From IFA Network To Directly Authorised - One Financial Solutions Next Chapter!

After 13 years inside a financial advice network, Wayne Griffith and One Financial Solutions have become directly authorised by the FCA.

But what does it really take to become a directly authorised financial advice firm? How long does FCA authorisation take, what are the risks, and when is the right time to leave a network?

Wayne joins Sam Oakes on the Financial Planner Life Podcast to share the full story behind One Financial Solutions becoming directly authorised.

The process took around 18 months, including nine months of preparation followed by a demanding nine-month FCA application. Wayne speaks honestly about the interviews, capital adequacy requirements, compliance responsibilities and the steep learning curve that comes with taking full accountability for a financial advice business.

He also explains why the FCA was far more supportive than he expected and how compliance consultancy 360 helped prepare the business for direct authorisation.

Why did One Financial Solutions become directly authorised?

For Wayne, it came down to greater control, accountability and agility. He wanted the freedom to shape the firm’s investment proposition, decide which advisers joined the business, develop future advisers and build a privately owned company capable of creating long-term wealth for its people.

This is not an attack on financial advice networks. Wayne explains why networks remain essential, particularly for new advisers and smaller firms that need a “business in a box.” After 13 years of support, One Financial Solutions had simply reached a stage where its ambitions required greater independence.

In this episode, we explore:

• How to become directly authorised by the FCA
• How long the FCA authorisation process can take
• The true cost and responsibility of becoming directly authorised
• The difference between a directly authorised firm and an appointed representative
• Why financial advice networks remain valuable
• Capital adequacy, compliance and FCA interviews
• Building a centralised investment proposition
• Creating generational wealth for financial advisers
• One Financial Solutions’ plan to grow to 100 advisers
• Training trainee and junior financial planners
• Why new advisers should learn marketing and build a niche
• Neurodiversity within financial planning firms
• How AI could change administration, paraplanning and client service

Should your financial advice firm become directly authorised?

Wayne’s answer is clear: direct authorisation is not automatically better. It depends on the size, experience, resources and long-term ambitions of the business. A network can provide valuable protection and infrastructure. Direct authorisation provides greater control, but also places far more responsibility on the firm and its leadership team.

If you are considering leaving a network, applying for FCA authorisation or joining a growing directly authorised financial advice firm, this episode gives you a refreshingly honest view of what lies ahead.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Wayne Griffith’s big announcement
01:10 Why One Financial Solutions became directly authorised
02:19 Working with the FCA and 360
04:40 Why financial advice networks are valuable
06:17 When a network may stop fitting your business
07:50 Control, accountability and generational wealth
12:00 The reality of the FCA application process
14:10 Training the next generation of advisers
20:24 Marketing, lead generation and building a niche
23:55 Neurodiversity in financial planning
30:36 AI, upskilling and serving the mass market
34:24 The future of One Financial Solutions
42:49 The Hundred Club growth plan
48:28 How to contact Wayne Griffith

Learn more about One Financial Solutions at www.onefinancialsolutions.co.uk 

Financial Planner Life is sponsored by Redmill Advance

Whether you're starting out, already qualified, or building a training academy, Redmill Advance delivers expert-led learning, exam support and CPD from Level 4 to Chartered.

✅ Trusted by top UK firms

👉 www.redmilladvance.com/fpl

Be sure to follow Financial Planner Life on YouTube for extra content about  career development within Financial Planning. 

Want to appear on the Financial Planner Life podcast? Reach out to ceri@financialplannerlife.com

Reach out to sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or podcast production. 

Transcript

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Welcome And The Big News

SPEAKER_02 0:04

And welcome to the Financial Planel Life. Today we have Wayne Griffith. He's back on the Financial Planel Life podcast to talk about his journey to becoming a directly authorized IFA after 13 years in the network. And we dig deep on neurodiversity within his business. Again, it's a great topic for us to discuss. We talk about what it takes for a trainee financial planner to make it in the financial planning career. We talk about his next journey, what he's building, who for, and why you should consider One Financial Solutions as your home if you're a financial planner looking to build a business, or go hello. So, Wayne, welcome back to the Financial Planner Life podcast, your second spin on the um Merry-Go round of Financial Planner Life. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Great. Thanks for having me back. I didn't think you'd have me back after the last one.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

Mate, it's always a pleasure. Look, I love be I love keeping in contact with you. I love hearing about what's going on in your world. You're very an entrepreneurial person and you're very open and honest about your journey and your experience, which is why we get on very well. So you know, it's always a pleasure to bring you back. And you know, tell us what's going

Choosing Direct Authorisation

SPEAKER_02 1:10

on. What's going on in the world of One Financial, Wayne Griffith? What's new?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Uh, we're going DA. Big news. Uh, 18 months, maybe 20 months in the planning. First thing I've got to say is uh everyone thinks the FCA is the devil. Uh we I've been shocked at how wonderful we've been. We had an amazing case manager, uh, really supportive, really helped us through the whole journey. I mean, they they were brilliant, absolutely fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Amazing. So, look, today then what I'd love to do is understand your journey going directly authorised and also the reasoning behind it. And maybe we can educate a few people as to should they, shouldn't they, and when might be the best time to go directly authorised if you choose to do it based on your journey and based on your experience. We can then dig a little bit deeper, can't we, into what one financial planning are doing, where you're going to be taking this business, why you NDA. So just let's just get back to the start. You said about the FCA then, and they were really great to work with. How do you actually work with the FCA when it comes to being directly authorised then?

