416 Jeff Thurecht – Transcript

Clayton Daniel
G’day, Clayton here from Ensombl. Today I’m chatting with Jeff from Evalesco. And mate, thank you so much for coming in.

Jeff Thurecht
Thanks for having me Clayton.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. When we caught up in Cebu, we were over there for the VBP conference. It dawned on me that I mean, I’ve crossed paths with you so many times over the years. And you’ve got this amazing business over there at Mr. Lesko. I realize we’ve never actually had the chance to sit down and, and discuss things. And it I sort of hung up the what do you call them the gloves of podcasting a little while ago, but I thought, if you’re available, it would be great to sort of sit down and chat because I’ve seen you like at all of the I would call it the evolution of advice, events, and whatever, whatever is going on in the industry, you seem to be a part of it. And so I figured there’s probably a couple of sort of big picture questions that we can cover off together, which I’m sure a lot of advisors would be excited to hear from you. So let’s kind of kick off with Where do you think advice is headed? I think that’s probably like, as big a picture as one can imagine. So if that’s something that you’re comfortable with tackling main, please feel free to share?

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, thanks for having me. And likewise, you know, it’s been great to see what you’ve been doing with the ensemble business. And you know, watching from the edge of the fringes of that, it’s pretty, pretty amazing what you’re doing there. So thanks great to reconnect in Cebu. And for me, I mean, we just came off the back of a conference we had with our team and our license in Melbourne last week. And the theme for that was the best is yet to come. And so in terms of where I think advice is heading, I genuinely believe that that is the case. And the best of advice in the best of life for the participant is yet to come. Yeah. And for me, I was saying to our team, that’s really exciting. Because I’ve been working in the industry for 26 years, and I’ve had an amazing time. Like, I feel very grateful, very fortunate for what I’ve experienced in terms of the purpose of what we do the people, I’ve got to know the conferences and you know, fun times and being able to make a good living and build a business that I’m really proud of. So that’s already been amazing. So to think that it’s going to get better. Absolutely. So exciting. Yeah. So I think, you know, we’ve obviously, in saying that, acknowledging that we’ve been through a pretty tough time, in many ways. And for many people over the last few years, I mean, as a general society, but you know, within the industry off the back of the Royal Commission and the changes that have come there, but I feel like we’re kind of pushing out the end of that now. And there’s some real light at the end of the tunnel. So I think the, you know, the demographic changes, increasing demand, and decreased supply in the industry means that that’s really powerful drivers for where we’re going to go. I think there’s some opportunities for different business models to emerge, it’s been a, you know, pretty much a one way, same way, sort of model a lot driven by the regulation and the compliance side of things. Yeah. So I think now, hopefully, we’ll be able to be in a position where we can adapt to market forces and really be more customer centric around business models as well. And technology will be a big part of that. But I think there’s lots of evidence to suggest it won’t be just about technology. So that might be a solution for a certain segment, but it might be part of the solution for the broader segment. So there’s still a really strong role for advisors to play.

Clayton Daniel
Do you think if the way that you approach business, would you look at splitting, would you would you ever want to address multiple markets at once or stay in one?

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, we do address multiple markets. And I think it’s been to our detriment for a lot of the time of the business. Yeah. We’ve probably tried too hard for too long to find a solution to the

Clayton Daniel
that’s pretty common as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah. And I think that’s because, you know, we all got into this to help as many people as we could deal, still the motivation for growing a business. But we probably tried too hard for too long to address that smaller segment of the market. Because that’s, you know, that’s where we were. And that’s where our advisors were, we wanted to help our cohort. And I think the when we tried that, we probably still tried to force our tried and tested model onto a segment that wasn’t really suited for that model. But maybe we you know, we didn’t know any different and maybe there’s legislation or regulation, that could be an excuse, you know, didn’t kind of allow us to go there. But I think there will be some opportunities to do that. Yes. And cover the slightly broader segment of the market. So you know, we still do look, you know, look at accumulators as is an important part of our business. But we’ve probably now looking at, you know, slightly wealthier accumulator, slightly higher income earning accumulators, slightly older accumulators, then what we would have at the start of the journey. Yeah, I had

