#420 Lionel O’Mally – Transcript

James Wrigley
Hello, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I’ve got this pleasure of speaking with Lionel O’Mally from Purpose Planning today, Lionel. Thanks for joining me for a chat.

Lionel O’Mally
No worries, James, happy to jump in and have a chat.

James Wrigley
And specifically, before we press record, we’ve sent a few messages backwards and forwards on on Instagram and are keen to just have a chat with you about business and what you’re up to. And why don’t we make a podcast episode about the same types? So maybe tell us a bit about purpose planning? Let’s let’s start there. What who’s your business? What is it? Who do you do it for? The what? What’s?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, so likewise, messages are a bit of a fan of James Wrigley. So like the content that you send out, and I’m interested to hear more about you what you post on the daily. So thanks for sending that out. Takes. Beacon has to actually do that. Because the social media is a bit of a

James Wrigley
it can be scary kind of. Yeah, yeah.

Lionel O’Mally
But me myself, I’m Lionel O’Mally, founder and Principal of Purpose Planning, really new into the piece of business. I’ve been in business now for the last two years in with purpose planning. So it’s been a bit of a roller coaster, but at the same time, it’s been great and more motivating to get out on my own in my own business. About me, I guess, I’ve got a bit of a different background, from a traditional financial planner, really. I’m originally from Burke way out worse. So grew up there and moved down to Dubbo went scoring there. Yeah, I was more known as a football player rather than financial planner. So whenever I go back to Burke, now most people actually died. And I’m a financial planner. So I’m trying to promote that back there now, but I was there originally, no, that was playing rugby league. So I’ve been in Sydney, where I live now, Benny for over 10 years now and moved down predominantly just to play rugby league for the Bulldogs. So that was the start of my journey in Sydney. And then the football side of it sort of went two ways I was ever staying sim professional playing rugby league in the New South Wales cup Wentworthville. At the same time, I was conquering for six months. And then the concreting side of it. I was like, I’m not going to do this for the rest of my life. So the guy that I was working for actually looked like they are worn out leather boots, and it was only 50. Here’s a 62 These are any boys short shorts gumbo. It’s a nice shirt every day is pretty tough. So I just looked at university degrees around where I was living in Parramatta, and found accounting and financial planning. And pretty much Yeah, one thing led to another and I had an internship with a small practice in Castle Hill for about two and a half years and did the admin client service and paraplanning route, finished the financial planning degree. And then essentially, I was like, I need to get out and actually do advice and see clients. So then I’ve got another, got a job a larger a&p firm in North Sydney, was there for five years and then led me into the route of going down to purpose planning, which is AWS wasn’t going to work for a big practice for a smart career. So I’ve got at the time I had 30 years to work as a career as met, why don’t I just do it on my own and make a bit more of a better living for me and my family? Long term? Yeah.

James Wrigley
How old were you when you decided to go to university and do the study? How old were you then?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, so I was 21. Yeah, okay. 21, I had to contract with the Bulldogs for two years. In that time, I had a knee reconstruction cross roll on the back burner. But yeah, I was 21 and still play ourselves playing 40 working part time or full time as a landscaper and doing unit Sam. So pretty full on.

James Wrigley
Yeah, it’s interesting that the people that have that have kind of got into accounting and financial advice, a little after school, like you know, you’re not talking too long after you were to finish high school. But you know, I’ve had chats as people here and others that I’ve had on the podcast that have kind of gotten into it a little later, rather than just finishing school going straight to doing their three unit degree and then out the other side of it I was actually there in between. So so a couple of years into inter purpose planning what is your is it you on your own? You’ve got some some people with you what’s what’s your what’s your business look like in 10 years

Lionel O’Mally
said to ease into it. I have an admin or Client Service Manager works four days a week in the office where I’m working at the moment. I work out of a chartered accounting practice. So that’s pretty handy. We work hand in hand with all of our clients situations. In our in my business, there’s got to offshore stuff as well. So we’ve got like a full suite of a service to help before you find planning areas. And it’s remember trying to make the process pretty quickly and, and informative, but along the way, giving regular communication to clients.