SPEAKER_01 2:19

So we we started the process by uh engaging with 360. So they were exceptionally good, so they help you prepare for the application process. We umden for for nine months before we put an application form in. And they helped me through that process. But the whole process that you know you have multiple interviews with them, and your case manager's really good. The first meeting, you're you're like, you know, rabbit in the headlights thinking, oh my god, they're just they're just grilling you to find out all the things that you're gonna do wrong. But actually, it's the opposite, they want to they want to really help you become the best DA firm you can. So I was really, really impressed with them. Um, and and it's it's it's been a long time, you know. Well, I I've been part of uh a network, two plan for 13 years. I started as a one-man band, and they helped and supported me and got me to where I am today. It's been it's been a journey, but yeah, feel free to ask me anything. Ask me about all the mistakes I've made because that's how we normally work, uh, and I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Brilliant. You mentioned 360 for people who don't understand who 360 are and what part they actually play and go and directly authorise. Can you just explain that so they understand?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, so 360 are a compliance support uh business, uh, very similar to um SimpliBiz. And you know, you sit down with them, you talk about what you want to do, how you're gonna do it, and they they really support you. They've been through that journey thousands upon thousands of times, and you get a uh you know, a dedicated person that supports you and helps you.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Cool. So they sit between you and the FCA and help guide and manage you and prepare your business for the application and the questions that are going to be asked.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Yeah, yeah. So they'll do uh role plays with you, they'll um you know, they'll they'll you know, feedback on those role plays. Uh, you know, you you can talk about anything you want to talk about, anything that comes back from the FCA, you can discuss with them if you want. So it helps because I mean I'm very fortunate I have my own compliance director. But if you don't have your own compliance director and you're a financial advisor, I mean, oh my god, how can you actually sit there one day advising Mrs. Miggins, next day an ultra high net worth, and the next day go, FCA application?

SPEAKER_02 4:27

How do you do it? Yeah. I tell you what, every financial advisor seems to be dealing with Mrs. Miggins.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

I think she she gets around a bit with the she makes a lot of pies and she's very good at what she does.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Here we go. Off

Why Networks Work At First

SPEAKER_02 4:40

piste already. Yeah. Right, but let's get back on piste. So excellent stuff. So they support you in respect of going down the DA route. Now I want to go back though to the very beginning. So 13 years ago, you were working for a bank, weren't you? HSVC, you decided to become a financial advisor um within the um independent world. Correct. Went to a network. Yeah. Okay, so let's just go back to that. Why, let's just set the scene because at the time the network was the thing that offered you the solution to the um to the journey that you wanted to go on. So let's just speak about networks first, because they are vital, they're brilliant, and they offer a great level of service. And you obviously have been in one for 13 years. Tell us a little bit about that part of the journey then and why a network at that stage and not going directly authorized, for example.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Well, our our business in itself couldn't survive without people like OpenWork, SJP, Quilters, you know, the the you know, other networks. It couldn't survive without it. You know, it's good to see the banks getting back into financial services because most of us joined a bank and went, don't know how to be an advisor. They trained you to be an advisor. Um, and then I left because I had no idea on how to be an IFA. So I went to Tuplan. Uh very grateful they took me on in the first place. And um, over 13 years they supported me in how to take on advisors, grow the business, branding, and and it's uh it's a business in a box. Okay. So it's um the small networks are unbelievably great. You know, when they're small, they're agile, they can change, they can listen to their advisors. The advisors will go, I want to do it this way, and they'll they'll design things based around their advisor workforce, and they are absolutely essential to the business.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

So, in that 13-year period, then when did it start to become apparent to you that maybe being part of a network wasn't right for one financial solutions?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I think two years ago, the two plan had uh a couple of issues. Um, and I started to think was it as agile as I wanted it to be? And for me, I wanted to start putting my own stamp on, I wanted to have my own um investment proposition, I wanted to have my own brand in, you know, I wanted to be more agile and more responsive to how advisors, the type of advisor I took on, whether it was going to be an academy graduate, whether it was going to be someone who was CAS, non-CAS. I wanted complete accountability and responsibility for that. Uh I mean two plan is going strength to strength. Claire, who's now the the MD over there, is someone I've known for years and is is unbelievable at what she does. And it would be a great network. Um, well, it still is a great network, but for me, it was just it was time for me to you know to follow my journey.

SPEAKER_02 7:24

So you chose directly authorise in there for the reasons of being more in control of the direction of your business? Correct.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Okay. So if I wanted to have my own, let's say, investment proposition, you know, if I wanted the type of advisors I would take on, lots of lots of different reasons that were all small reasons, but built up to having my own accountability for my own business.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Okay, I love it. So

Control And Generational Wealth

SPEAKER_02 7:50

let's talk about that journey then. You spoke about, you know, you thought about going directly authorised.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

What was the so what the the the biggest sort of catalyst to you going right, I'm doing it was Oh, that's uh I don't think there was a wake up in the morning and light bulb, I'm gonna do this. There was a I wanna create wealth for my advisors, generational wealth for my advisors. I want them to grow their businesses and for them not only to have money for them, their kids, but also their kids' kids, you know, and I I wanted that for them, and that means I have to look at how does a business grow and be profitable? How does it actually become uh you know, wealth generation for the advisors? And so I was thinking, is the business all about just ongoing revenue? You know, are we ever going to be swallowed up by a consolidator? Um, all of those questions were going through my head over and over and over again. And and One Financial Solutions is a family, you know. Um, we've always said that every advisor gets given a number, and we want to build this club where we get to X amount of advisors, and you only get a number when you join, and that number comes up and gets recycled if someone leaves, and you can only join when there's a spare number. And for me, it's essential that those advisors are they can they they have my ear, they can say they want to do this, we want to do that, and that's very difficult if you're not top of the tree. So if you've got a DA firm above you, advisors will say to me, Oh, Wayne, we think we should do this, and then I've then got to go to another CEO and say, Oh, we think we should do that, and that CEO is listening to a hundred CEOs, and it sort of gets doesn't ever get anywhere, you know. That's the problem. Um, and I think that's where agility is really, really important because you can change things for the advisors and and their families.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

So you had a big passion to help your advisors, what you were experiencing was really a barrier to being able to actually make the changes, perhaps, that were going to have an influential effect on them?