Clayton Daniel
an really interesting conversation with an advisor just a week or two ago Someone with a high high profile. And they were saying that they’d sort of gone from, you know, when they first started, maybe a couple $100,000 To 500,000 800,000 to 1.22, overhand, you know, like, sort of 567 years. And then they went backwards one year. And the and the reason for it was, they spent a huge amount of time coming up with courses, and looking to develop a sort of a way to address the mass market. And that was that was pretty compelling in terms of hearing that as soon as you know what you’re doing, but then try to expand on the scope of what your business handles, it does make things a little bit more difficult. And then so that strategy was parked. And now it’s up and running again, and the growth is good. So with with scalable advice, I kind of look at the the investment options that are out there. I mean, there’s money soft and open invest. And there’s, there’s a bunch of kind of tech companies that are out there that allow financial planners to compete in in the scalable process. But I haven’t actually seen someone handle the top end, and and the sort of lower end of but I mean, there’s, there’s guys like Vin Scully, who have done extraordinarily well, on on the on the scalable end, I think he’s last looking at 4000 clients or something like that, it was quite amazing. And so yeah, the the opportunities are certainly there. But it does, at least in my mind look a little bit hard, unless, unless you’re using kind of one, like using a like building your own membership site and creating your own courses. That looks pretty, pretty difficult. Whereas you know, there might be other solutions out there that allow you to sort of plug and play and go straight away. That’s kind of what I’ve observed, anyway.

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, no, I agree. 100%, it’s easy to get distracted in the business. And the opportunity looks like a great opportunity. Yeah, I think one of the areas, which I do see, and I’ve seen a couple of presentation recently, which, and I’ll circle back to the point you’re making is the intergenerational wealth transfer. And so that’s a massive opportunity and a massive challenge for for people. And the stat I saw was 68% of high net worth clients want to have a conversation about intergenerational wealth transfer and think they might need some advice at some point. And so where that sort of circles back is if you can have a proposition which allows you to bring in the next generation, and possibly even the generation under that, to have that conversation, start providing education, that’s a service, which is really helpful to the matriarch or patriarch of the family, because you’re helping them with that conversation. But they then will possibly want a different, you know, that younger generation will want a different solution. So it may be a place where you can have a consistent philosophy, but roll that out to a different solution. So that may be something that kind of ties in with your core proposition in the business. But yes, you to expand it. If you know what I mean by that. Yeah, no,

Clayton Daniel
definitely that that makes it so you’re essentially creating a lower cost, more scalable service offering, but it’s, it’s almost like the business model light, it’s the light business model. And you’re almost even delivering that as a part of the package to the to the full service clients. Yeah, that’s right.

Jeff Thurecht
And then in our business, it might be that, you know, the matriarch or patriarch at the wealthier into the family or dealing with myself or with Marshall. Yeah, but the younger younger clients, younger members of the family might not necessarily want to talk to the old blokes, they might want to talk to some of the younger advisors and get advice on them. So there’s an opportunity for a business like ours to cater for that and be a little bit flexible in that space. So yes, and that, to me is a bit more of a compelling reason to think about, you know, that more online solution and more direct kind of solution, as opposed to totally turning our business model to focus on that.

Clayton Daniel
Yes, yeah. I’ve always said, and I honestly believe it, I think financial planning would be one of the last business models to be disrupted. I’ve, I know when Robo advice first came out, there was a sort of, you know, about a decade ago, there was somewhat of a worry that, oh, people can access, low cost ETFs. But I mean, it’s quite funny now to look at that in hindsight and be like, well, that, you know, didn’t get close. And but of course, and because advisors have been saying for a long time, that financial planning is much more than than just putting someone into low cost ETFs. One of the elements that I think One of the professions that I think is a very close analogy is something like psychology. And so I’ve always kind of thought, well, the day that someone picks up their iPhone and says, I can’t even give you an example, because the voice will start talking to me. But insert name Sri, I had a bad day to today. And, you know, I’d love to talk about it, I think that’s still a while away, to have sort of that close of a of an emotional relationship to technology. But then, something really strange came along. There was I can’t remember the name of it, but there was a relationship, AI. And it what it was, was it, there was some sort of subscription fee. And this AI became, like a partner, girlfriend or a boyfriend right there. And it’s not it didn’t like take off take off, you know, it’s for a very sort of small segment of the market. But the fact that it even had an iota of uptake sort of did change my mind in the sense that maybe when not as far away from Ai disrupting financial planning, as I originally thought, I think it still is the one of the last, I think that in psychology will be the last. And for example, you know, if you were to ever go up to one of your wealthy clients and say, Hey, do you want to use this Chatbot? Instead, I’m pretty sure what the answer is gonna be. So So I think there’s going to be a huge moat, around financial planning still, for some time. But have you seen sort of how the latest generation of artificial intelligence could potentially work within the financial advice process?

