TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

79 - Consolidator Conflicts

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 79

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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

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Unknown:

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

Nick Lincoln:

Yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 79 of the real advisor podcast t up a Beat Trap. My name is indeed Nick Lincoln, and joining me as ever in the digital studio of doom are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Two of us are in this country. Storyteller and myself, della vocci is in the USA. Ultra is in South Africa. Gentlemen, give us a quick backstory as to why you are in such far flung outposts.

Andy Hart:

Ladies. Ladies, first I,

Carl Widger:

I am in Florida, in Pensacola, because my daughter is today, starting on a scholarship at the Pensacola State College. She's studying and playing football, as you guys would know it's soccer as we would know it in Ireland. So it was all let's stress from getting here because of student visa issues that we had to go through and jump through hoops and blah, blah, blah, but we are here, and we've been here since Saturday, and she begins a huge adventure today. So best of luck to her.

Alan Smith:

And Hey, Carl, did you have your social media posts reviewed at the border at the arrival, or did you spend a lot last weekend?

Carl Widger:

I'm hardly going to comment on anything now. Okay, my daughter's opportunity. Bye, bye. Alan, fair enough.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, excellent stuff on ultra

Andy Hart:

I'm in sunny Cape Town. Yeah, I've got my humans under management South Africa conference tomorrow, so I flew over on Saturday or Sunday morning, so getting everything sorted out and organized for that. But obviously, I'm wedded to the cause of trap, so I've carved the time out, and I'm on my balcony, actually, on the 34th floor in central Cape Town. This is not a virtual background. You've got table mounted and lion's head. So, yeah, ready to ready to rock and roll. It's good that the time difference is only an hour. So yeah, I think Carl's is a bit worse. Should we say?

Carl Widger:

Yeah, ready to rock in the morning here. So

Nick Lincoln:

best time of the day. Best time. Yeah, okay. Well, without any further ado, let's get this show underway with some more high energy. Is it one wheel or two? You always tell me off. It doesn't matter. Mate, high energy review is my very good friend, the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain Hart,

Andy Hart:

yeah, we got two reviews today. The first one is from podcast. Is on the podcast addict platform, not the Apple platform, which is quite interesting. It's a three star review, though, entitled or sorry, the review is, yikes. Successful advisors should be able to afford better equipment, terrible sound. Three stars would sort of take that on board. We have been here, there and everywhere with the sound over the years, and I've got drilling and stuff going on now, so I'll try and mute my mic. But, you know, we try our best, but onwards we go. The Good Review, five stars from see Tim ball is entitled the perfect companion for long drives to client meetings, rather than listening to the nagging voices in my head, listening to trap has been far better use of my time went on long drives to help people become better, help me become a better financial planner, while I spend my days trying to help clients have money peace of mind. This podcast provides me the clarity and peace of mind that I'm keeping up to date with this great profession. No BS, just for experienced experts in their field, sharing their wisdom, laughs and stories on what matters in the investing and financial planning world. Nothing else seems to compare six stars. Thank you very much. Back to you. Nicholas, lovely,

Nick Lincoln:

lovely. Thank you. Nothing else seems to compare. I think the on that, on the on the sound quality thing, I think, actually, we're pretty good. But given that you listen to some podcasts, I think, I think we're okay. Yeah, we record from overseas quite a bit of the time as well. So hopefully, if it's if it's a real problem, do let us know. TRAPPIST, when we listen back, not that I do, but Andrew, not that I do, but Andrew listens to each episode about 17 or 18 times to get us up the rankings. Okay, right? Well, let's put a timestamp on this episode, because we've got a show pack full. Well, absolutely nothing. So let's do some topical tidbits, and we're going to start, oh, make this exciting. Exciting storyteller.

Alan Smith:

I mentioned this every year about this time. In fact, it's slightly later this year, but we have got a lot of new listeners in our audience, and they may have missed previous episodes, but the famous, the world famous, dimensional fund advisors, matrix book has been released for 2025 so I think there's varying degrees of enthusiasm for this piece of collateral. It's very useful. I think Andrew, I know, likes it, because he's a geek, and he likes getting into the weeds of the data and the numbers, obviously link to it in the show notes. You don't necessarily, I don't believe have to have an existing relationship with dimensional there's a PDF version which you can download, but if you want to really get into it and get the hard copy of it, I know a number of advisors use this as part of their sort of client presentation material and your planning meetings. I guess it depends on your client, if they are one who likes the data and the detail. And there's quite a lot of sort of backup support for this. There's a great video by friend of the podcast, friend of all of ours, to one degree or another, David swanek, the Aussie Swanny, who's, I think he's the best presenter I've ever seen, super, super professional. And he delivers great, strong, agree, yeah, he's brilliant. And anyway, he delivers how advisors can best utilize this, this piece of kit, it's collateral. And as I say, it's not for everyone, but for those for whom it is, and for those clients are quite interested in this stuff. It really is, it really is good, and it helps articulate and explain what it is we do and the power of Evidence Based Investing. So there is a link to it in the show notes. You know, get in touch with your local, dimensional contact and learn more about it. I think it's great. Any thoughts, Andrew, do you look at it? Do you update yourself when it comes out,

Andy Hart:

there's a lot of police sirens in the background at the moment.

Unknown:

So I'll keep my responses finally coming from you. Very, very Yeah,

Andy Hart:

it's absolutely amazing. You're right. It's, uh, information overload when it comes to investing historical data compounded returns over multi decades, even, even over 100 years. I think the s, p, but yeah, it's brilliant. Get, get, get your hands on it. I think you might have to have a relationship with the FA dimensional, but maybe not anyway. So yeah, it's brilliant. I think Carl, you always have a bit of an issue of them bringing it out too late in the year, don't you? Or have you moved

Carl Widger:

on? No, it's great. I used to only use one page when I was sitting in front of clients, and it was the they have one page where it's like, the the expected are the actual returns for portfolios for like, 4060, 6040, 8020, 100, yeah, 135, and then they do the lowest, the lowest return in any one year. And I used to be able to, I used to use it to basically say, look, here's what you can expect over the long term, but here's the lowest one year drawdown. Are you happy that you know you're not going to panic and ditch this investment strategy if that happens, because it will happen again, you know. And using that kind of language it used to definitely or still does help, because when there are drawdowns and we don't get we do get calls, but we don't get as many as probably some of the other firms do, or as we used to do, for sure. So yeah, definitely it's good. I just can't understand why it's like out in September, like for a firm with 800 billion under management. Would you not put the resources? If you guys are saying that this is, like, you know, the Holy Bible for investing, did you not put the resources into getting this out faster? Sorry, I recommend

Andy Hart:

January, end of January, yeah, then we're all ready for it. Now. It's like, yeah, it's a bit too late in the year, but, but the numbers don't change that much, as we know, because it's just a small increment at this point here. But yeah, yeah.

Carl Widger:

But they do. If there is sharp movements in a particular year downwards or upwards, it becomes very quickly obsolete. So that that's kind of my bug bear about it.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, good stuff was sticking with you, yeah, the 6040 is to have you got the show notes in front of you by the bio market prompt you,

Carl Widger:

you're gonna have to prompt me, right? The 6040 is dead because I'm in Florida. That's because, yeah, there's an article by a guy from Elk stone called Carl Rogers, and he was writing in the business post. He didn't say the 6040, pass that was my headline. He's basically saying that private markets should form part of investor portfolios going forward. Now I don't disagree with ever. No, no, no, to be fair, right? I. Don't disagree with everything, and he says, he says in his article, but some of the things, so first of all, elk stone have been on record saying that they believe pension funds in Ireland should be used to invest in private markets and kind of replace VC and that kind of stuff. And interestingly, there seems to be more voices on that front because act venture capitalists were out last week or the week before, saying exactly the same thing. So they're pushing the government here to, you know, open up normal Joe blogs, pension funds to private markets, because that, I guess, that's a little bit like, can you open it up to Bitcoin? That's a, that's an, that's an easy one to an easy door to push through, because you can sell sexy stories around private markets, around cryptocurrency, etc. But the article goes on to, basically, he says that, you know, the mark the market drop in. Sorry. Let me know if I'm fiddling with my microphone too much. So we don't get any more complaints. The market drop in 2022 basically showed that the traditional 6040 portfolio is dead. And I was like, but if you stuck with your 64 portfolio, okay, the bond part of it? Yeah, I get it hasn't done well, but you'd be back up and making a lot of money since. So I'm not sure that's a perfect argument, but I guess he's trying to make the argument to, you know, kind of sway people towards maybe private equity, etc. He also used the example of, sorry, Nick, go on.

