#410 Steve Sloane – Transcript

James Wrigley
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’m James Wrigley. I’ve got the pleasure of speaking with Steve Sloane today, Steve from Link Wealth Group or owner of Link Wealth Group. Steve, you were kind enough. The other week, put a post out on LinkedIn saying now there’s anyone very free for chat. You know, kind of then in that morning, you reached out saying you’re happy to have a chat at some point. And so we’re here we are. So Steve, thanks for joining me.

Steve Sloane
Yeah. Thanks, James. Great to be here. I know I’ve seen your face pop up a couple times, though, we got a great opportunity to meet and have a chat. Yes.

James Wrigley
Yeah. And recorded and value for everyone. So. So link, link wealth group. As I said before, we before I started before I press record on this, you know, by and large, a lot of the people that I get the opportunity to speak to us out of this podcast, they kind of solo operators, in a sense, you know, might be one advisor to advisors, powerplant, maybe the client service manager or some operational type support. But a lot of the ensemble communities is relatively small financial planning businesses, you from just judging by your website, and I’m keen to hear your story. You seem to have grown past that. Don’t just one, one advisor, bit, can you tell it like, what is the link? What is the link look like at the moment now? And then maybe we’ll go back to how you kind of got to where you are at the moment?

Steve Sloane
Yeah, for sure. So link today, we’ve phased out a Melbourne so head offices in Melbourne, we’ve got an office in Adelaide. I’m in Adelaide today. And then sort of small little satellite office in Brisbane, Sydney that we use from Melbourne to go up and down and service clients in, we’ve got five ADRs. As we speak, we’ve always sort of floated around the five to six, eight hours, but a bit shorter than that just stuffing gene general or think is in the industry. And trying to find another ARB, time, but it’s a bit of time at the minute. And then we’ve got a team of about six, or we call associates or FPGAs. So whether they’re signing a while program or just about to start we’re have a base about six of those. So it’s about 11 or 12. In the advice team, I call it which gives the engine room. Yeah, then we’ve got the operations in Melbourne sorry, ops managers, the five or six ops in Melbourne. But then the business is sort of multifaceted, because all we did about five years ago is create an offshore business that that it’s called Avira. And I’ve got about 30 Odd staff over there in the Philippines that I support the engine room of Link wealth group. Okay. And then we got to finance business. We’ll go mink will finance which is the mortgage broking side of the business. So yeah, all that was very 5052 staff across across the whole group that really support the business and yeah, and it started 2012. And it was just me

James Wrigley
in a room. Yeah. Look, as I said, you know, there’s, there’s not that many that build financial planning businesses up to 50 staff wherever they might be sitting and whatever they might be doing. So that the business that’s in the Philippines, is that is that just kind of resourcing for your own business? Do you do you have virtual resources or whatever want to call it for for other businesses as well? Yeah.

Steve Sloane
Originally was started to support link wealth group, originally. But then about three years ago, we decided to outsource it to other FaZe Clan practices. So we also look after about another 14 businesses around Australia. Yep. And supply so the administration staff for them as well. So they do so they enjoy and administration, if you like the applications, all that sort of jazz. Yeah. And yeah, so it started to go to other businesses as well, which has been nice

James Wrigley
so that those 30 people that are offshore are supporting you and and the others. That’s all in the one, one business, I guess,

Steve Sloane
correct. So I’ve got about 11 of them that support my mice, my group at Lincoln and the rest of them are sort of outsourced to others around the country. And we used to say like got a bit of a center of excellence? Yeah, they all sit in the same room together and talk about advice and how to implement it better and things like that. And it’s been really, really good.

