84 - Mr Marmite!

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

• Topical Titbits
• Meat and Potatoes: Paul Armson - "Mr Marmite" - with a special offer for TRAPists: go to https://www.inspiringadvisers.co.uk/TRAP50 and use the code TRAP50. For those U30, there’s a free membership deal - but you’ve got to listen to the episode to get it!
• TRAPist question from Aaron Brann
• Culture Corner

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

Sponsor Link: FundmentLive is happening Thursday 29th January 2026. Get your tickets here: https://fundmentlive.com/ 

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:07

Matt, 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.

Nick Lincoln: 0:42

Yes, indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 84 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap joining me in the digital studio of doom are two of the other three horsemen of the apocalypse, Alan, the storyteller, Smith and and the ultra heart, the third horseman, Carl, our close friend, Carl, can't be here today. Sadly, last week, Carl's father, after an illness, short illness, passed away, and Carl, obviously, he's just taken some time out to be with his family, be with his mum and his sisters and everybody else and his children. So what can we say these these times never easy. Carl, massive condolences from the trap pack. I'm sure I speak for the TRAPPIST audience when I say the same. And I hope you guys are holding it all over together in Ireland, the Wake looked very good, boys. Anything to add?

Andy Hart: 1:37

I think you said most of it, but yeah, thoughts with you, my friend and your family and yeah, hopefully we'll see you very shortly. Smithy, yeah.

Alan Smith: 1:45

Thoughts, no, same, same. These are just, you know, terrible moments, unfortunately, come to all of us through life. And you know, Carl's there. He's doing the right thing. He's been present amongst his loved ones. So, yeah. Thoughts with you, Carl, catch up with you

Nick Lincoln: 2:00

soon. Indeed, indeed. Okay, so Carl can't be here, but we life must go on, and we must go on with episode 84 with some more high energy review. I think we've got reads plural this week, read out by my very good friend the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain Hart,

Andy Hart: 2:15

thank you very much. Nicholas, my dog Maven is over my shoulder. He might be barking and interrupting us today, but onwards, a we ago, the first review is from Christoph ski from Apple podcasts, five stars entitled invaluable insights into the industry would be five out of six stars as an aspiring financial planner currently studying with the CII for a career change from engineering, this show provides great insights into the current events within the industry, and must listen. Keep up the good work. Next review is from trap Louis Apple podcast from Germany, German Trappist. I've been listening to this podcast for about five months now, and it's been an incredible source of value for me, even though I'm based in Germany, where some things are slightly different compared to the UK market, the core lessons in insights are universal, and I can apply them directly to my work as a financial planner. Pains me to read the next bit out last Wednesday, a conference, I had the chance to meet Alan Smith in person, together with his more competent and capable colleague, Charles, spending the whole day with them and getting to know their business model approach was a fantastic experience. Listening to the podcast is great, but having a real conversation face to face is on a completely different level. It was super motivating and has given me a real boost to move forward with my own journey. What I truly appreciate is that this podcast allows me both to switch off from the daily noise and at the same time to learn so much that I can directly use in my profession. I really hope the team continues this podcast for a long time to come back to you. Nicholas, wonderful, yeah.

Alan Smith: 3:57

Shout out to Louis. Is right. I mentioned him on the pod a few episodes ago, because, yeah, Charles not been out there to Munich and had a great time. And I love the fact that we are an international brand nowadays, the national award winning, international award winning keynote speakers. But yeah, Louie's great. There is, like, all these, let not all of them, but a few European countries as a small pioneering group of independent financial planners. You know, we know a bunch of them from the Netherlands. There's one or two in France, and now there's an emerging group in Germany too. So well done, Louis. Keep up the good work, and we'll keep keep on delivering our wisdom and advice.

Nick Lincoln: 4:38

Keep on. Keep on, keeping on. Yeah, thank you TRAPPIST for the reviews. We do love them. We love them. We can't get enough of them. Our egos are unbound, unbounded. Okay, let's put a topical timestamp on episode 84 Ultra. Lead off with some exciting news.

Andy Hart: 4:52

Very exciting news, yes, we alluded to alluded to it on the last show, we have two new partners, the mighty van. Garden the mighty fundment, we did a bit of an official announcement for Vanguard. So here's my official and out announcement for partnership for fundment. So fundment are an official crap partner. Smooth. All right, shut up. Fund it is an investment platform that's making life easier for 1000s of advisors just like you, the fundment platform empowers you to act faster, advise better and grow with confidence. If you've ever felt like your platform should be doing more for you and your clients, you're not alone. Fundment was built from the ground up to do exactly what a modern platform should do. Think lightning, fast onboarding, simple workflows and a client experience that actually feels like 2025 and not 2005 and here's the real difference, fundment isn't just about technology. It's about trust. It's about giving advisors back their time and their confidence that their advice will be properly looked advice clients will be properly looked after. So whether you're running a solo practice or scaling a growing firm, fundment helps you thrive. So welcome to fundment as an official partner to the trap podcast. We'll be doing various things with Vanguard and various things with fundment. We think they are two perfectly aligned brands, and looking forward to doing more for the Trappists and now our new partners. Back to you.

Nick Lincoln: 6:18

Nicholas, superb stuff, is perp stuff. And we have, we have Ola, the CEO on appearing on trap early next year, which we're looking forward to very much. So okay, so we're gonna leave off trouble. We straight back with you. And St James's place are branching Well, a partnership is branching out.

Andy Hart: 6:36

Yeah, this caught my attention. So former St James's place executives launch advice firm, support service. It's quite in its infancy. It sounds like it. It's a company called the next stage, spell, N, E, x, s, t, A, G, E, without the T, next stage. And at the moment, I'm not 100% sure exactly what they're going to be doing, but it's always good to see new firms being launched around the support for financial advisors. They're calling it the next stage collective. I think they're going to get independent experts on I think they're focusing on the compliance side of this business. But they are two very experienced executives, former SJP duo, Claire Blackwell and John Owen. I think Claire was head, Chief client officer, and John Owen was a director at the firm. So yeah, they've spent probably many, many years at the big blue and now they are, they are branching off. So it's always good to see people start new businesses.

Alan Smith: 7:39

Are they providing advice? Providing advice to SJP practices or

Andy Hart: 7:44

to, I'm not sure. Obviously, they know the partnership and the SJP advice model inside out, so they might pivot and focus on them, or they might just go for the wider market. I'm yeah, I'm not 100% sure. I can't even find a website for the firm, but yeah, so that's super helpful at 10 pence, but, but you've got the name, you know, the people behind it, I think they're focusing on consumer duty, AI consolidation, as I say, it sounds quite, quite a wide agreement at the

Alan Smith: 8:12

moment, all encompassing, to be fair, if they've been on the journey that SJP has been on for the last, say, two years, It will be quite interesting from going from a pretty challenging brand reputation to one that looks, you know, to the outside world, quite appealing in terms of their how they've changed the model and the fee structure and all the rest of it. So could be, could be quite interesting to hear from

Nick Lincoln: 8:37

them. Yep, all right, yep, okay, the fast tempo that our Trappists love and need. I've got some good news. We often get mired in especially with the budget looming on the horizon like a train coming down the tracks. We often get mired in a negative state of mind. But I've got some good news to report about an old life assurance, dinosaur company. Quick shout out. Nothing to say about if you don't want to guys to Scottish Widows, who I do signed over a letter of authority to them two weeks ago, and on the same day, that afternoon, they came back with all the information I asked for, not a generic pack, but all the specific information I'd asked for. Then submitted the relevant pension switch to move them onto my preferred platform. And it took just over a day for the whole thing to go through, maybe no, just just over, yeah, two working days, let's say, for the whole switch to go through. Just amazing. And when he happens is it's such a I've got another case with another company that starts with legal, ends with General, and I could quite happily throttle someone there. So go wrong. They just get lost in the abyss. But this good stuff, and it's not the first time, winners have been really quick with letters of authority, so just credit where

Alan Smith: 9:40

it's due. So you think that is something that Scottish Widows do just as a matter of course, now they're just really efficient. This isn't just a one off for this one client. No, I've had it

Nick Lincoln: 9:49

before with them. I've had it before. So it just seems to be a thing where they're just, they're putting the resources into doing the right thing by their clients. You know, who paid their charges over the years? And those clients. Deserve every bit as much good service as and when and if they're thinking of leaving a company as if, as when they're staying with it. I think

Alan Smith: 10:06

that's that's encouraging, because I always felt that, no, no company is going to put significant resources in to having clients. You know, most don't know. That's why, when it happens, it's so refreshing. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, let them be the shining beacon and setting an example for the rest of the dinosaur group,

Nick Lincoln: 10:25

Scottish Widows. Yeah, Okay, moving on. Let's get this tempo nice and

Alan Smith: 10:30

forward, quick with a quicker pace. Yes, 200

Nick Lincoln: 10:33

beats per minute. Come on. So we can do the so. Smithy, you're just you're

Alan Smith: 10:37

it's just a quick this is just a quick shout out. We like to bring ideas, innovation and resources to our beloved Trappists. It's pity that crypto Carl isn't here, but other friend of the podcast, Dan Parkinson the Bitcoin IFA, he's now rolling out a free course for ifas. You know, it's we've brought this up many times in the past. You know, Bitcoin is a thing. It's not going away. There are now Bitcoin et ends. There will be ETFs, probably in short order. Clients are asking about it. So Dan has this. He's got, as you know, he's got a number of different services, in person, seminars, webinars, things that you pay for. But he felt that for those that weren't quite ready to put the hand in the pocket and write a check or to pay for something yet, but they are still interested. He's got a free course program. There's a link to it in the show notes available now complimentary from the Bitcoin. If a worth taking a quick look at that, I would suggest. Okay, lovely.

