#402 Trish Gregory – Transcript

James Wrigley
Hello, welcome back to another episode. I’m James Wrigley, I got the pleasure of speaking with Trish Gregory today. Trish, thank you for joining me. You’re at Fox and Hare at the moment, but get into a bit of your story, are we going to talk women in financial advice or financial planning? Trish suggested some fantastic topics that we’re going to get into. So, really looking forward to this episode. And thanks for joining me.

Trish Gregory
Thank you for having me. I’m very excited to be here. My very first time on this podcast was when I just was joining Fox and Hare, when Jess Brady was doing the podcast and now I’ve been in the company for a bit over a year. So it’s wonderful to jump on again and connect with you. You’ve been doing an amazing job.

James Wrigley
Come back again. What did I What was your first episode about? I haven’t listened to it. What are you talking about? No one

Speaker 2
probably similar thing. I can’t even remember. It’s it’s a lot of what I talk about is women in financial advice. Yeah.

James Wrigley
So that’s, we tend to start all of these, we’re gonna get into a range of different topics. income gap, parental leave a lot of other things, which we’ll get to in a minute, but we tend to always start these chats with kind of tell me a bit about your story. So your fox in here now. So a little bit over a year. Is that how long you’ve been there for?

Speaker 2
Correct? So I started in April last year, first of April. And I was really hopeful that you know, despite it being the first of April that it wasn’t a joke or the contract really it was coming through and like but yeah, a fun time to start. So it’s been less that now. A year and two months you’re

James Wrigley
in? Yeah. So you I saw on one of your posts on LinkedIn. Some some comments about you being remote. Does foxon here just work completely remote these days? Do you have an office? What’s this? What’s the setup?

Speaker 2
Absolutely. So we all work completely remote. So I live in Canberra. Foxen has offices in Sydney, although it is a like one of those share offices. It’s called the hub. So we meet there as a team once a month to get together spend some time together in person. So But beyond that, yeah, we’re all completely in our home. So we have people working in Wollongong, we have a couple in Sydney, we have one down in Geelong. One in Tasmania, so people are everywhere. And really interestingly, the way that works is that when the business was started up, and staff started coming on there was very intentional. Making sure that the online culture was supported and kept going. But intentionally rather than sort of saying, oh, we need culture, but not doing anything about it. And that really shines through in the fact that we all really liked each other. We also connect really well online, we also have a team over in Cebu. So I did only talk about the Australian team. We have a team of six in Cebu in the Philippines as well.

James Wrigley
That’s an interesting, interesting, I’m sure others are doing it. But so so the business that I work in is more of a traditional a we’ve got an office in Collin Street in Melbourne and and we’re kind of doing his house working from home half working from the office thing, but for those businesses that have gone 100% remote out, you kind of keep everyone together. And so you’re doing this once once a month, everyone comes together. So the person that lives in Geelong, they make their way to the airport, they fly up to Sydney for the day is that with that will that’s what happens.

Speaker 2
Correct? That’s right. And so we all fly in for the day, I’ll often stay for a couple of days. I have a cousin that I stay with down in Bondi so I get to have really lovely morning walks when I’m in Sydney. And yeah, we will get there to make sure that we’re connecting. And when we connect, we tend to do a bit less work because obviously this is our time to chat in person. We usually have an activity so most people will stay overnight. We’ve done things like Axe Throwing, we went on a little yacht, we did pole dancing. We have done like bar trivia in a pub. So it’s always something different and interesting that we do as a team to connect

James Wrigley
and is the outside of that in person connecting what have you made the you know, with with such a distance between so many people, obviously people in a different country over in the Philippines but then just thought of around Australia. Have you managed to keep everyone together and feeling part of a team and working towards common goals and these kinds of things. Whenever I’m so remote outside of the meeting up is that is there anything that you’re doing outside of that, that monthly meetup?