James Wrigley
Yeah. Nice. Any any glad you did the move on to your own a couple of years ago rather than working in the bigger practice? So yeah, yeah, well,

Lionel O’Mally
actually, it’s pretty tough in the first years. It’s a bit of a roller coaster on emotions as well. So, but yeah, definitely glad. Because you’re obviously, when you got 100% of the skin in the game, you’re working, like round the clock pretty hard. And the harder you work, the more fulfilling and rewarding it will be for you long term. So I like to work pretty hard. Especially in the hours or when, when I can work. You know what I mean? Like, I’ve got three young kids as well. Okay. I help out a fair bit at sort of Max a fair bit of flexibility from having your own businesses or you can have a day off at same time that day off does cost us so yeah. Yeah. It’s

James Wrigley
because you’re not accountable to anyone else other than yourself, aren’t you? And so you wouldn’t really want to work don’t work when you’re when you’re when you don’t want to work, but, you know, just accountable to yourself. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So what have you done in terms of licensing? So you know, you’ve gone gone on your own, do you see licensing arrangement? Like,

Lionel O’Mally
yeah, so I joined with spa Financial Group, are you okay, you’re down in Melbourne? Good group. Oh, yeah. Good group of advisors, a younger group, as well. So the responsible manager there, Arthur calles. He’s a good guy. Yeah, who cares about his advisers and the direction where He’s taking his business and gives fair bit of flexibility in terms of what, how we were running our own businesses as well. And then just chips in to help out where we are. And yeah, with the license as well. We also have a quarterly catch up advisor catch up group, which is pretty cool. We’re about 10, or 12 advisors in the region, or in the state pretty much catch up. And we all catch up in person as well known as zoom bullshit. We will catch up, talk business, have lunch together, and then have a beer in the afternoon as well. sort of let the free throwing emotions run. Yeah, during the afternoon. So yeah, it’s pretty, pretty, pretty vital part of our, our group as

James Wrigley
well. Is that is that a? Is it a kind of a structured quarterly thing? Is it like there’s an agenda and things to it? Or it just kind of go with the flow each each quarter? How do they work?

Lionel O’Mally
It’s, it’s structured in the sense that we catch up every quarter. Yeah, that’s sort of like a must. But now, it’s not really any particular agenda. It’s sort of whatever is the flavor of the month time. And most of the businesses in that group of the advisors are all principles of their own business. They’re all one or two main bands. Yeah. And, and a been in business three or six months or five years. So we’re also learning along that journey together, owning a business, running a business, running and doing advice clients and managing clients and how we’re doing advice pretty much so it’s worth it and open sharing and for them to like just share what you’re doing in your business and if it’s doing if you’re doing well at it, obviously share and tell people your tips and tricks Erica there’s so many clients in Australia to help so we’re not really competing with each other, we’re trying to help each other, help each other

James Wrigley
support each other to grow. Yeah, and I would imagine you know, being a being in a small business you got elicited for days or weeks some support staff and everyone else that’s the you know, one or two men businesses as well. Having that ability to come together there’s going to be pretty good you know, you’re not going to have someone on a day to day basis to bounce ideas off quite so much. But bringing it together quarterly is kind of helpful law audits

Lionel O’Mally
quarterly and at the same time, we’re all small business owners in our own business and if you’re not doing something like that, you’re pretty much becoming very like independent on your own and you’re sick, you’re segregated from the outside world He is true to other advisors as well so becomes quite lonely as well when you’re only in practice, you can have one event so that is sort of the reason for that meeting is just to form better relationships with your peers and really learn and try and elevate your game as an advisor and as a business owner as well because at the end of the day if you can do that your business practice your your advice is going to get better your business is going to obviously earn more revenue for you and your family. So it’s like a win win win. Yeah, essentially.

