#409 Jonathan Mannion – Transcript

James Wrigley
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’m James Wrigley. And I’ve got the pleasure of chatting again with Jono, Jonathan many in Sandringham Wealth, Jono, welcome to the podcast.

Jonathan Mannion
Thank you very much. Thank you for having me on.

James Wrigley
I really appreciate you and I were chatting a few weeks back now it was kind of pre 30 June, you were generous with your time or in some some SOA things that I was trying to work on here. And anyway, we got got to talking about Ensombl, and you mentioned finding your community and we need to, we need to get you on. So thank you for thank you for joining me, tell us a bit we were just chatting about your office and we might slice the audio to kind of bring that bring that part back in again, I was. So for anyone that doesn’t follow John or you’re you’re active on Tik Tok and a few other places. That’s how I’ve gotten to gotten to know you. I was just commenting to say that your office looks like I could have sworn you’re in the spare room at home, the setup the background for your videos, you know, we’re chatting here on on a on an on a video platform anyway. But he talked me through your office setup that that that’s impressive.

Jonathan Mannion
So basically, when, when the business started, I started renting office space I was renting from my account, and it was good, but you don’t really get that sense of ownership and you’re only ever renting in somebody else’s space. And as the business has grown, and then we want to expand, I wanted to effectively I want to plant the flag in the ground and say, right, this is where we operate for the next 20 years. And I you know, there’s a very particular way that I would like things to be set up, I want you know, the, I want to experience when you walk in the door, I want it to look and feel and smell a certain way. And the office, you know, when sometimes when you’re in a sort of sterile meeting room, it can feel like a sterile meeting room. But here, I’ve got it set up, you know, to a large degree the way that I want it to look and feel and and smell. It’s never sort of a complaint. But it’s it’s well I’m awake. But now I can’t I can’t work at home. I think I’ve learned that June COVID. Very clearly.

James Wrigley
Do you own the office space. You’re not renting it anymore. You

Jonathan Mannion
Yeah, so right. It’s said Seeing them in Superfund sites, you know, part of what’s in Superfund. I feel a tick tock video coming on

James Wrigley
that would do really well, the the LRBA buying your office space or your warehouse in if you’ve got a factory type type business I do, and I get a lot of inquiries from those types of people via tick tock, but yeah, talking of your own experience in doing it yourself would be would be interesting.

Jonathan Mannion
It was really interesting. So, I mean, it’s part of the past that we provide, because I do just, for whatever reason, had quite a few business owners. And providing the advice is very different from going through yourself. There were times where I wanted to sit in a corner and just rock. And, you know, from an advice point of view, because you’re on the other side of the table, these are the things that need to happen. Here’s the advice. Let’s go when you’re actually dealing with the lender, and the broker, and the lawyers and trying to coordinate the project manage the whole thing. Much, much more

James Wrigley
complicated. Yeah. And actually, it has, there’s value in that to talk to your clients through to say, I’ve been through the process as well. This is what worked well, this is what didn’t work well, because like, I myself, have advised plenty of clients on doing it. Have I done it myself? No, I haven’t done it myself. So there’s a lot to be said for being going through the process itself.

Jonathan Mannion
To be honest, it’s not one that I want to go through again. Yeah, you know, we’d really have to, you know, there was a real motivator from the business point of view. From a numbers point of view, it’s certainly stacked up. But you know, it’s not one of those things that I would I would go through happily, again,

James Wrigley
that said, tell us about Sandringham. Well, to be honest, when I first came across you online, I just I thought you had a financial planning business in Sandringham, down here in Victoria, but but I’ve looked from some of the other videos that you’ve put up, I’ve learned you’re not in Victoria, where are you?

Jonathan Mannion
Now so we used to be we used to live in Melbourne. But we got to the point where, you know, we looked at it and said right if we wanted to move out of Richmond and into say Hawthorne, it was taken on another million dollars with a debt and you can do it but there’s a there’s a cost that comes to that in terms of your time and focus and family stuff. And we moved from Melbourne up to Newcastle lifestyle, bit close to the ocean because that’s my happy place. And Sandringham was basically was a sort of a nod to mum and dad that was Sandrine place was the first home that we lived in and it was one, I was just such a beautiful home. As a kid, I think as an adult, you look back and go, you know, maybe less so. But as a kid, it was like this fantastic place. If that wasn’t Sandringham place, and that was the sort of the nod to mum and dad, salary and wealth.

James Wrigley
There you go. Love it. Great story. What? So what is the business look like at the moment? What tell us a bit of what’s the kind of a bit of the backstory because you, you were in the bank? Previously?