Speaker 2
Absolutely. So most days of the week, we have a 15 minute catch up at the end of every day. And it rotates with who is going to talk about themselves. So we have a couple of questions, prompting questions so that you talk about what’s going on with you. You know, it can be personal, it can be business, that sort of what things have you done really well, what are you proud of? And so everyone’s cycles through that. So we see each other every day, as long as obviously you can attend the meeting, sometimes people can’t. On top of that, we all have Microsoft Teams, and instead of writing messages will often just call each other where it works. And so we’re very regularly on the digital video with each other. There’s heaps of emojis, there’s heaps of gifts. There’s all that sort of thing, like the oldest person in our business is 41. The youngest just turned 20.

James Wrigley
Yep. Very different demographics to, to a lot of other financial advice businesses, which may reach maybe leads into prior to Fox in here. Can you maybe give us a bit of a recap of, of your time and financial advice prior to joining Fox?

Speaker 2
Yeah, sure. So I’ve been an advisor for six and a half years now. And the first organization I joined was actually single planet practice. I learned a lot, but I wasn’t there for a very long time. But it was my first experience, I literally just jumped straight in. So really be brief background, I was a stay at home parent for four and a half years, my partner was in the military. So I followed him around Australia. And then when he became injured, we swapped roles. So he became a stay at home parent and I became the working parent, and decided to jump into financial advice, and became an advisor, five months after joining the company, so very, very quick, no experience beyond loving talking about finance. I’ve worked for two firms since that first one. So in total four firms, so it feels like a lot. And in that time, I’ve actually had 14 months of parental leave with child number three, as well. What we have at Fox in here is so different to what I’ve experienced in other financial advisors, which have been bigger. Mainly because there’s a real sense of, we need to make sure that everyone feels really good to do their jobs really well. Yep. I could go a million ways with that. But why don’t you ask me a question?

James Wrigley
So how does that?

How is Fox in here making you feel really good, so that you’re then really good at your job? Yeah. What can others do in their businesses to make their advisors and everyone else that works in their business feel really good to?

Speaker 2
Good question true, because that’s, that’s the point of this. We’re all learning. So let me give you some practical examples. Number one is, I love getting gifts. And so the first year at Fox and here I was receiving gifts for things. So I passed my CFP exam, the next day, champagne and chocolates and a letter, were on my doorstep, which is a bit extraordinary. I receive gifts for my birthday. And I you know, everyone loves getting surprised gifts, those sorts of things. And so that’s kind of number one. Number two is our values align. So Fox and hare is very big on a quality support the environment. And that’s kind of me as well, like at home, I am always trying to think of ways that I can do better. I have three children I have husband like it’s a challenge to do better. But at the moment, like we have chickens, we have gardens, we have bees. We’re growing our own food, I do try to pick up litter when I you know wander down the street. So the values aligned for me with the company. Other things are like so almost 12 months ago, more than 12 months ago, I think Fox and Hare became a certified B Corp. And again, that’s the values alignment. So I remember my very first time meeting Jess, and Glenn in person and Jess has now exited the company to work on an amazing new project. When the first time I met them was at a breakfast. And one of the first things just said to me was up we’ve just made a policy where we have three months worth of parental leave for anyone who needs to take leave and will pay superannuation guarantee for up to 12 months if that person takes unpaid leave on top of that. Now having come from some previous firms where per Parental leave either doesn’t exist, or feels woefully inadequate. I hugged Jeff. And I was like, That is amazing. I love that I’m having no more children, I will not take advantage of this. But I absolutely love that as a very small company. They said we need to get policy in place that if someone is having a baby, that they don’t feel really stressed to have to come back to work really soon. And that those are some of the things that Fox and Hare works to it’s like leaves by its values. Absolutely. That makes a difference to me. Yeah.