James Wrigley
So who you who you working with like Adam had a look at your website earlier and you need to talk about different segments or whatever or quality or types of clients or different different life stages but but What was the kind of typical demographic and location of the clients that you’re working with?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, so typical clients for most about what majority of our clients, probably 70% of them, pretty much pre retirees and retirees. So they’re small business owners or Asiago. Couples and stuff like that, that are employed closer to the nearer of retirement or they’re actually in retirement now. And we’re pretty much adding a fair bit of value there who are making sure their structures are set up effectively reducing their tax and all the other digital pieces that an advisor would add value is there, the area that that’s our sort of our sweet spot, because we have done that quite a bit. And I’m more of a team coffee guy. Happy to go and have a ton of coffee with my clients and sit down and chit chat about their life. So I do a fair bit of majority of our meetings like when the review start ticking around more personal and, and lifestyle and, and like history sort of type discussions rather than talking about finance finances covers about 25% or more open that 20% of our conversation here. Most of us end up have like their last thought what they’re doing now airlines

James Wrigley
the airlines are typical review meeting go for your health helander Would they would they last for

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, typical review meeting, we do it in two parts. First part is just pretty much data capture just capturing their data, doing a quick half an hour or or a 20 minute phone call just to capture the data and update their details with the app that we use. So just sewer, we call that our looking back meetings. And now Now second meeting is called are looking forward meeting where we’re going through all the projections and advice documents and stuff like that and ongoing fees and stuff like that. But a typical review meeting, they’re looking looking forward meetings roughly around 60 minutes, or 90 minutes or there abouts. Probably three quarters of that is just chit chat.

James Wrigley
Yep. And how do you do that? Besides that two meeting process, you know, one’s a bit of a data capture just refreshing to make sure you’ve got their current details, and then you’ve got this looking forward meeting? Are they done in quick succession? Or had well how does that work?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, it’s it’s turned around within three or four weeks, to be honest. So the first meeting is just a data capture is like a reverse of that one, send out a form to a client via our app. Yep, they go through the form and update all their details, most of our information is pretty much up to date already through the Wasp portal app that we use for my prosperity. So that’s sort of like just a pre Hayyan, what’s changed? What’s new, and what do we need to do as part of our next meeting for our staff meeting? Okay. So that’s usually is takes about half an hour at max? Yeah, really? That’s our obligation to make sure we’ve done a review within that 12 months as well.

James Wrigley
How are you doing that meeting? Is that on the phone? Are you going to see them like? Well, you

Lionel O’Mally
know, that one’s that one’s all virtual over the phone, over the phone or via zoom? When we’re sending out a Calendly link at Siva, they’re the only two options that they get phone call or Zoom meetings.

James Wrigley
And then that looking forward meeting, how are you? How are you running that? Like, is that is that in person? Is that virtual?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, that’s my big, that’s probably one of the big things that I sort of, don’t share with advisor with clients that are probably my point of difference that I actually like seeing people in person or hazing meeting. So I’d rather go out and see them sit down and talk to them about their their lives and get to know them more of a relationship person. So yeah, all of our looking forward meetings are all done in person. Or,

James Wrigley
yes. So you then when you go through that you block out periods of time where you’ll spend a few days on the road going to see everyone and you knock it out in one go look at it any manager diary.

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, well, we’re a lot of a lot of my clients, based in orange Bathurst, Dubbo. Griffith down on the south coast. A couple up in Queensland out and book as well. Yeah, outwards. So yeah, we usually just have all of our review meetings, those looking, looking back meetings over the phone, and then book all of our meetings in the same two or three days when we’re going out there. So we’re just sort of staggering it wherever we can. Put them all together until one one does you typically like a day where I’m going out worse as like, I’ll drive from Dubbo to Bathurst and I’ll have five consecutive meetings for an hour and there was an hour or half an hour between say yes going, bang, bang, bang, bang, like one of cups of teas and coffee. Got a

James Wrigley
little toilet break in between? And then until the next one?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, exactly right. And then we’re sometimes going out for lunch with clients as well, or taking them out for lunches, as well, like some people that are really unexpected that you if you want to go out and actually build a better relationship, you set aside all the finance side and actually get to know them on a more personal level. So taking someone out to lunch or a client out to lunch, you really get to open they really open up to you. So that’s pretty powerful.

