New Business Opportunities In Corporate Financial Advice

Hey everybody, Sam Higgs here from the Financial Planet Life Podcast and today I've got an awesome guest, it's Oliver McDonald from Engage Wealth Management and we dig deep into corporate financial advice and why financial advisors aren't really in that space but what are the opportunities and why you should get in there. He even shares his process of how to do it and some hints and tips around who to part the whiff to get the best results. Spoiler alert, he now gets about 90% of his business on an inbound basis so Oliver knows exactly what he's talking about. Check out the podcast and get out there in the corporate advice world. Oliver, thank you so much for joining me today on the Financial Planet Life Podcast. How are you? Very good, Sam, very pleased to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. All good. That's amazing, but listen, thank you so much for coming on at such short notice. I've been a bit naughty, I didn't have any podcasts lined up and I've had a bit of a break, I've been off a half term looking after my daughter celebrating her seventh birthday, so I've not had any podcasts lined up, so last minute you came to the rescue, so thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problems. Fantastic, and obviously we've had a bit of a chat, anyway, pre-podcast and I was really keen to get you on because of your journey into IFA, so you've come from an employed background, banking background and when I very first started in recruitment, I did a lot around bank assurance when there was an abundance of financial advisors and all the banks were hiring and then you moved from that environment then into the IFA background on an employed basis and finally ending up running your own directly authorized business, so it's a lovely journey, I think that people will love to learn about, so let's just kick things off Oliver, just tell us a little bit about how you actually got into the profession. Yeah, so my journey is, I guess a little bit different to the class, a lot of people sort of fall into this profession, whereas I was actually one of those strange people who wanted to do it, and but I got to the age, didn't go to university, I got to sort of 2021 decided I need to do something with my life, I was out in the French Alps and having a great time and decided I think accounting's my thing, pretty good at numbers, talk to the accountant there and he said, "Why don't you look at financial planning?" It's more, you'd actually talk into people, not sat so much behind the screen, so got back, I actually at that time was the level 3 diploma that I did, got a job at Bar, please bank, and this is not a high level banking, this is a cashier on a minimum wage back then. I worked hard, worked my way up there up to doing sort of dealing with premier level clients, and then did my exams there as well, carried on with the sort of level 4 exams, got a job at Lloyd's bank, which is more, I think with Lloyd's, if you really want to learn how to sell, try and sell life insurance and income protection in a bank, because nobody goes to banks and nobody goes there definitely for life insurance, so if you want to learn to sell that, that has a great way to sort of to get into it, and I, yeah, at that point I still wanted to be a financial planner, very difficult to get into the industry, being young, I was 25, 26 at that time, which I imagine a lot of your listeners maybe are at that stage and they think about how, and they're all barriers still, it's an age thing, it's still there, very much, so I ended up applying to companies, I didn't go through, sorry, I didn't go through a recruiter so I'm not, I don't, I decided to email, and I sent, I remember sending 52 emails, 52 different companies all around the southeast of England, and I got three replies, two of them said, we're a small family company, and one said, you come in for a coffee, and that was the rest of the history, but that was a local firm in Hove, we're in for a coffee, eventually we're in as a trainee financial advisor, I think if you're trying against the industry, having that protection background is a great way to start, and then I went in as a trainee financial advisor, so I didn't do the admin, did I do the power planning thing, it's going to do again, I probably would go through those routes, because it wasn't until I started my own company, I realised just how much power planners do, and just how important admin they are, so you know, spent a long time there, worked my way up to direct to level at that company, and then got to two and a two and a bit years ago, where I decided I think I can do this myself, I think is a product of lockdown, like a lot of people, you're generating, generating all my own business, I think, and why am I doing this for somebody else, why not do it for myself? And that was then the decision to, what do I do, do I go self-employed somewhere else, do we go under it for network, do we go directly authorised, I ended up setting up the limited company and going directly authorised with the SCA, incredibly tough journey to go through, it's even tough and now it takes, I think, about a year to get authorised now, took us five months, there is a sheet of lots of applications and things before that, and then yeah, we got authorised in May 2021, so yeah, May 2021, so we're just just here two years, we're still here, which is good, so I think it's 80% of business is failing the first two years, so we're still here, we're not, we're part of the 20% and yeah, things are going pretty well, so that's my journey so far. That's fantastic, we're a great, clear overview, and it's just a lot in there to pick apart, there's set a few things that resonate with me and what I tell other people, it is difficult to get into the financial planning profession and if the last few years it's been really tough and although there's a shortage of financial planners out there and we're crying out for new people to join the profession, it still can be very tough to get in, there is a reduction sometimes for firms to pay recruitment fees for individuals that perhaps haven't got experience within the financial planning profession, it's interesting that you went straight in at trainee level and I wonder how much, well I don't wonder, I know this is beneficial, just how much having that experience going through the banking, face-to-face experience, so from cashier into selling life protection, all the difference, it was a sales job in banking, you know, you know, when you're on that sales floor, I used to do a lot of work with all the major banks, putting personal bankers in, now I used to take, I used to head hunt people from like phones for you and then say do you want to come and be a personal banker, I was probably personally responsible for the financial crash then, but you know, we used to bring people in from mobile phone backgrounds, even people that were working in a state agent or if they were working in travel agents because they had that cross selling client customer facing USP type sales background and it worked really, really well, I always tell people, look you know, you need to go out there and you need to market yourself, if you don't have the experience but you want to become a financial planner or you want to get into the profession, go on knock on a few doors, I love what you did, I love that you went out, you made a list, it's nice and simple, you make a list, go on to Google, search for local businesses, make a list, put them on a spreadsheet, go on their website, find the names of people, go on to LinkedIn, you can do that now, you probably didn't do it back then, but you go on LinkedIn, follow those companies, connect with somebody who's a director or decision maker within that business, start liking their content, perhaps start commenting on their content and reach out with a mail because if you're going to send 52 messages, 52 emails or like 52 phone calls, I guarantee you're going to get a job at the end of it. What's really interesting, what you said was three opportunities came up and 52 emails, right? Those three opportunities came up but they came up and they're there and they are there, the opportunities, if you rely too much on a recruiter, unfortunately when you don't have experience, you're going to fall flat on your face, you have to be proactive in your approach to getting a new job opportunity. Yeah, those opportunities didn't come out nowhere as you can see there, and that's the approach I've taken throughout my career is that if you're sure of clients, you're going to have to do some things, maybe not proud of, but you're going to have to scrape around and try and find them, and you're going to have to do stuff that's, that is hard work, believe it or not. Yeah, it's funny you said the phone background, yeah, when I actually, so I came back from French outside when it worked for '02 for a year. So yeah, I went from '02 and to be I think that's the big message with this our industry, our profession I should say is changing, it's going the right direction and we're doing more, there is more professional financial planning around, but don't get you don't kid yourself, this is sales, you need to know even if you're selling a fixed fee structure that's independent financial planning and you're running index funds, that's fantastic, but you still have to sell that as an idea as a concept. So that's where, and that was probably the wake up call for me when I went to the bank, I thought I'm just going to be sitting there selling, you know, doing cashier and stuff and they were like, no, no, you've got to sell prices and you've got to sell and then the personal banking was