TRAP: The Real Adviser Podcast

88 - Independence Day: From SJP to IFA

• Alan Smith; Andy Hart; Carl Widger; Nick Lincoln • Episode 88

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TRAP LIVE26 tickets on sale here: https://www.therealadviserpodcast.com/

In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss

  • Topical Titbits
  • Meat and Potatoes: Independence Day: From SJP to IFA
  • TRAPist question from "Wilson M" (me neither)
  • Culture Corner

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

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Unknown:

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 yes,

Nick Lincoln:

indeed, dear TRAPPIST, welcome back to what many people are calling episode 88 of the real advisor podcast, T, R, A, P, trap. My name is indeed Lincoln. Lincoln, and joining me is ever in the digital studio of doom are the three other Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Carl della voce, the voice widger, hello, Alan the storyteller, Smith and Andy Ultra heart, Now, gentlemen, we have a show packed full of app, absolutely nothing. So let's start unpacking it straight away with some more high energy review reads. Read about my very good friend, the right honorable Mr. Andrew Usain Hart,

Andy Hart:

thank you very much. Nicholas, Hello. Happy New Year to everybody. This review is from Freddie Barton, five stars on the Apple podcast platform. Amazing for all advisors, but invaluable for the younger cohort. As a 25 year old, in my second year of providing independent financial advice, this podcast has been an invaluable source of insight, practical wisdom and motivation. The four lads are truly among the profession's best, and I've enjoyed listening since day one. Each episode provides insight or something you can use to improve your service business or simply a good laugh, either from their banter or their bickering. I've been fortunate enough to win lifetime access to Paul Armstrong's inspiring advisors program, and even recently received a direct LinkedIn message from the one and only Nick Lincoln, who I have to admit, is my personal favorite of mine in the trap pack. I'm hopeful that 2026 will bring the chance to attend my first trap live event and meet you all in person. Keep up the fantastic work. Your commitment to elevating our profession continue to make a remarkable impact on me and many others. Nice review. Thank you, Freddie. Back to you. Nicholas, his favorite,

Carl Widger:

I'd say you're muted Nick right? Yeah, very disappointing.

Alan Smith:

First episode of 26 he's muted himself.

Nick Lincoln:

I've never seen Andrew Hart grit his teeth so much when he had to read out that Nick Lincoln is a personal favorite of someone. Thank you, Fred. That's lovely. And thank you TRAPPIST for the reviews. I know I said this every time, but it does mean a lot to us, so please do keep them coming. And it feeds into the algorithm and just sort of get gets us near the top of the charts.

Carl Widger:

Nick, Nick, when can Freddie buy tickets to trap live? I think that is upcoming. Am I right?

Nick Lincoln:

That is upcoming. That is upcoming. It's upcoming on the so actually, this today, today, the tickets go on sale today. Watch out. There'll be emails going out to various lists. There'll be things on Twitter, and there'll be things in in LinkedIn and so forth, but the 15th of Jan, when this episode, and we'll be listening to it in your logos,

Alan Smith:

will there be going out early bird ticket opportunity? Nick, for those who buy the tickets quickly,

Nick Lincoln:

I yeah, we've got an early bird you've got to be at your at your desktop at 1am on Thursday morning. It's lasting for three minutes. That's how Keely

Andy Hart:

email list you'll be getting all the information via there and various other outlets. But yeah, sorry,

Nick Lincoln:

Nick, yeah, yeah. No, good, good. Thank you. Good shout. Carl, Thanks for Thanks for running. That can't wait. That's gonna be super exciting. Really good venue, we think, and it's going to be going to be good fun. Okay, let's put a timestamp on on episode 88 of the real advisor podcast, just, I want to shout out. Shout out. Something happened to me this morning, actually, then we can go with the stuff I was I was going to London for a breakfast meeting with a friend, and I'm on the Victoria line, and I get, get this nudge in the back. And bizarrely, I mean, it's just so bizarre, this world of ours, the chap who nudged me in the back was listening to trap. He was a financial advisor who I've met before. And Andy knows certainly. And Martin, Martin McNamara, just want to say shout out to Martin. And yeah, the price of a little bit of fame, I guess, just, just, what a coincidence. And, but he said he wasn't listening to you at the time to catch up on. He was just listening to me speaking in Episode 84 as I walked on the train, he gives you a prod in the back. Yeah, yeah. So Martin says

Carl Widger:

you're the best. Jesus, Nick, this week. Can't get any better,

Nick Lincoln:

surely, Carlos, it said it's a descent into chaos right now. This is Pete lick. This is perfect. I'm gonna go now. You. You free. Tyco, all right, come on. Let's, let's get this, let's get this show back on the road. Okay, Smithy,

Alan Smith:

this, I hope, is the last time I mentioned this. This is a subject that has been on our agendas for all of the last year, and possibly a bit before that, which is investing in private markets, and we have expressed our own views, our own views of them. The the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the UK is very keen to get pension schemes allocating towards private markets, private equity, private credit and all that. Are those other alternatives. And I just thought it was very interesting and useful, because our friends at dimensional fund advisors, DFA, who, if nothing else, are financial scientists, they go into the weeds, don't they, in terms of research, data, facts, and I noticed just before Christmas, dimensional published a paper and an article on their website link to it in the show notes, which just basically breaks it down, unpacks it, rather than saying, Oh, I don't like private equity, or I do like private equity. Here's the data, here's the evidence, here's the information. So if anyone is considering or has a client interested in it, then that's the source to get the facts and the data. And by the way, they're not saying it's absolutely awful, and you shouldn't touch with the barge pole, but they are giving you some very thoughtful input based on the facts, the research and the evidence, which will allow people to come to their own conclusions. So it's worthwhile. It's a useful piece of research that dimension have recently put out on that market. That was it. You wanted to share it?

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, cool. Thank you for doing that. My I think it was me next on the slate. I'm having problems accessing the link. So can I just ask Carl that we go straight to your to your two points and they'll come back to me certainly.

Carl Widger:

So that's totally thrown me. Oh yeah. So the first link that I had was an article about Ireland's tax take for 2025

Unknown:

and they'll also they'll also see that I was deeply uncomfortable with the content of some of today's Podcast owing to the Irish versus UK cultural differences.

Carl Widger:

There we go. Yes, the Ireland's called the Six Nations is upcoming. I'm not as smug as I normally would be. I don't think we should take this year's very serious. Third favorites, car, I don't think we should take this year's tournament seriously at all. Then Ireland, I think it's just kind of a building tournament.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, pack your team full of Ulster players. You might have a chance. Yeah.

Carl Widger:

Well, we're packing them full of aging Leinster players, unfortunately, and it's not working. But we'll see. We'll see. Anyway, the tax take for 2025 is in 106 billion in total, of which 34 point 7 billion came in in corporation tax, which is 4.4 billion down on last year. But if you remember, last year we had an 11 billion. It's all about billions. Here in Ireland, we did an 11 billion windfall from the Apple tax case. So so to only be 4.4 billion down this year is immense. And where we have an Exchequer surplus of 3.8 billion, all billions guys, the tax the corporation tax rate for multinationals rises this year from 12 and a half to 15% so we're expecting it to be bigger again, even in 2026 so yeah, look, the gravy train just continues. It's just absolutely bloody mental. And to have these kind of numbers when we don't this year have the the apple tax case, that that windfall that we got is absolutely and utterly phenomenal. Now, one of the reasons for this is that a lot of companies forward betted their exports because of the Trump tariffs, and they're trying to get ahead of that. However, it seems that the Trump tariffs didn't are not going to have any. Are a very small effect. So it seems like it's business as usual, and just drive on. So in a very, very, very good place, spending has increased. We are trying to do a bit of a lot more infrastructure spending, which is good, because that's where we're sadly lacking. But yeah, overall this, this story, just continues to run. When we think it's running out of steam, onwards it goes and. Um, it will finish at some stage. We will struggle at some stage. But for now, it's as you were. Let's keep going. So, Andy, you have a question,

Andy Hart:

what's the rationale around increasing it from is it 1212? And a half to 15? I mean, is life good enough at the moment?

Carl Widger:

Yeah, that's not an Irish thing. That's the European thing, my friend. So we've had to sign up to some European rules as we are part of the EU.

Andy Hart:

So okay, so you're gonna lose your your edge against the rest of Europe to some degree.

Carl Widger:

Yeah, but there is an argument to be made whether this is real or not, that because we have a lot of the the tech companies are ensconced here and have many 1000s of employees that it will be difficult for them to move

Andy Hart:

employees in Ireland just to keep the office open. I don't know.

Carl Widger:

No, they have 1000s and 1000s of employees, so to move them to somewhere else in Europe would probably not make an awful lot of sense when the tax treatment is going to be the same.