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Um, never like the term barrier because that feels to me as though someone's actually deliberately stopping it. Okay, yeah. But when when uh an AR firm, or sorry, when a um a network becomes so big, the network will have one-man bands, two-man bands, 30-man bands in there. It's got a national and it's got a network, and it has to bring in rules, control, um, you know, standards, procedures that apply to everyone. And that's very, very hard to apply the same standards and procedures to a 30-man firm as it is to a one-man band, because that 30-man firm may have a leadership team of five people and want to start bringing some control into their business. Whereas the one-man band actually needs all of those out of the box for them.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Brilliant. I love that. So looking at going back to these advisors, I want to understand a little bit about your thinking about that generational wealth, that making them wealthier and you know, gaining more from being part of a financial planning business, which maybe they couldn't get if you yourself was under a network. What are those things then? Let's get that, let's get that in let's get that in place because there's probably a lot of people that are sitting in firms right now or under networks as an AR and might be feeling the same way. So, what are the what are the advantages of you going directly authorized that then filter down into the advisors that you've got within the business that's going to improve their life, make them wealthier, make their families wealthier, etc.?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Well, I think the main thing is being privately owned. You know, we own the share capital. So that means that if I want to share that wealth with the advisors, I'm going to share the wealth with the advisors and their family to me. So, you know, the the the big firms that are PE backed, you know, if they've got uh uh an investment management arm, they're not gonna share the the profits or the share the um the benefits if they ever sell with their advisors. Um and that's for me, you know, um that's essential that you share your success with everyone that works with you, whether they're self-employed, employed, whether they're 21 years old, 65 years old, you you share the wealth with them.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Okay. And just get back to this DA

The FCA Application Reality

SPEAKER_02 12:00

application then. Can you sort of just talk a little bit about some of the um the things that you have to do? Because you, you know, we've spoken openly about this. You found the whole process quite quite stressful, tiring, it's quite time consuming. It's not something that you should do and take lightly, it's gonna take time, right? So, what are the what's the expectation of time and what's required of you to go through this application process? So people that are listening can kind of prepare themselves for it and think, is that a good idea or not?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

I think the one thing is that the through the process I've learned that my neurodiverse brain overthinks things and doesn't listen when people say it's gonna be nine months. You think, yeah, we'll do this in three. Um, you know, so listening to experienced people is is essential. But the whole process, yeah, I mean, took us nine months to put an application form, and then we were still do we, don't we? And then it was nine months process to get approved, and then that nine months process was quite arduous to the point of I when we got the email to say you're mining to approve, I didn't even celebrate, I was that tired. So I've got an amazing leadership team. Honestly, they are the best out there. They put the application together, they helped with all the processes, um, they helped with all the questions. You know, I don't know how to deal with capital adequacy. I mean, I knew what it was, but didn't know how to calculate it. And then people like, oh, you know, a subordinated loan, or are you going to use, you know, retain profits, or have you got this much money in the bank account? Um, all of that was new to me. And that might sound odd, but I was very happy and cocooned, you know, in a network that did everything for me. So it's it's a steep, steep learning curve. So I think we had ended up having four or five interviews, uh, lots of back and forth with the FCA, where they, you know, they want to know that you're gonna be a firm that's responsible, accountable, got the policies and procedures in place. They want to know your growth plans, they want to know, you know, everything. Um, and looking back, it's fantastic because that actually prepares you the best business plan you're ever gonna

Training Advisers And Using Restriction

SPEAKER_01 14:10

have.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

So go and directly authorise then. You're going on your IFA, remaining IFA, because obviously two grammar was an IFA network, then.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Yeah, remaining IFA. Uh, you know me, I've come from restricted background. I'm not not anti-restricted. Uh, I get exceptionally angry when I see the whole IFA versus restricted argument on LinkedIn, you know, the SJP bashes and stuff like that. I get really frustrated that I sit there and go, Do you not realize that other our clients are looking at this, seeing the industry tear itself apart? Um, it's ridiculous. Am I ruling out one day having a restricted device arm? No, I'm definitely looking at it because if we want to bring younger advisors in, we need to train, we need to spend as much time as we can training them on how to deal with clients. That in the middle, in the meeting, how to deal with them, how to get clients, and then once you've got them, how to look after them. And if you then do that, and then they have to walk away and spent 90% of their time going oh hole on market, where do I find that? Let's just give them a smaller range of products and services and train them more on um how they deal with the client. Yeah, it's essential, you know. And teaching them, we we spoke about Jasper last time I was here. You know, a 25-year-old satin in front of a 45-year-old millionaire isn't a bad thing. They've just got different life experiences, and we need to teach them how to talk to those people, not oh my god, right, who do we choose from the MPS marketplace and do the MPS versus a fund of funds and nah. So restriction is is a good thing in the early days, and it might still be a good thing for firms as they grow.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Let's say 21 years old, we've got about 130 people or 150 people under the age of 25 financial planners. If someone was like under 25 right now, okay, and they were coming into the financial planning profession and they wanted to be financial planners, what would you say to them to focus their attention on, let's say, the first couple of years?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Marketing and watching. Honestly, I learned everything from sitting with the most successful advisors at HSBC. Um, you know, go and join a firm where an AR principal is let me go back a bit. I used to sit in a meeting and you'd have like a sales manager behind you with a flip chart, you know, going, did they hand out a business card, the terms of business letter, all those sort of things. But afterwards they would tell you all the things that you did well, didn't do well, didn't like. As a younger advisor, I'd want to have to be able to go in and sit in and with an AR principal appointment and have that relationship with the the AR principal and say, Oh, you said that. Did you know you said that? And have the balls to actually go um, you know, call them out a little bit, but also then accept that when the AR principal comes into a meeting, they're going to be constructive about everything you do. I don't I think it's terrible that we we recruit people into academies, they come out the academy and they've got this shiny drive-in certificate that says I can go and do this, and we just let them go. That's it's we're letting them down. That's why we see this huge turnover in the first two years because they'll take on 20 or 30 clients and then just leave the industry because they've not been supported.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

