AdviceTech Podcast #43 – Scientiam – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And the guest joining me here today to deep dive into Scientiam is well it has a puppy dog in the background clearly because that’s why I love it my dog luckily

Nigel Baker
I didn’t think she would bark at the door…

Peita Diamantidis
That is the best beginning because my dog Chewie manages to sit quietly through most but then he starts snoring and I always wonder if it’s gonna get loud, or this is a fantastic intro. I love it. So he is a fellow Macquarie University alumni like myself, also the MD of a financial advisory and accounting practice, however, clearly decided that that just didn’t keep him busy enough as because he’d be also become a tech founder, just to you know, make sure his days are filled. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Nagal Nigel Baker. Welcome, welcome. Thanks for having me. I reckon that that might win for me out of the 40 hours we have not at all the puppy is puppies are always welcome on the podcast. So before we pick your brain about all things, see and Tim, let’s just get to know you a bit better through your use of technology. Now, emojis are the thing, right? What is your your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, well, look, it has to be just a simple thumbs up. That’s gonna be the most used but you know, I don’t mind the odd exclamation mark or I guess the occasional wildcard as well, you know?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, okay. Okay. But the simple stuff, we like to

Nigel Baker
do the fancy, you know, drop drop down and find all these other sort of images that gets a bit ticked off.

Peita Diamantidis
And so look, we now all live with our smartphones almost permanently attached to a some of us on our wrists, I guess, if you had to get rid of everything on your smartphone and just keep three of the apps, which of the three, which of them would you keep?

Nigel Baker
Well, I’ve got three children who have got busy laws than I do. And the school apps, quite phenomenal, actually. So I couldn’t live without the school app. So I know what’s going on what events are on this weekend, all the updates to the various dance and sporting things. So that’d be number one. If I didn’t have the sports app, and I was able to all their school apps for all their activities, and they drove trying to juggle them around. So yeah, that’s number one, Spotify Of course, number two listening to your podcasts and many others become a rule. Obviously in podcasts, Alyssa and I think that’s been a great innovation the last couple years and great way to learn and keep on top of things. So for sure. And then, you know, just just WhatsApp million WhatsApp chats. They need a whatsapp chat to run the WhatsApp chat, I think.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. My most frustrating thing actually is I wish Spotify had a way that as you’re in the middle of something like in the car, and listening to a podcast, because most of the time it’s passive listening, isn’t it, you’d like to just it’s like background listening. But then you think, Oh, that’s a good idea. And I need to be able to like press a button to send myself like a message like a voice message or something. Yeah, remember these three points because that’s the most frustrating thing for me is moving from passive listening into quick remind yourself to do something when you when you’re listening to a podcast, that’s a

Nigel Baker
really good audio, let’s build that down. It’s true. It’s not Utah, remember it, tore it down or texted to yourself was

Peita Diamantidis
exactly like, please, please, please remember to do this. Alright, let’s dive into Scientiam. I came across you guys at the advanced Innovation Summit, which we both attended in the last few weeks in Sydney and Melbourne. And I was really fascinated by both the tool itself but the reason it came up for you like the reason that that you’ve embarked on this. So to begin with, in case somebody you know, listening isn’t aware of your app, then just at a high level, where does it sit in the advice tech space? Like who was it lined up again? What category does it sit? Sit in?

Nigel Baker
Yep. And well, we started this because we’re advisors like, like you are running an advice business and we wanted to solve that problem for the younger sort of intergender clients to start with, that’s where this journey started to say how do we find a digital, you know, more interesting solution for this next generation of clients coming through? I suppose where it’s evolved as you know, what does the what does the future advice look like? And we started to really think about well should we be thinking about this digital journey for all clients? And yes, it’s start with those clients perhaps didn’t fit the mold for the traditional advice practice and but started looking at well shouldn’t we be able to offer a service to all types of clients in the new world and that’s that’s where we are We Got to Now when

Peita Diamantidis
you look on your website there you know the words like Portal and everything appear but having seen you present now and doing some digging, it’s a portal in that you’re logging into something but it’s not just like a it’s not a document hold or you know, like this thing that’s that’s passed. So talk us through actually, what the client then, you know, is experiencing or seeing when they’re logging into the

Nigel Baker
tool. Yeah, we had this crazy idea to make it really sort of education based. So really just stripped out the product and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, we know this product at the end of the day, but how do we put the client first and, and flip it around? So what are what would a client use on this? And what are they what are they looking for, and, and all the data research is showing that particularly younger, but I’m finding older clients as well are really, really after that sort of short, sharp information, whether it’s video or, and be able to be intuitive and build, engage with that, and learn do a bit of their own learning and research online before they come in for a meeting or before they engage with you. And so we wanted to make that portal as a word, really something that they can engage with and sort of self help. So the first step is, they effectively self open and they can take a pathway and start to go down a journey and go, Okay, I’m on the self help stage. And that’s great. But now I do want to get some basic advice, and then might be evolving to full advice down the track. Okay. But to really that that funnel for good could be done online.

