#415 Craig Keary – Transcript

Clayton Daniel
Hey, how’s it going? What do you know strike a light. It’s been a while since I’ve been behind the microphone. But there’s been a lot happening inside of Ensombl as of late. And we can discuss some of it that’s coming up and some of it we can, you know, keep keep, you know, shielded, and under our wings for the time being. But one of the big things that certainly is public knowledge is that Chairman Mao otherwise known as Rocksy, fired himself, because we had the opportunity to work with our guests today, Craig Keary, mate, thank you so much for joining us today.

Craig Keary
Thanks, Clayton. It’s great to be here. And really, really enjoying the time so far out on an Ensombl and looking forward to the ride ahead.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, so we got introduced through a mutual friend, the esteemed Robert Colter.

Craig Keary
We did.

Clayton Daniel
And, and it became pretty obvious pretty quickly that we have very similar views on the opportunities that are ahead with financial planning. We certainly had an alignment in terms of values, what we found was important to grow a business, the impact that a business can have on the world. And kind of pretty cool. And then and then you were studying a PhD in financial planning. And really, like I was I, I’ve been waiting to meet someone with your level of experience, who approached business in the same way. And very quickly, it became obvious that we should do some work together.

Craig Keary
Absolutely. Like it was, you know, we got introduced by Robert and we had a number of conversations. I’ve been following the business for a number of years and seen it go through the growth that it’s gone through and amazing profile in the industry. But equally, I went when he obviously spoke to Roxy, about me, he remembered a conversation that we had, probably eight years ago at a dinner, which is always a good thing to remember that people do remember what you say, at dinners, where we were, we actually had a really good conversation with, with Roxy and his wife, about culture and the importance of culture in the business. And, you know, I think it was just a series of events that and a series of common beliefs around culture and values, and just a passion for this industry that have led us to join forces.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, and, and I mean, that our entire team, you know, we’re extraordinarily pumped when they got to meet you. And also the exact alignment which which, which I saw immediately. And look, things have kind of taken off at the at the exact same stage that you’ve joined. So, I mean, we just launched in South Africa last week, we’ve just kicked off a series a raise, which you know, in a very short amount of time is looking like it’s like a half filled, which, which is super exciting. We have some very interesting meetings coming up in Singapore, in October, which I mean, if these go ahead, could see Ensembl really sort of go from an Australian and now South African based application to a global platform that connects the whole industry. And that’s a super exciting time for our company. And it’s, I just love that it coincides with you joining. So

Craig Keary
thank you. And it’s look, it’s great to be here. And I think one of the things that we sometimes don’t realize in Australia is that Australia does lead the world in a lot of things with respect to financial services, and a lot of things with respect to wealth management and financial advice. Our superannuation system or pension system is one of the leading systems in the world. And when I spent a lot of time in Asia, one of the things that was very easy to go and have conversations with a number of people across Asia and talk about Australia, because they always looked to Australia as being that leader in so many different respects. And that’s when I when I joined I was I really pleased to see the growth that the business has achieved here in Australia. But equally, I actually wasn’t surprised when you said look, we’re actually going to go live in South Africa because of course we would, because we’ve actually developed a leading platform here in Australia. And that leading platform absolutely has application. On a global scale. The problems are the same problems the same, we’re all dealing with the same problems globally and Uh, I think what what you and the team have done in positioning this business here in Australia really does really does set it up very, very well for for global success.

Clayton Daniel
Absolutely. And what are the, you know, one of the when I when I refer to your experience that, you know, you’ve had senior positions across, sorry, capital markets across technology companies, and I kind of wanted to ask, you know, where did where did it start? Where did it come from? You know, you’ve you’ve kind of any other reason I know your CV so well now is because I’ve been sending it to a few different locations. So I’m pretty familiar with your body of work at this stage. But what I mean, what, where did it start? Where did your passion for financial? I mean, there’s so few people do a PhD in financial planning? Where Where did where did the idea of the impact of financial planning? Where did that come from? And why did it resonate with you?