What about things like um starting out in protection? Um, you know, I've got aspirations to build a financial advice business, and when I think about young people joining my business, is it right that they should go out and do full-fat financial planning straight away or should they cut their teeth in protection?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

What do you think? Oh, 100%. If you just if you look at the way the CII exams are designed, it's so you can actually become a protection advisor to begin with while you're learning about the wealth journey. Um I think it's essenti essential that we do it. You know, protection is a less complicated journey, okay, but it it gives you the opportunity to sit in front of five clients a week, ten clients a week, whatever it may be. Our biggest failing is that advisors then lose what they class as boring and go on to the sassy, sexy stuff, and then you sit there with an advisor and go, your 99% investments. Where's your protection sales? Um, you know, where's your protection advice? That's that's you've lost it. Um and we also have a lot of mortgage and protection advisors that we don't encourage to become full financial planners. But you and you and me are exactly the same. You start off in, you know, the most important thing, which is actually the what if scenarios, and protection is the biggest one of those.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Hi, sorry for interrupting this episode, but I just wanted to let you know that it's sponsored by Red Mill Advanced. They're the UK's leading provider of interactive e-learning courses, specifically for the financial advice sector. Their best in class e-learning, CPD courses span technical knowledge, leadership and management skills, business skills and compliance knowledge, while their exam support courses help your people pass their CII, CISI and NIBF exams first time. It's all delivered on a powerful learning platform that makes reporting CPD to the FDA seamless and gives leadership teams full knowledge and skills visibility across their entire organisation. That's why companies like St. James's Place, Quilter, PLC, Hascot Lloyd, Foster Lenovo and DeVere trust Redmill to keep their advisors and wider teams competent, compliant, and at the top of their game. So, to book a free demo, get yourself to redmilladvance.com and they'll do the rest. Some of the most successful under 25s that I've had on the podcast start with protection. Well, they've had a good go at doing the investment side, but they get batted back, back, it's batted back, batted back. As soon as they switched to just purely doing protection first, as a you know, as a an ability to lead into a conversation or into a group of people or into a niche, they were gaining some really strong traction, which then led them into the investment side and the pension side. So that again is a very, very strong angle. And I've seen it in younger people, and I would definitely say to people that are say under 25 and you're struggling a little bit, it's like just maybe just focus on protection first. Um another thing that you said on so as well is there's

Marketing And Building A Niche

SPEAKER_02 20:24

the marketing side. You said, you know, observing people, I totally get that. The more you watch somebody, the more you're in meetings, the more you listen to people, the more you're gonna learn. Do what they do, do it better. That's my kind of motto. But the marketing side is something that I think is massively overlooked in every single academy. Most firms out there won't take somebody on who's brand new and then say, right, this is how you build a social profile, this is how you build social proof, this is how you use LinkedIn to generate leads. No one's delivering anything like that at all. So I think there's a massive gap there, and it's definitely something that I want to focus on because I think anybody coming into the profession, old or new, they need to learn how to use marketing effectively to generate good quality leads and good quality appointments. Now, Hannah, who's in our business, who's my operations manager, she's training to be a financial advisor, we're putting through her qualifications. The reason why I wanted to go through me first of all and to run my operations is one, because I'm an absolute nightmare running operations, but she's absolutely sorted my life out. Um but second is I want her to learn from me how to build a profile, you know, how to build social proof. So we've got her on the podcast talking about her career journey already. And in the background, we're talking about her niche. So, what is she going to niche down on when she becomes a financial planner? So we share, like, you know, we have sit-down meetings for like three or four hours where we just brainstorm absolutely everything that she thinks that she wants to do, and then we start to build a model around it. And she was like, Do you think it's right that I should actually start building my target niche right now? And I'm like, 100%. I mean, like your qualifications, by the time you get your qualification, like as you say, the shiny driver's badge, you're gonna leave and you're gonna be like, oh great, now what? And it's like, no, no, no, now's the time to build your brand. So start building your brand, start getting comfortable in front of camera, start to understand how to use LinkedIn sales navigator to book appointments, understand the power of. Niche, deep dive into the niche that you want to get into. One of the niches, because she works in cruise ships, right? So people on cruise ships, they tend to have tax-free. Uh they're on, you know, they're some of them earn quite considerable amounts of money. So we start delving into that and how many people are in that niche. Do you think that's enough? That many people in the niche. Yes, 100%. Because always go back to financial advice for me. Yeah. Very small amounts of people. So we're deep diving, we're doing research into niches, and we're building ideas and ideas and ideas around it and qualifying that market for her, and then creating content to give it a go now. And she's finding that really, really beneficial, running alongside the qualifications. So sales, marketing, and qualifications side by side. I think that's such a powerful uh way to get somebody hyped up and ready to go once the driver's license comes through the door.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Yeah, I think building that niche or understanding where you fit in that process. There are some stunningly great female-only advice firms out there dealing with with women, absolutely brilliant. There's some amazing firms that are dealing with the ultra-high net worth marketplace, you know. Um uh you uh UK Res, um, non-dom, you know, those sort of types of advisors. There are great protection firms. So I think understanding your niche, so you can understand your your market, but no one really teaches you then how to get into that market, and that's where we're missing because you will find networks or firms will go, oh, we'll go and generate leads for you, or they'll say, You've got to go and generate your own leads, but do they ever teach you how to generate your own leads? So you don't have a choice of either learning how to do it, or you know, I'm terrible with names. You had someone on here that was talking about lead generation, you know, and booking appointments. Um, you can go and employ someone like that. That's great. But I think number one, find your niche, and there are niches out there that haven't been