Nick Lincoln: 11:36

Very, very, very nice. Thank you for that. Can I quickly come back to my previous I meant to on my previous I meant to on my previous point. I meant to shout out one other thing as well, another bit of good news. No, sorry for missing that off. I subscribe to the compliance department called the TCD mark and Sarah Dennison. Every week, Mark puts out a little five minute podcast on something to do with compliance as well as at least one email missive. And in this last podcast, Mark Dennison of the compliance department said it's funny when we're checking compliance records for our clients, ifas to make sure they've done the number of hours, they never put down the fact they listen to this podcast and they read these emails, and 50 weeks a year of a four minute podcast and a four minute to read email equates to roughly six hours of unstructured CPD. So you don't have to be a client of the compliance department to listen to their podcast, but I would certainly suggest you do subscribe to it. It's just another way of getting up to date, getting that stuff in between your ears, keeping on top of what you need to keep on top of. And if it's doing six hours of heavy lifting for you, which it effectively is, do it. So thank you. Mark Dennison of the compliance department, I know some therapists do use them.

Alan Smith: 12:39

They do. And I think just completing that circle and those two points, Dan Parkinson's Bitcoin, IFA is CPD credited as well, so you will get you, you'll accumulate your hours one way or other. We, I think trap is as well, isn't it? We were unstructured. Unstructured the

Nick Lincoln: 12:57

most, the most definition of unstructured. Yeah, chaotic. There should be chaotic. CPD, we'd win every warning,

Alan Smith: 13:05

structured, unstructured and completely chaotic.

Nick Lincoln: 13:09

Okay, moving on. Oh, my God. Andy, budget tax calculated. Christ, save us.

Andy Hart: 13:14

Well, I did ask you boys if I should put this in all struggle to pronounce his surname, but he's very prolific on Main needles, Dan needle. I believe he runs an organization, or is very key in this organization called Tax Policy associates. He's got this incredibly complex, convoluted, detailed spreadsheet calculator. I'll put a link to it in the so called show notes, the budget 2025, tax calculator. So you put in your income, where it comes from, and it works out the tax marginal rates and loads of other stuff. And then you can compare it to some proposed changes, which, again, the in reality, what's actually going to happen is probably going to be very different to what everyone's speculating. It's probably been, I mean, you boys a little bit older than me, so I'm sure you'll concur with what I'm going to say. Now, it's probably been the budget that, as most people are looking forward to in many, many years, I'll say looking forward to, you know, yeah, not looking forward to, whatever's concluded. But the speculation leading up to it has been like nothing else. They're going to do this. They're not going to do that. They're going to do this. They might do that. The bond yields gone up, so now they're not going

Alan Smith: 14:28

to do this. It's always going on. It's absolutely crazy. I don't know about you guys, but speaking to my colleagues, Shambles the the amount of inbound that that therefore generates from clients. I've just read this. What do you think? And people just say to you, what do you think we should do? Of course, we all take the standard stance, which is, well, until it's fact, we can't really take any action on it. But it does generate a lot of client communication.

Andy Hart: 14:53

Well, again, it's probably played into our hands. Again, the point we mentioned before, because they're inundated every day. The morning, it's going to do that. In the afternoon, it's going to do this. So in some ways, a lot of clients are a little bit paralyzed in terms of, you know, if it was just one huge change that they were speculating on, maybe clients would be, you know, a bit more on the front foot, because

Alan Smith: 15:15

income tax rates are going up so quickly. What should we do?

Andy Hart: 15:18

Ni is going up, and Ni's going up, and this is going to be pulled, and tax free cash is going and thresholds.

Alan Smith: 15:25

What's your view, you boys in terms of some people say, Well, you shouldn't even talk about it. It's newspaper press speculation. But my understanding is a lot of this is fed from the treasury, just to test the water.

Nick Lincoln: 15:36

Shall? I was thinking about this maybe for our next meat in potatoes, which is prior to the budget. And we don't often make we don't go into prognostications or forecast, but this one is, there's so much going on we could

Alan Smith: 15:46

do. What do we think the next MMP is after the budget?

Nick Lincoln: 15:50

The next MMP is 14 days, I think, yes, come out with which case our prognostications will all be right. Okay, you're right. I don't know. It's a shambles. It's a shambles. It's a complete shit show, isn't it? This really is a shit show. Okay, off the cuff. That off the cuff thing, one thing each guy is that you, you hang your hat on. They're gonna, I'm gonna go with the easy load, hanging fruit. I reckon they're gonna raise capital gains tax percent that the tax rates higher. Next quick, punchy, come

Alan Smith: 17:22

on go. The going to cap the amount that you can put into a pension using salary sacrifice or with no ni contributions.

Andy Hart: 17:31

Ultra, no predictions, no predictions. Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 17:35

I'll do Ultra one for him. They're going to get rid of the CGT, wipe off on death. Okay, there we go, moving through the Oh, yeah, that

Andy Hart: 17:41

would be an interesting one. Nick the CGT, uplift on there? Yeah, well, it's not, well,

Nick Lincoln: 17:47

it's not really all you doing. You're getting taxed for inflation. I mean, if they bring anyway, but they don't care. They don't care. So what's next on the slate? We did the budget. Okay. Well, yeah, okay, so we Rachel Reeves' Mansion House speech of last year, in which she sort of suggested further that private equity has got to get involved more in pension funds, or rather, the way around, that pension funds need to invest more in UK equities. We've now got the science, science and tech committee, another room full of the unemployed in suits who have come out with another report on the back of the Mansion House reforms. I read this paragraph verbatim. This is what this committee said. So just listen to what I'm saying here and listen to the arrogance. We do not believe that the average contributor to you to a UK pension fund would think it is right that most of their contributions should go to boost overseas economies starving their own country of investment. The government should ask pension funds ask to survey their active contributors on this matter and respond accordingly, the government should reserve powers including mandation and withholding tax relief from funds that fail to meet their mansion house targets. This is the iron fist in the glove approach. It is naked, naked interference with with with pension funds and the pension fund members on what they do. Most pension fund members don't give a monkeys. And to be honest with you, if I was Joe Public and just had a smattering of knowledge about world markets, I'd be thinking, I hope I've invested in you in the USA for the last 20 years, and not the UK, because, from what I understand from page 17 of the sun, the UK stock market is down three fifths of Jack all so another terrible idea, coercing pension funds to invest in the UK stock market in some lame, harebrained scheme to get the UK stock market going again. It doesn't work that way. Capital flows freely. It's like water. You can't you can't corral it. Guys, what do you think

Alan Smith: 19:40

I've got my hand up Nick because I read that's the House of Lords report came out last week. Yeah, House of Lords, Science and Technology Committee, yeah, yeah, which I read in detail and broadly speaking. Well, it's, it's, it's, it's thoughtful and positive in a range of its its ideas and suggestions. The fundamental issue here is that the UK kind of entrepreneurial startup scene is on its knees. There's all sorts of issues. We already talked about them. We'll talk about them again in terms of government policy, tax policy and what have you. But it is very, very difficult for early stage companies to raise money in the UK for all the reasons that it goes into in that report. So a lot of them, some that I know, I certainly know some that Andy knows, they they list in the US, or they raise funds in the US, and a lot of that capital flows outside of the UK anyway. And this is me. I'm going kind of back on what I have said before, but I'm beginning to understand this a bit more. This is, I think it's not reasonable that pension funds should be forced to buy, you know, big listed UK companies, as we know, most of them make most of their revenue overseas. Some of them are headquarters overseas. They just happen to be listed in a London Stock Exchange. I think with all the tax breaks that pensions get, I don't think. As a starting point. It's not unreasonable that they could start off by surveying their members and saying, Would you be willing to have a small allocation, I'm talking one to 2% of an overall pension fund in innovative UK startups, AI companies, tech companies, biotech, that sort of thing. Is a very small percentage, because they are there are very, very generous tax breaks that everyone, all of us, benefit. Not generous. They're

Nick Lincoln: 21:29

not generous tax breaks. They just don't get taxed to bug we like everybody else. That's not the same thing, yeah, but it's

Alan Smith: 21:37

a fundamental issue for, you know, the next generation of

Nick Lincoln: 21:41

British but address the underlying issue, why don't these companies? Why don't these funds it? Why don't these startups get the investment address the bloody cause? Don't put another band aid over the wound. Why don't people invest in these startups?

Alan Smith: 21:53

Well, it's there's a range of suggestions that are made consequences. There's a whole list of things. You're absolutely right, but the fundamental thing, you've got to create an attractive economy. But right now, it is very, very difficult for any early stage company within the first 123, years to even get off the ground. And those with good ideas and innovation, they're just upping sticks. And so I'm just thinking the next 10 or 20 years in this country, and all the examples given, there's examples within that report. I think of things like Deep Mind, which Andy knows, which was bought by Google and for 500 million, or something like that, or 400 some, some low figure anyway, and it's now worth 10s of billions. And there are so many companies UK, you know, good companies worth a lot that have all if they've been bought by us, companies, Chinese, companies, other non UK. And it's just, you know, if we continue to ignore this issue, then it's just going to get worse and worse. I'm not saying that's the only thing. There's a whole range of other things that the country should do, but we should start thinking in terms of being more innovative, more more creative, and thinking about the next five and 10 years, because if you think things are bad now they're going to get a lot worse. Okay,

Nick Lincoln: 23:03

I'm going to start up a company tomorrow, and I want one reason not to a proposed exit tax, right? Exactly things. In

Alan Smith: 23:11

fact, that report, interestingly, didn't even mention tax. They didn't. That's a whole

Nick Lincoln: 23:16

lot of other pain. The people that are tax rates never want to mention tax. Those anyway, right? Okay, so right now that one down, no. Hands are raised. Your hands still raised on right Ultra Yes, give it. Go on. Go on. It was good.

