57 - Adviser YouTube Mastery with James Shack

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

• Topical Titbits including Budget analysis both onshore and offshore peeps, 5% AUM acquisition models, more (potential) Irish fraud, SJP new charging model going down like a bucket of cold vomit, a UK Ponzi scheme, the struggles of a young adviser, Métis Norway hiring yet again, a Bulletproof MBA course
• Meat and Potatoes: Adviser YouTube Mastery With James Shack(ell)
• TRAPist question(s) from www.twitter.com/conor_beaumont https://www.linkedin.com/in/conor-beaumont
• Culture Corner

Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks. Chris Emmott's execellent guide to the Budget for international clients is here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/l04c9aedyexqt3f8blgpv/Budget-Summary-for-International-and-Overseas-Affected-Clients-EBG-International.pdf?rlkey=oihbam52ceydltqsafi9ly62i&dl=0

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:07

Music, welcome to the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, Trep. Please follow us and join in the conversation on Twitter at advisor podcast, where you can suggest ideas and themes you'd like the trap team to discuss. Also, remember to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel and leave a six out of five star review on iTunes. Doing all this really, really helps us, which means we can do more to help you. Now, let's head over to the studio for the latest pile of trap.

Nick Lincoln: 0:42

Yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 57 of the real advisor podcast. Tick up AP track. My name is Nick Lincoln, and joining me once again in the digital studio of doom are the three other horsemen and the apocalypse, Carl della vocci, the voice widget and the ultra heart and Alan the storyteller. Smith, Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app salutely, nothing. So let's kick it off with some more high energy review reads, read out by my very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Hart,

Andy Hart: 1:17

thank you very much. Nicholas, first up is from Chris pedals, it's entitled best podcast in the business, five stars. I recommend this podcast to every advisor I meet for experienced and successful professionals sharing their experiences of what works and doesn't work in this profession of ours. It has entertainment value and frequent banter and tall tales from Mr. Smith tall town, yep. Final review is from Matt the Lancer. Interesting title, entirely sensible and yet completely nuts at precisely the same time, five stars. Trap has to be the go to podcast for the next generation, or agile members of the current generation of quality financial advisors. The TRAPPIST, unrelenting, focused on financial planning, led elegant, simple equity focused, low cost, straight talking financial advice is spot on, loads in each episode to take away and actually use in your day to day business. Incidentally, there's a fair there's a fair number of switched on SJP partners who use SJ, P's, passive range and price extremely keenly for their precious clients who sign up to the trap ethos, keep up the good work. That's it. Back to you. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln: 2:32

very nice. Andrew, thank you for the reads. Thank you for reading them out, and thank you TRAPPIST for the reviews. We do really, really appreciate them. Please do keep them coming in six out of five stars on your app, player of choice. So gentlemen, let's move on and give this episode, Episode 57 the Heinz baked beans trap. Episode Five Seven. Let's give it a topical timestamp you might just tune out on this one for a little bit with your model to contribute. But it is a UK focused event. We had our budget. You had yours a couple of weeks ago, and we had ours. And, well, let's not belabor it that every There are a zillion budget briefings out there you can get from anybody. I just maybe I'll kick off on this. I think it could, we could see that budget as the end of a golden era for UK financial advisors. And there are two reasons for that. The first one is that since march 2009 as you guys know, as the TRAPPIST, no, we've been in this superb bull market, which really has gone on interrupted. We had a little bit of a thing with the Wuhan lab leak, bed wetting, the 34% decline in 33 days, or vice versa. And then a couple of years ago, the S P fell by about 25% when inflation came back into the system. But those were two quite. One was a very, very short, Savage, temporary decline. The other was a short decline as well. But since 2009 we've had a really good run. And then in 2015 and I'm not but I'm not saying that the next decline is coming, but what I'm saying is it's probably more than likely, it's overdue to happen, all right, but quite a long, temporary decline. And then in 2015 George Osborne brought in these pension freedoms, totally out of the blue. I don't think there's any lobbying being done by anybody in the industrial side of our business. Remember the life insurance companies share prices just tanked on the day, because everyone suddenly clicks Hold on. Why are we ever going to buy an annuity? And he brought these, pension freedoms in where you could cascade down your pension funds to your children, your grandchildren, free of inheritance taxes. Like Jesus, this is too good to be true, and that's gone. That's the big thing from the budget that I think is going to affect us massively. And I think that's a bad thing. And you might be surprised to hear me say that I always thought this was this was a bit odd. You created the loophole for wealthy people to pass down pension funds free of inheritance tax. Pension funds that had tax relief going in, they've grown free of all taxes. You can take 25% tax free cash. It was just too good to be true. And Rachel Reeves has got rid of that, I think it's going to shake things up a bit, because I think since 2050 a lot of advisors maybe not doing full fat financial planning and kind of just sat on these pension funds, taking their fee. Told clients not to cash them in and pass them down, you know, to your beneficiaries. I think going forward, cash flow modeling, full fat financial planning becomes front and Central. I don't know how you'd run a business without doing that for every client, because now you're gonna have different conversations with clients. It's gonna be stuff like, do we take the tax free cash out of our pensions and put them into trust or gift them to our children? Now we're in real life. Do we take income from our pension funds up to the 40% band, you know? So 50,000 in total income, just with our state pensions, what have you. And if you're not doing cash flow modeling and walking through these scenarios, which are going to be different for every client based on the unique circumstances, you're not doing your job properly. So I think, I think we're going to look back and think is that it's, it's a sea change moment. And I'll reiterate, I think she's I think it, it had to go. Basically, it was just too good to be true. It's not going till April. 2027 they're giving quite a long lead in on this. They want quite a heavy consultation process. I think maybe around well, do we still tax the money and when the beneficiaries take the money out, because you could pay inheritance tax at 40% in your pension fund, and then you can pay potentially 45% on the income when you take it out. So that maybe is what they're going to look at. But there we go. Those are my thoughts on the budget. Guys. Well, Alan, and any other thoughts,

Andy Hart: 6:11

lots of thoughts. Nick, you've mentioned lots of points there. And obviously the first thing you mentioned was just, you know, historical investment returns, which is slightly different to specifically talking about the budget. I personally think the budget is great news for financial advisors. It's added a load more complexity to what's going on clients approach that that retirement point, it's not simple for them to work out what to do. So I think it's a super budget for financial advisors. The specific point you mentioned about the pension and inheritance tax? Yeah, it was a little bit odd that when I came to the business, the death tax on unspent pensions was 55% which I thought was a bit harsh. Then the 0% came in, and I thought, where's that come from? Nobody asked for that, and now they've aligned it with IHT, which I think is fair. Obviously it's not between spouses, so that's the same rules that apply. But then it's obviously when it gets received further down. So I'm sort of, I think the budget's been okay. Good news for financial advisors. The pension is still the number one place to grow wealth long term. And the CGT, I think, is a fair increase. 24% is absolutely fine, compared to 45% income tax. So again, you know, suck it up. I don't see a big problem with that. We're still sort of processing exactly how we're going to change the strategies with our clients, but we're struggling as professionals. So end consumers, they've got no chance. Clients with a certain amount of money, they're going to have to approach financial advisors for their assistance, guidance, strategy, advice. So I think it's a great budget for financial advisors. There's nothing in there. I think it's too harsh. I mean, the whole sort of political thing, you're never going to tax your way to prosperity. So I see there's going to be a sea change, a sea change coming down the line. But, yeah, I'm generally okay with it. I think it's quite fair, and incentives drive behavior. So we'll see what's going to happen. The next chapter. Over to you. Mr. Smith,

Carl Widger: 7:59

can I just ask a question Alan, before you jump in after you take your tax free lump sum in the UK, under the UK rules, do you not have to take a certain amount each year? Zero

Alan Smith: 8:11

income distribution had

Nick Lincoln: 8:14

to be made. But it's there.

Carl Widger: 8:17

We changed that a good about a decade ago. I'd say where you depending on the level of the fund, you have to take either four or five or 6% because what was happening was the wealthy people who made it were just leaving it sheltered. So you know that, I think that's quite a good rule. I know the wealthier people don't like it, but what it does also just make sure that, you know, there is taxable income coming out, you know, over time as well. So that might be something that might be introduced over time between now and 2027 it is a very long lead in time, which kind of a long lead in time with with a lot of uncertainty, because there's surely other stuff to come in that period of time as well. Yeah,

Alan Smith: 9:00

yeah. I think the biggest thing is, as you have suggested, Andrew, is this idea of double taxation? We can accept inheritance tax charge, but and or on the recipient 40% tax charge, but you never

Nick Lincoln: 9:14

do that. Alan, the survivor would

Andy Hart: 9:16

just take the money as cash, they wouldn't leave in a pension, then pay income tax on it. Tax on it. Again, that would be mad to do. Again, this was a detail, but yeah, between spouses, you do the initial transfer, then deal with the problem later on. The second transfer as into the children, to your friend, to whoever you know. Normal pension rules, there's no way you leave in a pension environment and pay income tax on it. You just take it as cash and deal with it yourself. So I think that, again, is a red herring, because nobody's actually going to do that. You can do that, but you'd be mad to do it. But yeah, everything the detail,