James Wrigley
I do I do find that then your your clients are strong referrals into you, because it seems like you’re putting a lot of work into DSM, more than one a lot of other advisors are in, in being with them in their in their home or whatever. Do you find that they’re strong advocates of yours?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, they definitely are. A lot of our a lot of our new clients come from all the existing

James Wrigley
fantastic roles.

Lionel O’Mally
Valley just started picking up the social media showed social media posting recently, because we just want to have a bit more of a presence. And I’ve got, like a little book that I’ve created to share with the rest of the online community as well. So yeah, going through that over the next six weeks. But yeah, like we we don’t, we don’t really get a lot of clients from social media. A lot of it comes from referrals, or existing clients, mainly

James Wrigley
in to see you mentioned a couple of times there about this. You mentioned the web app, our app, they’re updating things here, how are you? What are you using how you engaging with the clients. And

Lionel O’Mally
yeah, that’s the app that we’ve we’ve taken on board is could my prosperity, we refer to that as our wealth portal. with clients, we’re pretty much for new clients is really handy, because you can send a link to them, they activate and register their own account. And then we’ve got an automatically pre populated, it’s not a full fat bomb. But it’s a cool little world snapshot where it captures all of the main pieces of information that you need for advice. And they can enter in what they’re looking for as well. And that pretty much they do that on their time. So takes me 20 seconds to send an email to register, it’s actually in their calendar invite. And then before our first meeting, we’ve pretty much got all the details from them from a financial financial perspective, because they’ve added everything to the app, that’s for new clients. So that’s pretty handy. It saves probably three or four hours of capturing the data in the first 45 minutes, giving it to a power planner or me myself putting it into x span, which is an absolute nightmare. And yes, saving time with data capture. So but for review clients, we’re integrating all the information from what we originally had and putting it into my prosperity. Net looking back meeting is them either updating the details themselves, or I’m actually jumping in there myself and updating all the details as we go through the questions and see what’s going on. And then it can generate a a wasp report printed off of that point as well out of that. So that’s pretty handy. But some of the the older generation, we’ve got clients in this sort of like 60s 70s 80s. And actually I’ve got a 94 year old clients. She’s obviously not using the app, but all the other ones that are still have the the ability to use their mobile phone and their devices, they can all use an app. So it’s a bit of a hurdle to get over at the start actually, activating the app is probably the hardest part the past. But once you’ve got it, it’s easy.

James Wrigley
Finding the you know, the 70 year olds picking it up picking it up well, better than what you thought maybe

Lionel O’Mally
picking out well, because once it’s set up, and they’ve got the app on their phone, all they need to do is just click on the app, and it shows up their four walls, their net worth of their situation, which is all the details. And at the same time. With my prosperity we it’s a lot of advisors use it for cash flow advice and all that side of things where a lot of my clients, I don’t give cash flow advice and not gonna tell a seven year old how much money to spend. But the data feeds that you get from the bank accounts, we don’t use that we use it for my just a net worth situation for them to jump on to the Wasp auto account, click on their super account and tell us what the balance is. That’s all they’re after. And that’s pretty much the nuts and bolts of what we use it for. It’s for checking on their total wealth. And also the good thing about it at the moment is that we’ve been using a lot electronic signature through it then it saves the documents to the to the vault, so you don’t have to go looking for it. They know what they’ve signed. It’s in their actual dock bowl. And then they can upload all their personal documents that they need to upload as well as the wheels, driver’s license, all that sort of stuff uploaded into the app, and they can just take a photo with their phone. Bang There we go. Straight in.

