#419 Chris Young – Transcript

Clayton Daniel 0:02
How’s it going? What do you know? Strike a light. I’m here with Chris. Mate, thank you so much for joining me today.

Chris Young 0:33
Great to be here.

Clayton Daniel 0:34
Yeah, so we’ve, the last couple of years have bumped into each other over in Cebu, which is VPS. HQ. And we just the amount of time I spent laughing talking to you was reason enough to have you on the podcast. But beyond that, you know, you’ve got this long career in financial planning. You’ve you’ve certainly got this interesting sort of experience in the world of associations. And, you know, that then sort of goes into what would you call it like dealer groups and licensing, and then of course, what independence is, and this is an interesting sort of thread that I’d like to sort of, you know, sort of follow with you. Let’s start at the top. Please explain to us the association that you’re a part of, and, you know, whites a little bit different to what, what else is out there?

Chris Young 1:33
Okay, it’s an advisor Association. And I can I can hear all the listeners thinking that’s exactly what we need another advisor Association, to have amalgamated. So we’re going to have another one pop up. And we’ve, we’ve, we’ve sort of been in existence a little over a year. So it’s CIFAA, CIFAA, and we’re an association for independent advisors. So that’s those whose satisfy nine to three pay. And why do we exist? Basically, we are a voice for independent advisors. We are a brand that they can use on the website and emails and talking to clients. And we hope to build in membership over the years, perhaps influence and policy, certainly get the word out there as far as being an independent advisor and the importance importance of it. And also encouraging advisors who aren’t quite independent yet. Let’s call them independent in spirit, but technically not to kind of make those final steps and move across. And we kind of talked a lot advisors may say, I don’t really see the point. So maybe we talk about that a little bit, I think it is worth taking those extra steps to move over. You can satisfy but that’s basically what CIFAA is, was a membership for financial advisors who are independent.

Clayton Daniel 3:04
Right. And here’s, here’s an interesting question. Before we even get to, as you mentioned, what is the point or not? What do you find? is the limiting factor to what’s what’s generally are the most common reason that a certain advice process or business model? What gets in the road of qualifying in the first place? Like what what is sort of the the general environment that you’ve come across that you think, oh, yeah, this, this happens all the time. But it’s real, real simple as him to just to do something else.

Chris Young 3:47
Yeah, so to be independent, you can’t receive any commissions, you can’t be associated with the product provider or bank or what have you. And you can’t charge in any other way that might influence the advice. So the main two that sort of disqualify you receiving insurance commissions and trail commissions, any of that, and being a part of a dealer group. So those are the big two. And I’d say for a lot of people, they are charging flat fees. A lot of people have structured their business now. They’re not taking the risk Commission’s Yeah, but there’s still a member of a dealer group and they haven’t quite made that move to their own oversell or what have you that

Clayton Daniel 4:29
also you have to be self licensed specifically, you can’t use someone else’s license.

Chris Young 4:34
Yes, unless that license is specifically they’re all independent advisors. So one of those advisors takes a commission, then that sort of disqualifies the lot.

Clayton Daniel 4:46
Like you got you that makes sense. Okay, so, I mean, if we look at even the last, I think, the last month, or the last quarter, I can’t remember I was I was on now I’m looking at the data on wealth data.com data, you shout out to Colin, I was looking at his data the other day, and there was, it was, it was like there was 100 New licensees in the last whatever the period was, and 60 of those. So the majority were have either one or two advisor. practices, which, which I mean, tells me automatically, that or, you know, even though they’re smaller businesses, it’s easy to tell that they are certainly my, you know, like, self licensed, so, so it’s kind of the transition period, or the trend is aligned, you know, to a big, a big dealer group, and then typically to a smaller dealer group, and then you get the courage to kind of stay on your own I sense that kind of looks to be the trend. So, so that’s certainly happening. Do you? Do you expect this to continue? And in what I guess, what do you see is the benefit? Or where do you see advice going as a result of it?