Alan Smith: 9:50

I think, just starting off on this conversation, the first thing is, it was just, it's just really good to get clarity, to know where we are. This has been, I think. Longest lead up time to any budget I can ever remember. It was announced something like three months ago. And as we've talked about in the past, we're now living in a different era of consistent 24/7, you know, media, social media coverage, speculation, you know, newspapers and everyone's in business of getting eyeballs and clicks. And so the speculation was just, you know, just off the scale, wasn't it? And so just whatever happened, at least now we know it was really, really important. I think there's a sense of just relief to have the clarity begin to begin to think and plan in terms of the budget. You're right, the most impactful budget for financial planners in, I don't know, a decade or more, I would rather think lots and lots in there. We can't remotely cover all of it within this conversation, but I do remember again, talking relating to what you said a minute ago. Ultra an advisor told me years and years ago, he said, generally speaking, labor budgets are bad for the advisor in terms of personally, but good for business, because all of a sudden there's lots more issues that need to get fixed, people who are kind of on the fence thinking, you know, you often see these things, or I see them online and elsewhere. Why would why would I pay an advisor to buy me an index fund? I could just do it myself. You know, the concept that's all that advisors do. Clearly, there's lots of moving parts. Every situation is going to be different. I did a podcast the other day, bulletproof with some tax experts, and you just sort of scratch the surface, and you think is that sometimes it's a second order effects. Well, that happens. Okay, fine. Ah, now these two or three other things may well happen down the line. So and as they kept saying throughout that conversation that I had, it's just such a highly personalized situation. There is no one rule fit. So you should take your pension, you shouldn't take your pension, or whatever it is. So highly personalized, independent, experienced advice is never been more more valuable, agreed? So I'm just going to just just mention another couple of points as it relates to ifas and ourselves and our business owners. And there's two quick things. One is these, the additional National Insurance contributions. Now, most advisors are relatively small businesses, but you do a quick sum and you realize that you've got an additional business cost in the company running into, in our case, you know several 10s of 1000s of business or, sorry, of cost that just comes off your bottom line in terms of these additional NICs that are to be paid. Just kind of an obvious point, but if anything else, this, I think, accelerates the adoption of technology, some of these AI tools, which are out there, people aren't necessarily going to be going out hiring a lot of early stage, Junior type people coming into the industry. So there's a big question mark over new young entrants coming to the business. If you can get some tech to do the job and save yourself not only the salary, but the additional NIC costs, so that will be interesting. And the other thing that we haven't talked about yet is that the these private businesses that we all Yeah, own are now going to be subject to inheritance tax, albeit at the lower rate of 20% and again, I'm just thinking about the second order effects on that God forbid anything happens to any one of us, anyone running an IFA practice, the their estate will be charged 20% of the value of that business, above a million on the Debt. Yeah, above a million now, and I'm going to talk about it in a minute. A lot of these businesses are worth several million dollars. To say, Well, yeah, okay, so that's the other thing. As I asked the tax experts the other day, how do you value a business? How do you value any small, private company? There's never, there's no liquid market, you know? And he said, Yeah, exactly. It's a good point. And it depends. This is the one situation we want, the lowest, lowest possible valuation. So it's, it's an interesting dynamic for us in the profession ourselves, never mind the impact on our clients. So lots to unpack. And

Andy Hart: 13:54

just want to know from that point Alan, the thing that's got a lot of press is farmers, obviously, and farmland and agricultural now, same, same, same. Numbers apply to them. Yeah, you know, your typical farm in any place is gonna be worth more than million quid just because of the land. So all of them are caught up in it. They're obviously asset, you know, wealthy, but they haven't got a lot of you know that their land, their income, very little, very, really liquid. I was in Madrid when the farmers were protesting. It was absolute carnage. The farmers would be protesting in London. It's going to be absolutely garnish, because they make a, you know, an absolute racket. But then again, Clark's, Clarkson was writing about it in The Times, obviously, Clarkson's got a big farm, and he was saying a lot of wealthy people have been buying farm because it qualifies for agricultural relief, but that's the exception. That's not your typical farming family. So there's a lot of unintended consequences, as you say, second order effects. So that's a super interesting point. The other thing I want to talk about, which has got a bit of sort of presses, is aim, EIS and VCT again. They're now going to be caught up with the similar sort of thing. They are not the limit of the million. They're gonna be taxed at 20% I mean, the aim is interesting. So. Done bugger all anyway, so it's gonna be bugger all Now, minus 20% so good luck with that one. So that's hopefully just killed that market dead. But I'm sure the sellers and manufacturers of these products will come up with some some some unique strategies around that. I think EIS and VCT are caught in the same regime as an organ be taxed at 20% again, personally, to me, that's good news, because I wasn't really a fan of these products anywhere now they've just made them even worse. So again, that's another tick in the box. That's another point to anyone else.

Nick Lincoln: 15:27

No, I think we're gonna have to just nail it on on there, because we're we've got a lot to get through today. We've actually got from one of our TRAPPIST friends, Chris Emmett, who deals in the expat market. He's based in Chile, and he works with people all around the world. We've got a two minute budget summary from expat expert Chris Emmer, hopefully this works.

Chris Emmott: 15:50

Greetings horsemen and fellow Trappists, the non DOM regime remittance basis is set to be abolished. A new foreign income and gain scheme will allow new arrivals to keep overseas incomes and gains untaxed for four years. But this scheme applies only to newcomers. For current non DOMs, a transitional arrangement allows tax efficient remittance for three years. There's also potential opportunities for rebasing capital gains. The protected trust regime ends with settlers to be taxed on incomes and gains as they arise and excluded property trusts also lose protections, causing IHT headaches. Many non DOMs may leave, but remainers may find it pointless keeping liquid assets overseas, bringing them into scope for UK ifas offshore bonds look attractive here, regardless of intent, all non DOMs have something to think about now. Entrepreneurs, relief remains, but CGT on business sales almost doubles over the next two years between that and changes to IHT for owners, more will consider an overseas move and sale of their business, shielding them from CGT and IHT Dubai, Cyprus and Malta, amongst others, offer low or zero tax on capital gains foreign pension incomes and inheritance and the move to a residence based IHT system makes permanent move more attractive a 10 Year UK IHT tail is easier to shed than UK domicile status. Qurops will now be a niche solution. The overseas transfer charge now applies to general EEA transfers, so only in country. Curops transfers now qualify for exemption. Popular destinations such as Spain, France and Portugal don't have local Cure Up solutions. So retaining UK pensions can now be more attractive. Those moving to France may be able to cash their full pension at a flat tax of seven and a half percent, where conditions align, but advice there is crucial. Q nups also appear to lose their IHT, free status. This, of course, is just a short initial summary. I'll ask lick to pop my contact details on broadest and a broader summary in the so called show notes. We work with lots of ifas to ensure best outcomes for clients moving abroad. So if you have any questions, please do feel free to reach out. Thanks. I

Nick Lincoln: 17:50

didn't get a word of that, but it sounded very good. Thanks, Chris for your expert summary of the ex. He's

Alan Smith: 17:55

got that. He's got a great what they call late night, late night radio, DJ. Boy, suddenly sultry tones of Chris, Emma from Santiago.

Carl Widger: 18:06

He was really, really good, but there's an awful lot of detail there. Isn't there? My God, this is just getting more and more complex.

Alan Smith: 18:13

Yeah, yeah. And I think Chris, Chris does make a point. He does, he does make a point, though, that about UK advisors having, you know, good relationships with trusted non UK advisors could be, you know, more interesting. Certainly in London in the southeast, there are loads of non DOMs living here and enjoying quite a favorable tax status tax regime for the last number of years, and it's kind of disappearing. So, you know, cross border, all that sort of, you know, giving good advice and finding high quality you know, we've talked about this before, didn't we, through the our Singapore TRAPPIST connections, but there's all sorts of places around the world, so having good connections with good advisors in other parts of the world to help our clients is not a bad thing. But yes, Mr. Widger, is getting much more complicated.

Nick Lincoln: 19:02

Chris okie dokie, good stuff. Storyteller, advisor, acquisition models.

Alan Smith: 19:09

Well, I guess this kind of neatly follows on from what I just talked about on. Well, all of this stuff, CGT and an inheritance tax on private companies, I just thought I'd just chuck this in the mix. I think a lot of us get approached by acquirers on a regular basis. I get emails reasonably regularly about, are you interested in selling your business? And generally, don't pay a lot of attention to it. But one guy particularly phoned me up, and he's a sort of m and a specialist in the advisor sector. And I was just quite intrigued, because he said, Look, this is a company. I won't mention the name, but they're a pretty well known UK independent acquiring firm. And long story short, they're offering 5% of AUM as an acquisition paid over half of it from day one, and then all of it paid out within 24 months. Yes. So you work out your sums that, you know, there's a lot of firms with 100 million AUM, 200 million, that sort of thing. Some of these small IFA practices are now worth it would appear, you know, a lot a lot of money actually, is quite interesting, because I we did think that with interest rates going up and maybe some of the challenges that the PE companies have had, I thought maybe it's all going to go quiet for a few years, but it still seems to be very vibrant, very active and quite punchy in terms of valuation numbers coming into the market. Just any thoughts, is that happening in Ireland as well? Carl continues to happen in Ireland.

Carl Widger: 20:35

There's a, yeah, there's a bit of activity. It hasn't, kind of, I don't think, kind of totally ramped up, yet it's the scale. Is the problem here. You know, any of the really big guys coming in wanting big, big scale. It's a small market, you know, and that's going to be the difficulty. But, yeah, there is a little bit of activity. I'd say the devil is in the detail with, you know, when you hear, oh, 5% of AUM is like we well, yeah, they'll shit all, you know, half of it doesn't really count because of this. And by the way, you'll need to stick around for eight years out, you know. So look, who knows what's, what's behind all of that? Yeah, yeah. It is definitely interesting. Definitely interesting.

Andy Hart: 21:19

It doesn't sound too punchy. Alan. I mean, there was a firm recently, who's just recently reduced it was paying 8% of AUM, who we all know, we've always worked off a broad, crude metric of 4% of assets. So 5% obviously it's more than four, but it doesn't sound, doesn't sound too punchy. It might be a lot of firms that still have a lot of Is it dry powder cash available? They've agreed a 200 million pound funding line. They need to acquire a

Carl Widger: 21:44

lot. I think that's exactly what it is. I think that's exactly there's only a few, I would say, really active at the moment, and that's exactly what what those guys are. They

Andy Hart: 21:53

have to spend that money, and they have to spend it, yeah, they have to spend it interesting. So we're moving on. No

Alan Smith: 22:02

way playing the infinite game. Play the

Andy Hart: 22:05

infinite game.