a very hard sales profession and that got, yeah, that kind of the crisis, so I was there just kind of after that as well, which was, which is all good fun. But yeah, if you're looking for experience or looking for the, yeah, to get into the profession like you say, you've got to market yourself and if you haven't got that sales background, that's what a lot of financial planning firms will be looking for because that's what it is at the end of the day, but there are very nice parts of a job that eventually you don't need to sell, people come to me now. which is great, but it is a sales profession at the end of the day. What's really interesting as well is something that you said that you now run your own business. You started out as a trainee advisor on an employed basis when you did your door knock into finding job opportunities. So it took you on straight as a trainee advisor. You didn't do the administration and powerplan of ROOP. However, you now run your own directly authorized firm and you look back and you think, well, actually, administration powerplan experience might well have been incredibly beneficial to you because you didn't realise just how much work goes into the administration powerplanning, perhaps the operational side of a business as well. When you were stuck in the role of just being that financial planner, we think, well, you know, it can't be that difficult. I can spin those plates. I can do those things within the first couple of years and support myself, but actually it probably was quite tiring and exhausting when you ended up running your own business. But my question on that point would be looking back, Oliver, would you have gone down the administrative powerplan of ROOP over the trainee advisor route with sales experience? Good question. Good question. I think probably, probably I would have. There was one firm that came to me and they said, I mean, their advice was to stop my diploma studies and join them as an admin. I'll just carry on the diploma and then when it is trainee financial advisor, I don't think you need to. It's just having that knowledge of what they do. I've always been a very respectful person, so I kind of got the powerplanner is the person that's going to be, we worked in pods like a lot of companies do. The powerplanner kind of bosses that because, although you're the one bringing in the clients, they're bringing in their boss in that sort of client journey. And then the admin, there's a lot of yes, phoning and chasing and that's not a job that I would want to do. So I think just understanding those jobs is very, very important. But when I went to start my when I started my own company, it's those things that yes, you can do the jobs, you can do the admin, you can do the powerplanning, but it just takes you away from what you're great at, what I like doing. So yeah, when I started my own company, I was writing my own report, but it would be like, right, taking on the client, I need to now take two days off to do the admin and write a report, and it was just taking me forever. I've now got somebody that comes in, she's the sort of operations manager, so takes care of the operations side, the powerplanning, and we share some of the admin, but we're looking at, yeah, probably taking somebody on for that now as well. So yeah, I don't think sorry, I'm going back to your question, which I would have gone down the admin powerplanning. Probably not, no, but you need to just get a very good grasp of what that role does involve. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we're going to dig a little bit deeper onto this now. You run your own business now, okay, and there will be people listening to this, they're thinking about getting into the financial planning profession, and they are considering the administration powerplanner, advisor root, or they're thinking about becoming a trainee planner, or they might even be thinking about joining one of the many academies that are out there to go and fast track themselves to being a financial planner, running a business, and I know you just started a smaller business, but if you had in front of you somebody that was at level four qualified powerplan, I've been doing it for two years and was looking for a trainee advisor position, or you had somebody say that spent five years in a sales role, relationship role, and had really solid sales experience, which one would you choose? It depends also on the powerplanners experience, if they've got the sales experience. I think the powerplanning is a profession in itself now, and it certainly can be, and you can go further than just powerplanning, not the lady that's joined me, she's our operations manager, she will become a Shell Director, looking after compliance, so there's that route to go. So if you're thinking about whether you want to work side, you want to go and think very clearly about what side you enjoy. If I had those to in front of me for an advisor role, I would probably go with the person with the sales experience, because it's just huge, it's the technical side of our business, you do need to know it, but the amount of times I've gone into client meetings, and it was strange at first, it wasn't intentional ever, but I mentioned, you know, I was wearing gays, having our first child, and then you spend half an hour talking about that, or you talk about cycling, or you talk about, oh yeah, we're working in the French Alps, and that conversation then goes on for half an hour, that's what clients want to talk about, they don't really care too much, too much, they still need to talk about it, but asset allocations and efficient frontiers, that's not what excites clients, and that's not what finds common ground and builds rapport with clients. So yeah, it depends on the person, I think power planners can certainly go into the advisor role, but just having the technical knowledge is that's half of the job really. Would you advise say a power planner to seek some soft skills training around relationship building, perhaps understanding sales techniques, for example, do you think that's good additional training for a power planner that has the drive and ambition to want to be an advisor, or do you think they should sit in client meetings more in the firm that they're in? Would you look at that if you were to have a power plan in front of you that was thinking about being a training advisor? Seeing in the client meetings, that's huge, yeah, yeah, so definitely just to understand what that journey looks like, that you're not talking about the technical side of it for the vast majority of those meetings, you're normally talking about the client, what they enjoy, what they want out of life, but yeah, the soft skills training, if you've got power planners listening to this, they're looking to go into that, yeah, training role or financial bias role, then yeah, just getting some wider experience outside of the technical side. So I think yeah, turning client meetings is just understanding the culture of your company, how advisors work, that's absolutely huge. Well, Oliver, do you, I'm going to stick on this area at the moment, and this is just your opinion, by the way, you know, speaking on behalf of the profession, this is your own personal experience and your own personal opinion. There are lots of power planners, there's lots of people that want to get into the profession and they are, they have two choices, one is like administration power planner become an advisor, the other is go down an academy, go self employed and become an advisor, or hopefully not on a few doors and somebody takes you on because they like you, they like your background, they like your experience and you become, you become that that advisor. It's a tricky one, isn't it? And it's, and I'm, you know, people often ask me, should I be admin, should I be power, should I be then be power planner, or can I go in straight as an advisor? And the thing for me is, like what you've just said, and I'm going to echo it, I think if you've got a background and experience of relationship building, and perhaps even if you have strength in your network, so let's say somebody's like a second careerist, so if someone's a second careerist, they might be like, let's say 25 year old plus, right? They're 25 years plus, maybe they spent five years doing something, maybe they didn't get a university, maybe they spent four years being a marketing account manager, so they've used to managing large marketing accounts dealing with, you know, individuals within a corporate background, building relationships, giving feedback, selling the services, all of those typical types of things. I think somebody, when they've got that transferable skill set of a proven background, that's quite attractive then to go into the financial advice side and even going down as Academy Roots, if you've got financial backing behind you to go down, say a self-employed route and set your own business up. Now, you are somebody that spent, how long did you spend employed within a financial planning practice? Seven and a half years. Now, going back that seven and a half years, if there was an SJP Academy in the form it's like in now or equivalent, not just SJP, do you think you'd have taken the plunge into an Academy on a self-employed basis knowing what you know after spending seven years employed? Good question. That just depends on personal circumstances massively, I think. Funny, you should say, when I left Lloyd, so two guys that were also doing the exact same role as me, we all got maybe done at the same time. Luckily, I'd already found my new home. My personal circumstances meant I needed to be employed. I didn't have the financial back in to go self-employed at