Peita Diamantidis
So then from a practices sense of this sort of putting this in, like you say, their engagement funnel way out from somebody who’s maybe what we would call not ready for advice, right? That’s sort of the category we’re talking about, whether that’s because of age, or all sorts of things, then it’s a way that they can self serve on some content, maybe even like a little bit of a program style. Is that what you mean? So it’s like some sort of delivery of some content that they can learn and engage with? And then eventually, is there also the possibility of them doing? So I’m betting that there’s like, they could do that for free? It could be a paid program, it could be like, how are the different ways they can engage with the platform?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, we built it to be so it’s a platform that the advisory firm or the or actually uses white labels for their services they can so for example, a client that might not be ready yet, but just checking them out, they can, they can offer that to them for free and say, Look, there’s some content on here, you can attend a course you can attend our one of our regular updates, you can upload scanty our most recent videos, read a few articles, you know, leave three or four articles up there. So they get a bit of a feel for you in a bit of a digital format, they start to see you as a person, somebody videos, and then they can, they can book in, like a session, like a 1015 minute, half an hour session, it’s all within the sights of not leaving and going out to zoom or teams or anything like that. Yeah. And then the adviser can obviously then have that quick chat and guide them and get an understanding of you know, are they are they after full advice? Are they just looking to learn a bit more about savings, etc. But I suppose for us to weigh is the clients getting a good experience, but the advisor start to build that relationship, and that that relationship might take a couple of years for that client to come through or there could be ready in the next month to start the process. So rather than not have anything at all and say, Well, traditionally, it was practices. Because that’s where the you know, the revenue was, and if people run businesses to make money, we can do that, but also, because of the law. So then there was a regulation saying, well, we can’t really help this guy or the client. So let’s just keep focusing on these complex work clients. And that’s great. But so therefore, most advisory businesses only have really one solution, you know, their wireframe, which is cool, but how do we bring that down and say, you can offer something to our clients. And you can do it in a really economical way, really low cost way through the business, but also something that’s really economical, and at a low price point for the prospects that can start to build that longer term relationship and give them access to some quality information. And so, quality advisors, you know, we’re advisors, we believe in advice. So we know that advisors can help 1000s of clients in the current Mark business model.

Peita Diamantidis
Right? And it’s, it’s, it’s a really interesting thing to force yourself to think through because we’re so used to starting at the point of advice, right? So it’s like, yeah, they ready for advice? And they’ve said, Yes, and then we build everything after that. Whereas most offerings, like if you come up with any new like, as a consultant, or an entrepreneur, most offerings, they spend most of their effort on the before that point, because they acknowledge that the hard task, that’s the part of getting them in the funnel, and even self qualifying. And I think that could be an interesting thing to use this for, is letting the client qualify for themself. Yeah, they need assistance. It’s, you know, and, and if you find you couldn’t, you could have that sort of self qualifying experience, you know, until we unlock a program, it takes them through some steps or whatever it might be that, like you say, could be free. At the end of that, even if the answer isn’t advice, you could set up a call, you know, like you say, for 10 or 15 minutes with each of them. And if you start collecting, why that’s the case, why they’re not ready for advice, what they need to do, right, then, then you could just build another program that answers that challenge, you know, and it could even be a low dollar, it could be a few $100, and you’ve put another one in the in, you know, Centium that answers that challenge, and at least they’re getting a solution. You know, maybe it’s not advice, but they’re getting value.

Nigel Baker
Yeah, and that’s what exactly that’s what I’m trying to say, Oh, we give value to this cohort of people who don’t need full advice, but we’d like to engage in some way or format or we don’t really try Just thinking about that, as you said, it’s not starting with advice, starting with the journey, and trying to remove all that we know what’s happened in the past and all the regs and was aimed at, it’s got to be compliant. But you got to start to think about what was the client? What do they want to see, they want to start to build a relationship and get some information. And as you said, self self test themselves into a course and say, Yeah, I’d like I can see the benefit advice, I’m ready for oh, no, I can work this out online. Thanks. But I’m willing to pay you covered it was a year to be, you know, in the system and getting some content. So there’s just different ways, I think we’ve got to think about serving these people. Because, you know, we can’t, we can’t give full complex advice to millions of people, but we can certainly give people access to quality information and quality advice, quality advisors. Yeah, yeah. And that’s where we will be able to go, we don’t want them searching and doing Google searches, or people who are unqualified and doing the wrong thing, right. And getting caught up with scams, or who knows what,