Chris Young 6:15
So yes, I would expect it to continue, I think there’s going to be a lot of people getting their own license, there’s going to be a lot of people sort of joining up with other firms, and then they go out and get their own license actually spoke to a group of advisers. I know, when I was part of the delegate, they were part of the same dealer group, and they were tossing out okay, do we get our own license? Or do we move to another dealer group, I think the experience, unfortunately, for people in dealer groups, there’s going to be a lot of movement, this tailgate has been sold to them and, and what have you, as we can see that sort of happening a lot at the moment. And the problem is, if we don’t like who we’ve been sold to, we’re going to move to another dealer group, and then all of a sudden, all that dealer groups been sold to another group. And it’s just going to be this sort of continual change. And I think, obviously, advisors have had a lot enough of change for the moment, thank you very much. So the AFSL is somewhat of a scary option. It’s not, it’s not all about available to anyone, you obviously have to have a certain size or be willing to sort of take on that workload, it does take time, and you’ve got to do it properly. But if you can do it, I would recommend doing it. It is well worthwhile. You can set up your policies, and your procedures and practices in a way that suits your business makes sense to your business, you don’t have to have compliance for the lowest common denominator all makes sense. You make a decision decisions made and then you run your business properly. So I think it’s it’s worth doing. Yeah.

Clayton Daniel 7:54
Interesting. What what’s happened? Well, what do you feel has been the results? Since since moving into an independent license, since being, you know, qualifying for that independence tag, have you? I mean, there’s a couple of ways you can kind of view it, there’s, there’s obviously like business performance, you know, revenue, there’s also sort of that internal feeling of pride, right? There’s also the impact of what your clients think if we kind of like, if we kind of sort of picked apart those three, what’s the emotional reaction that you get from what’s the professional result that you’ve achieved? And kind of most importantly, do you clients care?

Chris Young 8:41
Question? Well, I’ve sort of started the practice, and wasn’t intentionally I’ve got to satisfy these rules, and I want to be independent. And so that’s going to be a massive advantage. I just actually made these decisions, and then realized, okay, yeah, I did have a tiny bit of Insurance Commission. I was a member of a dealer group, and then we set up on a for sale, and I went, I actually, I can just make a couple of changes. And, Robert, your father’s brother, we’re independent, we can do that. So now having done it, I don’t know why I didn’t do it earlier. It’s one of those things, you don’t really realize the benefits until you’ve done it. And I’ll speak to a lot of advisors and it doesn’t take much there at some I spoke to one the other day, and he had a tiny bit of trial commission, it wouldn’t have been that difficult for him. So make that change. But he just said I don’t really see the value. And here’s the key thing. Clients are looking for independent advisors. There is some information out there and it’s getting out into the general public. It’s not a massive wave at this stage. We do think it’s going to grow but there are people who are seeking out advisors who are independent. So I know I can See who’s come from the see for website to our website, you know, over the last month, there was like 15. So that’s not bad. So we are getting clients who are searching out for independent financial advisors. But if you’re not independent, they don’t actually ring you and say, Oh, by the way, I was going to make a phone call. But I’d say that you’re not independent, so I’m not doing it. So you never see that value, they don’t tell you, you don’t see that. You don’t see that loss. So but it is there. The other thing is, it just makes the whole process as far as your existing clients and also new clients, it makes things a little bit easier. Because you know, the financial planners don’t have the best reputation and people are scared. And when they’re dealing with their life savings, you need all the help you can get to allay their fears, it makes sense that they’re a little bit afraid, put their trust in someone to provide financial advice. So if you can do something to say, Okay, well, we’re different. We know, you’ve heard a few horror stories in the past, we’re a little bit different. You know, because of these reasons, that helps. And what we get from people who are quite independent, those are my clients don’t care doesn’t make much of a difference, but we think it does, you just probably don’t see that difference, it makes things a little bit easier. And you move along a lot quicker. And then you put that in with the fact that you are a good adviser, they can see as you’re going through the process that you are doing things and acting in their best interest just makes things easier. So it’s not like the panacea. But it really makes things a lot easier. As far as dealing with new clients, and also your existing clients, they might be more inclined to refer, you know, go see, go see clay or whoever. Yeah, independent advisor. Makes a little bit a little bit easier.