Carl Widger: 22:07

Yeah, there's i just i Patty O'Halloran, our head of finance, mentioned this to me, that one of the problems we have here, I don't know if you guys have it, is that, you know, if someone wants to make their, say, their annual pension contribution of 30 grand, and they have a deadline to make. And they go, oh yeah, transferred by EFT. And then they go, oh shit, I have to do it kind of five grand over a number of days. And will we run out of time? And blah, blah, blah. So there's a new EU directive allowing these payments to be made kind of in lump sums. So it's the SEPA instant, I think it's instant SEPA directive. So basically, you're going to be able to move large tranches of money in one goal, which is great because then you don't have to hang around and people don't have to go into the bank and blah, blah, blah. But I did think, My God, the fraudsters are going to be absolutely licking their chops at this one. And I was wondering why the pillar banks here were putting lots and lots and lots of money into scam and fraud education, shall we say. And that's why, right? Because they're going, Oh, Christ, this is it's bound to happen that someone that people are going to get caught by fraudsters moving large sums of money. And then, I think even on the last episode, Weren't we talking about a scam, and the guy who was scammed went after his bank because he transferred the money. So

Andy Hart: 23:30

I've got another similar sorted I call, Yep, yeah, okay,

Carl Widger: 23:33

so I Yeah, to be welcomed, but yeah, fraud and scams is just gonna, I just think it's gonna increase and increase. I heard a terrible story today that, um, there's a girl, an Irish girl, was on holidays out in Sicily and got knocked down basically, right and she's, uh, in hospital with a brain injury, and her family had to set up a GoFundMe page, and they raised 130 grand. Do you know what the fraudsters did? They set up another GoFundMe page that cloned the the existing GoFundMe page just put in a different account detail, like they will stop at nothing, like horrible wankers. Oh my god. Oh my god. So anyway to be welcomed, but technology brings its own issues. I suppose, indeed, it does Okay.

Nick Lincoln: 24:16

Thank you for that, right? Just cut out one of the things I was gonna talk about, because we're running low on time. So we're going straight to you. Smith, you time. So we're going straight to you smithy with the SJP. New

Alan Smith: 24:25

charging model, quite interesting, I think, just as a continuation of previous conversations we've had, the whole kind of landscape in UK, financial services is changing. Continues to change. The dear CEO letters the consumer duty activity week. This comes up quite regularly, but a lot of the big firms, as we mentioned before, they are going through some significant challenges and some significant change. I think it's quite interesting that I happen to know, and I think all of us, to some degree or another, know some really. Good advisors at the largest wealth management company in the UK, St James's place. And I happen to know underestimate the

Unknown: 25:09

power of the dark side.

Alan Smith: 25:14

There's quite there's a number of them. There's a number of good firms giving notice the new pricing model they've got, and the the kind of revenue and fees that the advisors can retain isn't quite as exciting as it once was. I don't think there are definitely some issues and challenges. And fundamentally, it's it is changing for a lot of these firms. And I think, well, I know that some are giving notice, and they're leaving, and they're going to join the independent sector. And I think that is just an interesting dynamic. And then they're not the only one. Some of the bigger firms as well, some of the other bigger firms are seeing some people go. And you know, if everything's changing and the revenues are being squeezed a bit because they've got to deliver and all the expectations of consumer duty. And what I'm seeing is some of these large organizations, you know, they've had a big fright, they've had fines. They've lost, you know, value, share prices, etc. So what do they do after the horse horse is bolted? They create some pretty draconian rules and regulations that you got to adhere to. And so people are thinking, well, if I'm going to have to do all of this stuff, and my income is going to fall, then I wonder what the chances are me going taking my business and just going into the independent sector. And I can tell you, some of these firms are excellent, excellent firms. I always remember, you know, I spent the early part of my career, as has been mentioned before, at a large

Unknown: 26:42

output. I can't see my wheelbarrow with props signed by the weak. I was 21 when I own

Alan Smith: 27:07

my absolute favorite of all the drops you do for all these reasons, but in my days, driving around Alberton and other suburbs of northwest London working for a huge organization, what did? There's lots of challenges working big companies or with all that kind of infrastructure and compliance and rules. But there's a lot of positives in terms of, you know, systems, processes, just, you know, robust marketing initiatives, sort of clear courses, definitely all that sort of stuff exists at the big companies. And again, I'm just always thinking about second order effects you're seeing as a result, result of all these changes, there are going to be some, I mean, fabulous firms coming into the independent sector, competing with other firms who've got all these structure, systems, processes, top draw, individuals, advisors, highly qualified advisors, with good systems. So it's to be welcomed frankly. I mean, I love the independent sector, and these people coming into it, are gonna gonna raise our game? So the things are continuing to evolve and pretty quickly,

Nick Lincoln: 28:08

good, good, good to hear good stuff. Okay, watch your ideas exchange, the Irish style,

Carl Widger: 28:16

yes, the Irish ideas Exchange, which was founded really, on this podcast, and I decided to put it together. It's, it's, it's gone, I would say, really well as a there's a WhatsApp group with lots of questions, most of which I don't even understand the question. Nevermind I've not done the answer, but, but there's a lot of help going on in the group, and we are having a get together and a bit of social occasion. You understand

Andy Hart: 28:40

get together as well? Do you understand get together? Understand get

Carl Widger: 28:44

togethers? I organize a get together. We have some special secret guests coming along, which we can't tell anybody about. We are going to change and shape our financial plan. It's nobody on this podcast. Are

Andy Hart: 29:03

you gonna tell us after the fact?

Carl Widger: 29:06

Possibly privately, maybe I'll say strong with

Unknown: 29:13

this one does

Carl Widger: 29:16

one of you I might tell but the others are definitely not. I already know what

Alan Smith: 29:20

secrets safe with me.

Andy Hart: 29:22

Smithy, the biggest, the biggest

Carl Widger: 29:27

mouth in UK, financial services,

Nick Lincoln: 29:31

okay, all right, and that high COVID secrecy. Storyteller, letters of authority. And I'll chime in on this once you've spoken.

Alan Smith: 29:42

Yeah, just my I find this quite funny. Me giving a Tech Tech Update on a regular basis, but can us as part of the ongoing, fast moving innovation around AI in financial planning, I did a presentation a few weeks ago at thinkor. I think Nick You spoke. At this as well. Clive Waller, who's an industry legend and a veteran, runs a network group. It's called the Investment Network, isn't it? And so isn't it's actually not, not many ifas go there. There was a few advisors, mainly kind of big institutions and the big networks and so on. Anyway, I was there, and it was a good event. Enjoyed it, and I got to meet a guy called Gary abeler, and he has a piece of technology, which I thought was quite interesting. So since then, I've had a demo of it. So it's called, I don't know how you say it's re, l o a, like, as in R, E, L, O, A, and what it does, just thinking through some of the challenges, you know, if you go to get a let now, there's letter authority issue, that's just that, that's just an issue to get. And there's things like pensions lab, and I think there's others to try to just get the data. But what you end up getting, thinking about it, is you get, let's say, a letter or an email or something from whoever, Aviva, legal in general, blah, and it's just, it's, you know, it's a schedule of stuff that some human being has to read, interpret and extract the Core Data, policy, number and valuations and all the sort of important information. And so what this re LOA does is it just using AI technology. It is reads, it reads the whole thing and extracts all the information and pops it in a spreadsheet. So rather than a human being reading it, and obviously taking time, and obviously the instance of errors, it does it in a second. It just kind of, I think, would you call it machine lead reading, or machine learning or something, machine learning just a way of just extract you, looking for exact right, the right data, and extracting it in a second. So again, depending on if you take in a lot of clients, there's lots of LOA to interpret, read, extract the data, put it in somewhere else, like a spreadsheet or something else. It does it quite well. So check out our E LOA. It's it looks pretty good. We're certainly going to trial it. So Nick What do you have to say on this? Nicholas, I

Nick Lincoln: 31:53

just want to I think the LOA thing is being gradually sold. I think Doc, DocuSign, it makes it so much better. Now, in the fact you can email these things to providers using Debbie Condon's letter of authority. Guy, I sent over three LOA a new client. They've got existing protection policies, three different companies. Sent off the LOA is within a week, I'd had all the information back with two of the companies. I had it back within 24 hours, all done electronically, no waiting for Royal Mail to f it up. So may that continue. Okay? Another, another. Ponzi scheme, ultra what's going on? Man,

Andy Hart: 32:23

what's going on? Yeah, so this is a recurring theme. I've seen another one at the weekend. This is again, a financial and investing illiterate invested in what she's now claiming is a scam. When it was a greed scam, really, as in, she was trying to earn a lot of money from it. She lost 190,000 pounds, and now basically she's trying to go after Barclays Bank, blaming Barclays that this should fall under the A P, P, like the automated payment sort of, sort of system, sort of regime, and there's actually been limited to 85,000 that's a whole other story. Again. Fraudsters will be all over that, so they'll just be asking people to send them 80,000 pounds. Anyway. She's got caught up in this scam. In hindsight, it's turned out to be a scam. It's obviously just an investment sort of scheme that's gone belly up. It's called fret wells. I think there's a load of people that got caught up in it. And again, she's gone to the falls. So it's going to potentially land on our laps to pay the bill for this investing, illiterate sending money to porters and then trying to go after Barclays Bank. So it's a recurring theme. It sounds like this is not that common in Ireland. Carl, it's basically Caveat emptor, buyer beware if you're going to send money to your own freaking fault. But you're saying the regime might be changing. But anyway,

Carl Widger: 33:38

that's Yeah. Point. That's that's kind of my point is that it is changing, and this what you're talking about. You

Andy Hart: 33:46

can, you can push the button, and even they've asked you 45 different questions before you finally push the button, they'll still come after you in three years time and say, but you shouldn't have let me push the button. And they're like, that's

Alan Smith: 33:57

a no loss situation, isn't it? I'll invest it if it works out. Well, happy days. If it doesn't get my money back. Oh,

Unknown: 34:03

I was ridiculous. A

Carl Widger: 34:04

shot to nothing. I

Andy Hart: 34:05

think the college, yeah, if I unlimited funds, which I

Nick Lincoln: 34:09

bankers getting their bonuses and they're being bailed out by the taxpayer and keeping their bonuses,

Andy Hart: 34:15

well they'll come up with this limit of 85,000 so people can just take punts of 80,000 in here, there and everywhere, and if some of them shoot the lights out, great, if all the ones that fail, you just claim your

Alan Smith: 34:25

money back, covered by uh fauz or the team. This is unregulated,

Andy Hart: 34:29

we've not then, even the journalists that talk about this, obviously, they're just trying to get an angle, but they're almost thinking that Barclays terrible, Barclays bad banks. Why they not? You know, paying them the money back. And it's like,

Alan Smith: 34:44

sometimes they will anyways, they'll just do it to save the publicity.