Peita Diamantidis
exactly, I remember, I was running, I was actually doing preparing for a presentation to the industry. And you know, we use analogies for what we do. And all you know, advisors might be like, the GP, or they might be like the specialist, all that sort of stuff. And, and I just run some concepts past this person who’s outside the industry, and they’re like, pretty much just gonna call you out on something and like, What do you mean to you as well, based on the dollars and the experience? And all the stuff you guys do? You guys are more like neurosurgeons and what we need the normal specialists or the GP, like, like, and it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting analogy, where what we haven’t built his all those things in between, yeah, that’s before they need to get to the neurosurgeon that’s going to charge them 1000s of dollars, you know, so it’s really clarified for me, I’m like, Hey, we’re missing this, there’s this big gap, you know, and if they don’t get it from us, there’s all sorts of places they’re gonna get them. They’re gonna get information from that won’t necessarily help them out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which is a struggle. So in terms of the practices that this will this works well, for, I’m really curious of where you’ve seen this sort of this tool, really hum. versus others that may struggle? Is there anything they’ve either done beforehand, or wages? They’ve implemented it that just really ramped up the experience?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, that’s a good question, I think you tend to get the, the, you know, the owner, or leader of the business, who’s a little bit more wanting to, you know, take on new ideas, and it gets excited. And I’m one of those and says, This is great. And then they come into the business. And then great, we’ve got this new idea, go work it out. So we found early on that we needed to get to the, you know, to the advisors, or the managers and get to the people who are actually going to be holding this because they need to sort of, you know, obviously understand how to explain to clients and what they’re offering now is and that sort of thing. So so the learning path for us being being you know, we’ve been traditional advisors, our lives suddenly getting a kick out into a tech world and how to people use it. And it’s saying things from our perspective, but also seeing how our businesses produce things. So certainly that experience of getting getting involved with the team, understanding how it benefits their clients, benefits them, how people are a little bit afraid of technology, as you know, so a little bit of fire to change. And as you said, that we’ve been so trained to go no, I can only I can only talk about advice, and if I don’t, device or nothing. And trying to change that mindset, they’re going Yeah, but you’re allowed to the law completely says you allowed to talk about actual information, as much as you like, you know, and we want, we don’t want you we want you talking about it, we don’t want to go to the service station talking about super, super better, but superannuation we, we want you being the conduits of this information. So yes, there’s some boundaries, and you just use some common sense and some compliance guidelines around at what point you need to engage from a personal advice point of view under the current rules, but you can, you can really extend extend your knowledge under the current legislation without causing any problems. And I think they will just need to get comfortable that. And in fact, I think that’s what the regulators would like to see.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Yeah, without a doubt, and I think we do get caught up in, understandably, the legislations there, we get why it’s there. In fact, with some of the challenges with you know, crypto for influencers, all that sort of stuff, you can see why this, they want to print this sort of stuff, because they can go pear shaped, when they don’t, but I agree with you, that probably the skill that I don’t think advisors realize they do, and realize you can convert or amplify is that coaching element, it’s not that it’s not the technical advice or limit, it’s like there’s a lot of emotional and transformational coaching we do. And that stuff’s perfect for programs and and, you know, giving them things to do and things to learn and all sorts of stuff that it’s we repeated enough. We know what people go through, you know, and so you could have a couple of different ones that you set up based on where they’re at, you know, or what experiencing they have or what challenges they’re facing, or, I mean, and particularly for your niche, I mean, it would be so cool if advisors, you know, maybe they’re into I don’t know, maybe they themselves do marathons internationally or how can you afford to do three merits three international marathons a year like you could do all sorts of interesting, yeah, programs that really engage people that you’re not going to do advice on. Like you’re not gonna charge somebody five and a half 1000 for an advice Some but what a great engagement tool that actually gives them something they want. You know, I think it’s, it’s a clever, it’s a clever way to approach. So then is the tool and excuse my ignorance for this question, is it an actual app that they download onto their phone? Or is it a log in a web portal,

Nigel Baker
it’s a web portal. So the the, we call it a tenant, this is our internal word. And each firm gets built out a tenant, which is their, their branded site. And so it’s like a little website, our website just embeds into their current website. They simply looks and feels like it’s just part of their current website, but they can set it up on there, they can just go to the clients have a link. And they can obviously see all that activity they can see, one of the other benefits we found is that you can see all that activity of what people are watching and listening. So you might find that a topic on interest rates, obviously, right now is really important, we can really see how much people engage in that as right so you you are driven bit like a Facebook so that if I’m on there, and I’m I’ve already attended a session on interest rates, and I’ll read another article on interest rates, guess what the next thing that happens, I’m gonna get fed all the interest rate stuff. So you had advisor or expert who’s talking about that, I’m going to start to engage with that, because they’re lining up with what I’m interested in. So it’s more likely I’m going to book a session with that advisor. She’s already done two sessions that have attended, she’s really an expert, I can see that I’m liking the sound of her expertise. And bang, I book good timing, and then that advisor or expert will then guide me and say, Yeah, great, stay on the board or self help, I can give you some limited advice or how you sound like we could really help you to come in for, you know, a full advice session, which can be still digital or or in person. Yeah, yeah, just gives those pathways off options here. And yeah, engaging so their content can be driven by the firm. Obviously, some of the firm’s obviously want us to help them get set up with that which we which we do we provide that those building blocks. But then off they go, they can build out their content, how they how they please.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, because that was my next question is, I’d imagine there’d be some advisors out there, like, that sounds fantastic. Oh, my God, how much content? Am I going to create it? Like? Right?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, that’s right. Anything like it is very easy to use. But we we’ve got a library now, so much stuff that we can say you can have all this you just carry out, it’s all gonna look and feel like you but you can just take all the current stuff and start to just use that and going forward as well. If they’re a smaller firm, obviously, that’s just another thing they have to do. So they can, they can just piggyback on the back of what we’re pushing out. They can pick and choose obviously, what they’d like. But some of the bigger firms obviously want to create their own content, a lot of them have a fair bit of content, but it’s all over the place. It’s not consistent. It’s on an email system, it’s on a, they might have a YouTube channel going, it’s all out that and they can’t track from one to the other. So this also brings all that data together. And you can see who’s attending water and which experts are, you know, you can monetize that as well. So sessions can be charged on as well for people to attend. So yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Peita Diamantidis
And is there just on that? So in terms of being able to charge people, is there the ability, say, for example, I mean, I could see an environment where you might want your clients to be able to see, you know, 10, for free, but hey, it’d be nice if for that event, somebody was charged, because they’re external. Is that possible? To do that?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s a free session are chargeable. But you give your clients with the code, so it’s just a perfect discount code or a free code to login.