Clayton Daniel 12:00
Interesting. And so Okay, so there’s the there’s a growing trend towards self licensing. Does that. And I, you know, I can definitely look at the data to see that, where does the association part fit in? So I follow all of the all of the thinking, is it is the point of the association, then to is it to promote independent financial planning? Or is it to put pressure on the wider on the wider profession to, to join? Is this is is the reason for because, and there was a great quote, that the CFP Board in America, there was a there was an article that I saw recently, and, and one of the best lines was, you know, the journey from an emerging profession to an established profession is still ahead of us, right, like, we’ve come a long way. A huge, a huge amount of distance has been traversed, however. And if I was looking at sort of a scale, I would put us over the 50%. Mark, I’m certainly in this certainly in this country. And and we’re, we’re still on that journey. And is this is the proof is the association designed, you know, we’ve got the F AAA now, right, like, which is it’s a big Association, the main two combined is the point of Sefa. To say to the F AAA, Hey, we should be doing this or is it to say to it, is it to be more? I guess what I’m saying is, is it for the profession and the professionals or is it for clients and and to educate them? Or is it both,

Chris Young 14:06
it’s both it’s both at the moment, the focus for us is clients and to educate them as far as get the word out there the importance of independent advice. And so that’s a focus at the moment but also the focus is to as I was talking about educated advisors at ACC does matter it is worthwhile make that change. And I think it is just going to naturally happen that people will take these steps, new businesses will probably be starting with their own AFSL and you will also have less people taking commissions more people charging flat fees. So you’re gonna have people naturally moving to satisfying nine to three A and, and therefore, you’re going to have more members join our association, and and that point of difference is going to go All right. So we do want it to be a point of difference. And that’s not to kind of sling mud at everyone else. It is to help the consumer make the choice and trust the advisor more than they otherwise would just say help them along the way. So that’s the point. And yeah, when we get a certain amount of size, hopefully we can help influence policy and what have you, which is something we’re working on. But it’s, I guess, not the focus at the moment, the focus is getting the word out there, to consumers and to advise us.

Clayton Daniel 15:38
Awesome. I’ve got some, I got some kind of questions around self licensing in the in the sense of the business models that that kind of pop up, we’re seeing sort of the growth of the asset consultant. real interesting story, I’ve kind of done a bit of a deep dive on this recently. So early 2000s, all the super funds have asset consultants, you know, output says we need, we need to merge these super funds. And these new super funds get so big, and they they’re merging, so there’s less of them. And they hire, they hire internal teams, to be the asset consultants. So you’ve got this kind of list of asset consultants who go okay, well, not a lot of business anymore, and super funds and sort of move down to the the financial planner level, and the financial planet levels, you know, they were originally kind of looking at research with, with morning second, as he said, Morningstar, and lonsec, and zenith and whoever else, and they’ve kind of replaced that with the ASIC consultants. And so there’s kind of this interesting situation where as bunch of planning companies have gotten bigger. The ASIC consultants have shifted their views from super funds to advisors. Are you are you seeing this kind of trend amongst it like within the the individually licensed? Or is it? Is it still, because everyone’s individually licensed? That trend hasn’t continued yet, into your world?