Andy Hart: 23:32

Yeah, no, I'll get this is a little bit self indulgent, but I'm still on a bit of a high from humans under management. Last Last week, you boys were there. I moved to a new venue, the Pullman hotel, sure theater. Lots of Trappists were there. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, awesome. I'm still going through all the feedback and tweaking for next year, but I was pleased with how the new venue went. I asked everybody for a score out of 10, how do you rate the overall conference? And so far, it's the highest score we've ever got. We're at 9.2 out of 10 for financial services, financial advice conference. That's pretty high. And the overall speaker scores are, again, are crazily high. The overall speaker scores at the moment, at 8.69 out of 10, yes. Thank you to all the exhibitors who came, Vanguard and funman were there amongst the other exhibitors. Thank you to all the speakers who came, and thank you to all of the delegates, because without you, we have no show. I'll be staying at the same venue next year, but tweaking, I think the main feedback is, have a have another fancy coffee cart. And a few boys were there, but the venue provides its own coffee. And then I had to buy in another coffee cart, and that was just absolutely round all bloody day. So don't worry, I'm listening to you. There'll be more fancy coffee next year. And a couple of other minor points. Daniel Priestley, who lots of you may know, finished off the show. That was good. I was speaking to him for quite a while backstage. Smithy, you were backstage with me for a while in the green

Alan Smith: 25:14

room, seeing the, oh yeah, with all the celebrities and keynote speakers and the

Andy Hart: 25:18

screen we had at the event, it was, it was back lit, so people were looking at a screen. But imagine, like a cinema that the screen has the projector behind it, and you, at one point, walked behind the screen to go and sit down at the at the sofas, and your image head just walked across the screen. Anyway, you boys were there. What did you think? Over to you, Smithy,

Unknown: 25:42

credit where it's due. Andy, honestly, you know, we'd be the first to criticize you, and we have been in the past. And I think, look, I've said this to you personally for me, and I've been to every single one, I think Nick has as well, every single one. And I've been to Dublin, I've been to Cape Town, and there was a time maybe a couple of years ago, I. Was thinking maybe it was just me. I just been to a lot of it. It was all got bit samey, same sort of subject, same sort of thing. This one, you came flying back with a vengeance. I thought this was the best I'd ever attended. I saw pretty much all the speakers, I think almost all of them, and the one for me link, apart from you, actually, that was, that's one of the funniest bits of the day, because you're right, because none of us you, it's worth saying that you launched on stage first thing in the morning. We've been obviously socializing the day before, and none of your fellow track pack members had made it quite on time. We're running a few minutes late.

Andy Hart: 26:48

All added to the bands,

Nick Lincoln: 26:49

okay, yeah, it was,

Alan Smith: 26:51

anyway, it was, it was really good. And look forward to doing it all again

Andy Hart: 26:56

next year. So hopefully, yeah, you'll be supporting me next year. Okay, so that's enough hum for the moment.

Nick Lincoln: 27:01

Superb stuff. Over to you. Okay, well, thank you, and thanks. And it was, it was superb. Moving on to moving on to it's back to me, make this snappy smithy, because it looks like you can send the whole audience to sleep.

Alan Smith: 27:12

No, no, it's not. I don't know about you boys, but with all the aforementioned tax changes, things getting progressively worse across the more traditional tax wrappers, we're certainly finding increasing demand or advice given for bond wrappers, life insurance, Bond wrappers, onshore and particularly offshore. I can't remember if I mentioned that in the last episode, but it's certainly something I've had discussions about the FT did a thing in the last last weekend's Financial Times saying that inflows to offshore bonds have doubled in the previous 12 months, because as capital gains tax gets impacted as pensions come into the inheritance tax estate bonds are kind of making a worthy comeback as part of your investment and Tax Planning Toolkit, and we're certainly experiencing that. That's the first thing to say, interesting observation, and the second thing is mentioned them before as well, but a company called Firenze, who are an independent Lombard lender, which in other words, they will lend money against portfolios. Historically, only done it on GIS and isas. They are now rolling this out for bonds. So this is a sort of this is where our clients, and particularly the high net worths and super wealthy ones are able to use some of the tools that they you know, the billionaires, what have you been using for years? If you've got a couple of million quid or a few million quid sitting in an offshore bond wrapper, and then you have a short term liquidity need, you need to bridge a property purchase or to help your kids temporarily or something, and a lot of your wealth is tied up already. Then just borrowing some money, borrowing against the security of your investment bond at a relatively low rate, competitive rate, hopefully a relatively small percentage, let's call it 20% of the overall value of the portfolio. Pay a low rate of interest. Don't have to encash anything, don't have to sell it down and then pay the loan back once you've dealt with that sort of short term liquidity squeeze. I think that's really useful, and I think not, certainly not available, not right for everyone, but for a few of your wealthier clients, they've got lots of moving parts in their lives that can be a useful addition to your to the range of tools that you've got. I know Nick fell asleep because you will never use them. We will only ever use ices and Gia. But for some people, it can be appropriate.

Nick Lincoln: 29:31

No, I was listening. I wasn't falling asleep. I'm just recording this shirt at my brother's house in the Cotswolds, and I'm sort of crouched on a sofa, so I'm just giving my back some release. I was just, she thought you just laid down on the sofa, stretching out. No, no, no, no, no. I was listening to it. And then, you know, as ever, as ever, yes, course, life assurance dinosaurs are pushing their investment bonds. Enter into that relationship with your eyes open. They're going to be your partners for the next 30 years. There's no getting out of it once you're in them, you can't in specie, those buggers away. Right? True, moving on.

Andy Hart: 29:59

Is this the first time you've left Fort for this year? Nick, I've left this the first time you've left what for this? Year,

Nick Lincoln: 30:07

left Valley path. Yes, it's the first time. No, I ventured into company. Comes into central last week. I survived just right. Let's move on to renters rights. Ultra

Andy Hart: 30:18

renters rights. This is the new renters rights act that's been introduced in the middle of next year. I suppose it's the wider conversation that we frequently have. You know, the golden age of property, the golden age of property, investing in physical property, I think, probably ended about 10 years ago, and then since then, it's been an absolute slow death. So there's more absolute regulation, red tape, new acts coming in that are going to impact private landlords. The big thing that's got a lot of attention is, you know, no no reason evictions, currently, you can just decide to kick someone out with a bit of notice and do whatever. You wish with the property. So a couple of the main changes. So currently you can serve a section 21 eviction notice for no reason. After the first of May next year, your landlord will need a legal reason to evict you with a section eight the main the only one really is if they're selling the property, the one that is quite interesting. Currently, there's no limit on rent in advance. And I know a lot of people that you have used rent in advance over the years. So a typical example would be, let's say someone just got recently divorced, and it might be the less financially savvy one. They might have a load of capital. They don't have any income. So they'd say to a landlord, look, I'm a good tenant, you know, I'm not going to cause you any problems. And just to sweeten the deal, I'll give you 12 112, months rent upfront, and then I'll start paying your rent with three months to go. For the 13th month, 40. You know, I'm just going to front load this deal, whereas the new changes coming in, the maximum they can ask for is one month. There's gonna be a lot of people who are capital, heavy, income, job, poor, let's say that will probably struggle to find places. So there's a lot of you know, intentions versus outcomes with this, but it's just more and more red tape compliance issues for private landlords and renting. Yes, Nick, what's Ultra

Nick Lincoln: 32:27

what problem they're trying to solve with that last thing you talked about there?

Andy Hart: 32:31

Well, I think they're probably assuming that greedy landlords are constantly asking for rent upfront, whereas most of them don't really want rent upfront. From my experience, they just want consistent cash flow. But as I say, there are niche examples where someone needs to keep it simple, pay six months up front and continue to pay that because they're capital rich, they haven't got any income so that so they're going to fail the the income test for rent. So there's a whole other heap of stuff that is coming down the line, and obviously rental agents need to be more aware of it. Private landlords need to be work more aware of it. Financial Advisors loosely aware of it. But I'm assuming we're focusing less and less on portfolio landlords. But as I say, Yeah, we left the Golden Age many, many years ago, and since then, there's been just been more and more reasons

Nick Lincoln: 33:21

we did, we did avoid it. So just conscious of time, guys, we're 33 minutes in. Our guest has been waiting in the lobby for the last 30 minutes. So I know you can't see that, but it's, I know it's praying on my mind. Okay, Buffett's final letter. Oh no, sorry. Storyteller. Mind the

Unknown: 33:36

Gap. Mind the Gap. This

Alan Smith: 33:38

is, this will be very brief. This comes out every year. It's morning star who produces report. It's like a bit like our friends at Vanguard and their advisor, alpha, but this is just very specifically focuses, and it's just pure data. It's looking at investment return, ETF, investment returns in the US and across the world versus because Morningstar track inflows and outflows into funds. So average investor returns versus actual market returns, their number across the board, is about 15% lower. In other words, the average investor obtains about 15% lower investment returns than the markets actually deliver. We all know why, because investors make dumb decisions, and they are guard guided by their own behavior, which is likely to make wrong decisions. So it's as you expect from Morningstar. It's just full of facts and data. Some of the returns, that's that's a general across all funds, but some of them are the gap is much, what? Much wider. I think international equities, for example, they said was much wider. So I put a link to the report in the show notes, and it's good again, not that you need to justify yourself, but that in itself, would cover an advisor's fee if they did nothing else other than keep the client in a seat. And it's fact and data worth checking. Oh, that's interesting.