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, absolutely. I think I’m certainly not an expert in this area, but really interested in what it can do. And we’re just having a good conversation over dinner with some friends the other night, and they had been reading a bit about some AI. And they talked about the disruption. And they talked about the medical industry as an example of where they think there could be disruption. And that their hypothesis out of the book was that doctors themselves could potentially be disrupted pretty easily by AI, because you can, you know, type in the symptoms, or you can do a scan and put some tests in, and it can do that processing behind the scenes. But nurses would be really hard to disrupt because they’re the ones providing that human, you know, the bedside manner and hear that engagement. And I kind of look at that as a bit of an analogy for, you know, what we do, it’s that, you know, bedside manner. Yes, it’s that questions. It’s, you know, the human touch, yes. But if you can use the tools and the technology to really run, you know, best next, next next actions and modeling and that sort of stuff where AI can do that, and technology can do that. So if you can find a way of pairing those together, I think that’s a really powerful opportunity.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. Because I think one of the things that just talking looking, eyeballing someone, for lack of a better time, is a computer might know the right answer. But you can’t talk to a computer in the sense that the computer can’t say, oh, I’ve been doing this for 40 years. And I’ve seen, if you do go down this path, it ends up like this. If you go down this path, it ends up like this. And so it might Yeah, it’s the it is an interesting analogy between doctor and nurse, because the nurse is going to go into that experience, their bedside manner, their experience is going to help them talk the patients through the situation. That yeah, I just I do find would be very difficult to for AI. But interestingly, on the topic of AI, I was speaking to a mate of mine at the market, he does marketing for financial planners. And when when marketing first came out, or sorry, when we’re marketing AI first came out, he looks at me, he has Oh, no, like, you know, my job’s going to be replaced, because all my clients are going to rather than work with me to create content, all that sort of stuff, that they’re going to now just be able to use this AI function. And so this, you know, it all happened at the beginning of the year. And I spoke to him again a week or two ago, and I said, How are things did it did it end up doing everything he said? He said, No, it didn’t it. People still want to work with me. Because the the content that’s coming out of these AIs, it’s very hard to get the kind of tone that you need it to operate it. It’s almost the way that I like to think about it is on it at my inbox. Sure I have a spam filter, but I also have an experience filter in the sense that I can count How to tell if an email is gonna be worth reading or not just by looking at the preview text, which, you know, I’d never trained myself, but it’s just learned over time. And I think what’s going to happen in terms of content was written by AI. I think we’re, I’m not sure if we can tell now. But I’m, I think over a long enough period of time, we’ll probably be able to tell, we’ll end up developing some sort of filter in our minds that are this is AI generated text, compared to compared to human generated? Yes. But in terms of seeing things come and go, like the the the, you know, the financial advice profession has grown a lot in the time that you’ve been advising. I’m sort of super interested. Sure, it might be aI today, but I’m sort of interested to see, you know, you’ve got this conclusion that advice is better than it’s ever going to be ahead of us. And you’ve got kind of his multi decade behind. What have you seen over that time come and go, in a sense that you thought perhaps this was going to be the thing and but it wasn’t, or perhaps something you didn’t expect? did end up becoming a big thing?

