TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

62 - Planning Your Best Year Yet

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 62

Share episode

TRAP LIVE25 - 14TH MAY. REGISTER INTEREST HERE.

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

  • Topical Titbits including the passing of TRAPist Stuart Knight, massive outflows from active in 2024, Terry Smith annual letter, BitCoin Newport landfill horrors, private equity risk, Verve cohorts, Irish pension “loopholes”, Saba Capital coming after UK investment trusts, Phil Billingham on annual meetings/fee refunds, UK savers are too risk averse
  • Meat and Potatoes: Planning for 2025 - Plus Ça Change
  • TRAPist question(s) from Michael Reed http://linkedin.com/in/michael-reed-wealth-management and Dee HB
  • Culture Corner

Show links: http://tiny.cc/traplinks

============================
TRAP LIVE25 - 14TH MAY. PUT THE DATE IN YOUR DIARY! Click here to register your interest.
============================
Take part in the conversation! We want YOU to suggest topics and questions you’d like the Trap Pack to answer. The best way to do this is to ask them here.

Help us to help you! The more followers we have, the more we can do stuff going forward. So please:

Unknown:

Music. Welcome to The Real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, T, T, 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:

Yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 62 of the real advisor podcast, tee up a beach wrap. My name, apparently is lick Lincoln, and joining me as ever in the digital studio of doom, are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the ultra heart. Alan, the storyteller Smith and Carl, the voice de la Bucha widger, Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app, absolutely nothing. So let's start unpacking it straight away with some more high energy review reads or read, read out by my very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Hart, thank

Andy Hart:

you very much. Nicholas, the first review is entitled A positive for the profession. Five stars. Great show. Gents, having graduate, graduated via one of the well known advisor academies, I started my advice journey in September 2021 I've always heavily focused on understanding the hopes and dreams of my clients. But whilst learning on the job, there have been times where I second guess myself. So this podcast has been absolutely gold for me, and ticks every box, given that advisors and retail investors listen to this, I think having these guys discuss topics openly with balanced views is a real positive for the profession. Thank you for the commitment to delivering high quality, high value content for us all to consume. Keep it up. Dean Brooks final review entitled just what the profession needs. Five stars. As a seasoned financial advisor, I have to say that the real advisor podcast is a gem. Having only listened to a couple of episodes, I was quick to share this with our team of younger advisors and encourage them to listen on a regular basis. The topics are relevant, the messaging is spot on, and just what our profession needs. Highly recommended. Mike Mullen, Hughes, back to you. Nicholas, brilliant

Nick Lincoln:

stuff. Thank you TRAPPIST for those reviews. We do love them. Thanks for giving you real names as well. Appreciate that. Do submit a review via the link in the so called show notes, six out of five stars, ideally, keep them coming in. It gives us a real shot in the arm. Okay, let's put a timestamp on this episode, the first episode of 2025 episode 62 Happy New Year to you all. Hope you all survived the Christmas festivities and the seemingly endless fun and frolics that goes with all that. Let's move on now. You've got a slightly sad note to kick off on, actually, Andrew, yeah,

Andy Hart:

just a very brief note an email received soon back into the office was Yeah, rather sad email a fellow financial advisor by the names of by the name of Stuart Knight, sadly passed away on the 27th of December, at the ripe old age or not a 59 sadly passed away of cancer. His IFA firm he ran was called Miller Knight. He's left wife three kids. I've known him for about 15 years. He's always come along to a lot of the events that we've ran. He's a regular at hum, great team at Miller night, who he works with, yeah, just a reminder, really, that yeah, livestock rehearsal us as professional advisors. We help lots of individuals families plan their retirement, and sadly, some of us don't get to live our own so it's always sad when someone passes away early, but

Nick Lincoln:

even slightly, cuts a little bit deeper for someone that's helped many people you know retire on their own terms and live a decent retirement. So yeah, reminder to all of us really to be a bit more intentional about life. Get one shot at this thing. Um, yeah. So sad news, Stuart passing away. He was a regular listener of trap, and so his team. So, yeah, just, yeah, just a mention to that. So, slightly sad news. So, over to you, Nicholas, to somewhat bring up the vibe. Yeah, well, well said, well said, well said, and the rest in peace, Stuart, yeah, being a rehearsal, we've got another live show coming up on the 14th of May this year, for which there will be absolutely no rehearsals. Just to remind you, once again, that's on the 14th of may track live happening at the Royal College of Physicians. Those of you that know and these Harmon have been to it. It's the same building, not the same auditorium, a slightly smaller auditorium, a more cozy auditorium, but it's going to be great. Register Your Interest and the link in the so called show notes, and at some stage, when we get our asses in gear, we'll we'll send out a page where you can buy tickets, but at least put the date in your diary. This is happening 14th of May. It's going to be great in the evening the 14th of May. Okie dokie, watch, ft, article, active funds. Whoo so.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, picked up this article. I think it was between Christmas and New Year, but the outflows from active funds continues in 2024 it was the biggest outflow ever beating the 423 billion of 2023 450 billion and counting, because they'd only counted up to the end of November, actually, in the article, 450 billion had left the active funds. There was a pretty cool chart, actually in the article, which you'll see in the show notes. And it shows that in 2008 when the financial crisis problems were really kicking in. There was massive outflows, which is human behavior, isn't it? But then after after that, it kind of seemed to settle down. And the outflows from active funds really didn't start, um, until 2016 so it was around then that you could see that the index funds were starting to take over. So I think that trend continues. And I think the next item in our topical tidbits kind of is going to talk towards that as well. Yeah, so

Alan Smith:

call what do you, what do you put down as the main reasons why this? I mean, that's half a trillion moving out of active that's a lot of money

Carl Widger:

moving out. I think there's people are becoming more aware of, you know, the fact that active fund managers can't deliver the performance that they promise to deliver, and that it's much more expensive. I think it's simple as

Alan Smith:

that just awareness.

Carl Widger:

There's tons of I'm probably perfect example. It was around 2016 I started to, you know, see what was right, and go, Okay, do you know what? I've listened and listened and listened to these active fund managers. I've watched and watched and watched one after another after another, underperform the index or their own benchmarks, or whatever it might have been, and that they cannot beat the the index, whatever that might be, and it's way cheaper to do it that way. So why not take all of that risk out of it, and you're you're a bit of gambling. Say, Okay, over a period of time the stock market goes up. Why not just buy the world stock market and just have massive diversification doing it. It's, it's, you know, it's, I was challenged by someone recently to stop saying that this is, you know, really simple stuff. And, you know, it's, it's kind of very obvious stuff. It's not really, you have to have the experience. You have to understand, you have to have probably gone through the brainwashing that the active fund managers and their marketing departments do to then understand and come to the conclusion that keeping it simple and taking the complexity out of it, and understanding that the market does its thing over time, I think that's you know, you need, you need time and experience to come to those conclusions. And there are lots of us out there advising clients to do that. And hence, you who see these massive outflows, but I'm very interested you guys know, because we've had a chat privately about the next item. Because, like, I these active fund managers. And anyway, maybe we'll just leave it after Andy to talk about this, because this just would just just believe for me to be finishing

Andy Hart:

a finishing point of your point. It was covered in the times as well. Yeah, they went through it in quite a lot of detail. They got sort of top from asset managers in the world. You know this or don't. But for the listeners out there, Black Rock is number one at the moment. Moment, it manages around 10 trillion a mix of passive index and, let's say active. But I think the bulk of their money still is in the what would be considered the index camp. Vanguard is very much in the index camp. They're number two on the list of eight point i Wow. The first drop, Black Rock, Vanguard. Vanguard are Second in the list, eight point five trillion. Third, US player, it's 4.5 point 5 trillion. Any guesses on the first UK company to make the list legal in general? Very good. Alan hazard. A guess at the dollar, monetary AUM number. They're looking after a trillion. Yeah, it's decent. 1.4 trillion. They're number 13 on the list. Yes, this whole movement from active to passive is gathering pace. Shall I move on to my next topic?

Alan Smith:

Yeah, just just a quick, just a quick one on that. It just makes you think what the kind of evolution of the asset management industry is, or, I mean, I noticed my alma mater, Aberdeen, there. She. Prices, share prices, 7585 75 of the last number of years, they are just bleeding assets, left, right and center, Schroders as well as, yeah, as are all the the big, major active managers. And you wonder, I mean, how sustainable long term is this? I suspect we'll see lot more mergers, because you just can't be losing that amount of assets where you've Isn't

Andy Hart:

it just a slow death, unless they seriously change their business model? Well, the

Alan Smith:

fundamental thing is, you've got to guess what. You've got to deliver performance if any of these organizations could show some sustainable outperformance against the benchmark, against the index. But we know that

Unknown:

could be done. So that's that can't be done. It's a matter. So they've got

Alan Smith:

like an existential problem in that what they their core offering just doesn't work long term. And more, extract wealth.

Unknown:

Let's be, yeah, brutal about this. Extracts wealth.

Carl Widger:

The difference guys now is that there are too many of us know that there are too many of us out there saying, There was a time when not many people knew, nobody was saying it. And really, when you were talking, when people back in, I don't know, in the early 2000s when people were talking about index fund, it was like, Oh my God, all the cheap stuff. Would you really go and buy the algae fund? Well, I think

Alan Smith:

when we went through the journey, 2010, some of these index funds, there was still 1% you know, there was still, you think we might as well take a pump because it wasn't more expensive. But now they are, you know, practically the Virgin. But obviously now it's a it's a few basis points to get access to it. But I must say, car, I think people are going through this journey on at different points. You know, we did it back in then 2010, and onwards. And I remember looking at and I just, and I thought, Well, I've been in business by then, but, you know, quite a number of years. I was gobsmacked. I just didn't know all these various layers of costs and charges and underperformance, because I was as guilty as anyone else at looking at the investment company's marketing literature. I said, Well, they're doing. Well, they're outperforming. But you can be very, very selective, as you know, on time periods and benchmarks and so unless you start but I think much of this information has now become mainstream. I think some of the rest picked up on that and just showed, showed the data. I'm almost

Andy Hart:

certain every year we're going to see a shift from active to passive. I mean, it's, it's still we

Nick Lincoln:

have enough for Dart. Is it

Alan Smith:

legendary prediction?

