TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast
TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast
Today's The Day!
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Hello dear TRAPPIST, this is LIG if you're listening to this on the day of its release on May the ninth 2024 This is the day of trap live. So we can't put out an episode today trap live is being recorded and will come out in two weeks time. But today's episode is really just a placeholder ideas and themes just to give you something to get your ears into. And tide you over for the next two weeks to channel this episode is we put it together at virtually no expense. It's a compendium of some of the best bits of trap since the inception. So hope you enjoy it, speak with you on the other side, assuming we don't kill each other
Andy Hart:alive.
Nick Lincoln:I think when I get to 60, I'm gonna keep on doing what I do, because I love it. And I love that like Carl, I love the meetings, it's the best part of the job and interacting with people. And I get a lot of personal worth from from from doing my job, what am I going to do? You know, I'd be looking at the other pubs open yet, you know, and that that's that I don't I don't want to fall more into that kind of lifestyle for sure. So what I'm saying is I'll probably work and work and work until one day I just you know, I just don't enjoy it, the regulatory burdens are too much. And at that point, I'll either sell my business or I'll just give it to somebody I you know, I've always said that in our financial plan myself and pennies. There is no sell value on the business. If we get something it's an absolute bone who knows what legislation is coming down the train the train tracks in 1015 years time that could wipe out all of our businesses, there may well be the FCA says Listen, going forward. Now, we don't want this one man or small micro businesses, you've got to have X million of CAP add, you've got to have at least 30 advisors and you're going to follow a prescribed path to deliver financial advice might sound a bit wacky, but you never know what's coming down the line and that would wipe out all of our businesses so I haven't built in any business plan business selling in our financial plans, I will just sell the business and I'll just do it cold turkey I won't hand over Andy to someone like young apprentice I mean, maybe my son will develop into an financial advisor. I don't know. But I'm not forcing that on him by any means. And I'm certainly not letting him know it's an option because I want him to go and forge his own path in the world and not so I think we've all known if a firm's where it goes from and yes it yes sorry ladies, it is Mayor when it goes from father to son, and the son isn't entitled to act and that they're just generally use and it doesn't end up well. That's that's a Latin phrase car. So that's my that's my view on it as as as the ultimate one I'm really I'm more of a one man band and Ultra and that's saying something that and that's my approach to it. I'll keep on doing it for as long as I love it the moment I don't love it, and we've got enough I'll walk away adding
Andy Hart:just a quick tip in there. The advisors I know that are solo founders that are then employed an advisor to basically take over all the client work they're not taken on a young apprentice is a very established advisor and they're paying them a serious chunk of money because the company can afford it you know, they're hitting the ground sprinting than or hitting the ground walking, running or hitting the ground sprinting and it's usually an advisor they've known for 1020 years anyway and that advisor for various reasons have got there's got capacity to basically look after the kinds of X amount of years so that's the quick point on that.
Nick Lincoln:So what are you
Alan Smith:are you angling you angling there to take over hat tip financial services so
Carl Widger:it might be a next business plan but I can tell you
Nick Lincoln:a big spike in my voice it would be to like minded advisors like like Andy obviously because we're very similar outlook and we see the world in similar ways we use the same kind of language with our clients and you want to you want to consistency and continuity of message and so with only with with your approach and if you did that if you if you brought in an experienced advisor, right, you would still be owning Maven, but But you should be paying this guy to or Girl Yeah, you
Andy Hart:as 100% owner of the business, you are 100% entitled to the profits or however you want to distribute everything the numbers need to be give me
Nick Lincoln:a call, I'll change your mind, give me a call and you after this. That's great. Whatever. two pints by and sealed, yeah.
Carl Widger:What does this person then do all the client meeting do absolutely everything.
Andy Hart:So what I've seen, what I've seen is keep it simple one solo advisor founder with a team of three admin, you know, looking at the punchy numbers in client, so high high profit in the company, minimal costs, you know, the the the, you know, the ultimate type firm have that setup. And then they don't want to sell to x y Zed grubby PLC. However, they want the clients to be looked after, and still, you know, juice the income out of that business that they've built for the last 20 or 30 years. So they find the device that they know well enough that still quite young, let's say late 40s, early 50s You pay them a couple 100 grand to to do all the client work. You're still regulated as the owner for various reasons, because you're still discussing things. And you're and you're a rainmaker so you bring in new clients for the person or them so you're given up, I don't know let's say 20 to 30% of what used to take out the company will be now diverted to the to the salary We have this advisor that's going to hit the ground, sprinting and take over the clients. Again, similar type of advisor that is, you know, financial planning lead, you know, global equity allocation investing, you know, it's not like, Oh, we're going to pull out the plumbing of Mr. Mrs. Mackenzie Milliken after the last 20 years, and we're going to set up an offshore multi trust situated site now. Keep all the plumbing the same, it's perfectly set up my friend, don't they bollocks it up. So yeah, that that's the strategy I've seen. And I think that is going to become more and more common potentially.
Alan Smith:It's interesting, because we don't, we don't take much of an onboarding fee and upfront initial cost, sometimes we take we take zero, as long as it's relatively small, the model is 3%. That's it, you take 3% of assets. So there is a, there's a huge incentive to onboard clients to take 3% of their wealth as an initial provide no service fee. And then that's it. And, again, sgmp thing was all about incentives, and people were getting rewarded. And people were, you know, having, you know, big celebration days and things like that, for it was just, it's as somebody referred to it. And there's lots of big organizations like this is institutional asset gathering where all the incentives are onboarding assets. And then, and then you just want to keep them on board. And we're doing as little as possible commercially, you want to do as little as possible, because there's more profit in doing that. But legally, you're expected to do something, Nick,
Nick Lincoln:it's funny, but it's, I mean, our business models here, I like you, like I don't charge for the initial financial plan, I don't charge for the onboarding, because the value to be blunt, the value to me is that the ongoing relationship with a client for which they are paying me for which I provide an ongoing service. So that's the bit that I absolutely focus on, it's completely inverted to the asset gathering.
Carl Widger:That's why Nick, that scaling of financial planning firm is bloody hard. Yeah, that's why we have to hire more stuff, because we've committed to proper real full financial planning. So you got to deliver the service. So like, these the SGPs of this world who are trying to reinvent themselves to offer this, it ain't gonna be easy, it is not going to be
Alan Smith:hugely as a result, because bottom line, you need more time more people, just more resources to deliver this stuff.
Carl Widger:Yeah, lots of expertise.
Alan Smith:Must have been a gravy train for some of these companies, if you can onboard clients and take half percent or 1% a year of their generally growing assets, and send out an annual valuation statement or something that whatever was being done
Carl Widger:or not talk about in a second.