Alan Smith:

Well, also the language they speak. The Americans speak the same language as the Irish, almost, whereas to move it to

Unknown:

almost as important, yeah, but yeah, you're

Alan Smith:

right. We're going to move it

Carl Widger:

to France. The danger, the danger really, is that they they move back home. That's right, manages to get them back to America. I don't think there's a massive danger in moving lock, stock and barrel to other countries. I think what will happen is they might do, you know, open other plants or open other offices in some other company, other countries, but we will manage to hold on to what we have at the moment, which is all good so, so that's the good news. But then I read another article, which is the bad news, and the bad news is, so we started a sovereign wealth fund. I'm looking for my glasses here to make sure I don't get any of these numbers wrong. So we started a sovereign wealth fund when the gravy train kind of started, when we realized this is happy days. We started in 2024, and we added 4.3 million, 4.3 billion, because it's Ireland. We only talk about billions at that stage. And we added a further 4.0 5 billion and a further 4.1 billion into our sovereign wealth fund. But this article that I've shared says that the investment strategy for our sovereign wealth fund has lost about 600 billion because they've just decided what the long term strategy is going to be. Guess what it's the long term investment strategy is going to be bonds, property, 80% equities and 20% bonds, which is yay, good, but it took them a year and a half to come up with this strategy, and here too for it was in cash, no a bond fund, but short, dated and all that. So I just, I just screenshot this right. This is from the NTMA who run the fund, implementing long term strategies with a higher risk profile is a complex process which requires appropriate levels of rigorous assessment, due diligence, governance and consultation with stakeholders to ensure public funds are protected appropriately. So it took them a year and a half because of that, what I just read out to come up with. What we would have come up with in five minutes,

Alan Smith:

they've lost about 20% growth. In that time,

Unknown:

600 million they have lost so in terms

Alan Smith:

of what they would have, this is what you could have won if you'd invested

Carl Widger:

exactly opportunity. The return was 2% and they're comparing it to the Australian sovereign sovereign wealth fund, the New Zealand sovereign wealth fund. They haven't spoken, they haven't spoken about Norway isn't mentioned that one, but they're all getting double digit growth. So anyway, look, on the one hand, it's just funny, isn't it that this is, this is risk profiling questionnaires, assets like the extreme right that they had to go through all the stakeholders to come up with this solution, and it took a year and a half or they're about to come to it. But it's like just, you know, just when is the, when is

Alan Smith:

the could have just called you call to invest.

Carl Widger:

The best time to invest was 10 years ago. The next best time is always today. And look that that big gap, but we're in a good place now. We are in 8020 what will be interesting is when the inevitable temporary market decline happens? Will the investment strategy endure? And I would say somebody, or probably a committee of people, were sitting there for the last year and a bit going to use the markets are at the top, we're all, we're all going to lose our jobs if we recommend an 8020, and then this thing tanks. So we. They have the courage of their conviction, you know, will they stick with it, or if and when these enormous tax takes that were were getting the benefit of at the moment, when they kind of start to peter out, will we go and raid our sovereign wealth fund? That's kind of what we've done in the past. So who knows? At least your buddy got the answer is yes, right? Yeah. And a surplus and a surplus, where's?

Alan Smith:

Where's our sovereign wealth fund? Nicholas? Where's the UK's? Well, the North Sea oil money we made. It's in the North Sea,

Nick Lincoln:

but we're not allowed to drill it, so we're giving away to Norway, right? If we can move on to the next part, because now my point now becomes even more relevant. I managed to hack a paywall, and I can read this off and remind myself what I was blabbing on about, because it links in with what you were saying there. Carl, with saying there, Carl with missed opportunities. And this, this whole thing about the in the UK, we've just lost the ability to take risk or assess risk properly. This is a Times article that came out the start of this month, and on the biggest pension schemes in the UK and where they're invested and what their returns have been. And it's, it's beyond shocking, the biggest defined benefit pension scheme in the UK is the university's superannuation scheme. The USS. It has returned. What has it done over the last five years? 1.7% 1.7% the airways, different the BT pension fund has returned over five years, minus 6.8% average annual return. This is almost impossible, and this scheme, they will say, well, these schemes are now in surplus, and it's actually, everything's fine. We've got enough to pay out future things. They're only in surplus because they ask the members and the employers to whack in so much more money those those members and employers wouldn't have had to if they had even a sensible asset allocation. They're laden with guilt. They should be laden with guilt if they're a pension trustee, but these things are laden with guilt. Absolutely diabolical. Return, illegal, all totally legal. But, and here's, here's the here's, here's the quote that jumped out to me. Part of the reason that the British economy has been so masculinity is because of an obsession with eliminating risk, says Michael Tory, the chairman of the financial advice firm Ondra, the system is entirely focused on risk elimination, with no recognition that risk and return are inextricably linked in any capitalist system. So a five year annual return of 1.7% the 6040 portfolio that some of my clients are in not many, 60 equities, 40 bonds, right? The classic has returned just shy of 8% annualized over over the last, since 2000 well since, over the last 10 years. And that's not, by any means. That's not, that's not a high volatility portfolio. I don't know. I again, I could have had five minutes with these people and said, what, you know? What are you doing? It's just unique.

Andy Hart:

That she was an individual. They're a committee. There's a common theme here. This is all by committee.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, yeah, I know, but they're creaming, and there is no park in the world where there's a statute highly paid committees. Yeah, they're highly paid. They are creaming fees off these trustees. I'm thinking, it's negligence. I'm sorry. This is behind the veneer of safety,

Alan Smith:

legal, it's true, but it is one of the it's got to be one of the biggest gravy trains in investment, which is these investment consultants that the pension funds hire, and everyone's worried about a complicated getting fired. So they hire all these external consultants. They come in. I knew somebody that worked for one of these firms, and the amount of money they charge for these, which is basically just for these reports. The answer is actually 6040, you know. But, you know, a 50 million page report and a huge invoice to the pension fund in order to do this. And this is the result, you know, it's just a scan.

Nick Lincoln:

Nobody got fired for buying IBM, right? That's the thing you just Yeah, well,

Alan Smith:

everyone is guarding their back. There's a whole series of people just as guarding throughout the whole process.

Andy Hart:

Isn't that the guy isn't there? The guy in America, Nevada, is it? Steve Edmondson, yeah, he managed, yeah.

Alan Smith:

He's hired someone now he's got someone to get the

Andy Hart:

coffee, because if he dies, she knows what he used to do, like he's employing her not to do anything. He's got it all sorted. But if I die, you step in. That's your role. Yeah. He looks after the entire Nevada state.

Carl Widger:

All of the brilliant podcast with him actually isn't there. I think we shared it here

Andy Hart:

one person, yeah, yeah. Predominantly index funds, predominantly low low fees, predominantly equities. I mean, that's the answer,

Alan Smith:

and they've outperformed almost every other state pension in the US.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, all right, yeah, let's keep the tempo up. So thank you for that. Okay, Andrew, the FCA, the

Andy Hart:

FCA, this is dreadfully boring, but going to be very useful for a lot of practicing financial advisers listening. I'm sure some of you have come across it. Some of you have missed it, but the FCA has removed the mandatory 15 hour CPD requirement in relation to insurance and protection for our annual CPD requirements. That's. Basically it. So just get this checked off with your compliance department and people that help you with your CPD. But we were required to do 15 hours of insurance CPD every single year, and now they've removed it. So I think that applies to you, Nicholas, not to Alan, and obviously not to Carl, but he's obviously got his own regime in Ireland,

Nick Lincoln:

Nicholas and of course, Andrew, every year you were very diligent in getting your 15 hours Absolutely. But of course, we both were. We both were, it

Andy Hart:

was a night. It was a nightmare to try and get that

Alan Smith:

done at the last hour. Do you get the sense that the FCA are slowly but surely, kind of loosening some of these very prescriptive rules last 12 months, they seem to Yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

to their credit, to their credit. They've now started talking about risk as the erosion of purchasing. That's right, inflation, yeah, that's that's a massive, massive sea change. If they start to really embrace that in their culture, that'll change everything, that'll turn everything around and great. Okay, to be welcome. Thanks. Andrew, that's one of your better, boring stories, right? Amazing. The other list of doing me. It's me again. Oh, the best person in track. Meet people on the trainers. Now, another point for me. Okay, I mentioned callistoun Before you should sign up for their reports. They issue a report every month on UK domiciled funds, which is going where? Long story short, I'm going to read some of this out quickly. Equity funds suffered record outflows in 2025 remember that last year wasn't a bad year, yeah. So UK domicile funds saw the largest ever outflow from equity funds. It's double the previous record, which was set in 2016 December marked the seventh consecutive month of outflows, the most prolonged period of selling recorded safe haven money market funds and lower risk missed asset and fixed income funds benefited from the flight to lower risk investments. So UK invest, and I don't know whether it's broken down between institutional and resale, but UK based investors with UK domicile funds are fleeing an asset class that is going up and up and up. Now, part of me thinks, well, that's really quite savvy, not because, normally what we do is sell when they when markets are tumbling, that's when they really sell out. And maybe people here are just taking some money. And there's this capital gains tax thing in this country as well, which is an influence around the edges. But I just find that because I know, I know when we do have the next temporary decline that Carl referred to a few moments ago, they these people will bail out. You know, the selling electric will just, will just gather a pace. So there you go. I don't know what there was.