James Wrigley
And so does that does that then push across into x plan like the name or date of birth, and all of those details goes straight into explain you’re not

Lionel O’Mally
straightway integration from my prosperity straight into x y. So, in a review, you’ve already got the information in x plan, when it goes into my prosperity, it’s outdated, and then they push it back into x plane, you just got to make sure you’re not doubling up on assets. But it’s more accurate into the sense that they’re all the valuations done through CoreLogic for property, the Red Bull valuations for their cars, all that sort of trucks and caravans and all that sort of shit. It’s a lot more accurate with what their actual vet lock evaluations are, especially if you have the data feeds turned out as well. It shows you all their bank accounts, what they’ve spent for the month, where they’re earning for the month. So there’s no

James Wrigley
I haven’t looked at it too much. That’s, that’s good. And so from, from an advice, kind of preparation, Power Plan perspective, then how you pay your managing that in your businesses, that part is done offshore, you mentioned before, so

Lionel O’Mally
I’ve got VAs that yeah, offshore, she works full time. So pretty much from our meetings, it’s a voice recording file note with our templated meeting notes sent to her part of that voice recording is a task list that I give her to do. She does all the research produces the ROA isn’t the SOA is and then passes it to our client service manager that prepares are the documents in our checking documents before we’re sending them out. So yes, she does a fair, fair bit of the heavy lipstick

James Wrigley
and using some people use like Dragon Dictate and things for those voice notes. Like how are you recording the voice message? What are you doing,

Lionel O’Mally
it’s just a voice recorder app, it just records your voice only. And you send that to the admin power plant. And we’ve got a template structure of all the meeting notes, that type of meeting. And you’re obviously just reading off the heading. And then obviously, what else part of the meeting note and they’re just putting it all in sending it to me and saving it to our client file at the same time. And now it’s pretty much done. So meeting notes for me take probably three to seven or eight minutes. That’s incredible. Yes,

James Wrigley
give me some tips from you for what things that we can do here. We’ve before we press record, we were having you’re having a bit show we’re having a bit of a chat about MDRT. And so you mentioned the you’ve got your quarterly advisors getting together as part of your as part of your last see. But then you’ve also part of MDRT in the psychology of one of the conferences that are on Can you can you talk about MDRT a bit in your involvement and how that’s helping you?

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s great, great thing to talk about. Yeah, being a part of MDRT for the last two years now. So where that study group came from our our quarterly catch up came from was from another advisor in Sydney, he’s been part of MDRT going on 40 years next year. Well, he’s 70 Z’s ages 75 or 70, something like that. His name’s Godfrey Phillips. Godfrey, his name is from Sydney, on an echo of stuff off his last name. But yeah, he’s been a part of MDRT for a long time. He’s an old insurance advisor. And NDRC was created based on pretty much the million dollar roundtable or like Daniels, that 27 advisors that came together and they’re all like, we want to join a create a group where we can share information together to help each other in business. So from that, pretty much grew. It’s grown into this global organization where there’s like 90,000 members. In Australia, there is a lot of members now. Because a lot of the old insurance advisors were part of that group, and a lot of them are left the industry. But at the same time now it’s become more it’s it’s more about sharing information with each other. So that group that we catch up quarterly fraud stemmed from that, like, that was part of the part of the reasons why I started the group because we were sitting down at a Christmas function one year for Spark, and we always sitting around the table, talking about our business, my business, what are you doing this? How are you doing that? And then I took the initiative from from Godfrey and said, Why don’t we just start this on a quarterly thing? I took the initiative of actually starting it and taking everyone down. And so I’m pretty much like the the person or the person that spends the time organizing each group each session, where we’re going to who we’re talking to who’s coming to the session. So the advisors within our group are just pretty much saying yes, we want to come or we don’t work our mom organizing the whole day. takes me half a day for me to organize OS, which I’m happy to give away, because I’m happy to avoid going to those sessions. It’s good to be around. Other advisors speak to other advisors. So yeah, that MDRT has two conferences every year, or actually three to conference. So the main conference is in America every year, they have between sort of like 10 to 15,000 advisors that go to it. And then there’s watching Asia Pacific, the most recent one was in Singapore, okay. The one in Singapore, yeah, had about seven or 8000 advising. There’s a lot of advisors, a lot of advisors through the Asia Pacific region, like the Philippines and stuff like that, just there are brokers for one company. But the same thing, there’s a there’s a format, and there’s a very well run organization. So if you go into like a licensee, PD day or a conference, usually what you get bombarded with is product, you’re sick of going there, because there’s a fund manager here, product provider here, use my product, use this product, use that product now then it’s really about Well, you’re the advisor, how do you become a better advisor, and that whole conference is about motivation to become better advisors, motivation new as a business owner, teaching you about marketing and different techniques and stuff like that. But teaching you about life as well, they have locked his whole concepts. whole concept mentor thing with this whole concert thing. Okay, about No, I just you personally, but I’m talking about you financially, spiritually, all that sort of stuff. So yeah, that’s it. But the good thing about the whole group is you’re going away to an international conference, or the one that I went to two years ago was in Australia for luckily met here. So I was pretty wowed by the whole whole session, there was like very motivating, coming out of it, you feel very motivated to go and implement things that you’ve learned through that whole, three or four days into your business. And that’s, that’s the key of notice that you come away from all the MDRT groups in the conversations that he go to that you’re actually big thing is you’re coming away with little gold nuggets of information. And it’s what you do is that information that really makes an impact to your business, you can always go and listen to it. But if he’s not going to actually make a change to actually go and implement, while two little things that will make yourself better and your business better and your advice better for clients. So it’s more of a professional development thing.