Neurodiversity As A Competitive Edge

SPEAKER_01 23:55

uncovered. You know, we speak about it all the time: neurodiversity. Yeah, okay. We are we're designing a a questionnaire with a chap called Kevin Mitchell at graphing um platform. Um, and it's a neurodiverse questionnaire. Because for me, you know, I struggle to read past, you know, if I get an email that comes in and it's more than four lines the first paragraph, really struggle to get past that. You know, there will be people that if I send a suitability letter, I would have said to them, Would you rather have 16 one-page suitability letters or a one 16-page document? Would you like small paragraphs? Would you like, are you um pictorial? Would you like grass rather than we talk about client vulnerabilities, but we don't actually ever market the correct way of saying how do you learn for advisors and for clients? And these uh extra superpowers that we have, our clients have them as well. So we should be marketing niches where we go, well, actually, um, I'm gonna have someone that knows and understands how that person's brain thinks. Um, but yeah, it's not just about protecting the visors, it's about the clients that you really want to go into. But marketing of that, that's where I leave it to people like you.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

Yeah. Neurodiversity is actually a really interesting area. Um, we had somebody called um Dan from Neurosparks. Now he has a whole business set up supporting financial planning firms how to bring neurodown how to bring neurodiversity awareness into the business for the employees, because obviously we look after vulnerable clients, but yeah, we look after vulnerable vulnerable employees as well. So it's well worth you checking out Neurosparks. I can make an introduction there, but they've got um uh sort of questionnaires that they've built that can really quickly establish your whole workforce as to where they sit on the spectrum and and then build training and development around those individuals. And then he's also part of Redmill Advance, which are our sponsor. So he's like design he designs all the content around training and development for advisors and the exam, how to pass the exams, etc. If say you're dyslexic or dyspraxic or you know whatever it might well be, well so this calcular is one that comes up quite a lot actually within financial planning. People people who are financial planners who just can't stand numbers, like numbers to me spin me out, they move all over the page, it's just uh too much for me to to deal with. And I think when somebody understands exactly how that works, but also understands the world of financial planning and has built training and development to implement to those businesses, you're light years ahead. I like I don't want to hire neurodiverse people because as you said, they're like an they're like a superpower. Once you work it out that what makes them anxious and what makes them happy, then you double down on the things that make them happy and support the things that make them anxious or take it away from them and give it to somebody else and just go off you go. Because the likelihood they're gonna 10x that because the bit you've taken away has calmed them down. I personally have experienced it myself by bringing Hannah on just by simply removing the need for me to go in my inbox. She runs it all for me, she runs everything for me. It allows me to go out and start building other team members and it support her and then gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I found it's be a real, real benefit. But check him out, Dan from Neurosparks, because I think you guys were gone well.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah, I think look, we we have to understand that our personality traits drive the type of jobs that we do.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Okay, you know, and I'm being really simply crude here in that, you know, if I run a car sell showroom, you know, I probably want to have everyone with severe ADHD selling, you know, because they're driven by, you know, if you're told it's gonna take you an hour to do something, or wait for 20 minutes to do it. You won't start on the Monday, no, it's gonna be done on the Friday, because you need that dopamine hit to prove to everyone that you can still achieve something quicker than everyone said it's gonna achieve. So you just set them off, you know, it's like a jury cell banner, you wind them up and off they go. It's brilliant. Um, they're fantastic, but then you go into the back office and look at people that are dealing with numbers and admin, they tend to have sort of like autistic traits, um, which is great because they're so detailed that don't really make mistakes. Um so it's not a bad thing, it's a bloody amazing thing. And we just match the right people with the right jobs because of their superpowers, and then we celebrate how wonderful they are at that at their jobs.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Um don't force them into a plan that don't force them into a style of working that doesn't suit them.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that you know we need to we need to we've spoken about this so many times before. You know, most people get into the industry because they care. They care about clients, they care, are they gonna, God forbid they pass away, are they gonna have you know enough money left over for the family and the kids? We care whether they're actually gonna get to retirement, enjoy retirement, get their first house, you know, get kids for university. How many advisors actually care about themselves?

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

They don't, they don't, there's no self-care in our industry. Um, there really isn't. And I think that we, as employers, we need to start making sure that they do, make time for their family and um and themselves because the industry is driven by numbers, and we need to stop that.

SPEAKER_02 28:55

Yeah, we had Hardy on from Malu, uh, an AI company, um, and it was interesting that you just said, like, you know, it's very obvious a one-hour meeting with a client turns into 10 to 15 hours worth of work. And I think we are on the cusp of freeing people up, right? It's starting to really free people up. And I wonder what the overall well-being uh impact that will have on the advisor workforce in general. Because, like, you know, like, oh my god, every meeting that I've got to do, there's gonna be an extra 15 hours of work behind me or 10 hours of work behind me. That's enough to put people off and be very selective around who they use and who they don't use. It's not very productive and it's not very consumer focused. So I think that's gonna have a huge impact on free. I think AI for me has been incredible because it just absolutely takes care of so much of the stuff that used to keep me up at night like a cold sweat because I had to write a document. Whereas now I just record a call and it comes through, and the whole thing for me is 90% there, and it's just powerful. And I think financial advisors are gonna be like growth mindset, coming into it, consumer focused, knowing full well that technology in the background, AI specifically, is going to be able to um eliminate the mundane, boring tasks. Even the CRM stuff, like CRMs are so antiquated within financial planning, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

And I don't think there is a CRM in financial planning, not a true one. No, there really isn't.