Nick Lincoln:

He he's got something to sell that's not in a 6040 so you know what's gonna put food on the table is slagging off 6040 I mean, yeah, okay,

Carl Widger:

boss, that you could say exactly the same about me, that I'm selling 6040 portfolios, 8024, 40. And so you can say the exact same to be fair, right? There are a couple of things that that he definitely points out that it's tricky with valuations. You know how? You don't know if one is going pear shaped until it goes pear shaped. Liquidity is obviously an issue. He doesn't talk necessarily about the long term nature the seven to 10 years. He does use, though, an example of Yale. So Yale went into private markets a decade or more ago and that they've seen significant out performance. He doesn't say outperformance versus what, but he does mention it. And I haven't checked his facts here, but we all know there are lots of other Ivy League universities who have done this also and got into absolute return and all this kind of stuff. And they have significantly underperformed, you know, 100% equity so, you know, he goes on then to say that, you know, family offices are in, are in, are in private markets, you know. And so my challenge with this, so, yeah, no, yeah, okay, my, I don't disagree that that for the very high net worth investor, that they're going to be number one interested in it, they might want to dabble in it, and it's, you know, it might be relevant to them. But for the people who the normal folks and and like normal folks are, for me, it doesn't really matter, because it depends on how much you're spending each year, but, but if you wanted me to put a number on it's 5 million or less, right? This is difficult stuff to get involved in, because you can't, it's like buying a house. You can't, you know, sell a window out of a house. You can sell part of your your private equity fund. If it's a liquid, it's a liquid. And the long term nature of it. We all know the challenge of convincing clients to stay long term in their in their investment funds, and that's going to be tricky. And then, you know, valuations can be like, Oh, it's going, great, great, great, great. And then all of a sudden, so people actually have no insight as to how this thing is going. So therefore, forward planning. If it's a core part of what you need into your third act, into your retirement, then it's going to be very difficult to plan, because you don't know what the numbers are going to transpire. So look, I just think it's an interesting space. There's a lot of talk around it. Do I think that you know, private markets, private equity and cryptocurrency will form part of portfolios in five years time. In 10 years time, I do is access to them a little bit difficult at the moment, it certainly is, but I've been on record saying this, I do think that will open up. So yeah, so look, it's interesting. It's a pretty long article, actually. And, yeah, well written, I would say. And he makes some fair points, but there's some I would challenge for sure.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, thank you. Well, let's lead quickly on to the next point. Then, because that storyteller and I read this thing that this fund that Hargreaves Lansdown is launching, I'm rolling my eyes here, dear TRAPPIST

Alan Smith:

vegan, yeah, exactly. So I saw this golden docket. Carl, when you published it, to be fair, it's a subject we brought up loads of times in the past. As you know, our chancellor in the UK, Rachel, Rachel Reeves, that's her name, isn't it. Almost forgot, she's been very, sort of prominent in getting particularly pension funds, large sort of employee corporate pension funds, involved in this. And there's always an ulterior motive, really, it isn't there. I mean, the way I see these things is the solution to a problem that doesn't exist, you know, fundamentally, and it's a kind of, there's loads of issues around it. It's a real opportunity for various organizations to gather assets and to build fees out of it, there's I read someone the other day talking about volatility laundering effectively, because these funds aren't daily priced. They are not marked to market. They decide when they price it, and so often they're quarterly, sometimes even less than that. So they decide the actual the underlying so it looks like they're quite safe and stable, but, but, but, yeah, I just noticed, because you raised it, and just happened to be in the FT this morning, when I looked at it, that the largest retail fund platform in the UK, Hargreaves, Lansdown, have just announced they are launching one of these funds and unleashing it on an unsuspecting public. Yes, I think you've got to have to self select that you are a sophisticated investor, but it's a fund that's managed by Schroders Schroeder's private equity, or one division of Schroders. I had a quick look at the fund. Give you an idea the at the the annualized the annual fee to manage the fund is 3.24% 3.24% I'm going to suggest as well that there's a probably a lot of other hidden, undisclosed fees in there as well. I think it's going to be north of 4% a year. That's your first hurdle rate to beat public market investing, global equities, s, p, whatever. There's also a 5% redemption fee, which, if I read that correctly, that's you want your money out, you got to give up 5% to get the money back, to create the liquidity there's also, in order to keep liquidity in this fund, the continued their targets have 20% held in cash. Now that's a hell of a drag on your investment returns. Adorable to get that out. So and the other thing the fund, this particular fund launched October last year. So it's just under a year total returns to date, for those who've been fully invested, just over 3% compare that to the equivalent Public Market global equities, s, p, whatever you want to create significant underperformance. I got to say, I'm a big fan, actually, of Hargreaves Lansdown in terms of the tools they've got kind of free stuff. They've got online. Yeah, I don't think they cover themselves in glory. I mean, they are still, I think, you know, holding some blame for the whole Woodford fiasco, and that was a lot about liquidity, etc.

Nick Lincoln:

They promoted the hell out of hold them to the same stand that we hold the platforms we use. It's a sales business Harcourt. It's just a pure

Alan Smith:

sales a sales business. They know there's this is of interest to some people, so they'll just get it on their platform and allow people and of course, it's not advice, so people will self choose it, self selected. Those who don't wish to pay for an advisor. The vast majority of advisors wouldn't go near this with it, with the data I've just quoted,

Carl Widger:

yeah, and Alan, it's interesting, because you need to be a professional investor to get into some of these funds. But by creating these funder funds that gets around that professional investor, you now become quite, you know? So basically, every single person can invest in this, and it is a sexier story that I'm investing in this, that and the other. And like when, when these guys are all talking about it, who's it? Who's the number one company that people talk about in terms of private markets. It's stripe, right? Because it's a massive, massive company. Well, there's a million of other companies. There's not a million. There's tons of other companies that have failed for the one that has absolutely shot the lights out, and then the other, the other. My final point in this is, you know, the really good ones get hoovered up by some of the big boys, so like Google, have, Google have hoovered up, I think hundreds, hundreds of homes,

Alan Smith:

yeah, all the bait, all the Sequoia Capital, the big VC firms are already this is, this is also known as dumping and retail. They can't get rid of this stuff, and they jump on retail. Retail punters come along who know no better. That's, that's what it's known as. It's just

Andy Hart:

not Alan, just on the fees of that HL fund you mentioned. Yeah, redemptions are capped at 5% of the net asset value of the fund, not your charge 5% as in, they're not going to redeem more than 5% of the net asset values of the fund. A technical point.

Alan Smith:

But does that make sure? Not sure about that the comments in the FT article, after that, there's a lot of what seems to be because the comments experience. The wisdom

Nick Lincoln:

is, can we save this for our redemption free offshoot podcast? Thanks. Okay. Um, docket, done. I mean, dear TRAPPIST, we do come back to this every episode currently, and the reason we do that is because we're passionate about doing the right thing for our class, and this is a thing. And. I think all four of us know, and I'm sure many Trappists know that we'll be looking back on this in 1015, 20 years time, and thinking what the f will be doing this was, you can see this as we're walking through a disaster with this, and I've got really strong things, it's going to pan out that way as well. Okay, ultra

Andy Hart:

girls, go on. Don't say make this interesting Nick. You know, we were talking about the dull world of personal finance and money. We try our best. But there's been a new consolidator launch called absolute Financial Group. I read this in the professional advisor. The two people that are running this. The CEO is a guy called David Carter, who I don't know, not aware of, but he's also got involved with someone who I am very aware of, called Paul Hogarth, who's a who's one of the OGS of the financial advice world. He runs a company called tatten and prospective Financial Group. So they are now actively buying firms. They set up a new consolidator. What was interesting I read in the article is one of the main reasons they're doing this, or a contributing factor, tatton, who run, you know, an NPS, they've got 1100 firms that use their services, and what they've found is, when a firm that's using their services is bought, they're being told to move their investment assets away from tatton. So tatton thought, let's be on the front foot here. Let's set up a mechanism to buy firms. Then we can buy the firms, help them grow, and they can still use our investment solutions. Yes, a little bit like Pepsi owned something like 50,000 restaurants around the world. They buy the restaurants because they can then control the pipes, as in the Pepsi being shot through it, and then, you know, they don't start selling coke. So, yeah, interesting. Paul Hogarth is, is a serious player, and I think you can probably do this quite well. So, yes, again, connected to the consolidator space. Yeah. So to buy, buying the companies, to protect the investment offering,

Carl Widger:

we'll, we'll be talking a bit more about that later on. It's an interesting concept, for sure.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, well, given that we are going to talk about that one, let's move on to the the next point then. So, oh yeah. Sjps Charging structure, which to me, still, I struggle to get my head around a bit structural. Maybe you've, you've seen through

Alan Smith:

James mousley, who's an advisor that few of us know. He posted something in LinkedIn when this was announced last week. Quite interesting bit of a deep dive into the new charging structure. Obviously, this is of interest. SJP remained, by some margin, the largest firm of its tight wealth manager financial planning business in the UK. So what it does is of interest to all of us. They've come under, as we know, tons of pressure over for years, really, about their pricing model, going through a hell of a huge transition. You know, we're hearing all of us here, sort of all sorts of, sort of conversations about various advisors there and some of the challenges that some of them are going through. But it's a bit of a kind of restructure of the whole organization, it seems to me, looking on, and part of that is a brand new fee model, charging structure, and so everyone's quite interested in this. They came in for a lot of flat because of this kind of exit penalty thing they did. You invest in pensions and bonds, and if you choose to appoint a new advisor or move your funds away, then you're going to have an exit charge from the first six years. So they've done away with that now, it seems, and they've got, and what they've done is, and it's probably, you know, fair and reasonable, they've done what all of us do, which is going to unpack the various components. IE, you pay a certain amount for advice, you pay a certain amount for the product and the wrapper, and you pay a certain amount for the actual investment, investment management. I mean, it's still kind of structured. I was just looking at it now, first 250,000 initial advice charge 3% and it scales down. The next 250 amounts over 500,001% and the ongoing charges is quite an interesting one. The ongoing charges for advice are 0.8% now, I happen to know that advisors don't retain all of that. For advisors, they used to get 0.5% as their fee ongoing for the advice that they deliver, they've had a little bit a microscopic uplift to that. They now retain 0.55% so a pay rise of 0.05% and SJP keep, they keep 10% Yeah, 10% Yeah, okay, okay, 10% of the fee, but, but, but the but the client. The client is charged. The client is charged 0.8% for advice, then separate product charges point three, 5% for pensions and investment bonds, bit less for unit trusts, ISIS, and then the fund charge. And there was a bit of to and fro on this. Obviously, anyone posts anything about SJP online or LinkedIn against a hell of a lot of attraction so, but the ballpark is they're about 2% on. Going all in. So you think, no, if you take in, depends what fund you use. Of course, they do have some pretty low cost funds. But the kind of managed fund where a lot of people end up in or versions of that about point six, five, and then you've got the kind of the dealing charge, the trading costs, which in one example I looked at, was another 0.6 so, yeah, about two, maybe just a shade under 2% so where does that sit? That's, I mean, not that price is everything, by any means, but just trying to position where they are because they, you know, we, you can all compare ourselves to them, medium, medium to high price right now. They're not, necessarily, not the most expensive. But on on that link you sent Alan, there's on that link you sent as a download PDF that breaks it down in an insane amount of detail. It's very Yes, I read it. No, the PDF, yeah, PDF has got all the total fees, but most of way under 2% Yeah, if you really want to do a proper analysis, there's another you go to then download another link, which is dealing costs, which is to say, you know, rate depends on what they are. But in some of them, the kind of quite popular funds that see. The one I saw was another an extra 0.6% but regardless, it's

Carl Widger:

not a vanguard and passive index. They don't

Alan Smith:

have Vanguard and index funds. As yet, I understand they're they're coming. I don't know when. Yeah.