Alan Smith:This is a version of extrapolation, isn't it, we assume something's just happened, or something's recent is exactly always gonna happen, it's gonna get worse or better, or whatever. It works the other way as well. The danger of straight line cash flow forecasting is we assume it's always going to be that or potentially could be, could be good. If you have if you're on a cash flow model, and it looks, you're absolutely fine for the rest of your life, it might not be the case. So there are no guarantees here. The other thing that's never factored in is the rate. You mentioned, one net, which is job security, for example, there's a whole load of other variables that are never factored in. So you've got health, health as well, this is assuming you're always going to be healthy enough to work or create an income or whatever. There is political things, tax rates, you assume something's going to happen and the tax rate doubles. What again, outside of your control. Golf forbid, what if you got divorced, all of a sudden, all your things on track, you suddenly you know, walked away from you'll put it this way, your personal finance, your wealth is significantly different to what it was before. So the multiple just life associated variables of which there are no guarantees. And this just demand or expectation for absolute guarantee and a 4% withdrawal rate will keep you safe and all that wrong. So your point is well made, Nick is about being grown up. It's about being you know, essentially human having the kind of right brain skills to advise consult, really go deep with your clients, what's important to them. And it's just it's a, it's a compass, it's not a specific, it's not a map, it's not just telling you exactly where you must go. It's just telling you the broad direction of where you are today and where you need to be 135 10 years from now, that's all this can be so completely agree with you all the academics that are demanding precise science behind it. It's not true, as we know, you know, good quality outcomes are more of a human and a personal sort of issue than the art a scientific or a maths one. That's my thoughts. What do you think Mr. widget from Ireland?
Carl Widger:Yeah, I think I think Nick kind of hit the nail on the head there when he said, You know, it's it's when you're planning for people who are somewhere between 50 and 70. You're doing a 50 year plan. If you're doing a 50 year plan for someone There's only one thing absolutely sure is that that plan is wrong. Because you just there, we've you just said it, and there are too many variables. So I think the point is that people, however, do like to have some semblance of a plan. And I think that's why financial planning and being real financial planners, it's so important that we impress on every single person that comes through our doors, that it's a process. It's not a one off. So you can have a beautiful document saying, Here's your financial plan, and good luck and good night, and we think you should go into XY and Z. Well, that's what the private banks do, right? That's not what real financial planners do, they map out a rough plan over a long period of time. But where you can get specific, is the first few years of the plan. So on the one hand, we're trying to say, trying to encourage people to look to the long term or whatever. But then on the other hand, as financial planners, we can look to, well, how much money are we going to need to spend over the next couple of years? And we don't have that money in the market? So we do have that money available? And, you know, it's it's so, so important that you stress that to the clients. And I think, you know, we've all been through it over many, many years now with, with certain clients. And you know, that yeah, the best, the best meetings, for me in terms of financial planning are when the clients are standing up, and they're, they're looking at their plan, and they're saying, what have we put this in here? And why don't we put that in there. So they get engaged in the plan. But but they understand the short term, you know, focus, but also the long term focus. And I think, you know, to summarize Alan's point is the famous Mitch Antony phrase, you know, when life goes in transition, money moves, and you don't know what that transition might look like. And it can be good, it can be bad, and it can be bloody ugly. So you know, we're trying to give, you know, guidance over a long period of time. But that's all we're trying to give, I'm trying to be precise, or I agree with you, Nick, this guardrails and all that stuff. They're just useless financial products that are not required, in my opinion, call,
Alan Smith:which, once again, showing the wisdom of the Irish, amazing.
Andy Hart:When people haven't gone on the quest to find the financial advisor, they think financial advisors are desperate to take them on. So they'll call up one person and be a little bit rude and be like, well, I've got this, so you're gonna come see. And the advisor might be like, we don't really do that. And they think, Oh, my God, I got pushed back there. And then the next person they call, there are a lot more, oh, I'm looking for financial advisors, or any type charts, you can, you know, they're a lot more sort of cordial to the to the process. And they might have got pushback from about three or four financial advisors. And then they bring up the fifth one, and they'll go, what have I got to do to get financial advisor, I thought it would be easy, you guys and gals will be clamoring to my door to sign me up. And we're all sort of screening them going? No, I don't want you from a sort of personality point of view, I don't want you from a wealth point of view.
Alan Smith:It's no surprise as we describe that initial conversation with a prospective client. And we say, the purpose of that is just to identify if you're a good fit for us if we're a good fit for you. But sometimes we aren't people that aren't a great fit for us. But we would happily send you to somewhere else, and we might be a better fit for that. And all of a sudden the dynamics change. You're right, they go hang on. Yeah, every thought every advisor wants my business. Well, maybe maybe not. And that's that's the thing. Once you've been in business for a while you've got a mature business, you definitely you definitely know. Considering I haven't
Andy Hart:gone full steam ahead with it. But I think some people call them client interviews. You know, like a discovery meeting. You know, we'll have an interview to see if you're a fit for us. And immediately the framing of that is, is Jesus Christ. I didn't realize you were interviewing me. I mean, it's the whole Nick America, isn't it? We're qualifying them. They're not qualifying us.
Carl Widger:I heard on one of your on your latest podcast on the guy DT depressant trainer guy that you interviewed was really good. And he does market marketing on his website. So he's kind of pre screening people saying if you're not x, y and Zed basically don't contact we're not gonna get on. Yeah. And I thought it was, you know, maybe not quite as harsh as how he puts it. But you know, your your marketing messaging can help in terms of screening people before they even come to you for that first meeting. So I think to focus in on that would be would be a good idea for everybody. Tell people in the messaging call.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, given that, we've been good. We've done that a good going over. I'm gonna draw a line under it because we're temperatures fugitive as we speak. So you mentioned that the vetting process that discovery meetings, the client thinks they're interviewing you, you're interviewing them, and that is a Nick Murray ism. And on that note, Nick Murray had his annual behavioral conference last week. He used to do it in in Manhattan. and he's certainly been I think, Alan, you might have been I can't remember. I never had the chance to go he's not doing the physical meetings anymore. It's all online. I attended that online thing last weekend it was you know, I know some of us are a little we raise our I can feel people in the in the trap studio raising their eyebrows at Nick Murray a little bit. Yes, he does say the same thing. Pretty much every year, he'd find you always to say and invent new words to say that go on. And his new word list that he's, he's building up in the background. True story he talks about get dispensing the vitamin C to clients all the time. And when I listened to Nick Murray is dispensing the vitamin C for me, you know, it's just Oh, yeah, you know what he is right. And that's a nice turn of phrase. And the stats do add up. It was very good. The best part is that he does three sessions and then a q&a session at the end, which is overcoming objections, but he will he wouldn't call it He slapped me if I said overcoming objections. And the q&a bit is very, very good. You know how, when when somebody has an objection to a race, someone just asked what the real just keep on ask the question, ask a question back and find out what the real issue is because people prospects will ask a question, but that's not actually the question they're asking. They, they they just, there's something else going on in us. You just got to peel the onion very slowly. So that was very good. I don't have much more to say on that. Except to say that on the back of the whole behavioral thing, which I think we you know, we're all wedded into, right? That's our value proposition really is here's Mr. Mrs. Client, here's your plan. Here's the next 30 years of your life, we're going to keep you on this plan, right, we're going to stop you blowing yourself up. And we're going to save your tax and costs and expensive fees along the way. But we're gonna stand between you and stupid.