Andy Hart:

There's never going to be a year. There's never going to be a year and more move from passive to active. Is there, like out the bottle, but

Unknown:

on that point, Andy, right. There's actually in that article, in the chart 2021, there was a reversal of the trend. It was there was more outflow in

Andy Hart:

terms of the monetary numbers, yeah, full No.

Unknown:

In turn, there was a positive. I

Nick Lincoln:

mean, I blood, in fairness to your point, Andy, I mean, I've made the point before, haven't that? We've all not, we've all been on this journey. And we all know countless advisors have gone from active to passive, and I don't know

Alan Smith:

I see the other way. Who's gone back,

Unknown:

that's that's

Nick Lincoln:

Penny comes down.

Carl Widger:

I would ask, I would ask any client who's being touted an active fund manager who's meeting the active fund manager, him or herself. Are you investing yourself in this fund?

Unknown:

I think that will be. They probably won't tell. And sometimes, when you meet an active

Nick Lincoln:

fund manager, you might meet him, and he might start off as a he. They can end up as a she, like I used to work for Morgan Grenfell in the 1990s

Alan Smith:

you've gone off pieced already. Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, right. Let's move on to Terry Smith. It happened. It's a thing. Yeah, no, remember Terry Smith's annual letter?

Andy Hart:

Is it Terry Smith or Jerry Smith? I'll stick with Terry Smith. Terry Smith, my most personal friend, yeah,

Unknown:

come on, Nick. No ding, no ding, okay. Terry Smith, who is known as shock, one of the

Andy Hart:

most renowned active fund managers in the UK. He runs a fund named after him, fund Smith. Every year he produces an annual letter similar to Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, a big he's a huge fan of those two individuals. It's very detailed, it's very candid, it's very honest. And he does share a lot of pearls of wisdom. He's come out with his latest one. It came out in January 2025 for the whole year of 2024 so 24 and he lists the performance against his benchmark. He's underperformed it by about 50% keep it simple, the benchmark he's following did a return of 20.8 and his fund did a return of 8.9 to half the return. But over the long period, which is the only really. Important time period to focus on his fund, he says, is the second best performer since its inception, which is the inception in november 2010 and he that is out of 162 funds, his return has been 353% versus the average in the sector of 254 my final point I'm going to mention on this. I'm a fan of his writing. Obviously, I've got no money in the fund. I've got no clients money in the fund. I watch it quite with interest, and I watch his live Annual General Meeting, which is again, answering questions. So a big fan of him as a person. He said, basically just five stocks, the Fab Five, nvidian, Nvidia, Apple, meta, Microsoft and Apple and Amazon, sorry, provided 45% of the returns of the S p5 100. So if you were not in these five stocks, you massively under perform, perform the S p5 100. The fortunate news is all of us are, and all of our clients are, because you own the beasts, if you own global equity funds. So that's my two pence on it. Over to you guys to share your thoughts. There's

Nick Lincoln:

not much else to say. Really, it's just very hard to maintain outperformance and talk the outflows that were referenced in Carl's previous point. I think fun Smith suffered 3.3 billion in outflows last year, which is more than 10% of the funds so and a lot of that will be hot money that probably went in after that. Again, you could, you can come you can, you can transpose two graphs. Can't you show the performance since inception? And this graph is going fantastically up in the early years. And against that, you could match inflows, and they'd be tiny when that performance has been and they'd be massive in the last few years. And of course, that's when the fund has theoretically tailed off other courses, still delivering positive returns. It's just, it's just, it's just on performance bench, right? It's the same old story. I mean, it's the same it's, this

Alan Smith:

is the I was looking. I know you're going to speak about this. I was looking, but it's very, very difficult to get what they call money weighted returns from funds, which actually does transpose that cash flow net flows in and out over a fund. Morning Star used to produce data on this. They still do. I well, I couldn't, you can't find it on this fund anywhere. But that's that's interesting because, because I would be confident they do it. They do it on the US money weighted returns for any US fund. Well, if you listen to Morning Star, start start, applying it to UK funds as well. It'll be interesting, because this is, this is a human behavior thing, because the minute you've got three years of good out performance, which law of averages is, you're going to get some funds that will do that more by luck than by

Unknown:

the money piles in, yeah, then the money

Alan Smith:

piles in. And, you know, the discretionary managers, the portfolio managers all that lot they will let, they'll buy into this fund. And as how much went out, 3 billion or something is about 23

Andy Hart:

I think it's about 23 billion left, the turnover of the fund has been very low. So he's done what he's going to do.

Alan Smith:

He Yeah, he's more. He's bought a bunch of stocks and sat on it in his in his house in Mauritius, tax free. So he's good for Uncle Terry.

Nick Lincoln:

Doesn't mean this tax free.

Alan Smith:

You get that? It does Mauritius

Andy Hart:

certainly taxes advantageous. Means his investment strategy is by good companies. Don't overpay and do nothing.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, I hope. Well done. Okay, if he did, why is he charging 1% a

Unknown:

year anyway? Correct? On the

Alan Smith:

you've got, you'll have the data Andrew the Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway and all that they've they've underperformed the s, p for the last

Andy Hart:

10 years. Or what time frame you pay? Yeah, I'm talking the last decade, whatever you want, prove whatever you want, exactly. Yeah. But that's another conversation

Nick Lincoln:

as well. About conversation as well. About value investing, you know, not being the flavor du jour for the last decade or so. Maybe I think

Carl Widger:

that this is, this is, this is just the quintessential star fund manager Gone, gone wrong, right? I think the letter should, should, should go like this. Hey guys, early on, I made a couple of points, and we got really lucky. Now none of you are in so none of you got the performance, but a load of you followed in after that. Now we're doing pretty shit for the last four years. In fact, really shit when you look at the numbers, but you're still most of you hanging on in there. 3.3 billion out of 23 billion have left in the last 12 months. I hope the rest of you, hang on in there. I have no idea, absolutely no idea if the bets I've made are going to pay off. But if you hang in there, I'm going to make a shitload of money for the next few years, and that's what I'm hoping you'll do. And I will get my fees, and I will get them tax free in Mauritius, very

Nick Lincoln:

good. I think FM, I've got a PR opening, so I might, I might put your CV forward. Thought you could be the spokesman posture. You

Alan Smith:

know, it's just thinking about that, that if you, if you embrace a philosophy of index investing or sort of factor A base, a simple buy and hold investment strategy, just thinking that through. Because if I had, you know, a 10% of client equity money in that fund, I've got this dilemma right now. Do I recommend we leave it right now? Crystal fold, yeah. Then then he just had a fantastic year about performance.

Andy Hart:

Always the active management dilemma, what do you

Alan Smith:

say? Don it we were gone in because he's had over four years of good performance, and now he's had four years of bad performance. I pull all the funds out now and then he has another two years of good performance. So you just, you eliminate all that nonsense, just because, by the haystack, as they say, don't look it's

Unknown:

so liberating that we don't, the four of us don't have in Alan you got to manage to spend

Nick Lincoln:

on doing all this nonsense, you

Alan Smith:

know, I mean, all these we talk about it privately as well. Sometimes you get invitations these various webinars and show up to a fund manager's views on that, you know, the macro, bloody, bloody blah. And you think, thank God I don't have to go there to spend time. There's a waste. Yeah, you could go

Nick Lincoln:

to the PA conference and listen to Alistair Campbell Alan. That would be,

Alan Smith:

well, that's true. He's keynoting. I know you'd

Nick Lincoln:

be fine. Oh, okay, are we done good, right? Talking of rubbish. Be careful. Rubbish. I'm not sure if this story has been covered by any of you guys before. If it has, sorry, I must have switched off because it is registered to Bitcoin. But this poor sod, this poor Welsh sod, Newport News in Newport, James, Howells. James Howells, in 2000 before,

Unknown:

yeah. Have we? Yeah. He lost us. Yeah, yeah. Go on. He lost his

Nick Lincoln:

driver. I do it again. You couldn't read the the agenda and maybe tell me before we hit the record

Carl Widger:

button. But I did read the agenda 10 o'clock this morning, and then I read it again at midday. I'm not, I'm not actually gonna read it again, because there was nothing in there at midday anyway. Drive on the story honestly. It's

Alan Smith:

worth it's worth repeating this

Nick Lincoln:

update on the BBC websites from the ninth of January. So there has been an advance in this. In the space of this guy mine these Bitcoins in 2009 forgot about them, took apart his computer. He spilled a drink over his computer, so he took it to bits and sold bits up and kept the hard drive, stuck it in a drawer. His ex partner, then, in 2013 was clearing out the house. She threw this thing away. He'd forgot about it anyway. And then years later, he remembered that he had these 8000 mined bitcoins on this drive, 8000 8000 8000 and the value of those this is languishing in a landfill in Newport is 598 million. This guy's taking Newport county council to he's trying to sue them, so I want to get in there, and they've just declined. His

Alan Smith:

good luck with that. And he's

Unknown:

got investors in, hasn't he to? Like,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, after compensation of 495 million pounds of new person, no, not going to happen. But the quintessential stock coin was after the he was struck out. He didn't, this is not going to go on. The judge said, we're not having this. Mr. Howe said, quote, he was, quote, very upset. Half a billion. Half a billion on that drive. You can't get it, because that might have changed his life a bit. Anyway. Another reason,

Alan Smith:

yeah, it is a, it is a thing, isn't it, for, for those Bitcoin, Bitcoin holders, because he's, he's, obviously, he's got that saved locally. He's got a, as they call it, yeah, cold storage, as opposed to on a platform or something, on a hard drive, yeah, yeah, on a hard drive. So, yeah, that's the thing. You lose that. That's it gone. And the other thing I've seen a lot of people talking about, now, there was that one, but there's, there's other people who have lost it. You know, you get a you get a seed phrase, you get a a phrase. You may or may not know this, but it's a sequence of unique words, up to 24 words. And if you lose those words, that's the effect of your password to access your Bitcoin. And if you lose the words, you lose the words, that's it. It's gone. And there's been a few of those as well. Those classic, I had them written down in a in a diary, in the second draw behind my socks and everything else. And my wife was clearing it out, and she saw some old notebook, and she chucked it in the bin. This

Andy Hart:

is why he has burned down. Yeah, Allah La at the moment, yeah,

Alan Smith:

any number of things that that is absolutely if see, one of the things about the Bitcoin maximalist is they don't want to have it on a like a platform like these codes, because they want to have ownership of their asset. But it literally is like having a big pile of, you know, 1000, 100 million pound notes under your bed, and if you lose them, you lose them, and it's gone. So there's this plot. There's probably loads of stories like that. Can you imagine losing that sort of money? I know it's

Nick Lincoln:

just, it's just the scale, but this

Andy Hart:

story has been rumbling on for years. I think it's the same guy, and I think it's not going to stop until, I'm assuming

Alan Smith:

he gets in this dressed he is you've worked on every same time he sees a bitcoin price go up again

Nick Lincoln:

when he gets a bill. Is thinking, I

Unknown:

can't afford this bill. If

Andy Hart:

I find this, we go 5050, yeah, you get. 50% we turn Newport into the best town.