Peita Diamantidis
Because it’s an interesting habit to that I got hauled up on by overseas, they like an, you know, an entrepreneur on line, and they do all sorts of stuff and silly programs. And they said, the mistake most people make for their free stuff is not making sure everybody knows what it’s worth if they did have to pay. Yeah, like, yes, go, but it’s free. And it’s like, well, no, no, it’s worth $400. But it’s free is actually the status.

Nigel Baker
That’s really good question. But I don’t think that’s going to have value to stuff, right? Like, and so you’ve got to, it’s nice to say to people, look, we’d these sessions, we think, you know, or they’re worth $30 $40 $100. But you’re getting it for free, because you’re already a client. That’s yeah, that way they’re referring someone in or the case may be there’s expectation, there’s a price for that, because there’s value in the value in the content and the time behind it. Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
exactly. And looking at a particular practice might decide that each client can even invite a guest. If they want you, they might see this as a lead generation exercise, and you’re going to charge but always contemplating, if we did charge, what would it be, just so that you make sure you you assign value, I like doing that too, because it forces me to make sure it’s worth that, you know, it sort of makes me lift my game a little Am I putting enough value in this? So that then I’d be happy for somebody to have paid that you know, and I would be comfortable with it. So So yeah, I’m right there with you. So in terms of so we can get you get the white label for the practice, then it can have some content you guys already having However, over time, potentially they can, you know, do their own thing. I like the idea of then having it very clear and easy that they can then make a time with an advisor is not something they’ve then got to proactively call in or do something different. It’s all within the portal is quickly makes a difference.

Nigel Baker
Yeah, it’s all linked to the calendar so it just sinks to you. The Outlook or whichever calendar system use so it’s pretty nice and seamless. Yeah, you’re not having to then go on now we’re gonna start this email chain or whatever and it was.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly. And so do you find then though that really, once the, once they reclined then for the advice process that is not occurring in the portal that’s occurring elsewhere? Or is there documents or anything interchanging within the portal itself?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, we’re, as you can see, the courses can be, say, look like to now you can embed your factfinder and risk profile questionnaire into it just by adding a link. So you can have a course on say, right now you’re ready for advice? Complete Course. 121, which is complete the factfinder. And you have a little video in there and say, no, no, thanks, Peter, you’re ready to start the advice process, firstly, I need you to do is show these forms, you lay out a leak, and that can leak straight to your CRM. So some people have used Padua, for example, some of us just HubSpot, and just embedded that link in so that data is going straight through and then they’ll use that in their, whatever software they use for trading the next step, or advice. And there’s their CRM. So that’s totally buildable. We’re gonna We’re not SOA builder, like we’re not gonna say we’re gonna throw this away, but you can certainly link that, that data forming to whoever you’re using.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, okay. Okay, perfect. I’m assuming no, it’s not like a chat function within it is there, you can end up you can check there.

Nigel Baker
As long as you as much as we thought it would be, but it’s it there is a chat function.

Peita Diamantidis
So if somebody is trying to, I mean, you and I both witnessed a cyber security session at the advisor Innovation Summit, where, you know, getting trying to get off email as much as humanly possible. So if somebody if you did have a client, and you are using this, for some of the elements of the advice, like you say, the fact finder and other things, maybe even understanding risk profiles, whatever it might be, then they could be talking within the portal.

Nigel Baker
Yet, there’s a there’s a door within those systems that I leave it at the messaging systems is all in there tied to tied to their accounts, or I’ve waited like a little random chat, like a chatbot. It’s more it is personalized, it’ll go from me to the advisor, and back and forth and be almost like a little slack system that I can chat to the advisor Perfect.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, that’s a good thing, because we are all looking for those options aren’t really like, like, it’s all well and good to say we should get off an email. But here we need an alternative. Yeah, that was to reach out to people. Okay, so, so I practice could be starting this with some of this content, but they could work towards actually sort of really embedding it into the advice process. Yeah, they need to get really clever.