Andy Hart:

I mean, all the points you made, Alan, are right. Yeah, there's eagerly, eagerly awaited their change to clear, transparent fees, no exit penalties. It has been pushed on, but it's came in, came in. Now there'll be a bit of a transitional period to it. They are the biggest by an absolute mile, I think, for a huge firm, this is very transparent.

Carl Widger:

I couldn't, I couldn't agree with you more. I think, like,

Andy Hart:

oh yes, the stock price has roughly tripled since it hit a rock bottom or whatever. So yeah, the markets quite, you know, excited about exactly.

Carl Widger:

And I look, I think all credit to them. And if you go back to the podcast where they're put, their stock price went down. I said, Watch this space. These guys are making changes this I would be investing now in the long term, in such a space. I think it's brilliant. I think they've done everything really, really well and really transparently. I think it's really

Andy Hart:

good. It is only transparent as I say, the large DFMS are just smoke and mirrors still in relation to fees, is trying to get that for them is insane. They have launched an insanely low international equity fund call 0.09% it's still classed as active, but the ongoing fee is insanely low, so I'm just thinking of that as a passive play. That's one of the lowest fees in the whole of the UK. So if a client is invested in that, which is 100% global equities, it's point 8.27, and point 09, all in for 1.16 that's insane. And again, St James's place provide human advisors. The Ask the investment only individuals DFMS. They provide no human assistance. So all in for 1.16 are getting a human advisor, holding your hand, coaching you through everything, building you a financial plan. So I think it's, it's, it's a really compelling offering.

Alan Smith:

They're absolutely just changing the it's like the the old guard is changing. You know, we existence. They've had a whole clear out of some of the people have been around for years. And so it's, it's, you know, it's a bit of a gamble. I know there's quite a few senior advisors are not thrilled with everything.

Andy Hart:

I think, I think the initial fees are still a little bit too punchy. Yeah, I operate.

Alan Smith:

You can discount them if you want to. I'm just saying

Andy Hart:

the headline initial fees, I think are too punchy. But you know, I'm not running the footsie 100 business. I'm running, you know, little old me in a chicken shed. So I can take a hit on the initial fees. My ongoing fees are very similar. My overall fee that I charge ongoing clients is about point seven nine on aggregate across all the money I looked after my ongoing platform Allen's is very similar. Don't be deceived. Listeners, my ongoing platform fee is about point two, five and one going investment management is about point three. So it's, it's, it's, it's on par. But obviously everything it depends on the individual you get.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, yeah, everything eventually kind of consolidates around a particular fee structure. But the biggest challenge of all this thing, which is why it's impossible to compare apples with apples, is you don't know what service you're getting. You know, we do full fat financial planning, comprehensive and see individuals simply asset gathering, pension transfers, blah, blah, blah, boring and the charge in the same and or more. So yes, that's an ongoing debate. Is it? I heard a rumor that there might be somebody from SJP coming on as a future potential guest, just to chat this through. Maybe not as far as this week. Was a deny, as

Nick Lincoln:

far as I'm aware.

Alan Smith:

Okay, okay, you posted that online. But then again,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah, then yes, and then the person you teed up said he didn't want

Alan Smith:

to come on, yeah? So great, I got replacement, don't worry.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, yeah, he can't do the date that I said he had needed to do. So we're seeing him in January. All right,

Unknown:

okay. All right. Back end, thanks for the heads up.

Nick Lincoln:

Nick right. Are we done on SGP? Or do you want to have another half an hour done? Okay? Kind of linking in with us with SJP a little bit. I had a nice email from a guy called Joseph Sykes, I'll read out in full, Hi, Nick. I was listening to the podcast on my way to a client meeting yesterday, and wanted to echo the impact the podcast has had on me. You were talking about Max and how he decided to leave a practice and go his own way. I think that was via you Alan, that's that particular story. Okay, I have a similar story. I wasn't an advisor in an SJP partner practice. Don't get me wrong. It wasn't bad, good people and doing a fair job, but it felt stale. I also didn't have equity, so it never really felt like I had to stay in the direction we were going. I decided to take the leap in May and set up on my own with valid, valid path. There's never the perfect time. I just moved house, and my wife and I just had our first daughter in April. Bloody hell. Joseph sites, good man. Anyway, since listening trap has been great and helped me think about the service I wanted to give to clients and the business I want to build. Ironically, I started listening around the SJP episode, which I guess was the first one put out, which is one of our most listened to episodes around the thing with SJP. So thank you for that. Joe Sykes, and there. Wow. Wow. Good man. Good luck, good luck, good luck. Yeah, tremendous tree men, dos right. What's next on the slate? Slate, Oh, watch, oh, this story. Oh, this is that. This is, yeah, go on case football is, sorry,

Carl Widger:

yeah, I Yeah. I saw this on a number of kind of news outlets talking about footballers, Danny Murphy, who's, who's on match of the day, isn't he? And Brian Dean and I think rod Wallace. I was kind of interested in this, because these were all guys who were playing when I was, you know, probably 20. But yeah, so a sad story about what's Andy doing anyway, a sad story about footballers getting caught out with kind of dodgy investments, or they claim to be dodgy investments via a firm called kings bridge. The interesting thing about this is, well, it's not very interesting in that this continues to happen, especially to that era of football, or it seems, hopefully, the guys who were looking after this niche are doing a much better job. We know some of them, and I know that they're doing great work. But yeah, it's, it's, I don't know, does part of me with this kind of going like, some of the detail around the story is like, would you not have maybe asked a question or two and but it just goes to show, you know, the kind of herd instinct, you know, if you get kind of one in a group, you'll get a whole bunch of them. And these guys were getting these footballers. So there's two lessons from this if you're doing your marketing, niching works clearly, because they all started talking to each other, they all loaded into this kings bridge firm who I don't know if they did anything wrong, just putting down that on record there are, there are accusations of fraudulent behavior, which I'm sure will come out in the court of law in the UK. But yeah, look, it's just sad, isn't it? Let's hope there'll always be the guys trying to pull strokes and pull one over on put one over on investors who don't necessarily understand what they're getting into. But on the other hand, some of the detail you're like at what point do you go Hold up? Can I just check please, or maybe get a second opinion from somebody? So yeah, it's just an interesting story Ultra because they're famous people, and we know who they are anyway.

Andy Hart:

Sorry, yeah, this has been a common theme, and a lot of footballers have run into problems with investments. And yeah, there's a BBC program on it, annoying. They haven't watched it because I've been out and about. So maybe you guys watch that when you can. Apparently, an advisor I'm out with here, Keith button. He told me about the story in a little bit more depth. What one thing I'm going to raise on this point is, we have legislation in the UK now about vulnerable clients. Now, I think young footballers, regardless of how rich they are and how much money they've got and how flash their cars are, they're insanely vulnerable. They might not think that, and then bringing that up with a 20 year old Strapping, you know, wealthy, multi millionaire footballer, but they are. They're insanely vulnerable, vulnerable clients. Legislation in the UK is infiltrated everywhere. But yeah, I just, I just, I just thought, if anyone's. Vulnerable. It's southern wealth from, you know, young footballers who often come from backgrounds where they don't have a lot of people that are smart around money, slightly different to the rugby backgrounds they often surrounded by people that, you know, they can bounce ideas off as a massive generalization. So they're insanely vulnerable. And I would like the vulnerable client regime to recognize that. So, yeah, that's more,

Carl Widger:

yeah, I guess it's a difficult and, like, lucrative, but a difficult market to operate in. So one of the advisors we know, was telling the story, you know, about a famous guy, 21 signed a mega deal, but he's dealing with his girlfriend, his father, his brothers, his sisters, is, you know that it's not just this one person, and there's people ringing and there is asking, oh, yeah, yeah, that's that's difficult. Those boys. Boys earned their fees. For sure.

Nick Lincoln:

Even one thing, one thing I take away from that story, is reading that story, if you're if you're Joe Public, listen to this city street. If your advisor says you want to go on holiday with me, that's a red flag. Okay, these guys want these these these guys, these advisors, in quotes, is that, yeah, in quotes, these advisors took their clients on holiday. That is a flag of enormous proportions, of a red hue. That's what I would say. Um, Smithy, your hand is

Alan Smith:

raised this, unfortunately, is a kind of well trodden path, isn't it? Nick you're one of your favorite sports, the NFL in the States, and basketball, what have you. There are unlimited number I cut that. There is some horrendous statistic about I'm just going to guess it's about the 70% of American football players who retire, you know, multi multi millionaires become bankrupt. They just make bad decisions with the money. There's a few exceptions who become ridiculously wealthy, wealthy, yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

yeah. Well, a lot of those players really do come from very deprived backgrounds. I mean, properly deprived,

Alan Smith:

but unfortunately, and it's the same across motor sport as well. You can see boxers and a number of other sports. And unfortunately, does seem to attract kind of people with, you know, unscrupulous ideas about what they should do with the money. And these people just, you know, they want to trust somebody, and somebody will come along and what would appear to be, allegedly, you know, take advantage of them. So be interesting, is this, this is going to court? Is it Carl, is it the whole thing is going to end up with,

Carl Widger:

yeah, I think they were outside. It was, yeah, they were doing a kind of demonstration March, like, I'm like, oh, man, just got a really good solicitor and take it to court like, you know.