Craig Keary
That’s good question and haven’t haven’t really thought about it that way. Probably go back to how my career started. I started in a in a stock broking company in 1987. I actually started a week before the 1987 crash. And my my children get really lucky to be good dad, you so all when I talk about the 1987 crash, as if I’m talking about the Great Depression, but even the GFC. But I started in a stock broking company, as I said a week before the 1987 crash. And but what I did is I started in a in a, in a in an operational role, and at the lowest lowest peg in the organization, but through that was very, very fortunate to have worked with some amazing people that supported me in moving through a number of positions. And ultimately, I was lucky enough to effectively be the chief operating officer for a relatively big stock broking company here in Australia. But very, what we what we realized, probably in sort of the mid 90s, was that technology would play a pretty significant role in how financial services would play out in Australia. And in particular, we also recognize that individuals, you know, needed access to, you know, financial advice, or needed access to financial solutions or products or services. So it was actually, part of the there was there was a there was there was myself another another, another partner. When we were at HSBC, we actually set up an online stock broking business in the late 90s, called HSBC, direct, which was now if I did that today, I’d be a tech founder, very much probably retired. But But back then that was just part of the course of what we did for our work. So I was really lucky to very early on experience, you know, setting up an online stock broking business but but what I realized, and it was a multilingual business, it was in English, Cantonese, or Mandarin. But what I realized really quickly, and I bought by listening to calls because we had both Internet and call center, I realized very quickly that individuals needed help, and that the power of getting that help and advice and guidance and education. That was quite important. I went I spent a fair bit of time then with HSBC in Europe. And but then I came back and worked with a number of other organizations. But what I realized after the GFC was that the power of financial advice was was really important, and that individuals needed financial advice. They needed help. And it was only when I was actually having a conversation with my father. My father had had lymphoma. And one of the things I do now is mushy on the board of lymphoma, Australia. So it’s a way of giving back he passed away but that I had a number of conversations with my father talking about well, what was the legacy that he was leaving, and that then sort of got me thinking, I knew I knew that financial advice, improved well being I knew that if people got access to it, it had a profound impact on their lives. So that’s sort of really started my passion, probably, you know, it’s been accelerated my passion sorry, for the last 10 years where I have this very strong belief that we know that what the financial planning industry does, changes lives on on so many different fronts. What we know from people’s As own lives is that it’s not linear, they go through ups and downs changes. Now I’ve gone through that we’ve all gone through that. So having access to somebody there to provide support and advice on that journey, and ultimately lead to a better life is, is absolutely worth fighting for. So that’s, that’s why I’m so passionate about the space that we’re in.

Clayton Daniel
Awesome. Um, one of the things that we’ve spoken about is the idea of retirement changing, potentially, the concept of it, at least from this, get as much money as possible. And then do as little as possible kind of this Great Australian Dream of pay your house off, get a million bucks in the Super, and then kind of not really like maybe buy a caravan and sell it six months later, and not really do a lot that that’s, that’s a pretty, you might might take one being sojourn around the world. But typically, you know, fast forward 20 years into retirement, you’ve got these people that are sort of turning around going, you know, what, probably could have done more with my life in the last 20 years. In one of the one of the very interesting views that you’ve got, because of the global nature of your work experience is we were talking about Japan, and how in Japan, they have a different view of retirement to Australia. And it is an interesting concept. And it’s something that I’m really looking forward to in terms of connecting advisors all over the world together on ensemble, to me, that is, that’s a huge sort of goal for this company. And one of the reasons is, is we can start to export or import depending on the view that you’re coming from, but to see what other countries are doing, what their culture? And does the financial planning strategies, work in these different places around the world. And, and we were speaking about Japan, and if you could, maybe, if you can just maybe describe it again. And yeah, I think this might be one of the benefits of Ensombl is to is to get these kinds of things out there.