James Wrigley
Fantastic. And so in the Australian team, it’s really just the advisors, associate advisor, what have you, you know, particular title, you might call it people going through the professional year, so you don’t have like a client services team as such. Yeah,

Steve Sloane
we do. So I’ve always been so yeah, even with the outsourcing arrangement, I’ve always made sure that if something happened, and I got cut off and say there’s an earthquake, or what happens over there that we can still operate. So I’ve got two client service offices in Melbourne. We’re about to bring on a third, and a full time receptionist, and a Operations Manager, and we’re just recruiting HR, P and C now. So that’s so yeah, we just make sure we all can always build it out. So we we all pray if we need to.

James Wrigley
Yeah, right. And so how to take us through the story of starting from just you to ending up at 50 Odd now like, what Where did you? Were you in financial advice before you started on your own? What was the story there,

Steve Sloane
I was part owner of another company called I get financial partners, with another fella based out of Melbourne. And then in 2012, we amicably just decided to go our separate ways. And so I pulled out some clients out of that business, I had obviously out about 30, or 30 families that came over with me to start and so yeah, just started with myself and a small desk in one of those share offices in Melbourne, back in 2012. And then look at there was a lot of ups and downs and sideways movements and a lot of mistakes across the journey. And as we all know, with business, but I think we just always had the philosophy to try and find the right people to come on board. And so that that from the get go. And we know how important that is. And just always try to go forward. Yeah, whatever is happening, be royal commissions or whatever issues, we’ll face your time, just just keep on going forward and pressing forward. And yeah, and so I sort of grew from there.

James Wrigley
And your role at the moment, see, you’re still seeing clients, you’re not just kind of heading up the business, you’re still financial advisor as well,

Steve Sloane
I am eight year look, I love it. Look, I don’t want to give that away. I really enjoy seeing clients. But what we are model at link is we’ve got a pod systems, I’ll be an advisor, I’ve got two sort of associates that sit with me and say with Josh, and Billy and the like. And then what we do is over time, we feed the up and comers, the clients. So this year, I went from 120 clients down, I’m gonna go to about 50 clients and all of those clients have gone on to other advisors or one of our associates came through to AR and he’s taken about 50 of my clients. So we’ve got that model where all then build it up again. And then as the new light come through of p y into AR will then feed on to those guys. And we find the clients have no problem with that, like they’ve dealt with the guys for two years or three years, even if they’re just associates or junior advisor, whatever you want to call them. They don’t send a waiver, because they know I’m always here. And I’m happy to be sort of guy service by another advisor. And yeah,

James Wrigley
I’m interested in how you manage that process. Like we have a fairly similar process here. And it’s interesting to hear how are others managing that? So you build it up, you transition some clients onto someone else that’s coming through? Yeah, how do you manage that with with the client, but what’s the conversation around that with the client? Has it worked?

Steve Sloane
Yeah. So before we’ve managed to, like move them on, they’ve been working with that person for a long time. Anyway, so I’ve got Brian Duckworth one of my new ARs and he went through the power program at Lincoln advisor Academy of link and then that because I’ve been working with him for two years, and all the clients know Him day to day anyway and been talking to have it was such an easy conversation to the point where we didn’t have to say much to be honest, it was it was like you know, brightens here and I just said look, you know, the business is changing, the models changing so we’ve just got to be very allocating but I’m always here and to go through there was just no no negative feedback whatsoever. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing because I didn’t worry too much like wasn’t looking after him. And that

James Wrigley
and that’s probably been our experience here to where particularly with the clients going into an associate advisor that had been working with for a while like there’s been now our managing director when he was handing over his last clients they were to one of the advisors stiff and the conversation went something along the lines of like Steph does all the work anyway and the clients will turn around and say we know that Ben is fine like just move on because you know you hit that you know you just show up at Steph actually does all the work if you’re done recall Steph so yeah, it does work quite smoothly. We’ve found it a little bit more challenging if and rightly so if the client doesn’t know that advisor, so far was handing over clients to different advisor in the business but that may well have been here for years. But their clients had no no touch point with them up until now that’s still still guys. Okay, but can be a little tougher.