James Wrigley
So so on. So on the topic of parental leave your worked in a few other businesses. You’re just like, you know, really highly of flux in here is doing but the parental leave generally in financial advice, do you think it’s is being dealt with at a like at a bare minimum, there’s, the law says we need to do this. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re not going any further above like, you know that the SG for a whole year that it’s incredible, particularly for a small business, is your sense that most businesses are just doing the bare minimum that they need to to get by?

Speaker 2
Look, I haven’t looked in a lot of businesses. But I would argue that businesses that are run by let’s call it out straight white men probably don’t think about how important it is, for a woman or even like the partner, not the person who’s carrying the baby to actually have that time. It’s my, when I went on leave for my first for my first child 18 months, I supposed to take 12 months off, I asked for an extra six months because I was exhausted, I was not having fun, and I could not cope. And to think that I might have had to go back to work. After six weeks or three months would have been just, I wouldn’t have been a functioning member of the team. And I would say that because it is a male dominated industry, I think we have 19 or 20% of women are fond of financial planners or women. Therefore there are not as many who are bosses. It really isn’t something that is looked at closely enough. And I wonder whether people look at it as well, this is going to be a cost to our business, and we’re not going to get a benefit. But the benefit is actually in that your staff are happy. There. If they feel comfortable taking time off, they’re not stressed about having to figure out how to stay at home with their baby, and then they’re gonna come back early, and their brains are probably going to be shot like some people might be fine. But I was not. And a lot of people will not be it’s an extraordinary thing to have to go through. So like I’m happy that the government is now doing I think it’s 26 weeks of parental leave, which is amazing. And I really still want to see superannuation guarantee for 12 months for primary carers, predominantly women. One of the other things I wanted to point out while we have this platform, is the CPD legislation doesn’t actually have any leeway for going on extended leave, including carers leave, or parental leave. You still have to do your 40 hours of CPD.

James Wrigley
I was not aware. So one of the advisors here who will go on maternity leave in three months time and so does she and what the neighbor not does she do? Well, she plans on taking 12 months off. She’ll still have to do 40 hours of CPD for the for the year that she’s not advising otherwise, she fails that CPD requirements.

Speaker 2
Absolutely. And I look I’m happy to be proven wrong. I’m pretty sure I’m right that it’s baked into the legislation. Whereas there are a lots of others medical providers, lawyers, accountants, I’m pretty sure I did a research subject on this in my masters. They rely on the industry body, it’s not enshrined in law, that you have to do CPD, which means then that the industry body says yes, of course 12 months parental leave two years parental leave, you don’t have to do it. Or you might have to do so many hours over a five year period. So that’s something that we need to work on because it is just 40 hours. I mean, you can crack out 40 hours at Kaplan you know in the middle of the night. While you’re sitting up breastfeeding just do like a little bit of CVD but that kind of takes us into These, the next thing I want to talk about, which is micro aggressions against women in financial advice. And whilst people might say, well, it’s not a big deal, it’s just 40 hours of CPD for an entire year while you’re on parental leave. It’s these tiny little barriers that stop women from being financial advisors, because you just keep adding a brick after brick after brick, and eventually they just go, just blah.

James Wrigley
It’s all just too hard. How do we like what? What can we do to? How can we make it a better place for for women in financial advice? I know that’s a that’s a topic. We had to tackle it. And I certainly don’t have the answers. Being a white male in financial advice. How do we do it? Does it start with, you know, the likes of Fox in here doing some amazing things to be really supportive? Is that where it starts? Is there some pushing to the likes of the the financial advice bodies, F AAA and the others? Where do we go? How do we? How do we make it a more appealing place for for women in financial advice?

Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s, there’s so many things we can do. And I had a conversation recently with someone who is trying to be an advisor. And she was telling me her what she’s currently dealing with. In her organization, I just said to her, Well, you’re in a toxic place like this shouldn’t be your journey, let’s find you a better employer. So part of that is the issues like you have to find the place that fits you. But there are lots of things we can do. For example, the government has recently said that anyone with more than 100 employees has to publish their gender pay gap. So that reporting will start in 2024. I would love every single financial advice firm to have a serious look at their pay, and their gender pay gap and across like same or similar roles, including bonuses. And think really, really critically, are you being totally fair? Or do you have unconscious bias about well, she’s not performing as well. Even though she might be she might just not be given the opportunities that the male has. Because in our brains, I do it too. We go, Okay, well, the guy who’s 40, or 50, with a beard, is more experience than the woman in her 30s, who’s like a little bit Tabby like me. And that’s actually like, that is research that has been done to show how unconscious bias affects the way that we view people. And so people might think that they’re actually being really fair. But in actual fact, if you get someone externally to look at it, or if you critically think, am I being fair and have a look at the numbers and have a look at the data, you may find that you’re not. So I would love to see not just the 100 100 or more employee employees publish this but every single advice firm looks critically at this and making sure that everyone’s being given the same opportunities and the same pay.

James Wrigley
And I think in a lot of businesses, there will be a degree of unconscious bias. It’s not it’s not until someone it’s really not until someone externals scenarios, they will Why is it so like the lazy was talking, the thing that kind of popped into my head is you spoke about the 50 year old male or the other 30 year obscene male, you’re looking at the will the the females taking time off work from eternity, they haven’t worked as an advisor for they’ve been working as an advisor for five years. But in that five years, they’ve been in and out and in and out and in and out. And the males worked for five years. And so so we, as a business will say, well, the advisors, the male advisor, because they haven’t taken time off. they’ve progressed in their career, so we should be paying them here. But the female is much she’s kind of been in and out of the workforce. She’s still been working as an advisor for five years. And I would imagine that that itself creates a degree of gender pay gap that creeps and whether that should be paid, whether that shouldn’t be paid. Not until someone stands back and starts to point it out that then the business needs to start to be making decisions on how are they dealing with all of that.

Speaker 2
Absolutely. And it comes all the way down for business. says and I would love for everyone who listens to this to have a look at what their business says. So in your job ads on your website in your marketing, the unconscious bias is ginormous. And so if companies say, Well, no woman ever applies to us, it may be your culture, it may be your reviews on Glassdoor, it may be the fact that your job ad has words that women will turn away from because they’re like, Nah, I can, I can sense that this is a bit of a toxic culture. And I’m just not going to even bother applying, will self select out a lot more.

James Wrigley
Or they do or they do end up applying and get a job there. But then, all of a sudden, six months later, they’ve left and they’ve gone somewhere else. And you said to me, you want to move off? I can’t pretend to have any female advisors. What are we doing wrong?

Unknown Speaker
They’re absolutely. They just

James Wrigley
moving on without necessarily planning?

Speaker 2
Yeah. And by contrast, let me tell you how I feel. People are probably going to have to pry me from Fox and hair. Yeah, like I am not, you know, people say I should still be looking out. I know, I’m not going anywhere. Unless something radically changes, I have not, there is no way you could make me leave. Because it’s not just about the money. It’s also about how you feel emotionally, and how it affects your life. And I’m sure there are a lot of advisors over the past couple of years have experienced how work affects their life in quite a negative way. And I’d really love for more financial advice firms to actually help people feel positive, even when it’s really busy. Like, we’re not exactly quiet. We’re very busy. Yeah. And,

James Wrigley
you know, this is the first time that I’ve ever spoken to you, we’ve been speaking for a whole 22 minutes, it’s from you, now that they know that you’re found your home might be in a different state, but you found your home and something, something drastic is going to have to change for you to decide to move on from from there. So that you know the the recruiters that are always hitting up everyone on LinkedIn. lying to them. It doesn’t sound like you’re, you’re going anywhere.

Speaker 2
That’s right. And I’m also trying really hard to help the young ones coming through, figure out where they can land without having to go through the toxic pathway first to learn. So I am trying to direct people in certain ways. So that if you’re a place that might be find it hard to keep women, it might be that all the women are steering them away from you. You know, that’s the

James Wrigley
couple of times the young ones like you’re not, I wouldn’t say you’re old.