Alan Smith:

So, yes, we would say, you know, and it's hard, but you know, word of mouth, as you said at the top of this, Carl, we do know a couple of excellent, independent advisors who can deliver advice to them, but it's hard to find them, I guess, because these guys did go through word of mouth,

Carl Widger:

Muse, Muse Andy does a lot of background.

Nick Lincoln:

Sorry, yeah, I think, I think our lunch club Dirk is drilling into a bank vault somewhere in Cape Town. And there's also similar change to be chased by a squadron

Carl Widger:

of police cars. It's, it's the police with the strait jackets outside Andy's apartment banging on the door.

Nick Lincoln:

Good stuff. Okay, so I'm trying to segue to the next point, because it's very difficult. Northern Ireland mastermind Ultra.

Andy Hart:

Oh yeah, this is just a bit of a shout out, following on from trap, and we spoken about the ideas exchange in obviously London and the one in Dublin, they set a Northern Irish mastermind up. Paul mccauber is the guy that sort of runs it, and Stevie is another good financial advisor. Runs it with them. They're actively looking for decent advisors and para planners and people in the profession that want to join it and they can add value. Paul's email is in the slate, apparently I'm calling it, which is the show notes, the so called show notes. So if you are in Northern Ireland and you are of the similar ilk to other fellow TRAPPIST, then reach out to Paul and he'll give you the details about the meetup. So again, just a bit of a shout out for trap that, obviously we've had a bit of a nudge for those guys to set that up. So yeah, keeping the good message going. Probably inspired by Rogers example, Carl, they were, he did say, maybe mentioned to Carl, you'll do an all Island meet up one time when, when both groups were established, if they

Carl Widger:

pay enough, they're more I think

Alan Smith:

I mentioned before as well, there's a group in Glasgow. Lisa Johnston is organizing that group, I'm not sure, meeting. Oh, cool. So be great, you know, hope there's, there's this sort of trap inspired mastermind groups all over the country springing up. I was with an advisor last week who was talking about that just really, really, would love to, you know, meet like minded people and just kick around thoughts. And I.

Andy Hart:

Years so we could get our act together. We might be able to have a link on the home page where you say you're interested in a master class and what area so, yeah, leave it with us. No, I think

Carl Widger:

you was right together. Genuinely don't underestimate this, because I would say it was transformational for our business when I met you guys, and we started exchanging ideas. No, I absolutely, genuinely never said that. No, it's not, it's definitely not the first time I've said it. It was transformational, because I had all these like doubts in my mind and and when I was able to just talk them out, and

Unknown:

are we magnified them?

Carl Widger:

Yeah, okay, there's other crazy there's other crazy people.

Alan Smith:

That's good, no, there's a load of value in meeting up with sharing.

Andy Hart:

Masterminds are the number one way to accelerate your life and career is in, is in Think and Grow Rich,

Carl Widger:

wasn't it just that stamp to say, Yeah, you're on the right track. Keep going, yeah? Or stick with the plan. Just, just drive on.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, no, totally, totally, get with that. Okay, so there's a UK based company called callous stone, and they monitor the fund, UK fund market, the retail investment fund market, and we know that what was it back in April that we had the Trump tariffs introduced and everything kind of went hair and scare them. And, you know, the dialectic media said this is the end of times. Well, often an initial flutter that markets have resumed their very strong upward growth of the last decade or so, really, to an amazing degree. However, that doesn't seem to have much weight with UK investors. Now, I'm going to quote from this article that callistone emailed me, and I'll put a link to in circle show notes. I don't know whether these figures apply just to pure direct investors or advise directors and direct investors, but anyway, investors withdrew 1.3 billion from equity funds up from 1.1 3 billion in July, marking the worst bout of outflow since the summer of 2022 meanwhile, safe haven money market funds enjoyed their best month in two years. In August, investors added a net 630, 3 million to their holdings. Fund investors are wary, clearly, fearing a correction is around the corner. August was the third consecutive month of outflows, an unusually long stretch. Global Equity funds were particularly hard hit. And there's not some graphs in there as well and so forth, just showing that since January 23 every month since January 23 UK funds have had outflows. UK equity funds have had outflows. And now global equity funds having outflows, this into the into the teeth of a rising market. So you've already got to work out what's going to happen as and when we do get some kind of temporary decline as I don't know if that's advised funds in there as well, but it's Nick you know?

Alan Smith:

I'm pretty sure it is advised funds as well. Just it's all funds. In fact, probably a significant part of that is advised portfolio managers, discretionary managers, etc.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, they've left. They've taken millions and billions on the table then the last couple of

Alan Smith:

months have but they always do, yeah, every time. You know, this is why we're here,

Nick Lincoln:

isn't it? And they're going into money market funds, just as interest rates are starting to come down and save the shares on those funds are are tailing off. And what were two years ago, you know, pretty decent rate. Ultra you're shaking your head. Is that shaking your head in just agony, or disagreeing with me?

Andy Hart:

Oh, no, sorry. Don't disagree with you. I'm just saying it's, it's terrible, the way that people react as I agree that you're saying, yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

so is, is

Carl Widger:

consumer sentiment in the UK driving a lot of that behavior? Do you think genuine question?

Nick Lincoln:

It's certainly something must be on the UK fund, because so the UK equity sectors has outflows month on month by one month since January 2023, every month since then, there have been a net flows out of UK equity funds,

Andy Hart:

and it's been going up during that whole time, Nick generally,

Nick Lincoln:

under the footsie and not the no is, you know, nine, nine over through the 9000 mark, isn't it? God knows how Paul Lewis sleeps at night, but that's not the question. Yeah, I don't know. Carlisle, right? Yeah. I mean, everything is a bit negative in the UK, but that shouldn't affect how you invest in global equities. If you're projecting your downbeat view of your own country's economy on the world economy, aren't you? And that's not so the whole reason you have a global economy is that you're not a global equity portfolio, is that you're not really bothered what happens to your domestic market. You know, because there's

Alan Smith:

a whole the numbers right now around what was kind of the mag seven, and is now probably extended up to about 1010, companies, you know, they are just, they are driving. There's about 10 companies globally that are driving the majority of the returns. Most other, a lot of other companies are kind of going sideways, not doing a lot, but that's the point. You know, we're in. We're in all of the companies, the ones that are going sideways, the ones that are killing it.

Andy Hart:

We invested, I mean, I mean, I mean our typical clients, top holding now is, if. Videos, as we know, you know, you scroll down and see it's top, a small amount of companies have always driven most of the returns and represented the biggest chunk of the market, but now it's a slightly unprecedented. I think Nvidia owns it represents 8% of the market on its own. So yeah, it's odd skewing going on at the moment, but those 10 companies you see, if you live long enough, you see everything. In the better market. So this is sure another thing that we've never seen before, that we're seeing, you know, for the first time. So yeah,

Alan Smith:

little fact, those 10 companies are greater than the combined market cap of all the European not just the UK, all the European listed markets. 10 companies greater than all of them added together, is mad. But hey, there we go.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, I'm just checking the global equity portfolio that I use with my own money and my clients money massively, and Nvidia coming in at two and a half percent. So even, even if they're number one, are they number one holding? Yeah, number one. Amazon, second. But it's not 8% 9% it's, but it's, they're still, you know, Microsoft companies, yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, own 14,000 of the bank comes into the world in one hit. Why not? Right? Okay, well, I'm conscious that we're at 46 minutes, and we still got some more things on the slate. So quickly wrap through these as smithy Carlyle Group.

Alan Smith:

Just a quick one to acknowledge this. I found this is quite interesting, Intelligent Office in teleflow, io, whatever you want to call them, that they, you know, we work with them. Have worked with them for years. They are the dominant player in the financial planning kind of CRM, you know, management systems. I believe they account for about 50% the marketplace. I know a lot of people kind of moan about them. We've got a pretty good relationship with them because they we understand how this system works. Is it perfect? Certainly not. Are they trying to improve? Yes, I believe so. I find it's quite interesting. Carlyle Group, all of you will probably know, to one degree another, are one of the biggest kind of back to private equity companies in the world. Hugely successful company. The fact that they continue to Rubenstein. Rubenstein founders, yeah, Rubenstein, yeah. He, I mean, he's and by the way, he's brilliant. The stuff that he does, interviews that he does on things on Bloomberg was on channel, but yeah, he's quite a player. And for them to come into the kind of UK retail, financial planning software market is is quite interesting. So they've acquired Carlyle Group have acquired IO, and I, this is just a personal view right now. Io, seem to me, like a lot of these organizations, are at a bit of a crossroads. AI has come in and is sort of stolen some of their lunches. We're all kind of trying to work out now, what does a CRM system actually do? Is it just a database of information, client data? Is it? Is it workflow? Is it, you know, what the hell does it actually do? Because, you know, they've got all these other players around them, whether it's timeline, whether it's Saturn, there's a company called Nicki. It's just, I've heard a lot about as well recently, and so it's just going to be quite interesting. They're obviously going to have some, some, you know, deeper pockets in firepower now at IO to determine their kind of their next move. But it's quite a pivotal thing in the UK financial services marketplace that someone so big and influential as Carlisle has has acquired them, though.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, yeah. I think it's huge news. Alan, as you say, 50% of advisors use them. Yeah, obviously it shows that Carlyle think it's a wonderful business. You know, they don't buy crappy businesses. So they see a lot of future potential in in telephone. And you're right, because all the other players circling and trying to, you know, work out what they're doing with AI and the future roadmaps. So they've obviously got a lot of firepower behind them now, but normally, what happens in these situations? The fees start to increase over time as these private equity companies try and get their, you know, squeeze as much juice as they can. So yeah, this is huge news for UK financial services, but it's also quite a compliment that such a, you know, formidable brand has bought, you know, our biggest player in this space. So yeah, watch this space. You'll be interested.