Steve Sloane
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No for Dubbo. But yeah, all in all worse would be working pretty well that also frees up my time and Josh has done the same bill he’s doing the same and so really frees up the probably save your icon senior advisors to go out there and shorter more people and see more people and work on the business a bit more and yeah, multifaceted,

James Wrigley
that they’re going from just yourself to hiring your first person that albeit 10, or 11 years ago? Is there any kind of learnings from that? Or yes, you see a lot of stuff online about people saying kind of higher before you really need it. And then other people’s are somewhat drowning in work. And then all of a sudden, they tried to hire someone you have any learnings and not that you can share? Yeah,

Steve Sloane
all I just so challenging to make that call, it’s like when you got to sort of predict the future to sort of work out when the guy and I have made the mistake of going too early, digitally on my the annual cash flow was cooked. And so I just had to get a rival to go wrong. So yeah, I did. So sometimes I go wrong. Sometimes I got to write, I just got to write more often they go wrong, when to go. Because you got to go, if you’re going to grow, you’ve got to, you’ve got to employ staff. So it’s just when when to make the right call. If I got better at it over time, probably so probably just got better at knowing when to pull the string based on what I think’s coming. But it really is a bit of a gamble, to be honest.

James Wrigley
And it’s probably maybe one to two might be hardest, but then two to three, three to four, four to 549 to 50, there’s still you’re taking on another salary, there’d be a whole lot easier to absorb when you’ve got 49 Other people operating a business, you obviously got a reasonable scale there. Yeah. And if you do get the timing wrong, might be easier to absorb for a little while, heard a little bit more when you’re going from one to two, but it’s still the same decision to make the whole way through, isn’t it?

Steve Sloane
It is it is. And probably the most challenging. One was the offshore business because I wasn’t there physically on the ground a lot. And so we went, we hired three, and then we’re back to one. And then we went to three, four back to the ice that was just such an up and down process.

James Wrigley
So we’re not going to feel like he got the balance right for the moment. Yes, yeah,

Steve Sloane
look, I will, we’re probably fortunate. Now we’re in a position where you got that economies of scale, and you’ve got the structure and do the right managers on the ground in the right spots. So it has made it easier. But once you get past that mark of 20 to 30. Because you’ve got that structure. So if you drop a couple, which you’d ever want to do, but it can’t happen, you can absorb Asia or things like that. So that that’s probably where it’s gonna look

James Wrigley
like there’s just a couple of a couple of positions for your Australian team that you’re looking to fill different roles there. Yeah. You mentioned something we were talking before about your professional year and so forth, something he called the your advisor Academy. What What’s that all about?

Steve Sloane
Yeah, so we’ve launched it as liberal advisor Academy, a federally to bring in new new new recruits who want to be advisors. And it’s a program that’s it’s fully built online. We run it as a Scott Zone training portals, and it’s designed to run alongside the licensee. Py program, they can start it at the link side linkadvisor COVID, they can start whenever they want two years out from doing py doesn’t really matter. And it’s an online system that they go in and do sort of regulate training programs that we design at link. And also where we capture all that client meeting so they can get recordings of directors doing meetings and things like that, to get up to speed with how to do it. And then we do online training sessions with them through those portals. So it’s sort of like a systemized and process we take them through alongside the py program, and it’s run by Fe calm one of my senior guys, and he controls the the associates and make sure they’re all up to speed. And yeah, it’s been good. And we started about five years ago now. I’ve hit a zero. Yeah, it was and we saw the Royal Commission come and we knew we were going to have an issue with trying to get advisors. So we decided to really step it up then to get something going and then and I’m sort of glad we did because it’s really now we’ve we’re struggling to find probably the ARS we need and so this is really the wave that’s gonna come through a couple of years is probably going to come through that

James Wrigley
so that so that’s then more of a you’re kind of training them in house, you’re building them in house rather than trying to hire someone that’s already an AR from somewhere else. You’re hiring someone in at a more junior level. They’re working through whatever their career path is, but start on the Euro your advisor Academy and train them internal instead. Correct? Yeah,

Steve Sloane
yeah. So we’re just getting trained on sort of our way now processes and procedures and we’re finding that’s that’s a good span very quick.