Jonathan Mannion
Yes, I did. I started off, you know, we moved to Australia 616 17 years ago. And the stuff that I did, I spent eight years in the UK, and sort of towards the end of sort of prime brokerage and stop lending. And that stuff just didn’t exist in Melbourne. And I really wasn’t convinced that I wanted to deal with institutional clients, and then sort of found a really small niche, financial advice, stop lending and investment bank all in one. And that was sort of where I got to sort of my, I guess a foot in the door and then moved through a practice that was eventually acquired by a&p. That wasn’t necessarily going to work for me. So I went through the decks. And then, you know, as the banks were exiting, I looked at it and went, you know, do I you know, it’s one of those watershed moments where I go, right, do I want to take the plunge and go and set up my practice? Or am I comfortable being an employee forever and chose to start my own practice? So I didn’t, I didn’t take my book. I basically started day one, back at square one, not a Dunsworth revenue, which is scary when you’ve got you know, family to support and you got to put runs on the board. It’s you know, it’s intimidating stuff. But that’s sort of where that where the business started. And then, you know, now it’s maybe still sold advisor to two team members. paraplanner slash associate advisor, and administrator, and it’s just the three of us

James Wrigley
that there. So did you start? Did you start the business when you’re in Melbourne? And then move to Newcastle? Or did you start it when you’re a new customer? What was the timing around moving as well.

Jonathan Mannion
So moved from, from one of the banks, when I was in Melbourne, left there started sort of afresh with it with a different bank up here, did five years in that bank, and then everything sort of was on the on the way to winding up. And then so we’ve been operating now for four and a half years in the business

James Wrigley
yet, and going well, for you like what is what is your client base look like? Who do you who you’re working with? Who are you to be clients?

Jonathan Mannion
So from a, from a client point of view, it’s high income time poor professionals. And traditionally, my clients are probably smarter than me, probably earn more money than me. You know, it’s a really sort of SmartSwitch don’t client base, and I love working with people like that. We’ve probably only got 70 Odd ongoing clients about pretty close to 70. And we still taken out a couple more, but it’s not, you know, we’re probably going to get to a point where so right? Well, we’re now sort of near or at capacity. And then it’s, I guess, looking after the clients that we’ve got,

James Wrigley
and so no plans to take on another advisor or someone that’s in your team to, for them to go to go through you keep it as the solo advisor.

Jonathan Mannion
It’s really interesting. It’s trying to it’s trying to work out, do I want to build a business? Or do I just love being an advisor, and like, I love both parts of it. But I’m not 100% convinced that I want to grow and expand, I saw some really interesting research, Michael Kitsis have done a thing about and you know, that tracked advisor happiness, and they said, you know, advisor, happiness dips until you get more support, and then it rises. And then, you know, it dips again, when you take on more advisors, but your revenue grows. And it was this constant sort of up and down. And I’m getting to the point where, you know, that’s the sort of the question in my mind, I’ve actually got that. I mean, she would be the absolute ideal person to bring into the business. But it’s, you know, whether or not I do it, and then when, because particularly that, like the social media, I mean, the way that you and I caught up was by tick tock, that stuff has really started to take off now. And there probably is the capacity to take on another advisor. It’s just whether or not I’ve got the strength.

James Wrigley
Yeah, look, it’s the classic financial planning question is like, Well, what do you actually want to do this? Sure, you can take on another advisor and, and grow a business if you want to, or you can keep you know, what have you 7080 clients or whatever number you decide is enough and be comfortable. And in your revenue and happy days. It’s like you can do whatever you want. It’s your business. And the financial planning question is what you want to do.

Jonathan Mannion
And that’s the trick, that’s the bit that I’m still weighing up at the moment, I’m sort of leaning towards just being solo advisor. And it’s really interesting, because a lot of you know, a lot I’ve listened to a lot of the podcast episodes, and sort of providing sentiment seems to be that a solo and bio, you know, one man band isn’t sustainable, and I recommend is very, very comfortably. So I think you’ve got to have the right sort of setup. And you’ve got to watch, you know, the costs element. But, you know, I, I see this as sustainable long term, it’s just whether or not I’d take somebody else out and grow. Yeah.

James Wrigley
And what what type of support? Do you get into the business from others? And aside from theirs? It sounds like there’s a couple of direct employees we view. But what others what are the services from your licensee or anywhere else? What are the services you’re taking on so that you can kind of confidently say like, you’ve just said, that you’re happy being a solo advisor and you think it’s sustainable?

Jonathan Mannion
I think it’s probably the network and having that really good, strong network to say, the big that I’m really good on is this bit. I’m not going to start going too far down the estate planning path because I’ve got to got that that I can refer you to who’s an absolute guru. It’s literally all he does. You want to do mortgage broking, I can give you a some rough idea as to what to expect, but really, this is the guy that you need to speak to that a couple of brokers that I refer to, they’ve got very set niches both really specialized. You know, there’s the accounts will be so it’s sort of having that network that I can refer out to just to say, you know, I’m literally have specialized in sort of switching the flags and everything else can go out to experts if that’s their need.