Nick Lincoln:

Okie dokie, good stuff. Moving on. Sorry, just absent minded. There email from my beloved, which is always a dangerous sign. Okay, wealth levies,

Carl Widger:

college levies. That's me, yeah, very, very briefly on this, you guys have spoken about the possibility of wealth levies and some stuff that has been introduced that you know, high net worth guys are leaving the country. There's a little bit of talk about it again here. There's a very good article by Peter Kinsler on the danger and the minimal impact in terms of the amount of money that it would raise and the unintended consequences. It's very well written piece, but, but the last is kind of his conclusion to. Was the end. I thought was really good. It's like, okay, if you wanted to raise a shitload of money from the wealthy, means test, children's benefit, so the people who don't need it don't get it. I've actually spoken about that before. It's a, it's so obvious. It is so obvious. And it's, you know, I don't know. Is it a we've already got that? Yeah, we don't. So we went to, you know, the everybody

Alan Smith:

Child, child benefit, child everyone got, and then, and then they completely smashed that. The previous government in the UK conservatives dropped that we've, we have got an element for children's, yeah, benefit. But yeah, everything is so contentious. I mean, there's every kind of Western democracy is facing the same thing. Politicians, by definition, can't cut benefits they don't want to. It's a vote loser taxes in the UK, and they can just choose not to. That's different. Well, they'll get they'll lose their job, basically, if you do, yeah, but I

Carl Widger:

look at their challenges with it, because that he didn't talk about. But like, if you're really, really wealthy and you're taking no salary out of your company, like, you know, so will you still get it? Because so it has to be done on network. And then, how do you value companies? How do you value so, there are challenges with it. There's no point to say otherwise. But like, look, it's a don't, please don't let us start losing people to Malta and Portugal and all that kind of stuff. There's a few gone, but we, let's limit that anyway. We don't need to talk about any more. We've dealt with that one before. Thank you.

Alan Smith:

So if you get your hand raised Ultra down, I was just gonna, I was gonna just mention something as a follow up to this, Carl, which is Daniel priestly, keynote speaker at humans under management London this year. Hey, Andrew. He's like, everywhere right now. He's really raised his profile since he went on the Stephen Bartlett diary of his CEO saw him on the trigonometry corner today. Alan what? Daniel Priestley on that. Okay, so anybody speaks specifically about this subject, anyway, you would talk about, if you want later. But he just said, you know, how do you value someone's wealth? If you've got a business, you've got an idea in theory, it's what it's worth, 10 million, 20 million, 30 million. There's no you haven't got the money and got the cash. How do your chart. There's so many issues with it, but hey, yeah, all right, we'll listen to Andrew a bit later on.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, it's great, great episode which I was happy to introduce you both to, wrapping this up storytelling.

Alan Smith:

Last one of the day, we did mention this. This is a kind of perennial issue that does come up quite regularly. Thing for all of us you, I think you mentioned that the last episode Phil Brays new venture to so yeah, for those advisors who are happy to take on kind of, perhaps lower revenue, lower clients, that sort of thing, I was reminded by my good friend Matt pitcher of another similar network or group, and this one is populated by those advisors who've seen the light and charge a fair fee, while not necessarily related to assets under management. Yeah, you need to. You're a bit nice, my friend. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just, don't shoot the messenger, but point

Nick Lincoln:

nine, five a year, I think, for you.

Alan Smith:

So there is if. But the good thing about this, and it was a there was something that came up in the group this morning with Matt, which is, some clients haven't got any money, but they really want financial planning services. For example, they haven't got they might have property assets. They might have wanted they were able to self advise. They might have just business assets, but they really love the idea of proper, structured financial planning, etc. So these advisors in this group who charge retainers, subscription, flat fee, call it what you will, fair fee advisor network.com fair fee advisor network.com link in the show notes. And if you are one of these enlightened, forward thinking advisors that do not run a conflicted fee model, please check out the website and get in touch with Matt and join join the gang.

Nick Lincoln:

What was your strap line? Flat fees for flat service? Got it? Let's go. 5454 minutes in, shoot me. We'll move on to the meat and potatoes of episode 79 of the award winning real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. So this meat and potatoes, as it often was, was inspired by the bit of content that one of us saw. I can't remember who put it in the in the WhatsApp chat, first questions to ask a financial advisor, which came from the evidence investor.com again, of course, link to it in the so called show notes. And what are these are questions that you should if you're Joe Public city street, you should have front of mind when you're thinking about engaging with the financial advisor. I'm not going to say any much more than that, because, uh, watch is watch from Florida, from Pensacola, is going to lead off on this subject.

Carl Widger:

I am, yeah, because Alan found the article suggested we read. Do I read it? I said that'd be a good meat, potatoes and animal great. You lead on that. So I got that message in Florida last night, so hugely prepared. It's an interesting article. It's a long read. It's an interesting read. Robin Powell puts out some great stuff, so I would recommend that everybody follows Robin, for sure. I have a few pushbacks on Robin's article, though. Andy, will you please mute so he starts the article by saying that Vanguard who have always extolled the virtues of transparency and that they're in it for the for the customer and all this kind of stuff. Well, they were fined in the US because they didn't say that their private client people, private client division, were actually getting paid bonuses if they onboarded new clients. So there was a fine of $20 million so for a company like Vanguard, that's not actually a whole lot of money, I would say, I don't know, because they didn't read the the US regulator stuff, but it seems like a fairly minor kind of a compliance issue for them. My problem with that it but be that as May, it's a fine, and they put their hands up and said, Okay, we'll do it differently going forward. But Robin goes on then to say that, for me, he conflates the issue a small bit between the Vanguard issue about their advisors not not disclosing, or Vanguard not disclosing that they pay their advisors or bonuses to he moves kind of into well, and that's like the consolidation that's happening in the UK market with, you know, the private equity guys coming in. And he points to, you know, loss of independence, if you're swallowed up by a private equity that's an obvious one, proprietary product pressure. So we kind of mentioned that earlier on about, you know, oh, well, you must go on our platform, and you must invest in our funds and whatever fee increases so they may happen. Those two points may happen about product pressure and fee increases, but, but that's not the case with all of the private equity guys, and then service deterioration, I don't know. Like, if you're, if you're flat out one man show with, you know, kind of two half people working for you, and then you go into a bigger firm, maybe the service will get better. So I'm just not sure about this. This whole discussion has gone on that private equity is across the board terrible. Now, when I said this, I said there's something like this at trap live, and I got slagged about it, going, Oh, you're setting yourself up for private equity and blah, blah, I'm absolutely 100% I am not, but I'm not an agent either, and I have had chats with people, right? And some of them are, well, yeah, we're in this for the long term, and you can stay on your own platform. And absolutely, we love your investment planning or your investment philosophy, and we love that it's financial planning led, right? Anyway, the three, the three questions, Robin says you should, so his conclusion are, how are you paid? And have you, you know, what kind of bonuses, blah, blah, blah, that's number one. Have you incentives to recommend funds, right? So, yeah, okay, fair and and the funds that you're you're recommending I invest in. Are you willing to invest in them yourself? Okay, now, my problem with this whole article, and there's another, there's another discussion LinkedIn, is that business isn't, it's not binary. It's not it's, it's, it's, it's multi dimensional, it's nuanced. There's so much stuff going on, and ultimately, your values are your values. Good Behavior is good behavior and misconduct is misconduct. So you know, there might be tons of reasons why you have decided to go a certain direction with your business. So saying that every single person who has been consolidated is that a word, right? So has been taken up by the Pac Man that is the consolidators, right? Say that they're all wrong, that they're all They're all only in it for the money, and they've screwed their clients and whatever. I just I don't, I don't know. I don't get it. And there are, there are lots of reasons for, you know, people doing something slightly differently, and a lot of those reasons can be in your clients best interest. So I'm just pushing back a small bit on the the black and white. And look, it's for me guys, right? I have to say it probably comes more from the UK advisory market arguing on LinkedIn. I don't think is a good look, and I think that there's very little allowance for the nuance of business, like, why aren't you just like Ireland, where you just send a strongly worded email directly to the person who said something that. That you didn't like, right?

Andy Hart:

So I'm refusing, John, do you think that? Do you think that doesn't go as well? Well?

Carl Widger:

I think that's that's more business like, and it's more professional to say, hey, and then you can have a private discussion. But like going so hard in on, you know, comments on LinkedIn and to know, and Does anyone else want to talk about the Abraham LinkedIn message, or maybe I'll go there, right? Because I don't really mind saying this. So Abraham talked about an article that Brian Hill put out, and you know, it was all about all the consolidators are exactly like what Robin had said. You know, that they're putting pressure to go onto their own platforms, into their own funds, or whatever. And then there was a guy came back and went, Well, I'm kind of one of those. And for loads of different reasons, that's not really the case. And then it was another guy comment saying, Oh, you're, you know, really aggressively. That's terrible. And whatever. I just like, if clients are looking at that, it's not good. It's a little bit like the footballer story, right? That financial advisors have screwed these people with really bad behavior that's in the media, and then they're looking at LinkedIn and the financial advisor going, No, you're wrong, and you're terrible, and your business is terrible. I just think it's not a good look. And I think black and white is not certainly the way my business is run, like we have, we have probably 70% of our business on a platform, but the other 30% is somewhere else for a reason, and it's for the client's best interest reason. It is not for our benefit, because we're absolutely clear that they're all they all pay the same but to say that all that's terrible, men as Ireland don't have all their business on their platform, that's terrible. That's just not the case. And, you know, making accusations online about people's business without knowing the intricacies of what goes on behind the scenes. Booger off mind your own business. Look after your own field. Don't be looking into my field and saying, Oh, that's terrible over there. So that's my, uh, meat potatoes for

Andy Hart:

today. By field, you actually mean physical field, don't you?