James Wrigley
Is that like, video tools have you present now whether it’s you or someone else looks like someone is at someone’s recorded? You mentioned client meeting so so Is it is it like you in a room explaining something sub doing some type of training or is it actually recordings of client meeting? means where you’ve explained some particular topic, and people can watch and learn, and you can absorb it that way.

Steve Sloane
Yeah, both. So due to COVID, obviously, everything moved online. And so that really captured a lot of our online meetings were recorded prior to every single meeting that the advisors do. And so that will, we’ll select different different meetings based on the type of advice the advisor is giving, and save that under the if it’s SMSF advice, it’s ended up being with the fact finders all that. So we’ll say that in the SMSF section. And then we’ll also do online training. So sometimes I sit here in Adelaide, and I train the guys back in Melbourne, and I’ll talk about a particular topic. And when they received that on the system, so they can go at any time and or any advisor for that matter whether they go through the payroll or not can go in there and just have a look at different topics and things like that and go from there.

James Wrigley
You’re right. It’s a what what my take on it, it’s always interesting to see what how people are dealing with the recording of the client meetings, what what technology are you using for that? And then also the kind of the follow up is, you then make those recordings available to the clients to review afterwards ahead. What’s that process like for you?

Steve Sloane
So we use teams and everything saved on Microsoft, Microsoft SharePoint, and all the systems sell through Microsoft, we share pretty much that we’ve got a bit of a sales system, as you want to call it was designed a couple of years ago, that comes off the back of our social media stuff. And we share every single meeting with a client. So we do a 15 minute chat to start then a one hour discovery session with them. We send that all to them. So we had saved on our internal staff as well as sent to the client. And yeah, it’s pretzel Team 70. Now then we use Zoom. I haven’t used this one before that we’re on today.

James Wrigley
But this is more just for podcast, rather than human reason with clients here.

Steve Sloane
So it’s fairly simple. To be honest, it’s not overcomplicate every week, they just try to keep it very simple and straightforward. and Iraqi just log in and the it’s an oral, that’s internal, and yet, you can choose what they want to go through.

James Wrigley
And I’d imagine your licensees fairly supportive as the advisor Academy which surely they think that’s a good idea that you’re doing something some structured training like that,

Steve Sloane
at cities. They’re all for we’re trying to actually commoditize it for others as well to use at some stage in the future. So we may look at doing that. But yeah, they’re very supportive of the program. It’s it’s making radically different for everyone this week. Police Officer 44 years of age coming to join us and yeah, yeah, so So that’ll be quite quite good. So let’s change it good.

James Wrigley
We’ve had we’ve had some some some good success with some what you might consider older people coming in, you know, they’ve bounced around a few different careers and things in their, in their 20s and 30s. And then and found their feet in financial advice and it’s worked well for us too. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So Who who is it typical link wealth client? who you are? You’re pretty broad as like he really narrow with who you’re working with? Or is it really broad?

Steve Sloane
pretty broad Jay surrealist made like we don’t we don’t tend to pigeonhole too much. Yeah, we go through a process when when people engage just make sure they’re on the right track for advice and the right time, they’re ready for it. But yeah, I suppose in the generic terms, middle market mass market, semi professional to professional mums and dads to be honest, and the cube writers space we deal with other ends of the spectrum as well but definitely we can provide advice to the Australian market really is we we don’t tend to have that target client. And even in our marketing we don’t tend to do it that way either. To be honest, so yeah, yeah.

James Wrigley
So let’s talk about your marketing so for anyone advisors or anyone that might be listening that that is it on tick tock you know, if you’re not on tick tock you might not have seen but a couple of your guys there Josh and Billy fairly active they are on on tick tock and both amassed some some really decent followings there. Because that that’s one channel that I know of in terms of your marketing exercises, what out we’ll we’ll talk in a little bit more detail about tick tock in a second, but But what else are you doing from a marketing perspective to build the business?