Alan Smith:

There was a lot of talk, wasn't it? There was a lot of talk last year, and continues to be about the AI bubble, the mag seven. So, so people are just banking profits. There's a lot of that. Yeah, yeah. And I think three years into this podcast, there's some recurring themes, private market investment seems to give up a lot. We kind of dismissed that. And this thing about market timing comes up all the time, and I think it always will do you'll be reporting callerstone next month, next quarter, next year, and just reminds us all of the value, the importance of the work we do.

Nick Lincoln:

Yep, fair enough. There's a link to the callistone website, and then if you sign up for that, you'll get there, you'll get the report, and they'll They Don't bombard yourself. You'll get an email once a month with just where we are. It's just just something to bear in mind in this thing of ours. Okie dokie, storyteller,

Alan Smith:

this is one for all the younger viewers and listeners, there was a company. There was a company called equitable life. Going back, oh, God, is

Nick Lincoln:

this going to be? Is this going to be? It's just going to be a

Unknown:

special grab yourself a drink, a very long drink. It's story time with Alan Smith.

Alan Smith:

It's been a while, and actually, there is a little story behind this. So I just saw the other day the equitable life. Who were. I mean, for those of us have been around for a few years, they were massive competition for ifas. Remember they were, they put themselves forward as a sort of a firm, like, kind of like an old school SJP, almost. But they made a big point of saying, we cut out the middle man. You don't need to hire an advisor come direct to equitable life, because then they sold pensions and investment products and all sorts of things. And they were hugely, hugely successful, it would be fair to say, and you can look it up what happened to them, but there was a whole series of kind of scandals and guarantees that they offered which couldn't be delivered upon. And, long story short, they effectively went into liquidation, kind of bailed out people. I mean, a lot, a lot of people lost a lot of money as a result of them back in the day, and I noticed something, because they just, they're kind of just one of these zombie funds now. They still exist. They've obviously, they've got lots of policy holders still receiving income and various things like that. They obviously haven't been able to sell anything for a long time, but they've just been bought once again, by some private equity company called gj. A, B, who the other companies, I thought, very interesting that's in their stable of investments is preta Monte. No, they're European, of some descriptions, I understand it, but they also own preta Monge and Krispy Kreme donuts. So it's a natural fit to have a legacy insurance and investment company founded, I think, was the oldest one ever in the UK, founded in 1755 or something. So you can now, you know, check out your pension policy and and get a free sandwich as well at the time. But it reminded me, and hey, here's the story. This is just a little bit of insight. And for anyone listening about taking opportunities when the equitable life saga really began, as I was starting off in business and I had no clients, no nothing. What's up? Nick I said this before about seven times. All right, so listen, listen to a past episode. I just, I saw the name come up, and I just put an advert in the newspaper to to advertise anyone. Because the great thing was, they didn't have an intermediary or advisors. The point of the story with your granddad, this point of the story was when there are things going on, when there are prevailing news stories breaking that are attracting people's interest, then you can take the opportunity to news Jack, as the word is called news Jack. Things are going on be a source of information, ideas and advice to those that might need it at the time, because the company they've got invested in is going through a difficult period of time. But anyway, that's it. They've been bought by pre a Monge and some others. Over to you.

Carl Widger:

Nick, our chairman at Matt is Tom Tierney has a great phrase for that, Alan. He says, Never waste a good crisis. He has, always opportunity, always opportunity.

Nick Lincoln:

This is true. This is true. Tom is a wise man. Yeah, it was a terrible saga that's a real stain on financial services in the UK. They shouldn't have been allowed to do what they do. And then the resolution took so long that most, a lot of the annuitants

Andy Hart:

were dead by the time, j, A, B, C, in it, Alan was there any more in

Alan Smith:

the posted a link to it. It was, do you know Henry Tapper? He was the one. I saw him. Yeah, subscribe to his blood. He's like, sort of pension expert, isn't he any? I think I subscribed to his blog. I saw the thing soon. But I guess the thing is, it's an annuity income play, isn't it? It's pretty much they're taking, you know, policy fees and what have you off this. I guess it's a declining book of business as people die.

Andy Hart:

Have some assets invested, like zombie funds and, yeah, yeah, this,

Alan Smith:

the people are still buying us. That's the whole that's what Phoenix life were, wouldn't it. They just went out. Whoever was behind them bought out a bunch of these companies. You can make money at it. You know, just you've got a recurring maybe

Carl Widger:

they have bigger plans. Maybe they're buying a database. You never know. Yeah, could be, who knows anyway.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, the database that most of them, most of them will be in their 70s

Alan Smith:

and 80s. I thought judges and lawyers.

Nick Lincoln:

Um, okie dokie, er, we are on ultra over

Andy Hart:

to me. So this is a recurring link or blog post or blog that I refer to, called novel investor always does a very deep dive into investment returns, investment return porn, as they call it, different asset classes sectors, and he's done his update for 2025 where the returns come from. I'm quite interested in every year, just getting a bit of a snapshot of what markets have performed, what the highest returning market sectors, global equity funds, because you think you're investing in very similar assets like global equity funds, but there's a wide range and a broad church of different returns for funds that you think are actually quite similar to each other. So anyway, there's a link in the show. In the show notes, the big thing from last year was international markets beat America. Obviously, America have been beaten in international markets for many years leading up to it, there's some very weird oddities in there. I think the Spanish market was up by over 50% and Europe did really well last year. But we began some some, yeah, as we did so, just some numbers on this. So I want to know roughly what my 100% global equity portfolio done for my real life clients in relation to the rest of the market. I know, obviously it fluctuates, and a year is utterly irrelevant in investment management, but it's just a snapshot in time. But then obviously I want to keep a good idea of how things progress as we move through the years and move into the decade. So the s and p5 100 did about 17% last year. The Russell 2000 did 13% the MSCI World, which is the, you know, plain vanilla no brainer portfolio. They call it, did about 20% the essence the FTSE 100 did 21% and then the global equity funds that most of us use for our clients were in the range of. About 12 to 16% and there's various reasons for this, but the big thing for UK investors was the currency. The UK currency got stronger against the US by about eight or 9% last year. Anyway, some people are interested in this, some people are too interested in this, and some people are utterly disinterested in it. I'm somewhere in the middle of it, and I do do a bit of an analysis every year with real clients portfolios to work out roughly where I am. My learnings from last year, my general global equity fund performed as well as all the other global equity funds. I have a big chunk of my Maven invest 100 in emerging markets that did incredibly well, but then the kicker was a very famous targeted Value Fund underperformed for another year, so I'm still waiting for that to perform in the future. But all in all, I'm I'm happy with where the returns are, but I still think it's worth as practicing advisors, knowing these knowing these numbers, knowing this data, because you may or may not have these conversations with clients. You just, you're just armed if these conversations are raised, certainly if you have people that are very much a short term investment focus, which hopefully you have minimal of these clients, and they're well trained, long term thinking clients, but we deal with a whole different range of types of clients, and we have clients that we've been working with for a short period of time, a medium period of time, a long period of time. So yeah, that's that over to smithing. You're muted. Did.

Alan Smith:

It is quite interesting when you get into the weeds of some of this stuff. I remember in our investment committee meetings, you know the benchmarks you let's choose an choose an emerging market benchmarks. You got MSCI, emerging such and such, or you've got the foot See, develop, develop markets. And one, I remember, one was massively different to the other. I was trying to work out what it why it was, and the reason was because, on one of them, I think it was South Korea was included as an emerging market, you know, developing market, when others would say, No, that's a proper main market. So it's excluded. So you do have to be a bit careful about creating, you know, if you're creating you know, if you're creating benchmarks and trying to compare yourself against others, you've always got to be trying to compare like with like is a minefield, very

Andy Hart:

messy. Yeah.

Alan Smith:

Nicholas, what the ONE FUND solution? Nick Lincoln, he doesn't care.

Andy Hart:

Just there's so many different one funds, Alan and the range with the one funds that I follow. It's broad, I think long, long, long term, it will all sort of revert to the mean, as it were. But, yeah, interesting.

Nick Lincoln:

Well, I'm going all in Spain this year.

Andy Hart:

So, right, that was last year, Nick

Nick Lincoln:

now I'm going this year, because

Carl Widger:

fund managers will do. There will be a Spain fund to leverage on the amazing opportunities in Spain.