James Wrigley
What about from a business operations perspective? Like, clients are going to pay you somehow? And like, how do you get a bookkeeper? Do you have? Does your licensee help with that? Like, what? What do you do on that front?

Jonathan Mannion
So So that sort of stuff in terms of the, the payment, everything’s collected by the licensee, I don’t have a bookkeeping, because from a revenue point of view coming in, there is a fortnightly payment that it’s done, I keep an eye on, you know, if any direct debits fail, it’s, you know, us on the phone going pain, you know, just let us know, when we can read debit, because it hasn’t gone through, a lot of stuff runs through the investment accounts. Because I don’t want to have to have that conversation with the accountant going, you haven’t worded your summary, you know, this is the advice and the summary of costs. When we count, we just run it through through investment account, across single or whatever it is. And then in terms of payments out, there’s not an enormous amount, a lot of the stuffs recurring, you know, for the tech side of things, I’ve got the rule set up zero. You know, a lot of that stuff is is done, I think the thing that I probably have to put a rule in for is, you know, buying milk and coffee for the person. That’s pretty well, a bookkeeping site. It’s been pretty skinny.

James Wrigley
Yeah. Nice. It’s good to hear. Because, as you said, there is a lot of you know that I’ve spoken to a number of advisors and just listening to other episodes. Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot in that space, where they’re kind of saying, well, is being a solo advisor, having my little business couple of employees, is that sustainable or not. And I agree with your sentiment that there, there seems to be this, this sentiment out there that possibly it’s not sustainable, and there needs to be a bit of safety and numbers coming together.

Jonathan Mannion
I think the one thing that I have putting on we’re in the middle of putting in place at the moment is is another guy who runs his own business. And by paycheck and said, Listen, I want to put a Buy Sell agreement in place, because I want the certainty that if my wife is convinced that I’m gonna get a mug shot and another ground, and there’s a scenario where, you know, all of that happens together. But, you know, since I want the certainty of knowing that she’s not going to have to worry about, you know, getting stuck into the business and trying to get it ready for sale. So he’s been within, you know, within the same licensee, I’ve known him for years. And I say, Look, if if I go, I want to have the businesses now yours, and that’s your problem. We’ve got the funding in place that literally is a ticking plug

James Wrigley
exercise. Fantastic.

Jonathan Mannion
Yeah, and I look, I’m because, you know, the conversation started when you when your business is bigger than mine, you know, what’s in it for you. And as soon as what’s in it for me is the fact that I’ve effectively sold my business, my business now is your problem. And in this in the same way, your wife doesn’t want to get out of his wife, but she doesn’t want to get involved in selling the business. He literally wants to be able to go, there it is, it’s gone. She’s got the the value of the business extracted already. And then his business becomes my problem. Yeah. And I think for the two of us, that’s, that partly solves the sole operator, sort of issue here.

James Wrigley
And from your social media, if you’re out and you can do it, or I am catching fish or something like you seem to be on the weekend, I can understand your

Jonathan Mannion
picture. A couple of couple of moments where I’ve you know, just second guess myself, but yeah, it’s, it’s good.

James Wrigley
Yeah. Nice. So I wanted to pick up a bit on a conversation that we had last time when we were talking that said you like you kind of came out of the bank and you what I remember you saying whether they were the exact words that you said you kind of got a little bit lost kind of on your own until until you stumbled across Ensembl and you commented that it stuck with me You said you felt like you’d found your people and you know, you said you consuming a lot of the podcasts and you’ve picked up little bits and pieces from different people of explaining how they you know, they’re using different elements. Can you can you walk us through I guess, you know, firstly how how you’ve kind of built your service like what do you know someone someone reaches out to you, like you’re gonna get in a bit of you know, we’re kind of we all like to geek out on on the tech that we’re using, like, walk us through the process of someone reaches out to you you contact them somehow, you know, making file nodes delivering advice, Can Can you talk us through how that works and then The different pieces that you’re using in that process to, to make your life a whole lot easier. So you’re not bashing out file notes and things.