Unknown Speaker
I’m about to hit 40. I feel there. I mean, I feel Yeah,

James Wrigley
I’m the same way. I like the lines on my face. Getting all that and it’s and it’s when you’re talking about the young man, that’s when and that kind of next bit of I want to talk to you about is like people approaching you. You’ve talked about steering them in the right direction. How are people coming across you I like people reaching out to you through LinkedIn or wherever. Like you’re getting to a point now. And I’ve noticed that in really in the last year myself. The young ones as you put it kind of coming to me saying hey, what you know, what are you actually study any What was your career path? Like? What have you actually done to get to where you get to? That that’s when a bit of a light bulb has gone off in my head to say actually, I’m not one of the young ones anymore? The older ones? Is that Is that what you’re finding as well?

Speaker 2
Yes. So I say the young ones, because they can literally be half my age and have already been working for two years. So like I said, when I say I say the young ones, but the younger than me mostly. So one of the things that I did, like I try to with varying degrees of when I’m able to be on LinkedIn and highlighting issues for women. In financial advice, especially, I try to be vocal and I I’m at the point in my life, where I’m not worried about the backlash anymore, because I know that I have privilege. And I know that I have security and so I can be a voice for people who are really worried about standing up and therefore losing their job. So when last year I went to the FPA Congress, and I got a scholarship to do that, which is very kind and one of my former colleagues was part of the emerging professional Will’s cohort. And so she and I have talked about financial advice and women a lot. And so she kept on introducing me to people and saying you need to talk to Trish, I had a few drunken conversations around people and how much they earn and how they really should be, they are getting ripped off, and they should earn more. A few of them have then gone on to change jobs and get more money, which is fantastic. And I love that so much.

James Wrigley
I remember reading that on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2
Yeah. And that part of that is because of my experience, I know what it is like to be ripped off a very first employer who you thought you could trust. So and I know that I have been paid less than my male colleagues, at literally $10,000 left less doing the same job. So I know what it’s like. And I don’t want people to have to go through that. So as an example, one of my former colleagues is working with someone. And he reached out and said, I’m working with someone, I’d really love for you to have a chat with her because she’s feeling quite feeling like maybe she doesn’t want to do advice, because of the place where in. So absolutely happy to have a chat with her. I have. I’m on the FPA mentoring program. So last year, I mentored one person this year mentoring to so get to have really wonderful conversations with these people around what their plans are, what their goals are, and how I can help them. And just more generally, people tend to reach out to me now yet on LinkedIn, people will connect other people with me. Because at the moment, I’m very, like, I have time to be able to have conversations with people and really talk to them around well, what are you trying to get out? Is your experience normal? What should you be asking for helping people how to ask for more money. And if not, then steering them in the right direction to try and find other places to work. Have a big problem with I feel like especially a lot of women get taken advantage of earlier in their career. So they they come in, they join, there might be a client services officer, a power planner, and then their job progression gets stalled much more than men do. So they get delayed, stuck in these roles or stuck in the associate role for longer when they want to be advisors. Which is very frustrating. Because if if we don’t be open and honest with the people that are progressing through, about how long things really take, what salaries you can expect, as you progress through, they’ll just get frustrated and go somewhere else. Someone who promises them something more. And we know that the professional year is slow. It’s not really a year, it’s more like 18 months. I’ve heard what’s what people tend to say so which can be so frustrating you like I just want to be an advisor.

James Wrigley
You mentioned a couple of times there, if pa Congress or if if I now it’s called, you wanted to talk about child care. And talking about when, when we were before we press the record. Maybe I read to you to maybe talk about what the particular thing that you wanted to do. And then I don’t know how do you kind of drum up support the ends on a list or something but talk us through your idea for for for childcare conference?