that point. The two guys that went elsewhere, they both took the plunge into SJP and they said, "I've got six months worth of outgoing, I'm going to try it for six months and see what happens." I think they went through the Academy because they'd already got, I think they've gone level four, they might have gone through the Academy at that point, so this is 2013, 2014. They went through that process and they've become very successful in that route. What works for individuals is going to be, it comes down to personal circumstances and it's the same when I started my company, which we talk about, but it's, again, your personal situation is going to influence what you do in terms of how you sell that, where you're self-employed, you sell your own company, where you go employed. I went and say for you employed because I was, so I started to start a relationship, we're looking again at property and I had a set of sorts at that point. For me, employed was an absolute no-brainer. Two guys that went self-employed, no dependents, no very low-outgoings, so they could afford to take that risk. And we've all done pretty well long term. So I don't know whether it's self-employed versus employed, it's probably more how do you got the drive and you've got the determination and you're ready to put in the hard work 'cause all of us, none of us have got successful through luck, it's all been each of it. I know they're hard workers and they've done very well down that reach. And I've worked my ass off to get to where I am. So yeah. - Yeah. But essentially it is a gamble isn't it when you go down that route with some of these academies because you don't know what to expect. You've never worked in the profession before. You don't know what you need to do as a financial advisor. You might be told a few things in the safety of a training and development program, but you don't know the realities of the job. How long it takes to get paid on it? How long, how many knows to get to a yes? How quickly you can convert a client? And I think going into something where perhaps financially you're a bit nervous. Maybe you don't have, you know, and I'm saying to people like, make sure you've got six to 12 months of income by email bank to cover you. - Yeah, I mean, when I, yeah, when I would go higher, depends again how you set up. So when I set up my own firm, it was, we set up, lead me to company directly authorized. And there's certain financial things you have to have aside. So this is where it comes into, where I'm now my business partners. I've been approached by companies before. So we want a financial advice. Arm to our business from that was from a county firm, from a mortgage broker firm. And I said, that's great. There's two things you need to provide them because I've got plenty of commitments. One of them's going to be a lump sum of cash and one of them's some clients. And even could really sort of explain where they're going to get clients from, how they're going to introduce solid clients to the business if I set up my own firm. And even wanting to put in cash, we said, oh, no, that's not what we do. So my now business partners who are an employee benefits firm, that's kind of how we started. We put some money aside for, yeah, I did 12 months. If I started again, I would say 18 months, as at least, just again, depends on your circumstances. My outgoing is pretty high. We've got, yeah, mortgage kids, dog, (laughs) my white births part time. So, again, depends on your personal circumstances on what you do there. But 12 to 18 months is, yeah, certainly, I'd say 18 months minimum you want. So that you've got time to build the business in the way you want to build it. If you're going down, you know, the full on set set up your own business kind of thing. If you're going self-employed and there's some sort of lead generation through another, through a company, perhaps you don't need that much. And I've just said, you mentioned there, how long it takes to get paid and things like that. I, yeah, I've heard some, this is partly why we went directly author, sorry if I'm jumping ahead, but if this is-- - No, you're right. - If I went directly authorised rather than, through a network or self-employed, but yeah. Is because I've heard some horror stories of networks taking forever for payments to be made. And you're doing that first case and they want you to submit all the paperwork and a month later they come back to you and they're okay to go ahead with the case. We set up in May 2021. I got my first payment in July, so less than six weeks later. And that was from a set up of pension scheme. It was the strangest reading 'cause I sat there and said in so much at costs. And they said, "Less end of your bank account now." And I'll, oh yeah, okay. So let's hit the invoice and check my bank accounts. These are the left of the meeting and there was money in there and then to the business account. And we did, I just was sure and some things at the beginning. And we got paid pretty quickly. So I think that all, there's been some horror stories I've heard on podcast before people wait to nine months, 10 months before they even got any money into the business. I think that's if you're going through a network or I don't know how you end up in that position. But if you're starting your own company, you're gonna need to start thinking about where your clients are, where before you start, where what clients are you gonna bring on straight away. Have you got contacts already? Have you got family that you're gonna do even just a bit of life insurance? So I think that was one of my first clients was one of my brothers and we ended up doing his top and up his life insurance. So you've got to think about those things but way before you start. But that's one of the reasons we went directly authorized was the, yes, some of that along with other stories we heard from networks. We decided to go down the more painful route of directly authorized initially. But now allows us to run our business in the best way for our clients. - Lovely and we'll get on to that in a minute actually. I just want to go back to when you were working on an employee basis because it started as a trainee. You had a lot of success in that business, right? You went from a trainee, became a financial planner and did you say you ended up one of the directors? Is that right or possibly? - The director, I think it called me, more of a name thing, but yeah, ended up. I don't know, I talk, yeah, as a trainee and you're starting on pretty low earnings and you've got to abbreviate yourself and I've never been a natural salesperson. So I worked this up just a year, this is a sales profession but I'm not an natural salesperson. I just, the one I learned early on is, it is, it's a sticky word. Do you get to say you're gonna do something, do it and work incredibly hard and that's, it's as simple as that really. And I learned from other advisors and then I would probably work in a way that other advisors weren't happy to. I think if you've got that hard work, it's, I've said it a few times now, but that's massive just to get in any profession. Yeah, worked up to, so then yeah, became a full financial advisor after a while was dealing a few, the advisor left to go to some of their clients. So ended up with a ridiculous amount of clients. I think I had 250 clients when I left individuals plus 30 companies that I was looking after. It was, yeah, it was carnage, but that's where I got to in that position. And that's just through God work doing, doing the work day in, day out. And then yeah, got up to the position of the Associate Director, which was, yeah, wasn't luck. It wasn't that I did something massively different to what anybody else would do. And I could have stayed there. Could have stayed there for, you know, 10 years and been very, very comfortable. But I thought at the age of what I was in, 30, 34 thought I can do something better for clients and I think I can do this better myself. So, she's incredibly arrogant, but hey, that's where, maybe that's what I think is. - I don't think it's arrogant. I think, I think naturally everybody gets to that point where you either consider employment or you think you can do this yourself. And when you start looking at the facts and the figures and you think, wow, I can make some serious money out of this. But also I could live the lifestyle that I wanna live and I can do things how I wanna do it. I can have the brand how I want it. I can position things the way I want it. When you're employed, you are at the back and call of the owners of the business and if they don't have the same driver enthusiasm as you do, well, they don't have the same value or culture and it can be very, very difficult because if your intrinsic values aren't aligned to that employed role, then you often feel as if you're living a false life when it comes to work. And I think that's the part where, when you are looking at job opportunities and you are looking at companies to work for, be sure to dig deep around what their culture and values are actually like because if you're gonna spend a lot of time there, you wanna make sure that you are aligned to that business. When you made that decision then and you said yourself, right, I'm gonna move on. And you know, you've done a really good job. You were probably earning really good money. You know, you'd fall in a fair few clients there, client banks, that's like the dream job for some people who are thinking about becoming advisors and expect the dream job for some advisors that are in companies where they're struggling in a little bit to find clients, right? So you had it probably a quite comfortable, would I say, were you comfortable? - Yes, very