Andy Hart:Now, so on my Maven, advisor.com website, people go there and want to potentially become a client anyway. So subscribe to my email newsletter. And the first question I asked them in bold is, what's your biggest financial concern at the moment, just hit them hit reply, just to see where they're at. And I got reply a couple of days ago from someone saying my biggest financial concern is to do with whether I should have bond bonds as part of my portfolio at all. And then he goes on to list four points about bond funds. I think I shared it with you the other guys. This, to me is obviously a red flag. This is not your biggest financial concern at the moment. I suppose it might be. But it's not the real concern. But yeah, when clients aren't, so things like that, but
Carl Widger:I think I need to be fair, he that that clients or prospect may well consider that to be his greatest financial concern at the moment. Yep. And I suppose it's, it's inherent on all of us, if real financial planning is what we're about is to is to bring those clients on the journey with us and to explain, you know, the real important you're so right at simple Core i, what I've learned over the years is to meet that client or that prospective client where they are I used to have met someone that that said, no, no, none of that is not your issue at all. Your issue is, you know, something else having enough money, if to last the rest of your life. And that's not how you win. People. That's again, engagement. If
Alan Smith:you say, Oh, I understand you tell me more about the bond issue. Tell me more about that. And then you'll win them across. Okay, if
Andy Hart:you saw the rest of the four points that this person it's obviously a guy has listed. My tacit knowledge tells me this client is going to be a nightmare. But
Alan Smith:yeah, I get it, but you'll take him on anyway.
Nick Lincoln:So I don't do I don't do seminars, I don't I haven't organized a seminar for either my clients or for other advisors really I get involved with Andy with the voices user group to an extent and that's now a webinar and that's really what what Yes, I know I can I can feel a part of your dying inside and and maybe you as well, if I was to do anything, I would now do it as a webinar not a seminar I think the days of unless you you know, bigger firms, maybe you can do something you do golf days, I totally get it fine. But I think for the for the for the lifestyle, financial planner, webinars are the way forward. And Phil Bray, who is a who does listen to the show runs the yardstick agency, a well known marketing brand in in front of UK financial services, he's written two really good long forms on how to organize a, a webinar, not a seminar, but a webinar. And I'll put links into them. And actually, it's an object lesson in content marketing from Phil, which you'd expect because he's a marketing expert, because he's given chapter on verse. The first piece is how to organize a webinar, everything you need to do. So he mentions Eventbrite, he mentions LinkedIn, he mentioned upgrading your zoom package, don't run it as a Zoom meeting, you have to buy the webinar package, which is about 600 quid a year. It just, it just works way better if you do that. And then the second long form piece that he wrote is the 10 mistakes that you should avoid when doing a webinar, which is really the same article but just rewritten. Really good and you read this thing crikey, he's Phil here has given away everything I need to organize a webinar. But it's subtle content marketing, because I think a lot of people will look at this and think Jesus Christ, there's a lot of moving parts that can go wrong. I need to turn to an expert to organize this webinar for me, who's the expert. He's just demonstrated his expertise. It's Philbrook At the Arctic agency who makes one oblique sales line in it and says, of course, this is too much for you, you might wish to outsource the organizing and running your webinar to people that know what they're doing. So it's very subtle. So I would, I would look at that, I might, I'm just country without it, I might run an annual webinar for my clients, which will just be to talk around the investment. Fun running the portfolio, maybe do it in January each year looking back over the last year. But of course, as a one man band, I would need to get a third party involved the one if you're doing webinars, don't do it by yourself, because you've got enough going on with the presentation, you have to have someone looking at the chat, looking at the questions doing the housekeeping and so forth. So I don't know if maybe dementia would step in and would give a 10 minute overview of where the markets had been over the last year or so. And I know you're thinking, Nicholas, that that's kind of counterintuitive to your core message, which is don't use on the investments. But I just think once a year just saying, Oh, what's happened? Where what just just just going through the portfolio, just going through the 13,000. Great company, I don't know I'm just throwing it out there. It's probably because I read this article, it's front of my mind on how to do a webinar. And I haven't done a webinar, and I want to do it. I yeah, I just I
Carl Widger:like that idea, Nick. And look, there's no part of me thinks that it's not the way to go is to do webinars going forward. We're definitely looking at them. And throughout COVID, we did a number of webinars that I hosted and we got actually loads of people on them. So I'm not against that idea at all. I just a little bit old fashioned and I love pressing the flesh. And I love just meeting people face to face. So you know, but I do understand that there is another way. And I'm not convinced it's a better way. But there's another way. And of course, we should be exploring all of the ways. So yeah, I like that idea. And I do like the annual seminar about investments. I think that's a really good idea actually.
Alan Smith:In 2015, our esteemed regulator, the FCA published document fair treatment of customers, which was distilled down as TCF treating customers fairly first published 12th of May 2015. Have it in front of me, obviously, I I remember it very well. But going through there are six consumer outcomes. And without reading them all out, but outcome six, and I quote, consumers do not face unreasonable post sale barriers imposed by firms to change product should switch provider submit a claim or make a complaint?
Andy Hart:I think you told me it was unreasonable. Alan, I
Alan Smith:think the key word there to be interpreted. I'm not saying for or against that word unreasonable is just Wallace's as always reputations, lawyers dream, right? So I and I just think in my business, I'm looking at you guys as well, if I took on a client and need a million pounds in a pension product, and we did all the work for him, he set them all up and he just and he came back to me 11 months later said my circumstances have changed or something else has happened. I need to move that font else where I say absolutely fine. Here's my invoice. 60,000 pounds, please pay the invoice and I'll make sure the paperwork is done. I think I'll be having a battle for that particular I think that client would interpret that as being unreasonable reasonable. I just I just do. And the other thing I would say is for the largest wealth management companies, you see Andy with 200 billion of assets under management, the weight of evidence in favor of index investing, and not employing active fund pickers stock pickers, the weight of evidence is overwhelming is not even up for dispute, peer reviewed academic papers, year after year after year. As far as I'm aware, there is not one single index passive type fund that you can get access to through that.