Nick Lincoln:

He offered to split it with the council, and they said they'd offer to split into the council. What idiot said? No,

Unknown:

I suppose they can't counselors. There's no councilors. That's local councils here. Yeah, there's some

Nick Lincoln:

environmental reason they can't do it as well. Yeah, oh dear. Okay, so watch private equity risk, and if I sense at all that you haven't gone around the subject before at any previous 61

Unknown:

episodes.

Nick Lincoln:

Crack on, my dear friend.

Carl Widger:

I just put this in because this was a guy who raised 40 million for polywork, which is basically a kind of a LinkedIn, but he previously had raised 30 million for a previous company that didn't really work out, so it turned into polywork, and then he raises a further, I think, 40 million, if I'm reading the article correctly, and the types of people who invested in polywork were the Collison brothers from stripe, so they'd be that's why it's kind of hitting the news here, because it was a Northern Ireland business. And then obviously the the Collison guys, and also the guys who founded Reddit also contributed to the fundraise for this business. And it's gone. It's it's closed down. So look, my point is, imagine the FOMO from people who went, Oh God, we have to get into this fundraising round, because the Collison brothers are in this and you do hear that a lot. You know, when it's private equity, it's like, no, no, this one is a dead cert. And I know for sure, because this guy, that guy and that girl and this girl is are all in it, and they'd know because they're like, you know, serial investors and blah, blah, blah, well, there are no such thing as sure things. And I don't know about you guys over there, but certainly over here, we're seeing a good few of these startups failing, right? And that's obviously, I'm not celebrating that factor or anything like that, right? But it's just, it's just the way it goes with startups. Yeah, Nick, I predict

Nick Lincoln:

that this year will be the year of private equities. But in terms of being pushed the end of last year, you could see various brands are getting into this private equity thing. Pension funds are talking about getting into it. Schroeder's got a private equity thing. And I think it's going to be the next big bloody car crash that will become not to go into, yeah,

Carl Widger:

avoid Yeah. I saw here, I think Willis towers, Watson, I think, have launched a private equity fund to take in the money. Yeah, they're doing 150 million fun to take in money from the auto enrollment that we're due to go go on with this year. And the problem with setting you know, if you have 150 million in fundus, like they need to spend it. Yeah, certainly. You know, sometimes due diligence might be kind of skipped through, because I can't have this money sitting in the bank. I need to actually go and put this money to work. But my overall point is, you've, you've all come across your high net worth clients who are like, I know, you know that index investing. So this is, that's probably a bit of a common theme here. This this afternoon. So far, you know, the the index investing on a bit simple and boring and not really for me. And, you know, I'm looking to double and travel my money. And I've done it, you know, a couple of times so far. And that's luck, if that's happened to you so far, and they have a habit of not, not working out,

Alan Smith:

correct two, two quick points on that. One is private equity. If you, if you get you understand the model, these are generally funds. They go and raise capital, they borrow money, or they raise from investors, and then they go and invest in various organizations. And you would see, if you were to look today at maybe 10 years of historical returns from private equity, they would generally have outperformed the public markets. That's the reality. So what you've got, again, as a classic example of rear view mirror investing the if you could imagine, cast your mind back 1015, years, we were in what they called Zip zero interest rate environment. There was interest rates were zero. So you could raise a lot of money and borrow a lot of money at effectively zero. And so your returns inevitably are going to be, should be reasonable. Well, the world has changed. And of course, these funds and the sales people at these funds are going out and say, look how well we've done. We beat the S, P, we beat everyone else. Well, of course, you did. The environment is different. The next 10 years are going to be entirely different to that. That's on private equity V venture capital, which I think you were talking about if it was a startup, is different in terms of its strategy, and, you know, arguably much higher risk startup companies investing in software businesses and all that sort of thing. And, and I was just, it's always good to have these kind of anecdotes and stories. I think, I think I mentioned on this podcast. Can't remember, but you guys will know my latest close. Personal friend who is Thank you, Richard Farley, ex dragons, den super

Nick Lincoln:

morphing into a story or not, no

Alan Smith:

anecdote, not a story

Unknown:

Alan's anecdotes.

Alan Smith:

But Richard, who got to know and came on my podcast, bulletproof entrepreneur, I went to dinner with podcasts

Unknown:

much better than this. When people say, I listen to your podcast, what do you say? Alan, which one

Alan Smith:

boom, boom story. So So So Richard is, you know, he's made a ton of money in his in his life, and his various business ventures, he wasn't Dragon's Den, and he's just, he's one of those. He's a serial investor and all these companies. And he's written a book about his whole his journey. And I got his book before Christmas. Read it over Christmas. He's very candid, shall I say, in terms of his disclosure of his investment experiences. He's invested in over 100 companies across multiple different industries, all sorts of different things, the vast, vast, vast majority, and I mean, 95% have failed. And he is a super smart operator, really shrewd, very, very clever guy. And and he, you know, just he tells all the stories about them, and for any number of different reasons. It could be, you know, could be, you know, the best business, best idea ever, the best team ever, the best whatever. But multiple different things happen. That's startup stuff, which is what you're talking about right the beginning of this part. Carl, it is. It's very it's exciting, it's sexy, it's interesting. The startup, the, you know, the tech business, is going to take over the world. The data is against you. You know, if you are the one in 100 that strikes it lucky, happy days. Well done. But it's not, it's not for orphans. Look,

Carl Widger:

this is kind of like a separate point, but when there's 40 million raised and the fund is or the company is closing down, now, it does say that he's given, he's returning some funds to investors, but it's a lot of money, isn't it? To be gunsville. It's like, where did all that money go? But anyway, look, I guess that's a, yeah, that's a naive viewpoint. Perhaps the

Andy Hart:

investors would have invested, I'm assuming, in a sort of portfolio of companies. They wouldn't have put, you know, I mean, the Collison brothers, I'm assuming that shifting money in here, there and everywhere, yeah, 40 million is a lot, depending on what part of the world you're in could be seen as peanuts in Silicon Valley or a big amount in Northern Ireland. I don't

Nick Lincoln:

know what doesn't touch the sides in Newport,

Unknown:

apparently, not. Okay, moving on.

Nick Lincoln:

Ah, story teller Hayley rabbit and verve,

Alan Smith:

just a quick shout out. Got a message from Haley the other day. We've mentioned before the organization called verve, Verve foundation doing some great, great work in the UK, helping advisors. They do a whole lot of different things. One of the things they do is they've got this they've got an offering to those people who are, what's it called, when people have been an incubator, that's the word I was desperately searching for, incubator. So they've got this incubator thing. So if you are an advisor who, or someone who's thinking of setting up your advice business and going out on your own. Maybe you're working for another firm. You've got an inkling that you'd like to start your own thing, but you don't quite know how to do it. Or you are just new, relatively new, to the profession, and you want to get into it and start your own business, and it's a bit confusing. You don't know how to start well, get in touch. And the link is in the show notes with Haley at verve. They are running now, not one, not two, not three, but 1212, cohorts this year. So there's a lot of capacity. I think that's just fantastic with I think, as we may come on to a bit later on in the question, in the questions, I think there's, I think there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people out there who are at that moment in their life and they would like to do something for themselves. Maybe they're a bit frustrated where they currently are. Maybe they've the younger people who are really embracing real financial planning and sensible investing and but the organization that they're in is not not playing ball, and they really have this inkling, but as we know, crossing that chasm, crossing that divide, and setting up by yourself and creating your own business daunting is undoubtedly a challenge. So yeah. Hats off to Haley and the team. If you're interested. Want to learn more, you know, speak to them directly or check out the link in the show notes and get on one of the cohorts ASAP. Well done, Haley.

Nick Lincoln:

Very good, very good news. Thanks for sharing that storyteller. Watch another loophole. Explain.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, that's just a quick one. There was a so I mentioned prior to Christmas we had the changes in pensions were happening whereby you are now limited. We are now in 2025, limited to in prsas, A. What you can put in, whereas up till the end of 2024 it basically as long as you had a salary from a company, the company could contribute whatever they wanted, right up to the limit of too tight, 2 million. And I stopped that. And then there was this article in the paper. Now I put the minute I saw the article which I shared, I was like, this is, this is a joke like that. The media are saying, oh, there's a loophole. And financial advisors and tax advisors and accountants are telling people to take advantage of this. These are the rules, right? So the minute I saw it, I put it into our agenda, because I said, I'm definitely going to bring that up. But thankfully, I've seen on LinkedIn loads of really good financial planners out there going, this is a joke, calling this a loophole, or that, you know, it's sharp practice. People doing it. The rules were the rules. The legislation probably was written poorly, but we all played and advised our clients to play by the rules, within the rules. So again, it's, it's, it's screaming out once again for this long term rules, regulations for pensions. And let's just stick to it, and just take the politics out of it, please, and just set up this, this new body. But I just said I'd say it because and fair play to all of the financial planners, financial advisors out there who were out on LinkedIn saying, no, no, hold on a second. That's it's, it's unfair, you know, because I'm sure some clients that did it were reading this and going, Holy shit, am I in trouble? No, you're not. You played to the rules that were in play at the time. So I just said I'd mention it. Yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

I wrote my first hat tip essay last week or so. This is exactly on that subject of deep taking the politics. We gotta we got to have a long term view on on pensions. We've got to take it away. Politicians are short term. They're four or five year time horizons, and they're just focusing on winning the next election, and they're constantly Dick constantly dicking about pensions that are maybe 4050, 6070, years in the germination. And it's we've got to do it, because it's at the minute, it's just, it's just not, I know it's good for us because it's work for us, right? Because people just haven't got a bloody clue. But it shouldn't be that way. We've got to just have a moratorium and say we're not going to touch pension installation for 1520, years, cross party agreement, and just let the bloody things settle. It's chaotic, really chaotic. Yeah, okie dokie, so Ultras saber or soul, I'm going to save a capital.