Jonathan Mannion
So there’s a couple of things. So I thought my process was pretty good. I was very comfortable. And it’s sort of been developed in different iterations for 10 or 12 years. And I got to the point growing, I probably need to grow the business a little bit quicker. And that’s why I engaged a coach Steve salvia been on here. And I went to him going right out, I don’t know, when my next client is coming from. And this is the problem that I want you to help them solve. The stuff that he solved, for me, in part was that, but probably, you know, a bigger piece that he helped me solve it was, was what does that process look like? And what, you know, how do you how do you look after the people that you want to but also respectfully say to somebody, you’re not, you’re not going to fit here, and they will will advise if you but it’s not going to be me. And I went in going, if I’m going to pay him what he’s charging, I’m gonna go with a really open mind. And I still got a trap. Absolutely everything that he tells me to do, I might not like it, it might feel uncomfortable, I might think I know better. But you got to go in with that open mindset of I’m going to do absolutely everything that I’m paying him to guide me through. His process is phenomenal. Now my conversion ratio, beef ball going to stay, I was really happy with it, that conversion ratio afterwards is unbelievable. Because his process of sort of pre assessment is, is really, really strong. So you know, things like the tick tock, or you know, Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever it is, it’s got a little link in the bio to book a 15 minute chat. But in order to book a 15 minute chat, I want mobile email, and you got to answer five questions. You have somebody says, are not working full time, or don’t have enough spare cash flow, I need you to help me remove something, that’s a really quick response, hey, you know, I might even pre record them a video and say, it’s not really my thing I can see what you’re trying to do here is if you want an intro to somebody who looks or feels like this, here we go, it’s cost me five minutes instead of sounds cold, but wasting an hour, an hour and a half for somebody that is just not going to fit my business. Yeah. And that screening process is ready, you know, is really good, really strong. And then you know, if we get on that call, I’ve already got sort of a pre defined process to go through and weed out the people that I don’t think you’re going to be a good fit. And that

James Wrigley
so that even even that initial screening, where someone clicks on a link to book a 15 minute phone call, or using Calendly for that, like what what is a Calendly? Using? And then your question acuity,

Jonathan Mannion
you can use, you can equally use Calendly, but only use acuity. And then

James Wrigley
so that, so then you have built a template, you built a workflow, whatever you wanna call it in there that prompts them. Name, email, address, phone number, answer these five questions, right? And then I guess that itself is going to filter out some people as well. Because if I’m not answering these five questions, forget about it. And they disappear. Absolutely. Right. They, they, you know, they’re not okay, so. So there’s the acuity part there. So you have this phone call with someone you’d say, Yep, I agree. We can help I can help you in some way, shape or form. Yep. What happens next? What happens after

Jonathan Mannion
after we booked something so if they you know, if they say, I’m not sure what a partner is, in dire looks like, I’ll send them the direct scheduling link and go when you found a time for both you picking the link, I’ve got to prefer and this is again, Steve’s sort of process, I’ve got a template, and it’ll sound really silly, but it’s saved as a signature in Outlook. So instead of having to retype the damn thing, and you know, I’ve got an intro video little bit about us, this is how we operate, who we look after how you might feel here some questions, all that stuff is literally click on that. The initial Meet and Greet signature, it all adds in it’s got the video, and away we go. So that’s that big book tip. And then we start to go through the boss process. So the first meeting it’s 90 minutes and there’s literally no he’s, again, it’s so the state’s process here. It goes through all of the stuff that we need to and it does. Effectively if you think about like is this Sales piece. It’s not, I’m not a big one for selling stuff. I’m not a salesy sort of guy. But it takes you through that process and go, we’re going to start here, these are the things that we’re going to do, here’s where you’re stuck. This is how we’re going to do it. This is how it operates. This is the fee structure. This is what’s in it for you sign Yarrow book, the second meeting. And it it runs almost exactly to 90 minutes every single time. And it’s a really, it’s such a good process, because it brings out all of the stuff that people are worried about. And all of the things that we can do as advisors, and it shows these things that we can do matches them up. I’ve run a you know, a flat fee model only, there’s no commissions, and it literally, you know, I talk them through all of that stuff, it pretty well answers everything they can possibly want. And if you’re not sure, at the end of of 90 minutes, then that’s okay. It might be that you need to find someone else find someone different. And you know, we had that conversation right up front to say to people, I want you to be really critical of me, I want you to I want you to judge me really harshly on to two different sort of facets. One is the person the other its professional. So if you think that I’m a really smart guy that it makes your skin crawl, it’s not going to work. And if you think I’m a lovely guy, but not particularly switched on, again, it’s not going to work. And because I want them to think about this as advice, but it’s the relationship. And the two have to have to match up.

James Wrigley
Yeah, gotcha. Okay, so in anticipation of that first 90 minute meeting that you’re having with them, I you asking them to share any further information with you beforehand, other than what you’ve gathered in the phone call?