James Wrigley
And directly in your in your your you sound really passionate about your comeback and made some changes. And you know, people are small.

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, for the for an example, like one of the small things was a business card, Aaron Kane down in Melbourne, yeah. Here the spice business card, that’s like a TAP card that says all your information for a client straight away for a business card. That was one of the things that took away from it. Okay, that was one thing. The other thing was about teaching you to do things that you’re good at, and what you’re valuable that doing and pass on all of the other things that you don’t like doing to someone that can actually do on phones. And if it takes should you if it means that you need to sacrifice some of the short term, like short term cash flow. Yeah, to actually go and actually pass on that to someone else, it makes you work harder to go on, go to that next level. So that’s what I took away, I took away that at stylight, I hired a client service manager straightaway after that, as like, I had a fair bit of work coming through. And I was trying to juggle all these different hats. And it really just made me have actually get to go and do that. So that was one of my little gold nuggets that I took away. And I implemented that straightaway. And that’s made a world of difference to my business. When

James Wrigley
What do you reckon the biggest challenge in your business is today?

Lionel O’Mally
I don’t really have any challenges love, it’s always. Now it’s all about just bringing on your ideal client. Okay, marketing to your ideal client and getting a reach to the ideal client is so

James Wrigley
is that what this books about the you mentioned before, you

Lionel O’Mally
know, the little book of both concepts that I’ve created is just pretty much like a tool to give to clients to say, This is who we are, this is what we do. And this is what we speak about. And these are the areas that we can help you in. And it’s a tool for me to actually explain the concepts of advice, right. So it has everything from cashflow, bucketing strategies, has a lot about insurance in there about the needs and the what how what you need insurance wise that’s Got a great table to show you life stages, what the last stage is that you need for insurance talks about the different types of insurance. It also talks about investments, a big thing that I use it for is the investment side of things, the investment timeframe of how long you’re going to be invested for. And also the asset classes. A lot of people don’t know what asset classes are, they just say, Oh, my super is with Australian super. My super just does that. And like, actually, no, it’s not what Australian soup is doing. It’s actually investments inside the fund that make it run, how hard it’s going to run and how fast it’s going to run. So the asset classes is just more about an education base, helping them understand the asset classes. What does Australian shares mean, international shares, property, all that sort of stuff, how it means? And how do we make the breakup for your money and where it’s important for you in your life stage. And then also talks about superannuation and retirement planning and a bit of estate planning? That’s our sort of like our little contact

James Wrigley
there. That would would you give that to clients? How did it How does it

Lionel O’Mally
give it to every client every meeting, it’s like our FSG. And I take it with me to clients. So usually, when I’m having a first meeting with a client, in person, I’ll take it with me to the meeting and use during the meeting, because I’m actually explaining the concepts of their areas of advice at the time, I’m giving it to them. So it’s a tool for me as an advisor to help educate clients really. So that’s, and I created that right at the start of when I started business, because when you start business, you don’t have all that many clients. Yeah, yeah, I was like, What am I going to do to actually really get to someone that’s a bit more Tange, tangible that actually can look through and read. And now I’ve gotten to the point where we actually catch up with, with corporate to in businesses, where we’re having one group sessions with the employees, and non laminating and as a wellness program, you’re there, to show them that their employees actually you want to look after them. And we’re giving out this book together, don’t give that give something to them, it obviously cost me something to print. It’s like a little handbook that you use. So it’s nice to give something away, always like giving something away, because you’re kind