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, good question. There’s a lot of stuff, I suppose over that period of time that has changed. And there’s some stuff which has remained pretty constant, I think, in terms of business models have been pretty constant and the way the device is delivered, and I think that’s a real opportunity for disruption. But I think the proposition has changed a fair bit. So when I, you know, in the early days of our business, and before that, it was a lot about investment. So investment returns and portfolio creation was the was the proposition for many firms. I think that’s changed now where you’ve got a acknowledgement of a broader industry, broader skill set, you know, more that goes into that, rather than, you know, me sitting up in our office trying to pick the best manage funds and put those together. So I think that’s been a positive evolution. I think there is still value, though, in advisors having input into that, because advisors have to sit across the table from the client. So if you outsource all of that to investment consultants, all of that to fund managers and just leave them on their own, there’s a little bit of a disconnect between what an advisor what a client is feeling and saying, and I think advisors can really brings some value to that. So I would encourage advisors to stay part of that process. I think, yeah, building on that theme, it was a lot of product centered advice was, you know, it was all about the end result was a product and selling that product and receiving some commission or, you know, getting paid for that was a big part of it. I think that’s, that’s gone, which is fantastic. And as it should be, I think the banks in advice, you know, when I first started it was insurance company. So my entree into the industry was as a agent of an insurance company, and, you know, had a couple of different agencies and did that. And then the banks came in and changed it. And we kind of thought that the banks would be a real, I guess, positive in terms of what they can do from a technology viewpoint and bringing their scale and size, but I think they’ve been a bit of a disappointment in that space. Yeah. And what it did was, there was a real concentration then. So they weren’t going to be the Savior for the technology solutions, then it was no one else’s. The rest of us were just little, you know, our little business, we can’t afford to spend millions of dollars a year on trying to develop technology. So I think having them, you know, leave the industry maybe opens it up for other people to go, Well, now it’s on us. And we’re not going to wait, wait for the banks. Having said that, I think the banks and some of the insurance companies did a great job in terms of providing an entry point, some, you know, basic training for advisors, and started that process, which is a bit of a gap. Now it makes it you know, something that we’re grappling with, I think, as an industry for how we get the next people into it, I guess, you know, quite worried about the insurance space. So, you know, it hasn’t gone yet. But it’s looking shaky. Right. Yeah. So I think it’s, you know, it’s really concerning for me, passionate advocate of the value of insurance. And it’s interesting when we talk to a lot of people when we’re recruiting or bringing new team members into the team and you say what’s, you know, what’s a client scenario, or a piece of advice or an outcome that you’re really most proud of? And I reckon eight times out of 10, they’ll talk about an insurance claim that they’ve been part of, because that’s where the rubber really hits the road. It’s a one single, tangible, really valuable moment. So when we get frustrated, insurance is really hard to do at the moment. So when you get frustrated, try and come back to that and say, Well, you know, you can’t, it’s hard to beat that moment when you can provide a family the support that they need, so Hopefully things turn around. I mean, we’ve invested heavily in that space and are committed to it. But it is really hard to hopefully things turn around. That’s not one of those things we’re talking about, which is gone a couple of years. But it’s, it’s pretty precarious.

Clayton Daniel
It’s very precarious. I mean, for example, integrity, life is not running any new business. And that was goodness, just three, four, maybe a bit longer, maybe eight or nine years launched, and it had relatively good funding relatively good management team. And yet, it’s hard to compete. It’s hard to exist if your business flows drop 75%.

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, there’s some of the things that have come and come and gone, I think. Alright, is there anything else that you had in mind that you’ve seen or that you think is worth

Clayton Daniel
exploring? So it’s, I think, goals based advice. I don’t hear that term. As often as I used it, I think that was where it was kind of a catch cry for. As, you know, as as the financial planning, sort of industry as a whole was coming out of the out of FOFA, it became this sort of, like, quick grab this thing on the wall called goals based,

Jeff Thurecht
I think that comes back to the proposition was about investments. So when goals based advice was coming out, you know, kind of look out and go like, Oh, isn’t that just doing? Isn’t that just doing your job? But I think, but I think the difference was, because a lot of the stories before there had been about investment portfolios, investment returns. Yeah. And what was it? It was understanding, you know, clients retirement wanted to retire. Yeah, that was the goal. Yeah. But there wasn’t much else to it. So I think that was possibly why it was such a big thing. It’s like, how can you have a broader conversation and expand out the goals and change your services, but I think a lot of our clients were younger, wasn’t just about the farm. It was about, you know, cash flow, and lending and insurance and super, and investments were a part of that. But talking about property and buying your home and that sort of stuff. So yeah, I’d have goals, you had to prioritize a long as all the time. So it wasn’t anything kind of terribly different. But for other people, you know, we were a bit unusual in that space. When we started the business, there wasn’t a lot of people now, not everybody. And now let’s move on to working in that part with that.