Craig Keary
Sounds great. So first, maybe what I’ll do is I’ll talk a little bit about Japan. But then I’ll also talk a little bit about the Craig Curie view of retirement and just some of the trends and debate that I’ve seen going on that we were we were really fortunate to live in Tokyo, my wife and I, and my daughter for some period of time as well live in Tokyo for a number of years. And one of the things that we really observed, there was a couple of things. First of all, that typically people worked beyond their normal retirement age that they had that we have here in Australia. And they found purpose in life, it was almost full employment, where you had at the even at the local supermarket, you had a whole lot of people that typically that you would think would be retired, but were they’re doing a range of different jobs range of different functions. And they were really happy, they were really happy. And then I got really interested in talking to a number of people that I worked with, and this concept of, even in financial services where somebody would retire as the CEO, but would come back as like, like a chairman, or a chair, and they would literally come into the office every day. And they would they be there to mentor and support the younger staff, and then provide really good, you know, high level impact across the the industry that they were in, that’s quite a common part of Japanese culture. And I think, you know, there’s this concept of Akagi, ik ag i and this concept where, you know, people just continue to work but work in a, it’s all about their well being. And it’s about finding purpose in life. And it was really fascinating. And this so therefore we sort of think about, you know, retirement, it’s a 65 that’s driven by a mathematical formula, how much money you need, how long you’re going to live for, and what are you going to do with that? I think the I think that’s it, nothing wrong. That’s that’s a valid, that’s a valid, valid methodology. And it’s actually a valid valid approach because it allows individuals to save towards it particular goal. But what I think where I think this is going to go globally is I think retirement will get reframed. A, there’s a couple of big factors here, one, we’re all living longer. Yeah. Number two, is that what we do know, from a range of mental health? You know, if I look at mental health as really an important factor, people need purpose in life, and they need something to do. So therefore, I think this is going to look, therefore we go on that basis, let’s look at what an individual’s goals are going to be what’s going to make them happy. And there’s a number of different through my research around well being and financial planning, there’s a number of different models that you can use regarding that, but but unpacking what’s going to make Clayton happy, what’s going to make Craig happy, it’s gonna make Craig and his wife happy. Yes. And actually, that I think, gives us the ability to reframe retirement, and that retirement may be a blend of work. And, and, and sort of social activities. It could just be, you know, working in a different context. I think this this, this concept of one size fits all, I think is I don’t think is going to be the way of the future. And I think given what I observed there in Japan, it was just a set, people were working longer. They they live longer, their health healthy. They’ve got and and they would typically had purpose in life. Yes. And I do think one of the great things about what we’re doing in ensemble is we allow advisors to have that conversation in our community and platform. And I really think it’s going to be absolutely awesome to have a global conversation around retirement. Because I think there’s going to be lots of learnings globally. And understanding different cultures and beliefs will lead to well, what is your best retirement? Yeah. long winded long winded response. But I think it’s, you know, I just look at, look at people that I talked to him, you know, I’m in my network of friends. They’re not rushing to rushing to get the caravan and retire, they’re looking at how they have a couple of different trains on the tracks, that provides a bit of balance. And I think that’s going to be the way of the future.

Clayton Daniel
Yes, I actually being a financial planner, including my tax accounting career, I did about a decade of professional services sitting in front of people talking about their money, right. It was a it was jolting two things, two major things that impacted my life from from being a financial planner. One was the idea of retirement, I saw these men and women typically, there was men who were still working later in life. And those men coming into my office, you know, us working on the pre retirement, transition to retirement, you know, and we would still focus on what may, you know, we were aiming for the terminology we used. And my, my company was ideal lifestyle. So what what their ideal lifestyle was into retirement. And yet, as the years went, went on, I saw these, they, they literally shrank, these men got smaller in front of me over the course of many years, and maybe it would be six months or a year between between meetings, and it was a little bit shocking, because they’d been this sort of, you know, you know, these these, they had ambition and there was and then all of a sudden, it became my, you know, really relaxed and that really impacted me it I saw it happen time and time again and it dawned on me I said was I never want to retire now whether I end up living that in reality or not, but I know for a fact that I want to work as long as I humanly can. And the other the other big impact that had on me, was children actually didn’t want to have children. But as part of good financial planning, when you’re meeting someone you ask about their family situation, and undoubtably the conversation always goes to children. And I would see a response in people’s eyes when they said that they didn’t have children now, you would never ask especially at that early stage, whether it was a purposeful decision or they just simply couldn’t, but I just the the their responses to me actually changed my mind as to having children I remember going home to my girlfriend at the time, who then fiancee, wife, now mother of my children, I remember coming back for work one time, and I said, I think we’re going to want children when we’re older. And she looks at me, she goes, Wait a second, we’ve been together for a handful of years, with the premise that we weren’t gonna have children, like, this is a pretty big change. And, and, and, yeah, needless to say, we ended up agreeing on that. And the rest is they say, is history at 2am this morning. But wow, the children thing and the retirement thing were both two impacts that it had on me as an individual and, and so the reason why I really enjoy funds planning as well, is I think it’s such a brilliant career, that and more people need to learn about it. So and you’re aware of this, as part of ensemble, as us, you know, doing the raising spending around the world, I actually want to operate as an attraction mechanism into the industry, there’ll be different sort of levels of membership at that stage, you know, especially if someone’s, you know, want, you know, if they’re an aspiring financial planner, for example, they probably shouldn’t have access to everything, right, like, there needs to be some protection mechanisms in place. So I don’t know the exact feature set that will allow this to occur off the top my head, I’m sure we’ll figure it out when we get there. But I met this financial planner, recently that had come in from management consulting, and this, this former management consultant, left uni became a management consultants in there for two years. And as I’m sure everyone’s aware, but if not, I’ll explain it to the listeners out there. Basically, let’s say 100 People 100 graduates get a job in management consulting, the next year is 50, the year after is 25 and 12. And then, as you go on, realistically, the greatest compliment you can have as a as a management consultant is I lasted a decade. It’s so it’s a this this, this younger guy, he blasted like three or four years. So it’s sort of, you know, earn his stripes. And typically what what guys like that do is going to what they call industry, so they’ll take a maybe a middle management position, and you know, and then work their way up. He turned that down to become a financial planner. And he’d so he turned down, like a 200k salary, he had about 25, for a 65k salary to become an associate advisor. And because I said to him, how do we get more view? And he said, you want because of this one, that story I just explained back? And I thought, right. In that case, why did you end up coming? And he said, Well, I learned about financial planning, because I actually as part of a job that we were doing in management consultant land, and I fell in love with it. And I actually realized I really wanted to be a French. And I looked at this sort of, you know, highly capable for mid 20s. Guy. And I thought, we need to get you before you decide you’re going to be a management consultant, you should be leaving uni and getting a $65,000 career straight out of uni. So that you’re not competing with a $200,000, middle management and Telstra. Right, so. So what ideas do you have? What kind of views? And if you’ve never really thought about it, it’s totally fine. But attracting younger people into the industry is your son, for example. Right? So what could have we done to attract your son? That’s probably a great question.