James Wrigley
of leaving, you’re leaving something with your name and your logo and so forth. And is this, Eric, you mentioned you about hiring and the different making different improvements. I’ve had different people along the along over the years. So if there’s something in your business that you’re repeating all the time, like documented in some way, so that you’re not having to repeat yourself all the time. So yeah, you’ve done it in the form of a book by the sound of things and you’re referencing different parts of that book, when you’re explaining other people talk about, we’re gonna record a video of how you explain your investment philosophy or whatever, and have clients watch the video rather than repeated over and over and over, particularly if you’re in a small business on your own. There’s only so much time that you that you’ve got to do things, if you can say to be there, then it’s helpful that

Lionel O’Mally
they’re right. Yes, yeah, it’s more about a tool giving you because I think we both learned early on as an advisors that you’re an educator first, and then you’re an advisor. Second, like always use your educator hat for us to educate people, because a lot of people don’t know what cog personal finances mean. So help educate them first, and then give them guidance, what they should be doing. And then help them make a decision and what they need to do. Rather than saying, I’m the advisor, this is what you have to do here. Listen to me, other than you, you listen to me. It’s like I’m building a relationship with you. I want to help you through your journey. But you need to know what things mean, and how they interact with different things and educating them on their different parts of that is, I think it’s really important.

James Wrigley
So what’s what’s the biggest opportunity do you think for you in your business?

Lionel O’Mally
Thing, the biggest opportunity around? There’s a number of things at the moment we’re working on, we’re working on another book for retirees. I think that’ll be a be big opportunity for us for a heavy lead referral. In so the biggest opportunities, and I really, yeah, I’ve read read during our hour. At the moment, we’re redoing how we interact with clients in our pipeline management. And what we want to do there is every every part of the stage of our advice process is that we want to be in contact with clients to communicate with them, where they’re at, what they’re doing, what we’re doing, and what part of the stage you’re up to. So I find that when you speak to a client for the first time, and you have a presentation meeting in between we have a strategy discussion meeting for half an hour as well what we’ve found and what we’re actually going to give advice on and what they’re comfortable with because that’s pretty much like a pre A presentation reading you’re confirming everything before you have the presentation meeting. And then you’re not going into that presentation meeting blind here. So but what we’re doing is part of our process, especially with an onboarding process, when we’re getting a new lead, we’re actually allowing them to book the meetings for themselves having a discovery meeting and then getting that data capture, which is a wasp portal, all within a quick process of moving it a toll on and then there’s automated text messages and emails going out to clients to systemize. That process.

James Wrigley
What’s that? What’s that automation built on?

Lionel O’Mally
It’s built just through through a system really like a Syrian pipeline. Yes. So you can create the automation through your business and how you want it to look. And we want to say, so as part of our each part of our process, we’re actually sending out and communicating with clients in that manner. Whereas an automated process, it’s fantastic. Yeah, so once you’ve signed a client, or you’re following up, a client sends out an automated message soon as you move it from one tool to the next door. And then as part of the research process, you don’t really hear much from clients. So we do like a text message for when we’re actually sending out the authorities to their super accounts to let them know, and letting them know, once you’ve completed the research, we’re going to have a strategy discussion meeting once we’ve done all the research for the super and pensions or their insurance cover. And we have a quick 20 or 30 minute strategy discussion. This is your fun, this is what we’ve found. This is the what the lead advice looks like. Are you happy with that without telling what the product is, and then going through that process. So it’s an easier meeting when we go into the implementation meeting. But as we move through that process, once the power plan is completed the advice document, it sends an automatic test message to them, we’ve completed your advice document, book in your presentation, meeting with your advisor, and then moves on to our next stage of implementation. And it’s got automated systems for our internal staff to tell them what to do, where to look for. And then as we’ve completed all as we’re implementing the plan, it sends out another message. We’re implementing your plan. Now we’ve got any questions, give us a call. But the system integrates both text message, emails, Facebook, Instagram, all onto the one system and you can reply to them in that one system.