Clayton Daniel
Right. Yeah. Which and I have, I didn’t know that about your company. And that’s kind of one of the reasons why I wanted to catch up chat is because there were, you know, let’s call it back in the day, there were sort of a handful of companies that were already pretty mature in this area. When faux fur came around, and in for when ensemble at the time, we were XY advisor, you know, nine years ago, it realistically, it was just a cup, you know, a handful of practice principals who were just trying to figure out what financial planning could be. And yeah, that speaking to you, it was pretty clear that there were companies that are sort of, were ahead of the curve and had made that jump. But then I guess the conversation became, well, how do we get the majority of advisors onto this path, and it became, yeah, almost comically called goals based advice. Otherwise known as financial planning. One of the things you said earlier, which I thought was quite interesting, and we’ll touch on if you don’t mind, but if I think back to me, when I started, as a financial planner, I started in accounting lucky County. And then I moved across into an SMSF specific advice firm. And so you know, as a, as a graduate, I got drilled on the SIS act quite a lot. So became your technical knowledge, technical knowledge. So I sort of had this accounting technical knowledge in this act, technical knowledge. And then I jumped into horizons, which was sort of a bit of a baptism by fire and what’s not just all about the numbers that there’s also you have to call people on the phone as well. And I was like, okay, and then so by the time I sort of launched my financial planning business, I had a fair bit of technical knowledge, a small amount of sales skills up my sleeve. But I was sort of lucky enough, if you want to call it that in, I could write insurance, I could do simple advice. So that it was just time in the game. And then over the course of a handful of years, I understood what it meant to be a financial planning right. And I was kind of lucky, lucky enough to be quite involved with ensemble back in the day and I was able to learn as much as I could from a lot of people and so it I had, let’s call it a five year apprentice apprenticeship while I was the business owner, yeah, on top of my handful of years that I’ve done in the technical space, that’s super hard for a new planner to get anywhere near that sort of level of experience. And that’s what the job is now. So when it is difficult to bring people in, and on this podcast, just recently, there was a really interesting gent that I met actually in Cebu as well. And it was the first time I’d ever met someone who used to be a management consultant, and became a financial planner, and a younger guy, and I sort of chatting to him about it. And he said, Well, you know, I was there for three years, and then half of everyone gets fired, right? So, you know, he got, he actually, I don’t know if he was fired, or if he was, if he left on his own accord, I want to be clear on that. But I do know that his next opportunity was going to pay him quite a lot of money, right. And he took off, you know, a third of that money to start in advice. And the only reason he did that is because he learned about financial planning during his time as a management consultant. And, and what I realized in that moment is it going to be almost impossible to get people who would have gone into that to come across here. Now, the both of us know that if you stick around long enough, and you are going to earn yourself a good client base, and you’re bringing money into your practice, and you’re going to earn a good career. But it’s hard from day one, it’s really hot from day one, it’s really hard to find the people with the skill sets. And if if I was to start a job, in a bar, for example, my first day, I’m going to get a shopping, shopping basket, I’m going to walk around, I’m going to collect glasses, there’s something for me today what I do day one, right? And then eventually you learn what Postmates is, and the whole thing, right? So you go from there. But what how, you know, with the banks being out of financial planning, at least for now, what is in your mind the best way to get someone up and running into a position where they’re, you know, the washing their own face in terms of their own salary? And then they’re able to actually grow, help grow the business as well?