Chris Young 17:23
It’s not. So I’m not so much saying that. With the smaller firms, I am a little bit. And again, I guess for the independence piece you’re doing, it’ll be a little bit careful if you’ve sort of got your own discretionary accounts or what have you. That you’re that’s not influencing the advice you’re giving. And you’re not basically trying to get everyone’s assets on board with your firm. So what you want to be able to say to the client is which I’m sure advisors do, hey, look, we’re going to look at your situation, we’re going to look at all your assets, and we’re gonna put you on the right path, yada, yada, yada. But if you have a certain Superfund, and that is the right Superfund for you, and there’s no real amazing benefit for moving elsewhere, we’re gonna leave you exactly where you are. And I think that’s the right thing to do by the client. And it does become a conflict there. If you’ve got either these are our investments or investments, there’s going to be this incentive to Well, I want to get as many people on those investments as possible.

Clayton Daniel 18:33
That’s a very interesting point. Yeah. Because typically, there is whatever amount of basis points there is typically an incentive there. So yeah, I understand. So So. So. So I guess, in the independent world, there’s not a lot of SMEs know. Ah, interesting. Interesting. I get that. Yeah. Right. That’s, that’s a super interesting data point, considering the rise of the SMA, but that might actually be a hindrance for some people to, to join.

Chris Young 19:12
Definitely. Yep. Yeah, right. Oh, nothing in the legislation that specifically talks about that. has said it’s not a problem for them. Right. But I would be careful about doing that. Yeah. Because that might change their mind.

Clayton Daniel 19:36
Yeah, yeah. That makes total sense. So are you saying that technically, if someone did have an SMA, and there was an incentive in there, then under the current rules that you could still call yourself?

Chris Young 19:46
You could argue that you’re still independent, and that’s not influencing your advice? Well, I would argue, well, it probably does influence you’ve revised doesn’t have the same with percentage base fees. Specifically in the legislation that says Okay, you charge a 1% fee on assets under management, that you can call yourself independent. And we put it on our website. Members put whether we charge a flat fee, they all charge a flat fee.

Clayton Daniel 20:14
Sure. Yeah. Okay, so to bid to be a part of Sefa, you, you can’t charge an asset base fee? No, it’s just

Chris Young 20:23
that we haven’t had anyone come along that does have an asset base fee. And when they do have an asset base fee, we would say, Okay, well, yeah, it’s we’re not you, you have to make sure that that’s not influencing the advice, we’d strongly encourage you. And my experiences most people, they’ve set up their firms that way, just because they think that’s the right way to charge. And yes, I think it is the right way to charge and most people are moving their way anyway. So yeah,

Clayton Daniel 20:49
I’ll look. Absolutely. I tend to agree, it’s quite funny, you know, if you go back almost 10 years ago, when Ensembl was known as xy advisor, and, you know, we’re all running our own financial planning practices. A lot of us, quote unquote, younger, we weren’t, I mean, kids, but we were, you know, like late 20s, early 30s. And we had our financial planning companies, all we had known was asset base fees. And so what I’ll never forget, one of the very first things that we learned about was sort of stripping out, okay, well, this is financial advice, and it doesn’t have an asset base fee. And then over here is an investment fee. And it does have an asset base fee, I remember that being one of the very first sort of concepts that I learned about, you know, when when, when I opened my first, yeah, my my French wine company. And that sort of premise really took me and I know the other founders, but also all of the financial planners who were around, you know, formally XY visor at that time, we’ve kind of all went through this huge journey together. Where, because, because the interesting thing about charging a flat fee, to me, the interesting thing is, it forces you as an advisor to to identify what it is that you do for a client, it then forces you to learn how to do that better. So you then go through this multi year long process, often decades long process of further articulating and identifying what that financial planning value is, and how you can get better at achieving a better outcome and a more valuable outcome for the client. So at its base, yes, it’s flat fee versus asset fee. But what it means in a career is kind of two very different outcomes. If you’re charging an asset based theme, you’re always going to be focused on the assets, charging a flat fee for financial planning, you’re constantly, you’re constantly at a micro level and on a daily and weekly, monthly and yearly, and by yearly process, you are focused on what the outcomes are, and ultimately, identifying them and improving on them.