Andy Hart: 34:48

They just, sometimes they say, blah, blah, blah, invested 230,000 pounds, and they've only paid back 63,000 Yeah, 63,000 man, it's like, don't deserve that. You're the one that's causing the problem. You invested to try and make money. That's what I keep adding. It said we

Alan Smith: 35:05

can probably greedy. We could probably do this every week or every other every other episode, exactly. Well, how some solar farms getting on car

Carl Widger: 35:22

easier? I've managed to clear up the whole system. Well done. Sarah, yeah, right now, listen,

Nick Lincoln: 35:28

trap No guesses in the lobby. Okay, so I'm just letting you know that, so just bear that mind when you start rambling on. Yeah. Benjamin Beck is a young IFA, he's a Trappist. He came to trap live, and very bravely, he put on LinkedIn recently a post about how he's just struggling because he's new, he's new to advising. It's got his own business, and he's finding it really tough, I think, just to remind that it's not all plain sailing out there, especially if you are starting out. So the three, the four of us, talk from a position of kind of privilege, in that we have worked really hard to get good businesses going, but Once upon time, they were small businesses and and it's tough when you start out. And we don't want to ever give the impression it's all going to be just plain sailing for the youngsters entering this mighty thing of ours. So credit to Benjamin Beck for putting that out there. I hope he manages to get traction with his business. But it is not all plain sailing, and we don't want to give the impression that it is okay. What's the next thing on here? Card, someone called Steven interview, someone else I haven't heard of. Go on. Expand. Yes.

Carl Widger: 36:35

Stephen Bartlett interview, yeah. Diary. CEO be fairly well known, actually, Nick, but anyway, he

Nick Lincoln: 36:44

Stevens in the world, you know. So it's quite difficult to know which one you refer to,

Carl Widger: 36:47

right? Well, if you, if you read even the first line of the link that I put with, anyway, yeah, this guy. And look, I just by a coincidence, the book that I recommended that the last time out, but the Christine Benz book How to retire, this guy actually features in in the book also, and RAM Sethi is his name, and he speaks in the Barclays podcast entire CEO there's some investing advice in there that's just wrong. And it's going out as this is, you know, the Gospel, because it's on diary of CEO, and it's Yeah, and I mentioned the last time that I hadn't been all the way through the How to retire book, and there's some investing stuff in there that's just not right for retirees as well. There's, there's in both, in both the podcast, the Stephen Bartlett podcast, and in the book, there's some really, really good content, really good stuff. But then there's this investing stuff that you know only professional financial planners, wealth managers, investment practicing advisors who have experience over a long period of time. Know what's right and what's hot, what's really, really wrong, yeah, and stuff like, you know target date funds. You know you're he says in the Bartlett interview, you just pick your your the date you want to retire, and then you pick that target date, and it's like, Oh, my God, this is

Andy Hart: 38:26

talking about for really well. But it's not,

Carl Widger: 38:29

it's wrong because, because he was talking about, you know, the potential to maybe retire early. So, you know, well then pick a pick that you're going to retire, you know, at 45 or it's just, he's done, he's

Alan Smith: 38:41

done so well for himself. Ramit Sethi, he, you know, many

Andy Hart: 38:45

financial advisors, I

Alan Smith: 38:47

can make you rich. That was his book, I don't know, decade ago, more than that, yeah, huge following, don't you? He had a Netflix series last year. He's got a Netflix series. Yeah? He's like, Yeah.

Carl Widger: 38:56

But he makes, he makes the point in the in the Bartlett podcast that you know you don't need financial Pfizer, and they're all

Unknown: 39:05

just premium money. If you

Carl Widger: 39:09

paid me, if you paid me my half percent trail, I would save you way, way, way, way, way more than what you think you are saving by not paying, yeah,

Andy Hart: 39:24

everything for the value of nothing. The problem,

Alan Smith: 39:26

I had a bit of engagement with him last year on Twitter when he came out, and he was when he's, I think he launched a book with a Netflix thing and everything. He is dead against you percentage charge boys just said, you never, ever, ever do do this and but what he's, it's completely

Andy Hart: 39:44

please, percentage fee model people as well the disguise you can't sit

Alan Smith: 39:53

down. Straight shooters, straight shooters, as is always the case with these things. It's like one rule. To apply to everyone. What do you actually said? And it kind of he referred to this. It's not worth paying an advisor 1% a year to buy you a Vanguard fund and do nothing. That's the whole point. And I think this is one of the biggest challenges conversations. Another time comparing fees, he's painting the to the

Andy Hart: 40:18

advice gap, he's actually causing more issues than he thinks he's trying to fix. But hey, hope these are the

Nick Lincoln: 40:24

people we got an interesting subject, but I am just conscious of time and the fact that all right, okay,

Alan Smith: 40:35

right. Watch this quick. Just quickly. Just mention it. It's a little advert. Go on. Carl,

Andy Hart: 40:42

that's coming.

Unknown: 40:45

That's coming. We're still going through.

Nick Lincoln: 40:49

Carl, just talking things up for us. I had an email for the start of the show from standard life. I don't know. I lose track on the standard life or the aberdoon Anyway, my subject was manage the dangers of retirement. And of course, they're launching Standard Life smooth return pension fund using an estimated growth rate their age, an EGR point eight ongoing fund charge before platform fees, before advisor fees, just a reminder of the nonsense that's out there. It's designed to help grow your clients pension investments, while cushioning them from some of the impact in daily volatility in investment markets when it's, of course, exactly daily the volatility that you need, you want and you crave. I'm no doubt that, yeah, but let me, let me. Let me just give it a thumbs up. Let

Alan Smith: 41:35

me just come back to you in that quickly. Just reminded me of something else, conscious of time and our guests waiting. But I actually met an old pal of mine shout out to him, Doug Dougie much, who's very senior now at what was Prudential. His name is M and G, so I was invited in to see him and his boss, and at a lunch thing last week, had a great conversation. And by the way, all these very, very senior people at M and G are avid listeners of this podcast, which you believe, and they were saying that they're fun. What was the old Prue smooth? You know, the Prue smooths managed fund, whatever proof fund, whatever you say about it, it sells by the

Andy Hart: 42:13

low risk ones, yeah.

Alan Smith: 42:20

Yeah, it's good, but it serves a need. It's a behavioral need for people, especially for those who don't have advisors, or people who just simply cannot tolerate short term volatility. It gives you a return. There's a cost in your long term return.

Nick Lincoln: 42:34

Weak advisors, that's very weak advisors who don't have a who don't have a who don't have a belief system.

Alan Smith: 42:39

You're listening Doug, yeah, it is alright. I

Nick Lincoln: 42:43

bet you're not listening to this. Okay, right. Moving on. Sorry. Now. Carl,

Carl Widger: 42:51

yes, yes, indeed matters. Ireland are hiring trying to save us. I'm again, correct, big boy trying to save us the recruitment fees. So we're looking for a financial planner, or, as you boys would not, a para planner in our Dublin office. And we're also looking for at least one brilliant, brilliant private client manager. Please get

Alan Smith: 43:17

into his name. So that private client manager means advisor. Is that what you mean?

Unknown: 43:23

Price manager? Yes,

Carl Widger: 43:25

yes. Very good titles are important. Yep,

Alan Smith: 43:29

that's true. Mr. MD, we just about to hire our second financial planner of the year. Keep it quiet for now, but we are sent out an offer letter, so a second one. So it's good to know we're all moving in the right direction, growing, recruiting good people. So

Nick Lincoln: 43:48

great opportunity.

Andy Hart: 43:52

I've already had five is enough? 17.

Nick Lincoln: 43:56

Okay, yeah, can you

Carl Widger: 43:57

imagine? And I will

Nick Lincoln: 44:00

have advisors.

Alan Smith: 44:03

Is that for posh DFL, your subsidiary, I'm done, right. Good luck.

Nick Lincoln: 44:09

Alan, okay, cracking on before I kill somebody. Oh. Alan, promoting yourself. Bulletproof. MBA, yes, about it, my good

Alan Smith: 44:17

friends as we were, as we're in the self promotion zone, am I gonna mention? Oh,

Carl Widger: 44:21

come on, come on. Move. Okay, okay, okay.

Alan Smith: 44:26

I'm running with some other people much smarter than me. You're running a program next year called bulletproof MBA. I'm currently on the program myself, and it's fantastic. It's like a million MBA is meeting monthly, talking about all things, about just how to run and grow a successful business. It'll be of interest to advisors looking to grow their business, also in of interest if they've got business owner clients looking to grow. So we talk about, you know, marketing, branding, pricing, how, how to basic stuff, how to read a set of accounts, P and L, growth. There's a lot of stuff. It's. A distilled version of the full an MBA, which obviously would cost you 50 grand and a load of time over the course. And so we are having a free taster session in London on November 25 might run a second taster session, but as for now, I'll post a link in the show notes. If anyone's interested in coming along to a free taster session in the morning of November 25 in central London. Please do get in touch. I thank you.