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Yeah, Shp use sales Salesforce, don't they? And have kind of like made it into their own.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Um you're gonna use in Teleflow, and theirs is I think the best in the marketplace. I really do. But it's uh as a back office system, it's it's amazing. Is it a real outbound CRM system? No, you know, um, our chairman comes from the the the telco industry, and their their you know, their CRM system is is phenomenal.

AI Upskilling And The Mass Market

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Just going back to your point about AI, I think what we need to do though is a bit of caution. We need to make sure that we're upskilling our staff because you know, power planners are fantastic, they're technical, there's still going to be a need for power planners. But I see AI attacking the sort of the admin role, the mundane stuff. So if we don't start upgrading or upskilling the administrators to power planners, power planners to advisors, I don't want to see people being very redundant and losing losing leaving the industry.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

And yeah, people are saying, oh, you know, admin to power planner to financial planner, that's the route you should be taking into the career as a career within financial planning. We're actually saying go into a role that's probably going to give you less salary. Right. I spoke to somebody that had an 84% pay cut to become an operations manager. I mean, she was earning like nearly 300,000 as a legal representative, litigation lawyer. She's like an 84% pay pay cut to get into financial planning. 84% pay cut. Um but I think giving somebody the impression that this admin to power planner to financial advisor is starting to get very outdated. So you're absolutely right. And I think if you stop and you look at how many administrators we've got within the profession, how many power planners we've got in the profession, there has got to be a huge amount of people in there. If you can just energize and upskill, and AI helps them get that way as well, and get them through their qualifications as quickly as possible. There's a huge amount of financial advisors that are sitting there, but firms are reluctant to lean into AI right now because they're not doing it, they're not using it to its full capability. Yeah. Because if you used it to your full capability, you'd then turn around and go, Oh, we can now train upskill these people, and we can train them up to become financial planners if they're the right people. Unfortunately, it's going to have a huge impact. Admin is going to be lost. You know, there's a lot of people that are probably going to lose their job within financial planning easily, I'm not laughing, but easily within the next year.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Yeah, yeah. But but why are we not focusing on the mass market? Okay. So because of the cost of dealing with the client, you know, you get firms going, I'm not going to deal with anyone under 250,000, anyone under 100,000, anyone under 50,000. And then you get firms like us that I still sit there and say to myself, you know, client segmentation, I had that imposter syndrome. I took on every single client when I set the business up because I was petrified I wouldn't get another client, didn't that was good enough, you know? And those for me to now turn around to those clients and say, Oh, I'm really sorry, you've only got £57,000. I'm not dealing with it anymore. How disrespectful and disgusting is that? It's it's horrendous. So we need to find a way because these are actually some of our vulnerable clients that actually need the most help. So why can't we have a system like the equivalent of hairdressing that's a junior stylist that actually looks after those people, you know, and they they learn with those clients, but with AI, we're making the cost of looking after a client cheaper. Yeah. So actually, we're going about circle instead of saying we don't want those clients anymore. They're a great business for for training, for helping, so supporting our admin people that go, I could be losing my job, but actually, well, you've been looking after these clients for 20 years. You know the cake that they make and the cups of tea, you know. So it's actually a little bit of just a training bit that I'm going to trade with an advisor because you've known them for such a long time anyway.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

And go into the client servicing role. So a lot of firms are now building out client servicing roles, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

And well, especially within firms where they've got self-employed advisors as well. So self-employed advisors can sell their clients into the business, which frees up them to go out and write more business. Yep. They sell it in and then the client services team look after it. And you're seeing firms of all shapes and sizes now bringing in that client servicing model, which I think is a fantastic model, bringing a fantastic training ground. A lot of it is desk based. So you're in the office, you're learning from other people around you. You're not sitting down with clients every single day, you're just segmenting your clients into a servicing team. And they've still got you know the ability if they want to pick the phone up and speak to you, if you've still got a relationship with you, so they're still they're still within the business. I just want to come back to your business then, one financial okay. You've

The Academy Vision And Culture

SPEAKER_02 34:24

gone directly authorised. This is a really, really, really exciting time for you, right? It's clearly going to be a time for growth for you as well. But what should people be excited about if they're thinking about joining a company like one?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

You know, sometimes when you get um people apply for a job and you say to them, uh, make the role your own. I'm saying to advisors looking to join us, let's make this business our own. You will have a say. If you come and join us now, you'll have a say in how this business progresses. You know, we have 30 advisors, okay, we've got 55 people in the business in total. That's sizable, but it's not where we want to be. So come and join us now, either as uh an AR, an RI, a junior, um, you know, a trainee, going through, you know, we want to put you through an academy, which is why I want to talk to Redmill. So um we want to look, I'm old. Yeah. That Mel Pell and style, I'm old. And I and I, you know, I'm passionate about passing on the knowledge that I have of all the mistakes that I've made to the next generation of advisors and seeing them grow. I want them to come in and say to me, Oh, when I was here, I I used to do it this way, and I'm like, fantastic, that's a great idea. We're nicked that idea. We only make our business the best out there by getting all the great ideas from everyone joining us. And so for me, yeah, you want to come and join us now because one, it's an exciting time, but two, you can have a say in what where we are today, where we're gonna be in the future and how we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Is that where you see your role then as you progress within the business? As you said, you know, you're old. I don't know how specifically old you are, but you must be thinking about that next stage of your career. Um, and what does that next stage of your career look like? Is it training, is it development, is it working with younger people? Where's the where's Wayne's best skills within one financial services over the next few years?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Well, just to answer that question, I'm 55. I know I need to look 35, so I'm 55 in September, I expect the present from you. Um but the truth is I'm at that point now where I will still look after clients, but my client facing role will will slow down or diminish a little bit. Um, I think honestly, this is going to be controversial, but I think all AR principals should still look after certain clients. Because if you want to stand up in front of people and train them how to do things and they turn around and say, Wayne, when was the last time you saw a client? You go on 1987, things have changed a little bit since then. So I still need to have clients and I'll still see clients, but yeah, I see my role as telling everyone about all the mistakes I've made. I'm not embarrassed by that. Those scars are there for a reason, and I'm gonna make them the best of what they can be. I'm just gonna, you know, it might be they're gonna do it anyway, and all I'm doing is just taking away barriers. Just take those barriers away that have been put up. It might be barriers they think are there, they're not really there, but I'm gonna make them the best of what they want to do. Whether that's they're here for a year and then they go on and become DA themselves, whether it's they're here for five years and then they build a business within our business and then go on. Nothing wrong with that. I can sit there and still be proud and go, help them do that. Um, so yeah, for me, that's my role is is you know, gluing the leadership team together, um, but training advisors to make them the best of what they can be.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