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, it’s, it’s quite a complicated challenge, isn’t it? I think, I guess in some ways, the good thing. And the bad thing now is that there’s an expectation of a certain level of education for people coming into the industry. And so there’s more courses available, they’re coming in with a bit more of that technical sort of knowledge. That’s for brand new people, which is, which is I think, fantastic. And they’re gonna hit the ground running from that viewpoint. The challenge with that is, to your point, salary expectations for somebody who spent three or four years at uni studying a different to potentially someone who’d been a career changer, who was willing to start at the bottom in an admin role and work their way up. Yeah. also potentially expectations of how quickly you might be sitting in front of clients. Because I’ve done this financial planning degree, I can give advice. And, you know, in many ways, they’ll be far superior to me from a technical viewpoint, right. But again, you know, you talked about some of the sales training you got through horizons, and that was kind of where I started, it was all about, you know, sales and relationship stuff first, and then we built the technical stuff on top of it. And I think that’s a gap and a challenge. So that, I guess, to plug that gap, it is just about you have to be a little bit more patient, you have to put a little bit more time into it. But I also feel the best advisors have had exposure to the different roles and different parts of the business as they come through. So you know, a good example in our business is home who’s been with us for eight or nine years now. He came to us straight out of uni, super smart guy. He’s now a senior advisor on our team. So yeah, it was it was an advisor after say, six or seven years, which to me is pretty quick. Yeah. But for somebody who is straight out of uni, it may be slightly, but for him, he came in as a power planner. Yes. And so he developed his technical skills. And he already had that he did a sub major in financial planning, you know, when it was not really a cool thing to do. And so he had that technical side of things and the strategy and he’d worked on that, but he’d never seen never seen the paperwork, which was associated with implementing that advice. Yeah, he’d never seen the pain of dealing with, you know, the underwriting process for the insurance advice that they’ve given. He’d never sat in front of a client and had to explain it to them. So it was always things and he’s you know, he then was looking to move into an associate advisor role. And we said, well, you’ve got to go and do some admin and client service stuff first. So he can see what’s involved in the process. And that’s really very valuable for him. And then he went to an associate advisor advisor. And you know, he’s a really fantastic success story within our business and for the industry, I think. But the best thing that he did was everything we asked him to do every role he had, he just did that to the best of his ability. Awesome. And then he said, Okay, now what’s next? As opposed to going, you know, I want to be an advisor, what do I need to do to get there? Well, the short answer is be really good at what you’re doing now. And then you’ll get more opportunities. And so it’s kind of, and as frustrating as that might be that will actually make you a better advisor when you get there. And so, you know, his timeframe, for my viewpoint was pretty quick. But you know, I get that it might sound a long time for other people. But still, I think you’ve got to take those steps in the process. Like when you do your apprenticeship you do Yeah, yeah, learn different skills along the way. And you don’t start off with, you know, building your house and your day, one of your carpentry apprenticeship, you start off with doing other, more menial tasks to build on that and growth, I think, being willing to, you know, roll your sleeves up, do the best you can at what you’ve been given and be really curious. Be really helpful. And that’s, you know, how you’re gonna get ahead more quickly.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, well, I mean, the weight of the job is so huge, right? You’re literally giving someone advice on how to live their life and how to spend their money and use their money. I mean, goodness gracious, like that is the kind of as big of a larger verse blitz abilities one can have. So yeah, the idea that you can complete a degree and sort of walk into that there. At the end of the day, we may not be as structured as medicine. But I’ve got a mate who’s my age, and I just coughed her and 40, who’s who’s not yet a fully fledged ICU doctor, and he’s been at uni, was studying I should say, for almost 20 years, so including sort of undergraduate degrees, and then graduate degrees, and then medicines and specializations. And, and so he’s probably maybe two years away from completing. And that’s they don’t, they don’t sneeze. You know, that’s just, that’s how it’s done what you do. Yeah. And, and, of course, being being like the top dog in an ICU ward, you definitely want to know what you do is, it’s a huge way to the job. But at the same time, you know, the massive weight of being a financial planners is there as well. And and I think, when you see the outcomes, when you see the, like, let’s say, let’s say good and bad, like, let’s say, someone doesn’t listen to your advice, you need to see that. And you need to see what happens when they do listen to you vice, you need to see that you need to hear the inflections in their voice. When they regret that they didn’t listen, you need to hear the elation in their voice when when they did. And you need to measure or I should say go along the journey of people experiencing changes in their life, because we’re doing quote unquote change management, in real time on a on a micro basis just within a family, not a not a company, but it still is really, really hard. And those those those soft skills of essentially the sales skills really ends up being not just the moment of sale, it’s also selling every single step along the way Exactly. of implementing the the the advice,