Nick Lincoln: 45:26

Okay, good luck with that. Well done. Final point from me, our close friends, dimensional fund advisors, put out a thing last week just showing how the small cap premium is very, very strong around the world. It just ain't been strong in the USA for the last two decades, mainly because of the magnificent sevens, or the fangs, or whatever you want to call them. But in the rest of the world, it's still there, and has been very strong over the last two decades. So that is good to know. I'm rushing through that because, dear Trappists, we have a guest on the show, and I can see him waiting patiently outside the studio.

Unknown: 45:58

Hey, there's somebody at the dock. Come on this Sunday. Now

Nick Lincoln: 46:05

I'm gonna let this young man in. Perhaps we'll bring him in and just say hello to him, and then Alan, you can give a quick bio to the TRAPPIST of who this chap is. His name is James shackle, but you'll know him from YouTube as James shack, trademark. Let's bring the man in. There you go, James.

Alan Smith: 46:21

There he is. Hello.

James Shackell: 46:23

I've been sitting out here for ages. I know. Yeah.

Alan Smith: 46:33

Carl witters on, he taught he talks and talks. So James, really, really good to see you. Great to have you on trap podcast. We're going to just sort of run through a number of a number of, yeah. Let us run through a number of questions just, you know, bearing in mind the audience, which is predominantly financial planners, ambitious financial planners aiming to grow their business, looking at what you've done, which we'll unpack in a second, really inspiring and really, really interesting. But for those who don't know you, despite the fact that you're the biggest YouTuber in the world, he's a qualified financial planner, and you know, love to go back to your kind of early days and just sort of position all this. I mean, what? What is, what's your background, what's your career to date in financial services.

James Shackell: 47:23

Well, I've had a pretty varied career already. I've almost had sort of four different career paths that I've been on in my sort of 12 to 15 years of working. And my first job, straight out of university, was working for a company called Fisher Investments. You guys familiar with Fisher? Yeah, so Fisher, yes?

Alan Smith: 47:47

Is it?

James Shackell: 47:49

Oh yes? Vision, investment, really, a really interesting business for a number of reasons, they've essentially managed to build this $200 billion empire off the back of a single piece of content, which is their 15 minute Retirement Guide, which most of the UK population would have seen at some point in their in their Facebook feed. And my first job was essentially calling people that had downloaded that guide so they get a contact information, I give them a call and try and get them in for a meeting with one of our advisors, which was a pretty grueling job. I was doing 200 300 phone calls a day, and it was pretty grueling, but it was a fun job at the time, first job in London, and then, and then I had to move on to do something a little bit more serious. So next step after that, was working for HSBC global asset management. And I started as a assistant investment manager there, and that's where I did most of my qualifications. And I became chartered with the CIS I did that route there and worked my way up to being a discretionary wealth manager, although HSBC was a pretty funny place to be. I mean, I don't know whether if any of you have worked for any big banks or institutions, but yeah, it was a bit strange. And one of the main problems was that at the time, they were moving from having all of their portfolios managed by individual investment managers on desks to having these connections at best, is it model portfolios for everybody, and at that time, it meant that there was a lot of people leaving to go to more traditional shops, like rathbones, invest tech, all of that type of thing. So all the people that I was there to sort of learn a learner off were leaving. The benefits of that is that I got a lot of client responsibilities really early on, which was great, but HPC was this difficult place to work, because when you're young, you see problems, and you think things you want to solve, you see things that you want to change, and big organizations like that, it's just so hard to change anything. So I actually became a bit disillusioned with a whole family. Services industry, after my experiences of working there, and I thought that I just sort of landed in financial services. And I wasn't really sure whether I actually wanted to continue working in this space. And I actually wanted to get involved into into technology and into, specifically into product managers, so working with software engineers, building things, creating things, that type of thing. And I, fortunately was introduced to some people at octopus, who I'm sure you're all very familiar with octopus at the time, were looking at creating, starting up a financial planning business, a new financial planning business, which was going to be called octopus wealth. And they basically needed some boots on the ground to help them build that, that whole thing. So I joined there. This was seven years ago. Now I joined octopus as a and actually a product manager, so I wasn't working in a client facing role. My job was to build out the proposition, the systems, the operations, the processes and everything that sits behind that. I was working very closely with a team of in house software engineers. So again, vastly different to what I'm doing now, or I did it did in the past, and I loved it. To be honest, I this was the first time in my life that I never got Sunday blues. I absolutely loved it. Working with a small group of people, solving problems, working with engineers. Learned so much from so many people. Octopus are fantastic at starting new, innovative, exciting businesses. However, after after a period of time, I think I've been doing that role for about three years, octopus decided to make a bit of a pivot with what we were doing, what we were focusing on at octopus wealth, and mainly because octopus energy was growing so big that it was actually sucking a lot of the available capital that office had to spend on other exciting projects, like, like, like, what we were doing. So they decided to pivot the business quite a bit from being a technology led financial planning business to a financial planning led business, but with technology. And at that point when we were we were letting go of a lot of the engineering team, that type of thing, I sort of had to think, Okay, what do I really want to do with my career now? Do I leave and go to a proper technology company and carry on this road road? Or actually, have we built something here at octopus wealth that is actually quite compelling from a financial planning perspective, and actually being a financial planner and I, made the decision four years ago that actually I wanted to start pivoting myself, my own career, back into or into financial planning, ultimately, for the first time, having been in Investment Management before, and the setup that we had, the proposition that we built there at octopus wealth, now called Nova, which you could get onto A little bit later, why that name changed, but at the time, I thought was really, really compelling. I loved working there. Loved the people there, and they worked with advisors, typically on a revenue share based model. So it's up to you to go and find your own clients. So I was gradually passing off my responsibilities on the operations side of things, on the technology side of things, and segueing into being a financial planner. So I had this, I was faced with the daunting, the daunting task, then, of growing my own book of business, which I'm sure that many, many financial advisors and you guys, at certain points in your career can can remember, is pretty difficult, pretty tough. And so I was trying to think, how the hell am I gonna go about doing this? And there's obviously the traditional Road, getting in touch with with with accountants and solicitors, getting referrals and getting yourself out there, getting on the road, which is, as you know, difficult, very difficult. And I thought I had this idea at the time of potentially creating a YouTube channel. Now, the reason why I created the YouTube channel was not because I thought it would be a fantastic marketing machine, ultimately, for financial planning. I had no idea that it would end up doing what it has. The main reason why I got onto YouTube and had the idea in the first place is that I'd done a little Venn diagram of the things that I think that I'm good at, one of which is, I know to a thing, to a thing, a thing or two about money and finances. And I also like public speaking, and I also like writing, and in the middle of that essentially sits content creation. So that's where I sort of very, very that's that was the starting position from the fact that I was moving gradually into becoming a financial planner. I needed to find clients, but I had the time on my hands to also explore this other avenue of, okay, let's start making content and see what happens.

Alan Smith: 54:41

That is really interesting. Thanks, James for sharing that journey to date. Because what you've you've hit the nail on the head, really and actually, early on in this podcast conversation, Nick raised something which was posted on social media recently by another young advisor who's struggling and, you know, very. Candidly shared that on a LinkedIn post, really struggling, and the point of struggling is all about lead generation is finding you can be the best advisor in the world if you've got no one to sit in front of, no one to speak to, to pitch, to explain, to help, that we're all kind of wasting our time. And it is, I think it's a huge issue, because there are some super talented people in the financial planning profession, but there's a lack of really high quality marketing as far as what I'm seeing and looking around. So you've, I think it's going to be really helpful, really interesting to anyone listening to this, who you know is open for business effect, to be looking to recruit and hire new clients. So you, you obviously YouTube is huge anyway, but this is going back when? When was this? Just give us a bit of a timeline. When was it you sort of really started thinking about creating a YouTube channel and content about,

James Shackell: 55:50

probably about four years ago, and I spent, I actually did the classic thing of filming my first videos during the pandemic in the attic of my parents home, and I probably filmed about three or four videos that I never actually released because I was too embarrassed, and I just thought they weren't good enough, and I just ended up scrapping them. And when I did actually end up publishing my first video, I really needn't have worried, because nobody watched it anyway. So that was my first learning point, is that if you don't have anybody watching, then who's going to care? Who's going to judge you? So that was my first experience. Was just uploading my first video. I thought that at the time, I didn't know who my audience was going to be, I didn't know what I'd find on YouTube, so a lot of what I was creating was targeted at students. I did videos on student loans, on first time buyers, that type of thing, the type of audience that you if you don't know much about YouTube, you might expect to find that, you know, typically a younger audience. So I started making these videos, tried to get my mates to watch them, and they weren't really, didn't seem that interested. And it was, it was pretty grim, really. It's pretty difficult having to put so much time and effort into these videos at the time, it's probably taking me 4050, hours to make these videos. I mean, it still takes me that long today, but when I didn't know that it would there would be any sort of anything at the end of the rainbow, at the end of this toil and the effort that I was putting in, it was really, really difficult. And I kept at it, I kept at it, and probably after about six months, I ended up putting one of my link to one of my videos on a Reddit channel called UK personal finance, which is this massive Reddit channel, which is fantastic at helping so many people, and it just kind of went viral on there, and I ended up getting a couple of 1000 views on a video, which for me at the time, was just absolutely mega and from there, it kind of just kicked things off. And I was releasing about video every month, so pretty low cadence, because I had all these other responsibilities at work. I wasn't necessarily even doing it, like financial planning full time. At that point, I was just trying this thing on the side to sort of see what would happen and see what it would look like. And I think it wasn't until probably a year after I'd been posting videos, and I'd be getting, probably, can't remember now, like two or 3000 views on videos, but it was getting getting more and more and more and more and more that I eventually was like, Okay, great. Well, let's see if I can actually generate any leads for myself. And what I did is I just put a link in the description of my videos. I have I certainly at that time, I never, ever in any video, said book in a call with me. It was all very passive. There's just a link in the bottom in the description of the video, if people want to come across it, they can. And at the time, I had no idea whether anybody would ever, would ever click it. And fortunately, after probably a couple of weeks of having that link down, I think I had my first lead come through, somebody book into my diary, and I was just like, Oh my god. This is absolutely nuts. This is brilliant. I was so excited. And from then, it sort of continued to snowball. And what I what I realized, is that although you would think of YouTube as being a predominantly young audience on YouTube, all just depends on what content you're making. And what I started to do is to pivot my content more towards, okay, well, hang on, I've got a couple of leads through now here. What if I start pivoting my content towards the type of people that were actually looking to bring on board as clients? Because that wasn't, I didn't know if that was going to be the main goal and objective of this channel. I thought that, you know, I want to help people. I want to be able to teach people, teach people about finance and improve financial literacy. So I thought, Okay, well, let's try and pivot this and actually start making content that would target people specifically at retirement, which is an area where, obviously we can, we can help clients a lot. And and when I started to do that, things really changed, and things really kicked off. And