Jonathan Mannion
No. So that that first meeting is, tell me what your pain points are. This is the things that we can do, you know, this is what we can do to solve those problems, we’re gonna get you to hear at that stage, you’ll probably don’t even know, you know, asset position, we get an idea of sort of the income that the income and assets may come out and that conversation, but we get to the point where I’ve got a really good idea of what’s going on. And then also, right, this is the fee structure, sign here to say that you will engage in my services to write the SLA. And then we’ll book a second meeting. And then I’ll say to them, at the end of this meeting, I’m going to send you a link. But I want you to click on the link, and I want to put I want you to put all of the details in I am not an Asian guy with that, you know that like the What is your name and your date of birth, I don’t have the time and patience to do that. So I get the clients in fact find themselves. They do the risk profile themselves. Ending that second meeting, we’ll go through that together and go right, let’s just sense check the stuff that you’ve used. So I use advice revolution, and then the sort of CRM pieces x plane and business two way sort of push and pull. So the front end of x plan, the last time I looked at it wasn’t something that I want my

James Wrigley
son the same. Yeah. So

Jonathan Mannion
with advice, revolution, Etn. You know, it looks and feels pretty good. It allows that push, and I have to add a fact find the risk profile was like a real game changer for me. Because if I have to ask that set of questions, again, I think you know, the frustration, it’s wasted time. I want them to answer those questions so that I don’t steer or guide. And then once we’ve got the Indicative your growth profile or whatever it is, then that’s the bit of the discussion that I really want to have. So you’ve Indicatively come out as this, I’ve got a slide deck that I run through and go this is what it actually means. This is one the emotion of investing. This is the difference between growth and a high growth and growth and unbalanced. The good times the bad times How does that feel? And then we start to get for me, that’s a much better discussion. You know, the tick box exercise?

James Wrigley
Yeah, I was gonna ask how you had to use sense check that that risk profiling exercise because you can we I do it in a ask every client the same kind of set of questions. It’s part of meaning and I’ve just done one earlier today. And yeah, you’re kind of getting into that just asking the same. I’m asking different people but the same questions over and over and over since Jeff chickened out along the way, and it’s interesting to see how you deal with that at the end. So someone answers a set of questions, but then you’re circling back to say, Okay, this is what it actually means the way that you’ve answered this question. And this is what it actually means for you. And then you put your advisor hat on, you can kind of gauge whether you think it’s a true reflection of what they’re actually up to and where they’re at.

Jonathan Mannion
Exactly. So So when if I asked you those questions, I can steer your answers in the way I ask them. And I can put more emphasis on the answer that I think is most relevant. And I want to remove my sort of inherent biases from that pick, what you know, once they’ve answered the question, then we can have the discussion and we can do the sense check. And for me, I think there’s a lot more value, in sense checking in and saying, look, you’ve said this. But we’re also trying to shoot for the stars, but you want to be ultra conservative. Let’s have a look at that. And sort of, you know, I’ve got the, you know, the Vanguard charts, and I’ve, you know, there’s a whole bunch of charts that I’ve collected over time. And then I’ll, you know, talk them through talking through that stuff. But if I had to ask those questions around the risk profile is art, it’s painful.

James Wrigley
And that’s advice revolution as well the risk profiling through advice revolution, or is that something?

Jonathan Mannion
So? You can actually I mean, I’ve pre loaded so me the risk profile questions, and I are just, they literally just loaded that into me.

James Wrigley
So you have this second meeting with them? Your sense checking everything. At the end of that meeting, they kind of agreeing, yes, this is this is us, this is what I’m expecting of you. And then you go away, and you do statement of advice is that what happens after the second meeting?

Jonathan Mannion
Yeah, so actually, I’ve left out a point. So at the end of the first meeting, they did the fact find that risk profile, and then we sent them a series of tasks and the tasks I want you to grow, I want you to sign the research authority, I want you to sign your drag and drop that into the portal, I want you to take your USB type ID in the meeting. But I want you to take a copy of your super statement, drag and drop that in there. Here’s the insurance pre assessment form, don’t skip that one, every answer needs to be marked down. And that’s the portal as well. So by the time we got there already have, you know, they filled out the Fact Finder risk profile, I’ve got the research authority, so quite often will will have the research authority, you know, uploading, and sometimes we’ll leave it at the the the super stuff, you know, the research dump. And part of that, you know, when we come to the second meeting, a lot of it is just a sense check. And I may even have some thoughts on strategy. When I do the super sounds, that sounds silly, but any you’ve seen that that renders TV show that voice. Yeah. So like the blind auditions, what they do is I’ll put it up on x plane, they’ll say right here at three sinking funds. This one’s really low cost. And it’s got low features. This one’s quite expensive, and also has low features. And this one is high futures and high cost, let’s have a look at the cost, the features and then the performance, you pick your fund, really mind which one, it’s very rare that somebody’s going to pick the industry fund that they with these high cost and low functionality, they either go with the really low cost index option, or the rep. You know, I’ve been from an advice point of view, when you take the labels off, it takes away their, you know, bias towards one font or another one style of font. And then, you know, from a file learning point of view, that’s really easy conversation. And when I play that back to them at presentation stage, do you remember when you picked this font will now you know, this is the name of the fund. It is super fund X, you already know what the performance has been roughly but let’s go through the makeup portfolio and rest of it from a compliance point. It was interesting because they got picked up at audit. And the blog started laughing he’s like voice he goes, that’s a really bad show. But in the way that you position yourself, it’s it’s actually really interesting to watch somebody go through that process or read through your fall notes on that process and how they’ve selected it. And so