Nigel Baker
They can Yeah, well, without as people start with, like, we go to that, that sort of funnel and go start with the, the the clients that, you know, again, you asked before about the businesses that start second on board go, yeah, we’d love to have a solution for these younger future clients or being referred by their parents. So we want to make sure we capture something, they start that process. And now this is pretty cool, pretty easy. And then they dropped during, okay, now we can start to use it for the clients that might need a little bit more advice, they might need a limited advice. So we want them to talk to an actual advisor, we won’t take from the self help to an advisor, and then they’ll start to build out and go, well, actually, we could use this for our top end clients. But let’s, let’s start at the the easy ones. Before we start saying it also solves a something for your top end clients, which Yeah, because once people start going down a journey, as you know, they start to use tech better and they start to use it and go, don’t be so scared of it. This is just a way to engage clients, and share content and create better cloud experience. It’s not about completely if people are afraid to onboard another system, how do I get that here, but this is pretty pretty easy and impactful from day one.

Peita Diamantidis
And particularly as as from musician, my understanding is you guys really have taken a look at the way people interact with the social platforms are already all using so this there’s it’s designed to feel familiar, you know, that’s, that’s part of the thing that’s hard with some systems is they go they decide to be really innovative and different but different is hard with tech. Just it doesn’t feel familiar, you know, so it’s got to just feel sort of normal and yeah, I just love I can watch that video no big deal. You know, all of that can be easier. I mean, I can actually see a really interesting when I think through so our practice is fully virtual. So we have to get very creative about the ways that we can help clients and because it’s all done, you know, from an arm’s length and even having some explanations for some you know, things like nominated beneficiaries that people are like it’s a struggle right it’s a punish to get some of those things done to have these little mini courses you know on the internet to just go okay, you’ve got a particular platform X here are the things you need to do make sure you do this the witnesses need to be like that like to just step somebody through his little

Nigel Baker
video and it’s like now the kids watch these little YouTube videos with someone explaining so I was exactly like that. So yeah, literally pointing on the spot wiener designer fill this in, sign that section. This is what it all means. Here’s the definition. So again, in a business where there’s people explaining this all over the business to different people asking it all the time and just getting that consistency as well but then clients I got this really next time you go here’s the link, you just just fill in this and it’s nice and consistent and easy to understand

Peita Diamantidis
EDS and it lets them act quickly. I think people worry that then well I’m flip passing them you know I should be helping them with that. Oh, my senior admin person should be doing that. It’s like, well, no, but it also if they can’t get their person, it also lets the client take action earlier because the person even on reception can go, Hey, I’m gonna send you this link. Alright, and that’ll get you started. But I’ll make sure that whoever gives you a boss to make sure you’re okay, like, it just lets them continue, which we all love. You know, we all love getting that bit of extra information where it makes Oh, don’t worry about calling me back. I’m on it. Like, yeah. Yeah. So So yeah, I think there’s, and what’s nice about that is your your, the rest of the team can be doing that content, they can just be grabbed once a week, I want you to record a video on this type of form, you know, or any of that sort of stuff,

Nigel Baker
which is going to get the younger younger advisors engaged as well, because they can really lead me in, they love this stuff, right? So they start playing over it, and they suddenly getting a nice front in front of clients about stuff as well, or it’s just trying to give them an exposure, which in a more digital world is a bit harder for them. So now they can really have a lot of interaction, great, a lot of videos, create a lot of the content and and get that you know, so the client see them a lot more as well. So just to take away that dependency, it does

Peita Diamantidis
and, and conversely having, you know, you could probably start to transition some of the more experienced advisors to doing some of the more I don’t know, technical market updating stuff. And that could just be content in the platform, rather than something the client feels a need to necessarily having actual conversations with maybe their junior advisor, you know, it’s that combo of all the skills in the team that can really be utilized. Yeah, it’s exciting. So you mentioned the chat isn’t used much. Is there any other features that you find that people don’t use that you’re surprised by, like all there’s some gold there that people could be implementing?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, as well, that chat bots sort of thing. We thought like having that chat body thing, but you can obviously chat within the platform to it as a more change sort of so far. I mean, it’s just at the start. So it’s better coaching sort of development and stop to use. There’s, there’s a little application, I think what we’re scared about is giving people too broad spectrum of things to talk about this dollars. I tried out. Yeah, you know, one of the things we’ve, we’ve any takers, it just, it’s endless, right, you start to think, well, we could do this, do that, do that. And right, let’s just bring it down to, let’s just do this one first. This, just keep it simple. And then as you start to get to use it, then you’ll, you’ll see how you can easily add more video or things like that people are a little bit scared of video, but once they see how easy it is, they get on to it. Yeah, it’s just a natural thing. Some people just get out, I want to use video, I’m just gonna put articles on there. Like everyone wants to do that, you gotta gotta get them out of their comfort zone, say it’s really easy, it takes you two seconds. And clients love it. And it doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t worry about the production quality of it, they just want to just want to hear from you. And I want you to see your voice and and I think that’s where people get stuck stuck that they have to wait for the right moment. And the sun’s got to be here and the lights got to be here and they’ve got to you know, it’s on their on stages I need don’t worry about that. Just just press the button and film.

Peita Diamantidis
In fact, we’re at the point now with the way we absorbed content that were suspicious if video is over produced, right? Because it was like an ad. Right? So our brain goes, Wait a minute, that looks a bit slick. What’s going on there, you know, so it does need to feel a bit natural and that she volume you can produce if you’re doing video is like 10 times what you can if it’s

Nigel Baker
much quicker. Yeah, it is. Anyway. Exactly,

Peita Diamantidis
exactly. So it’s just a matter of practice, even if you forced, you know, the listener if you force yourself just to start recording them, even if you don’t release them yet. Just start recording and practicing them. And then I guarantee you they’re better than you think they are.