Carl Widger: 59:57

James, can I ask a question? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, after you created the content, certainly in the early days, you must have a fairly focused effort and where you kind of promote it. But did you just kind of fall upon the Reddit link? And are there other places then that you started to promote kind of, you know, snippets of your videos, or how do you kind of get that traction and build your audience? Because I know your audience is absolutely massive now, but were there loads of different things that you tried, or are they very specific?

James Shackell: 1:00:35

So the thing is, the great thing about YouTube is that if you make good content. It finds the audience for you. It brings the audience to you. So the fantastic thing about YouTube and what I do is that if I want to get a bigger audience, I just make better content, and YouTube finds me the audience if it's if it's good content. The problem, however, is that you've either got to get very good at making content and is extremely competitive, or you've got to get some somehow, fuck it. Get a leg up by getting the algorithm to notice you. And that's what I was trying to do by looking at these other places where I could post, post my content. And I thought that UK personal finance, it's, I think at the time, there was maybe 300,000 people on that forum. I think it's now well over a million people on that forum. I think they've now got very strict rules about not posting content on there, so I I stopped posting content on there. But people do often post my videos nowadays, but I can't post it myself. You can't sort of promote yourself now. But that was, was what gave me the initial push. Did I post it anywhere else, no other than on every single Whatsapp group that I'm a member of trying to get my mates to watch

Carl Widger: 1:01:46

it, but come here, when you say, Can I, when you say, create great content, is that like, obviously the content, I've watched a lot of your videos, and the content is really cool and the production is cool, but is it the content, or is it the whole production? And obviously it's very, very slick what you produce now, I'm guessing that developed over time, and it wasn't quite as slick when you started out. Yeah,

James Shackell: 1:02:09

absolutely. Well, the thing, the thing to remember, but remember, remember with YouTube, is that it is ultimately just an algorithm that is optimized for watch time, like they just want, YouTube just wants to keep people on its platform for as long as possible, and if you help them do that, then they will promote your videos. Okay, so I got you again. It's aligning these incentives, but what that ultimately means is that you need to create, obviously, content that as many people as possible are interested in and is as engaging as engaging as possible. Yeah, so it's, it's not a

Carl Widger: 1:02:42

it's about, it's the whole package. It's

James Shackell: 1:02:44

the whole it's the whole package. But how you present that as well? So things that I have improved a lot on over time is so all my videos are scripted, like everything's 100% scripted. I think some people do do well on YouTube, non scripted. But certainly if you are a regulated financial advisor like myself, like you've got to be so careful about the things that you say. So compliance. Check all of my scripts before I do the video. They check the video before I post it. So everything has to be scripted. And I've got a lot better at scripting my videos and storytelling specifically. So it's like the budget, for instance. We've got all these changes that have, that have happened, instead of just telling people what the changes are like, bring that to life with some examples, with some either client stories that you've got to tell or or some, even if they're just demonstration examples, examples that you've made up to make the point, but take people through that Journey and understand all the factors around it. It's really just about about storytelling. And the thing, the thing to really focus on, is that when you're making videos, is you've just got to make as many as you can, because you should be, you should be trying to improve 1% every time. And if you can improve 1% every time at one particular area of the content that you're making, then it will continue to get better, and you'll eventually get to a position where you know more really good point watching. So that's something that's something that I have superb continued to do over a very long period of

Andy Hart: 1:04:08

time. James, before you started, were there any other personal finance youtubers that inspired you, or general YouTubers

James Shackell: 1:04:16

as well? Yes. So Pete, Matthew, of course, I'm sure you guys are all very familiar with the legend, absolutely, yeah, the legend, absolutely lovely guy. He has been posting videos on YouTube since as soon as it started doing matches, yeah, absolutely nuts. So he very much inspired me to get involved in this space. But I was also inspired by the fact that going to YouTube to get financial content is was already a very big thing in America. There was already a lot of not so many financial advisors over there doing it, but certainly a lot of other content creators in the finance space and obviously around COVID, which is when I started making my content. And a lot of the reason for my success is just being at the right place at the right time, because suddenly everyone was at home, suddenly everyone was worried about money, and everyone was consuming huge amounts of content. And I had just so happened to start a YouTube channel at that point in time, because I didn't think that there was the same coverage as there is in in the US and the the other big YouTube channels in the UK. So you've got sort of Pete, you've got Damien talks money. We all started. Well, sorry, Damien and I, we all started at exactly the same time, but just around that that time. So it was very much right place, right time. But I was inspired by what they were doing in America. And also, the other businesses that I've been very inspired by in America is RIT wealth management, you guys familiar with, and the fact that they just have this incredible lineup of content creators, and the the ability they've scaled their business with a very, very small team, just on the power of content. And I was just like, Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. Like, this was something that I only realized. I only came across that content, probably after I'd already started my channel. But I've spoken to various members of the team there about asking for help in my early days and advice, and I've been really inspired by what they do? Yeah, as well.

Alan Smith: 1:06:24

Really interesting. James as Carl said, your output and your videos are they do, unlike ours, are really polished, high quality, super professional. They look at they look amazing. They look really engaging. Can you just talk us through the process, you know, give us an idea of the equipment you use, just trying to gage how easy or difficult it is for somebody listening to this to go from zero right now, haven't got a challenge, a channel, a YouTube profile, to being, you know, to having a degree of success, everyone could aspire, could only dream of being anything close to you, but what's your process and what equipment do you use?

James Shackell: 1:07:05

Okay, well, yeah, I'll talk you through what my process is right now, and then I'll talk you through what I would do if I was starting again. So my process at the moment, and as I am still an advisor, I have 30 clients that I look after, but I have a lot of support on that from other members of my team now. So I spend probably a day a week on client work, and another another six days of my week while focusing on YouTube and writing content there. But I'll typically come up with an idea, come up with an inspiration, an idea. I'll talk to other members of the team here about it, get their thoughts, get their insight, and then I'll sit down and start writing a script. And that script might take me three days to write in full. I will write it through your first draft. I then go through it again. I then go through it again. I'll then go through it again. But again, but again, I would not recommend that somebody else does that if they were starting again, just because it's worth me putting that much time into it, because I've got such a big audience or audience already, and my content is highly optimized, so I go through that process, and once I'm happy with the script, I film it. It typically takes me two hours to film. So my setup is, this is where I do all my filming. I've got a nick on z6 camera that's sitting behind here. I've got a big teleprompter that sits up here, and a bunch of lights and stuff like that as well. I've also, I'm filming in my kitchen, so this audio quality is pretty difficult to manage, so you can't actually see this here, but I've actually got some some some rugs up on the wall that I put, that I put up when I'm filming, and my wife takes me, makes me take them down, like as soon as straight away, because they're not fully attractive to have sitting in your kitchen. So yeah, I've got that there. Got my mic here, just a laptop, and yeah, then I edit with Final Cut Pro. I do all the editing myself. Still, I still haven't been able to find a relationship with somebody that I'm comfortable with, mainly also because I do a lot of graphics in my videos as well, and you need to have a lot of knowledge about the content, the finance, to actually think about the ways to articulate things visually, which is, actually, I think one of my one of my USPS, ultimately, is I do all the graphics myself. But it does take me, then a day, about a day to edit my videos as well. So end to end, we look at, we're looking at sort of four to five days to get out a single video and do the thumbnail, upload it, and then that's, that's pretty much it. At the moment, I'm, I'm just a bit of a one man band. Nick, good question.

Nick Lincoln: 1:09:39

Yeah. So you're putting a lot of effort into this YouTube channel, which is James shack, that's your brand, isn't it? And not looking to muddy the waters here, but so octopus are entirely comfortable with the division that they've got of your time because you're bringing you're bringing potential clients into the business,

James Shackell: 1:09:58

yeah. So how. They have been so octopus wealth now been spun out, renowned over wealth. But yeah, when I first started the channel, very innovative business. They were very much just like, yeah, we are interested in exploring all different avenues that we can to generate new business. I mean, why wouldn't we? And the thought process that we had at the time is that, obviously, if you go to any of the traditional businesses and you say, I want to start a YouTube channel, you're someone Junior there, they're like, No, we don't have the risk appetite for it. But they were very much like, look, James, if no one's watching your videos, and we don't have a problem if people are watching your videos, then like, Yeah, great. This is brilliant, and we'll put the resources into it to make sure that it's that everything is done properly, not just me having to do everything by myself. So they were really supportive there. And then my role within that business as a compensated on revenue share. It's my job to go bring in my own leads, my own clients. So just as somebody might be, as I know a lot of you guys are very big on LinkedIn. It's as if you're, you're writing content on LinkedIn to join to try and generate leads. I was just writing content and putting it on YouTube. So very much. Just this was going to be my own little personal way for me to potentially generate leads. That's where that's that's where it started from. That was the genesis of the idea, but obviously it quickly grew into something that was much bigger than that. And after about nine months of of having that link at the bottom of my videos and actually getting some leads, leads in, I I then had too many leads and I could handle and I started distributing them to other people. But yeah, so there's, there's without sort of going into sort of the key details, there is a very clear separation between myself and my YouTube channel and the and and Nova. And ultimately, I am an introducer. I'm two things. At one side, I am a financial, financial planner, and over and the other side, I am a separate, independent introducer, and although we are obviously very closely tied, because they are providing all of the compliance services that go around my videos.