Nick Lincoln:

I'm going to the Spanish smaller companies hedge back to the Japanese yen, right? Let's move on and watch

Carl Widger:

Monzo got their Central Bank of Ireland banking license, which apparently is the most difficult one to get in Europe. It's the most stringent, but they have chosen to stick with good reason after

Alan Smith:

the last time

Carl Widger:

of the sins of the past, yeah, which is good, which is actually good, right? But it's a barrier to entry, so therefore the pillar banks here had no competition when everyone else left after the financial crisis, right? So we, I actually said here, and someone corrected me that there's two, only two pillar banks in Ireland. There's actually three. So there's Bank of Ireland, there's AIB, and then there's permanent tsp. And I kind of don't or didn't count permanent TSP, but they are for sale now, so hopefully some foreign bank comes in and tries to seize an opportunity. Here in Ireland, we've got revenue very active here. So every in Ireland, pretty much as revolute accounts, I think. And we've Monzo now, and people can open Monzo accounts over the over the coming months, which is brilliant. Now, Monzo are using it as a base to kind of have their banking license into Europe. So they're not only focused on Ireland. The point here, though, is that the Bank of Ireland, AIB, have had it too easy for too long. I've said that so many times, and competition is finally arriving, and that can only be good for consumers, and hopefully we'll have some real options in terms of banking products, in terms of deposits, in terms of mortgages, etc, etc. So really good. Very welcome. Monzo. Can't wait to see this market being shaken up over the next. Last couple of years,

Andy Hart:

ultra revolution, Revolut and Monzo are quite dangerous to the incumbents in Ireland, aren't they? Carl, because they can't buy them. You know, if there's a threat coming from a young company, the big banks can buy them, they can't buy Monzo or revolute. So Revolut can just cause havoc in Ireland in terms of new clients, deposits, offering better products, rates, mortgages, everything, very exciting. I think,

Carl Widger:

no, it is 100% you're 100% right? And look, I guess there's a lot of you know, folks, elderly folks, who aren't comfortable doing everything digital, digitally. But I think you know there are, yeah, I have Revolut, by the way, no, but I think people are, you know, most people are becoming more and more comfortable with it. Like Revolut have gone into the deposit space. They've gone into the trading space. You know, they are shaking this thing up. And you can buy it and sell cryptocurrency on revolute as well. It's, it's really, really good to see this, and it will make everyone sharpen their pencils. And those massive, massive profits that Bank of Ireland and AIB are that they're making on a yearly basis having been bailed out by the Irish taxpayer, yeah, hopefully that comes to an end, and a spread around a little bit, and we get better service and more options. I think that's, that's, that's going to be good for the Irish consumer. Let's keep

Nick Lincoln:

the pace going. Thanks for that. Carl storyteller,

Alan Smith:

yeah, I just want to share what thing is, a really positive message. I was contacted during the holidays by a gentleman, effectively, an aspiring financial advisor called Matt Spivey, and with his permission, I'm sharing some of the words that he's said and some of the lessons I think that are that are available to all of us, and particularly advisors looking possibly to change jobs, looking to get into the industry. But Matt contacted me via LinkedIn and said, Alan, just wanted to thank you and tell you what the impact has been from a couple of your suggestions on trap. I'm 55 looking to move into financial advice following redundancy from another industry, etc, etc, while studying and taking the exams this year, I've been catching up on trap up to episode 71 so you've done well. Hope that supported your exams and study, it's really helped me to see what's actually important, over and above what I had to learn from the exams. And he said, in an early episode, you were asked what you do differently if you started now. And you and Nick mentioned picking a niche. I've done that, and it's made my business plan much stronger. So he's chosen a specific niche, and I said the other suggestion was about standing out when approaching practices to work with or for you, advise setting up a web page and sharing information. Now I shared it with his permission with you guys, and it's fantastic. So Matt has built this simple but very effective web page with a short video.

Unknown:

Brilliant, isn't it? Really is brilliant.

Alan Smith:

And he's and he said, If you do happen to know any firms in my area, Sheffield, Yorkshire, may be interested having conversation, then obviously, get in touch. I've put a link to Matt's web page in the show notes to have a to check it out. And so I just think we did mention it before this that people applying for jobs. We all get inbound or certainly, Carl and I do blah, blah, blah, looking for a job. You've any, any vacancies, etc, and it's like, Yeah, sort of. But if somebody like, produce something like, like, Matt has done the really professionally put together website. He got his business plan documented in public, this is how I'm going to grow the company. I've never been in the industry before. I'm going to grow it. This is the niche I'm going to focus on. This is a bit about me. A little short video. I think it's a fantastic example that anyone should adopt.

Carl Widger:

It's amazing. And the little video, like you know, clearly you can get from that that this guy can present, he can, yeah, he can get his ideas across. So it's really good. And in sharp contrast to some of the CVS that I'm being just sent willy nilly by The Recruitment firms are awful. Recruitment firms are sending just absolute crap. Yeah, so everyone should look

Andy Hart:

at this just a horrible two page Word document that looked like it's been put together in 1997 and then they're saying in the body of the email, I'm young, innovative and creative problem solver. You haven't got a clue. You haven't got a clue. So this is

Carl Widger:

our recruitment firm sent me something. It was last week of the report. So this is recency bias, right? Saying that this girl would be amazing in your business. And I actually looked through the CV, and she changed jobs every single year for the last five years.

Unknown:

Yeah, why would you think that person is great for me? Like, you know, come on. Like, if you want me to take you seriously, respect,

Carl Widger:

respect my inbox. Like, that sounds like an awfully arrogant thing to say, but like, it's just. Mean, like, I'm not taking the next email seriously, you know? And I

Alan Smith:

think that's, that's, that's why we've, we've mentioned them a couple of times before, why James Barden has been helpful to some of the people that approached us as a specialist recruitment consultant. The feedback we've got from people who've spoken to him has been very positive. He would have, probably, I assume, would never have done that car just sent you another you probably wouldn't have dealt with that applicant in the first place. So James is very good. All right, what's next?

Nick Lincoln:

Very good. Very good. James. Matt's. Matt's site is in the so called show notes, and he built it on the, on the on the Google site, which is free, you know. So there's no excuse not to do this, and that's not a cost thing. So well done to Matt for doing that. Okay, me quickly, quick rant, really. But also it's a positive thing as well. Service Standards in this in the UK, certainly not so much in your neck of the woods car where things seem to be going great guns. But in the UK, there's a general sense of malaise here, and the economy is, to use an economic term, in the shitter, and we're all very keen to blame the government of any hue, blue or red. I do wonder how much of our economic woes are down to just in net businesses. I service standards, right? This drives me up the bloody wall last year. Last year, I emailed two cleaning companies near me because we need a new cleaner, because our other one has moved out the area. I haven't even got a holding email back from either them, let alone, you know, yeah, we'd love, you know, blah, but nothing whatsoever, just just Tumbleweed. Why bother? Why are you in business? At the start of this year, I emailed a plumbing company up the road in hem on Hempstead. I've got quite a big ticket thing, I think that needs fixed in my garage, a water filtration system thing. And I don't got a bloody clue. I've heard nothing back. And it just drives me up the wall. And it makes me realize, I think drives joke about the wall more than perhaps the average Joe Public is because we are in financial services, right? We are very, very service orientated. And it's a massive it's a massive USP for ifas, I think we undersell to prospect. People in this country are so used to shitty service that if you say to them, Listen, if you come on boards a client, we guarantee that if you make contact with us, we will come back to you within 24 hours, whatever your turnaround time is, if you tell people that they're not expecting and as long as you do it, you're already so far ahead of the pack. And the service standards that I deliver, and I know you guys as well, will be way above what most people experience. So I think in the prospecting stage, when you onboarding clients, tell them what you're going to do for them, obviously, make sure you do it, but just because they won't be expecting it. They'll be expecting to just have emails sent into the void, get nothing back, and just do it. Yeah, it's just, it's so bad. And I know Alan myself, I think this is a particular bug bear. But people just can't, just do not do what they say. They're just piss off. Why are you in business? Why are you in business? You might as well be shut so there you go. So you can, we're financial services, and, you know, keep the service standards up, and you'll stand out from the rest. Sadly, that's just the way it is the minute.

Andy Hart:

Yeah, no, this is a recurring theme. Yeah, show up. Do what you said you're going to do, and, you know, be consistent. And yeah, our clients are very lucky that we hold ourselves to those service standards. However, Nick my question to you, what was your tone with your original email to these companies? Because I have been on these opening emails, and I know you think it's funny, but if I received that as a cleaning company,

Alan Smith:

things are cranking. No, I didn't.

Nick Lincoln:

There was no sarcasm. There were no sexual references. I've got them.

Andy Hart:

I know you Nick and I know you're funny to us, but it can come

Alan Smith:

on, right? Plebs, right? Plebs need some

Andy Hart:

cleaning done. Yeah, I know you're a cleaning

Nick Lincoln:

company, so you're probably polish. You might have had to read this email, but if you can read it, no, it's nothing. They were very vanilla, very vanilla, and not, not by yours. So, right, quickly.