Nick Lincoln: 35:04

That isn't Thank you. Okay, getting getting through it at a decent temper. Now we have it. Mrs. Name was a, was a buffet

Andy Hart: 35:13

was a. I am an absolute Warren Buffett fanboy, as you boys well know most Absolutely he loves me. He's big fan of me. Big big fan, big fan of mine. Who is, yeah. So whenever he produces one of his letters, I print it out and I highlight the keynotes. So this is, I suppose, quite a sad moment in the in the investment world. So Buffett used to come out with his his annual letter just before the annual meeting in May. The meeting wasn't you come out the letter in about April, anyway. So this is his final official publication, as let's say, being directly involved in Berkshire Hathaway. But what he's going to do going forward is going to he's going to do what he calls a Thanksgiving message. It's going to be like a watered down version of the Buffett letter. Couple of things I'm going to highlight in here. He mentions in the letter that in nine. 1958, he bought his first and only home, which is very interesting. So he bought the one home. Stayed in it forever, and he's going to be there forever. He's talking about obviously his old age is 95 at the moment, those who reach old age need a huge dose of good luck daily, escaping banana peels, natural disasters, drunk or distracted drivers, lightning strike, strikes, you name it. Basically saying luck's been on his side. His children are currently age 7270 and 67 it's all very old. My camera's sort of playing up. I don't know why. Anyway, I'll move on from that. And he also says ruling from the grave does not have a great record, just adding some humor in there. But the one thing I've got to speak to focus on is he mentions about, about, you know, where these policies come out with good intentions, but they end up, you know, achieving what they try to avoid. Anyway. He's all of them, yeah. It's called all of them, yeah, well done. Nick it was mentioned about CEO pay. So there was a mandate or a directive that came out in America that said all CEOs need to publicly display what they earn. And they thought this would incentivize them to not be, let's say, so greedy. And a lot of companies used to have to publish the average wage of one of their employees, and how many times the CEO wage was that. And it started off at 70 times and 100 times. Now it's at 350 times or something. But what he said the result of this was CEOs were publishing their pay records, but the new rules produced envy, not moderation. What happened was other CEOs saw what other CEOs are earning, and they were like, Why am I only earning 47 million when the guy or girl down the road's earning 82 million? So it was it was devised to hopefully incentivize moderation, but the result of it was envy, which I think is human behavior. Human behavior?

Nick Lincoln: 38:07

No. Sherlock, yeah,

Andy Hart: 38:09

okay, thank you. It's like that they're publishing it in their own accounts that you know me as the CEO, I'm earning 480 times my typical employee salary, but I'm annoyed that I'm not earning twice as much. Yeah, you know, 680,000 because you know the guy down the road who I think's a worse job. They

Alan Smith: 38:28

use that then in negotiations with their with their board, you say, Well, I'm underpaid relative to my peers. Okay, it's just pure, pure human

Nick Lincoln: 38:37

behavior. My battery is also going as well, by the way, which is another pressure, Okay, moving quickly on so this, this kind of snuck out. I didn't hear a big fan for about it, because I think with this impending budget of doom, the proposed or the muted or the potential changes to tax free cash being produced was kind of front and center for a lot of us, and certainly for our clients, but the Treasury has actually gone out. And now I said that's not happening. I mean, it's a bit bloody late in the day, but there's an article in The Telegraph behind the paywall, but there are ways around it, if you know how in the so called show notes, the Treasury have ruled that out. However, however, that might come a bit too late for many UK advisors, because my next subject is a thing I subscribe to from a company called callerstone. Callerstone.co.uk link in the show notes, who measure UK funding, flowers and out UK domiciled funds. There could be UK funds. It could be global equity funds, but if they're domiciled in the UK, okay, they don't pick up Ireland yet. Hopefully they do. But October was their worst ever record for outflows from UK domiciled funds. And it's just another example, really, of this, this, this nature of which, don't know what's going on. And Edward Glynn, Head of Global Markets at Callisto, and said, callerstone, said, one of the reasons this outflow is happening, they think, is growing concern about Rachel Reeves' budget and the anticipated tax implications. For some it's a simple matter of crystallizing capital gains. In case races go up, rates go up. I think that's probably right. This drives a huge uptick in selling. It did so last year, and is doing so now. But for many others, is about pensions. The tax free lump sum that over 55 may draw down from their pension is such a vital part of most people's retirement planning that the risk it will be scrapped or drastically scaled back is simply too concerning for many diligent pension savers in their 50s and beyond to contemplate speculation on policy has made this drastic step the only rational choice for many, even if it may ultimately harm, harm their longer term financial goals. Now here we are as regulated advisors, hide, bound by consumer duty and everything else. And, you know, consumer detriment is worse than is worse than mass murder. But here we have a regulatory here we have a government and the whole regime that is if, and I totally get it, if I was Joe Public, I, you know, and I was relying on, I need my pension, tax free lump sum to fund clear the mortgage next year, and we're going on this lovely holiday, and my girls weddings are coming up that I would take the money out, and I've done it, and it's just,

Alan Smith: 40:56

it's so bad, it's bird in the hand, and all rest of it's probably not going to happen. But who knows, there is just a complete lack of trust. Trust. Old, lack of trust has evaporated across the board. So it's like, I'm going to take this whilst I can, because they might not do it now, but they probably do it sometime in the future. Chances are they probably will never do it. But once trust is gone, then you've got no chance. And you and you're right. So all this God, with all this stuff you were talking about before, about encouraging investment in the UK, and we're having billions withdrawn just by short term tactical stupidity.

Nick Lincoln: 41:27

Address the underlying causes. Don't bloody force pension funds into you. Okay, so sorry, guys. I'm resting this now the final, the very final thing before we our guest gets let into the trap studio of doom.

Alan Smith: 41:38

Storyteller, I was hesitant to add this, in case you all went, oh god, that's, that's, that's old news, but one of my colleagues shared with me, because, as you know, I'm off the tools. I don't get into the my new shy of day to day. But there is, if you come, if you meet a new client, and all this stuff about protect, you know, tax free, cash, pension, commencement, lump sum. And there's all the various historical iterations, and some people got various protections in place. And sometimes a new client comes to you, and you can't quite remember what it is that now all that data is now, might have been for a while, but I just found out about it last week in our centralized database. Put the link in it on a.gov then you can find out exactly what protections your client has. HMRC, that's it

Nick Lincoln: 42:24

useful. There's the link to that so called show notes. Another thing we're giving all you beloved trappers. Okay, we're now at whatever we bloody our 41 minutes in, our guest is hovering. He's not a man to wait either. He'll be, he'll be pent up with the with God knows what. But let's move on to what many people call the meat and potatoes of the real advisor podcast. Now we're going to let him manage the lobby, who we've all had interactions with over the years, he's interacted with many, many advisors. He's been transformative. He's also divisive, and I think that's not necessarily a bad thing, and he's an interesting guy, so let's let him in and let him talk for himself. Hey, there's somebody at the door. You can hear you, sir, we can see you. Can you hear us?

Paul Armson: 43:10

That's better taking these things out. Can you hear us? Paul, can hear now.

Nick Lincoln: 43:17

Yeah, rehearsal before the so, anyway, completely Mr. Marmite is in the room. Mr. Marmite, the man who puts the money into Marmite. Paul, hello, welcome Alan. Before you get before you go. Alan, give, give God's quick potted bio of Mr. Armstrong.

Alan Smith: 43:33

Well, now I'm going to invite Paul to give a bio I was just saying before you came on. You and I, we go back a long way, a long time. I've even been sailing on your majestic around the Aegean. So we've known each other for many years, but and you were, and I think certainly I Nick Lincoln in particular, and a whole bunch of us of that kind of cohort, that generation that was growing up sort of 15 plus years ago and trying to build financial planning businesses. I've got a debt of gratitude to you, because we all went to this when you did a kind of UK tour, didn't you? We're giving presentations up and down the country, going back quite a number of years, and you were really impactful. And I was speaking to colleagues in my company recently, saying thinking about some of the most impactful things that we ever did in the company, and engaging with you and the sort of presentations that you gave us was really, really meaningful, and it still is to the business today, and it is for many, many others. Having said all that, there's quite a few people on this podcast and Trappists and people who tune into it that probably aren't so well versed with your work, your background, your experience. So just as we open this up, Paul, can you just go back and give people who don't know too much about you a bit of a potted history background where you've come from, and that journey over the last 10 or 15 years or more, Journey of the last 1015 years or more?