Steve Sloane
Yeah, so I suppose our marketing strategy, it’s all in so it comes from the top down, if I’m doing it, and Josh is doing it, we’re all on the same journey. So we’ve got a philosophy of Lego really is that it’s all of us are going to join the party and getting involved and share the ideas between us. So that’s our starting point. And then we just use it like yourself as this content where you know, we’re just trying to get the name out there tell people what we do. I think it’s still a challenge to get people to understand what advisors do and we see this is a good way for people to understand what advisors do for a job and I think that’s just half the battle. Really, you know, because once I realize what you do where they go, I can eat and I’ve got the need and they put the two together right so that’s all we try to that’s all we’re trying to do with it and and also have a bit of fun with it where we the guys are really enjoying it and I have done for a couple of years and yes up different which is good. Yeah. So look, we’re all we chat such a Kong, he does the WeChat side of things and yeah, very much good on that. Charlize greedy sort of fits, Rosie on Instagram. LinkedIn is quite quite heavy. So I do probably more than LinkedIn stuff. And then, obviously, Tik Tok and Facebook as well. So we sort of use all of them. And then I think the key is for us is probably connecting that to a decent website. So we’ve, you know, it’s all sort of connected up with the cabling link. So let’s automate where we can tell the stuff but yeah, it’s also connected up and I think that’s probably second it that and only 5000 People across all the platforms connect in some way, shape or form you’re following along

James Wrigley
in some way, shape or form. Yeah, since I’ve never spent any time looking at WeChat what does that is there like a feed kind of thing on WeChat? Like there is on Instagram and these other places or

Steve Sloane
it’s very similar to the Facebook type of arrangements $1 Look faders alive. A lot of live pod lots more live soccer stuff on there. So he’s, he’s on there doing a lot of that type of stuff. It’s it’s more live rather than that. It’s quick video type of stuff. So yeah, he gets good success out of that one. Yeah. Nice.

James Wrigley
Good on you. And so what are the like it is, if you think of where most of the inquiries coming from? Is it coming from tick tock or Instagram? Or like, what’s what’s working for you at the moment?

Steve Sloane
Yeah, funnily enough, it’s a real mixed bag, LinkedIn, where he goes in waves we find like sometimes we LinkedIn, sometimes Josh, Josh, Josh, and Billy do very well on that they get a lot of contact on tick tock. Here, then funnily enough lately, last six months has been Google. Yeah, I don’t know why or how it’s just people have been finding us on Google that we don’t really advertise on Google or do and I’m not sure if it’s just through the internet world of our that all connects up? And yeah, I don’t know how it’s working. But people are just getting off Google. And we’re asking them and they say, Yeah, I got off Google and I don’t really know where that’s coming from. But we’re just like, let’s let’s go so

James Wrigley
we get a bit said no sense. Uh, yes. Collinsville? Where did how did you come to come across us? And there’s a there’s a fair bit of that I think is like a scam like, like, not a scam but but trying to check that the online presences on Instagram and particularly tick tock that it’s not a scam. Yeah. So we find people either googling My name or first financial or something like that. They may well have seen some of our content on one of these other places. Children they just go back to Google find your website. Hey, it looks like a legitimate website. You know this. I’ve seen Steve’s videos and now I can see Steve’s on this website it all kind of marries up and then make an inquiry through the website rather than rather than through these as these other ones because there’s lots of fake accounts out there. Lots of scam accounts.

Steve Sloane
Go to like it’s a nightmare, and I really wish there was a solution to it. That’s for sure. Yeah, yeah.

James Wrigley
Because you get them I get them all the time on Tik Tok people saying oh, there’s a fake one and this one’s message me about stuff says ah,

Steve Sloane
we had unfortunately we had one got caught up in a client and that they’re not good here is really really disappointing but you got to just try keep working on it to educate I suppose.