James Wrigley
I’m interested in the file no party, like is that a recorded meeting you’re having with the client? Or is it? Are you recording what they’re saying? Or are you just making file notes after the fact

Jonathan Mannion
no, just make file notes. I’m not a big fan of recording meetings because a lot like I tend to miss the way that I view advice. A lot of it is about you know head versus height. But I would say at least once a month somebody’s in tears in my office because I want to talk about what you know what keeps you awake at night and what scared See, and what gets you really excited. And sometimes it’s that relief of, I’m going to be okay. And I’ve been holding that in so tight that somebody will burst into tears, or somebody last week is going through this enormous change in their life. And as it took me through it, you know, I don’t want to record that stuff. It’s feels quite invasive. And I don’t want that. But from a fallout point of view, I’ve always bought efficiencies, the business bottlenecks, and anything that I dislike, so any negatives, and, you know, for me file notes for some, I just don’t, I just don’t like doing them. And I looked at them when right, I am procrastinating here because I don’t want to talk them out. So right, we’ll get rid of that. And I’ve probably been using I use Dragon speak. And I have been for probably 14 or 15 years now. But you know, for me, that was a way of saying I don’t have to talk to foreigners. And then I found that I was delaying doing drugs speaking, you know, from a behavioral point of view, why I went out? Well, it’s because I’ve had to use a USB headset. And I’ve got to take it out of its case, and then plug it in and unfold it and put it on the headsets uncomfortable. That sounds silly. But I can I can see. And notice that that’s where a delay went. And I went right, I’ve now got an external bike that sits on the desk, and you plug it in and you talk you know. So from that point of view, it’s trying to pass out anything that’s going to delay advice getting, you know, underway.

James Wrigley
And is that how you kind of your SOA request, whatever you want to call it, and how you ask your paraplanner to write your statements of advice for you. Is it the same thing such as a dragon speak notes about whatever your strategy might be? Or how are you dealing with that part?

Jonathan Mannion
The reason is that I hope the portfolio request forms. I’ve gone through various iterations and everyone just I find intensely irritating. And so I just use loom to open up the thing. And you know, what I found is that because I didn’t like the form, and it would take me half an hour to fill it in or whatever it was, I was procrastinating, you leave, you know that that form uncompleted in you, you created three day lag in your process. It’s all and I’m broken down and went right? How long is it going to take me to do that recommendations around super, it’s really simple. Click the Go button on loom. And I was thought of Hey, Joe, you know, this is the overview of the plan. This is the client, these interviews that I’m excited about these the bits that we’re going to have to be careful of because the fee structure like that, it’s a two minute video, and I just put the link in that in the email to the next one is these the super recommendations. And it’s so quick because like I’m now at the supermarket, you know, before your meetings finished what your super recommendations are likely to be, they’re going to be barely close to the mic, because you’ve been doing this for so long. And it takes me two minutes to tell somebody, you know, what we want, what the alternatives were? That’s really quick. And it’s so it’s so different from a mindset point of view of here of 512 minute videos on the recommendations, rather than here’s a 35 or 40 minute talk jack for that I want to poke myself in the eye.

James Wrigley
Yeah, I’m gonna adopt that myself. It’s one of the one of the pain points just from my, in my own process advice processes, these meetings and finalize the factfinder and all the rest of it, and then it’s okay, get bridging it from the thoughts that are in my head and the notes that I’ve made. bringing those two together, for someone to pick it up and, and organize the SLA. So is that is

Jonathan Mannion
your skill set? And not just you and I, as advisors in general, the skill set of sitting down and talking to people? You know, yes, there’s the point, you haven’t stopped around the technical side of things, but a big part of it is being able to sit and talk to people. And if that, you know, if if you’ve got a verbal skill set, or it’s something that you enjoy it so much easier to talk through things than type out. Even if it’s, you know, voice recognition software, or whatever it is. Yeah,

James Wrigley
yeah. And then so your requests your SOA, is that the paraplanners that someone that’s internal with you or Yes,