Andy Hart:

Saber capital. I'm assuming none of you've followed this story or aware of it. It's behind a paywa, which is a 9% no, okay, there's a there's a US, New York based, active investor hedge fund saber capital is who's taken a keen interest in the Investment Trust sector in the UK, which are basically limited companies that buy, you know, invest in other companies that have a net asset value of a share price. There's a discretion. Discrepancy. So they've focused in on five trusts that they believe are mispriced, and they're aggressively building up stakes in these listed companies to then, you know, take ownership of the trust and extract some value, quite interesting, for a few points. The Investment Trust space is quite sleepy. There's quite sort of historic providers in this space. Some advisors love Investment Trusts because some of them provide high yields and do other things. There's an interesting bit in the article. It says, dripping with irony, the media for the last three years straight, was unrelentlessly critical of the UK Investment Trust industry, but it's now full of opinion pieces from self interested parties decrying sabers move to shake shake things up. So they've been moaning for years, saying how terribly run and inefficient and x, y, z, this whole sector is. And then when someone comes in to, you know, exploit that discrepancy, obviously they see this as a potential concern. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln:

are you? Yeah, just to say on this, we can use Investment Trusts, can't we? Because they're collective they deem to be collective funds. Have you ever, I'm not sure if you can. You even have them in in Ireland car, but I've never used them. Ultra, I bet you haven't, and I bet you have

Andy Hart:

no definitely not using again, something to avoid. Yeah, my client there

Alan Smith:

used to be a few years ago. There are, as you say, Andy, there's a few advisors and just other opinion, people that are always banging on, yeah, people just sort of value and the City

Andy Hart:

of London and Edinburgh, that's famous for these types of trust. So again, the boss of this hedge fund, he said he's pointed out that although the Magnificent Seven, obviously the UX tech giants, have had a fabulous return over the last three years, the funds that he's targeting have lost money during that period. These funds. He's calling them the miserable seven. So the miserable seven have obviously lost money in three years, whereas obviously the marketing shooting the lights out. I think it's quite an interesting story. It's basically a massive raid on what he sees as untapped potential from potentially seven investment trusts. But he's focusing on five and building up

Carl Widger:

a stake. Am I right in saying that it's not necessarily the company's performance, it's the it's the the assets of the it's the reporting. Yeah, he Yeah. He just sees a gap in it in an Excel spreadsheet, and he goes, if we buy it, we're gonna basically,

Andy Hart:

yeah. I mean, this is the world we work in. So yeah, you know, financial trickery is going to end up with some random hedge fund in the US clearing a billion dollars profit from faffing around for three months by shifting paper. I can imagine same world

Alan Smith:

in New York, and some dusty Investment Trust in Edinburgh, exactly

Unknown:

in Edinburgh. I'm not

Andy Hart:

going to do the Scottish accident, but building up some, some stake in

Nick Lincoln:

our can this gentleman not fax us his questions board meeting

Unknown:

every day he buys more and more stock to, you know, bleed out this inefficiency. Andy, you're your mic

Alan Smith:

is playing out.

Andy Hart:

Is that my mouth? I think all of our mics are playing up online. Up on just yours. Is it

Nick Lincoln:

just mine? Nick, I can't tell it only happens when you speak. Andy at the minute. Oh, okay, is it

Unknown:

me? Is it better? Better now I think that's better. I thought it was Alan's, to be honest.

Andy Hart:

I thought it was Alan's as well. Yeah, it was in my ears. Okay, let's, let's

Nick Lincoln:

just bring the excitement down for the listener on this subject, because I can just, they're going to be going off the scales with this. Back to the next point, which is me. Okay, so Phil Billingham is a big character in the financial services world. He's a well known person, and when he speaks, people tend to listen. And he wrote an article in the New Model advisor, the FCA this year. It's got two reports they're going to do, or two thematic reviews. They're doing the consolidation thing, all these consolidators and ongoing reviews, and charging for it. They're going to be the two big thematic reviews coming out this year. And Phil billing has written this really good piece in the model advisor about it's crazy just to value the advice that you give or the value of your relationship based on the annual meeting. What Phil billing is saying in his piece is that if you don't carry out the annual meeting, you should not have to refund your fees. That's, that's, that's, that's, there's, there's loads more that happens outside of the annual meeting for clients is that that's not the sole part of our value proposition. Sorry, I'm just looking at this. Andrew is coming in and out of the meeting and out of the meeting and is driving me scatty. But you can't see this to TRAPPIST, so I thought, credit to him. He's absolutely right. Where advisors offer the annual meeting, if you if you Sorry, it's part of the engagement process, if you say you're going to offer the annual meeting, then you must do that without a shadow of a doubt. And if you don't, you deserve to be castigated. And there are going to be many advisors who are going to be shitting themselves over this if they're not doing it right now. Offer the annual meeting and the client, for whatever reason, can't make it, because life happens sometimes, because sometimes the client will say, actually, know what, Nick, I think we're okay. This year, not much has changed. That's fine. That's not a justification for returning the refunding fees, because we do loads more other stuff for clients in between, just the annual planning meeting and Phil billing has come out quite vocally on that, which I think is a good thing, because his voice

Carl Widger:

and as well, Nick like, you're not necessarily doing stuff directly for clients all of the time. You're doing your team and yourself are doing like, research in the background. You're staying up to date with legislation and all that kind of stuff. And you will be in touch with the client if, if required. So it's, yeah, I think that's a that's that's really good. There's microphone issues. You're gonna fill with your microphone. Can you mute Alan? Just to see if it's you, it is Alan. But anyway, yeah, I think it's a really, really well made point, Nick and fair play for putting it out there. Yeah, for sure. I also

Nick Lincoln:

got a message coming on my screen. Have you seen saying Ultra stop recording.

Andy Hart:

So this is all going mute, please. Ellen, again. Just did. I'll do it again, right? It's definitely here, and I basically refresh myself and came out

Carl Widger:

of it. Nick you, and I will continue the podcast. We will, we will

Nick Lincoln:

come back in? Yeah, maybe we saw like sparrows and we're surrounded by worms. Is that it? So

Carl Widger:

how can we soar like an eagle? Oh, yeah, flying with pigeons. Oh, that's the one

Nick Lincoln:

good map. Okay, now Alan's buggered off. Hopefully he'll come back. Okay, so we're on the final topical tidbit. We're only 44 minutes in. Look at that. Ultra Yeah, UK, cautious savers. So

Andy Hart:

this is another article via the time Sunday Times it's behind a paywall again, but they did a study. Actually, you can search it via Aberdeen. They're the ones that came out with this research or findings. Think it's still not working that well. Okay, so the UK out the g7 the g7 is the. US, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, we are the lowest contributing nation out of the g7 into shares, equities, the great companies of this world, as a percentage of our overall wealth, our personal wealth, we only invest 8% Keep It Simple in the stock market, whereas in the US, which is the number one, no surprise, very capitalistic society, and everyone seems to have an opinion on the markets. They're investing 33% of their personal wealth into the stock market, global equities. So the US is 33% Canada, 22 Italy, 19, France, 13, Germany, nine, Japan, nine, UK, eight. Just to give you some context, I'm assuming Ireland will be similar numbers. Carl, maybe a little bit less, depending on less. I was okay, yeah, maybe six, 7% or something. But around those numbers, and we have a load of money in cash, property and pensions, um, and the article saying, What can we do to increase this? Hence, what we do, spreading the knowledge, trying to get people to invest, keeping minimum amounts in cash. Nick,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, as you say, it does exclude pensions, doesn't it? So a large number, many people in this country would have a large amount of money in in shares via so well, there's other countries as well, so maybe that cancels out. So where? So if the UK has got 8% in shares and 15% in cash, the rest must be in pensions and property, then I guess you've got to make that kind of assumption.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, and I think it gets a bit murky. When we look at DB pension schemes, I think maybe at the g7 as a nation, or as a collective, whatever you want to call it, historically, we have had a bigger number of or bigger percentage of the population invested inside defined benefits pension schemes, they didn't have to be interested in the stock market. So other countries might have had a bit of a head start from that point of view in terms of their final salary. DB pension schemes might be closing down at a sort of more rapid rate than ours. It's still not good enough. I suppose

Nick Lincoln:

our DB pensions are gone, and then the bigger the biggest ones that still around, regardless of the state ones and, yeah, three biggest state pension schemes are unfunded. They're not in anything. They're in there, in there, in your next P, P, P, 60, coming in from one bucket and going out to another, straight out to the pensioners.

Alan Smith:

This is the times, yes, and it's been a quite a lot of the press. It's the it's Aberdeen, again, Yes, correct. Who've done this report? Because reading in the FT, they caught a lot more more detail. One thing that caught my eye was in ISIS ices have generally considered, considered to be a successful, tax efficient investment product, yep, because more than 22 million people have do have an ISA in the UK, but, but, but two thirds of those hold cash only. Imagine that two thirds cash only ices Are you got this nice, absolute shambles, tax free product, again, all your growth is tax free, any income. Yeah, the general public, are you putting cash? The general

Andy Hart:

public think having the ISA is

Alan Smith:

it? That is the invested

Andy Hart:

the ICER is, you know, the cup. It's important what you put inside the cup. You know, you've got a cup. It's important what you put inside. It was that, like, No, I've got an ISIS and that sorted. It was like, Well, what's inside the ICER? I was in just some crap cash account. It's like, well, there's no point having the ICER. It needs to be in a productive asset that's doing something that's compounding. Then the ISO makes sense. So again, it's it's education. Again, obviously a lot of people understand ISIS, and they've nailed it. But yeah, I think, yeah, most people are just generally quite cautious to invest. And you know, think investing in the stock market is gambling. They've all got stories about Mom Dad losing money. It's same

Alan Smith:

old, same old, same old, same old. We shared viewers talking about, I posted it, the classic Sunday Times payment fortune. Oh yes, comes out every week. I mean, I don't look at it every week. I did look at

Andy Hart:

it. This is a guy mastermindly. So barrister qualified. Barrister qualified, one master. He's now on the chase and doesn't understand the stock market. He's got zero understanding of the stock market. It's mind blowing.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, disaster in

Unknown:

every sense. It doesn't

Alan Smith:

just, I just I just don't gamble with my money. I'm smarter than that.