James Wrigley
What’s it? What’s it called? what system you’re using, when Tojo James left Kimia? Level? What is it? What did go high level? Go high level? That’s it? That sounds amazing. Because there’s so many parts in there that yeah, we’re contacting the clients are your advices. Ready? Can we book in a meeting with you? It’s certainly enough. Yeah.

Lionel O’Mally
So then yeah, and then we’re doing that for our review process as well then sending out a message to them 45 days from the pretty much the anniversary date to book in that looking back meeting, yeah, and then are looking forward meeting is post our anniversary date to obviously sign off on an extra 12 months of advice. Yeah, and during, in between trying to learn our business and how I like to operate is a big thing. But on one thing, we’re getting to a sweet spot where we’re now being able to use your system for the last pretty much two or three weeks. And it’s just giving us a good visual overlay of where we’re at with things what we’re doing, who’s doing what what stage and and then the the interesting is now we’re going on this next phase of like social media and marketing Yeah, base. It’s got social media planner through the whole thing. So you can create a social media posts in the system with in the calendar and link Instagram, Facebook, and Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn all into the one posts and it links it all together automatically for you. And then you can schedule it for the coming month really scheduled at all. And then it’s got an AI integration where if you want to create content and what you want to talk about a time to you come up with it on your own, it’ll tell you what to do. I just pretty much clicks a button that creates a carton creates a little spiel for you.

James Wrigley
That’s fantastic. I’m gonna go and have a look at that as a burst.

Lionel O’Mally
It’s pretty cool. But yeah, that’s the thing about and moving out and business on your own. Yeah, it’s challenging at the same time you get to do things differently to how you’ve previously done before. Yeah, use us as users system for a big business and overlay and overlook where small businesses like you want to create a system where you’ve got support around you to go and give code and simple and accurate advice to your clients and communicating with them have notice where a few other visors where they get their virtual assistants to actually give them an update whether or as like, I’m gonna take that from that and use a system It just gives a little email or text message every time I’m moving through the process, letting him know that it’s not stuck in stagnant land, something is actually happening. And as you move it from tile to tile, it shows you what’s going on. How does go? I think so. Yeah, we a lot of my clients, where they’re all out in the country areas, so I’m originally from the country at the back of books, so like to get out there and meet with country people. So we do a lot of trips out to Baptists and Davao and Burke and stuff like that, because country people get country people.

James Wrigley
keys in the car, then, yeah, so

Lionel O’Mally
I caught them. 50 Ks, but we sort of have a day where we’re actually going out and seeing people all in one day or two days. So but it’s not to say we’ve got a number of executives in Sydney, that we look, I

James Wrigley
look after the house, I love the I love the mission that you’ve put that you’re putting into place. Have you just been talking about using this, this system where it’s using AI and automation and all the rest of it to really speed up all of that. But at the same time you’re jumping in the car, you’re driving to Burke, and you’re going to have a cup of tea with someone for their for their meeting, it’s it’s a great meshing of both kind of the old and the new worlds together for for the way that you want to do business. Fantastic.

Lionel O’Mally
Yeah, no, it’s it’s pretty cool. It’s good. We’re in a good spot. We enjoy what we do. So I figured we’re gonna be in it for the next 30 years. So why not have a good crack at it and try and make it as simple and easy for you to do business and obviously create decent business out of it so well on our way to that now thinking think, James. So good luck.

James Wrigley
Thanks for joining me this morning, Lionel. This has been fantastic. I’ve got a few. I’m gonna listen back to this episode myself. And there’s a few nuggets that you’ve had in the show there is for anyone that’s that’s been listening. Thanks for your time, and thanks for sharing so much with us today.

Lionel O’Mally
No worries, James. Thanks for having me on.