Andy Hart:Maybe some other can answer that. The other thing that people obviously say about them is they're they're high costs. So their annual management charge all in, I think the lowest it can be is about 1.6. I could be wrong on that. And the highest it can be is about 2.3. But again, there might be other fees I'm not too aware of. It just shows you the real cost to run a long term scalable business that employs all the right people in all the right places. I believe they're a high end vanilla firm. They don't get involved in too many weird and wacky type financial products. I mean, yes, they are quite involved. I believed in I believe in EIS and VCT and a couple of other sort of inheritance tax type products stuff, but you don't often hear about huge blow ups within the company. So they're quite tight on their on their risk. So as I say it is said that they are quite expensive on an ongoing basis. But is that is that the cost to run a business that can be scalable for this long, many have tried to do it cheap, and it's not worked out. Nick and then Carl.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, thank you. So my views on SGP, it is an interesting one I Yeah, business wise, absolutely superb, brilliant. And it just shows that some people want to pay a bit more They're quite happy to do it. It's the stellar Artois thing we seem to be consumed with getting down to the lowest basis point shaving a basis point. Some people don't want that some people don't want low touch, low costs, some people want high touch and higher cost. And that's exactly what SJP gives, gives them. Some people want want a seminar at the local country pile on inheritance tax and coming up for some food and wine. They want that they want the massively thick business card, they want the valuations on beautiful cartridge paper. Some people want that.
Carl Widger:No, no, all all. This is the point just you guys want to admit to it right? We are not trying to reinvent the wheel. None of us on this podcast, have come up with any original ideas. We've just seen some stuff that has worked really, really well. And we're just we're just putting our own twist on it. And we have so like, if you come if you tell me that oh, well, I thought of this idea. You didn't? Because I can guarantee I find someone who came up with the idea first, right? Who's done it already? We're just can you put them into a complete package? And make it you know, something? That's a really great experience? And, look, there's lots of things that and I'm very interested to hear Ireland's right, because he's obviously put some thought into this, right. But I saw a post from Stephanie bulgan on LinkedIn only last week, and it was relevant to this, right? And it was like, how can you make your client meetings, like a Michelin star experience? And I'll put the link in the in the show notes to that as well. And that's what you're after? And it's like every touchpoint? How can you make it, you know, 567 star experience? And that's what you should always be trying to do? And you know, I'm always challenging the guys here, how can we make it better? How can we make it better? And when you think you have a nailed, then it's you know, let's go and look for other ideas.
Alan Smith:You know, because I've been in this business a long time, I've seen them or I remember when commission disclosure was brought. I was I was not an advisor then but it was gonna you know, you had to actually tell your customers, your clients how much you are earning, yes of advice. It's a shocking, immunize. When I was working for a product provider, you speak to my ifas. And if we're all just freaking out about it, how can I possibly tell my customers what I'm going to earn from it? And then you had of course, commission disclosure on quotations, which often would get dropped off there. Mysteriously removed from the stapling?
Nick Lincoln:No, no, I when I was a broker consultant, I used to deal with the least one IFA, who would just rip off the final page. It was okay, whatever, you know,
Andy Hart:whatever. You said at least one, Nick, I thought you're gonna say at least one didn't rip off the back page.
Nick Lincoln:But commissioned disclosure in 93, slash 94. But I just joined and as a cologne, seven year old. Yeah, it was, it was like, now it's just like, it's so automatic, isn't it? It's just you don't even Yeah, we the old days, we got paid commission, and they weren't, you know, people knew it knew. But of pre 1994. You didn't have to disclose it. It's just like, wow, different world. Different.
Andy Hart:I think I think the two themes were just becoming more transparent and better qualified, which is great. There are two big things that we're we're very keen on. But then it overcorrect, isn't it? So then now, you know, the disclosure and transparency is like the clients thinking, why do I need to? You know, I get it, Andy, we're in anyway. Yeah. All good, long story.
Carl Widger:My final point of that is, you know, there is potentially good news in this right for us who are already set up and in business is that it's a barrier to entry, it's another barrier to entry. So is that the regulator's surely don't want that that the thought advice I've spoken about before, they
Nick Lincoln:don't care, they don't care about the advice, Cap everything, they don't look at what people say, or what they do. Everything that they do broadens this so called advice gap,
Alan Smith:right. But you know, I think about this, and there's all the comparisons with sport, for example. And it's like it football or rugby and knowing the offside rule or something like that you can, you can use it to your advantage, I've often thought about compliance, and everyone I spoke to was say, Ah, I know just moaning rally regulators, buddy compliance, and I thought, if I can get a step ahead of it, if I can understand, like the rules of the game, and I can optimize it the way that we would then you're either I agree with you call if it's making life difficult for everyone else. And we've just got to spend a bit of time and attention to make it better or smoother. That's that's a competitive advantage for us. And that's the way I treat these things. Yeah, I huff and puff like everyone else does. But I think right, you know, you're either one, you either play around, you know, understand the offside rule or don't play the game. That's the way I see this.
Andy Hart:I got a final point on this. A very old wise financial advisor who I often moan to about this profession and all the things coming in He's probably going to take the mick out of me for saying this. But he said, the way you gotta look at it and he is, isn't it? Amazing? That thorns have roses? Isn't it terrible that roses have thorns? You know, it's the way you look at these things that will, you know, dictate how you deal with it. And that's it.