Paul Armson: 45:48

Cool. Okay, thanks. I'll try not to go on too much. So for those people that may not know anything about me, I fell into the job as a financial advisor when I was 22 so that was in 1982 so it's interesting for me now to see youngsters in financial planning wanting to sort of achieve success. So I think the people on the call started very early on. So I was 22 when I started in financial services, fell into the job, and for the first eight years of my life, was busy selling financial products and doing all the things that the industry had trained me to do full commission back then. And I was busy. I was seeing people who had anyone at a pulse. I'd be working evenings, weekends and so on. And then everyone on the call knows this. You guys know this. That, to me, happened that sort of changed my life. And that was my mom died suddenly. And when she died, that sort of woke me up to this idea, or this fact that life is not a rehearsal. So I really got this sort of awakening, if you like, about how life speeds up. The older you get, even for a 30 year old, I had that awakening, awakening and that awareness that it is going fast, and I'm only 30 right. And then so I then started to live by this mantra that life is not a rehearsal. And what then happened, though, was when I first started to see clients. After my mom died, I started to hear clients say certain things that my dad had always said, always said, and those words were often, one day, we'll do this one day. We'll do that one day with the other and I had this, I remember having this conversation with one client, and just really got quite annoyed with them because they were saying that this, this thing about one day, will do stuff. And I said, Why not do these things now? Why not do these things now? It's not a rehearsal. So what happens? I bought this whole new dimension to the conversation with clients about life and how it speeds up the older you get and you've only got one chance to do stuff. And I started to realize that my job as a financial advisor wasn't to peddle products on behalf of the industry, it was to really engage with clients about where they are in life right now, how they got to where they are now, what's their story. And then once you understand where they are now, you could then start delving into what they would like their future to be, and then it's my job to help them to have the right money at the right time, to get the things out of life that they say that they want. So I started to have this realization about the concept of lifestyle financial planning. I created this concept called Lifestyle financial planning, which is basically helping clients to identify, achieve and maintain their desired lifestyle without ever running out of money or dying with too much. And that's really what I realized my purpose was in life. So anyway, cut a long story short, I just did that for every single client that I took on from that point forward. Got very choosy about the clients that I took on, and that enabled me to have a decent life and semi retire at 45 that's what I then did, because it's my my life too. It's your life too, on the call. So um, and then other advisors started asking me how to achieve those things, and they asked if I could then teach them what I knew. And that's how I became if you like Coach, you want a better word. I don't really see myself as a coach, but that's how you came across me when I started to share up and down the country my concept of lifestyle, financial planning, and how to adopt it to demonstrate and deliver more value, and, more importantly, how to enjoy the job again. I mean, that's the thing. Financial Products are pretty boring. Investments are pretty boring. It's helping clients to get the life that they want. That's exciting. That's it. That's sexy. I call it. So hopefully that gives an overview. And then when I was running around the country, I thought, hang a minute. Why am I running around the country doing this when I can actually put all of this online through videos? And that's where I created inspiring advisors with a whole load of videos that then teach advisors how to how to adopt a more meaningful service proposition with lifestyle, financial planning. And my videos basically teach, step by step by step, how to do it, what to say, when to say it, and so on. So lots of advisors adopted that process now. And, yeah, I got a kick out of that still

Alan Smith: 49:40

brilliant Nick. You've got a question.

Nick Lincoln: 49:44

Yeah, it's more of a comment, really. I just wanted to, you know, we've all paid homage to armison Over the years, and, and, and I just want to get, I want it on the record again that I went to a, I went to a presentation by Paul in 2008 and he was nothing wrong with this. He was selling, he was selling truth software, but on the around the concept of lifestyle, financial planning. And I was in this hotel room above St Albans train station, not just myself and Paul. There are other fully clothed people in this hotel room. And hotel room, and Paul gave us this presentation. And I was just blown away by and of course, it was the bucket, which I'm sure Paul wishes he'd copywriting, but it's this brilliant concept of just showing people within a picture, because the picture says 1000 words. This is what we do. We help people through this morass of stuff. Have you got enough? Will you? Will you have enough to enable you to do all your life goals. And this just blew me away. And in that room at the time there was there was certainly Tina weeks was in that room there probably some other big hitters who've gone on from that moment onwards who are inspired by Paul. So I want to say a real thank you to you, and that message can be repeated hundreds, if not 1000s of times through through this mighty profession of ours. And along the way you've you piss some people off, and that's a good thing, right? We want, we need, we need. But you know, if you're not upsetting somebody almost every day, you're probably not doing the right thing. And I'm, you know, I live by that mantra, which is why I got a very small circle of friends. But you're such an advocate for good. You don't give a monkey's who you upset. You realize that the industry really has been opposed against us for first, way too long. I think it's getting better now, but I want to just say on record, thanks. And for the younger advisors who haven't listened to Paul, aren't familiar with Paul and his inspiring advisors and everything else, just immerse yourself in this. It is a very quick way to be coming on the righteous path doing full fat financial planning. So there we go. There's enough smoke.

Paul Armson: 51:32

I'll say, Thank you for your nice words.

Andy Hart: 51:37

I will chip in. Yeah, I first came across Paul similar event. It was in St Albans. There was an advert in the new model advisor. It was my first paid event. I don't know if. It was 47 quid.

Nick Lincoln: 51:50

5767 47 quid. It was 47 quid. I remembered, yeah,

Andy Hart: 51:56

I was a lonely mortgage advisor, but I was doing the exams to become a financial advisor. I was 27 I was very impressed with what Paul saying, but I was a little bit underwhelmed that the lack of technology in the industry at the time. And then I spent a couple of years trying to become a financial advisor, and things came full circle. We've all spoken it back to why haven't we? Paul, and you said I was the best speaker. These boys were fillers. Still the case. Dream on

Paul Armson: 52:20

Ultra. Yeah, I remember, I remember you being in that seminar Andy, and I remember thinking that guy is going to be a superstar or a complete Oh, for God's sake, but anyway, you've turned out to be a superstar.

Nick Lincoln: 52:34

One of the reasons we wanted to get you on anyway, Paul, because because of who you are. But so financial planning has become embedded in a lot more firms than it was, certainly when you started out, and since I started doing it, 2008 is way more common, but it's still nowhere near as commonplace as it should be. That's not the only issue. I don't think a lot of people are doing full fat financial planning as well as they should be, and I think there are issues with it. You wrote a very good piece on LinkedIn recently. They linked to it in the so called show notes. And again, as as is your way, you were very dogmatic about it. You were saying is, this is what I would do, and this is the reason I would do it. Just expand on that. And it's loosely around the subject of unrealistic future assumptions being made about someone's cash flow, that they can kind of get off the hook for taking personal responsibility. I won't say more. I'll let you fill in the gaps. Personal Responsibility. I won't say any more. I'll let you fill in the

Paul Armson: 53:29

gaps. Okay, there's a bit of a lag on the conversation, by the way, but yeah, I think that's an apple thing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So that post, that post, I think, was talking about how it came about, because I was talking to an advisor who was like, checking out my stuff, and he has to have a call. And he said, I don't know what all the fuss is about, because none of my clients run out of money, and it was like doing cash flow forecast. None of his clients ever run out of money. And I said, Tell me about your clients. They said they're all business owners and and I said, they never run out of money. He said, No, they never ran money. I said, Well, something's not right here, so it's not right. And he got, when I got to the bottom of it, this guy was basically putting in every single financial plan, every single cash flow model that he did. He was including, and it was his suggestion as well, which is even worse, a business sale. He was including a house downscale. And it was even asking things like, do you expect to receive an inheritance? Any inheritances? And all of these things went into the plan. And I was just completely shocked and stunned by this particular methodology. And all he was doing really, was trying to make the client feel good when they saw their lifetime cash flow. He was using voyant to make them sure feel really pleased about where they were heading financially so he could get hold of their assets and invest it, basically. So that's that was the bottom line. He didn't really sort of deny that that's what he was doing. And I think there's an awful lot going on where client, where financial planners, so called, financial planners, aren't really taking this seriously, and they're quite happy to build a financial model or a cash flow forecast to help justify the sale of a product or to keep the compliance department happy, but they're not realizing the power they've got with that tool to do the job properly, and there's Only one way to do it properly, and that's realized that it's a draft financial plan. As soon as you create it, it's out of date. And therefore, the only reason why it works, as Andy will know, is because you can repeat the process year after year after year after year after year, ideally, using the same software with the same words, the same mindset, the same communication of the service that you're delivering is communicated that client year after year. You don't go switching softwares every five minutes because you get one cheaper or you get a free one with your company, or whatever. That's what's going on, as we know. So I think what we've got to do is planners, real, full fat financial planners, people who really believe this stuff, we've got to stand up and call out those people that are taking shortcuts and are doing one off, one off financial plans, or one off cash flow forecast never to be visit, revisit again, because it's done. It served its purpose. It's got the assets, and from now on, the conversation is about the money, and that's where I think we need to really shout from the rooftops that if you're going to deliver real financial planning, if you're going to call yourself a financial planner, then you do the job properly, and you do it year after year after year after year you don't then default to being a money focused advisor, which is what most advisors tend to do. Sadly,

Andy Hart: 56:24

good point. So my point to you, Paul, really, you know, for the last two decades, you've been champion, you know, lifestyle financial planning, you were the sort of initial person to popularize that term. My question is, the future, the state of the profession. Are you optimistic where the profession is heading? Have you seen good changes in your last two decades being a coach, or do you still think we've got a long way to go? So my sort of question for you. Is the state of the profession and the future ahead.

Paul Armson: 56:56

It's going in the right direction. The problem we've got, as always, is we're about we shouting from the rooftops about real financial planning. Can do what we can do, and we can get people's attention about it, and we can get people's heart and mind engage with the idea about doing it properly. But as soon as they finish listening to me or finish listening to trap, what happens is they go back to their day job, and they're bombarded then with messages from the industry that gets back in their head again to make it sound like it's all about the money. So we're fighting still not as much as we were, because we've got more people believing in this now, thank heavens. But we're still fighting against this thing called the industry, as you know, I always put industry in the inverted commas, because we're not in industry. We are fighting for a profession, a mighty profession, as Andy calls it. So we're making massive advances. Course we are. But the challenge we've got is advisors still get caught in the money stuff and the Transaction Trap, and they still such good people are still not delivering what they could deliver, and therefore not believing in their their power and purpose sufficiently. That's what we're up against, and that's where we've got to inspire more people to do the job properly. In inverted commas, I'll say how.