Andy Hart:

So he's in the top point 1% of intelligence in the UK. Yeah. And so still one chance the stock chances

Alan Smith:

everyone else got someone who's got that high IQ, he doesn't understand that the basics, as we always say, keeps us in gainful employment. Our work is never done or. Onwards, onwards. This is true.

Nick Lincoln:

And talking of onwards, we're at the 50 minute mark. So I think we can draw a line under topical tidbits and move on to the meat and potatoes of the first episode of 2020 25 episode 62 of the real advisor podcast started the year. It's a cliche, but we do do it. It seems to be a thing that we all start the year. We think, okay, we're going to have new, new ideas. We're going to change things. We're going to implement things. I've got good intentions. I've got wishes. I'm going to get I went to gym last week, Jim, I go through throughout the year. I couldn't bloody park because the car park was RAM full of people who are going to cancel the memberships in February. Cancel them now you

Andy Hart:

pass the side and park. You're doing what you're doing. You're doing V January. Aren't you? Nick, V January. V January. Vegan January, aren't you?

Nick Lincoln:

For January That sounds almost

Unknown:

no wet January is doing what I'm

Alan Smith:

talking about, alcohol consumption. I don't think it's good. I don't think day so far that you have not consumed alcohol. Is it? Is every day? Oh, it's very last Wednesday. Well, I had

Nick Lincoln:

band practice. I have to drive so to Stephen so I don't drink. Sure, there are other days. But

Unknown:

there was a bit of a chore for yourself. Anything to share with the group? Watch that you've implemented for 2025

Carl Widger:

No, not personally, not going to talk about business. Exactly. Okay. So what I thought I'd talk about is, I suppose what I see is the opportunities, but maybe some of the challenges that we have as well, and I've done a lot of work, probably prior to Christmas, and then since we've gotten back to kind of putting plans in place. And I'm always conscious of if I say to everybody that we're concentrating on too many things, well then we concentrate on nothing at all. So I'm trying to distill it down to, what are the the key couple of things that if we focus on these, we set ourselves up for success, but identifying well, what could possibly be the things that could trip us up? So for me, the things that I think we really need to focus on, we have had great momentum, right? So, good, really good. 2023 really good. 2024 and it's like, how can we bring that momentum through into 2025 and I'm a massive believer in this, right? That once the you the momentum stops, or you lose the momentum, it's really hard. It's like stopping a train, right? It's hard to get the train up and running and going again. So obviously, our challenge over the last few years, as we've grown, we've more than doubled in size in the team, so it's to keep that momentum going whilst we're adding all the new people. So for me, it's momentum, momentum, momentum. However, you have to be mindful, if you're looking for the momentum that we do have 25 people in the team now, so that we have to maybe put in some, I don't know, rules or regulations, or maybe just get a little bit more bureaucratic than we were, because I need to make sure that the that the advice that's been delivered is consistent across the business. So on the one hand, I don't want to lose our nimbleness or our effectiveness, um, by being really flexible, but on the other hand, I need to make sure that people are sticking to systems and processes. So for me, it's the it's keep that momentum. Can we really fine tune our systems and processes and make sure people are actually sticking to them? It's all well and good, writing stuff down and having a and then you should do this and that, you know, it's right. What are we actually doing? You know, client by client. So I think that that's kind of really key for us. I think the opportunities for us are, whilst it's a threat, having the bigger team, I think is a huge opportunity for us, because obviously we've got a lot more met as Ireland ambassadors out there. So we've a lot more people at, you know, various events extolling the virtues of financial planning and then on that for absolute sure, I've never been more optimistic about the fact that financial planning in its truest form and sense are becoming, is becoming much more mainstream here, and people are beginning a little bit like what we said earlier on. You know about the index investing, that that has become much more mainstream. People understand it, and people are looking for it and people want it. I think the same thing is happening here, where we've often said this, we're 1015 minutes, 1015 years behind where the UK were, but I think there are some I'm in the ideas exchange here, and not only just in that group, but in there are lots of other firms now starting just to talk about financial planning. So I think that's a huge opportunity for us, because all. All of us who are out there extolling the virtues of financial planning first and foremost, and only financial planning first and foremost. We won't do anything else. Until you do your financial plan. The more of us doing that, we will eat the lunch of those big wealth managers stock brokers. We really will, because clients will go, Oh, I get all that. You'll be able to tell me, am I going to be okay? And it's going to be probably a good bit cheaper than what I'm paying at the moment. So I think there's a lot of people, a lot of clients, going to start coming to that realization. I'm excited for what we're going to be doing in the digital video space. We're redoing our website at the moment as well. So that's all kind of very exciting. We have good big plans, I suppose, for to try and generate inbound leads from our marketing. We haven't really, to be honest, succeeded in doing that. However, I would say that we've always invested in marketing, and I have absolutely no doubt that that's beginning to pay off, because I won't say metta is far from a household name here, but the people are beginning to become aware of who we are and what we're about. So I think that has paid off, and I'm hoping to see that generate kind of more opportunities. So that's kind of a few notes that I scribble down. As I said, I, I'm, I'm, I am conscious. Of course, when you're, you know, when you're leading the business, you're, there's so many things flying around in my head, and I have to distill them down and rule loads of stuff out and say, okay, that they're not important. Here are the really important things, and for me, they're the important issues that we focus on for 2025 So who's next? Who'd like to tell us about their ideas for 2025

Nick Lincoln:

okay, I will step into the breach. I don't this may not come as much of a surprise to the trap pack or the trappers. I don't really have any. I then I don't have your situation gone. I think, yeah, if I was in your shoes looking at a firm with 25 staff and more, and the one thing you said there, which would give me absolutely massive, course concerns, making sure the investment is consistent across the advisor the client gets the same would get the same advice, regardless of who she was sitting in front of that absolutely has to be parent. But because of myself and ultra that doesn't apply. So I don't have any. I'm it's just a case of keeping on keeping on, keeping on top of things. I To me, it's 31st December, 2024 is not it's just the same as the first of January. 2025 I don't have that. I've never had that New Year's resolution thing. Just, yeah, I haven't just try and get a bit fitter, try and be a bit more tolerant. I know I can sometimes be very direct and disagreeable. I do work on that medication wearing off. That's that's me. But maybe we'll go to storyteller and then Ultra because then again, they'll mix it up a little bit more on this one. But may 2025, get to the end and get to it alive. That's my goal.

Alan Smith:

What was he you said in a past episode, your goal was to wake up, wake up dry bed, to

Nick Lincoln:

wake up first, then to wake up to a dry and then I did it to a dry mattress.

Unknown:

Double headed girl. Hashtag, life goals, dreaming, big Carl, dreaming big

Alan Smith:

car's coming up with all this other big macro stuff just to wake up to a dry mattress. Oh, good enough. Oh, God, a bit like Carl, I can be kind of all over the place in my thinking and plans, and there's about million different ideas that you could have. I was I watched over the holidays, a podcast interview with Satya Nadella, who is the CEO of Microsoft. If any of you saw it on the camera, what it's called, but it was sort of tech podcast. He doesn't do very many podcasts, very, very interesting guy. He is the single most successful CEO in history in terms of increases to market cap. He, since he took over a CEO of Microsoft, they've added 2 trillion, yeah, 2 trillion of value under his his guidance. So that is a he's someone to maybe pay a little bit of attention to, in terms of leading a business, obviously, in a micro sort of way in my in my experience, but what I was intrigued about, because he was interviewed, and he said, Well, what, what did you do? What you know when you came in? He said, I was very intrigued by the concepts of what he calls pattern matching, pattern matching so effectively, let's identify so in the long and in illustrious history of that organization called Microsoft. They've had some great things, great products, great services, breakthroughs. Then they've made some really bad decisions, and they've gone sideways. Maybe they tried to do 1000 different things and got most of them wrong. So he reflected back on the journey that they'd been on. He looked for specific things, innovations, ideas, that. Really sort of brought them through the into the next level. He said, we're just going to concentrate on those and maybe repeat some things we've done in the past and innovate in a similar sort of fashion as we've done before. Because imagine what the the opportunity must be a company like that. You know, one point the biggest company in the world, but, you know, huge, multi trillion dollar business. So he was all about again, simplicity and pattern matching. Let's repeat. And I just thought, that's the thing to do. That is the right thing to do. And I had, I spent a little bit of time just thinking about, in my over 20 year history as a business, there have been a few things, not not hundreds, three or four, where we've been ticking along, doing fine, and then we suddenly be broke through, and our sort of revenues and our clients and our situation just improved significantly. Without going to a huge amount of detail, a couple of ones, we think some of you guys know, we opened a couple of partnerships. I want to call them sort of joint ventures with organizations that occupy the same spaces we do, like, for example, corporate finance, M and A teams who sell businesses. And if I look back now, the maybe the, a huge proportion of our biggest and best clients have come from that those partnerships, and we kind of let them drift a little bit. We didn't. We sort of, you know, it's one of these classic things is working so well, we'll stop doing it. We'll stop nurturing and we'll stop developing it. So we looked at that, I looked at that thought. And I've got lots of opportunities, but just never really followed them through. So partnerships, I think, is going to be a big, big part of 2025 for us, another thing that we did as well, we've been, I mean, Carl, you're kind of, I believe you're doing this, or you have done this in the past. You're certainly doing it at the moment. Was making strategic hires. There are some really good people out there. They've got loyal clients that really want to work with them, but they're no longer loving the environment they're working in. Kind of alluding to some of the conversations we've had before. There has been lots of sort of takeovers and mergers and the advice sector, and there's some very good people working in organizations that they no longer have the love for, because maybe there's a private equity buyout, or maybe they're being squeezed. Maybe they've been told to squeeze their clients into portfolios that they no longer believe in, because it's better for the PE owners. So, and we've done that successfully in the past, and we've, you know, we've brought in advisor advisors who have, you know, got loyal clients, and they work with them, and you do it all above board illegally. There are non competes and everything else, but those are things, if you can bring in an advisor with whatever you know, 50 million, 70,000,008 100 million of assets, who fits the culture, all those other things, of course, fit in culturally to the business. And so we've done that in the past. And I thought, well, there are opportunities, I know for sure. So this idea of just think of that maybe one or two, definitely no more than three less is more things that have worked well for you in the past applies to your personal life as well. When were you at your best? And then focus on those, as opposed to try to do 10 different things, focus on one or two that you know, for sure, has worked well in the past. That's it. And for sure, that's it, yeah, yeah, that's, that's it. Just distill it all down, simplify the whole thing. And, you know, the thing I was thinking about, because, as I say, we're, we're a mature business. We've got great number of clients. The you know, our revenues are, you know, highly predictable, like all of us, ours are, and there's a great temptation to, you know, maybe to coast or, you know, we will always pick up a few referrals every year. Just the nature of the beast. People's lives are changing. They're planning for something. There's some life event, and you've got to decide, because all these other, these things I'm talking about, they involve effort, energy, costs, risk, all those other things. And so there's a great temptation to just, I mean this with love and respect, Nick, but you know, to do a Nick Lincoln, and just, you know, you Nick, you, you get a few referrals. You get people will find you on the internet. Whatever you get enough every year without you needing or wishing to do anything else. So and