comfortable. - Yeah, very comfortable. So what about that feeling of, right, if I'm gonna go and set up on my own, and not only did you go and set up on your own, but you set up directly authorized, you do need a lump sum for capital adequacy and everything like that, right? And that was about 50, 15, 15, 20 in the bank? - No, it's 20, 20, yeah. Start with the, - Yeah, just need to be accessible. - Right, so instantly accessible at any time yet. - Yeah, so you needed that money to draw on yourself, but what about that feeling of, where am I gonna get my clients from? Because obviously people have restricted governance in place. When you're employed, there's do's and don'ts, you know, non-solicitation clauses, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, they don't, with held, it takes about six months before one passes, I think legally dependent upon what's written in your contract, don't take my word for it, you don't have any tanks on the label when you do something like that. But, did you consider that at all? Because you built relationships with clients, you underaffirm under a different company name. Did you consider those relationships? Did you think about them following you? Did you try to target them afterwards? You know, what was your strategy around client development setting up your very first business? - No, so I, yeah, you have the risk of governance and you need to buy by those. So, well, it's up to you whether you do, but yeah, I did. So it was a case of we're starting afresh. We need to generate leads and we need to generate them pretty quickly, but that's why you have that 12 to 18 month buffer of income so that you can spend that time building relationships, it's starting again, but having that background, the financial vice-background, the sales background, that's what something I've done plenty of before. But that's why I also partnered with an employee benefits company, which we can come onto. That's was the idea behind that. was that we generate lease and there and initially that was a struggle. It's getting, you know, work we didn't hit the ground running but that started, that's gone bananas now which is great but that's something we've developed over time. We yeah I very much started out with right where where can I go so you can go there's the local network in I was quite active on LinkedIn started just posting lots on LinkedIn educational posts got some clients contact me through there who are now my clients and it was just yeah lots of different marketing routes to go down vouched for but I never used before that's I'll you know probably one of our best lead generators now because that's where our clients leave leave reviews and that's where people when they're googling they find you on there SEO didn't know anything about it still don't really I just someone said for out loads of content and somehow we now come up and in Brighton and and Hove we come up pretty high on as the financial advice as companies up against a lot of the bigger companies so yeah there's a lot to learn when you when you leave there what was your original question but just a round client yeah no that's fine you know when you answered the question really is that you didn't you know look at your existing relationships there were probably some that you would class as advocate relationships that you know the follow you at some point you obviously stuck to the restricted covenants that were in place and didn't sort of break those clauses which is great and that's obviously advisable because people do get sued so that was a you know good solid bit of advice there but the advice you then gave around client development and putting yourself out there so you were reaching out to people on LinkedIn which I think is really interesting because not many financial advisors actually do that but also sounds like vouched for was a really good opportunity for you to win new client opportunities so if someone's kind of listening to this and thinking I want to you know I need to start off fresh I need to kind of get myself out there you know getting yourself out on LinkedIn putting content out there reaching out and networking with people on LinkedIn vouched for was a good option you started putting content out on your website and you know the black magic of and black art of SEO worked for you and you managed to get yourself you know up the rankings did you spend much money on lead generation at all nothing on proper well I guess well the you know the guys that inbox you every day about lead generation I we did unbiased I would just say yeah anyone we can start in your own thing unbiased is is it it's a lot of advisors look down the nose at it and because you don't get normally you don't get real quality in your niche clients perhaps you know if you're one you want to work with tech execs that earn three to five hundred K a year that are in their last five years of employment you're not going to find them through unbiased there no one goes to unbiased that at that level but we used it for the first year and I don't mind talking to the figures we I think we spent three thousand three hundred in our first year and we generate and I'd generate from that thirty nine grand of business so a tenx return on your money is okay I'd say in my most profession but you're going to get those those kind of client depends what you're doing what you're what you're setting up your business for if you're setting up for a down a very specific niche unbiased is not for you and you've got a way into that niche then fine but if you're starting a fresh and it's kind of like that we will take on most clients initially we're now at the point where we're pretty much been off unbiased but I've had some huge clients come through there really really strange just couples that are in their mid fifties that have built up their impension pots over time and they just don't know a financial advisor so through their friends or families they've come from unbiased we've met with them and they're some some really great clients now so I wouldn't knock it too much the prices on unbiased have gone up massively so the return of the investment isn't as great now but we still keep it going because I've probably except about one lead every every couple of months on there now so it's it's okay but yeah vouch for we'll take time unbiased is one of these things that you can get returned in your money pretty quickly because the leads come through it start coming through straight away and you'll learn which ones to to click on and ones to accept and there'll be a lot of ones where you you accept it you never get in contact with them or they speak to you once you never see them again so there's a lot of that unfortunately but that's like any marketing any nearly gen if you're game if you're on your pun content out on LinkedIn you might get one or two views but if you stop putting it out consistently you'll get people there'll be people watching and you get inboxes from people that you've never really thought about before and they said I'll be watching your content for the last six months I'm like you've never liked or commented on anything before but and then there's that well I've got this money I need to do this it's like oh fantastic so I would definitely try new things if you're starting out the lead gen for the new clients you've just got to try a lot of new stuff and you've got to try stuff that you're not comfortable with I started doing videos on LinkedIn on my commute used to cycle over the south downs to to brighten and do do do videos and plenty of people were sort of inbox me on that I saw your videos it's like yeah you never like there's only comment on any of them but people are watching and they are listening to you so I'm 100% I am a massive advocate of putting video out it's why do the podcast like yeah no I put you know videos out videos out I've got a videography company now trying to do it for financial planning companies we're working with the likes in legal in general for instance we're out there yesterday filming some claims videos for them and I think what you just said they're about people not commenting or liking it's really important because when you're in a niche and you're talking about something that is like is that is super niche people tend to watch they don't like it or comment it's not a kitten falling out of a tree or something like that you know it's an informative bit of information they tend to watch it listen and move on but LinkedIn's algorithm will recognize that they've watched it past a certain point and start recommending that to other people that are similar so it's not to be disheartened if someone doesn't like or comment on your post on LinkedIn yes it does help with the reach but it's also how much people watch so if you look at the video and you look at the analytics and you bring the creator mode up okay it will tell you how long your video has been watched for so I've put out videos like this one I put out for St James's place where I stuck on a VR headset talking about their training and I had like 25,000 views of this video right which is huge on LinkedIn that's like the equivalent of like 100,000 views on on Instagram right I did that and I looked at the time and there is just like a this is like a a minute clip right minute like about a minute clip and I think I had something like I don't know if the hours of views of time it was viewed for so when you start adding that up and looking at it it's incredible so it's the eyes on it and I've had people reach out to me exactly the same as you I'm thinking well what if you ever liked or commented on anything that I have done but they haven't they've just been watching you so as long as you're