Carl Widger: 1:12:11

James, can I ask a question, just a kind of specific question, in your experience of the of the algorithm, what's the optimum kind of time for a YouTube video? Or is that a stupid question, and is that depending on the content minutes? Is it three to four minutes?

James Shackell: 1:12:31

It's not a stupid question at all. But the problem is, is that changes? So again, YouTube is just this algorithm, and there is a almost a meta strategy to it that is continually changing and continually evolving. So if you asked me that question a couple of 18 months ago, I would have said that shorter form content was perhaps better keeping videos below 10 minutes, but now it's moving much more to longer form content. And although I wouldn't do this myself, but less scripted content, more podcasts being based on YouTube. That is, that is being really, really, that's seeing a lot of success at the moment. So there's actually just a big change in viewers appetite. So I would say that your video should be as long as it takes you to get the to provide value and to keep it engaging, like if it's if you can't keep a 20 minute video engaging, then then don't do don't do a 20 minute video. And the algorithm will very quickly tell you great engaging content, because you won't get any views. But I would think that if you're going to be starting out something between 10 to 15 minutes, I'd probably even say make them slightly shorter than that, just because the shorter the videos are, the less time it takes to produce and the more that you can get them out. And I think that the biggest win that you're going to get is not necessarily getting huge amounts of views, but it's about upping your skills at the very beginning. But I typically, I typically, my videos are typically between 1520 minutes long, between 3004 1000 words is what I a typical script.

Alan Smith: 1:14:05

Okay, I know, James, when you and I have spoken about this in the past, you're very focused on on the analytics, the data you'll find out what the market tells you, and that's this constant sort of feedback loop. And then continually adjust your content, the style. What I mean? I know some of your videos have done, you know, well over a million views, which is incredible, and you've got hundreds of 1000s of followers, wow, to the extent that you're happy to share it, what? What are the demographics? Understand? Because, as you were saying earlier, you wouldn't old gets like me. We think this is all the youth, the youngsters, who are on YouTube, but not necessarily. You get a lot of, you know, of a certain demographic which are very interested in financial planning, but even give us a sort of rough idea in terms of numbers, I know, you get a you get a lot of leads, a lot of inquiries through this, if you can just share some of your data.

James Shackell: 1:14:56

So, yeah, I'm just opening my uh. Analytics now, but just, I guess, starting off with YouTube again. I when I started out on this journey, I thought, very much like you. I thought that if you're making finance content on YouTube, you're just going to get a load of teenagers looking for crypto advice. But actually, my audience over the last, over the last 28 days. So it's 90% male. YouTube is very much a male dominated platform. The average age of a viewer is about 40, about 50 years old. So 50% of my audience, 50% my views, come from people that are very young. I have 15% of my audience are older than 65 and the thing is, is that there's, if you make, if you make retirement planning content, there is enough older people on YouTube that you can get in front of millions of people, right? Yeah, there is obviously a ceiling, perhaps in the UK, and I'm perhaps touching on that in terms of the people that are actually interested in this content, because they have to be interested in it searching it out, or the algorithm needs to think that they're going to be interested enough to serve them up that content. So yeah, it's very much an older demographic. But then again, it's a sense that I, the people that I know how to help the most are typically people that are wealthier, that are closer towards retirement, and but also those are the clients that we're also typically looking for. So these things just marry up, and then in terms of how, what effect this has had from a lead generation perspective. And so this has been going pretty exponential for the last three years, but at the moment, run rate where, and just to sort of give, give listeners a little bit of a context, but I have a link in the bottom of my videos, and I would encourage people to go and check it out, just so they can see what I'm using. I'm using a fantastic bit of software called Video ask, which is basically like a form, an online form. But instead, it's me, a little short video of me, where I ask someone a question. Find out a little bit more about them in terms of a whether they're based in the UK, how much money they're earning, what their assets are, explained a little bit about our business and how we do things. See if they're looking for one off of advice or ongoing advice, and if they ultimately qualify in the lead, and if they qualify, then they can book some time in one of our advisors diaries for initial call. And I used to do those initial calls myself, a lot of them myself, but I've now stopped doing that. They now go straight on to the other advisors here at Nova, and we typically get about 120 of those calls booked into our advisors diaries a month, and through which we end up with about 60 initial meetings. So that's initial meetings, and then from that, we end up signing, wow, probably between 20 and 25 initial clients come aboard every month, and average asset size is about 700 grand, and that's pretty much it. So, yeah, it's, it's

Carl Widger: 1:18:15

phenomenal. Yeah,

Alan Smith: 1:18:20

just shows you, but ultimately, all credit to you, James. Because you know, if you go back four years and you've got, you know, two two viewers, and you keep going and you keep going and you keep going, and it just shows you once again what we all know, the power of persistence. Just keep going. It's incredible. Really, really amazing.

James Shackell: 1:18:39

Thank you. Well, it's one of those things. I think that a lot of people look up to people in my position, being a YouTuber or an influencer, whatever, thinking I'd love to be that that would be fantastic to have that job. But what you often forget is the sacrifices that have to have been made, and how, just like you guys, run your own businesses, I have been working for six days a week for 12 hours a day for the last four, four years, up until I had my son last year, and now I work seven days a week, including him. So again, it's like he has to sacrifice a lot, like my wife has put up with a lot, my family has put up with a lot with me being so obsessed about this goal and this ambition of putting in all this effort. So, yeah, it's been great to see amazing. It's paid off. Is

Andy Hart: 1:19:29

amazing? Yeah, yeah. Brilliant, brilliant,

Carl Widger: 1:19:31

brilliant story. Okay,

Andy Hart: 1:19:34

last question for me. Final question for me, so James, what did you go from the end, James Ferrari or Lamborghini,

Alan Smith: 1:19:44

he's not like you. Andrew,

James Shackell: 1:19:47

I drive a second hand valve, XC 40, XC 60, even no interesting. Course you do.

Carl Widger: 1:19:53

You are the man. James,

Nick Lincoln: 1:19:55

Good lad. James, that's the correct answer. That is definitely the correct answer. Okay, let's. That we've had half an hour of your times, James, we really do appreciate that we didn't get through all of the questions, but really good. Thanks. You'd like to stick around, James. We're going to do the next two segments of the show, then we'll wrap it up, and we'd love to just stay around and be part of that, if that's okay with you, because I can see and by the way, dear TRAPPIST, there'll be a link to James shack to YouTube channel in the so called show notes, Trini and I, James is quite nervous. He's got 192,000 subscribers. We've got 985 and you can feel our hot breath. We're coming up.

Unknown: 1:20:31

Okay, we should put

Alan Smith: 1:20:35

this podcast on you, yeah, but we put six days a week into this, don't we? No?

Carl Widger: 1:20:40

Six minutes, six minutes, six

Nick Lincoln: 1:20:41

minutes, six minutes a week. Okay, so I can see posters at the front door. She's holding the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up live. There goes. So if you want to submit a question for the trap pack to answer in the real advice of podcast, please do click on the link in the pinned tweet on X or the index on tweet, whatever I say, also in the so called show the link there, and we will get around to your questions. We're getting to them gradually. And the trap is to sing. We went very happy. This is a question. Let's see this question is from open up a letter, right? This is from a Connor Bowman, who posted this back in April. So Connor, we've got round to you. What's that? Seven months after six months after the event, and he's on x as Connor underscore Beaumont, I've been a regular listener of trap and enjoy the great debates that you guys get stuck into. Do you think client trust is linked more to qualifications, experience or interpersonal skills? As a young member of the profession, I'm interested in pursuing advising in the future, and would appreciate some insight into the most important area to focus on to give me the best chance of success when I step into the role. Many thanks. Keep up the good work. Who wants to go on that is trust down to qualifications, experience or interpersonal skills or a combination,

Andy Hart: 1:21:53

I'd say our honored guest.

James Shackell: 1:21:58

Mean, well,

Alan Smith: 1:21:59

what do you think, James,

James Shackell: 1:22:00

it's interesting, because having, I'm obviously much closer to that end of my career than you guys, so get him off with this, with this. But I, I certainly have found having, we've hired lots of great young advisors recently. And there's one thing, being technical is obviously fantastic, but you will have a lot of fantastic support from in terms of you join a bigger company, from financial planners around you. But a lot of it comes down to, ultimately, confidence, and unfortunately, some of it is a gravitas that you can potentially have with clients, and it's something that you can a lot of people just have, but other people can learn over time. And I think a lot of it also comes from just finding what type of advisor you want to be and the style that you want to deliver advice. Because when you come into a company, if you're lucky enough to work in a bigger company, you'll you'll get it, and now that most Well, certainly our company or our meetings are recorded so that you can, you've watched lots of different advisors and meetings. Is that you can take little bits from from from what people do and the way that they they present, and and come up with your own specific genre, even, of what the way you like to deliver advice? I think that, hopefully that answers the question a little bit. I don't know if you guys want to finish that

Carl Widger: 1:23:29

off, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's kind of a combination of them all. I think you're right. You gotta, you can't turn there's not a button to turn on for experience. You've got to live and work through the experience I think you've demonstrated earlier on, James, four bloody hard years to get to you to where you are. Sometimes I'm being honest. I think, you know, people, the younger folk, think about this working smart. You got to work hard at it, you know. So I would be going qualifications all the way. You know, experiences is something that you got to put in the hard yards on and, you know, there's no, Andy says it all the time, and he's right, there are no shortcuts here. You could, you got to put the work in and and I think that you do have to have the qualifications, ultimately, to back up your experience. So I'd be getting involved with the qualifications as soon as possible. I'd

Alan Smith: 1:24:26

back that up. Can't this is, this is a thing. When you're early in your career, you can't just magic up experience. So in terms of your kind of your your professional balance sheet, if you like, what can you do earlier on? What can you put? What can you boost? We can boost your qualifications. So when, and particularly when you're younger, most people, you haven't yet accumulated, although James you you have now. But depending where you are in your life, you haven't accumulated lots of children, pets, you know, spouses, all the other staff, which is wonderful, but it takes up a lot of time when you're younger. Ex spouses, several

Carl Widger: 1:24:59

well, so. Spouses. Would, would, would say that Nick, you know, yeah, yes.