Jeff Thurecht
I think that’s right, if you if you get good at that part of the process, and helping somebody through the journey, and along the way, then the sales part of it, which is often the key part of it that people think about the hard so you don’t need to do that. Yes, it’s about how you communicate and how you, I guess educate people get acceptance along the way that can make it much easier. But that in itself is sales. Absolutely. But it’s not that sort of high pressure sales. I think the other thing that, you know is evolving for us is that, you know, you and I know it’s a really rewarding profession. Once you get to be an advisor and you get to see the value you provide and the relationships you build. And you know, the deep purpose there is to the work that you do and the outcomes you’re able to deliver and you can make a good living and, you know, you can have some flexibility because of you know, you’re dealing with people and that sort of stuff. So it’s really rewarding. But people know more what a ICU doctor does, right? And they make squillions of dollars and they save lives every day and that’s kind of a you know, it’s pretty appealing. It’s been a little TV Those POVs. And you see that all the time, but it’s not as clear for people coming into our industry why you would put that time into it? Yeah, necessarily, unless you’ve had some more exposure to that, which is relatively unusual for somebody who’s young. Absolutely.

Clayton Daniel
And and I guess this is kind of my my final question. And that is what drew you to into advice? And then sort of as an addendum to that question, what made you be an early adopter of this of this, you know, pre FOFA? You know, what made you pursue what made you get into advice, and then what made you pursue your own what you thought advice could be.

Jeff Thurecht
I always liked understanding what was important to people what their goals were, I always liked being part of a team. And my role within teams was always to, you know, more of a facilitator than the, you know, flashy star player or the try scorer. So sort of drew me to the advice was a way of, you know, I was interested in how money worked, and in the psychology around money, and that sort of stuff, as well. So I guess the combination of those factors was what, what drew me to it, and when I was fortunate enough to get a role, we didn’t have to have any qualifications or experience, and they gave lots of training. So I kind of, you know, we got given a final consent call 40 people and stuff that they gave us the training, which was perfect, it was, it was the only way I was gonna get into the industry with my background. But then once I got in there and got a bit of a grounding into it, and we started to think about, you know, how you go about helping people and the role I could play there. And I guess, you know, people need to when we went into the business side of things, it was more about helping people who are having the same challenges and opportunities as we were. And there wasn’t a lot of people doing that it was more about there was insurance specialists, and there was, you know, retirement specialists kind of thing that was the two predominant models in the industry at the time. So there were people doing what we’re doing, but not as many. So we thought, well, if we wanted to help those, it’s very hard to go to another firm and, you know, follow their model, which isn’t really consistent. So we decided to do it ourselves. And we had, we’ve always had coaches, and you know, people supporting us along the way. So it wasn’t like we did it just by ourselves. Sure. But that was that was the main focus at the time for wanting to do it, to a degree do it our way, but for the people we wanted to work with and start from there. And that’s built out over time. But that was kind of why we launched the business.

Clayton Daniel
Amazing. Any any sort of big, so I remember when Yeah, I think it was my first year owning the company. And I learnt a big breakthrough, in that you could charge two different fees. One was a percentage of funds under management, and one was an advice fee. And I was I remember for as silly as that sounds, but I remember even just down to the billing, or the fee, that company, I started at a base level started separating out what it was that we were doing as a service. And, and you know that that took on many different iterations over time. But I still will never forget the time that I learned that that was an option. Was there any kind of, even if it was a long time ago, any sort of pivotal moments in that journey that you took, including the time that you spent with coaches and that type of thing? Yeah,