Craig Keary
Well, if I think about it, if I think about the, if I think about the industry, and I’ll come back to my son in a second, but if I think about the the industry, what we do know is that financial planners have a huge impact on people’s lives. We know that when they can work with their clients, through a number of different life events. They become lifelong relationships, and they literally improve the well being of the of their clients. And in some cases, you know, with a whole range of other things around sort of well being, you know, I would actually say, you know, their interventions can can lead to major major shifts in an individual’s mental health as well because they’re not worried about their financials. So that’s, that’s a pretty purposeful, you know, if you put that up there as a profession, that’s it’s a pretty purposeful job status Illumina job to do. What can we do to attract more people, I think, tell more people about it. And we’re doing that today. There’s some other companies out there that do that are attracting graduates. And yeah, they’re doing a good job with that as drivers drivers one. But we as an industry need to tell more stories, we need to tell more life stories we need to showcase the great work that people do. If I look at the noise, you know, when I sort of, say young people that makes me feel old, but but but if I if I think about young, if I think about the generation that we’re seeing go going through university to university today, what’s important to them? social purpose, yeah, responsibility. Yeah. having an impact on lives? Yeah. That’s what financial planning does. Absolutely. So what are we going to do, we’re going to tell more people about it. I do then think we have to develop a really good framework within the industry, which allows experienced financial planners to coach and mentor younger financial planners, we need to create a platform for interactions with people across the community and ensemble does that. The other thing that I think we do need to do is that people go into other industries, because they see them as global industries.

Clayton Daniel
Yes.

Craig Keary
You know, if I look at, you know, my children, they’ve gone into their jobs that they that they want to do, because they yes, they see it as an Australian organizations, but they actually see the ability to travel. And I think that’s, you know, I’ve worked overseas, and that’s something that, you know, I think this generation wants to do. But therefore, we need to also create a community of financial planners globally, that allows people to have portability, allows people to experience different cultures, and all of that. So I think, how do we attract more people in the industry? And how do we make it really exciting for young people? I think ensembles got a pretty big role to play in the great work that he does in, in enabling that.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, yeah, that’s a, I think you’ve just nailed that. In terms of, if I think back to when I was at uni, you would, you would look at these, you know, maybe maybe the reputations aren’t as glowing as they once were these before. But certainly, moving it up the portability, the idea that I could take this job, I could get this graduate position. And two years later, I could be working in London. That was that was a it was a huge sort of driving factor. In the end, I actually ended up going into financial planning, through accounting, actually. So I started in accounting, and then I was working in an office with a couple of financial planners and I went, Wait a second. As an accountant, I’m looking in the rearview mirror, it’s 12 months old. But that’s probably the plan. I’m looking at the at the front window for 40 years, and I was like, all the impact that I can have is so much, so much larger. So So I moved from accounting to financial planning. But the idea of portability, which also goes to qualifications like the CFP, that don’t, right, so that CFP really is I mean, there’s over 200,000 Now, there’s 30,000, CFPs. In Japan, there’s 33,000. In China, there’s 100,000, or something in America, it’s quite large. And in in Australia, we’ve only got about 5000, which which is which is pretty crazy, considering and that’s just of the latest documents that we were reading the other day. The CFP, though is the best thing that we have in terms of hey, I’ve got my CFP I can I can go work in the States.