Nigel Baker
Ready waiting five about a one take rule we sort of say just just do one take start with don’t try and take 20 takes the first take will be probably better than your second or third anyway. Just give it a go and just roll your sleeves up and give it a go. And no one likes hearing themselves back on tape. Either they go oh, do I sound like that and things like that. I haven’t done what you do. So we will Saturday we’re just gonna get over. And honestly, the audience isn’t worried too much about that. They just know they actually you’ll be surprised how your clients will love to see you. And they’ll come into next meeting or whatever, go Oh, wow, that, you know, and you’re constantly updating them rather than this old model of you might say that once or twice a year. So it’s meant I knew quite a lot of money for many years and being used to seeing you once or twice a year and the paper and now they’re gonna see you once a fortnight or yeah, they’re gonna go this is amazing.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Just like, I mean, what isn’t, you know, we don’t all want to be influences, but just like there’s some people you love absorbing their content, and you will absorb a lot of it. Once you find it on social media, this is the same you’re letting somebody absorb as much of your insights as they want to know and, and why not, you know, it’d be a bad thing. You know, this is a good thing.

Nigel Baker
We’ve got so much knowledge to share, we know that we know how much advisors know about you know, wherever it’s just from behavioral finance to tax to super to investment allocation, all these sort of things that they just can’t share in a conversation. So by able to get that and what’s the short grabs and and that their clients will go oh, this this advisors knows a lot more I ever knew that. Like there’s so much stuff I can learn.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, without doubt and being able to be

Nigel Baker
brave to share that because some people go well, I share all that then people won’t need to know that they’ll need You more You know, don’t worry that you can push all this content out, like you get on a chat box, or whatever. Now anyway, a lot of that stuff. And they know they’re not going to probably use that for advice. But what they do want is a relationship. And and it’s gonna get you to there being a bit more of a digital relationship rather than just they have to come and see you face to face one once a year.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely, absolutely. And so in terms of integrations, then you mentioned that like, of course, there can be links that take them through the client through to say, a form or anything like that. Are you at the point where you’re integrating with anything yet? Or is it early days?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, look, it’s pretty early days. But it’s built with an open architecture to, you know, take time, I think we’re sort of that from day one to so we can point to anything that wants to point to us, we did build in a link through to setting up small balance investment and super accounts, because that was asked for day one saying that, now these clients are on here, and they’re they’re asked you to open up an account, but I don’t want her to give them a $5,000 away. So so we build that connection through. And that, that works straight through processing. So they can fill in the form open up account without, you know, just on a general advice side saying, I’ll fill that in, in terms of integrations to you know, the ex plans and things like that. Not yet. And if, if that was needed, then I’m sure those things are possible. Look, and

Peita Diamantidis
I guess the thing is, people often focus on that first, when in reality, there’s a whole lot you’ve got to have done with the system and in then set it up and make it part of your process. And when you get to introduce it and all that sort of thing. First, you know that it for this one, while I might focus on the integrations with others, I think for this type of tool, it can be the last thing because you know, that’s a nice to have down the track. And I’m sure if somebody came to like, or somebody’s using it really actively and they’ve got loads of people on it, and it’s working like a treat, and then they come to you and go, hey, we’d like to talk about this integration, then you’re going to be far more receptive to that, at that point, because you can see, you know, what they’re looking for and, and the value of monads. So it’s that makes a lot of sense to me. And like you say, I think you can still get clever about linking through to things. And using forms and exactly like that embedded links can get you a long way there. Anyway. So what have you got on the development path? What’s sort of coming down the line for you guys in the near future? But also, is there anything sort of way out there that you’d love to get to? That would be the sort of ultimate point for the tool?

Nigel Baker
There? It’s a great question. And we we spent a lot of time sort of thinking about how do we get this sort of coaching slash video type platform into the system. And that was a huge win for us, just, you know, really got that released only in six weeks or so ago. And so that’s, that’s, that was the big thing, like right now that that integration where we can have all that in one platform that the client experience video, they can run courses, they can fill in forms they can there and then set to open up an account, I think down the track would be having multiple providers. So you’ve that maybe we’ve only got one provider leaked, if someone’s really small balances. If a big group came along and said, Hey, all our clients are on a courier app or on a first date, then that’d be great. But we haven’t leaked all that up yet. So that’d be Yeah, that’d be next stage, but that’d be demand driven as well. And someone came along and said, We want to use a platform we want to talk to all our clients are on. Exactly, for example, kind of first aid then how can we do that? That’d be a next step. stanchion.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And, you know, is there anything, you know, a big thing down the track? Like if this is really humming? Is there anything? That’s a wish that you’re not sure you guys could pull off just yet? But it’s like, it’d be great if like, is there any anything like that on the list?