Nick Lincoln: 58:12

Do we do this? Do you think, I mean, it's financial planning is such a one to one thing, isn't it, Paul, and it's so, it's so you're so enmeshed with the clients lives, it's and we've only got so much bandwidth. Is it a problem that we should be looking to solve? Or is it, is Is it because of scale issues? It's just going to be one of those things that would be lovely to have in a put lovely to have in a perfect universe. But is it actually something that we're going for, something that's just not attainable

Paul Armson: 58:44

to agree with you? Yeah, possibly. So all we can do is hope that a where, whereas you might have two or 3% of financial planners, real financial planners delivering real financial planning, which I'm guessing is about right, could be 5% at best. And what I mean by real, proper financial planning is when a client receive every single client receives one consistent service, which I say, revolves around three parts of our job, life, planning, financial planning, and if necessary, if necessary, a financial product. The problem as if we've got here, as the industry survives on this, this bit here being the product piece being sold, and that's why it's so dominant in getting into advisors heads will not change. We can't change all advisors into one of these because the industry's got too much power, and always will have too much power. But if we can get from 5% to 20% of advisors delivering proper financial planning to every client every time, that's the only chance we'll ever have of creating a proper, proper profession. That's hard to say. So again, it's that thing, isn't it? It's, How can we possibly build a profession if people call themselves financial planners, but don't really do financial planning, because in my head, if you and if people watching this or listening to this, really understand my three hat message about, first of all, it's know your client, plus plus, plus, which is called life planning. In other words, where is the client now in their life, and how did they get there? And when you understood that you've earned trust and respect and the right to delve into their future about where they're trying to get to. So when you do that, that's when you ascertain their life and lifestyle goals. I hate the word goals, but that's what you got to do first. How can you possibly advise any of that shite over there until you really understand your client. So getting to know your client, what they're trying to achieve is number one job. We all know that, right? But people pay lip service to it, as long as they get older the money. So that's our first and most important job. Then when we understand what the client's trying to achieve, we can then do financial planning, and that's understanding the resources available to them now, the resources becoming available to them in the future, and often the resources that might need to come available to them to satisfy their financial plan built through a comprehensive cash flow model to help them to see what that future looks like. If that financial plan indicates needed a financial product. If it does, then and only then, we did a third happy the financial advice piece which is right, find the right product to suit the client's real goals. That's how it should be. That's what I call full fat proper financial planning. As I said, very few advisors do that. They might do it occasionally. The minute percentage of people who do this with every client every time, is what we've got to focus on increasing. That's how we'll build a proper respective profession. When every financial planner does financial planning with every client, every time, no excuses, that's what we should be standing for. So if we can get that 5% up to 20% if we can get that 5% up to 20% then we've got a powerhouse family. Could change the world, but I doubt it. Yeah, we were we, the three

Alan Smith: 1:02:01

of us plus Carl, were talking about this last week. The term financial planning is so generic, and so you get a lot of advisers say, Yes, we do financial planning. It's only when you're sort of in the weeds, like, let's say I am with our firm. And as you know, we do full fat financial planning all clients every time, no excuses. We tried to do a kind of low tier service without doing it. And within a couple of client meetings, we realized it's impossible. You can't get to parts two and three without doing part one, and that's the position you get to. And yet, you know, doing interviews and things I'd be speaking to, you know, potential power planners and things, they'd be coming from a firm that I know of, and their website was on and on about financial planning. And often they say, Well, yes, if a client asks for it, that's the classic. If a client asks for it, no kind ever. And here's the thing, it's so experiential, you have to own it yourself. I mean, story for another time is what happened to me when I first went on a personal basis, when I went along to this to your presentation, which was in Knightsbridge in London over the years. If you haven't got time for it, I'll bring it back later. But when it because it's so personal and it's so experiential, and then, then you you roll it out, but you have to believe it yourself. First and foremost is the thing, once you believe it, you cannot, you can't not do it to your clients, because you're doing your clients a disservice. Yeah, you all have got a wide range of like, tools in your toolbox here, the one that the we still use to this day is your book. Tell us. Tell us. For those who don't know, you've got a book called enough. Tell us a bit more about the book, why you wrote it, and how advisors can use it. Use it.

Paul Armson: 1:03:47

Okay, so I'll wave it about. That's pretty good thing to do. That's that's a bit you're talking about there. There's actually two versions of that book. There's a one on Amazon, which is designed for consumers to learn a little bit about lifestyle, financial planning and what they should be receiving from a from a planner. That is not really designed for advisors to give out to their clients. Because what it does, it urges the reader to talk to me, to put him in touch with one of my inspiring advisors members. So any advisor giving that out is risking them contacting me to then get a competitive advisor. This version here is the advisor version, and that version there basically gets, educates and inspires the reader about real lifestyle financial planning, but it starts off inspiring them about their own life first, okay, because it's back to what I think Nick was saying earlier. Alan said, then it's an experiential thing is this lifestyle financial planning business and this real financial planning business, where you've got to connect with that client's heart and mind about their life, and possibly if you can bring that sense of urgency to them to remind them very ever so subtly, they're going to be dead soon. So therefore, what is it, Mr. Client, that you want to do between now and the day you're dead in the box? That's when the conversations get interesting. That's when the conversations get very meaningful without being too touchy feely. It's but it's bottom line stuff here. It's not a rehearsal. Time is speeding up the older you get. You know that to be a fact. No one can deny it. Therefore, what is it you want to do between now and the day, dead in a box in particular, what sort of life have you got now? What sort of lifestyle you enjoy, and what sort of lifestyle do you want to enjoy going forward? That's what we've got to get to the bottom of in that certainly first meeting. So that's why I thought I write a book about it to inspire people to reach out for this thing called Lifestyle financial planning. Because one of the things I've noticed about financial great financial planners, I'm talking about the great ones here. They're bloody good at what they do. They really are good when they deliver real lifestyle financial planning. They're amazing. But the temptation to fall into the Transaction Trap is just too great. And also, if they've got to pay their bills, they've got to get some business in, or they think they've got to get AUM in, then that will change the conversation, fortunately. So I thought, well, if I wrote a book that any advisor can give to their client and say, Hey, read this. This is what we do. And the client goes, Wow, this is what I've always been looking for from a financial advisor. Let's have a chat. You see, that's that's I had that in mind when I wrote this, this particular version of the booking us. So, yeah. So educates them about the concept, about lifestyle, being a rehearsal. It inspires them about the concept, about my bucket. It inspires them about the industry. It does inspire them about the industry, and that is, avoid it at all costs, primarily. In other words, speak to an advisor that is focused on you, not your many and yeah, it works a treat for those advisors. Well, it

Alan Smith: 1:06:46

works a treat if we it's. Still give this book out to prospective clients. So early stage, we just say, look, take this away. And it's a relatively small book. It's not going to take you too long to get through. It's very readable. Lots of stories, and almost any client or prospective client can see themselves in at least one of the characters in the stories, which, as I understand, are real life experiences, real life clients of yours back in the day, and so they can see themselves. And I got to say that I've handed that out to, you know, super sophisticated senior partners at law firms and people you think, Oh, they won't be interested. I've never had anything other than positive feedback. People have said, it's great. And of course, no one throws a book away. It's sort of lying around their house. And I say, once you've finished, give it to a friend, so it becomes a, you know, a referral technique as well. I think it's a really useful tool. And people should advise us listening to this, should probably get themselves a few copies and hand it out, particularly to prospective clients. It's just a nice thing to do and explain this in storytelling format. What it is that they're going to they can expect if they become a client of that firm, x, if they become a client?

Paul Armson: 1:07:54

Yeah. And this one in particular, in particular here, this is a co branded version here. Look so that's Cooper Parry's version there. Cooper parry, we've got a co branded version. So it's got their label all over it, and it's got their call to action at the bottom every single page. And it's got their own forward as well. So that's really personalized. Cooper Paris, belief in what it is the books all about, and that's that magnifies the effectiveness of the book quite massively. Anyway. It's not all about

Andy Hart: 1:08:22

the book, that old thing just hanging around. Well, I think my question follows on from that. I suppose it's about future ideas in your business really. You know, as someone who spent his career in your Slipstream, I'm always interested to know what you're up to. I mean, you were very early on with, obviously, the book that you just showed. You were early on with membership sites, independent conferences. What's next in the arms and stable of business ideas, business ideas still

Paul Armson: 1:08:53

working on an idea to try and unite and bring together those great financial planners. Because, again, the problem we've got is consumers don't know where to find these people. I mean, arguably, you've got the IFP web, sorry, sissy panel for planners, but are you still? How do you how do you know you're dealing with a great financial planner? Financial planner at Sis, you don't, because, let's face it, not all of them deliver what we're talking about. Yeah, and again, globally, it's the same problem everywhere, isn't it? You've got CFPs everywhere, but a lot of them are money focused advisors. They've got to be because they've got to get the Aum in. They've got to hit their targets, and they're not delivering what it is that we're talking about. We know we're talking about on this call. It's interesting. You know, one of the things that back to what Alan said, more than nothing Andy, is this term financial planning. And I was talking to somebody the other day in Canada who owns a software company in Canada, Michael Curtis, and we were talking about this, and the term has been so abused over the years, and now, unfortunately, in the UK, you know, everyone's a lifestyle financial planner. It gets worse. They've changed their job title so they didn't like be cool, they didn't like being called the financial advisor. So they call themselves a financial planner. And even financial planners got a little bit too populous now. They're lifestyle financial planners, but they still don't do any of those things. They still just pedal financial product. That's a frustrating thing that we're all up against. But one of the things that I think I'll mention here often we wanted to get this out, is I thought this is quite a good opportunity to do so when I first sort of went, came on the scene, if you like, back in nine, 2006 after I got back from middle from a little gap year, 2006 seven, when I started doing my talks around the country, that's when I started to have, I suppose, meetings with certain key people in key positions in various professional bodies, and also key people in certain large industry Companies, if you know, investment platforms and so on. And that term financial planning, often got raised. And my biggest mistake I've ever made in my life, I think, is the assumption that when I use the word financial planning, and they were nodding in all the right places, they understood what I was talking about. And that, I think, call it, call it imposter syndrome, call it what you will, but I shouldn't have allowed that to happen. I should not have allowed that to happen, and possibly I was too respectful of these people, but really they didn't have a clue what I was talking about. You guys did and do, but they didn't have a clue, but they nodded in all the right places. And I really feel like I've let down my purpose by allowing that to happen, that makes sense. It could have been an insecurity in me or whatever. I don't know, but I just assumed they knew what I was talking about, and that was the biggest mistake

Andy Hart: 1:11:41

ever. And final next question, if I may, I suppose your, your, your most famous work is the is the famous bucket I've presented. Into that many times in client meetings. I think Nick has as well. Alan's probably dabbled in it, the usual. Yeah. So do you want to explain a bit more about the bucket, how it came about? And I don't think it's changed since I've seen it. It's still, I mean, it changes per client, and you include things, miss things, focus on a certain area. But yeah, do you want to explain about the bucket? I know it's obviously better if you just draw it out. But yeah, over to you with the with the bucket.