Nick Lincoln:Yeah, stick to the magic mushrooms my friend. Okay. That does kind of lead us
Carl Widger:when we do, say cashflow plans, right, are what what are we always looking to do? We're trying to get rid of ranch out of the plan. Right, so any cashflow shortfalls in the long term, and when we talk about investments we're always talking about in the long term, so you got to stick with the plan. And you got to, you know, look to the long term and for looking at returns and all that kind of stuff. It's long term, it's long term, everything is long term. And I talked about this from my own point of view that you know, Joe hot. I've been doing a lot of over the last few years, when this happens, I will do this, our you know, we will have that experience, our I will feel this particular way. And General luck, guys. I'm just tearing that plan up. And I'm going to start living each day as it comes. I'm going to start living living in the moment. And I've had some experiences in the very recent past with clients, whereby, yeah, of course, we're always looking to, are we going to run out of money and all of that kind of stuff. So just just two quick stories, I have a absolutely wonderful couple who have been clients of ours for a good few years. And unfortunately, the husband passed away last year, so it's, it's about maybe nine months ago at this stage. And I left a gap before obviously, there's some cleaning up we have to do in terms of investment portfolios, and that kind of stuff and putting it into one name. And it's, it's all tough stuff. So I always try and leave a big gap. Painfully this hasn't happened too often. But when I sent the email out to the spouse, she's absolutely diamond, other lady. And she just came back and went, Yeah, look, it's been a tough, tough time. And we had so many plans for travel post COVID. And they were they were hanging on. And obviously, those plans are out the window now. And I just felt so what I've done, and I really, really hope this doesn't sound condescending at all, but I just felt so sad. And so sorry for because they didn't get to do all of the things that they wanted to do. And, you know, it's it's, it just, it just drove home the point that look, you know, don't wait around to do that bucket list item. And look, we're in the lucky position that most of the people we talk to are quite privileged. So they do have the resources to do the stuff now. And, you know, it's so incumbent on us as, as real financial planners to make sure that people go and live their best lives like that, in effect, that is our job, our job is to, you know, match the resources with getting people to live their best lives. And I had another new clients sold their business and have a bunch of money for the last three years in the bank. And they're now kind of coming to us because they're worried about the effects of inflation as they should be, you know, as as, right. So they came in and we did the plan, they're never going to run out of money. And, you know, they wanted to do things like put in new windows in the house and put in solar plans, and haven't been doing it because they were worried that they were going to run out of money. And it was like, okay, the financial plan was able to tell us look, this is not going to be an issue we can drive it on. But more than that, it was kind of you know, couldn't get a new car. And that would, you know, we get some thrill out of that, because we haven't had a new car in years. And we'd love to go and visit our daughter who's who's living abroad. And, you know, we're worried, you know, couldn't be gone for more than a week or whatever. And without any question or doubt we can and I just thought it'd be it'd be it'd be a good conversation. It's not it's kind of philosophical as opposed to anything to do with investments or any technical stuff. But, you know, we spoke about what is our what is our main role here, it's about managing human behavior, but that's not the right way to say it. Our role here is to be the the facilitator to help people live their very best lives. And that's where I get my greatest thrill when we we, I have a nother story which I won't go into but I get a client has gone out we're running our future EU event and he told me a story about he went to New Zealand for seven weeks to visit his son and brought his daughter over to New Zealand because his daughter had had a baby as his son's wife had had a baby and the two cousins had never met each other and he was able to facilitate that. And he said to me straight out, as you all know, we call it the Mattis life band. He said it because the Mattis life plan gave us confidence to go and do that. And I just, I, the hairs in the back of my head
Nick Lincoln:brilliant. Absolutely.
Alan Smith:We send that advanced a couple of videos differently, we explain our investment proposition, one of our one of my colleagues, Graham, he said, he's created several really good quality videos, which explain three minutes, five minutes, seven minute versions, because that's too it takes too much time to explain it in a meeting. And people haven't got all this sort of cognitive ability to process, you know, index fund and factor based investing. So we just sent a couple of things. If they don't watch it, they don't watch it, we don't sort of not have the meeting, if they don't, we name everything. So all the things. So this meeting is not called a strategy meeting, which is generic, it's called a blueprint. So everyone knows that if we, if you're building a house, you hire an architect, and the design a blueprint, it doesn't tell you what color the tiles are in the bathroom, but it tells you how many bedrooms it has, whether you're south facing or north facing or whatever, which is what this this is all about. We're not going into the granular detail. It's high level stuff. In terms of the actual work, we follow Nick Lincoln's approach in terms of we build the initial model based on the information that we've had. And then in real time, we'll adjust it, is this right? Is this correct? And if so, and you do a number of what ifs. Of course, that's where the magic is, what if you did retire five years early? What if you did give the kids additional money, etc. And I think that is so important. I've seen other people who kind of have a pre packed presentation here, it is almost like a PDF. This is your. And that's just that doesn't work. It's very interactive, and also shows that it's up to that you decide what life you want to live, you tell me and we'll see if the numbers stack up. So it's a really live and interactive situation. The only other thing I'll say is on the basis that we really think through because if these meetings do generally last two hours, we'll have it automatically one of the other members of the team have a duty to people lead advisor advisor and an Associates which in other in all money is a paraplanner to people in the room because it's quite difficult. Someone else has said to manage the client conversations, the tech, if it's just one person doing it so to an advisor and a co pilot it works really well. And after about an hour what we know is people will either want a comfort break, or they might want to top up with their coffee or something so someone gently knocks on the door after 60 minutes pre planned in advance it says we don't want to take you want to take a break now or do you want another coffee and people think this is slick. It looks good. well thought through and organized.
Nick Lincoln:It's about it's about filtering and having an onboarding process you know and if you've if you've if you're very careful with the vetting of people you bring on board you shouldn't have problems down the line which we'll come on to the meat and potatoes but also you bring people on who fit your service property this is what I do for all people all the time and if you don't want this you don't get on the boat you don't come on you're not you're not part of the squad in the first place. So once again, you know if you know what you stand for and what your service is about, offer that to people and they either take it or they leave it okay but if they come on board wanting that service, they pay for that service
Andy Hart:latest client I've taken on after you try to embark on this on his own the numbers just got too big and he needed a lot of help and since I've worked with him I've added so much value the first thing we did is work out the money flow where's the money flow and is it going to the right parts and is it doing the right thing
Unknown:and the the Hilldrup a Darien Andy knows about everything Andy can be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart.
Andy Hart:So I suppose it again boils down to we help people answer expensive questions seamless, seamless. Yeah, so it got to a point where he had expensive questions. He didn't want to make a mistake. So pensee saw our financial advisor, Alan mentioned it is this Lean versus fat fire. So lean is yes, I want to retire at 37 sell my car eat very fruit frugally, conveniently that they don't have children, you know, and they only want to have a burn rate of, I don't know 2200 pounds a month and you know, and they can get there relatively easily. Whereas fat fire is you know, I want to spend 10 grand a month I still crunch all the numbers are still being global equities. I still want to retire early at let's say 46 and do something that I'm more passionate about. So it's not as if I'm gonna retire 46 You know, and sit there and do nothing you know, I'm going to be driven and you know, help more and more people for what I can do. So you can there's various ways to skin it slice and dice it.
Alan Smith:Turn the recording, we're heading towards the end of 2023 and I'm just sort of throwing it open in terms of what people think about what are the what do you do for planning next year, so I have just bought three days away by myself. little cottage, on the beach where I've got time away from the office away from home life. But I've got time to miss his last story. I've got a story coming up,
Unknown:grab yourself a drink, a very long drink. It's story time with Alan Smith.