Nigel Baker
Yeah, I think that the other services, like, you know, insurance is a little bit tricky at the moment. So we’re sort of hold that off as well. And just yeah, it’s just bit hard to do that a lot. And we’ve, we’ve had this philosophy of keeping, you know, as a low cost offering, and, you know, we don’t get caught up with with too much complication. So I think that that would be nice in time. You know, being looking to accountants, for example. And yeah, I think other service providers on there and be able to offer their sessions, I think that that’d be really cool. And might be estate lawyers and accountants be able to also come in and share their content and share their ideas. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Nice. So real hub for what people might be interested in at that point in time, because the thing is for the public, they don’t see any of that is different. The fact that we all need to be different bodies to be able to provide it, it’s sort of in the same category for them. Yeah, it makes sense for the for the end consumer that they could come to one place to do that. So yeah, that’d be that makes a lot of a lot of sense. Is there anything we’ve missed any of the key features I’ve seen in we’ve missed that?

Nigel Baker
Well, I think, I think I think the key thing is just that it’s just a real different way to look at that client engagement to what we’ve been used to. And I think, you know, Peter, we said, it’s, we used to start with advice. We started with that pray advice, and we started to engage and build that trust with with knowledge and content before they need the full, you know, traditional advice model. So I think if we can give advisors the ability to offer that and you know, we say in a crazy way, wouldn’t it be great advisor could help 1000 Pay More than I think I’m mad, but I go, it actually is possible and you could do it, you could make more money or more people, like make a bigger impact on their lives. And it’s not going to mean you got to work 100 hours a day, you know, it is it is it is possible as some really cool digital tools, that’s only going to get better. That’s a better outcome for the end consumer to come for the advice businesses who want to who want to do that, you know, and I think, luckily, plenty seem interested to, to get out there and start to start to reach out and, and use digital differently to perhaps have industries addressed digital in the past where they’re sort of looked at it more as a back end solution.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, absolutely. It’s an exciting new world, if you can think a bit creative creatively, right. And you can sort of get to throw out the old way we’ve done things and just look at it as as an end user, and try to think about what they really want. And that’s when this will hum.

Nigel Baker
Actually, the i Six pushed out a report this week, which was really interesting and the most for the ASX style investors the most, the highest or the most popular search for an ASX investor. So someone who’s got listed shares or ETFs was on was on YouTube. Yeah, we’re gonna get to control the content of it.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. I completely agree. All right, advice explorers. If you’d like to find out more about seeing him, then the website link is in the episode shownotes, along with Nigel’s LinkedIn details, I’m sure he can then point you to a member of the team that can help you out if you were to reach out and connect with him. Thank you so much for joining us here today. And I really, really enjoyed that and sharing house, the team can help us see far more clients and engage with far more of the public. I really love it. It’s what we should all be doing more of. So thank you so much for your time.