Alan Smith: 1:25:04

So do spend the time whilst you're building up your experience. Spend the time to get qualified, because that, in turn, is kind of like a virtuous cycle that gives you a bit more confidence. So you go into your client conversations and meetings being competent and confident that you know the answers to the question. Someone can raise something with you and think, Well, yes, I've qualified in that area. So I do think now, and I know at least two people, if not more, on this call, will will disagree with me, but I think like chartered status, charter level is table stakes. Become a Chartered Financial Planner, whatever designation you want to have, but do it early on, if you can, and then focus on building your experience, getting into lots of meetings. And I would also say one last thing, and I love the way, the fact that you record your meetings, James, and then you allow people to go back and examine them. The idea of having, we've, we've done a fair bit of this in the past, the idea of having an after action review is called after every meeting that you have, what went well, what didn't, what didn't go well, and what would I do different next time? And just be very focused and conscious of that, because that builds your experience, and it helps build this idea of personality and rapport. So that just comes from doing the job day in, day out, but get qualified first. Anything else for you boys to add?

Nick Lincoln: 1:26:17

I will quickly just add on that do the exams you have to do the exams anyways, a regulatory requirement. Do them when you're young, and for your brain goes to mush, but there won't be enough. And we all know very, very highly qualified people in this thing of ours who can't sell, who can't sell, and we're all selling. We want clients to take the right decisions for their financial futures. We have to sell this concept to clients. If you can't sell, if the clients don't take action, you're a waste of time. So it's a combination of things. You have to get do the do the exams, but you just got to learn how to frame things, use plain language, and develop this interpersonal skills, because without those, you might as well just stick to compliance. Okay, right? Let's move on to the next section of the show, which we call culture corner. Now, young Mr. Shakur, I did warn you we were doing this. Have you got a culture corner item for us? Yeah,

James Shackell: 1:27:10

it's actually quite topical on that last point. So I, I know this is mainly sort of finance related stuff that you guys bring up, but I've just recently listened to the audio book of never split the difference. Chris Voss, have you guys listened to that? Yeah? Or

Unknown: 1:27:29

Chris one of my favorites?

James Shackell: 1:27:32

Yeah? Great. So that is something that I would recommend that any new, up and coming advisor listen to. It's a book written by Chris Voss, who is an ex FBI hostage negotiator, and he talks through all the different things that strategies that he uses to ultimately save, save people's lives. But they're they're practical skills that you can apply in all different walks of your life, whether that's in your career and career, whether you're dealing with EX wives or whatever it is that you need to have a negotiation with. And and, yeah, there's a bunch of things in there, and I think that can be useful in so many different situations. I

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:24

Sorry, you've just triggered at least three of

Unknown: 1:28:32

us, all of us. Jesus, yeah, no,

Alan Smith: 1:28:37

you're right. It's a great book.

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:41

It is a good book. Is Smith. Back to the normal so don't, don't say we were not going to prompt from now on.

Alan Smith: 1:28:49

Thank you so much, Nick, thanks for moderating this and helping your fellow trap pack. I'm going to bring up something that this. This is a newsletter, a blog and a whole series of content. It's been out for years, and I used to subscribe a lot, and I've gone away from it, but I'm back into it because it's fantastic. There is a guy by the name of Shane Parrish, who's a Canadian. He's very Canadian, Canadian, a boat, a boat, don't they? And he's got a blog. It's called Farnham Street, and it's really interesting. And within it, he's got a weekly newsletter called brain food. It's just super, super interesting things about mental frameworks. He's a big fan of Charlie Munger. He talks about that, but the blog is really distilled into, you know, very interesting and practical lessons to learn. Comes out every week. He's got a podcast, he's got a book. It's got the whole thing. He's got a really good ecosystem, and I think it's really relevant to a lot of people listening to this. So Shane Parrish, Farnham Street and brain food, all the links in the show notes. Thank you. Thank

Nick Lincoln: 1:29:55

you, storyteller. Okay, mine, I've got two. One I've dropped. One was a book, swim with the sharks without being eaten. I think Somebody here might remind me, Alan, I tried to read me. It's just a good book is dated. Yeah, I

Alan Smith: 1:30:05

don't this, this, this sunk time fallacy thing,

Nick Lincoln: 1:30:08

if I don't enjoy a book, I'd drop it. I was about 25% through, and I thought, now this is just a bit too cheesy, sorry, but something I did find, I don't know. I have not seen this before. There's a very good podcast called bobbleheads on investing podcast hosted by a guy called Rick ferry. There's 73 on episodes, very American focused, as you might expect. So you got to be cheesy about which episodes you listen to, but it's got some gems on there. And the most recent one was Jason spike, the Wall Street Journal, personal finance reporter, guy who writes really lovely content. It was a really engaging interview with this guy as well. So my culture corner for this episode, 57 is Bogle heads on investing, and a link to it will be in the so called show

Alan Smith: 1:30:45

notes. Can I, can I just make a suggestion as because I've listened to that as well. Fast, unless you're interested in American antiques and art, fast forward the first 16 minutes, because they talk all about that is, you know, childhood, growing up and all about, you know, collecting antiques or something. I didn't see the point, but it does. It does warm up my

Nick Lincoln: 1:31:06

recommendation, because I had to go your recommendation. I am

Carl Widger: 1:31:15

okay, the real advisor Podcast.

Nick Lincoln: 1:31:20

I'm sure your Charles

Carl Widger: 1:31:22

guest, I'm next AI magnified with Matt Cooper. Podcast hosted by Matt Cooper, who does a radio show here in Ireland, but these are kind of longer form interviews that he does with a lot of kind of business folks. The one that I've put up is a guy an interview he did with the guy I know, actually, who's doing kind of software to stop cars crashing, basically. So very interesting, personal friends. Reason I put it up, he definitely is. And I was all blacks came with them last weekend,

Unknown: 1:31:59

still recovering. They're

Carl Widger: 1:32:01

actually doing the A live version of the podcast next week. I think so, looking forward to attending that. It's really, really good stuff. Yeah, you'll enjoy it. Good stories in there.

Andy Hart: 1:32:15

Okay, it's me to close off the show. Okay, it's nothing to do with finance, but to do with economics and politics. It's the Tucker Carlson podcast and YouTube. Nayab Bucha Lee, who's the president of Ecuador. He's the highest rated president, 85% he's cleaned up. He's cleaned up. Salvador.

Unknown: 1:32:37

Salvador, oh, my god, sorry. He's cleaned up.

Alan Smith: 1:32:41

Geography, wasn't you straight three

Carl Widger: 1:32:44

chat, GPT living. But

Alan Smith: 1:32:49

there's another podcast interesting. I

Unknown: 1:32:52

was doing.

Andy Hart: 1:32:53

I was doing so well. I was doing so well. Anyway, he's the president of El Salvador. He's the highest rated president in the world. He's called like the coolest dictator on the planet. Massive fan of this guy is a clinic. He's cleaned up El Salvador in three years by basically putting away 75,000 gang members. So now it's seven highest country in the Western hemp, 75,000 and it's the safest country in the Western Hemis. It's the safest country the Western Hemisphere. You are. Check out. This guy's a young, lucky three young. He's a young guy, 43 young, just like me and James. So yeah, check him out.

Alan Smith: 1:33:30

It is great. Oh, my

Carl Widger: 1:33:34

God, got to be ruined on this. It

Alan Smith: 1:33:36

is a great conversation, to be fair. It's a great conversation. It's very interesting, and it's, it's a lesson to, you know, all the other bigger countries, he clearly did is he upgraded what the most dangerous country in the world to being the safest in the Western Hemisphere, yes, in a few short years, incredible. It is very trying to

Andy Hart: 1:33:53

fix the economy. He's fixed the country. Made it safe. Now he's going to fix the economy. It's up to now.

Alan Smith: 1:34:01

He's investing in big company.

Andy Hart: 1:34:04

Yeah, no, no, he's not just that's, that's, that's,

Nick Lincoln: 1:34:07

that's 94 minutes in.

Unknown: 1:34:10

Thank you, okay, TRAPPIST,

Nick Lincoln: 1:34:12

let's wrap this up for this episode. Obviously, Andy, you can talk under me through this next part if you want to. Thank you, dear TRAPPIST, leader usually does six out of five stars would be great. I'd like you to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're only 191,000 subscribers behind our guest today, I finally want to say thank you to our guest, James Chaco, aka James shack, trademarked, yeah. Thank you. Some really, really good basically what I took out with what you can do if you got to be persistent and it's a lot of bloody hard work. Okay, cracking the YouTube algorithm. James has done it all. Credit to you, young man. Okay, that is it. Get out my computer. Thank you guys, and we'll see you on the other side. Goodbye.

Andy Hart: 1:34:52

See you later. See you. Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 1:34:58

James, just stay here for. Second while we upload the well, we upload the files, I'll just stop recording that.