Speaker 2
Sure. Let me give you the background of why first of all, so in 2019, my third child Felix was born at sorry, 2018 he was born 2019 I really wanted to go to fin con. I had wanted to go the previous year, but unfortunately, I ended up getting pregnant. So I couldn’t I had to cancel that. And I was like I am determined to go thank God I did because the next year was 2020 and I would not have gone for ages in America. Yeah, exactly. And it’s filled up for people who don’t know it’s filled with financial nerds, not just financial planners, all amazing things, you know, content creators, that sort of stuff. You can learn a lot from the Americans. So Felix, I really wanted to go he was nine and a half months old. He was still breastfed. There was no way I could leave him for two weeks. Fortunately, Finn Khan had free childcare that they were trialing for the first time. So I registered straightaway for that to be on the free childcare list got in got my space, which meant that I had Three days at fin con, where I dropped Felix off a childcare, I went and did fin con picked him up for lunch, dropped him back off. Did morphine con picked him up at the end, like the end of the day. So I couldn’t go out and party, which was fine, because our sleep schedules were so messed up that I ended up just waking up at one and 2am with him. And we went and chatted with all the drunk people down at the who were having a great time coming home at some of the best conversations I’ve had, and having a baby as a great in to these like of famous podcasters and bloggers. That was amazing. And it really helped. It helps with inclusivity, making sure that people who may not have the resources to figure out how to get to these events get to these events. So what I would love to say is for the next F AAA Congress in November, is that we have childcare there. And the reason for that is you may be like me have gone on parental leave, you may be currently working, but maybe your child’s only in childcare, two or three days a week, maybe you’re breastfeeding, and you can’t not take your child with you overnight or for a couple of days. If you we don’t want to have to women, we don’t want primary carers, predominately women, to have to say, I can’t go to this industry event that I’d like to go to. Because I have a child. That’s another one of those little barriers. And you can’t reasonably have an entire two days of conference with a baby with you. I mean, really tiny baby. Yeah, but once they start crawling, like you can’t concentrate, it’s hard. You could, but like, that’s a lot. I took Felix when he was three and a half months old to a two day conference. And that was easy, because He just slept and he breastfed, and he was practically invisible. So I have talked to the F AAA about it. I have sort of done all of the groundwork and sort of handed off to them and said, I really want this to happen. But what I love from the listeners is if you would take advantage of childcare at Congress, or if you know someone who might, please let me know, look me up on LinkedIn, send a message through the podcast, and they can get it to me, I would love to know who might actually utilize this. I imagine there will be some people who would most of the people I know don’t have very small children anymore. But it’s one of those things that can make the difference for women being able to be more involved in the industry. As we turn into a profession.

James Wrigley
Yeah, we had when we had kids, there was a back then we were licensed through one of the one of the big groups we had two years or so 18 months, two years, we were kind of self license for a while then we went to one of the big licenses, they were going back to self license. And there was a conference in the Gulf Coast, I think it was can remember it was the other Gulf Coast. And we had our first child then and I was heavily involved in the feeding. So I was doing all of the fitting of a nighttime for it. And then for me to not be at home for two or three days at a conference was just not going to work. So we ended up my wife and Thomas my my my eldest son the baby back then he ended up just coming with us and so I was kind of doing this feeling of a nighttime and as he kind of didn’t do the partying but I was wasn’t interested in during the party that we made it work that way. Obviously not that was the primary tiara, but we made it work of the night time. That way that yeah, that Gabby, my wife and my son will with us.

Speaker 2
Yep. Yeah. It’s you do what you need to do. I would also say that something that could be quite easy, because let’s go with small wins and build on it. So do congresses have a pumping room? Yes. Do they have a breastfeeding room? When I joined my previous company I was I didn’t tell them because again like this, there’s there’s levels of not shame but wanting to hide not wanting to be difficult. I was actually I didn’t tell them and I was just pumping in the disabled bathroom and then my receptionist found out and she’s like, No, no, no, no, no, no, this is not happening. And I said I kind of add a little The rooms like all the offices and there’s nothing really that suits and she’s like all sorted out. And so she got got, you know, got contractors and they put like film up in a room so at least there was a designated, like, a nice room that wasn’t

James Wrigley
no one can see in, didn’t you?