So are you a current user of Scientiam. Now that’s fairly early days for them, but you may be your practice may be one of the early people that have tried this out and started to implement it. I’d love to hear what what you found has worked, how your prospects or your clients have engaged with it. And you know, how that’s worked for you what was good, what was a struggle, what you had to learn, you know, all that sort of thing, please share it share insights on the ensemble community platform, as all of us would love to hear about all this different tech, one of the one of the most asked questions on the ensemble platform is about a particular piece of tech or how do I implement it should I shouldn’t I. So the more we can all be just putting our views on there and sharing our insights, then the more value we can collectively bring together. And it even, we’re even using those posts and the way you guys will share with each other to define who we get on the podcast, what content we provide, and how we provide it. So I’m really encourage you to get on there. And give us that feedback. Now, my thoughts on this. Now, I should admit upfront that I am a big believer in coaching and facilitation being a new world for advice, I think going forward, there’s going to be a lot of advice practices that head firmly in this way, there’s going to be some that are going to become deeply technical. And that’s the they’re going to be an expert in a particular technical thing. But I think there’s going to be a lot of advice practices that big provide a lot of coaching. And when I say what I mean by coaching, it will be an element of some one to many programs, then it may even be one to one, but it’s a defined experience over nine months or something like that. And then there may be some advice and specific, you know, requires written advice style of Office. So it’s this is a different way of thinking. And it’s it requires work requires you to start actually experiencing online programs, if you’ve never done an online program. I mean, I mean, I don’t mean about advice, I mean about anything, Facebook ads, or how to use Instagram or like whatever you like if you need to have started to absorb those yourself, so that you can then understand what works and what doesn’t. One of the insights on that wanted to make sure I shared here was information generally for a course or a program or something like that, no matter how short or long, generally isn’t enough, it needs to be a transformation, even if it’s a small one. And a transformation generally is the consumer taking some actions, even it’s if it’s a, make sure you download your super report or make sure you’re like give them some actions they can take so that the end of the day, even if it’s just three videos, they watch at the end of that they feel like they’ve got a result and they are further ahead than they were when they started. So delivering a transformation and therefore providing actions as part of the program that we design is really important. And I only learned that by going and doing a whole lot of programs. Sitting and absorbing over and over again, just pure information is mind numbing. And you don’t actually learn anything because you don’t get to implement it yourself. So it really needs to give you some to dues as part of it. So link urge you to just park that is something you’re going to need to keep in mind going forward, but absolutely go. And if there’s something you need to learn about business or something external, start to engage with some online programs, so you can get better at working out what you could deliver to the public that relates to advice. One of the ways that we’ve done this that we’re looking at for our niche market is doing some market research conversation. So I’ve done some video calls, I’ve had about five or six prospects or current clients, but they’re in a particular category that we’re interested in. And I just, I just asked them questions about what struck they’re struggling with now the trick, this is a ninja tip, folks, the tricky is not to make it just about money, right? To ask things like what what’s keeping you up at night, what is the thing you’re facing the most struggle with right now, that’s just girls like so hard, you can’t get over this hurdle. And invariably, no matter what it is, it’ll invariably relate back to money at some point, right? So you’ve got to ask those questions to then work out the next best thing that you could do one of these online, you know, on something like seeing you in one of these online programs, because you could do a short program here that solved that problem for them, even if it didn’t have financial advice as the next step, necessarily. But what they’ve done is they’ve engaged with you you’ve shown insight, you’ve given them a path to take maybe or a roadmap, and they’ve made some great progress. And then hey, the next thing you could look at is, and then we can help you with so you know, just helping them solve a problem. And it can be big or small. Often, the small ones are lucky if you can just knock something off really quickly for them and help them get it done. Huge winners, those are lead generation tools. And the thing I’m learning with some of these tools is it’s you know, somebody’s paying for a program, even if it’s only a few $100. It’s like they’re paying for you to market to them. I mean, that sounds alright, right? We could spend a fortune, maybe paying Facebook or at least places to promote us to try and get to get clicks and to get leads, or somebody could be doing a program that adds real value to them, it qualify helps them self qualify of whether they need us as an advisor. And, you know, that gives us an opportunity to showcase who we are, and they can engage with us as an individual. So I just think there’s some real gems in all of that of the way we can change the way we think about these things. It’s taken me time to get to that point, I will admit, and it is a learning process. But the more we can sort of put ourselves in our clients shoes and behave, you know, notice how you behave with external things you’re learning about. And you’ll start to realize how we as advisors can do things differently to engage with the public. Now, as you know, there’s only one skill you need to become a bionic advisor. And that’s avid curiosity. So to help you build that habit, today’s curious curiosity corner app, oh, my goodness. I don’t think I’ve ever had an episode with as many tongue twisters as today’s episode, sincere apologies, folks. Let’s try that again. Today’s curiosity corner app, we did it that I wanted to take a look at is called Early Bird. You can find it at early bird dot i m. Now this is interesting, given what we were just talking about, and maybe you’re a bit uncertain, and you’re not sure something’s going to be valuable. Early Bird is actually a no code landing page builder. Right. So this helps you very quickly build pitch and validate a business idea. Now, in its normal use case, it’s used by developers or creative content, you know, content, influencers, marketers, maybe somebody writing a book, all sorts of things that you can use to create this sort of landing page pitch document right. Now, why would I think that could apply to advisors? Well, this could be how you get feedback on the next problem. Some you know, your clients might be facing on the coaching offer, you might be building the program you might be pulling together, or even a new advice offer something that just is tailored to a particular thing. You think that your audience or your clients might need, but you’re not quite sure. Right? So the idea here is to really validate that idea before actually building it out. So I know that sounds it’s a bit reverse for what we do in finance, in, in finance, often, you know, even the big product providers spend millions of dollars building something, release it to advisors, and then we all go Oh, no, that’s not what I need. Right. So this is flipping the script here. This is saying, this is the concept. I fleshed out the benefits. Here’s the outline of what it is. Are you interested and see based on the volume of interest and the level of interest then you go hard and you build it at that point. What I’ve done is dug into all this sort of psychology of high converting landing pages. And if you’re not sure what a landing page is, it’s basically that that single page website that just pitches a particular thing, it could be a webinar, you’re going to it could be a conference, it could be like, whatever it is, you’ve, you’ve definitely clicked on a landing page yourself. So it’s tailored to a unique thing, widget Experience Program course. So they’ve actually dug into all that psychology of what works and what people need as information to be able to engage with those. And then so you don’t have to try and work out what you should add or not, it just steps you through that. I think it’s an interesting concept, and probably something that ways advisors don’t really think we use much. But I wonder if if we tested a bit more about the sort of things we could offer to even our current clients and got their feedback on that, through just seeing what they clicked on or what they registered for, then you know, we might be on a really deliver something that we know is going to harm, really give them value. So check it out. And I’d love to hear what you think, all up. That’s all we’ve got for this week, folks, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you’ll get your advice, tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And if you feel like you are a bit stuck, and you know maybe like everybody else, it’s 2023 has been the fastest possible year ever, of all time craziness. You know, you’ve got some projects, maybe including some tech projects you’re going to need to embark on, and you just want to take a step back and do some planning for the year ahead, then I would love to facilitate a brainstorming session for you and your team. Drawing out the next best projects for the business. You know what tech might assist how you can all work together to innovate with the practice, this can be in person and it will be a really productive and enjoyable day for the team. So if that’s of interest, please reach out to me on LinkedIn forward slash Peita M D PEITA M D. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. Who knows whether it will be with puppies in the background or not? We can always hope so remember advice explorers: Stay curious.