Nick Lincoln:

I don't get web crawlers, and I get to all my referrals. There's all referrals. Yes,

Alan Smith:

you get most good advisors do you should get a few, at least a few referrals every year. So we would always get those as well. So I have to reflect in my own and my personal situation, the company situation, what, why, what's kind of, what's the North Star, what's the why? And without getting all sort of melodramatic about it, I'll tell you one thing that's happened in the last couple of weeks and over the holidays, I you know, we've, we've started the year with seven new prospects, if you like. They've just come in and and of course, you would expect this, you know, it's a classic thing like going to the gym. People say, right, I've got to sort out my personal finances to be a busier period of time than others. But I've had the opportunity just to speak to not all of those, but a few of those potential clients of ours, and they've shared some of their data and their information. I think I've showed you guys some of it, or shared the some. Some of the headlines. And it is not uncommon to see somebody who's hired a, you know, whatever you want to call them, wealth manager, discretionary fund portfolio, Admiral manager, etc, and then looking at the one I saw the other days, paying 2.5% two and a half percent fees per year. And I'm like, a broken record, because this stuff comes up time and time again. No planning, no structure, no organization. Is money management is sub optimal. Money management, you know, forming the benchmark index two and a half percent. And I kind of, I don't know why, but I just, I get on the verge of being angry about it, and I take it almost as a personal crusade, yeah, because I still, I still talk about, this is families. This is people's money, people's retirement, people everything else. And I really dislike it. And so for that reason, as much as anything else, and I want to continue to grow the business and recruit and hi to Olive. He's listening. We've had our second advisor that we've just hired in the last six or seven months, and you guys just joined us. So of course, I want to, you know, bring in great new people into the business, win new clients. But what, that's one of the things that does drive me this is not for, you know, self enrichment myself, we're doing fine, but I do want to be, you know, a voice of the truth and a voice of just telling people what the what the reality is about managing their wealth, creating financial security and independence for them and their family. And I just want to keep doing it, and so that, you know, within reason, the more the more the better. So I think that's another thing. That's the last point. I'll say, is you do need a bit of a North Star. You just, once you get in a, you know, when I started, you take on any client, but now that we're mature business, I need something that to drive me personally and drive the team. And I think we are all and most of the people, if not all the people listening to this in the advisory space, are a force for good. So we should be pushing forward. We should be looking to win new business and new clients, because we, you know, ultimately, we help people. And there's some other organizations out there, sadly, in my opinion, they don't who help

Unknown:

themselves. Yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

very well said, Very well said, I think that's absolutely is a crusade. When you come across some of these. I mentioned it in that pretty big last episode 60. It must have been the last one she did before the best of episode 61 but episode 60, I mentioned this. This, this lady who's coming on, sorry. Husband and wife coming on board, and they, they've got this, they've got this portfolio, a GIA with 30, maybe 28 lines, individual lines of stock. You know, funds the overlap. Every fund has got Nvidia, every fund has got Microsoft. They were being charged 1% a year. She was getting no planning. And this is a highly driven, really competent, high achieving lady, a delegator who just wants to know what she is. She going in the right direction, and she was getting none of it. And it absolutely makes my bloody blood boy. It's not illegal, yeah, but I think it's immoral. And we, yeah, that's our crusade. It's just to get and get people away from them. And if that's a negative driver of your, of your energy for the year. Well, maybe, but turn into a positive. You're doing so much good by getting people away from those people. Yeah. Well said. Alan Ultra, what are your what do you're a man from list. You've probably got an app that's told you what you should be doing for this year. Tell us what the apps telling you to do.

Andy Hart:

I'll tell you what the apps telling me to do. My years sort of panned out, mapped out, so I'll give you a bit of a insight into what I'm up to. So I pretty much wake up on the first of January, and I know what I've got installed for the year, included in that is 26 trap podcasts every other week around Maven advisor, my advice business. I'm a solo advisor like Nick. No plans to employ any other advisors, but I might build out the team as things develop, but I've got 40 annual planning meetings, financial mots to do in quarter one, I'm maximum looking to take on maybe another five client families this year. The business is well run in the background in terms of the team looking after it, but tighten up the compliance, but much of the same. Really, nothing else to really worry about there. Carl alluded to it loosely, but we've had two positive years in the stock market. Who knows what's around the corner? Obviously, that's just investment performance, not one of the main things we do, but preparing clients during the good times is something that is is advisable humans under management. Suppose the business that takes up most of my brain space. I got two conferences this year. I've got Cape Town in September. The big change is I'm moving to a new venue for London. So that's what I'm very excited and very apprehensive about. So I'm going from 350 to basically 500 a venue just up the road. So I'm in the stages of putting all that together, which should be exciting. So yeah, I've sort of out sold the last two or three conferences in London quite comfortably, you know, a few months before mike off or the conference starts, so the natural thing is to continue to grow. So yeah. I'll see how I get on with that. On that business, I produce content every single month for members. Hum, premium now is up to about 350 members, hopefully at the end of the year, will be up to 500 so that's taken a lot of time. We're building out the team there. We just employed a new designer. We got a new person doing videos. So that's all continuing to happen. Final points, my training days are pretty much booked out. I'll do about 30 training days a year. They're pretty much booked out. So as I say, my entire diary is pretty much blocked out. And then obviously I've got kids and life in between. It All. One thing I might do is relaunch my podcast Maven, money not, not gonna do it weekly, which is a killer. I think I might do it. Bi weekly got quite concentrated. You know, listenership, I got quite a few things to say. So maybe the bi weekly might, might fit into my calendar, but I don't need to. Why?

Unknown:

Why would you do that to don't really know,

Andy Hart:

I did 300 episodes back to back, so it was basically five years straight. At the end of it, I was shattered. It's been the best thing I've ever done in terms of marketing, adding value to people that need assistance. You know, free financial education. It's led to a lot of stuff in the advisor community, even with my, with my paid for businesses

Unknown:

and the ultra crippenarian Andy, he knows about everything, and he can't be told anything. His name is Andrew Hart. Andrew Hart, yeah, so the podcast.

Carl Widger:

The reason I'm asking is I suppose my focus is to take on that as little as possible, and to try, because this is what I always do, like I'd say, gone too way too much. And every single year I get to the last quarter and I am running out of steam, big time it is not going to happen. So, like, I'm really trying my best to do less and less client work, do the bits that I love, because I'll sit in with the first meeting, or maybe even true with the when new clients, because I love doing it and but then, and just be really specific, early, early days, I just sitting in, just to get you up and running, and then I'm out of here, and then here's, here's the team that are going to look after you. So, so I'm slow to take anything on. So that's, that's the only reason

Alan Smith:

it's a strange dynamic. Carl, as you know, we've talked about this in the past, because, you know, I've gone through that, and I'm still largely in that world. And it feels because, whatever people might think of us, we are grafters. We put all of us, I think we put an effort in. And it feels weird sometimes to think, well, I've got nothing significant in my calendar this week, or nothing, you know, big, important client meetings or something. It's more kind of strategic or thinking or joining some dots as well. And it's just when you evolve into that role. Just

Nick Lincoln:

so you know, dear TRAPPIST Ultras gone to answer the door. We did hear the door knocking before he muted himself. Andrew, yet again, sorry, sorry to proceed.

Alan Smith:

No, that's it. What question for Andy, you going? You're going large with hum London, going large with home London, yet moving to a new venue. The issue is, is there a space in this enlarged space, humans, space for Nick Lincoln, all his glory, keynote speaker since you canceled him a few years ago, himself now, Alan, but we've, we've The world's changed. You've got Trump's coming in. The woke stuff is over. You can Nick. Nick can return in his in his glory.