Craig Keary
Correct A becomes an anchor, the CA becomes the the anchor qualification and you know, we live in a global, a global variable, we are in a global environment, but we live in a in a world where people where we’ve got lots of cross cultures, we’ve got lots of different beliefs. We’ve got people that are global citizens. And therefore if you’re thinking about well, what’s the successful financial planner of the future going to be? It’s going to have to be a financial planner that understands different cultures, understands different beliefs because what we were just talking about retirement as an example. And I think that is going to really mean that creates a great opportunity, a great opportunity for for planners to work in different countries. And but the go and do do a couple of years in a country for two and potentially come back to Australia or come back to their home country and be far more qualified to help you The people in their home country as well. So I think I think we’re going to see a lot more of it like China was fascinating. We were we were talking about this earlier on in the week, China is now the second biggest CFP community created in the world. Yeah, I think of the US and China. And if you just look at what is happening in China, the growth of the population that is got access to wealth and needs advice around that. It’s a trend that will continue. Yes. If you just look at the problems that need to be solved globally, ageing population, we’re all living sorry, aging population. We’re very much living longer. We’ve all got different, we’ve got more money. There’s there’s there’s more money flowing around the system. That just creates a greater need. And it’s a global notes.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that Paul Barrett, the CEO is at NGA says, and I love it. He says we’re on the cusp of an of a multi decade, boom me in financial 100%. And that that kind of sentence really does. Ship sends shivers down my spine in the sense that I couldn’t agree more. Everything you’ve just said, alludes to the fact that we we have a lot ahead of us. And I think financial planning has traditionally been quite a cottage industry. It’s not a bunch of small businesses. I mean, you’ve always you’ve had your ANPS and your IWF. And But realistically, it but we’re starting to see the beginnings of these mega mega, like I said, You know what, winding up almost 100 of Australia’s largest practices. Actually, to be fair, David Haines, if I go back, he did he, I think he was the first the shadforth that exit that was, that was a big deal. But that was a little while ago now. So you’re seeing the sophistication across companies like invest blue, for example. And it has existed for quite a while. And and I saw their head of culture present in Cebu a week or so ago. And she was saying that their goal is to now impact 40,000 people’s lives. And I quite liked her reasoning. She says, and where do we get the number 40,000? And she said, Well, originally it was 4000. And we hit it some heady 10 times bigger.

Craig Keary
It’s worth fighting for.

Clayton Daniel
Absolutely, absolutely. But the the move away from cottage industry and into sophisticated business models is really making this industry far more attractive to outside money. For example, you’ve just got it was in the in the AFR, recently with ta getting closer to purchasing into this train environment. You know, they are in a couple of companies already, but specifically in the financial advice. And yeah, I’m looking, I’m looking across what were Ensembl is placed, and I’m saying I don’t think this is just a great place to be right now.

Craig Keary
Look, look, I agree with Paul Barrett’s comments we are on if you just look at the basics trends. More and more people need advice now than ever. Yes, we’ve got a growing need. We people are open to to engaging with that advice. We’ve got it’s complex IT work, you’re trying to work out what to do with with your life assets. And your financial life assets is complicated. How much do you keep? What do you pass on? What do you how do you utilize that? How do you invest that? How do you make sure that you protect that? These are all big problems to solve and it’s not it requires a requires professional technology absolutely has a role to play in, in accelerating how that professional can interact with people. But we are on the cusp, I think of a other global global boom, global boom. Because the need is not going away. Yeah. And I think the other thing that’s really exciting is we’re a global, we are a global we have a global culture, that there’s there’s there’s more and more people that live and work overseas from from all different countries. Now the borders are open. We’re seeing that here in Australia as well again, which is great. Yes, so therefore, having financial advisors that are experienced in global mobility, but also are experienced in different cultures and understanding different cultures is going to be the is also going to be truly necessary. And I think it’s really exciting. It’s it’s worth, from my perspective, it is worth fighting for. We know what we do in this industry is high impact. And we’ve got the ability to create a wonderful, wonderful legacy for the industry. And it’s certainly worth fighting for.