Jeff Thurecht
heaps, and heaps of them, you know, we got wrong and learn from those as well. But I think, you know, on the fee side of things, we always understood pretty early that our clients didn’t have big wads of fun. So percentage base fee was not really going to be a sustainable way of doing it. So we were flat dollar fees from pretty early right. From day one, basically, which meant we had to get pretty good at explaining and articulating the value. Of course, it wasn’t necessarily linked to how much you had in your super fund, because then we wouldn’t make enough money to be sustainable. So that was a really valuable lesson for us to be able to work out well. You know, what are the problems our clients have? How does our proposition support the solving of those problems? Yeah, how do we continue to deliver value? And a big part of that, you know, in the early days was we used to be pretty good at delivering the upfront value and selling the upfront value. But we got to year two or three for those clients, and it was kind of like, well, things are ticking along. Okay. Why do I need to keep paying you guys? Yeah, that time probably, you know, a grand a year, which is a lot of money. You know, why do I need to keep paying you so we had to get? Well? That’s a good question. Yeah. Had to get good at working out. What’s our ongoing proposition? How do we keep a client? You know,

Clayton Daniel
absolutely. Like I completely agree with it’s a major thing that you sort of get that two to three year mark, and you’re like, oh, wait, what I’m doing is working too. Well. What do I do? Uh, what when was there anywhere? Sort of unconventional, that you looked at to sort of help you? You know, kind of figure out the next steps? Or was it? Was it was it all pretty congruent to what you’re already doing?

Jeff Thurecht
It was more we had, I think in some ways we had to get back to matching, working on the tangible and intangible benefits of advice. And the various times I feel like we’ve gone too far, either way. So you had, you know, we got into, you know, tracking progress, because often people will just look at how much money have I got in my bank account? And how much is my super worth, but they kind of forget how much they’ve paid off their mortgage. You know, how much extra contributions they put into their investment account, which is ticking along every month, and they’ve gotten forgotten about it, which is great. That’s what you want. It’s just ticking over. So you know, what’s the value of that? What are the goals, they’ve managed to tick off along the way, setting up for their their family, or you know, buying a new car or going on the extra big holiday they didn’t think they would have? But then saying you’ve ticked all those things off. So what’s next, you know, you’ve built this foundation. We’ve got some good habits in place, we’ve got a plan. But what comes next? So it’s about, I guess, you’ve got to be that’s reminding them of what you’ve done. Yeah. And then also reminding them, there’s more to come. It’s like we can’t we can do some more.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. It’s like linking the previous success into, you know, projecting that forward. What are the next things?

Jeff Thurecht
Yeah, that’s cool. And I still think there’s an opportunity for technology to do that better. Like, yeah, it’s not quite, you know, we’ve got we’ve seen different things which do that. Okay. But we still do that pretty manually via a spreadsheet, and then chuck it into a PowerPoint. Yeah. So it’s kind of not all the way there. Yeah,

Clayton Daniel
I remember, when when memes first came out yet in Instagram, there’s a picture and the words over the pitch, I’m at one stage, I always talk about manual just reminded me, I, you know, someone would say, hey, I want to go to Rome in two years for my friend’s wedding or whatever. And so I would literally get a picture of Rome. And then the text overs up would be, you know, friend’s wedding. And that would that would sit in the document. Yeah. That that you’d have to sort of it was all very manual. Yeah. Right. Very manual. Yeah, there’s some recent solutions that have come out. I’d be interested to see if they can do what you’re talking about. Because it is there is an element of the upfront, but then there’s the ongoing and then how you link the previous to the future? Yeah.

Jeff Thurecht
And some of that some of the modeling that you can get is about, you can model one goal. Yes. Can you model alternative paths? Or can you prioritize or that sort of stuff is a bit bit more complicated, but that’s where the real value is? Because very rarely does the client have just one seat?

Clayton Daniel
Right? And then a linear path to it? Yeah, yeah. Look, I just wanted to thank you. It’s been honestly a pleasure to sit down and chat to you. And, you know, someone had seen you sort of do what you’ve been doing for a long time. Just want to thank you for sharing with us today.

Jeff Thurecht
It’s a pleasure. And thanks for inviting me, it was good to reconnect. And as I said earlier, I really enjoy and have learned a lot from listening to the podcasts that you guys do and being part of that community as well. So keep up the good work there.

Clayton Daniel
Thanks. Great