Chris Young 23:12
Yeah, that’s right. I mean, when I started my own firm, a lot of it came from a stock broking background, rather than a lot of financial planners in a lot of them said, hey, that’s silly, don’t go with the flat fee thing. You gotta charge some level of percentage started other than I’m really glad that I kind of stuck to my guns on that one. And you’re right, it does force you to change the way you I guess, pitch your services and advice and the way you deliver that. And importantly, you need to be able to say, Okay, well, we, you’re going to agree to pay me a fee before I give you any sort of advice. And once you’ve agreed to pay that fee, the advice that I give won’t really matter to me as far as what I recommend. That’s not going to change the amount of money I receive. That’s really helpful when in there helps the clients understand. Okay, well, this guy is going to give me the right advice. He’s not going to try to sell me anything afterwards. Yeah. So yeah, that really helps, I think, yeah.

Clayton Daniel 24:19
Here’s a question in regards to an ongoing service arrangement, right, because one, another kind of subject that I used to think a lot about, and I still do to this day, even though I’m no longer practicing advisor where what do you what’s your main goal? In an ongoing advice, environment? It is your main goal to say, here’s what we discussed. Here’s what you wanted. This is the journey that you’re on and how closely these were results are tracking to it. And here are the kind of the milestones that you’ve been achieved that you’ve achieved and in and from it from a financial point of view. Here, here are the milestones that we’re trying to achieve, like do you try to share with your clients on a yearly basis? how close they are to achieving both lifestyle and financial goals? Or is there something else that you do where

Chris Young 25:29
they gotta retire ecommerce, or were retirement planning focused as an individual firm, and everyone, so I guess I’ll talk through what we the onboarding process and what we tell clients. So we have, I guess, as most advisors do these days, we say, okay, come in and have a chat, we’re not going to deliver any advice. By the end of that conversation, we’ll be able to give you a quote on this as what we’re going to help you with, and this is going to be and our firm we quite an initial base of advice, they were going to get you from where you are right now we’ve gone through this process, we’ve delivered the advice, and then we’ve implemented that advice. And that’s going to cost this much. And then the client will inevitably say, Well, what are you going to charge me anything after that. So what we tell clients is, if we see value in an ongoing relationship, we will offer that to you. And you can choose to take that up or not. Importantly, there’s no obligation to take that up. And we’re not structuring our advice, to try to lock you into anything, we’re actually doing the opposite. We’re trying to make it as simple as possible for you. So if you are that way inclined, that you can manage things going forward. You can choose to do that. And some people do that. And other people at the end of the day, say now we’d like to engage you again. This next we do 12 month contracts. Okay, so then we get to the 12 month contract. And that was your original question, what are we essentially do retirees, so a lot of the time their goal is I want to live a comfortable retirement, I want to know if you got the money at the right times. I want to know not spending too much. I want to know if I can spend a bit more yada, yada, yada. So it’s not so much as the accumulators do they say, Well, I want to get high, you know, all these things. They’re probably at a point in their life, a lot of them not all of our clients sort of have goals and aspirations. But a lot of people, it’s just yeah, I want to help the kids, I want to not have to worry about the money and what have you. So what we do is okay, well, if we looking after your situation, we’re going to be available throughout the year, any sort of changes, and we will be there for you, as particularly any sort of big movements in the markets, we’re going to be available for you and help you with that. If there’s a job quite often, there’s nothing we’ll have an annual review, we’ll go through everything, we’ll recommend any changes something so typical sort of vanilla offering the most financial planners, yeah, will will offer