Clayton Daniel
I couldn’t agree more. One of the things that when I talk about an alignment of values, culture was right at the top right. And, you know, there’s there’s many sort of cliches that get thrown around and and culture eats strategy for breakfast, and yada, yada, yada. And yet, at the same time, culture, a good culture amplifies the rest of the company, right in terms of execution, in terms of, you know, in terms of people wanting to turn up to work, it has such profound impacts culture, it truly is, I think, sort of a leverage point that, but the team here at ensemble, we’ve really fostered over nine years in total, but realistically, last four years, as we’ve been sort of operating, as we are today, one of the things that I did when we when we met was, you know, I spoke to Roxy, I spoke to a couple people. And it was strange in the sense that everyone was so positively supportive of you, I was like, That’s it, I’ve got it, I’ve got to go speak to a competitor. I’ve got to find someone, and even the people that that you would have gone up against in terms of strategic sort of, you know, deals in the past, they will even those even they were very supportive of it. I thought, okay, that to me, that’s, that’s such a clear indicator right. Now, in terms of the culture here in sambal, I have no doubt that you would have done your own due diligence on us. And I’m super keen to ask, you know, what was sort of the prevailing thoughts out there?

Craig Keary
Look, it’s a great question. And, and this was a meet me taking on this role. I wanted to make sure that I could, there was a couple of key things. One, I needed to work for a company, which had an alignment of values. But number two, I wanted to work for a company that was ambitious, and absolutely wanted to grow. And then thirdly, I wanted to work for a company that was well respected by the community that it serves. I did a did a range of things as part of my own due diligence for what of a better word. First of all, we had a lot of conversations, and I was walking out of those conversations going this is there’s this the relationship between a chair and a CEOs are really important relationship and requires high trust high alignment. And I was walking out of those, and was really pleased him that we were absolutely on the same page. And I was trying to, I asked you, I asked you different questions, different sites, ask you the same question in different ways and got the same answer. So that was all good. But then secondly, you know, it was really important that I spent time with the current board and what was fascinating in that conversation was the board had all recognized that a the great work that they had done, but be that to take the business to the next level required a slightly different skill set and as a complementary skill set, and they were really open to that now. In an industry where sometimes we see ego come into play. That was just a massive positive flag for me that you had group of directors that were that were really open to thinking about in the interests of this company. Yes. And not just their own interests as to how they could grow the business and what what the complementary skill set that was required. And then I met the team. And, look, that was, that was the thing that nailed it for me. Clearly, you know, you’re a positive influence on that, Clayton. But what I, you know, an asked, I went through a series of meetings with your team, and the alignment of values, the passion, the commitment, and everybody was, they’re all very, very different, but they actually come together, yes. On on, got skill sets that when they bring together are incredibly powerful, and that to me was a was a massive positive flag. But then, when you think there was one thing when you told me that you had your last licensee, or sorry, all license CPD day, I think it was 18 150 or was over 2000 registration over 2000 registrations. And I, I remember going shit that that’s like, really like that. And I, I kept on, you know, I was going through and looking on LinkedIn, and I could see all the people in the room as well, yeah, the boom, and yeah, and then the positive influence. And I then sort of spoke to different planners that were using the solution. And nobody actually had a bad word to say about the business and actually saw it as, as a really good way to foster a positive culture across the industry. So culture, culture is a is an important part of that business. And I’ve seen businesses succeed with a positive culture, and smash the lights out. And I’ve seen businesses go the other way around, all driven by both by culture. And I think one of the things that I think Ensembl has got with its stakeholders, its board, its shareholders and its staff is an alignment around that purpose and vision. Yes. And that’s pretty unique. And that, I think, is what is going to drive the next phase of the awesomeness no more ensemble is going to be,