Carl Widger:

Not, not, not. We're Irish.

Andy Hart:

Stick over there. What general area of expertise?

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah. How about your hands raised? I

Alan Smith:

think that's from last time. But I will go remove him. I just do that to annoy you. Carl, I think, I think just listening to that, I think there's, there's two aspects of this. One is the kind of subject at hand, which, as I read it, it's advisor firms selling their business to consolidators and then having the assets gathered, consolidated, put on, you know, the clues in the name consolidated, having it sort of streamlined, systemized, etc. And the other thing is, really about this kind of online infighting within the profession, and that does seem to be, yeah, I don't know from what I see, or maybe just the algorithm sending it to me. There's more than there used to be. There's always been a bit of, sort of back and forward, active, pass it passive. The you know that obviously SGP questions, I thought we'd kind of progressed more as a profession, seems that maybe we haven't. And there's, yeah, there's one or two usual suspects that are forever being quite uh, negative. I'm more I'm a Solutions type person. I'd rather someone come up with. Here's some thoughts, here's some ideas. Rather than, this is shit, this is terrible. You're all a bunch of crooks and criminals that doesn't, that doesn't really help anyone. And I think you're right. I know for sure that our clients, some of our clients, do read LinkedIn and they see this kind of, uh, back and forward. It doesn't look it doesn't look it doesn't look great. It's not, it's not a great look. So I would encourage people maybe to be, you know, by all means, having, you know, having a healthy debate, expressing your opinion. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. You can do in a professional way. And I think you should be thinking about what it what are, what your solution might be, rather than just say, this is bad, this is terrible. You are doing the wrong thing. You can you can spin it to be more constructive and more positive and encourage more people to do that. This specific subject that you are talking about as exactly, there's a couple of points. One is about incentives, right? And so Vanguard were fined for, effectively, for not disclosing that their advisors were incentivized. And the other is more about the idea around consolidating everyone and broadly, often fees can go up within an in house, consolidated kind of investment solution. It's just weird. We've talked about this before, there seems to be this real reticence around selling. You know, the idea of selling, people do need to be incentivized one way or another. I'm assuming that we're all, listen, we're all running compliant, highly regulated businesses if there's anything untoward going on, if people are doing anything dodgy, and by the way, we have to, if I remember correctly. We have to submit returns to the FCA or regulator about those things, about incentives, are people incentivize? Are they paid any more for certain types of activity, for selling certain types of funds, more than another, all that sort of thing. So it's pretty transparent in the UK, and the information is being disclosed. And I think if that was being done wholesale, assuming that these organizations are submitting their data correctly to the regulator, they'd be in and sort of kicking the tires and having a look. I'll throw something just briefly out there on my other award winning, award winner podcast, the episode just went out. There's a guy mate. It's bigger than this one now, and there's my conversation with a guy called Phil hollingdale. I don't know if anyone knows Phil. He's a kind of serial FinTech entrepreneur. He's behind quite a few of the kind of financial services businesses. I just love the conversation, because he is all about selling. You know, you took all his various stories and iterations of how he started these businesses. I said, you know, how did you get going? He sort of picked up the phone. Up the phone, made a few cold calls, sent a few cold emails, and guess what? He said, multi, multi million exits. He sold his last business to NatWest for nearly 200 million. So he's done all right, but he just kept coming back to selling, selling, selling. And so I think just to remind ourselves, selling is not a bad thing, it's human. You do have to be a little bit careful about incentives. If you're overly incentivizing, specific, you know, if you, if you get incentivized to sell, like a private equity fund in this, you know, to sort of join the dots between the previous conversation and everything else, then that might be up for the question. But no, a there's nothing wrong with selling. Be aware of incentives and sort of driving particular narratives. And the last part is, Carl, you're right. I mean, Rob Stevenson was on this podcast a few episodes ago. Rob knows the market. I speak to him recently, regularly. There are, there are, you know, there's a wide range. There's something like nearly 200 potential acquirers, consolidators in the UK right now. There's loads of them. And within that there's a full range, like there is for everything. There's there are some that are very acquisitive, and they will pay top, top, top dollar. If you want to sell your business for an absolute fortune, you can do but it is conditional on you moving into these. You know, it's not, it's not rocket science. There are funds, there are platforms, there are portfolios with lots and lots of healthy margin built in. You move your clients onto those you'll get a higher payday for that. All of us have got our kind of deal breakers, things that we would never do. Should we ever choose to sort of step away or sell? And I think it's, I think just need to be, you know, quite careful of these kind of broad brush strokes. You know, private equity or consolidations are bad and you should never do it. So I think it's a fair point you raise car and I think it just needs a little bit more thoughtfulness and interrogation around specific circumstances. Okay?

Andy Hart:

And I'll throw in a couple of points the Vanguard thing that must be specific to financial services, a company having to disclose all their internal incentivization structures, and who gets paid more for what and who gets promoted? I don't think that affects all other industries, but obviously they they breach the rules, and they've paid for that. The consolidators are huge in the UK, as you say, Yeah, close to 200 at pretty much every firm selling is selling to a consolidator. What is also quite interesting, if you're selling your firm and you're finding a like minded firm to sell to, that's step one. So if, let's say, I sold my firm to a business that I highly trust, they look after my clients, that's step one, then that business could sell to a consolidate that I don't like. So the second order effects on here are not simple. The final thing almost only consolidating the funds. What is happening is consolidated, buying 10s hundreds of firms, and then there is some level of incentive and pressure to put them through in house funds that might be financial logistics. Again, business is messy. I don't know if the FCA are going to come after that at some point in the future. You know, it sounds quite cushy at the moment, these companies are doing it an X percentage of the assets that look after in in house funds. I'm sure the regulators will take a look at this somewhere down the line, so they're going to work

Alan Smith:

out. I think they are doing already. I think they are doing like I

Andy Hart:

haven't known that they've done it specifically looking at that, but they'll want to work out if people are getting value from it. The other my final point is, in business, we're all conflicted. It's just a case of trying to minimize and manage those conflicts. There's so many moving parts within it, and sometimes we make decisions that might seem based on one reason, but there's another reason for it. So yeah, it's you. It's a hyper complex problem. So yeah, a couple of points. Nick, over to you before Alan, I'd say I don't

Nick Lincoln:

really have a lot to say around this subject. To be honest with you, a couple of things. Oh. Nick, there's something wrong with

Andy Hart:

your mic. Nick, you're using the wrong mic. Just go quiet for a minute. Nick, and sort it out. Over to you, Alan.

Alan Smith:

That, yeah, that previous comment, that three star was well earned. I just, I just give a further further thought. Couple of things. This is any sale is usually done via an earn out, and that earn out, so you'll get a chunk of money up front, and then you'll get some further payments year and year one, year two, year three, possibly. And that will be conditional on, you know, not losing a ton of clients and not, you know, not really damaging the business. And again, I think the laws of, you know, commerce and business, we we've been on the positive receiving end when some firms have sold out to big consolidator. And this is where I think things go wrong. It's where the client who's been looked after by kind of independent, boutique, smaller firm, get bought up by one of the huge organizations. And it's like financial planning by numbers. You get this service, you get this person, you know, the whole and there's not a lot of flexibility around that, you get this portfolio, and that's it. And so those people say, Hmm, I'm not loving this. I love that. When John was looking after us and used to have a chat and used to have a chat and a cup of tea and all that sort of stuff. And so they do then seek smaller, independent boutiques such as ours. We've certainly picked up quite a few decent clients in the last year or two when this whole consolidated thing works carries on. So I think you'd be quite naive to sell your business where maybe half of your consideration, the amount you're going to get paid, was conditional on your clients basically being happy, not moving away, because you'd be, you know, you wouldn't receive your full payment. So I think we're all big boys and big girls. We're commercial. We'll make our decisions, and we will always do what's in the best interest for our clients.

Carl Widger:

Just the final few points on this, right? My point about Robin's article is that, like, there are two, two issues here, when you when clients come into matters Ireland, if they don't know or think that the private client managers are incentivized to onboard new clients, right? Well, like, is that not totally obvious? Yeah, we disclose all, we disclose all of the fees. So like we're hiding nothing here. So I didn't see a big deal with the Vanguard thing at all. And I think it's a totally and utterly different situation or scenario to consolidators telling people, you must go onto our platform, you must go into our funds you want. I I'm sorry, Robin, I thought you conflated two issues that were totally and totally different, and that's my point.

Andy Hart:

Just Just on that point. Carl, I think in the vanguard situation, they specifically broke the rules. The clients might have assumed there is some incentivization in the background. That's how business works, but it's the way that they didn't disclose it. So that's why Vanguard got the fine. It's because the way they did so there must be a law or a requirement that says they have to disclose it again. I don't really know the Vanguard case well enough. I don't think either of us do, but I think that was it. Go on.