Clayton Daniel 28:05
excellent aged care. So one of the super interesting things, or one of the super interesting trends that I’m seeing in financial planning, sort of on a global scale, is because advisors, it’s quite funny, the results of really good financial planning, like sometimes they’re totally on anticipated, like, so. I mean, if you talk about insurance for a second row, advisors was so good at giving financial planning, sort of giving insurance advice, and making sure that every single one of their clients who were even remotely close to a claim got paid that in Australia, kind of almost bankrupted the entire theater entire industry, and the government had to come in and say, Well, no, you’re not allowed to do this. We’re going to make it you know, like a lot harder. And, and ultimately a lot more expensive, just so that the industry can survive. So that’s like, like, that’s, that’s a wild outcome from good financial planning. But another really interesting outcome from good financial planning is the fact that retirement advice is is really now genuinely turned into intergenerational and, and aged care. It’s almost like it used to be that retirement was like, Ah, okay, we hit retirement. Now. That’s the second last phase. Now there’s this whole age care phase, and you’ve got a lot of people with a lot of money who are not, you know, don’t spend it all right. So and obviously with health, with health, you know, life expectancy going up there’s a lot of people continuing to live long past their ability to to spend it so to speak. Does your because your other retirement sort of focused practice? Do you, Wade much into the aged care? Or do you sort of when when things are getting to that stage and you’re talking with the kids? Does that move on to somewhere else? Or do you like to keep it in house,

Chris Young 30:20
we’ve been really, I guess, strict as to keeping within our swim lane. As far as we’re providing retirement advice, I’m really glad I did that I had so many people telling me, you know, you have to do risk. And so I’ve kind of stuck to my metal there over the years and not moved outside of it. But if we did move outside of it, it would be really about providing more advice and services to the existing client base that we have, rather than finding a new client base and services. So the things that aged care, aged care planning and estate planning are the two keys if we, which we are moving towards and that might take a little while. But at the moment, we provide relatively simple aged care, advice and help in that space. And otherwise, we refer out this time with the estate planning, we kind of looked at estate planning, and we’ve made a compliance decision not to go down that road just yet. Yeah, but we might might, at some point in time, look at that. But those are the key not anyone sort of sort of starting out and trying to decide where they’re going to focus, I would say focus on a particular demographic, a type of client or postpone or have client. And you can go really narrow, like, I’m going to focus on principals, school principals, and provide advice to them. Or you can go a bit wider than like us and go Well, I’m going to do retirement planning. But if you’re looking at your website, and it says we specialize in at least 15 things, you do not specialize in anything. So don’t do that. And I’m really happy we did that it makes, you know, if we do get a client who doesn’t fit that demographic, we’re going to refer them on generally, unless we really think we’re the ones for them. But if we get a retiree client, and then they go and see three other financial advisors, the other ones specialize in everything, we usually get that client, because we’re really good at dealing with that client understanding and knowing where everything’s sort of pointing towards helping them. Yeah, that is something I’m really glad that I focused on that and it hasn’t actually yesterday, one of the in a staff meeting, they said, Oh, should we actually think about moving in, like dealing with accumulators. And I was like, Well, no, actually, we’re gonna stick with one client and if we are moving out is to provide more advice and services to that particular topic client.

Clayton Daniel 32:57
Yeah, that makes sense. One of the best terms I’ve heard in regards to what you were just discussing, is your target. Sorry. Yeah, your target is not your market. So. So as in if you walk past one physiotherapist, and it says, We look after people with sore muscles. And then the next the shop next to that physiotherapist, is another physiotherapist that says, we work with the Australian cricket team. Me My schlubby self says Well, clearly, to go to the physiotherapist that looks out to the Australian cricket team. It’s not because I’m an elite sportsmen by any means. But one is for everyone. And one is is a speciality and the speciality that even though I’m not it, I aligned myself more to and so the so it doesn’t surprise me at all that if you say hey, we only do retirement that you pick up, your more, you’re just more likely to pick pick those clients up. And and yeah, it’s it’s, it’s a very, very universal rule.

Chris Young 34:19
Yeah, there’s a cost because there’s a demographic you don’t get and they go look at your website, and then they don’t give you a call. But that’s fine. They can go to someone else who is specialized in that area, we would much rather get 80% of the people who we are suitable for. come in as the meeting and then sign up happily.