Clayton Daniel
yeah, it’s, it’s what it originally started out as a methodology to, to, to get as much done in a shorter time as possible. So before we before I knew anything about the impact of culture and accompany, we always had such grand ambitions and grand plans and desire to execute, that the culture ended up being built as a natural result of not having the time to do anything political, that there was no time for anyone to sit down and figure out what the best thing is, for me as an individual, because we’re all so busy, trying to get as much work done as possible. And then this just continued to happen to two, I think, maybe two years ago, something like that. When we started growing the company, in terms of headcount, now we’re at about 15 or so. But the I think this was still when we’re about, you know, less, certainly less than a handful. And I realized that I was speaking to Emily, Emily is the personification of the culture of this company. And in a lot of ways, the our anti employee handbook, employee handbook, is a result of her and, and the original founders sort of just attempting to get as much done as quickly as possible. And what I realized was when I sort of sat down and started to codify it, it was it was it ended up being a document, which set a pretty clear agenda for what it’s like to work in ensemble. And and, you know, if I just sort of pick a couple of things off top my head you know, we’re not into pinching days off to go to like a friend’s wedding for example, in terms of your annual leave, because will more than likely you’re killing it at work. And so as a reward, you know, like sure, in it take two days off for for a friend’s wedding. Let’s call it one or split it with you right. Now, it also goes on to say that if this needs to be explained to you, the you’re probably not a good fit for this company. Because his obviously there are people that will look at that and go, Oh, great, I can just do this, that and the other right. But very quickly because of the The amount of work that we get done there’s no way to hide in this company. And so and so the the idea that generosity, it’s it’s it’s reciprocated. Now how that works as we expand further? I don’t know. And I’ve never I’ve never grown a

Craig Keary
large business before, but it’s fine to say we don’t know.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And And these days, you know, and this is something that Emily’s said to me. She said, Well, now that we have let’s, let’s call it now that we have a professional chair, shout out to Chairman Mao, Roxy. Now that we have a professional share, we do we need to change the culture. And I said, You know what the great thing is, is Craig said, one of the things he loves about this company’s culture, and he wouldn’t want to change.

Craig Keary
No, I think, look, if I just talk a little bit about South Africa, and I think the execution of going live in South Africa, to some extent, is a great case study for the culture of this business. You know, you went live last week. It was a an amazing success. Yeah. I asked one question, as part of that process, and was very quickly realized that it was on track. And I think you what you saw from that was a high trust environment. Yeah, head. You know, we spoke about Emily, we spoke about him, you know, an individual that that sort of is the typifies what this business is all about. Was able to execute. Go live? And really, to be to be direct. set the business up? Well, yeah. For global success. Yeah. And all of that was done, because of trust, and capability. And I think that sort of really does typify the culture at ensemble, and which is why the business is going to continue to be successful. Just take your point on the on the annual leave and days off. Look, I’m going off on three weeks leave. So you know, I could I could really testify to that fact that I think it might actually be three and a half. So which which sort of exempted goes to that goes to that very point. Absolutely. I’ll make sure I do take some phone calls again, as well. Thanks, man.

Clayton Daniel
That’s hilarious. Yeah, the thing I mean, and just even diving into South Africa a little bit. Emily, this is the nature of the beast this company ran. We’ve got we’ve got half the team here in Australia, half the team are in the Philippines, right. And I think as the company expands from here, actually, we’re going to grow more of the team in the Philippines. So we’ll probably end up being outweighed by our headcount in the Philippines moving forward from series A onwards. But the the Australians that we have in this company that, let’s call it just the heads of right, are ours are so focused on executing within their channel that Emily, for example, basically, came up with the whole strategy, execution by herself. So like, what a wild company to be a part of where I’m working with you on a couple of global initiatives. That’s where my focus is. But Emily’s handling an entire international launch by herself. I mean, it’s so rare to have a team that can just pick that up. And, but she has done that, right. She’s done. She’s employee number one, she was employed by this company even before I was and when she first started, she was given I gave her three small paragraphs in a Word document that said, Are we sort of Facebook group, we hold an occasional event, and we do podcasts. If you can make these three things better, you’ve got a job. And so from her very earliest days in this company, she’s been able to take a very small amount of detail and and expand it into what we see today. Like it’s, it’s, it’s crazy and as we’ve spoken about, with Emily before as well. She She is She represents the financial planner. She her what she wants in this company, literally is word for word what the financial planners I want to have that permanent advocate in this company operationally. And then obviously, we’ve got Ben Nash, who’s on the board. So at a board level, and operationally, I used to be a financial planner. But you know, these days, I’m stuck in like legal documents that accounting, right? So which is the fate of the of any CEO? That opera? Yeah, one of the clearest things is our dedication to financial plan.