putting regular content out you're being seen and it goes past that point where the algorithm goes hang on people are quite interested in this is engaging then you're doing a good job so yeah don't get disheartened by the lack of likes and comments a lot of people are watches a lot of people don't like to like and comment you can imagine in my world of recruitment sales and people don't want to be liking my content too much because they don't want their boss to know that they're liking a recruiters content so you know there's there's lots of reasons why but they will follow you and LinkedIn is about followers as well so you know you put content out and they will follow you if they're following you and then that first couple of weeks that they follow you and connect with you they will see your content a lot yeah so making sure you're connecting make sure you're following yeah and nobody's comfortable you know doing content and video especially video but we've even just been out of LinkedIn host over these are natural at that I don't think and I always put it out and just put my own spin on it and but yeah like you say with the followers yeah I've had other other advisors from other firms follow me but of course they don't like or comment on anything because yeah they're boss is watching well it's a good thing you know you getting see you getting seen by other financial advisors within your area is fantastic for the growth of your business as well you know you need your personality to come across you need your culture to come across so you need to be honest and authentically you and those around you within your environment or start to think you know he sounds like a really great person to work for I'll follow him I'll keep him in mind when I'm looking for a new job opportunity so when it comes to the growth of your business you as the leader of your business getting out there and being seen and heard is going to help your business grow not only from client you know client new client deals and client acquisitions but from advisors power planners administrators people will be listening to this podcast this podcast podcast will probably get 500 listens and views within the first seven days and that's very niche actually that's top 10% globally leave it or not well if you put a podcast out and you get over 420 within the first seven days that's top 10% globally across all blog post platforms yeah it's pretty pretty I'm I'm pretty proud of that seen in such a niche subject matter yeah and that's why podcasting podcasting I believe is such a fantastic way to market because hey and this is really we're going to get onto this now you're in the corporate world aren't you right so you're not traditional kind of private client advisor you give corporate advice you even you've even partnered with an employee benefits company right yeah I do the traditional just sort of I just touch on that yeah I do the traditional yeah full fat full fat financial planning but yeah we're very heavily full I think Nick Lincoln came up with our better credit him on that if he's if he ever listens to stuff yeah full fat financial planning which is you know yeah yeah you're kind of using cash flow modeling actually building plans for clients and that's why we're in there we don't just invest in this clients for the sake of making money. Yeah, I have my private client, but which is growing over time. But yes, we're heavily involved in the corporate space. Fantastic. So let's talk about that then, because it's an area that not all financial advisers either feel comfortable going into, which is the corporate world, or just don't think about it, because they're chasing those private clients more so. So just tell us a little bit about, why did you, how did you get into the corporate world? Also, when you set your business up, use, I think, quite smartly chose to partner with an employee benefits company. And did that help you? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the corporate world. Why did you choose to get, yeah, tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so my previous, obviously anyone who listens to this well, hopefully knows that auto enrollment was introduced at companies. So every company has to set up a pension scheme. Starts in 2012 and it went, started with big firms and went down. By previous company, we got involved in that a lot, and not many other financial advisers did. They said it's not profitable. What are you doing? That's madness. But we would go into the companies and there'd be a hundred staff there. We'd do a presentation to them saying, right, yeah, there's these new rules coming in. It's coming in in three months. You have to have a pension scheme. This is how it works. This is it's weird. This is how the contributions work. And you'll get, well, back then, it would be, if you did a hundred, start with, especially if we went into it, that's always face to face back then. You would get 10, 15 of those say, oh, yeah, I've got 50 grand, 100 grand at another pension. Can I consolidate those and do you do some more retirement planning side of things? And you just pick up clients like that and you get a few of those firms on board. And that was very much my old company. They had those connections locally, normally around Sussex, but we did a bit of marketing and we had firm random companies come to us. They now in that second phase, and I think that's where a lot of financial buyers have neglected this area because, well, also, a moment's done. It's set up. It's running. Where I've got involved in this and we've developed a service with, yeah, I'm probably benefits, which is my business partners company. They're great. They've grown very quickly. They wanted the financial advice arm. They had individual stuff come to them, but they also said we have these workplace pension stuff, whereas either brand new companies that set up and they need to set up a pension scheme. Or what we do a lot of is that second phase where you've had a company, they've set up with a basic pension option, something like Nest, that's all normally always that the route. And they're now 50 staff, 100 staff, 200 staff, and they recruit, they're recruiting and people are saying, well, hold on, why have you got a Nest pension? So staff are becoming more aware of what the options are. They know that the leaders in this industry are the likes of a Viva, a Royal London. So we thought, well, why not get involved in this a bit more? And we've developed, it's taken a long time, don't you know, we didn't start day one, think, yeah, we've got this great presentation that we go out to and we've got a market this. But what I've done now is develop a process where we take companies through that journey of going from something like Nest or people's pension. If they want to look at upgrading their scheme, getting better charging structures, implementing salary sacrifice, we'll take the company through that journey and we charge the company to do that. It's a process that we're still developing. We've got it to a pretty good level now and we've got consistent clients coming in, probably one every few days now on the workplace pension stuff. And it's an area where we've become a little bit of a go to place. I've had lots of financial advisors reach out to me because I've put comments on Facebook groups and even group emails and things. And they've reached out to me and said, yeah, look, this is an area where we're sort of involved in, how do we develop it from here? And we're now getting, obviously, referrals as well from lots of other areas. So yeah, we've developed a service where we're taking through that journey. And then people might be listening to saying, well, why do you want to get involved in that? It doesn't say, it's not as fulfilling. I've been perfectly honest. It's not as fulfilling as dealing. When you're sitting in front of a couple of 55-year-olds and you do their cash flow modelling and you do their financial plan and you sit in front and say, hey guys, you're going to be okay. You've got enough money for the rest of your life. That's incredibly satisfying and that's a really rewarding part of the job. Corporate pensions is not like that. It's nice to sit in front of a group of staff and say, hey, we're doing a better pension for you. And then you'll get your 25-year-old say, what do I do? Is this a good idea? And you can say, yeah, that's okay. You should. There is some information on that. But you will pick up the, or I do, we pick up clients from this. We pick up normally it's the more senior staff or the business owners a lot of the time. And they say, well, yeah, hold on. I am that sort of 50-year-old. I've developed this business. I've got pensions elsewhere. I've got investment elsewhere. Do you help with the individual stuff? And as long as you position it that way, I'll always position it that when I'm talking to new potential companies is that, yes, we do workplace pensions, but we do full fat retirement planning. We don't call it that in our brochures, but full retirement planning. We do investment advice and we do insurance as well. So we've got involved in that area. I guess Condemme will ever have it hold, but the opportunity here is massive now. And we deal a lot of, we've just naturally got involved in the tech space. So we've got a lot of tech companies where often it will be, yeah, we've got 200 staff across Europe, but the senior managers are all in London and there's 20 of them and they're all on 150 grand minimums. So you're going to pick up clients that way if you go on, even if you don't reach out enough to the companies to cover our costs and deliver a fantastic service. So it's, yeah, for me, it was a bit of a no