James Wrigley
Yeah, do what we can. Yep. So you seem really supportive of of the tape you spoke but it’s kind of words all or one in all in You seem really supportive of the rest of the team just trying these different things out and if someone has a bit of success some somewhere then in you will tend to gravitate towards

Steve Sloane
Yeah, yeah. So I look I you know, I’ve got a you know, I’d I do this job for a couple of reasons. One, they’ll see to provide you know, I enjoy financial advice and financial services in general and I enjoy the client side but I personally grew up in a lower socio economic family so I wanted to provide a different life for my family but I truly half the time is really that passions to generating the career development from last time to be honest, I I thoroughly enjoy it I’ve driven by it I want to give them every success they want to earn towards and work towards and that’s why it’s so so important to me that we’re on the journey together. It’s probably one of my top ones or twos really.

James Wrigley
Yeah, so what so what’s next what’s the business plan for the lake wealth we What are you taking over the east coast of Australia by the sounds of those different different offices you’ve

Steve Sloane
got Yeah, look, I I feel like we’ve we’ve we’re really enjoying it, like we’re in as a team are and I really enjoy it. I think I think you’ve probably witnessed this yourself. James. financial advice makes for a pretty hard tie. And I think you know, Ken tophi breathe and do our job and just look after clients and without the real big headwinds that we’ve had to deal with so I’m sort of really enjoy it now. Five years ago when the Royal Commission was happening and I’m actually losses by in peace I was that was interesting. Yeah, it wasn’t as enjoyable. But we’re just sort of on that journey now. So we’re starting to enjoy. where to from here. We’ve got we’ve got a really good business consultant working with Bas gardener. The minute went to a little work with Yeah. Yeah, up as Yeah. So yeah, so we’re sort of looking at what our options are, we really want to cement ourselves in Melbourne, Adelaide in particular, because Olivia off the week and keep on going into Sydney in Brisbane where we can and just go from there really, and just sort of see where where we go. We’ve got some pretty big players, we look out to follow or 2040 families today, we’re trying to get to 2000. Yeah, in three years time. So that’s, that’s what I’ve signed up to as the MD and so we’ve got a bit of a journey to get there. But and it’s really connecting the dots. Yeah, we’ve got a tech base asset come into that major campus that’s coming out of staff base as a company that are getting renewals lined up. So we’re working towards.

James Wrigley
So what does it say you see 500 Right at the moment with five A ours What does does to just 2000? That mean? You need 20? Is it my maths Right? Like, what do you think the headcount needs look like?

Steve Sloane
Look, it’s probably at least over half of what I’ve got. Now. The unfortunate probably this team, I’ll sure this is really our engine room for the growth than it has been. And that’s probably got us to where we are today to honestly, the team I have in the Philippines has been amazing. And yeah, that that will allow me to scale it up to get to that that level, really, we’re trying to get the AR numbers for looking after families or family unit we’ve got as far as one client, we’re trying to get them to look after our 150 to 180 family units, we’ve got to go to other tech to support that. Because can’t do without it. So that’s that’s sort of what I’m trying to get to today are a number of perspective. I’ll probably do another four hours to get to that. That sort of level, I think with the right tech.

James Wrigley
Yeah, you’re that’s it, you’re going to need to because the internet is often this, this kid spoken about this number of iron advisor tends to cap out at about 100 clients, they’re too busy seeing their clients, that kind of thing. If you’re, if you’re going to want to be sitting at 150 to 180. Yeah, this, you’re going to need the technology supporting there’s going to be people needed to support that. But also, technology as well.

Steve Sloane
Yeah, 100% Understand, so we’re having some really good conversations with them either with our licensees. As we saw the SOA saw the docks are coming down in size, which is nice, beautiful, the harbor, the tech piece we’re constantly looking at, so the AI is probably gonna come into it at some stage. So yeah, we. So if you have any secrets, you can tell me on tech.