Clayton Daniel 34:42
Yeah. If we if we’re to fast forward, you know, the last 10 years has been sort of just you know

it’s been, I think right now it is pretty good. You know, all the successful, great advisors who stayed on like yourself have washed out the lower level of advisors like me, who didn’t do didn’t stick around? The cleansing has occurred. It’s so it’s so now it’s actually quite. It’s, it’s quite a good environment, right, like, you know, demand is high, which is fantastic. Let’s, you know, whether or not q AR comes in at the end of the day, it’s pretty obvious that there’s going to be a winding back of a lot of the issues, or a lot of the the red tape and yeah, red tape oversight, not so much oversight. It’s absurd levels of oversight. And so where do you see advice, headed in the next 10 years? As both a, you know, like, a universal look, but also, where do you see you? Where do you see your practice? Where do you see Sefa?

Chris Young 35:59
Okay, so I think if you ask this question to most people, they’re gonna go, I think it’s a great industry to be in, I think they’re right, it’s a great industry to be in. I think demand for advice is as strong as it’s ever been. The the reputation of the industry is on the up and takes time. But over time, that is going to be a real benefit. There are much higher barriers to entry into the industry that they have been in the past that does present some challenges. That’s also a gift. And hopefully, fingers crossed a bit less regulatory change. So I think it is a great industry to be in as far as sort of our firm. Well, let’s start with the safe room, the association. I think we are at the moment. Well, biker Cricket Club are all volunteers. It’s a relatively low membership fee, it’s $500 for a year, if you are independent, crazy not to join, to go there have a look at the website. Now. So yeah, I think it will take time because it is difficult to transition to that independent adviser, so you can tick that box. So there’s probably it’s hard to get data on it. But there’s probably only a few 100 advisors in Australia, who came call themselves independent. I think within sort of 10 years, there’ll be 1000s. And I would hope that that will be a point of difference. point of difference, a good point of difference. So just help the client understand that okay, this is how it works. I am more willing to trust this advisor and all actually say because I know people are going to be yelling at the podcast right now. Because they’re going to be saying, well, I’m bothered by doesn’t implement my advice. And we know that the point is it could and it has in the past. I’m other firms and it helps differentiate you. Horrible analogy, we can cut this out. If it doesn’t work like Here’s an analogy. So my wife this is true. She is terrified of birds hates bird. If a bird flies in her general direction. She’s convinced that it’s whooping her particularly magpies because magpies take your eyes out, not all magpies just the bad apple Magpie will take your eyes out. And she’s also I don’t know if you have this in Sydney, do you have my locks? She hates my locks. I don’t know what I’d like is they’re all over Perth, and they are a harmless little bird. And they look exactly like a magpie or they do to my wife. Right? Right. So you can trust them. mudlark is not going to pick your eyes out. But you cannot tell my wife that she sees one. She is scared. So the analogy is, yeah, the mudlark would be better served. If it had a little badge on that says, hey, I’m not a magpie. And that’s what that’s what vague independence is about, you’re able to say okay, well, I’ve taken the steps in my business to structure things this way. And, you know, that helps you the consumer to understand the difference. We’re not like they are we know there’s a few bad apples that have to sort of upset everything. And this is just one thing. It just helps you a little bit as a consumer to understand the difference. How did that go? We might cut that out. Who knows? No.

Clayton Daniel 39:49
That’s a really good one. I and I mean look as a former Hugh Ross practice principle. Yeah, one of the things that I tried very much thing to do was to be as independent as possible. And so I, I do appreciate that. Yes. As you as you mentioned, you can be a part of it and not be a part of it. But yeah, does it make sense for the mudlark to have about that?