Carl Widger:

No, no point in that. Sorry. All Financial Services is great. I'm in the middle of sorting out some of my mom's stuff from my dad's estate, and I could tell you a few stories. I won't just now because I'm waiting for a few things to be done. But, yeah, the financial services aren't all great. I assure you of that some of the bigger providers defined benefit well mentioned scheme providers, some of the things that they are doing, it's absolutely disgraceful, yep.

Alan Smith:

So I can imagine, I can imagine Carl, I think, and it's a point well made. Nick as it relates to TRAPPIST, a lot of the people that tune into this are working for what I'll call boutique firms, and not necessarily the biggest even if you're SJP, you're generally running your own practice, we care because that email comes in, it's personal to us. If it's an institution and it's a call center and it is such in our business, it's such an advantage, it really is you right. Nick, make that part of your initial pitch speaking to clients, because the you don't have to be even outstanding. You just got to freaking respond to people in a reasonable the barriers to being good. Nick, do you remember we were trying to get a venue for trap live, and we did? We, you know, we were going to write a big check to hire a venue get. Get a couple 100 people along. We couldn't phone them up, left a message, couldn't get people

Nick Lincoln:

to even respond. I put a post on LinkedIn about this, and then just certain standards and just how diabolical it isn't someone who's not in this thing of ours, he's in a hospitality business. He says he regularly emails venues because he's got this event. He wants to host it, and there's been loads of customers coming, spending money. He typically gets one in four of them will respond, even respond. It's why are you bothering? Just shut the thing down. I don't know. It just drives me nuts wild. I'm sorry to belabor the point here, but we are. We have got a guest in the lobby. We were 45 minutes in. We've got two more points to go. So let's just do these. Smith thank you guys for Smithy.

Alan Smith:

But my one's very quick. There's a guy I know is that English guy lives in the US we spend increasing the amount of time in the UK, called Matt Anderson. Again, I met him just before Christmas. His whole focus is on referrals, how to build robust referral strategies within your business. He's he's written a couple of books on the subject. He's keen to spend a bit more time in the UK. He's got a new program he's just launching, which is generally is done over the interweb. But he will be in the UK quite a lot this year, and he has provided a discount if anyone's remotely interested in growing their referrals within their business using a repeatable, scalable structures, strategy, referral strategy. Then check out the link in the show notes, and you will benefit. If you're interested, you will benefit from a discount as a trap. Ist okay? Is he a close personal friend? He is, of course, a close personal friend.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, great. And the last topical tidbit of episode 88 Ultra.

Andy Hart:

This is a cracker. The title of this Nick train apologizes again for poor fund performance. This is another star fund managers, fool from grace. I'll give him a little bit of credit. Obviously, he runs a couple of big funds, and they've done very well since, since they've launched, apparently. But his UK equity fund 2025 basically fell by 7% fell by as in minus where he was trying to his benchmark was a FTSE all share index, which returned a positive 21.4 so this happens, obviously, with staff fund managers, they have many, many years of great returns people pile in at the wrong and right time, you know, you choose your poison in relation to that. And then they have a shocking year, because they are generally contrarian. They go against the crowd. So they do well. Sometimes when the market's not doing well, because they've picked the other horses. And then obviously, when the market does very well, that sometimes they can get massively underwater anyway, that's happened to him. Imagine, yeah, imagine if you had a huge chunk of your your life savings, and your and your clients life savings in these, you know, Star active managers. It's just not worth the risk. I mean, all the returns long term come from, you know, index, global equity returns, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so that's the latest. Okay, right, guys through the fund managers still there. Over to you. Carl, yeah,

Carl Widger:

yeah, there. Let's debunk this myth. There are no such thing as Star fund managers. They can't endure. They don't endure. It's a whole lot of bullshit, and

Alan Smith:

it is a total whole lot of terrorism. They endure until they don't, yeah, until they got they got lucky until

Carl Widger:

and they're not. It's not true to say they're contrarian. What they do is they, broadly speaking, match index funds, and then they do a little bit of their own betting, and that's what it is. It's betting. And there isn't one, there isn't one inverted commas, Star fund manager who has endured over time like Warren Buffett, people would say, Well, you know, but he's, he's a fund that has been going on for 50 years, but it's a fund. Star fund managers. Name them out. You know, Neil, why is Terry Smith?

Andy Hart:

I put buff into the business category. He's a business grower, manager, picking, picking, picking stocks.

Unknown:

Terry Smith, like, why are people still

Alan Smith:

investing with these? I was gonna say I come across someone. Came across someone the other day who said I diversified. I've got summer money with Nick train, some with Terry Smith.

Carl Widger:

I like, I never, I've heard of this Nick train fellow recently, but I never heard of him before. Like, when did he become 25 years? Yeah, happy wood dropped out of the that list, or Woodford dropped out of that list. Yeah.

Alan Smith:

Well, they all do, eventually they all do. All right. Nick, let our guest, yeah,

Nick Lincoln:

okay, great stuff. Great stuff. Okay, so that's topical tip. It's done now. It's time to move on to what many people call the meat and potatoes of the real advisor podcast. And I'm very glad to say that for this episode, as we're doing more and more so we've got a guest, a guest coming on to the. Show, and I'm gonna let him into the lobby. If I can find the button to do it, I'll let Alan give the introduction. Okay, there's somebody at the door.

Alan Smith:

James, welcome to trap. Good to see you.

James McPartland:

Can you hear me? Are you getting on? Okay,

Alan Smith:

there was a slight glitch. Good to see you, James. Now, James, you and I have met several times, I think, in the past, and you've been on from what, from where I can see. It a bit of a journey. Right? When you and I first met up, we went for a coffee in the city, and you were a partner at a very successful SJP practice, right? That is no longer underestimate the power of the dark side. So that's no that's no longer the case. It's fair to say. So I think a great place to start would be to share for the audience who don't know you, your background, your journey and kind of where you are now. Cool.

James McPartland:

So, yeah, we I think everybody says this, but they pretty much fell into financial services. I was just super lucky. That was my first job, straight out of university. Normally takes few years for people to get to get into it. So, yeah, we I had a job lined up at a stock breaking firm called MF Global. Think it's actually gone bust. Now it's nothing to do with me, but I with me, but we I wasn't due to wasn't due to start for a sort of three or four months. So I thought I better go and get a better go and get a job. In the meantime, I interviewed at this place for, I think I had three or four interviews, and ended up getting a job. And and it was a bit of a baptism of fire, I would say, I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into at the time you turned up. You were given a phone, you were given a script, you were given an objection sheet and told to basically go and learn, learn learn it all, and you your payment structure was 1500 pounds for three months, and then it was just fees only, and it was very much survival of the fittest. But the slight issue was that I was absolutely useless at cold calling. So I think in my fourth month I am I was working 1213, hour days, and I think I got paid 204 quid, so I was pretty much

Unknown:

looking so they overpaid you in the first three months.

James McPartland:

Yeah, yeah, exactly my hourly rate hasn't actually gone up since, to be honest with you, bno, we I had a bit of a I have had a bit of a taskmaster as a boss as well. So he made sure I made my calls and pretty much got on with it. But yeah, in some ways, I'm very thankful for that, because after the first year, it was brutal, but I started to improve, luckily, and I became pretty decent at the whole cold calling thing. So after the first year, we had a pretty much 100 households to to then go at. So that was, I was, what, 23 and you've got a client base of 100 households, it's a massive head start. So did that for a couple of years, and then we weren't really we wanted to try and own our own business. So we we went and looked at what the options out there, and SJP were certainly one of them. So we, as myself and three business partners, went and set up a business. And it, to be honest with it was a pretty good fit, because it felt like we were still young. We were 25 like we don't have a bloody clue what we were doing. And it felt like a happy medium. So happy medium between starting your own business the IFA thing seemed like a shitload of hassle. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't do that when I was 25 but yeah, no, it was a super good fit to begin with. I'd say at the beginning, it was a pretty good it was a pretty good brand to have behind you. It was like FTSE 250 it was going to FTSE 100 was exciting growth journey, and that fitted with what we what we were trying to do. But it's. Sort of things changed after, after a bit of time.

Alan Smith:

Really give me a sort of timeline on this, James, when was it that you joined SJP?

James McPartland:

So it must have been 2014 so I left university, 2010 2011 joined SJP, 2014 so it was on the cusp of FTSE, 250 gun into FTSE, 100 right?

Alan Smith:

And what? What did you notice? What had changed over the years between 2014 and, say, last year?

James McPartland:

Not, not a lot for about seven or eight years. But that was the problem. It was a great place to grow a business like we, we started, and we probably had five, 10 million between the between the four of us, and we grew it to, organically, to 400 million quid. But I would say the past the last three years, it became, we wanted to change some things. And it's, it's a massive beast, SJP, so any changes that you're trying to make, it's like turning an oil tanker. It was just so slow and that just didn't really fit with what we were trying to build. So we just became frustrated. It would be much easier for us to stay there, but yeah, we just became frustrated with what the pace of change, and either it was the answer was, either the changes that you want are coming or we're not going to do it at all. And we just became a little bit annoyed at that.