Alan Smith:Once again, you were premature mr. Lincoln. Once again,
Nick Lincoln:tell me you've got a story coming up. How am I supposed to know?
Alan Smith:Just trust me balls got a story. But not always. I've got I've got a brief story coming up in a few minutes. But this is not a story. This is just a reflection. This is something those of us who are serious about our business lives, I think that next year will be an interesting year. I think it'd be challenging in many ways, I think the economy will be extremely challenging. There's as we already know, there's a hell of a lot going on in our sector in our industry. And I like to take time away because I never give myself enough time to think to reflect and to plan and to organize and so I'm I just say I'm taking myself away for three days, I just booked an Airbnb cottage on the beach secret location, can't tell you boys could you might come and crash it and try to take me out to the pub, which I'm not you have to
Nick Lincoln:you have to crash it.
Alan Smith:Of a patient though I specifically removed the link.
Carl Widger:You're going on your own to reflect for three days. So you're gonna talk to nobody for three days. All right. God bless cash when you get home. Yeah, I am a lot of talking he needs to get out of the system.
Alan Smith:I wasn't thinking of going on a silent retreat, no talking for several days.
Andy Hart:You'll be kicked out in the first three hours.
Nick Lincoln:So we've got a question posted via Twitter from James Marston. And he's on Twitter at James Marsden ATA, I'll read the question out and then one of you maybe can who who picked up on this question can answer it. Does the recent collapse in bonds invalidate the whole risk profiling process? And given the bonds clearly have as much downside as stocks in certain scenarios? Are we all better off being in 100% Global Equity ETF? So who posted that question in that in there in there?
Alan Smith:I did. I got I got the message from James about that, who just been asking me via messages on Twitter. And so James, as I understand it's a relatively new advisor. And of course, he's been given the Kool Aid to drink. This is what you do here, you do a risk profile a questionnaire and if a client says I'm low volatility, then you give him a load of bonds in your investment. And he's obviously being somewhat disillusioned by having done that found that he's encountered tons of volatility and said, you know, what, we know that long term global equities is the place to be. And so why don't we just invest in that 100%? Which, you know, we all we want to have some controversy, we want to have some a good quality debate on this, but I think something we all agree with?
Nick Lincoln:Well, I think I think, I think we I think outside of our circle, and maybe the Spartans that the mix with what we're about to say, and what you just said, is gonna give a lot of advisors will is because they love their asset allocation. And they love their fixed interest exposure because of modern portfolio theory. Stuff that I think we over the last 15 years, we've we've realized that bonds are rubbish for income, they don't they don't do anything for income. And now we're seeing we actually said they don't do anything to dampen portfolio volatility. So you have to ask the question, what is the point of them? What is the point of attitude to risk questionnaires? I think this is us. This is, this is the great reset for bonds, this is our chance to get rid of this cancer out of our clients lives. And I feel quite strongly about this, as you'll find out and when I when I want to talk about it. How do you think so we think this is this is a real risk? Is it?
Alan Smith:Is it fair to say that this current crisis is the first the first time I can remember where you've had a significant correction bear market in equities and long dated bonds, particularly at the same time? I mean, the financial crisis worse? Yeah, I know. But so in 2007, eight, if you invested in long government bonds, you actually you're in positive territory, I think your opposite theory did, right. Yeah. You were right in that period. So that was one where the so called, you know, the asset allocation thing. If you wanted to dampen volatility that was that was fine. You did get you did achieve that. Yeah, you haven't had it? You're
Andy Hart:right. Alan, certainly is not having the last 25 years. I don't know well enough to even go back further than that. But there might be a case of it's never ever happened.
Nick Lincoln:It has about 1994 1991 global equities, lost value in that year and the fixed income markets global government bonds around the world fell in value. Okay. So unusual. It's so ya know, it's
Andy Hart:20 years ago. So you're about you're about 45 Then when you look in
Nick Lincoln:Earth years, I was 45.
Alan Smith:But is that maybe the answer if you've been contentious, are you defending you know, Asset Modeling and risk profile and say it is a Once in a quarter of a century or more situation, and you can't mitigate for those things in relatively normal markets, I mean, relatively normal is a global financial crisis 2008 They held up well, I can't remember what happened in COVID times I think bonds mostly held up pretty well as well. But the markets collapsed when equity markets collapse, so generally speaking, they do. And this is this is you have to be clear as well about the particular type of bonds because I know in 2007 people were invested in corporate bonds, which collapsed as far and fast as equities did, but, you know, government sovereign debt with like countries like UK, US and so on, tend to be a safe haven asset. So,
Nick Lincoln:there are two points here there are, I hear what you're saying. But we've worked we've had bonds in portfolios as this as this dampener. But But why? Because there's this this this slag, there's this dragon that was saying it doesn't exist, you know, when you only run out and you mentioned that we're we're looking at 30 year plans, multi generational plans, plans that will span decades, it's impossible to lose money historically, over any rolling 20 year period, and the MSCI MSCI World Index, you cannot lose money, of course.
Alan Smith:This is a sop to is a sauce to human behavioral psychology because we know there are certain people that see if my investments for I know Nick, I'm investing for 20 or 30 years. But if I wake up one day, and my 100,000 pounds is worth 80,000, or buy millions worth 800, I'm going to be I will be able to sleep at night that all that. So that's why and yes, it's an education process. But I think as we've all identified, you can have these conversations with the clients that one of the biggest failings in my mind for risk profiling is it asks you a question at a time when you're in a in a place of if you'd like calm, calm discussions, you know, what would you how would you feel if such and such such and such, so what but what always happens when you have significant market volatility, there's loads of other things going on in the world by so COVID was you might buddy die and your family might die. So you don't really work. And right now your mortgage rates gone through the roof, you might lose your job, your family might lose their job. So there's a lot of other things, which makes risk profiling in itself. Questionable though, I've talked in the past, if I said to either of any of you, are you are you scared of snakes? You might see them not really, if I literally throw a live snake on your lap, or trust me, you're going to you're going to recoil, you're gonna stand up or do something you told me not scared of them. So risk profiles are somewhat artificial in the way that they are presented and the time they're presented, because you don't know how you're gonna feel. Because it's probably a lot of other things going on.