Craig Keary
Look, look, look, you see that every day, every hour, every minute in this business, we know that those companies or organizations, which have a connection to the customer, or to it connection to the people that they’re serving, are far more successful than those that are. What we know with ensemble is that connection to the financial planners, and that unwavering commitment. And as a result of that unwavering commitment to a trust, that is what actually, is creates the foundations for the business. And what I would say is, you’ve got a number of people, with them being employee number one, that typify that culture, and that culture oozes through the business.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, I, I was speaking to, I actually won’t mention the name but a substantial individual with in the in the industry. And this person gives me a call. And we’d spoken maybe once in the past goodness, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they didn’t remember who I was right. And this individual says, his record and says, you know, I’m very familiar with ensemble, and I said, What do you mean, he says, I’m on it every single day. I am one of your super users. But you’ll never see me ever posting anything. He said, Because I actually receive so much value from belonging to it. That that i i Never partake in it, he said, but I’m very familiar with all of the, with all of the people that are on there. And, and the amount of times that I’ve heard that sentence because we see the numbers, right, like the people who log in, far outweigh the people who who are who are commenting and posting. But by the way, there’s still 1000s and 1000s of conversations going on. So sometimes I do because I’m because my head’s in the, in the books, so to speak, you know, but so, you know, even last night, I was at an industry event. And I don’t think I met someone who didn’t know who we were. And these are people I’d never met before. In fact, from from from the senior person who presented on stage to I met a brand new financial planner, who was about who was about my age, about 40 years old, just joined the industry. Through the whole gambit, everyone was like, ah, ensemble, your ensemble. And and and it does, it does take me does actually, I forget that at all look at a number. So for example, this podcast gets downloaded over 20,000 times a month. It’s for financial planners. That’s that’s more downloads per month than our financial planners, right. That’s how that’s how crazy that is. And and yet, I look at I’ll look at the stats and go oh, yeah, 20,000 that’s a word. But then when someone says I was listening to the podcast, will I go? It’s when when it when I when I talk to people, the impact is from them is so much more scalable than then I kind of remember often.

Craig Keary
Well, I think what what not, I think I might my hypothesis is that I think ensemble has created an environment, which as I said is high trust. And as a result of that being high trust financial planners and members of the of the community. I really don’t feel vulnerable in asking questions or asking for help or seeking advice. Yeah, themselves. That’s a pretty, pretty unique position to be in, and you only get to be in that position because of the trust. And as a result of that, because people we know that the people that go into our community, get, you know, planners get help to help them deliver things to their clients. That’s why they’re remembering Ensembl it’s those moments of moments of truth that they’ve had with their clients. Yeah. And we play a part in that.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. Well, I mean, as a perfect example of, you know, one of the people were saying that, that the here’s something very simple like the edge and that they send their clients for ongoing annual catch ups. They downloaded from Ensembl, because someone had uploaded this document that says, hey, this is the this is the agenda that I sent. And this person was like, Oh, I love that. Right. And so if we really go back to why Ensembl started, it was a bunch of practice principles. We were late 20s, early 30s. And we just wanted to accelerate that journey to mastery. But I’ll tell you, what’s super interesting, is that, that never stops. What what mastery isn’t a destination mastery is is is the journey itself spot on. And so no matter how, how advanced, someone becomes, I mean, I mean, that Federer still has a tennis coach, right? Like, no matter how good you are, you constantly want to get better. And all we tried to do nine years ago, was accelerate that and what it’s what what it looks like, now, I never would have guessed. But it has been the, you know, our sole purpose is to drive the positive evolution financial advice. And, and it’s awesome that all of these years later that that sentence, it still rings true.

Craig Keary
Look, it’s it’s great. And look, high performance is all if you look at the people that strive for high performance, it’s recognizing that the journey never stops. Number one, number two, it’s having a high trust relationship with with somebody or or a service or a solution where they can get input on how they’re tracking, and ask for help and not feel vulnerable in asking for help. Yeah, that’s really what Ensembl does. Yeah. So no different to coaching a tennis player coaching an athlete, just coaching somebody that’s looking to improve their academic performance. No different whatsoever.

Clayton Daniel
Yes. Well, mate, I just wanted to thank you for coming on. Because you’re you’re now a significant part of this company, and this company’s future. And yeah, just wanted to really thank you for joining our board as chair. It’s been a pleasure to have you, mate. And thanks for joining us today.

Craig Keary
Well, look, thanks for having me. And as I said, what you’ve achieved, the board has achieved but your team has achieved is remarkable. And I’m sure in the next 10 years when somebody’s listening to this podcast, they will, the business will be even bigger than what it is today.

Clayton Daniel
Amen to that. Cheers mate, excellent.