Speaker 2
And then and then COVID happened. So I was like, well not getting much use out of this room. But recently one of my former colleagues, she said to me, thank you so much for getting that room done. Because she’s using it all the time now. And if if congresses, if industry conferences, so your licensee conferences. All they have to do is say we have a room for breastfeeding or for pumping. If you need, please let us know. You know, send us an email talk to this person. If no one uses it, then no one uses it. But if you say that you have it and you have it, then maybe someone won’t need to jump that extra hurdle of asking for it.

James Wrigley
Yep, yep. Now the last, the last thing that we wanted to tackle was New Adult advisors. I see. So you won’t be aware, but I just record a podcast recorded last week, I don’t think it’s coming out just yet. Did a podcast with a couple of the associate advisors that work here. And once done the traditional path of go to university kind of going into accounting financial planning kind of straight after uni and talking through being an associate advisor and when the other guys that was on the podcast, has come to financial advice a little bit later on in life. So it’s had to do the studying and so forth. Via let’s talk about new adult advisors, their particular challenges for them like we were, what do you want to start?

Speaker 2
Well, I imagine the biggest challenge is if you’ve already had a career, you have you had a salary, and your family is living off that salary. to then go all the way back to the beginning again, you have to taste because significant pay cut more than like, you know, you’re not gonna get paid the same if you’re you’ve been an accountant for 20 years, and then you want to become a financial advisor, like your salary is not matching. Same thing with I met someone who was an optometrist, actually, and then is a professional year now. So that’s a real challenge that I don’t know whether we’ve talked about much in the profession of the how do we actually get career changes. So not fresh out of school with, you know, not as many expenses. But people with significant life, probably a mortgage, probably kids, how do we help them to become advisors without taking huge financial damage to their budget. Now, for me, when I became an advisor in sort of my mid 30s, I hadn’t been working for four, and I hadn’t been employed rather, for four and a half years. And then but we were on, like a very low income. You know, we were claiming from Centrelink when I was first an advisor. But we didn’t have stupid high expenses, we did have a mortgage, but it was like Western Suburbs out of western suburbs of Melbourne. So it was like a low mortgage than pay maybe middle of Sydney or somewhere like that. So I was fortunate in that regard. But if I had have built up a career, and then tried to become a financial advisor, I don’t know whether my family could do it now. Sure. I don’t have an answer. I just know that we need to be as a profession, we need to think about how we’re going to get these career changes to become professional year. People because they come with a wealth of skill, you know, they already know how to talk to people, they already know how to craft emails, you know, all the things that you kind of need to train people straight out of uni on. Oftentimes, they’ve got the life experience. They just need to know financial advice. What are your thoughts with