Alan Smith:

And of course, SJP themselves have gone through this complete kind of still going through it, I guess, to an extent, kind of complete restructure, reorganization. I mean, the share price absolutely collapsed, recovered mostly since then. But obviously you were working in the in the machine at the time, and that must have been quite a challenging period for you, when lot of negative publicity, lot of bad press, and all the fees and charges

James McPartland:

challenging time. Yeah, massively, like the it was more around bringing on new board. On board, new clients. The negative press was a killer. You were always up against some sort of shit headline. And people you get to the stage where you present it to a client, and they come back and say, Oh, what about this? Or what about that? And most of all, like from existing clients, you could get around it, was fine, you could explain it, but bringing on new new onboard new clients, it was pretty challenging. And I'd say there was quite a big cultural shift the past two or three years. It became a lot more about the shareholders rather than the client advisor relationship. I've got loads of examples stuff that I probably can't say on here, but that I probably

Unknown:

can't say on here, but the

James McPartland:

Oh yeah, all right, yeah, all right, I'm probably going to get in

Unknown:

trouble for saying this. But

James McPartland:

the All right, fine. I was gonna say something then, but probably best not.

Carl Widger:

Can I just ask a question, just in terms of, like, the I know SJP gets a lot of bad press in the UK, but they're not, they're not in Ireland, and I'm on the record saying, Yeah, but there's an awful lot of good stuff that SJP have done, and I'm interested in your journey from like the cold calling to you guys, then deciding to go as a as a four of you go together to SGP, and in terms of the training and development that they gave you then at that stage, like did, has that stood to you. Would you recommend that you know, what would you advise someone in your position now. So 2223 24 year old coming out, is the SJP Academy still a good place for them to go?

James McPartland:

I think there is definitely positives to that. We didn't do the SJP Academy, so we just set up a business and started from there. But there's some, been some really good businesses that have come out of it. I'd say it's a lot more successful than it used to be. It was a bit hit and miss. We bring on a lot of new advisors, but we don't, we didn't put them through the SJP Academy because we wanted to train them in our way. But I think if you're brand new to the industry, and you don't really know what you're getting into, I think it's a good grounding, definitely, because they get you up and running pretty quickly. But we just felt there was a different way to train advisors. But I've had a few people reach out to me and ask me about the academy, and I don't think it's a bad way to go. Just for us, what we wanted to try and do was bring on our own associates and train them in our way. I still think there's a lot of businesses that do that, but if you don't know any other business, I think it's a good option.

Carl Widger:

And James, what's the single biggest positive change that you guys have seen? That is that has helped the growth of your business since you've gone from SGP to to out on your own? Yeah,

James McPartland:

I would say the lack of friction between bringing on board new clients, there's no longer that sort of monkey on your back, rightly or wrongly, I think it does get bad press, and some of it is probably unjustified, but I think just not having a monkey on a bat, there's no friction now to bring in on new onboard, new clients. I think the biggest thing to the biggest challenge that people face leaving is that you're essentially walking away. We walked away from 400 million pound business to then start again, which is obviously pretty worrying. I've got three kids, you know, we got staff to look after, so that's the biggest pain point. But actually we'll be, we've been going since March, we'll be back to 300 million within within a year.

Carl Widger:

Is that your existing clients have decided to come with you, but they have to decide themselves, as opposed to you going after them. Is that how it works?

James McPartland:

Or Correct? No, no, no. So we again, it's a bit of a common myth. There's no restricted covenants. It's your they're your clients. So okay, you leave, but you leave the ongoing advice fees. So all of the income that we built up, obviously, we had 1520, staff to look after all of our income stops. So it's a bit of a bit of a leap of faith, but actually it can be done as long as you do it in the right way, and you're doing it for the right reasons, your clients will follow you because, and also, what I would say is that once you explain the story and what you've given up, they become your biggest advocates. The amount of referrals and personal instructions we've had since because we've made the changes for the right reasons, has been unbelievable.

Alan Smith:

Brilliant, brilliant Nick. You've got a question? Yeah.

Nick Lincoln:

So you've made this journey from this massive brand. James recognized brand for good and bad, and you set up Porter partners in March. What's the one thing that surprised you on the transition from SJP to being an independent financial advisor? What was the one thing that's happened to you you just didn't think would be either a good thing or a bad thing?

James McPartland:

I think the we spent two or three years planning this, and the amount of things that you have to think about is pretty ridiculous. The amount of times I said tech stack was unbelievable. Just the technology providers, the CRM providers like how you going to go and get regulated? There's just so much things to think about. SJP is quite easy. In some ways, because it's simple. You know what you're doing, you know what you're advising on. There's a limited choice, and in some ways that's a really good thing, but actually, the amount of stuff that's out there that you have to think about. That's probably the biggest thing that surprised us. But again, it was a massive opportunity, because we got to start again from from a blank sheet, design it from the from the ground up, and only use very simple things. Don't over complicate it. I think a lot of the businesses that we looked at just had so many going on. And I was like, Jesus Christ. It just seems like there's too much. So I think what we've tried to do is just keep

Nick Lincoln:

it Amen to that God James.

Andy Hart:

Let me just chip in. Yeah. Your story sounds amazing. Well done for taking the huge leap, mate. That's a massive thing to do, especially with three young kids. My question is specifically about the investing and investments and how you invest your clients money. How has that changed from you going from the big blue to yourself? How has that changed or not in relation to how you think about investing?

James McPartland:

So we're, we're pretty much 100% dimensional. We, we really like those guys. We, we think they're super supportive. They're really good people to go and speak to and because, and they introduced us to quite a lot of other people and other businesses that you can go and speak to. But yeah, we we looked at loads of different things. We wanted low cost, like model portfolio services. And actually, SJP has introduced that to be fair to them. But yeah, it was just taking too long for us. So I think that is a good change that they've made. But yeah, we're 100% dimensional. We really like those guys.

Andy Hart:

But as your thinking change, so that's less the building blocks of who you use. But has your philosophy changed, or is it quite similar? That's what I'm sort of.

James McPartland:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And that's what we were, that's one of the main bug bears of that we wanted to change a few years ago. So we wanted them to introduce some low cost stuff, but it was just they were going to do it, but it was just a matter of when, and we just run out of time. Our clients were after it. We look after city based professionals. Index investing is everywhere, and we wanted to be able to offer it. Some clients might not want it, but a lot of our clients did, so we just wanted to be able to give that option, and it was just too slow to come really hmm, cool, cool.

Alan Smith:

James, can you share that? Because you obviously, it's a brilliant thing to start from blank piece of paper. It's great, and I think a lot of us would like to do that sometimes so, but you are just looking at the marketplace. You're looking at all the options. I'm sure you had lots of meetings and lots of sort of sales pitches from tech companies and various things and you've landed, and where you've landed, can you share where you've where you have landed, in terms of your tech stack, the services that you use? Yeah. So we, we

James McPartland:

use, well, we, we ended. We looked like we were going to use about 30 different things. Then we scaled it back to having a fundamental base of getting the CRM provider, we write so we use planner, rightly or wrongly. We think it's we think it's a pretty good place to go. From a investment platform. We have looked at fundment. We've looked at the Soderberg platform, like sekol and transact. So each one offers like a little niche, but technology driven is super important. We used advisory AI so we like those guys, so they're the main sort of things really just not trying to over complicate it. We've got a pretty, pretty forward thinking team that tries to automate things like letter authority, so we've built some of it ourselves, but the fundamental was making sure that the CRM provider was right. And planner, we think is, is a pretty good option, because it gives you loads of things that you can build, build off yourselves. And the API links are pretty, pretty slick.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, I think, I think that's great. And, yeah, less is more, because I think I can think of, you know, we're trying to streamline it, but I know some companies have got 1250, more different sort of systems to try to speak to each other, and it just doesn't. There is a real appetite for shiny objects and technology. And every, every month, there's a new

Unknown:

tech if you're if you're that way,

Alan Smith:

I've heard of somebody who is not anymore. I mean, I'm in recovery shiny new object syndrome.

Carl Widger:

Can I ask? Just in terms of where you are now? And obviously, you're in a good place, and the clients have broadly come across with you, when you look back at, say, that period from a you know, you started very early, and then you went to the SJP, and now you're doing your own thing, like, is there anything, if you had your time back, would you have changed? Or did everything just fit at the right time? You know, was it just this is the right time to do this particular thing and then you changed? Or would you change things if you went back? So I the reason I'm asking the question. We have a lot of younger listeners who are kind of, you know, going, Okay, what should I be doing, or whatever. So if you had your time back, what would you do differently? If anything at all.