Paul Armson: 1:12:16

I won't draw it for you now. But how it came about is an interesting one. Andy, and it came about because at the time. So you guys will know that I've got a stake in a software company that's died a bit of a death. But anyway, that's, that's another conversation, but that company was set up by guy called Paul Etheridge, who was the original godfather of financial planning, and he, he was, he was a mentor of mine. I guess I learned an awful lot from Paul, but also started to see through some of the illusions that he was building into his process. And one of the things that he always liked to do was demonstrate to a prospect, when it came to his Chicken Shack offices, he would demonstrate the software to these clients. And I thought, Why on earth are you doing that. Why are you showing that client someone else's financial plan, even if it's a sample financial plan, it's not their financial plan. And now you've just gone and blown your cover. You've just gone and shown your secret weapon with someone else's information in there. It's not their financial plan. So why are you doing that? But at the same time, you still need to convey to clients what real, great lifestyle financial planning is all about, even though it didn't, even though I was just in the process of creating it then. So what I thought is, I need to draw something. I'm a visual myself. I need to draw something that conveys what real financial planning is without demoing software, without even mentioning the word software. I never, ever used the word cash flow modeling. Ever, not in my lifetime, I've ever used the word cash flow models or cash flow forecasting. It's only come into my vocabulary in recent years. Everything I ever did was revolving around sharing the concept of this bucket, which basically is helping clients to understand what's in their bucket, which is liquid assets. They can spend that money whenever they like. And they've also got money outside their bucket, which is intangible assets, which they can't spend unless they sell those assets. And if you can't sell them, you can't spend it. That's the bottom line there. So that includes businesses. So that guy who is putting the business into the plan is like, broken my first rule, straight away. You don't you can put it in there as a pound item for discussion, but there's no value going in there until the likelihood of that happening is extremely high. So anyway, and then you've got various you've got various taps, basically, and the taps your lifestyle stages. So for example, your tap number one is your current lifestyle cost. In other words, what it costs you to live your life now. Tap two is your early retirement tap when you want to have the most fun, and while you still fit and able to have the most fun. And then tap three I call it is your later life. Tap when you become too old to enjoy yourself. And that has little circles, because by then, you might not be able to do stuff right. And then it ends with a coffin that gets drawn underneath these little outflow. And there's another great big tap as well, for one off expenses for a world cruise, buying a yacht, new roof, whatever it might be. These are big things that could seriously impact your bucket. So by drawing this in a very engaging way, tailored around the client and their life based on the fact find you've just done with them. So you're drawing on that page, on that a four pad. I used to use an A four pad, or my my flip chart. I'm drawing their life on a piece of paper. I'm using their words. I'm talking about real life problems, about life speeding up the older you get whilst I'm doing it, and they start to understand. Oh, right, so you look at all of this here, I better tell you about this. And then suddenly they tell you about stuff they didn't tell you before, because now they because now they realize what you do. So then, so this conveying this concept of the bucket, and then I would be able to say to them, what this is this we call this real wealth management, managing your wealth to give you the life that you want. Why else have wealth if it doesn't give you the life that you the life that you want, good question, don't you think? And clients will say, Absolutely, poor, right? And I say, right. So this is what we do for our clients. Every client gets this, whether you like it or not, okay, this is what we're going to do for you. Okay? And then I then go away. I pitch my feet at that time with a risk reversal technique, which I know Alan has used, if not still uses, used at first. And that is, look, hey, this is what we do for our clients. But look, we're going to do with this fee anyway, whether you like it or not. Okay. Now, if you do not value what we do for you next, right? Our fee is this, but if you do not value what we do for you, next, you don't have to pay us. How does that sound? And normally they go, that's fine. Paul, right? And. What that enabled me to do was pitch a decent fee for delivery of a real financial plan. Whereas a lot of advisors get caught in the I'm gonna have to charge a fee for this, right? But the client hasn't experienced it yet. So how can they value it? You and me? So that's why they'd only ever get a small fee. So they get a small fee for delivering a financial plan and a whacking great big fee for investing some money. And that doesn't feel right to me. So what you need to do is you need a way to take away the risk from the client, so you can pitch a big fee for them to experience what real financial plan is all about, but give them escape rules that says, hey, look, if you don't value this, then you'd have to pay us. Now the reality is, course they value it. It knocks their socks off, so of course they're going to pay you. And then the point behind the bucket then was when I would then have the second financial planning meeting with them. The first thing I would do is get them back in the room by reminding them of that bucket concept before I start showing software, so you get them to remember what is you talked about last time? So today's meeting, then is all about understanding what's going to happen to your bucket. This is how we show you my special tool. Okay, that's based on the bucket Andy was to enable me to convey what real financial planning is all about in a very empowering, inspiring way that's tailored around the client and their life, without showing someone else's plan or demoing the software. So the software stays up my sleeve. They don't see that. They don't see that financial plan until it's got their data in there, their values, their meanings, their goals, their aspirations, is in that plan. And then what you then do, in my view, is you let that software, that information in that software, gradually reveal itself to engage the client more and more and more and more so it becomes their plan before you start showing things like lifetime cash flow charts. Whereas I've come across advisors saying, Here's your future. And the client goes, What the fuck is that? Why is everything going up? Because that's what first glance of things like volume level, like, it's all going up, isn't it? So, yeah. So the bucket is designed to convey something really, really important and magical and powerful, and often clients still say, even to this day, why the more financial advisors do this? And when they say that you can charge you more money,

Nick Lincoln: 1:19:16

that's that's great, great stuff. Paul, and we listen. We've taken up nearly 40 minutes of your time there, and you've just touched on something there you could, you could talk about the bucket, the process, the things you should be saying to prospects, the things you shouldn't be saying to prospects, the use of open questions, of two ears and one mouth and so forth, luckily for the universe, and luckily for the younger advisors who might not know you have an online resource. Quickly tell the TRAPPIST about that, and I think you've got a special code discount for them, or discount code even give us give us the lowdown.

Paul Armson: 1:19:50

Okay, so, so for years, then I've had this thing that I created called inspiring advisors. Because it's called inspiring advisors, because, guess what, we should be inspiring advisors, shouldn't we? So it's called inspiring advisors. So it's all my, it's all my years of training, if you like, put into bite size video snippets, and just recently, it's become accredited by Cissy, and it now is now accredited CPD, so that's now available to advisors. So but more than that, it's a community of advisors as well. So hopefully people who sign up for inspiring advisors really want to do the job properly and want to engage with the concept of real lifestyle financial planning. So it's a training resource, yes, but it's also a community where we have monthly inspiration spot sessions where we talk about all things lifestyle financial planning. So yeah, so one of the things that because you kind of invited me on to here, I thought, What could I do to try and help more people get the message, and hopefully give people a taste for what's possible for them. Because it does sadden me, and I know it saddens some of you guys as well when you've got such great advisors, but they somehow still can't communicate and deliver a meaningful service that's high value to every client every time, and that's why I think we can help and also under 30s as well. So what I've done with your agreement is put forward an offer where people can join my inspire advisers, community and access all of my training with a 50% discount for six months. Okay, now you guys will know, and hopefully you all agree that I've never really been one for free lunches. I think free lunches is what the industry suffers from, and that's why, if you go to certain events like the PFS and wherever you get the exhibition hall and lots of free stuff being given out, I'm totally against that, and that's why we're back to why I came from. So it's 50% discount for six months. But also for the first 10 advisors under 30, they can have free membership for life. Okay? And the discount code to use, what you need to do is go to inspiring advisors.co.uk, forward slash, trap 50, t r a p 50. And there's a discount code. You just put the coupon code in as t r a p 50, capital letters, trap 50, and that will give 50% discount to everybody. For the youngsters, then for under 30s, they still need to pay that first month, so I've got to go through the same offer pay that first month. But then what I want you to do is email me confirm your date of birth. Okay, just to make absolutely sure, confirm your date of birth, we might ask for proof, and also tell me a little bit about your story and what you're trying to achieve in this, as Andy calls it, mighty profession do that, and the first 10 who qualify get 10, okay, lifetime access for free. I should actually make it until they're 30, shouldn't I really think? Because otherwise they're going to be free, free business until they're 4550, that's detailed. Detail. Yeah, okay, can tell me what you think about that later. Anyway, the under 30s, if they're under 30 and they qualify lifetime access for free.