Alan Smith:

Did you know we'll keep this Convo going as Yes, Nick tries to So, yeah, hopefully he's gonna come back. So I remember

Carl Widger:

talk over each other, do loads. Yeah,

Alan Smith:

yeah, go on. He's useless anyway. So I always find it really you realize how far ahead that the UK is in terms of, you know, customer protection, consumer protection and all the rest of it. Because in the US, they talk about this thing, this word they always use, called fiduciary. We got fiduciary, you know, responsibilities and what have you. And there was a thing I remember was it, was it Trump 1.0 or previous to that, it was this whole thing. And we're going to bring in this law, which fiduciary, meaning, you put your clients interest before that of yourself or your organization. And that got kicked out. And so as far as I'm aware, as we speak today, the US financial services, financial planning industry, does not have to put the client's interest at first. Now that is kind of 101, it where we are in the UK, and I think it's maybe probably the same in Ireland. Don't know, but we have to at all times, but our clients interests, it's this sort of treating customers fairly. It goes back to all that and the canonical consumer duty. So the US rules and regulations are a bit odd to me, and it was a bit surprised that Vanguard got fined basically for, say, but for not disclosing that their advisors got paid for onboarding new clients.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, it's just gonna say, Just go. Just go back to a point you said a couple of points ago, Alan, you said you think people are naive. I think that's a bit too harsh of a description, because all firms are basically selling out to consolidators, and they have that similar structure that's been factored into it. So What? What? Why are you thinking they're naive? I mean, these are financial planners. They're money people. They understand, you know, how the deal

Alan Smith:

was structured. Well, exactly All I was saying you one would be nice. Believe if you kind of took the, whatever you call it, took the shilling, and just say, I'm going to move my clients to something which is going to be far more expensive for them, and an inferior experience, an inferior service, because the chances are a fair a fair chunk of clients will probably vote with their feet and company, because the original founder and owner of that business probably no longer around. So I just think, you know, you I'm not saying they are but some you probably are naive. If you think you can sell out to something where the fees and costs become more expensive, the service is inferior to what they previously been expecting. Sure money is going to come down the line and it's dependent upon most of those clients staying on board. So it's a tricky thing to balance. Fortunately, none of us are selling out anytime soon, but it's worthy of consideration. But I think your point there, Carl, was, was there's a conflation of two different things, which I think is a fair is a fair point stories by itself. We've tried to say this thing about

Andy Hart:

social media is another subject. I mean, I used to do quite a bit of it.

Carl Widger:

Now I've grown up the infighting was about this consolidator and it's all

Andy Hart:

shit is whatever topic. It's whatever topics they're they're hot topic of that time. Yeah, it's often active, passive.

Carl Widger:

Where do they know, where do they get the time, and why do they think it's a good it's a good way for them to expend their energy to go online and go because I guarantee you, they're spending all day then looking, did he

Alan Smith:

so many ifas are on, especially LinkedIn, I don't see. I'm not that. I our accountants are lawyers? Are they all sort of yeah, having each other all day long.

Andy Hart:

Oh, sorry, I don't know about him fighting another profession. No, I don't come across it. No, I only come across him fighting within the profession because someone said, yeah, right.

Alan Smith:

Nicholas, are you back? Are you back in the game? Oh, my God. Nick, so minimal. Give it a go.

Carl Widger:

Nick, give it a go. Anyway. Nick. Nick, do you want

Andy Hart:

me to do the question? Nicholas, let me know when you want. I can, I can read just about.

Alan Smith:

Just carry on. Nick, you've got a contribution to the subject the meat potatoes.

Andy Hart:

No, but yeah, yeah.

Nick Lincoln:

This doesn't particularly interest me to

Alan Smith:

great sort of sound quality production, and it's all gone pear shaped. Oh, here we go.

Carl Widger:

You absolute grumpy bollocks. Oh, my God. It's just

Nick Lincoln:

not a subject area that I find particularly interesting. That's okay not having a pin about something. Opinion about some things. The one thing I would say about if you want, if you would say one thing about it, I do have a, I think, having gone through RDR and really cleaned up our profession, this thing now kind of double dipping through the back door where you get these firms who are pushing, potentially pushing clients into their own in house portfolios, where they take a second slice, you're obviously going to an active route to do that, because, you know, you're not going to put into your own passive funds, because not going to undercut HSBC. Are you with their global equity track coming in at five pips or something? And I think that, I don't like that, but that's about, that's, that's what I've got. It really the bitching thing. Yeah, of course, you're getting more UK advisors bitches than Irish because they're about 10 times more advisors. That's just a volume thing. Yeah, right. Trappist question. Somebody read

Unknown:

out wrong?

Andy Hart:

It's one of the factors. Carl,

Carl Widger:

yeah, we don't do it. Okay?

Alan Smith:

Andy, can you read out the TRAPPIST question? I think Nick

Andy Hart:

has a bit of inviting online. Let's hear from him. A bit more about this.

Unknown:

Oh, here we go. No, I don't know really,

Nick Lincoln:

not really. All people I should fight with on Twitter have left now. It's not now. It's not a left wing voice.

Carl Widger:

You're just fighting with yourself on Twitter.

Nick Lincoln:

I've got various accounts, like I scubble, when I block on mute,

Andy Hart:

there is guys get your phone out. There's an option on Twitter to work out how many people have blocked you. I'd be very interested in your your numbers. Nicholas, I don't know where Andrew

Nick Lincoln:

nice meeting with that question from Tom Oakes, because I opened it up in the background while you were lower witchery on Tom hopes has put his LinkedIn profile. Thank you. So this is I came across this article on barons with Christine Bell from Morningstar, interested to get the Track Packs thoughts on the following, which I pulled from the article, excuse me, the stock market has had a spectacular run in recent years. Do retirees need to adjust their portfolios? And if so, how? I'm a big believer in the bucket approach where you set aside seven to 10 years of portfolio spending in cash and bonds, including short term or intermediate term bonds or high quality funds you want to balance against an equity shock for many retirees, this will often be close to a 6040, or a 5050, type portfolio, a challenge. These days is getting people who are about five years away from retirement to de risk their portfolios. It is unusual to encounter older Americans with all or 80% of their money in stocks that is probably too risky. Now is a good time to de risk. It isn't too painful to take risk out and lock in some income by shifting into bonds or CDs, end of quote, and then Tom closes off saying, Look, you have spoken before of the buckets. But seven to 10 years of spending set aside seems overly conservative, as well as the risking five years away from retirement towards a 5050, split. Yeah, it's kind of lifestyle, isn't it? God help us. A great podcast. Keep up the good work. Okay, well, I'll go quickly first on this one, yeah, seven to 10 years of potential spending is is that seems excessive. It's this art thing over science thing again, isn't it? If you want to completely de risk yourself from volatility in the frightening stock market, you put the rest of your life spending into bonds. But the trouble that is, you're going to encounter the vigorous which is your money getting a lot by inflation, and you'll probably, you'll probably outlive the money. And that's, that's, that's very suboptimal. Typically, I go two to three years worth of not spending. And again, I want to clarify this, or planned withdrawals. If you've got a client with a lifestyle of X but they've got two state pensions, maybe a rental property, maybe a bit of a DB pension for a job they're in 20 years ago. Okay? And then the plan withdrawals are just the difference between that and their lifestyle cost. So two to three years of planned withdrawals from that part I put into a into a short they do Global Bond Fund. Funnily enough, most of those portfolios end up in the round. Then in return are about 9010, 8020, some are 7525 some are 7030 all depends on what the plan withdrawals are, but I don't stop. And so you need an 8020 No, we'll put two to three years worth in the pot, and then we'll just, you're just a ride with it, and God forbid if that pot runs out and you're still drawing down with that. When the markets are having, when the temporary declines, then we'll have an adult conversation about maybe raining and spending, you know, let's just be real about this, right? The whole thing is ambiguous. It's very uncertain. We're just trying to mitigate against really unpleasant outcomes. I think seven to 10 years. That's, yeah, that's, that's a 5050, portfolio. In the 3040, year, retirement is not going to do anybody any favors, guys,

Alan Smith:

yeah, my response on on that is, we've been fulsome in our praise of Morningstar in the past and the content that they put out. It's generally very good. I think some of these organizations, they just, there's only so many subjects. They've got to keep going over and over and over again. But, and then, you know, put a different spin on it, different, you know, something else, because this, what was it a podcast or something that, yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

there's a one of the Christine, I think it's Christine Benz, actually,

Alan Smith:

isn't it? Yes, Christine Benz, who's generally pretty good, you know, listen to a few of those things, but it's just, this is just way too generic. This is the beauty, and we keep on repeating the same thing. It is highly personalized. To say, it concerns me that Christine Benz is using the word 80% in equities. Is too risky. Define risk. Just define risk. You mean. You mean short term, volatile? Is that what you mean, or do you mean the the heart, the higher the risk of running out of income in your later years of a 30 to 40 year retirement? This is we keep on repeating the same old stuff, similar stuff. But unfortunately, it's because these articles and these podcasts and things, uh, keep coming out. It's highly personalized. Circumstances are different from client to client, different economic backgrounds, knowledge, experience, any number of other things, and therefore you can't say yes or no. I did mention on a previous podcast episode with a guy whose name escapes me now, and he had a grown up conversation with his clients and said, How many years of planned withdrawals expenditure, would you feel comfortable with holding in less short term, volatile assets? And the average was about three, three to four years, which gets you, you always end up roughly about, sort of about 80% funnily enough, in growth assets, which you know exactly it was that American advisor, Alan, I think it's one of the best questions you can ask retire. Yeah. I think if you had to ask them one question when it comes to finances, money and investing, I think that's the one question. Yeah, you say, to give you the most insight you need, yeah. So you go back to the what we say at the top of this conversation, like the dimensional charts and what have you, it's it's not if, it's when there will be a temporary drawdown in your overall portfolio value. And you know, during those times, we would ensure that your ongoing require income requirements are funded by lost less volatile assets. How many years? Because these things can last 234, years in extreme and the rest. How many years do you feel comfortable with. And as you say that, there's a bunch of other levers you can pull. You know, can you tighten your belt a bit? Is it discretionary expenditures? Absolutely essential expenditure. And you get back and forth with the client, and you end up at 345, years some, sometimes you certainly don't get 10 years worth. I've never seen that

Nick Lincoln:

just, just closing on this. I mean, if you know, in the. Okay, if you had de risked five years ago, say, gone from 100% equities into 5055, years ago, you were going straight into that storm that was coming down the line when interest rates were recordably raised, bond, bond prices fell off a cliff, and you'll still be sitting on losses, whether you're in short, dated, long term index links, whatever. So you didn't actually de risk. You You added risk to your portfolio, and you added purchasing power risk as well. You had loss of value and loss of future purchasing power, the worst outcome you can

Unknown:

have for a portfolio.