Carl Widger:

The de eyes will be canceled. See what he wants. Yeah, everyone and be no checking of your presentation. Any ever again. That was all you very mean. That was really mean. No one now

Nick Lincoln:

checks my presentations go, hence the mess. I mean, I

Andy Hart:

made him. I made him famous. Now we're just trying to

Carl Widger:

manage it, managing Alge, yes, exactly. Come here. Is there? Is there? Is there a risk? Andy going to book the larger place and you don't sell tickets? Are is there

Andy Hart:

not, not really. Well, sorry, of course, there is risk and everything, but hopefully not in terms of the numbers the room, yes, is 450 you have to underwrite it for 350 so if I sell more than 350 which I'm hopefully comfortably going to do then I'm not, you know, out, yeah, okay, yeah, I reckon I could in the next couple of years. I've got my eye on my final venue, but the final venue's got 700 seats, so I'm hoping by 27 I'll probably be in the 700 capacity, and that will be the humans i. Management London conference maxed out. But, yeah, trying to add a few more tweaks and changes to it. But the format, I believe, works, and the timings work, the timings of the speakers work, the timings of the breaks work. It's one stream. How we prepare the speakers works. Yeah. So I attend a lot of other conferences, and every time they try and, you know, muck around with a format that I think works. So anyway, here's an

Nick Lincoln:

offer from from me and the other members the Track Pack. Don't don't feel afraid to mention harm on this show.

Andy Hart:

I won't mate. Don't worry. Don't worry. Okay, I'll keep banging the drum. It's hard to know. It consumes me. It's all I freaking do. Okay? We got to

Nick Lincoln:

think where we are now, in 15 minutes in we still got to do TRAPPIST questions. We still got to do country. Anything more to say about what I think the I one thing, I will say that I'm looking forward to, but it's not like to do. It's just the evolution of trap. You know, the last two years have been great. We've got another trap live that's going to be fun, but that's gonna happen organically. As far as I'm concerned, it's just gonna be a thing, and we're gonna be a thing, and we're gonna work damn hard on it, but it's not a goal to make it better. It will be better because we want it to be better.

Andy Hart:

Oh yeah, that was on my list in terms of the business of trap, where we're going with it. We're trying to mature the brand by doing Rand, you know, live events. Are we going to do an academy faffing around with it? Are we going to work with with a brand partner? So these are all sort of on the I mean, we're going to mature later discussions.

Alan Smith:

Start taking it seriously.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, a couple of years, and we've got to a certain point, we know there's a lot of value in it. We want it to be a win. Win, win. People, you know, you partner with us. It's a win. It's a win for us. It's a win at the end. And listeners, so, yeah, trap, yeah. And if anyone is anyone, trap will be quite a big thing in 2025 Yeah,

Alan Smith:

if anyone's listening has got things, ideas, things. You think it would be great if you guys did x, we're open to ideas. The

Nick Lincoln:

Capital Asset Manager,

Unknown:

if anybody wants to be the boss, right, good luck.

Alan Smith:

Lincoln, right. What's next? Boss?

Nick Lincoln:

What's next is, well, I think we're going to have to say we've done meetup. Meet some potatoes. Damn good. No. Sorry, that was not me. That was not me. That was not me doing an Irish one that sounds bad as well. Oh God, keep on digging right. Let's move on to let's move on to TRAPPIST questions. Because I can see posters at the front door. What I can't see is a little thing that I press to make the front door sound drop. So I'm cocking this up as well. Trappist questions. There we go. Okay, so post is at the front door. Trappist questions. If you've got a question you'd like to put to put to the trap pack dear Travis listeners, click on the link in the so called show notes, click on the link in the pinned tweet on x, and we will get to them. We're currently going, we're at July last year. So these questions are from July last year that we're going to go through now. One of them are going to go through quite quickly. One of them is going to take you about half an hour to read out. The first one we're going to go through quite quickly is from two from Trappist. Michael Reed. He's on LinkedIn, so I'll put a link to his LinkedIn profile there. He's called his firm, Michael Reed, Wealth Management. He got some consultants into do a branding on that, and that was a very good name they came up with. Michael asks, How are you all using spousal bypass, trust in death benefit planning? Question mark, so he's a very subjective question. He assumes that we're using them. I don't typically use them. I'm going to get shot down now here by pension tech is maybe with the changes, the muted changes, because they're not coming until April 2027 with the muted changes to pension inheritance and inheritance tax thing, they'll become relevant. I couldn't, kind of see the point of them. For the vast number of client situations that I've got with my client families, I get it if you've got a big pension fund and you've got minors, and if you pass away, you might not want the money going to the children when they're minors. You might put it, but that's about the only thing I can see where you'd use them. Andrew,

Unknown:

no, yeah, I agree with you. Nick, nothing further to add. Okay,

Nick Lincoln:

that's very good. And I don't think Carl, well, I know. I'm sorry. I'm making an assumption that Carl spousal by cross trust in Ireland, a thing yes or no. Okay, it's a shrug and Alan. Well, if you,

Alan Smith:

if we, if they do fall under inheritance tax, if the pension, then they've got, surely tell Alan

Unknown:

knife to gun fight. Let's move on. You can't

Nick Lincoln:

use them to get the money outside of the estate without paying tax. The next question, well, the next it's a essay. This is from D, H, B, D, spell D, W, E, and then H, B, I mean, sounds like a pencil. Firstly, great podcast. Love the content. Listening to you guys and a few others inspired me to take the leap to become a financial advisor. I'm very newly qualified, having recently completed the diploma, which I self funded to aid a career change. Good on you, fella, or fell less well, sort of. I've been a financial services for a few years, but I'm currently on impact. Boyd, I know Nick loves a question that's more than two lines, so brace yourself. DHB, I am totally braced onto the second paragraph of 86 I've actively been seeking work within the profession, back office or trainee advisor role, and I find myself shoehorned into one avenue and Academy recruiters and most job opportunities are looking for two to five years experience. So my question is, Jesus Christ, the sun's still up. So my question is, where the new advisors go to to gain this experience. If no one wants them except the academies, there are minimal roles within independent firms, and it's therefore extremely competitive. Quote, The industry is crying out for new advisors. End quote, they said they're all getting old and retiring. They said, yet the new advisor has an incredibly difficult time finding work, and some recruiters belittle you for having no experience within an IFA firm. If you're expecting to earn in excess of 25k in any role, do you have any other tips other than perseverance? Because it's wild out there. I've studied whilst juggling family life and full time work up until recently, and would like to work in the field, if possible. My hope was to set up a business from scratch, but I've been scared off that to Track Pack please advise or discuss. Thank you for all your input. Just just the

Andy Hart:

discussion point on this, before we get into the specifics of the question. You know, incentives drive behavior. Do you think the recruiters are massively incentivized to direct these people towards academies rather than firms. For example, are the academies paying a lot more than the firms are? Well, I imagine the Academy of products, you know, they have deeper

Unknown:

products pockets, right? They would have deeper

Andy Hart:

pockets. Can't speak a question that's sort of new to me, just to think about that, this is the age old question, isn't it, in this profession, you know, I'm dead keen. I've got my exams, I've got no clients. I'm bringing in no income, but pay me loads of money. I know it's not the case. And well done for doing your exams off your own back. I did the same many, many years ago. You just got to take a job anywhere on machine. It's tough the apprenticeship stage. I would take

Nick Lincoln:

your point you made in the previous episode Ultra. I would just write a really good, a really attractive CV and or have a website, yeah, your website with your profile, but something different, and send it on to those firms that you you know, there's the firms that you listen to, you read about, you might be one of the firms involved here. And just do that. Be creative. Yeah, I hate this word proactive, but, you know, using a recruiter is kind of reactive, isn't it? Well, be proactive. Bypass those buggers and

Andy Hart:

no emails. Send no emails. Pick up the phone. Pick up the phone, speak to a human, and they say, unfortunately, gonna have to send us an email. Then you do it or not. Send dry emails.

Nick Lincoln:

Write a letter, write a letter. Write a letter. Yeah, write a letter. But that's what I would do just and it's easy to find that there are, you know, we, I know we sometimes berate this profession, but there are so many really, really good firms out there that would bite the hand off someone like this, who, you know, you've self funded your way through your diploma. You're holding down a job where you're looking to work in this into this profession. You're obviously keen, you're obviously on the front foot. You're a self starter. You can write very long paragraphs. You know, these are all skills that are very valuable in financial planning. I would just go out there and reach out to reach out to me, yeah,

Carl Widger:

but there's a point made into question, I think I only read it once, to say that there are no roles available in independent firms or something like, something like that.

Andy Hart:

Well, it's just this rhetoric, isn't it? Like the industry is crying out for new advisors. Then you're a new advisor. You hear no cries. I understand that because I heard that when I was coming into

Carl Widger:

this business, like try and get a job in a firm like Allen's or like mine. There are, there's loads of opportunities.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, recruiters saying that, I'm reading the

Carl Widger:

question, recruiter is going to get get Bogar all for 25 grand salary, right? So you go directly to get

Andy Hart:

a bit of a bigger payday for the academies. That's what I'm interested in. This question,

Carl Widger:

if you go directly to Alan say, Hey Alan, here's my CV. Yeah, and I'd be really interested. And I'm I'd love to 82 our pod system is, is client service, financial planner, private client manager. I'd love to start in the client service role, and I'd love to develop, you know, through your business and and two things will happen if you progress right, you'll either love Alan Smith's business and the clients, and you'll you'll stay there, and you'll become, it'll be really lucrative for you, because you'll be highly successful, or you'll get one bloody hell of a great experience. And you'll go, Yeah, I can actually, I want to do this my own way. And, you know, go, go off and do it your own way. It's Alan's job, or any business owner's job, to make it so good where you are, so that you won't leave. But ultimately, some people will leave. That's okay too.