James McPartland:

No, I would, I would say, I'm been super lucky, like I went I've always been self employed, which was obviously it came with its challenges. I got paid 206 quid on month four. But actually, if you can get over that period of growing the initial client base, there's a lot of people just drag it out for far too long. So I'd say everything happens in a pretty good order for us. We were sick. I was super lucky. I became self employed, built a quick client base, joined SJP, which was, gave you the infrastructure to go and grow a business, and we're super grateful for that. And it just felt like it was good timing to sort of part ways,

Carl Widger:

yeah, that's cool and very mature way of looking at things. I think sometimes people are too quick to say, oh, yeah, one thing that I used to do that wasn't any good, but I think, you know, that's kudos to you for saying that. I think that's important.

James McPartland:

Andy, one thing I would say, Go on and go. Andy, go for it.

Andy Hart:

Michael James, you're the guest.

James McPartland:

One thing. I would say, is that for new advisors, what we do with ours, rightly or wrongly, is we get them into client meetings immediately, so associates going through their exams, get them in the meetings and get them to do the follow up and have as much client contact as humanly possible, because that is what the job is. All About, building relationships, being in those tough conversations, and the more exposure that it can get. Rather than doing Power planning for a number of years, in my opinion, that is the most valuable thing that an associate advisor does. We get them in client meetings from day one, because ultimately, that's what the job is. So I would say, if you're going to go and join a firm, just make sure that they you've got client exposure immediately.

Andy Hart:

That's brilliant. James, my question is, how do you see the future of financial advice panning out? What's your thoughts on that?

James McPartland:

Whoo, nice, simple. Yeah. Cheers. I would say it's, it's going to be technology focused. I think it's going to be a lot. We've tried to do a quite a lot of this, so making sure that the client and boarding it can be done in minutes rather than days, or making sure that there's a suitability letter in a client's hands 15 minutes after the meeting. It's all client experience stuff that should be technology driven. There's so many things now the way you can open an account and be a client within minutes. And I just think, certainly in some businesses, it can take weeks or months to become a client. And I just think that's ridiculous. Clients want it immediately, and I think the better and more simple people can keep that, the better business that they'll run. And I think there's going to be a massive going from 30 different systems to basically having, hopefully one or two that actually do everything that you can do. I think that is a general shift that we're seeing, and we've tried to sort of do that less is more.

Alan Smith:

Yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense. James, I want to ask you something that has come up on this podcast before, and I know a few of us have had conversations about with SJP people. There is a famous you call it like a loan scheme, where the business will lend money to practice professionals, practice owners, to help them grow the business and what have you. But it's had, there's been some sort of contentious issues. I've seen some stuff on LinkedIn, people back and forward. None of us know anything about it. But what are your thoughts? Because from our conversation, that we don't mind me saying you you didn't participate, and you were very keen not to participate. But what are your thoughts to anyone who's listening to this, who's at SJP thinking of participating in that scheme?

James McPartland:

So you talk about the business, the business sale and purchase stuff. Yes, buying a business, they loan you the money that that's one of the things that attracted us in the first place. Got to be honest, like, right? You we were 25 and you could build a business for 15 years and essentially sell it. You've got retirement plan. I don't think that model is as sustainable as it was, let's say that that was pretty diplomatic of me, as pretty much as diplomatic as I can be.

Alan Smith:

That's not like you.

James McPartland:

So I've had fair warning. So all right, no, it wouldn't be for me. I wouldn't be doing it right now. I know that BSB values are down. So the business, the business values are down. I know there's less of a market than they used, used to be, if it was me. Now there's no way I do it, because obviously we've moved on, but obviously each their own. And I know some people that have done it, and we've got, I've got I've got mates still there SJP, and they're still amazing businesses there for me. No, I wouldn't get involved in it. I think having a personal guarantee on it is, is pretty tricky as well. So, yeah, it's not something that I would get involved in.

Alan Smith:

Okay, that's, that is diplomatic, and it's, yeah, it's good advice to anyone, because we have had a few people contact us and we said, look, we can't advise you, but like anything you know, read the small print, do your homework. Particularly you're right when, when they've got that personal guarantee, and can, in theory, take your house away if the numbers don't add up. No idea any further thoughts or questions for James,

Andy Hart:

that's what personal guarantees are in business. Alan, the personal guarantees for SJP are not, not exclusive to them. Personal guarantee. No, I know, I know exactly, but they call it an idiot with a pen. That's what they call personal guarantees. But, yeah, John, yeah. Any. Questions, and to

James McPartland:

be honest, if people want to, if people want to grow their business, if people want to grow their business that way, each their own, isn't it? It's their choice. But for me, obviously, we're out. There's no way I'll be doing it. But yeah, going back, probably

Nick Lincoln:

not, right? I've raised my hand quickly, just okay if we're going to wrap this up. So James, we as you know, because you're an avid TRAPPIST, obviously you've probably got your favorite member of the trap pack, and I thank you for the private messages. I'm very, very flattered by that. If we're getting lots of traction with advisors who are with firms that they're not particularly happy with, some IFA firms, some SJP, and they're on the cusp of leaving and doing, what would be your message to them, and what would be the key thing that they have to get sorted if they're leaving a firm to go to pass as new

James McPartland:

I would go and speak To as many advisors that have done it as possible. And we are super lucky that there is so little competition in our profession that people are so willing to help. And actually that's pretty unique, I would say, like Alan went and met me for a coffee. He put me in contact with Rob Stevenson. We are super lucky that there's loads of people that have been there and done it. Just go and reach out to them, because they're more than happy to speak to you. I think that is probably the best bit about our profession.

Nick Lincoln:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we talk about that, that we this is such a shirt. I don't think other professions do it. I mean, I don't know. I'm not an accountant. I'm not a solicitor, but I don't think there's this level of just cross, cross fertilization of ideas, and the willing just to share stuff, and,

Alan Smith:

yeah, collaboration, most people will have a coffee with you, give you the best ideas, the best thoughts. And I think that's that's true, that there is, there's very little competition, so you're happy to help. You're in theory, your competitor get started and, yeah, we're all about just making the profession better. Just make it better. Have good people like you, James, come into the independent sector, and your colleagues, fantastic business there. Quarter partners, 334, 100 million of assets. And I'm sure growing, growing fast. So it's, it's a positive, I think, for the entire sector. So we're happy to share, share all these stories. So that's great. Really good to see you, my friend, James, hopefully catch up with you again in the not too distant future, definitely.

James McPartland:

Thank you very much. Brilliant. Do it over a beer, right? And a coffee.

Alan Smith:

Let's do that. Yeah,

James McPartland:

James, if you could leave the studio

Nick Lincoln:

by clicking on the leave, the studio by clicking on the leave icon, for thing, if you can see that and just keep your browser open until the download is the upload is finished, please. Thank you, James of WA, thank you,

James McPartland:

James. Cheers guys, look ourselves.

Nick Lincoln:

Cheers, Good Guy. Guy, good guy. He's, yeah, he's gonna do great things. He's already doing great things. On a tear.

Alan Smith:

We thought just be, it'd be very interesting to get on this, because this is what we hear a lot about, this transition. And just as you were saying that, going from bigger companies setting up your own, there's a few others that we know that are yet to be announced. So there's a lot of movement going on in our sector. So James is a great example of someone coming from, you know, the huge institution which is in James's place, and it takes a brave man or men or women to leave, walk away from that 400 million AUM and the mothership taking care of most of the big things for you, start from scratch again. Very good, very good.

Andy Hart:

I enjoyed that. I'm sure, in hindsight, you know, many, many years down the line, he'll be delighted that he did. Oh, completely not. He's already not from who he went to just now, he's fully in control of his own destiny, and he'll be delighted. Question Time. Nicholas, yes, it is

Nick Lincoln:

question time, because we're coming to that section of the Show, Episode 88 of the real advisor podcast, and there's post it at my front door. She's called the bulging sack of TRAPPIST questions up my driveway, and we're now going to answer one if you want to send in a question. As ever. It's the pinned tweet on x, the pinned X on tweet. Also in the so called show notes, we do get to them. We tend to do it in in order. So if you put your question in the hopper, we will get to you in due course. So let's see who this one is from. There's a bit of a quite a cheap envelope. This is not the best, not the best. Letter, either. Lack of detail. This is from Wilson. M, yeah, so this is obviously some sort of secret agent question. Do you think we should have a prerequisite qualification for chancellors? You wouldn't be a CFO of a company without relevant experience or qualifications. Why should you steward the state, the nation's finances without qualifications. I think this accountability will help protect the country's finances and economic future. What do you guys think, if that's okay with you, correct?