James Wrigley
like I had I had a conversation with the son of one of my clients that in his early 30s and young family and mortgage and all the rest of it, this whole career change thing it had it built up a career in in in what he was doing, but wanted to get into financial advice that come in, just because I kind of remember the reason why but let’s just say it was just because he wanted to. And the big part of the conversation that I had with him was that you need to first thing you need to work out is your family finances, you need to just understand that you’re gonna go back, you know, you’re earning, I know, whatever he was earning north of $100,000 in his career that it built up, you’re gonna go back to being a client, service manager or associate advisor, these kinds of things are going to take a decent pay cut, to do it. But if this is something that you want to do, the sooner you do it, the better. Because as you’re as you’re, as you get older, as your existing career continues to grow, you’re going to earn more, your kids are going to get older, they’re going to become more expensive with it, you know, kids, when they when they’re newborn aren’t terribly expensive, unless you’ve got big medical costs you having to deal with, but But outside of that, it’s not a not a lot of lot of money is going to be required. And then so as I’ve gone to talking through to him exactly the whole point that you need to understand that there is going to be the step back for you to then move, move up. And if it’s something that you want to do, and you’re really successful in a good, good luck, good luck to you. He then went away and had to kind of just dwell on it and work out, you know, between him and his partner, how could they make it work? The next meeting, I haven’t I haven’t seen spoken with him. But I’ve met with with the clients a couple of times since. And I was really, I was really happy to hear that not long after probably six or nine months after, I’d had that conversation with him that he decided to, he decided to move into financial advice and got a job with one of the one of the businesses in Melbourne. Some type of entry level role into into into financial advice. Yeah, it’s the it’s the challenge. And I know that no, I don’t, I don’t think we can expect people to come across their owning $130,000 A year over here doing their job, and then all of a sudden, we’re going to pay them $130,000 A year for an entry level job, then you get back to the pay gap. Problem problem before. It’s just, I think it’s just something that people need to enact. And how do we, there’s probably a bit of a haven’t thought of this through before I kind of just thinking on the spot, as we’re talking about it, there’s probably a means for fast tracking those types of people through in that there’s a there’s a whole lot of, as you said, talking to people crafting emails, all of this type of stuff that you learn in your first few years of, of having a job out of university, that these people already have that so that they potentially don’t need to spend so much time in those more admin type jobs before they become a financial adviser, or at least start the professional year. So maybe you you know, you employ them for three or six months, they pass their probation, you’re happy that they’re they’re a good person, and then they’re a good fit for the business. And then you kick them off on the professional year straightaway, knowing that as as it said, it’s going to probably going to take them 18 months anyway to get through the professional year. Yeah, that’s the way to do it.

Speaker 2
Yeah, I also think that we need to point out to people that this is a really amazing career, I love what I do. Sure, all of us would love the compliance burden to be less Wouldn’t we all. But the this career is so flexible this career is it feels really good to help people. And you can significantly increase your income or, you know, once you’ve passed your professional year, once you gather some experience, if you’re doing well, you can quickly get above six figures, you know, $100,000 Plus, those are the salaries that are around there these days with a little bit of experience kind of need them these days with inflation rates and the way the mortgage interest rate going up. But I know that I have talked about how things can be really hard, and how much more we need to do. But I can tell you that as a female in financial advice, I would not be anywhere else because I get to do so much to help so much to change so much. It feels good.

James Wrigley
And I get paid well for it. Yeah. And, and you in particular, you’re doing a lot to give back just in some of the things that you mentioned now quite aside from the volunteering and everything else that you’re doing to Fox in here. Like just being part of this mentoring program with you know, with other advisors and being open to chat. I would imagine that that that brings a degree of satisfaction to you as well. Not only are you do enjoy the job hope that you do as a day job, but being able to kind of give back and support others that are coming through. I would imagine, that’s a lot of satisfaction for you as well.

Speaker 2
Absolutely. I love it. And I draw from, like I said, my own experiences of not particularly being well looked after in the beginning by an employer, whereas so I just tried to help people to avoid those mistakes in the beginning so that they can see how amazing it is because sometimes, you just have to drudge through the drudgery to get to where you want to be and to figure out what you want. Like I didn’t know whether I wanted to work with retirees self managed super funds with whatever. But millennial working with millennials is my absolute jam.

James Wrigley
Which was thank you for joining me this morning. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you. Great to finally chat. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me. This has been wonderful. And if anyone wants to connect, find me on LinkedIn, Trish Gregory. I shouldn’t be too hard to find. Hopefully.

James Wrigley
That’s it. We’ll put some links in the show notes and wherever you’re watching or listening, or watching wherever you’re listening to this. There’ll be some links to find Trish. Thank you. Thanks. Bye