Jonathan Mannion
I’m sure the external piece and what I found is that there was turnover also don’t do SLAs you sort of traditional SLAs anymore, and I haven’t, you know for quite some time and to get an external service. to working with what I want, it was me feeding them. And I, you know, I mentioned that, and I don’t like that, that delay piece as well. And you know, the delays are really important for me because I’m a, it’s a small business. And if I’m trying to compete with bigger, better resource businesses, I got to be nimble, and I got to be quick. Because, you know, if I right, it’s all everything’s about shortening that timeframe for me, because if I write 500 grands worth of revenue, and I’m doing it over five years, I’m gonna go break, and then I’m gonna close the doors, and I’m gonna go out to find a job. But if I can have all those timeframes down, if I can write 500, in one year, because things look very different than so it’s trying to cut out, you know, all of the delays and get the advice in and done, you know, efficiently.

James Wrigley
You, you mentioned they’re doing SOA is a little bit differently. Can kid talk about what you’re doing there? Yeah, so

Jonathan Mannion
actually, this comes back to like this podcast probably four or eight years ago. And, you know, I don’t know, the other guy’s involved in this literally through listening. But it’s, you know, it was an interview that Andrew rocks was doing this. Now we do some stuff differently in our business. One of the things that we asked our clients is, how do you want to be communicated with, you know, we want a physical document, do you want text message, an email, an audio message, and I can remember, I was driving home, and was just on dusk, and I went, Oh, holy shit, I am pulled over, I got the phone out. And my phone’s full of notes. But I went that is that’s brilliant. You know, firstly, why haven’t I thought about that, but the way that he articulated that was fantastic. And it’s an idea. It’s sort of at the core of, of how, you know, we provide the advice, but it’s at a different iteration. So, you know, I’m looking at the stuff that intensely frustrating things like ROIs. But nobody reads that thing. I’m gonna send you a 10 page document that’s taken three days or four days to produce, and I’ve sent the request, and then I’ve checked it, and then stop it. So and it was so you know, his, his question was, how do you want to be communicated with and shortly after that Ben Nash was talking about, he said, when we bring new people on board, we’ve got this training manual, and we use this bit of software called loom will do screen recording. And then I’ve got a training log now and what better do that so I’ve done that. And then when if I can use Ben’s idea, and Andrews together, I can sort of hit a couple of issues at once. So particularly with things like ROI, as we started doing video ROI is probably three, three and a half years ago. And, you know, we got to hit a couple of points from a compliance point of view, but it’s a Word doc with like the thumbs switches or whatever it is, where it changes. And you know, it’s clicking the Go button on loom and saying to the client, hey, when we caught up, these are the things that we spoke about the remember that these were the changes that we’re going to make, these are the consequences, CGT fees, whatever it is. And also, we did the modeling, because we always do the modeling. And you can remember that we’re shooting for retirement or whatever goal it is, and you’re on track. And you don’t need to do anything. But this video just summarizes this, if you need anything, let me know. And the feedback from clients was really, really good, because I’d tell them, Hey, do you want the 10 page document to talk about the switches? And they’re like, no. But the video, it’s not uncommon for me to see somebody commenting on a limb. Hey, Josh, I love this great to have a reminder. So that was the first iteration. And I couldn’t get the you know, I’m doing video SLA is happening. So got signed up late last year. But compliance and labor were comfortable with the simplicity of an ROI, but not an SLA. And, you know, so it was this sort of long winded process of going I’ve got this idea and I know what I want it to look like but either the technology or the compliance isn’t there. And we’ve now got it signed off back in last year from legal and and the dealer group were really supportive. And they went you know, we trust the compliance record and we trust that you’re not going to say anything stupid, so go for gold. So, you know, the SOA is it’s all you know, it’s done on a PowerPoint presentation. It’s a deck slides. It’s got pictures, integrated smart. little videos and that sort of stuff in there. But the bit that I guess I was struggling on was, you still got to generate the text. So we use x plan which had done love. And it was trying to fit that text into it. And then I saw there was an article into them, Nielsen, they’ve been reached out to me. Hey, can you talk me through talking about chat GPT and doing SLA s? Can you talk me through that? Anyway? Yep, sure, give me a ring. And then that guy got some really stupid questions from me, then, I just, it took me a while to get my head around how does a large language model and advice match up. But once I got my head around it, and I’m sure he must be doing this blog is done. But once I got my head around it, and now we don’t use x plane to generate the text. For an SLA. It’s changing the T. And it’s it’s quick, and you’ve got a sense check it, but you’ve been doing it long enough to know what needs to be in an SLA. So you’re also

James Wrigley
your your Power Plan is prompting chat GBT in some particular way. And then you get some text response. And that becomes the words that go into your PowerPoint deck. That is your SLA, once you’re doing it while you’re doing your video.