Andy Hart:

Also in the question they've mentioned, my hope was to set up a business from scratch. But I've been scared off that too. From where, why? What? Right? That is also quite tricky. From Scratch,

Nick Lincoln:

incredibly experience of actually advising people, and you haven't worked in this thing of ours, that it's bad enough when you've been doing it with within a firm for 10 years, and then you go on your own, I would not do that again. Ultra, you made the point. Really, do you want to join a rubbish firm and see how it's not done and then join a really good firm? Don't

Unknown:

you understand? And then, too soon, but I

Nick Lincoln:

would be very brave to go out in your own from if you're changing professions. That's I would, really, I would, I would advise against that, my friend,

Alan Smith:

this is quite close to my heart. There's, there's a number of things I'm involved with, by the way, this thing about don't go out, don't start a business by yourself, I don't agree. It depends on, it depends on two things. It depends on your entrepreneurial spirit. If you, if you have the ability to do that, not everyone has, few have, but some do and and the other thing is,

Andy Hart:

if you, if you've got a balance sheet, how much money you

Alan Smith:

got the balance sheet? Yeah, can you afford to live on your savings for a year to 18 months? Is the second thing, the practicalities of assuming you're going to earn nothing, no. Other thing is the money side

Nick Lincoln:

is irrelevant. You could, you could have a million. Could be you're never going to learn the skills you need to learn unless you see other advisors doing you need to sit in on meetings. Well, it's not this thing is not easy to get people to take the actions they have to take. Is really, really hard, and you have to develop a skill set over a number of years. And you can, I think you need to do by surrounding yourself with really good advisors in good firms. In an

Alan Smith:

ideal situation. You do if, literally, you can't get in the door anywhere, maybe you have a go starting yourself, all I would say is, it's unlikely, but don't completely eliminate it. There is lots of again, joining a couple of dots here. Listen to the Verve program about setting up your own business that we mentioned already, and check out the links on that, because they will be able to help you. And there is mentoring provided within that ongoing experience. DHB will be

Andy Hart:

a prime candidate for that if DHB is the person who wants this question,

Alan Smith:

okay, yes, DHB, but this, this was, this a question from last summer.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, July

Unknown:

probably working either, okay, too

Alan Smith:

late. Just got caught up by the couple of other brief points on this. I'm kind of, you know, unofficially mentoring. There's a kid, I say He's 2022, or something, who is a graduate. He's an older brother of one of my son's friends, and he's got a degree in, you know, good degree in Kings in London, and I think economics and finance and he really wants to get into, he loves this, you know, kind of the investment management side of things. Management side of things. And so he was, but he wasn't getting any luck getting work. So I, I've met him a couple of times, and sort of given him, and I said, Look, I can't, I don't know too much about getting in working for JP Morgan or something, but I do, I do think that financial planning is a great profession. And I think you've, if you've got an aptitude for numbers, and you've got the ability to speak to people and and I've, you know, I've put them in a contact and community, communicate with a few people, and he's progressing that right now, and the Academy is coming up as an option, and he's just way weighing it up. It's just a way of getting in, getting into our sector, possibly, to your point, Carl, and just stand standing out. I got a again just before Christmas. See a an unsolicited CV with a really nice cover letter, but in the mail, in the post, it's not an email. I mean, I guess so many emails, I could even miss an email, and it has to really stand out. So a letter in the post, lovely covering email and a quite a compelling story about this particular person, and they've been in other industries and what have you. And there was, I don't know if I've got to put it on the gift register, but it was a, it was a box of chocolates before Christmas. And I thought, I think, you know, we think, well, that stands out. It's, you know, we Yeah, well done. Well, you have a lint Swiss chocolate and whilst you're reviewing the letter, but you know, at least it stood out So, long story short, and maybe at the risk of repeating what's already been said, it is, it is hard to break in if you haven't done it, done so otherwise. And so every single day, do your research. Look at company websites, get in touch, pick up the phone, or write a well crafted letter. The other thing is, more and more advisors, I'm noticing are on LinkedIn, and they're connecting in LinkedIn and they're active on LinkedIn. Go to LinkedIn. Do your research. Come up with something compelling that's not can you give me a job? Look at what they publish. Maybe look at their website. Maybe they focus on a particular area. Maybe you've got an idea. Write a blog about their particular thing, or come up with a, you know, a suggestion, a solution, something that's going to make you stand out and but trying to every day, I promise you, if you send out 10 letters a day or a week. But they were personalized. It's not a mass mailing. Yes, it takes longer, but your chances of success a getting engaged with it are so much higher. By the way, the guy who sent me the chocolate stuff before Christmas, we're not recruiting for that role, but I'm meeting him this week. I'm going to meet him in person, have a cup of coffee, and give him the benefit of my wisdom, because I respect the time and the effort that he's put into. You'd

Andy Hart:

do anything for a box of chocolates, wouldn't you? Well, I did it. I did it

Alan Smith:

for you all those years ago when you were getting started and you didn't even give me a box of chocolates. And look what

Unknown:

that's got you now. Cup of coffee and a donut, yeah,

Alan Smith:

something like that. Okay, and so, yeah, there is, you make the effort, reach out, connect, but offer something that stand out, and it's different, and it's not just a duplication of everything else that advises, oh, sorry.

Andy Hart:

The other thing is, join next gen, next gen panners, if you've not done that already, just a community forum. Yeah, good, very good point where lots of this stuff is being discussed, and people, you're pretty, pretty much day one into the the profession. It's not even really, you know, in industry, they don't quite know what they're going to do. So, yeah, I can't recommend that next gen planners. Uh, enough. So sign up for that if you haven't already, which you probably will know about that if you know about us. We're sort of step three or four down the line. Now, in terms of new people into this

Nick Lincoln:

profession, Okey, dokey, brilliant. Well, we're giving that very, very good run that question. Thanks DHB for your question. Listen, we're Christ. We're 91 minutes here. Can we just go a quick focus culture corner, please for our beloved trap? Sure. Pists,

Carl Widger:

ritual podcast, part one and part two, it is the summary of 2024 Best Bits. It's really brilliant, and will give you a good feel for the actual Rich Roll podcast. And you might like love two or three minute segment with some of the people that he interviewed, and you'd then go and find that full interview. I love the Rich Roll podcast. It's brilliant.

Andy Hart:

Good stuff. Over to me. It's a new TV series called land man. Has anyone come across this? Billy Bob Thornton, John Hamm, who's Don Draper in Mad Men and Demi Moore, it's awesome. It's all about the oil fields in Texas and people going out there and securing the the land leases and then getting all the the crews to build the, you know, the roads and the oil rigs and the, well, it's absolutely freaking amazing. Uh, definitely check it out. Thanks. On paramount, plus, I could

Alan Smith:

be wrong. Yeah, I can't, I can't face another subscription. I looked, I looked for it. I've got all these subscriptions, but I don't

Andy Hart:

have just coming out of everywhere. You just get subscriptions everywhere, yeah? Disney, Paramount. You need a consultant. Clicks, Amazon, yeah, they're everywhere. Can't get away from it, mate. Welcome to the subscription world. It's called a land man brilliant on paramount. Plus, I think, over to you. Nicholas,

Nick Lincoln:

okay, thank you. So with there is a powerful sense of malaise and bit of sense of doom and gloom in the air in the UK at the moment, I can't deny it. And the only thing new in the world is the history you don't yet know. And if you want to know a bit about your history and where we've been on the similar route before, I recommend two brilliant books by the historian Dominic sandbrook. The first one is called state of emergency, 1970 to 74 and then seasons in the sun, 1974 to 79 just decades. That just describes that decade. Politics, yeah, sure. But also culture, pop music, general themes, sport, really, really readable books, and then they've got four, 500 pages each. They're quite big tone, but they're on kindle the minute for like, four quid, five quid each. I would highly recommend those two books.

Andy Hart:

Is one negative, one positive, but it's the same decade, just to get the gist of that. No, it's there's just this decade split over two books and a state of emergency. Quite negative. And seasons in there both. They're both just name

Nick Lincoln:

the title, they're both quite negative. I mean, reflective. What was going on? I mean, the 70s, yeah, season the sun was a song, wasn't it? BY TERRY's in the sun, way before my time, way before I was born, 79 is coming up to the inception of Andrew saying, heart not a million miles

Alan Smith:

away. Just because you weren't born doesn't mean you've never heard the song. Yeah? There was just this outfit the Beatles before I was born. Never heard of them.

Unknown:

Yeah? This Beethoven guy, you're a similar enough decade. He's gonna relive it.

Nick Lincoln:

Crack On last one,

Alan Smith:

as you well in the beginning of the year now. And as you guys know, I live my life like a corporate athlete.

Unknown:

Fast in January, I've

Alan Smith:

actually got it was credit, credit to actually, so far we've I'm the only, maybe I'm the only one who hasn't come up with a kind of lifestyle type thing, whether it's IKEA wardrobes, in Hart's case, or what's your rucksack, but backpacks, Carl, was it? Yeah, we ever love that kind of like, make life lifestyle related one, actually, it was. Heart, who got me into this concept at first, then with mindful chef, but I've pivoted, and I've now used that Green Chef, which is a, what do you call these? A food delivery. They get, they send you the ingredients of the food, and you kind of put it together yourself. And so I use this one, calls Green Chef, Green Chef, and it's really good, because in terms of managing my health and everything else, you know, having less I opt for the low carb, the Keto thing, because every time I love eating bread and pasta, every time I eat it, I just got

Unknown:

a big birthday coming up soon. So

Alan Smith:

Green Chef is a food delivery company. I posted a link, an affiliate link. If someone downloads it, they get a free meal, and so do I. But it's really good. I really like it. And they deliver three, three meals a week after

Andy Hart:

the big birthday. Do you get a discount? A special discount, after the big birthday,

Unknown:

you get a free meal.

Alan Smith:

But anyway, it's very good. It's I recommend it. And good for healthy. Good food,

Unknown:

good food, good food.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, don't try. Don't try the eating business with your mouth. Taping the two don't go together. And that's something else we've picked up in

Alan Smith:

the previous show, IKEA wardrobe with the IQ. Okay, 9096

Nick Lincoln:

minutes in streaming. I think we've done everything, haven't we? On the on the agenda? Yes, we have. So that's it, dear TRAPPIST, as episode 62 comes to a close, and another part of trap slides down the U bend of Father Time. Thank you for your precious time, dear Trappist. Do rate and review us. Six out of five stars is a mandatory minimum. Like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Register Your Interest in trap live. 14th of May, it's going to come along like that, and we'll be upon us before we know what's going on. But until the next time from the trap back trap pack, I can't speak from the trap pack, it's adios. Take out there and we'll see you on the other side. Goodbye, goodbye,

Unknown:

see you up kicked.

Alan Smith:

Nick you think you need to have a drink you can't speak you.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Nick Lincoln

Host
Head Shot

Alan Smith

Co-host
Head Shot

Andy Hart

Co-host
Head Shot

Carl Widger

Co-host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Maven Money Personal Finance Podcast Artwork

Maven Money Personal Finance Podcast

Andy Hart: Personal Finance Expert, Financial Planner, Financial Adviser, F