Carl Widger:

You got the answer right in your question? Yeah. Well, no, I don't think you can. That's that's the reason the

Nick Lincoln:

civil service is there and you can't expect this. Is the other notion that somehow we expect governments to be able to run things. We can't run the economy. The best thing you do is get out the economy. Way, the economy is impossible to run by one person. They haven't got the training for, and the training doesn't exist. That's why you have this retinue of expertise, apparently, in Westminster, that you lean on whether or not the civil service were up to, I don't know, but no, you couldn't. But again, we have to get away from this idea that somehow one person or two people in government or three people in the cabinet can somehow run a company. It cannot be done. And the more they run a country, yeah, and the more they try and do it, the worse they make it. The best thing that the chancellor can do is get the f out of the way of the economy and let it just run. Is my answer.

Carl Widger:

Guys. I go, we have a great case study. At the moment, we had a brilliant, brilliant finance minister, Minister of Finance, Pascal Donahue, and he's left for the World Bank, but he was a brilliant guy, and I would credit him with a lot of what, all of the good stuff that has happened in our economy. And he's left, and he's his job has been taken by a guy called Simon Harris. He's a career politician, I'd say very guy with huge integrity, Simon Harris, but he's no experience in this stuff like at all. So let's just see, because either Nick will be right, or Pascal done, who was an absolute genius, I fear that Pascal Don who might have been an absolute genius, and we mightn't be so well set up for the future, but we'll see. I think

Alan Smith:

so there's a concept of, you know, modeling, modeling success. And so you look around the world at countries that have you know where? Where are the countries that have achieved significant economic success, often from very challenging backgrounds and origins. Salvador, the one that's really put forward strongly on this Ireland is one, to be fair, the last last decade or so. The other one is Singapore, and Singapore, which is a tiny, little spit of land, which was just a wasteland down the tail end of Malaysia, I think on you exactly right. So Lee Kuan Yew came in, was this revolutionary politician or businessman, really, who came in and, and there's a there's a paper, my close personal friend and billionaire so Tom Hunter gave me a paper on this recently, because the hunter Foundation has done a lot of work on this.

Andy Hart:

Have you handed you personally?

Alan Smith:

Yeah, did actually, when I was in his castle just before Christmas. That's why email, literally, when I was at Blair Castle, enjoying the company him and a few others. But they've done a lot of work this Hunter foundation on, you know, why are we so bad, and which, which other countries are good? And I did, it's fascinating. So just a quick example on that to answer the original question. Singapore, very purposely, go out to industry, to business, to the military, and they find really, really smart people, and they encourage them to join the government, and they train them, and they educate them, and they make them the very and they, by the way, they pay them. That's another thing. They pay them a lot. They pay them what you would get paid if you were doing a similar job in in the private sector to do that as well, because you're not going to go and take if you could be earning a million dollars a year, why are you going to earn like, 150 work for the guy? Work for the government and a very difficult job? So pay them really well, but identify really good people. We have got these career politicians that went to did a politics degree at university, went into work for some charity, did some legal work, and all of a sudden they're running the bloody country. It makes no sense, I would say, adopt a Singapore model, because they have done very, very well as a small economy with limited resources. That's your answer. Yeah. I mean,

Nick Lincoln:

then another example is Hong Kong, which, until we gave it to the Chinese in 97 Hong Kong was an amazing, amazing economy, Sir John Cowperthwaite, who was the financial secretary there, and he said, I do very little. All I did was try to prevent some of the things that might undo it. And it. And another quote of his, I was at my desk at 630 every morning to get there before the civil servants turned up and tried to do things. Yeah, so Wilson. M, Peter's not Wilson. P, I could call you Wilson picky, but I can't Mary Wilson, she was not the soul singer. There we go. Mary Wilson, the soul singer has had your question, right? Football that Tom

Carl Widger:

Hanks had on Castaway Wilson was, yeah, that's right. Football, yeah, yeah. So maybe that's who sent in.

Nick Lincoln:

Okay, I'm my depth on that one. Okay, right? We're at 84 minutes in. Bang on, perfect. Let's, let's move on to what many people call culture corner.

Andy Hart:

I am first my you

Nick Lincoln:

don't just say that, you just start speaking. Just go, Oh,

Andy Hart:

shut up. So mine is a YouTube clip of Jensen Huang, who is the founder Wang Nvidia, who I've become a bit of a huge fanboy of him recently, very smart, very close to the tech action, great business. He's great. This is an interview or a speech he gave at a business school in 2011 do watch it? It's all about. About, you know, culture innovation, tech progress, loads of stuff he covers. It's absolutely brilliant. Try and overdose on Jensen Huang, Nvidia's founder. That's me over to the next person

Alan Smith:

I think this. I'm aiming for something of a trap record, because my culture corner is my another close personal friend, one of Andy and I, which is we mentioned

Andy Hart:

this on the show already, but

Alan Smith:

no, you mentioned it previous one times. But no, no, this one Morgan household book, this latest book you can't have done. It's just come out The Art of spending you a few months ago, you have mentioned, you mentioned, have you read it? Then have you? Have you? Have you got it here? Yeah, you haven't read it. So this is the, this is Morgan households latest. Is his third book just come out. Very interesting. The original one being the psychology of money, which is considered to be probably the best book on personal finance this, and that's always about accumulating wealth, saving, investing this. This is obviously the other side of this is called The Art of spending money. Read it over Christmas, really. I mean, typically, he's just a good writer. He's good storytellers, good writer. He articulates things very crisply and cleanly. It's an absolutely essential reading for anyone in the profession, I was thinking, it's also a good gift if you've got clients that you're working with, particularly as they're a few years out from retirement, this art of spending money once you've accumulated it, how you do it? So, really, really, really worthwhile. And I'm going to give you a bonus culture corner this week as well, which is an app. Every now and again, I look at the mainstream media, not too often, but it's quite useful just to grab a news, but I never want to pay for a newspaper, and most of them are covered in paywalls and things. Nowadays, there is an app called press reader. Press reader app, you do have to link it up to library, but that's quite straightforward. I joined a library whilst online without having to go through but it gives you access. And quite interesting, actually, Nick, because you get actually. Nick, because you get, like, what's got? Wall Street Journal. It's got, you know, a lot of sort of big global newspapers, as well as some of the mainstream newspapers in the UK, plus magazines, Men's Health, Vogue magazine, all that sort of stuff via an app to quickly read it. So it's quite useful.

Nick Lincoln:

Vogue, Sign me up. I'm going to my local library to read

Alan Smith:

Vogue men's health.

Unknown:

Well, it will be, oh, it's Nick. It's got word three takes hold.

Alan Smith:

It has Okay, magazine. Nick, you catch up with all the gossip. Hello, magazine. All the gossip. What's going on in Smash North Watford? 442, local. Yeah, that's me, done, boys, off you go. Who's next?

Carl Widger:

Watch beautiful book. And this really is a beautiful book. I can anybody remember where? Who recommended?

Nick Lincoln:

Guess who? Just for the benefit of our audio listeners, you want

Alan Smith:

to tell them what the book is. So it was 100% me.

Carl Widger:

It's an Indian gentleman of wisdom by Vishal Kandel, one amazingly the testimonial at the top of it. This is a masterpiece from Morgan Housel, right. There you go. It is a masterpiece. And I remember, we all got it, and I remember flicking through it, but talk about a present, write a coffee. It's not that big of a book. It's a hardback, right? But it's just it goes through kind of a quote and then a kind of a page about this topic. It's illustrated beautifully. It's absolutely fantastic. And it really, really would be a class you want to get someone a thoughtful class present that is not going to cost you an arm and a leg, but it's really, really deep and impactful. I would say, get this. It's absolutely fabulous. Love this book, and I only skipped through it before, and I would say everyone should get it. It's absolutely what's it called, again, call. It's called the sketchbook of wisdom, and it's by Vishal Kandel Walz, K, H,

Andy Hart:

E, L, W, A, link in the show.

Alan Smith:

You are welcome. You're welcome.

Nick Lincoln:

Link in the show, welcome. Okay, well, me to wrap up, Michael Bloomberg. I think we all know who he is. Obviously the Bloomberg consoles that are predominant in all the financial centers. He's made a small fortune from those also the mayor of New York. There we go, my culture corner. And once again, I'm you do it for me. Andy, just keep on talking.

Alan Smith:

I'm glad we've started. 30 seconds to go. We started the new year in the way we ended the last year talking across each other, short tempered, argumentative, wonderful, not can't wait for the rest of the year.

Nick Lincoln:

So he's on the Ingo company podcast with Nikolai Tang Jen, thank you and

Alan Smith:

friend Andy Lee,

Nick Lincoln:

okay, there you go, dear Trappist. Episode. 88 comes to a close. Another pile of traps lies down. The ebender Father Time. Thank you, dear traps. For your precious time and input on the show rate, just leave a six out of five star review. Good luck. I'm gonna kill the rest of them. See you fellas, take care. Love you absolute Sham, absolute shambles. You

Unknown:

the bickering that we do here is the real bickering. You should see what happens after

Nick Lincoln:

I don't I try not to talk over anybody. It's a skill set. Work on it, right? Stop the recording.

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Nick Lincoln

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Alan Smith

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Andy Hart

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Carl Widger

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