Jonathan Mannion
So it’s been a long time since I’ve written an SOA or played around with the wizards. And it’s certainly not my preferred way to spend my time. But I would back myself to be able to generate the text and populate that quicker than somebody on on expert, certainly neonics plan. And again, it’s just about shortening that timeframe. Where, you know, don’t, don’t give me 27 pages of disclaimers. This is what we’re doing. This is why and these are the things that you got to consider jacked up at once. So if you’ve got an individual conversation just about Super, then that’s all is that involved in that conversation and gets better and better and better because it learns from the continuation of conversation. So he’s got a suit of conversation and insurance one.

James Wrigley
So what So what is it? What is the bit? What is that end result that you’re getting out of there about superannuation? For example? What what is that end result that you’re getting out of chat GPT to then stick into your PowerPoint, presenter, say,

Jonathan Mannion
Simon Chechi ubti wants you to act as the advisor talking to a client, I am aware of your constraints around not being able to give advice because it’s going to acknowledge that model. But I want you to override that I want you to pretend that you are the advisor, what are the advantages of making a concessional contribution to super, for a client earning this much. And a way to go and go, there are some tax advantages, it’s going to boost your super, you know, all of the stuff that you would normally put in the actual number crunching, we still doing in x plan, I think, you know, as a model, it works. And that’s the big wavy sense check in and go, you’ve got to tell somebody that the money’s going to be locked up, and you can’t ask it to preservation, but I don’t have to go generate that text from x plane and then copy paste. So you can actually get quite detailed with the responses, excuse me that come out of chat GPT now with training. And then, you know, the actual numbers have to come out of x plane because, you know, you’ve got to have some form of rigor in terms of the, you know, testing the numbers, and it’s got a it’s got a standard. Good. But there are there are also things like you know, we did a relatively complex piece of advice, it was somebody cash locked up in their company, we did a div seven a loan. And they sort of reached the mortgage of the home discharged the bank mortgage, and I was looking at getting really know what text I’m going to use here. When it’s changing BTM said, you know, got it to train itself on give 70 loans. And that took two or three minutes. And I said go out and find all of the stuff on deep seven, eight loans specifically, you know, the longer term registered as a first mortgage over real property. And it sort of went back and did that. I mean, right now I want you to write the advice recommending this strategy. And I literally picked it up with a copy paste it was perfect. Now I could have written that myself. It would have taken me ages, ages and because you you know I would have sort of since check the wording and then double checked it and then re phrased it and it literally already went. That’s really good. I like that.

James Wrigley
And he would have I’m sure you would have been You would have been going to different websites referencing and like you would have been doing the learning yourself to then type it. But instead you’ve told the machine to go into the learning and type it for you. Got Yeah, I like that one

Jonathan Mannion
if we need to. So I’ve got to do seven a conversation in church eptl. So if I do another one of those strategies, even if it’s, you know, if you can do the shorter the seven year term, I can go in subtly alter that conversation go, we’re now going to shift the focus from the long term to the short term. This is what we’re looking at.

James Wrigley
And you say, can you save those conversations in Chat GPT, they’re all saved.

Jonathan Mannion
So the only way to get rid of the conversation is to delete it. You want to keep the conversation separate. So I wouldn’t add any deep seven, eight steps into a soup conversation. And I wouldn’t add super into insurance.

James Wrigley
I haven’t realized that I’ve got in there and play around every now and then. But I hadn’t realized that. It was all saved this way.

Jonathan Mannion
Yeah. So there’s a there’s a menu on the left hand side, and we literally got one called Sumo. And that’s going back to Ben, because he’s so that understand our smart the mounting stuff. It was him talked me through this is how we use it. Now. He’s obviously spent a lot of time doing it. Now, basically piggybacked off his guidance, and, you know, and initial research, but it’s, it’s incredibly smart in terms of generating this sort of text that you probably want to put in there. And it gets, you know, learns over time.

James Wrigley
Right. Well, John, I thank you for your time today. I know you’ve got a meeting to get to. I’ve got other meetings to get to as well this afternoon. As I did when I spoke to the first time incredibly generous with your time and even now as we’ve been recording, we’re getting close to an hour of recording this. So thank you for spending the time chatting with me. I’ve learned a lot. Hopefully anyone that’s listening has done as well. Congratulations on what you’ve what you’ve built in Atlanta for five years. So you’ve done a tremendous job. Well done and lots of golden enter in this episode, that’s for sure.

Jonathan Mannion
I hope so. But this podcast without the podcast, my business would look very, very different. Follow old school. And you know, quite excited about some of the stuff that we’re doing but a lot of it comes back to the people I’m here who you know, say free with their info and timing and knowledge.

James Wrigley
Thanks Jono. I’ll chat with you again soon.

Jonathan Mannion
Thanks very much.