brain is to go down that route, but it's not for everyone. I appreciate that. It's not your traditional financial advice. But the thing is, and I thank you very much for explaining that. That was really, that was really a really, really good overview. I always think if I was in financial planning and I'm considering partnering with somebody to sell the financial planning business, corporate is the way that I would go down personally. One is because I'm a business owner. And I know what other business owners are like. They tend not to think about their own finances as much because they're so head down doing the job that they're doing and they're trying to build wealth within their business. And I think there are probably lots of very anxious business owners thinking about the future and not sure if their business is going to take off or when's their exit going to be or how much money they're going to have or the value of their business. We often kind of don't earn as much in the beginning as well. So there is that kind of concern. And you know, having somebody who's gone through the process and you can really put a financial plan in place is a real benefit within the corporate world. But I think also as well, and you're winning the hearts and minds of the staff because if there's 200 people within there and you're helping them with a pension plan, for example, right? There's plenty of opportunity there around then additional contributions. But also as well, there's the opportunity for life protection, right? There's the opportunity for whether or not they're young. So they might be on the journey to inheriting some money at some point with this great transition to wealth that's happening. So if you're going into those businesses and you're being considered the go to person when it comes to financial planning, financial advice, there's 200 people then, like you said, within that business that might well refer you onto one of their partners or friends. You don't know what their partners might be earning a shitload of money or their friends might be earning a load of money or whatever or they might be an age or their parents or whatever. It's about getting in front of people, either face to face or over Zoom, but as many people as you can. And it's a marketing tool within its own right. Like how often do you get to sit in front of that many people, not that often, and businesses give you that direct route in? So when you go into those businesses, it's pretty keen to help people, so they're thinking about going into the corporate world. What's your kind of sales strategy or marketing strategy for getting those clients, sitting in front of those clients, convincing them to pay a fee to come in and talk about the pension planning, but also then converting them into clients. Tell us a little bit about the early stage process. So the, I mean, we're at stage now where I imagine some of the more experienced financial advisors are at, where they have clients come to them and it's very much, hold on, or I want you as a client. And that, again, makes an arrogant, but that's where we're at with the workplace pension stuff. It's now, okay, you want our advice. I've got limited time, unless I recruit a load of people now. So it's very much, look, here's our process and here's that much at cost. But when you're starting that journey, it's, yeah, let's, yeah, just touch on the marketing and the pricing. So the marketing, my old company, we used to do the old school marketing, go around business parks, if you're working on business parks, go around and speak to them. If you want to get into this area, I'll route into corporate advice, may not be for everyone, but I'll route in is, right, who's your pension scheme with at the moment? If it's with someone basic, do you want to look at upgrading it, offering a better benefit to your staff? Most forward thinking companies want to do that. They want to provide good employee benefits to their staff. We do it as well a little bit on the financial education piece. So yes, you've got, you've got private medical insurance in place for their physical health. You've got maybe some mental health well-being stuff where people come in. What about the financial well-being, the financial education piece? So we go on that angle quite a lot. Even if they're with a great provider already, one of the lit market leaders, why not bring us in and we'll be your kind of go-to person for everything pension-related. So it takes the burden off your HR team, off your payroll. So that's the marketing kind of thing. It depends on your company. If I'm starting a fresh end. and I didn't work with employee benefits company. I'll probably go and find employee benefits company to work with, simple as a hat really. So, find one that's not my business partner's if anyone's listening to this. (laughs) But go and find and say, look, what do you do on the pension piece because they will have those inquiries. My business partner's had those inquiries a lot. It's like, right, you do our private medical, our group life insurance, all of this, do you do anything in pensions? So, that's how we sort of started. Or go old school and just go, go message businesses, the local businesses, go around business parks, find those companies that have got 20 to 50 staff. That's a good place to start. And going with that angle of potentially changing their pension scheme. You need to learn about workplace pensions a bit more. That's another subject. But yeah, you can, yeah, the marketing, again, you could do this sort of online stuff. I've not had much come through directly from LinkedIn or anything. But we've got our website set up. We've got web page, around workplace pensions. And we just, yeah, we do a bit of marketing on that. Bit of, we've done some Google ads on that. Not really generated much, but that's a really gang go. In terms of the, what was the other thing, the pricing? Yeah, it's, how you actually sell that, sell that service is, is, we've developed, again, each person will develop their own, their own processor and style. What I've done, I eventually went out to a graphic designer and I said, look, I need presentations here, because we're going to do, we don't want about four people powerpoint presentations, but I'm getting on to Zoom calls. I've normally got 20 minutes with an HR manager of a company that's very rich. He's very, very busy. What do we do? We've got a powerpoint presentation together. It looks really great and we just worked out a system of what we would do from staffing, going out to the market with their pension scheme. What we would do, presentations to their staff, one to one meetings with their staff and go through a whole process. And we can then send that over to those companies. Conversion rates in terms of the workplace pension stuff, we're probably at over 90% there. Companies, which is probably. We're thinking about changing our jarging structure. I think if someone said to me, if everyone's saying yes to your prices, then they're probably not charging enough. But we charge enough to cover our costs. But we, yeah, the only ever time we get a pushback is companies that are just not ready to go through the process at this point is really down to finance. Companies have this money ready to spend on their employees. If you market it as an employee benefit and it's you doing something nice for your employees, most business owners are aware that they need to be doing that. Now, especially if you're speaking to the HR department, it's a very easy sale normally. - Excellent advice there. I actually agree with you. And if people are buying it left right in the centre, you probably are in need of putting your price up, I would say, without a shadow of it down. And when you go into the corporate world as well, you know, you're absolutely spot on. They have got money aside for these types of things. The bigger the company is, well, even like, I've got 20 odd staff out there, you know. We've, we spend money on employee benefits. We spend money on employee benefits. We have people coming out and giving advice around pensions. You know, it's important to us. And, you know, I looked into some statistics. I can't remember exactly what the stats are, but I'm sure people can look it up. One of the great USPs and sales pitches is if your staff within your business are financially aware and comfortable and aren't in fear of lack of money and worry and debt and all those typical types of things, it has a positive impact on the bottom line of the business. The business becomes more profitable than more financially educated the staff are. So if you spend money and time and energy on the financial well-being of your staff, it will have a direct impact on your business. And of course, we know we're in a situation where there's a recession looming, cost of living crisis. Anything businesses can do where they can bring on some form of education to support their staff. They're under pressure to do so and they have a duty of care to do so. So right now is the best time to do it. And you can wrap it up as well-being because it is well-being. It's financial education, it's financial well-being. These are the things that often people don't talk about, push a size. And companies are becoming more, or not responsible, but, you know, we give people counselling sessions. We give people private medical care, life cover days off now. You know, we've gone to the nine-day work week. You know, loads of benefits that we give our staff from a well-being perspective. So companies are right on it. So yeah, financial well-being is such an easy way into these companies. So when you look at, though, do you go directly to like a direct, do you go directly