Right. Leadership team running the business, you doing everything that you enjoy doing and helping advisors progress through. And that counts as RIs and ARs and any kind of academy that you might well set up.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yep. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Is the academy definitely something you want to do?

SPEAKER_01 38:02

100%, because there are some amazing academies out there. Yeah, there is absolutely amazing, but there isn't the best academy. There are there are ones that do three-quarters of the job. No, someone one of them might teach you how to be a great advisor and do some marketing, but they're missing something else. And then there'll be another academy that does, but there's nothing that does everything, in my opinion. Um, and that's maybe because they focus on numbers, how many advisors they've got to get through the the academy to fund the to feed the network. You know, for me, that's not what we're gonna do. You know, I want everyone to be as the best they can, and our success will be on how low the failure rate is.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Yeah. I also think there has to be a process where you aren't just taking absolutely everybody on who wants to become a financial planner, but there has to be pushback, just protect that individual as well. Because if you're entering in the world of becoming a financial planner, you need to understand the expectation upon your shoulders of how to actually win new clients. Because you know, there isn't every single company out there that will hand you clients or have an amazing lead generation system. The ones that are the best are the ones that will sit with you and really dig deep on what potentially your market is, what your business plan is. And that's the bit that I'm enjoying the most, right? Is that when I sit there and I push back on somebody, it's like, well, do you actually like sales? Well, no, what do you mean by sales? And some people don't even have a concept or an understanding of sales, they just remember it is that horrible job they did when they were 18, when they were knocking on doors or something, and thought, I'm never doing that again, I'm never cold cooling again. And you're trying to get them to kind of understand the difference between sales, relationship building, uh, developing a niche, developing a market, building referrals, building introducers, long-term relationships, and actually get them to understand the expectations around all of that. And I think that's the missing piece of the puzzle. I think at the very, very beginning, if you can have those really in-depth conversations with them, push them away, give them work to do so they come back and they present a plan to you of how they're going to do something. I think that's hugely, hugely important. It's not open the door, everyone become a financial planner. It's like if you're the right type of person with the right mindset, and there's a few things that we can take off on the box here. It could be that you've come from a profession such as uh recruitment and you specialise in AI. So therefore, you know loads of companies in AI, you know, loads of decision makers, you know, loads of employees. That gives you a market, it gives you knowledge because you understand what it is they do. Therefore, you can become the financial planner to the AI revolution or whatever, you know. So there's all these kinds of things that people need to think about before they just start the qualifications in the hope that they're going to become a planner. That I think is what will make an amazing academy.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Yeah, if you think about it this way, there's a commercial reality, and then there's what's the right thing to do, okay? The right thing to do is to make advisors teach them to be self-reliant. That's it. Commercial reality is if you teach them to be self-reliant, they're no longer reliant upon you, so they might then flourish and go on to be great at what they do and take it elsewhere. How about just being proud that you you help them do that? So if they're self-reliant, okay, just believe that they're gonna appreciate everything you've done for them and they're gonna stay.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Because they might think that three years down the line they've achieved everything, but actually you then go, you're just at the start still. You're in the next part, we're gonna teach you how to be self-reliant in the next part and the next part and the next part. Um, and again, if they if they go on, yeah, look, prime example of that why I'm proud, okay. I still get advisors that have joined us that are unbelievably successful, gone on and had amazing um careers and businesses, they come to our Christmas party. There's some on some of our WhatsApp groups, you know. So be proud that you've made them who they are, and not this fear that you're gonna be an incubator and all you're gonna do is teach people to be brilliant and they're gonna leave you, then you have to go through the process again. Yeah. So making people self-reliant and making them a complete all-rounder, yeah, be proud of that.

SPEAKER_02 41:50

I I I but I I think you're right. So it's you know, it's right to have that conversation of the fear that let's say, for example, you put all that energy and all that effort into somebody, you do help them and all of a sudden they bugger off, right? Yeah, and and and and that's okay, that's well with well within their rights, like like lots of people have done within financial planning. It's just how it evolves, right? Um but I do think if you build an environment which is sticky, that you deliver something that no other nobody else can deliver, why would they go? Because the environment is the environment that they belong in, whether that's connection with other people, learning, whether that's marketing support, whether that's training and development in the areas that are required, psychology, behaviors, marketing, AI, when you give them all of that and you're the one saying, Look, we're putting this money into this investment over here, so you have the best ecosystem. Because if you if you extrapolate that forward to what we've actually spent, you're gonna be spending that money yourself and you're gonna have to start from the beginning. And not only that, you're gonna have to start from the beginning and do it yourself.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Yeah, we think about that as well. In that um, if you create the environment, I love the word sticky, I

The Hundred Club Growth Plan

SPEAKER_01 42:49

use it all the time. If you create the environment that it's sticky, you need to find out what they want. Sticky to them might not be the best commercial splits, it might be that they feel part of a family, it might be that um you look after them through a real tough time in their lives and they feel that you care about them, not just the business that they produce. It may be that you've taught them to be the best marketer, it might be you've given them some clients. There will be things that everyone as an individual will find that they want to stay because of that reason. And so by building a business that focuses on the advisors and the reason that they want to join, but then continuing as in why they want to stay, is essential. And that might be as simple as money talks. So it might be they want the best commercial splits, it might be that they want a privately owned business to pass on the wealth from I'm not saying we're doing it, but if we have a launch of their own platform, if we have a warrant or launch their own fund range, you know, the commercials behind that are you gonna just keep that to yourself and your family and generate institutional wealth for you, or do you care about these people and you're gonna pass it on?

