and you might think, oh my God, put them on a pedestal. I used to like financial planners, but the more I started speaking to financial planners and businesses, I realized they know a few things about financial planning, but outside of that they didn't know much more.
Speaker 2:That's what happens if you are a generic product seller? You're never going to do that, because when you really get into the depth of people's lives, what inspires them, what they're looking to achieve both professionally and personally, then you start to know them at a different level. Correct, that is so different from just the old world you know which we all come from.
Speaker 1:You know the challenges and the problems and the aspirations and the dreams and the goals.
Speaker 1:And when you speak to 100 people, you start to realize that we're all very, very similar and we all worry about the same things and we all want the same things.
Speaker 1:And it's just about understanding human nature, people, the challenges, the problems, and then being able to use that, I like to say, to your advantage um, it is to your advantage, it really is um. But it's also to their advantage because you're able to, you're able to put, to say to people look, you're not on your own in that thinking and this is a safe, this is a safe space for us to have a conversation about it. Let's get honest, let's talk about your aspirations and everything. Let's put some pride out of the way and let's get you moving forward. And that's the bit that I love the most is when you can really be confident that what you're talking about is bang on the money, because they're probably statistics will tell me, because I've spoken to enough people they're probably worried about the same thing as well yeah, they're worried about the way I put it is the challenges everybody faces are the same.
Speaker 2:Okay, but the way they approach those challenges are different because they are on a different journey. Yeah, exactly, footballer journey will be very different to a dentist, will be very different to a recruiter, will be very different to a computer science engineer and it's crazy to think that we can categorize everybody out there in the same way.
Speaker 1:It's better to pick a niche and stick to it and be an expert within that niche. And on that note, raheet, I'm going to have to bring this to an end because I've got another podcast straight after this one. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey. I love the fact you're niching down. I love hearing about the stories of people niching and I'm really pleased that the podcast and my story as well has helped you and inspire you, and I'm looking forward to continuing our conversations and and helping you, hopefully, to develop and build your niche even further. Um and um. Yeah, I'm just wish you all the best with your career. Really, really, really. Um, sounds awesome, mate thank you, sam.
Speaker 2:Uh, the proof is, I was inspired by watching your podcast, so it works right there we go.
Speaker 2:I didn't know you, well, I didn't know you from all those recruitment emails coming, you know, 15, 10 years ago. But, um, I really got to know you, the person behind you watching that podcast, and that's what inspired me to reach out. That's what it's all about. Yeah, reach out people, learn from them and don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Really isn't it. But thank you for having me real pleasure and wish you a very happy Christmas and festive season.
Speaker 1:Have an amazing one, Raheet. Thank you so much for your time today, buddy Cheers.