Chris Young 40:18
Yeah, exactly what most advisors now do with the dealer code that’s opposing your license with IWF, is they can’t legally get pressured to use IWF products. And what they want to do is they actually want to show to the client that they are not being influenced by the dealer group. So what did they do to prove that? Oh, they don’t recommend it. Oh, Allah products as a vibe, like, you see, I told you

Clayton Daniel 40:47
we’re laughing about it, but it’s absolutely occurring.

Chris Young 40:52
And so much to the frustration of your dealer groups, and where you go, Okay, well, that model is not going to work anymore. And that’s why you’re seeing all the changes saying, like, with IWF, at the moment, yeah,

Clayton Daniel 41:05
yeah, yeah, let’s go on. That is? Yeah, look, I think you’ve nailed it. Um, that is a it’s a very interesting, as I mentioned before, he’ll Ross which is owned, owned by a&p. And and yes, certainly one of the elements that was pretty common, even even back then was to see a&p advisors, kind of using everything but a. And, and then, and then, you know, it’s kind of well, is the advisor like, now, are you still you’re still non conflicted? Because it’s almost like that option isn’t an option at all now, and like, I haven’t looked at, you know, product record, I haven’t looked at sort of the differences in products for quite a while, but there was actually some really good products. Yeah. And so you get

Chris Young 42:00
to the voids by recommending a product.

Clayton Daniel 42:05
It’s a good product. Good goodness. No, you’re exactly right. So may I ever think I think, by the sounds of it, we’ll put it this way. I know, I know, financial planners who are independent, like 100%, I’m not sure if they’re part of your association or bid. I know that they’re independent. And I know, like, when I hear them speak, they do drop it in as a part of the call it a sales pitch, but it’s a value a value offering, right. And whenever I hear it mentioned, I’m like, they only spend, you know, two seconds on it. Right. But I always think to myself, wow, like the, the ability to do that must feel good. You know what I mean? Like it must it, it must sound good to, to a prospective client as well. And so when, when I was asking you, you know, like, what are the difficulties? And what are the benefits, you can definitely see where the benefits are.

Chris Young 43:09
And you don’t have to drag it in to the clients head, you’re just a little okay, this is something with us. I say, when I’m having a client FSG. And I just say, Okay, well look, here’s, blah, blah, blah. And by the way, we’re independent. And that’s a much nicer experience than and in the client, the FSG. There’s the warning there, we’re not independent, and then you have to explain that oh, yeah, but it’s just much nicer. So this is not about I guess, pulling everyone else. It’s about saying, hey, that’s actually really nice. If you can call yourself independent, it does make a difference. It probably will help and your self esteem as an advisor as well. So if you are in the position, you can make those moves even though there might take a bit of time. It’s definitely worthwhile and so maybe don’t dismiss it as soon as some of them do. And,

Clayton Daniel 44:03
and I assume you guys might have some in house or trusted or recommended people to assist with self licensing and things like that.

Chris Young 44:11
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, people give us a give me a call or give me an email, go to the website, go to the speaker website, which is C IF a.hsn.au. Have a look at membership if you’ve gotten inquiry groups or just went to the fat on sort of what you need to do. I’m happy to help

Clayton Daniel 44:32
awesome mate I’m I’m stoked that we got to do this like Yeah, yeah. Where whenever we catch up in in the Philippines, it Yeah, we do. We do end up laughing a lot. So I

Chris Young 44:47
met in the Philippines. I don’t know if you know this, but I got off the plane. I went to the hotel. I was davek. And I was on the way down to get something to eat and you are in the elevator and you said hey, A conference. And I said yes. And you said, Would you like to go out and get absolutely plastered? That’s that’s not actually what you said. But that’s what my That’s what I heard. And it was good time. So next time, I’ll see you there, we’ll do it again.

Clayton Daniel 45:21
So got it done. Well, thank you again so much for coming on the podcast and what’s the rate yet? Yeah, it’s awesome that you’re available for questions. So thanks a lot. Thanks, guys.