SPEAKER_02 44:00

So I've been doing my due diligence around some of the networks and some of the national firms that offer it. And um, I've asked you some questions about it. And one thing I would say without getting into the commercials, because it's not the time and the place to actually do that, is that you actually do support the individual. If they're at that point in time where they're actually delivering you know higher levels of uh occurring income, new business, that you have actually built a system where which which keeps them in place because the commercials are so good, why would they go? Like the risk to them going will will will will certainly impact though those commercials. Now, if you can deliver upon the centralized investment proposition and all the other beautiful things that you're building within your business, again, that's where the stickiness comes, right? And you can build that wealth for them and they're part of that that that journey. Do you want to go massive? Like, do you want to go really big or do you want to keep it quite small? What well I guess that's a silly question to ask someone like you because you're like me.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

You just think big, but um look, the bo I've experienced strains and stresses of when something grows really, really big and it sort of gets out of control, the spans of control and not having enough staff and and things like that. So I've experienced that, and I never want to be on the other side of it.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

So for us, it's gotta be it's gotta be very we we are looking to grow. Um we don't have set time frames on when we're gonna achieve it, but yeah, we uh myself and yeah, one of my advisors, he was the firstborn Paul Keeley. Um, Paul and I decided we were gonna have the Hundred Club. Uh, and the whole idea of the Hundred Club was uh I went to you won't understand this company, Elizabeth Duke. Uh they were like the jewelers, I think, for Argos back in the uh 2000s. And so I went when Paul joined and when I bought him a tie pin and uh and an identity bracelet and a paper money clip, I think I'm to 999, and it had number one written on it, and we've given every advisor like the numbers, and so the dream is to get to a hundred advisors. Yeah, that would be the dream over whether that be five years, one year, whatever it's gonna take. But we have to control that growth to make sure that what we're promising to advisors during the recruitment process is actually what we deliver on. Our industry is built about smoke and mirrors. Oh, we'll do this, and then when you get enough advisors come in that generates enough income to then actually pay for the staff, you need to, it's the other way around, you know, commercials it doesn't make sense, but you need to fund your growth first with actually making sure everything's in place. So, yeah, we want to have the Hundred Club, we want to have an exclusive club of a hundred advisors, and you only get into it when sadly one person leaves, dies, um, and uh you can have a waiting list for it. So uh that's where we want to be. We want to be small, agile, in control of everything we do, but also, you know, you might have saw on LinkedIn recently, I travelled round and saw 30 advisors. I'm happy to get in the car on the Caledonian sleeper, to go out and see people, right? Because Teams works, but actually sometimes just going to see someone, showing you care because you do is really important.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Yeah, some of the fastest growing networks um are the ones that have somebody who is specifically in a relationship role with the financial planners and also tied quite closely to recruitment as well, because they understand the pain points. Every time they go around to an advice firm, speak to the principals, they're listening, they're listening, they're listening, they're making the changes on an internal basis operationally, and then they're re uh you know, they're re-jigging the actual recruitment process. You know, you bullshit somebody, you'll be found out. Eventually, yeah, it will happen, it will happen. And you know, and one thing working in recruitment, bad news travels really fast in a small environment. Yeah, really fast. Good news travels fast as well, but bad news even faster. And when you've got recruiters that are out there trying to play companies against companies, if they know that the public perception is that they talk shit, yeah, that is the that is the marketing, direct marketing by the way, which is even more powerful, that is the message which is out there. And a lot of companies just do not understand that. They don't understand that there are out there people talking on behalf of your company positively and negatively. So it's really, really important that things are delivered in the right way.

SPEAKER_01 48:01

Oh, 100%. Like our industry, you know, you look at vouch for. I get people say to me about vouch for they're they're not on vouch for because it doesn't produce some leads. And I will say to them, how do you know the clients you've lost if they're not on vouch for? Because there might have been 10 people that were going to come to you and then done their due diligence and you weren't on there. So you don't know what you don't know. Um, but you're right, bad news travels very, very fast. So treat people how you want to be treated

Reaching Out And Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 48:28

yourself.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Love it. So, Wayne, look, uh always a pleasure bringing you back on the podcast. I can speak to you uh for hours and hours and hours. If someone's listening to this right now and they want to find out more about one financial solutions, where you're going, what you're doing, and whether or not it's a place that they should go, maybe they're thinking DA and thinking, well, maybe I shouldn't, or maybe they want to ask you some questions. Uh registered individuals could be trainees. What can they do?

SPEAKER_01 48:47

They reach out to me before I came in here today. Uh spoke to an AR firm of another network that no interest in joining me, but just wanting to pick my brains. We had a 15-minute conversation. Um, and I do that because that will come around one day back to me. Um, so yeah, reach out to me or the recruitment director, Richard Hamilton, our firm. Um, but yeah, just just reach out. I'm happy to have five, ten, fifteen minutes, however long it takes to tell you all the things I've done wrong, all the things about our business, uh, and it might fit. And if it's a no, it doesn't mean no never, it just means no, not now.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

Wayne, always a pleasure to have you on the Financial Planet Life podcast. Thanks for sharing the journey, and we look forward to hearing more about it, hopefully, in the next six to twelve months.

SPEAKER_01 49:29

Thanks, mate.