James Wrigley
Now look, we so much like you kind of careless, we’re just just trying to speed up that whole process. The bit that the bit that we really need to work on is the data capture from the clients. That’s the biggest roadblock for our process right now. Like it’s the 15 minute phone call template for booking in follow up meetings, and we need this information. We need that information. But then we get all of this stuff from the client and we don’t we use x plan and that kind of front end data capture tool on X plans pretty atrocious for you for clients to use. Yeah, and there’s other plugins and so forth that they were looking at at the moment. So that’s that’s a roadblock for us is to try and try and push some of that data capture back into the client rather than to us like they’re gathering it up anyway, instead of plugging it in. Yep. And we’re doing the video SOA stuff. So I’ve done a four or five of the video SLAs which is has a scroll, it’s not. So it’s a much more interactive experience for the client. Sure. Yeah. And it saves your back office paraplanning team hours, hours and hours in, in, in writing the SOA. So the biggest saving is in is in our power planning team. Everything else before and after, is broadly the same. The meetings better with the client. But yeah, so that’s that’s the other area where I want to speed things up.

Steve Sloane
The club has really enjoyed that compared to a gastro, well,

James Wrigley
I’ve done a couple of numbers like Go ahead of the client and I was talking to brand new clients that have never received advice before. So they’re already different that they were somewhat probably somewhat puzzled when I put the 60 page document in front of them and they say, Hang on, can you just tell me what I need to do? Yeah, but the the Adelaide office that that’s an interesting, so a lot of financial planning business, particularly there in Melbourne and Sydney and so forth. They’ll kind of have offices dotted up and down the East Coast. Yeah, not that any that go over to Adelaide or even over to wa what’s was that client driven? Did you have some clients around there? What’s

Steve Sloane
he was favorite family driven mainly, about five years ago, we unfortunately have a health in the family issue. And so we decided to reallocate re relocate the family, we’ve gone back and forth a lot between Melbourne and Adelaide and, and then I just sort of said to my wife, I said, Look, yeah, we we had a young child at the time. Harvey was one I think, yeah. So I said, Look, how about we just park in her late and I’ll do the travel rather than the whole family. It’ll move live and go back and forth. So that’s that’s predominantly what we did. And they were just sort of set up from there.

James Wrigley
So yeah, right. I hope so. Like home for you is Adelaide. Yeah.

Steve Sloane
Yeah. Hello, Jess. I live in Adelaide here and then I’d go back and forth door or Tuesday or Thursday back in Melbourne. Yep. I tried to do every week now I used to every week for about four years. But now, every couple of weeks I’ll go back and and

James Wrigley
particularly now with the whole, you know, all the video meetings, like you’re talking about before recording everything, and I’m sure clients are well and truly used to it. Yeah, it doesn’t really matter so much if you’re in Adelaide, or if you’re in Melbourne, or Sydney or Brisbane doesn’t doesn’t matter.

Steve Sloane
I’m in grant stuff as well. So like, I used to think, Oh, I gotta, I gotta be there because the staff are gonna need me they’re just not like that. They just, they just, I think they’ve totally thought.

James Wrigley
It just kind of reinforces that if you hire good people and trust them to do the job that you’ve employed them to do. Sure. You’ll soon work out if they’re not doing it, but if you’ve hired the right people, they’re gonna get on with the job whether you’re there or not. Yeah. 100%

Steve Sloane
and I’ve what I’ve I’ve I’ve always hated that micromanagement. Philosophy anyway, is never never worked for me. You’re never going to offer a caboose. It’s that’s completely fine. I’ve got a great team. So

James Wrigley
yes, well tested. All right. Well, thanks, Dave. Thanks for joining me, as I said at the start, I really appreciate you kind of reaching out and offering to come on for a chat good to speak with you. Lawful bit of value in there for anyone that’s listening, and thanks for joining me today. All right.

Steve Sloane
Thanks, James. Appreciate it.