Andy Hart:I think people should try and acquire new skills that will then lead to goals. When people set goals, they're just that they're quite loose. So I'm a fan of learning new skills anyway. So a skill I learned last year was PowerPoint sounds a bit lame, but I need to up my skills on it. Anyway. So that's that's what I'm basically just trying to say don't set goals learn new skills. So if this year, you've got a lot of stuff to achieve, rather than saying, I'm going to do X by then or why by then just learn new skills like this called your your skill stack, as Scott Adams talks about intentional
Carl Widger:working and living for me. So I, I've been down the burnout road before, right? And you'd imagine, well, if you've been down there once, you wouldn't let it happen again, I nearly let it happen again, this year, I spent Christmas nursing a bit of a cold. And the reason I'm standing today is because I popped a disc in my back. So for me, that's my body going, Dude starts off now out here, because otherwise you're on a slow road to nowhere. So for me, it's to be really intentional about looking after myself. So that, you know, my job here at matters is we have a really good thing going. So if I can be the best type of, you know, leader, to be a visionary to inspire people, well, then that's, that's where I'm going to have the most impact. And that's where this team needs me most. Your point,
Alan Smith:their call about sort of looking after yourself is really well made in again, we've talked about this in the past. I mentioned that to you. There's there's a book called Essentialism by Greg McEwan and as a chapter in that there's a whole section you can look at his unspecific blogs on it's called protect the assets. And the point the point being you can have people in your circumstances to look after everyone else around them and trying to keep the team going and support the team and the family and everything else. But you're the big domino if you go down, if you're getting stressed or you sort of can't show up then there's so many other negatives that happen as a result of that. So so important to protect the asset and the number one asset is you and it sounds selfish, as you say, but it's absolutely not. It'd be selfish not to do that is the point but check out Greg McEwan, writing.
Andy Hart:I think all of us on this call have read enough books to know what we need to be doing in terms of looking after ourselves. But yeah, employee went in monk mode a lot more in 2024 is going to be something that yeah, I'm also going to be doing as much as I can. But it's hard. But you know, we can read all the books, we can listen to all the podcasts, we can watch all the YouTube videos that we did wake up every day and put in the right behaviors. And we know what the triggers dominoes are for ourselves. Yeah, so let's try and keep each other all accountable. Yeah, anyway.
Nick Lincoln:Okay, well, okay, let's stick around to me, I think with my one goal for 2024 when it kinda time ties, all
Andy Hart:right, no more, no more of that drop note, we've had enough of that drop.
Nick Lincoln:There's two more to go mate. And I'm gonna do it with all three when you're talking. My one ties in with voices, sort of health and well, being minds to be more stoic and not to get maybe so caught up in what happens? You know, Marcus Aurelius said, and then Shakespeare quoted that as well. But it's not what like, it's not what happens to you in life. It's how you choose how you choose. That's the important word there, how you choose to react to events. So I'm just going to try and disassociate myself from what happens to me and focus more on actually how you react to it. So I think just just from a just from being a more, a more loving, reasonable, rounded Lik, Lincoln that's my goal for 2024 set
Carl Widger:yourself up for failure there but
Nick Lincoln:right Smithy?
Alan Smith:Simplify in a word? Yep. That's great.
Nick Lincoln:My antipathy to bond was existed before the meltdown in the bond market last year, it just happened to coincide nicely with it, then my message was more resonant. But I just think you want to be an owner of the companies, you don't want to be a lender, you want to own a future income stream, you don't want to lend
Andy Hart:rising income that
Nick Lincoln:and just and in case, we come across as holier than thou and perhaps I do sometimes, I have made every investment mistake under this under the sun to to get where I am today. So when people sit down with me with their, with their little pots of money, and they're, they're sort of the they're figuratively holding me by the hand and saying, Nick, don't screw this up. Because this is all we've got. What I bring to the table is over 20 years of knowledge of knowing how not to do things, it's the stuff you don't do with your money that will determine successful outcomes more than what you will do with it. It's avoiding all the all the crud. And having learned all these and having sort of got this thick skin from the mistakes, haven't got the calluses on my hand from all the mistakes I made at the coalface that's given me this anchor that I can drop into the ocean. So when the waves come, I'm not buffeted from this way to that way that and this is you know, we all believe in in the great companies of the world, there'll be times when the great comes to the world are just absolutely temporarily going through the floor. And these waves will be coming over you have the pressure from clients, the media, and we'd have this anchor that's in the CS keeping us there. There's we have a belief system, and we don't let it get rocked by our peers or whatever the new shiny object is on the street.
Andy Hart:It's a decision we will have to make there's a sort of key forks in the road, you need to do your exams, you need to understand how to do the job correctly. You need to earn money. You need to balance that with Do you have kids and family? You know it is challenging. And as I said, I earned sweet FA for my first 24 months. But luckily I had a little bit of money saved. I didn't have kids. Mortgage rates were low. You know, I got lucky. But yeah, I took a lot of pain for short term, but long term it's potentially pulling off. So who's next?
Alan Smith:We didn't mention the best day of your professional life. That day. You met me for a coffee and everything changed.
Andy Hart:The day I went for a coffee with a multimillionaire, absolutely ambles but then I ended up buying the coffee. Yeah,
Alan Smith:that's it. Let me forget the
Nick Lincoln:key word. You were like a key word you mentioned there. And the was the role that luck plays in, in our lives in every aspect, not just our business lives, but our personal lives and life in general. Certainly in business luck, is you can't you can't invent luck. You know, it just happens to you. But when it does happen to you. You've got to be you've got to have a mouse to be able to seize it. I think Carl, you've got some thoughts, thoughts around this? Yeah,
Carl Widger:it's funny. Before Andy and Alan joined myself and Nick, were just chatting about this this morning before we went on air and that's exactly what I said. I said, you know, we, we gotta admit here that luck plays a massive part in it. And I think you know, that was definitely a massive part of you know, how I've ended up where I am. First of all, I went I left a brokerage in 2010 set up on my own because I had to, I wouldn't have I didn't have if I didn't have to to be perfectly honest. I then did my own thing for for three or four years. About halfway through that. I was product setting. As I said before, I went, Okay, this is I'm not adding any value here, I'm not getting any job satisfaction, there must be a better way. So I went researching myself. At the time friends first, who no longer exists here, they've been bought out by Aviva ran a course about financial planning. I went on that course I met Carl Daly, who I set up matters with originally in 2014. And I kind of just took it from there and went, Okay, let's research this as best as we possibly can. I do believe people at that crossroads now are luckier because they do have what they've trapped, they've DFA, they have loads of different resources, they can go to loads of different people who are willing to kind of help loads of people who are doing real financial planning, and it wasn't a thing in Ireland at all. And I guess it was, you know, when Andy was you, when you were working with Tina, it was kind of it was in its infancy. So you know, you are in a better place, because there's lots more people to learn from. But exactly like Andy said, we struggled really badly, from 14 to 16. I've often told this story where struggled to pay staff, the directors didn't get paid for a number of months in the first 24 months. And but it was almost like a light switch once it started to happen, then we start to grow exponentially. But it did take two years. Now looking back, right? I think that's because we were poor ash, telling the story about what financial planning is the benefits of financial planning. And I suppose we were in a marketplace where this was all entirely new. So you know, if you're in a place whereby you're in a firm that's inverted commas, a bad firm, and you want to go and do it, I think you're I think, you know, you're lucky in that you're in an environment where you can go and do us understand, it's going to be different, difficult for a couple of years. And I always, always, always say that. But if you know that you can sell right, and don't be afraid of that word you need to sell, right, because you need to get out in front of people. If you're a person who's sitting behind a laptop, you're That's not for you. So you just go and find a firm and just go and work for a proper firm. But if you want to do it yourself, you need to be able to sell, you need to be massively, massively resilient. And you'll need to just consistently go out day after day after day.