Nick Lincoln: 1:23:17

Okay, that's, that's, that's brilliant. Paul, I'm going to boot you out of the meeting now, my friend, because we've got a crack on Tempus is fugitive. Paul, when I kick you out the meeting, can leave your browser open please, because you're still uploading. Do not close down the Riverside browser. This will be nothing to our listeners. I've got to say it out loud. I'm sorry. We're loud, I'm sorry. Paul armison, you're a superstar.

Andy Hart: 1:23:34

Thank you, pal for all you do for this. Mike, yeah, very much. Paul, thank you. Yeah, thanks. Goodbye.

Nick Lincoln: 1:23:39

Get out of our computers. Goodbye. Okay, okay, we're back in the room. We can all hear each other. Okay, cool. Well, that was well as ever. He's always such good value, and it's not. He doesn't just say stuff for the intent. He means it, and he means it from an immensely good place. And what a what a force for change. Okay, without any further bloody dicking about, let's move on to TRAPPIST questions. Because even though at my brother's house, I can still see post, he follows me around. She's followed me around to the Cotswolds with the bulging sack of TRAPPIST letters. And who is this question from? Let's have a look at this. This is from Aaron brand, brand spelled with two ends. And again, all your life, no two ends. The chap on the phone in Bangalore, you're on LinkedIn, but not Twitter, but no idea how to share the former. Okay, Aaron, you're already in a negative position. Let's see if you can redeem yourself here. Great episode again, boys, I generally enjoy the raw, unpolished style. I'm sure many envy your ability to speak so freely and without a filter. My rating is four out of five, not because it is lacking, but because aiming high is always what we should seek. You are not bad, far from it, but improvement should be the goal, and nobody wants to get too comfy. Really pleased to hear some technical guests. They brought depth and a level of professionalism that is sorely missing. Sorry, sorely needed in some corners of this industry, more of this, please, especially for the younger audience who need exposure to this kind of broader thinking. Jesus Christ. I might have lie down halfway through this on conflicts of interest. Interesting topic, Alan has been candid about a couple white tree and time lean. Any others to declare your comments about a few questionable firms. Did raise an eyebrow, not sure what the inference is there. Otherwise, keep doing what you do. Full fat content, as you call it. Might vary in flavor, but the core ingredients are solid. There's a lot to be learned, some but excellent, some balanced and some best digested with a large portion of chips. But it's always entertaining. Thank you. Aaron, okay, well, Alan, you can ponder on that for a second, obviously, conference event. Well, we've been very frank about the fact we have got this. Have got these sponsorship deals with two fantastic brands in fundment and Vanguard, and we're upfront about it. And why not? Who would not want to be aligned with those two brands? But Alan, do you want to have any riposte to Mr. Brand? The two

Alan Smith: 1:25:43

ends? Was that a question that seemed a very just long statement, seems like a review. Review. Did it not get mixed up with the reviews? And there was no real question there was, was there or was it?

Nick Lincoln: 1:25:52

Well, I mean, who aren't listening? I can't

Unknown: 1:25:56

be halfway through, sorry, back in a room conflict of interest. We have been fully upfront, transparent on anything that we might think to be a conflict of interest. And I think that's only fair if we ever promote anything in in the future. And just say, and you know, this is, this is becoming an increasingly influential podcast. And people have said to me, oh, when you mentioned X, Y, Z, oh, you know, I got a few people contacted me about it. So we can only, we must maintain our honesty and our integrity throughout this, if any of us, and I'll speak for myself, if I've got a financial interest in something, such as I've invested, or I'm a shareholder or something or something, then I will always disclose that out front. And people can make their mind up as to whether that's whether they want to review it, or anything otherwise. But and the two that he mentioned have have been discussed in the past and any future. Are ones that come up, we will disclose them. But anything else that we say, or certainly that I Speaking for myself, if I say this is quite good, or this company or this organization that I have used recently, I've been excellent. It's just because I think they're good other than there's no other sort of impact. So no, it's important that we always maintain our own integrity. Jesus Christ, we'd get shot down in flames if we were shilling some product because it was shit, but we hope everyone else could buy it to save our share price. Andrew, any thoughts on that?

Andy Hart: 1:27:22

No, not really. Yeah. I mean, without being torturous, do we have to mention that these are companies we use in our business like the whole show wouldn't flow. I mean, four of us are here to keep each other accountable, and I'm not sure if it is in the interest of every single listener, every single tiny commercial arrangement we've got, but yeah. I mean, obviously, if we've got something that is official, we've been remunerated like we have disclosed with Vanguard and fundman. Yeah, just it's continued people to have, you know, confidence in our integrity. As you say, the show does grow and become bigger. But, yeah, no. Good point. Well, made. Onwards.

Nick Lincoln: 1:28:10

Okay, thanks. Thanks, gents, thank you. And so TRAPPIST, do keep the questions coming in. If it could be questions more than, rather than sort of a novellas, that'll be much appreciated. Let's move on to what many people call culture corner. And I'm leading off on the culture corner. So the spiked podcast, which is always a decent listen. The episode is called how Wikipedia lies to you. And I think we know that Wikipedia is not always the repository of truth that some people imagine through me and Elon's got grokkedia out now, and I'm experimenting with that. I know Alan is certain, and I'm sure Andy is the reason why this podcast is fascinating. And they on. The guy on the podcast is an author of a book called How Wikipedia lies to you. Is that these llms, and that means large language models. Alan, I know you're sort of getting your head around AI and so forth, but the large language models they mine, they mine Google, and they mine databases of info, and Wikipedia is heavily, heavily behind the large language models. And the a lot of the information on Wikipedia is flat out wrong, and there's a very hard core set of people who are advocates for Wikipedia, who sort of are the gatekeepers, and they will quite happily doctor your biography, change facts if they don't like it doesn't fit with the prevailing narrative. So an interesting listen. Just be just be wary. And again, it's another reason just being wary of perhaps, who is your AI provider or everything in the world comes with influence and bias. We don't even know we're doing it. Sometimes. Don't think that AI, as it currently stands, on the objective stuff, is anywhere near the truths. Sorry, on the subjective stuff. On the objective stuff, you know two and two is four. AI will tell you that. But on the subjective stuff, just, just tread carefully. That's my point on that.

Alan Smith: 1:29:46

Next there is Andrew. Will know, I think you all know that one of, I think the most, best and clearest thinkers out there is a guy called naval Ravikant. He's been a guest on multiple podcasts. He's been on Rogan he's been on Tim Ferriss podcast a few times. And, you know, he's a writer, he's a publisher, he's an investor, and he's just got, I just think, some of the clearest thinking, the way he articulates his ideas and his thoughts are just super world class. There's that. There's a very few people, in my opinion, are able to do that. He's got a podcast, and someone else interviews him. You know, he does these various sort of Twitter threads and things about just his thinking, some of which have just gone absolutely viral, million tweets. The one about, however, I think, is the most popular sort of tweet storm, as he calls or Twitter thread ever, ever in history. But there's one that came out relatively recently. So his his podcast, just the naval N, A, V, a, l. There's one called in the arena. And we all know that. We all know the sort of the source material for that, but it's just, you know, one of these ones for you listening, and every single word is just thoughtful, and just, really, you're hanging on just to every single word is, I just think, personally, for me, it was brilliant, and I've gone back and listened to quite a few of the other episodes. So that was called collection in the arena. And I do have to, as we have been doing a bit of self promotion throughout this episode. I'm going to do a bit of self promotion my own. Other award winning podcast, a bulletproof entrepreneur, the latest episode with billionaire self made rags to riches. Billionaire Sir Tom Hunter was, in my humble opinion, one of the best I've ever done. Incredible story of his life and what he's done and making all his money and now giving it back, doing for the rest of his life. Well worth checking out, sir. Tom Hunter, bulletproof entrepreneur. Andrew,

Andy Hart: 1:31:36

it was a really good episode. Alan, I don't listen to all the bulletproof entrepreneur episodes I dip in and out, and that was a good one that I dipped into. Thank you. My culture corner this week is. Is Elon Musk. Disclosure, I own a Tesla vehicle. Nicholas, any disclosure,

Nick Lincoln: 1:31:55

I'm about to own a Tesla vehicle. I'm picking it up. So the day before you listen to this post, I might be wrapped around a lamppost somewhere around Brent cross, and put my foot down trying to go naught to 16, 3.3 seconds,

Alan Smith: 1:32:06

you'll be full self driving.

Andy Hart: 1:32:07

So my culture corner is Elon Musk is on Ron Barron's Baron capital conference, and Ron is an Elon super fan. He gets videoed in for just over an hour a few technical issues. So it even happens to the greatest of people, those listening to today's show. It is brilliant. Ron pushes him on what he's working on, what the challenges are, and it's very eye opening. Obviously, I'm a big Elon fan, and I know lots of Trappists are, and I know he's also a very divisive character, but I am a huge fan of his business intentions. We're

Nick Lincoln: 1:32:49

taking advantage of watches. We love Elon. We love Elon. We love it. We got there, we got there, we got it. Was that 9093, minutes of absolute value, absolute shambles, some chaotic tech stuff. But that's the way you go sometimes with these things. Dear TRAPPIST, thank you as ever for giving us your time during episode 84 episode 84 is sliding down the U bend of Father Time. So we're going to say, adios, please leave us 600 leave a six out of five star review on iTunes or Pocket Cast or whichever app allows you to leave reviews. Do the same on Youtube, LIKE and SUBSCRIBE, but well over 1000 subscribers now. It's absolutely amazing, but until the next time it's goodbye from the Track Pack, take care out there and we will see you on the other side. Good.

Unknown: 1:33:40

Shamble.