Andy Hart:

And the other risk, nobody talks about low returns. You just put yourself in a low returning portfolio.

Nick Lincoln:

It's again, another power. Andrew, but yes, that's inflation. Well, yes, but if you've got inflation, and yes, yeah, low returns are a problem if you've got inflation.

Andy Hart:

The two different risks, let's move

Nick Lincoln:

on. It's the same thing. Culture corner.

Alan Smith:

There. Is a podcast. Part of the we've mentioned it before, no, Andrew has tuned in a podcast called My first million. Sam Parr, really good. Another guy really, like, I kind of dip in and out of it, but real, like, they've now got, they're kind of building out their media empire. These guys, they've got this organization called Hampton, and there's multiple other sub podcasts, if you like that. These guys run as part of their group, one of which is called Money wise, the money wise podcast. And they do talk to, you know, people. They kind of get into the weeds of what what rich people do with their money, and what the kind of personal investment strategy is. And I've listened to a few of them, there's a general negativity around financial planners. You know? Why would I hire someone to buy me index funds that that kind of narrative that comes out? And they had, very recently a guy on who was exactly that, who was a financial planner in Calgary, Canada, of all places, but really good guy, Rob. His name is he's interviewed the host of that podcast, Harry Morton is an English guy, and he, I think he records it from from the UK, and this and the rob the financial planners out in Canada. And it just really went through, I thought was a really compelling conversation and his sort of promotion of why you would consider hiring a financial planner. The guy rob the financial planner is a dimensional advisor. He talks about dimensional specifically and why their strategy, their approach, could well be better than just simply buying slavishly an index fund. But he talks about whole other bunch of reasons, and it's just quite interesting listening. Interesting listening to it. So the host of the podcast comes on saying, Look, I hear you, but I'm not really. I need to be convinced. And everyone I've spoken to when I've hosted and asked people are not convinced. It's worth hiring a financial planner. By the end of that hour or so, he's saying, Yeah, you've convinced me. Maybe I should explore it or listen into it. So it's called Money wise. It's part of that, that stable of podcasts very highly, you know, highly professional, well produced, good quality, good sound quality, unlike this one, and it's, uh, yes, well worth tuning in if you're looking for sort of reasons. And if you come up against people who say it's not worth me hiring a financial planner, you get some good insights from Rob the financial planner out in Canada.

Andy Hart:

Thank you. So what's it called? Again? Alan money wise. It's called Money

Alan Smith:

wise. I think there's more than one called Money wise, but I'll put a link in the show notes, forensic money wise, part of the hat and group of podcasts.

Andy Hart:

The guy that runs my first million, he's doing a live mastermind meet up in London, and they're looking for really business owners at the moment? Yeah, yeah, it's quite a high qualifying number. But yeah, check it out. I think you just about qualify.

Alan Smith:

Well, you'll be 3 million turnover minimum. So yeah, you need some of us do that in our sleep.

Andy Hart:

Andrew, next, more than qualify.

Carl Widger:

God, speaking of which, I'll go next anyway. Yeah, I don't have coach corner, because I have been the last six weeks have been absolute torture, and I have literally done nothing other than have huge pressure with the triplets doing their leaving search. So I'm guessing the you guys have something similar. Do you have the GCSEs or whatever? Anyway, I'm not sure if it's as pressurized there, but the pressure that the kids are under here is absolutely insane. It's ridiculous. I was not prepared for the build up of pressure for my kids, obviously. Then the pressure comes into the house, and it's, it's, it's tricky for everybody. Then they have to wait for their results, and then the results come out, and then they have to wait for their university places. And we have had that's why I had to dash to Florida at the last minute to get Chloe over here. So I underestimated massively distress. I apologize. Apologize to every parent who said, Oh, I've got Johnny or Jill doing the leaving search. And I was like, so everyone doesn't even search. So my apologies to all those people and those of you who have yet to get kids through there, do not underestimate that the second big one, right? Because this is a podcast about money. What they don't tell you when they say, oh, yeah, it's going to cost. We increase of medicine, the annual fee from 12 to 16 grand a year, based on a study that was done, what they don't tell you is 16 grand, at least half the cost is upfront. It's just there you go. Pay the money. I need to book my place to stay. I need to pay for the fees. I need to pay for the books. It is in saying I have, I have never in my life actually spent as much money in a short period of time just like, just, go, go, go, go. So I'm glad this period is coming to a close, and best of luck to everyone who has kids who are about to embark on that final year. It is bloody difficult.

Andy Hart:

You do have three doing at the same time? Carl, so, yeah, you're allowed to feel that pressure. It's not one. They won. They won. They won three in one. Go. Is insane.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, it was, it was a powder keg.

Alan Smith:

That's equivalent of a levels in the UK. I believe, as you know, my eldest had just gone through GCSE, so he's now in the a level years, and so I've got that to look forward to. Thanks for the heads up on that, and the expense thing as well. But I think that's a good point you make, Carl in that we do advise clients. If you've got children who are younger or maybe much older, and have done this years ago. There really does seem to be an absolute. You know what? We're facing new technology and AI and getting a good place in a good university is becoming increasingly important. So maybe, maybe a bit more empathy for clients who've got, you know, teenagers going through these, you know, very, very important exams. This huge point well made.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, let's move on. Yeah. Well, said Carl

Andy Hart:

Ultra to me. Okay, yeah. So Alan alluded to this podcast earlier. This is the trigonometry podcast. I think originally you introduced me to trigonometry, Nick and I've listened to more and more of their podcasts over the years, but they have got Daniel Priestley. And I've probably listened the person I'm listening to, probably the most of all podcasts, probably Rory Sutherland, probably a close second now is Daniel Priestley, and this year, Alan, you're right, he's absolutely exploded. I agreed to him to speak in about April, and since then, he's just

Alan Smith:

you'd have no chance to trust him. Now,

Andy Hart:

maybe wouldn't. Yes, hopefully all goes well for November. So he's on the trigonometry podcast. He's talking about how, basically, Britain is destroying its own economy. He's hugely pro business. Small government backs the entrepreneurs. They're the job creators. He's all about. Money is now free to flow anywhere in the world, so if you make the incentives so terrible, people will obviously edit their behavior, move abroad. Yeah, he's he's a bit of a lone voice, or he's the best articulating it. A lot of people massively agree with him, but they find it hard to articulate. But he knows all the numbers on the back end, like the average UK person is costing 18,000 pounds, is your is your tax payment? If you pay more than that, you pay more or just goes into a whole amount of details. It's definitely worth checking out. I learned quite a few new snippets listening to that show.

Alan Smith:

So do check it out. I love the fact he always comes well prepared. He's gone just calmly, says, facts, data, evidence, information, versus some others who just ramble on and tax the rich or or whatever else.

Carl Widger:

For example, unprepared, like, like this podcast,

Unknown:

yeah, exactly

Nick Lincoln:

this ramble on, yeah,

Carl Widger:

because you had tactical issues.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, this is true.

Unknown:

I did come on. Yeah.

Nick Lincoln:

He said, Okay. So finally, me, ah, so that book I've just read The Everything Store, Jeff Bezos and the age of Amazon, really, really good book. It did come out a while ago, came out in 2013 but I think that's quite good, because a lot of the people that were involved with Amazon at that time and the formation of Amazon the late 1990s their memories were still fresh, and takes you right into the beginning of the of the story. He was still married to his wife then, and reading the book about it from 2013 you have no idea what's coming on the night. Really interesting story. I actually quite warmed the guy. He's obviously very driven, and he can be very, very demanding of his star, but he's got such a visionary this guy, you know? He says that most businesses plan for sort of three to five years at most. This guy's got, he's from the star he's had multi decade ideas they've taken time to germinate. It's well written. Some business books I can I just find them a bit taxing. This is well written. It's Pacey. Amazon Web Services. AWS is probably the most profitable part of the Amazon bloody stable, and it came up almost as an accident. They were just trying to solve their in house software problems, and they designed these. This. This concept. Now, of course, so many big brands use AWS good book, Pacey gets along out of date, but I enjoyed it, and that's my culture corner. I think we're done, gents, aren't

Alan Smith:

we? I ordered something in Amazon last week about 9am in the morning. It was delivered to my home about 3pm the same day. I didn't pay for any extra, any super duper thing the same freaking day. I mean, you just, you just kind of cannot beat that level of service.

Andy Hart:

And it's often something secure, like, you know, like a hose pipe or something, you know, yeah, Marley bone, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nick Lincoln:

Don't ask. Don't ask. Okay.

Unknown:

Oh, my Lord, on

Nick Lincoln:

the assumption that we've done there you go, dear TRAPPIST, as episode 79 slides down the you bend of Father Thomas, time for us to say goodbye and thank you for your precious time. Please do leave a review on your podcast app of choice probably will be on iTunes, but other apps now you can submit podcast reviews like and subscribe to our burgeoning YouTube channel. Oh, please jump, jump, um, but apart from that, dear TRAPPIST, it's adios. Take care of there. Goodbye from the track back, and we'll see you on the other side.

Carl Widger:

Goodbye. I did one from out of Ireland. Well done. Yay.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, Mega. Thanks to both of you. I mean, yeah, yeah. You call your heads all over the shop and ultra you've got hum going on. So I do, you know, we do appreciate you doing it. Brian, I guess, a level trap.

People on this episode

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Nick Lincoln

Host
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Alan Smith

Co-host
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Andy Hart

Co-host
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Carl Widger

Co-host

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