Alan Smith:If you were to really consider the fact that you've got little or no control over your future revenues, and it's your future revenues, and therefore your profits are predicated by global events of Overwatch, you've got zero control, up and down. That doesn't sound like a sound business model, you know, your revenue, our revenue, well, anyone who's an assets based fee model could literally fall 1015 20% 30% In the course of a year. And that's going to wipe out for most advisors, that's pretty much all their profit, they're now making a loss for a period of time. And I used to saying well, or bank, the bank this sort of money in the good days, and we'll sort of bring it out in the bad days. I don't think it's a sound business proposition, if I was going to invest in a business over which they had got zero control of their future cash flows and revenues, I will be questioning that as a business model zeros of a stronger what influence do you have over the global capital markets,
Andy Hart:which are actually which determined your personal revenues and your business or you don't have any it could be I bought a bomb could go somewhere this afternoon, I'm not market your income will fall, I'm not saying we have any influence, I'm saying the historical data, you know, goes back centuries. So we've got some insight of where we're going to move, we just don't know exactly which direction. But yeah, that
Carl Widger:would be what would be, well, if we're asking our clients all the time to look to the long term, then we should also be prepared to look to the long term and I suppose that was our big move towards the, you know, towards the trail model, the lower initial phase and all of that kind of stuff. So therefore, we're going to take the rough with the smooth over a long period of time, I'm comfortable that that will smooth itself out. Okay. And also our, also our our ambitions are aligned, so I'm feeling the pain with the clients and you know, when things are going well, then, you know, everybody is happy. And just a final point of that if we have clients who kind of invest on one of our lower tiers and move through more than you know, we will than we have done and we will continue to reduce their fees as we go. So
Alan Smith:it seems it seems odd to me that you're the value that you deliver to the clients and the work and the time probably during periods of market stress and tension will mark capital market values fall will increase and yet your revenues will fall now, I don't know I know nothing about your kind of your your business, your p&l and you've sort of forecasts and stuff. But there's plenty of businesses that if they had, which has happened many times in the past sustained periods, I'm talking 578 years of low or zero market returns, or negative period periods of negative return, you're going to have to, and this has happened before, and I'm aware of various companies that start making redundancies to start after laying off lay off staff, which is not ideal from if you if you're hiring people, if your income, your business income, fell 30% and stayed low for two or three years, let's, let's say someone's going to have to take the halo two from
Andy Hart:the Watford wise one over to you, Chairman.
Nick Lincoln:Well, Carl, just just if you haven't gone Submit button to say, my friend, you don't we do. Yeah, I
Carl Widger:think saying that we're going to have five to seven years of zero return, right? That what that hurts, Matt is Ireland 100%. However, if Metis, Ireland was 100% fee based, and we had five to seven years of zero return, that would also hurt us because we have difficulty number one collecting fees. And number two, I'm not sure the business would come in as its had done. So I don't think it's to say that one model is, you know, going to be totally sheltered from that kind of environment. I think that that model, any every model would struggle, if if that happened, we spoke in the last episode of having a few difficult conversations with clients, because we've had no growth for 18 months. But like has, you know, we will man up and we'll talk about it. And final point is, you know, do we have loads more work to do? When did we have loads more work to do when Russia invaded Ukraine and markets took a bit of a hiccup? Nope, because we do all of that really hard work and training with our clients along the way, in the good times. If your clients are getting older, say right to do and you have a natural follow up, like do you always try and replace those slides? Or do you let that just organically happen? Or how do you deal with
Nick Lincoln:when it's image wise, you would imagine it sounds the sounds cruel, but I'm using this metaphor. So you can people can see it from actually conveyable going along and clients at the end of their lives will drop off the conveyor belt, and they fall out of your life as fee paying people, okay, I'm not. They're human beings, but as fee paying people, they fall out of your life. And it doesn't really compare but you have younger people coming on board and some years, you'll have more people dropping off the end, you'll have more people coming on. I don't have a vigorous client Recruitment Policy, I work by referral only. So I do take on the some children of clients and grandchildren of clients. I get referrals from accountants, and it kind of washes through car, but it just happens organically. It's not me going out. And you know, I used to do the networking and everything else. And I do I am taking clients on but I am very choosy and clients are very choosy with, you know, the vetting process. We are vetting the prospects, they think they're vetting us, we are vetting them. And a lot of them don't get through, don't get through the process. So I take clients on but selectively but you lose, you know, one day, I might just be that I've got three clients left, because the rest of them have died. And I shut up shop years ago, and I walk away because my business is I've got my pots stacked up for the rest of my life. You know that we talked about that as well. I'm not saying that's
Carl Widger:not Andy's plan. And his plan is that you'll give up in a few years. And he'll take it all on. But anyway, yeah, we've
Nick Lincoln:got to find someone I trust. And like, and this is where this whole thing was.
Alan Smith:I was just reflecting, as you may know, I've been I've been sort of away, I've been on holiday for best part of a month, really. And I was thinking and I've come back and I'm back at work today, about half half a stone heavier than I left. I've enjoyed the good life. And what I was thinking about is we talk in this podcast quite regularly. And I think we can be sometimes unfair with our kind of demonizing or people, you know, stick to the plan by the great companies of the world, never sell them stick to long term, don't worry about volatility, play the long game, et cetera. And that's just information but it's hard to do. Because I can tell you, I haven't really stuck to my if you like personal health plan over the last month, what I should be doing is exercising everyday eating healthily, getting eight hours sleep and I and I can tell you I haven't been doing that for quite a few weeks. And I was just, I was reflecting on that this easy to see, be consistent, and then many things in life. It's actually quite hard to do or it's certainly hard for me to do so maybe we should be a bit kinder, more gentle to people be the advisors be the clients be the investors. Because it's not Yeah, there are there are challenges in doing that. If it was as Derek Severs if you follow Derrick services, he said if if all you needed was information, what if more information helped, then we'd all be billionaires with six specs
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