to like the owner of the business or the director of the business? What, and, you know, you've obviously talked about sort of targeting companies say of 50 staff plus, right? And LinkedIn's really good for that. If you use sales navigator, you can make a list of companies based on company size, turnover, how long they've been around for. You can pinpoint directly who the decision makers are within the business. So it's not, you don't have to go walking around business partners. It's not, you're knocking on doors. It's a very simple way of doing it. And sales navigator is really, really good for that. But what I'm interested in is, and the same in my world, you know, I will attack somebody, attack. I will go into a company, and I'd look at the marketing department, for example. And start talking to marketing. So a lot of what I do has a positive impact on their marketing. If I go in and talk to somebody about recruitment in HR, I'm just another recruitment company. Whereas if I go in and I talk to marketing and I express what I'm doing around the podcast and the network that I'm building and the influence I have, I'm then influencing those guys to then speak to HR in a completely different angle and internal referral is often far better for you. So what's your approach? You do you directly target, first of all? Well, now it's, it's all inbound, which is nice place to be. But and it's normally, yeah, you're speaking to HR and then I'll say, "Oh, actually, I need to get my finance director on." And that's, I'm like, brilliant, get the finance director on. And I'll show them the sort of benefit of this and even how salary sacrifice can save the company with a money, things like that. But we can do the calculations of what this is going to cost the business if they put their contributions up to 6% 8% what's that going to cost? So that's fine. If you're, if I'm starting a fresh now, yeah, absolutely, like you said, going out to LinkedIn, finding those, those companies and messaging a blanket kind of, you know, 200 people, that's fine. The only thing I'd say with anyone that sort of think about going into this is we've had the most success with local companies normally. So when we actually see, see companies face to face, or I don't know why it's sort of the businesses that we're attracting online are very much, you've got, it'll be tech companies or very fast growing companies. And you're doing everything online. You've got a 45 minute presentation with all those staff. You've got to be very good at, at making an impact on those, on those people during that very short space of time when you're just on a screen. So if you can go into a local business, a professional services business is into an author, the council firm and all the engineers, you can do presentations them about what you're doing, or if you're changing something about their pensions, or doing a financial education piece, you're going to have more of an impact face to face. That's my experience. The experience we've had on the, yeah, we do a lot of lot of tech firms, it's just naturally we've got involved in that. We still pick up the old client from there, but it'll be, if you present to 50 people, it'll be one or two, rather than five or 10 people contacting us. So yeah, that's the only advice that they've got there, but like you said, yeah, you don't need to knock it on doors in industrial bulk, but the face to face stuff that does generally produce better results in this just from our experience. But yeah, if you're, whoever you're speaking to, it's yeah, it's HR that you need to speak to. We've just taken on a firm, which is 1,500 employees, and we're just about to go and do a lot of work with them. On the call, there was, we had HR director, we had the payroll director and the finance director. And it was great to speak to all of them because the payroll guys were having a bit of a nightmare speaking to the pension company. We said, well, we can do that on your behalf. We're not going to get involved in payroll, but you get a real issue. We'll kick their ass. I'm allowed to swear on you. It's an arse of swear. You are indeed, yeah. We'll give them a kick up the arse if we need to. From an HR perspective, it was very much, look, we're here to educate the staff. This is what we're going to be doing. This is how we'll structure that. And then from a finance director, it's like, yeah, this is how much going to cost is it in your budget? And that's all the finance director wants to know is how much they're going to cost. And Ellie had the budget or not. And that's why it's quite nice to deal with corporate sometimes because it's not the individual staff where it's like, oh, don't know if we trust you or don't know if we want to do this. We're going to put it off six months. Businesses, it's even in their budget or not. And they're either wanting to do this or not. So it's normally quite a straightforward conversation. But yeah, who you're speaking to in the business is really important. And if you're going in on the financial education piece of the wellbeing, that's the HL. Guys, you want to speak to because they will then sell it internally, just like you said, with your marketing. So you mentioned there that you're in the luxury position that the business now comes to you. You tend to get clients that come to you and you can be quite picky and choose about who you actually work with. What was the tipping point then of creating that inbound process as opposed to majority being outbound? What was the thing that really got you to that stage? It's okay. So, you know, a lot of our business comes from my partners that employ, employ benefits company. Okay, but it's not a simple journey there. That was very much like, how do we generate this in the first six months? Nobody was doing anything and they're staffed and really know what I did. So, we had to develop that. And that was a bit of an education piece with their staff. So, if you're going to look at partnering with an employee benefits company, you need to go and speak to them first and explain what you do, what the benefit is to clients and what you get, how much it costs. That was our sort of tipping point. I did that with their staff, did a few education pieces, started driving that a bit more. Now we started becoming a bit of a name in a couple of local HR companies. So, where people, companies outsource their HR to these firms, they are now referring clients to me. Again, that was with them just doing a bit of an education piece with them about what we do, how it works and how much it costs. And you've just got to keep developing that service. So, yeah, whereas a tipping point is probably, yeah, we get a lot from my employee benefits company. If you're not working with an employee benefits firm, you're going to have to develop your own thing. Do I have some advice for that? Probably what we've already discussed. It's not going to be an easy journey. But me, there was it with my business fund, it's a last six months when it's really the inbound stuff has just gone just rocketed. So, before that, we've started to come through and you'll just need to play around with the things. I remember our first, the very first company we looked at, my business fund is director of the employee benefits firm. So, we've got this company, they want to look at the pension thing, their witness, they want to upgrade. Not so much how much do we charge. And they, strangely enough, they only had 20 staff, but they'd gone out to three different firms that do what we're doing, which is upgrading the scheme. And I came up with a price, but I thought was okay, and we thought it was reasonable. And they said, yeah, we really, with our feedback afterwards was, yeah, we really like you wanted to get ahead with you, but you were so much cheaper than the other two. We just thought there must be something that you're not doing that they are. And there wasn't. We're doing these very similar service. So it's just a chart. So from that point, we said, okay, we need to double that price. And we're probably now at point where we probably need to increase them even further. So, you just need to play around with these things. And it's not late. Anyone hits the ground running with this type of business. The corporate space is very much, not many financial advisors work in it. There isn't much CBD. There isn't much training in this area. So you need to develop your own thing and you need to do your own research. And if it's nearly one to get into, then yeah, that's how you're going to do it. Thanks so much for that. I think the key takeaways that partnering again, isn't it, is partnering with those other experts that are delivering a service to the clients that you want to work with. So partnering with an employee benefits company is such a smart move. Very smart because there aren't a great deal of financial planning companies out there anyway within the corporate space. And that employee benefits company, see you as an expert and as a benefit. Yeah, you are going in. You have to do a bit of work and you have to educate their staff of how to position what your proposition actually is, which might be tricky to do if you're not a business partner. If there isn't some financial interest going back and forth. So does that mean that the chap, is it a lady or a guy who runs the employee benefits company? Oh, guy. Yeah. Guy. So are you two business partners in the sense of shareholders within each other's business? How does that, you know, I just want to think, you know, if I was a financial planner and I'm thinking, right, no, what I'm going to go out and start speaking to some employee benefits companies. Should I be giving up equity in my business? You know, how do I, because otherwise you're kind of like, they've got a business to run and they might not be even thinking about pension. So how do you get them interested in partnering with you? Yeah. So yeah, I did give up equity, which is, which is fine. We took that, I took that pun. This would be, this would work and you're going to have to make it work yourself if you're going to. So if you're going to have to new employee benefits firm and you don't want to give up equity, then think about referrals, referral fees. Referral fees aren't dirty. It's something that is part of business. I think a lot of financial planners got a meld never pay an accountant or a solicitor to refer me to someone. But if you're going to be going down this route, the employee benefit space is kind of where financial planning was in terms of regulation, probably 15 years ago. It's all very much commission based. It's all very salesy, which is not a bad thing. I don't know. I think lots of people sort of drown at that. Not God sales. I can't go near those. But that's where it is. So if you go in and say, look, we offer this pension service, we'll give up, you know, if you want to refer clients to us, we'll pay your referral fee. I now pay the staff of my business partners company. So they are staff that just come in. We pay them a small referral fee for sending stuff over, which is okay. What are the other points you said? Yeah, it's something. Potentially, yeah, so if you need to do. So I just wanted to touch on another point as well. This is, you know, this is lead ultimately, this is lead generation. When I started my financial planning business, I thought, all right, I'm just going to deal with couples that are in their 50s, within 10 years of retirement, just nice people. And that's generally my personal individual client book is that. But you've got to adapt. You've got to develop, you've got to get those leads from somewhere. As often comes from the corporate stuff, but then we also got the alabouch for LinkedIn, everything as well. And obviously, we do get website inquiries and phone calls, which is fine. But the corporate space helps us get those clients as well. You've got to just adapt as well. There's a company we've started working with who wanted somebody to do the key person, which is again, an area I've got in spirit in. I thought not many financial advisors get involved in this space. Not something that most people love. It's insurance. It can be bit of a pain. But just yesterday I was on a call with a tech exec in London, and she's been given something like 20, 30 million and they need it from venture capital trusts. Some of you are BC's in the private equity. And we're setting up key persons insurance for them, mentioned during AquaWime, IG wealth management, financial planning. And that just pricked her ears up and said, "I need that." She's early 50s, ideal client, and we're now looking at setting up a meeting for that. So, it's one of those, like you said earlier, just getting in front of people, you mention those other things you do. You might speak to 50 people and nobody comes and comes and comes to actually. But you will get those employees or those business owners that come to you and say, "Yeah, actually, I need you for this other area." Oliver, you have to be in it to win it, right? You've got to be in it to win it. You've got to be reaching out to people. You've got to be consistently reaching out to people. You're niche then. Do you specialise in tech companies? Is that kind of your area of expertise? Do you tend to focus on that? Really over in here? I think it's like most people niche is. They're niche often comes to them, I think. Yeah, it wasn't intentional. I guess there's a bit of report there because often the tech guys we're speaking to are in their 30s, which is where I am and they've been given a load of funding and then they're looking to improve the employee benefits and then we're also looking at insurance policies and things, which is great. As individual clients, I don't take many of them on, but the tech space is not full of 20 and 30 year olds. It's actually, it's plenty of clients I've spoken to and I've taken on, not just at fast growing companies that have been given some funding. There's some of the senior managers and the execs there will be your ideal financial planning clients, which are traditionally the kind of 5th, 8th, 50 plus looking at stopping work in the next 10 years. Naturally, that's become bit of our niche, but not necessarily. We still work with quite a broad range of companies. Fantastic. Great stuff. There's another thing you mentioned, I just want to ask you a question on actually, is outsourced HR companies? Did you partner with, because that's actually a really good link, because obviously, an outsource HR companies do HR for companies. They've probably got 50 clients, 40 clients, however many clients. They'll know, and it's a great way for them to offer additional services. Partnering with an outsourced HR company is a really good partnership for a financial planner looking to the corporate space. Yeah, it can be. They're generally not working with massive companies, but they are clients of all business owners. If you're just thinking about that kind of thing about who you're partnering with, my employee benefits partner, business partners, all of their clients are running businesses. It was like, "Why don't we set up a pension service where we're targeting businesses?" Yeah, go to an HR department, all their clients are business owners. If you're going to and account to see you on the trope. I'm trying to partner with an account see firm. Most of their clients are going to be either self employed or business owners. So if the corporate space where you wanna be, you just gotta think about who you're talking to and not necessarily going directly to the source but going to the people that are going to, because I've got eight of the HR departments that sort of refer to us, they've already spoken for us. They've already sold off our service and then said, "Look, all of us the expert in this area "go and speak to engage well management." So it's a pretty easy sell from that point onwards. So yeah, it's HR department, HR, outside state charge, not something to give a miss. - Fantastic. Oliver, you've really shared quite deeply today around your career and definitely around the corporate side. So I've learned lots today and I think people who're listening to this podcast, it should put their ears up a little bit and get them thinking about working in that corporate space. So thank you for sharing so honestly and so deeply about that. 'Cause I think that will inspire people to perhaps look as areas that they can move into to develop new client banks and new client relationships. So thank you so much for that. Well, they sort of final note, what would you say would make a, what makes a great financial planner do you think? - What makes a great financial planner. I think we referred to it earlier. - Don't ever forget that this is a sales industry. It's not, yes, it's not phone sales or car, second hand car sales, but you've gotta have that report. You've gotta have that personality. And I think that often trumps the technical side of it. You're always gonna have somebody that's there that has the technical capability that can assist you. But if you wanna be a financial planner, financial advisor, you've got to have that kind of report. And that bit of life experience, I think you mentioned earlier about graduate coming straight into the profession. What have you done before that? What stories have you got to tell? Because you need to have some life experience before coming into this industry. I think that's my personal view, but perhaps not. I think you've gotta be adaptable as well. There are lots of financial buyers. I know that started their companies and they said, okay, I need these clients and I need this much money to live my lifestyle, which is a great position to be in. But if that's not your position, it wasn't mine. It was I needed to bring on quite a lot. I need to go to mortgage to pay. I've got children, young children, and my work was part-time. So we needed to bring in some pretty hefty amounts to keep our business running and to keep growing the business as well. So you've gotta be adaptable and that's what we've done. I never set out setting up my company thinking, I'm gonna be the workplace pensions go to expert. And now we're moving as well into a lot of the business insurance side and we're becoming quite known for that as well. Didn't really want to set it up like that, but that's where we've gone. And we generate a lot of individual clients from that. So yeah, hopefully that's, that's, it gives you an idea. I think a great financial planner can be, it can be a lot of things. So yeah, you've just gotta think very cleverly about it. If this is the industry you want to go into, you are gonna be in front of people, you are gonna be, you've gotta be comfortable with that. If that's not the room, you prefer the technical stuff and you like the spreadsheets and the reports and the compliance side of things. I think power planning and compliance is absolutely a massive career off of Junesine now. Financial planning is not for everybody, but it's, it is very nice and it's very rewarding once you get to a point where you're very comfortable. - Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today. Really, really, really appreciate it. That was a fantastic answer. You've come with some really great topics today. So really, really appreciate all your honesty and all your experience. I mean, wish you the best of luck and engage. Thanks so much, Sam. Take care. Cheers.