AdviceTech Podcast #47 – Look Back – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And this week, joining me on the show, she has tap danced on the steps of the opera house once worked in the shark infested waters of investment banking, and would secretly love to get a paid gig as a movie reviewer. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Peita Diamantidis. I know I know. It’s really daggy to be introducing myself on my own podcast that I host. But to be honest, I was a little worried that if the show started differently to the way it normally does that we’d sort of all get thrown off our game, and there’d be some sort of tear in this space time continuum or something. So we’re going to click along a little similar to the way we would and then this is going to become something of a different podcast episode just for this week. Normally, at the beginning of the episode, you know, it’s where I would get to know you and I would get to know the guest through the way they use technology. And funnily enough, I’ve actually had a number of messages from people saying, Peter, you know, you always ask the guests about their emojis and their apps, they keep it you know, what are your answers to those questions? You know, please share. So, given here we are I’m the guest and the host for this week’s episode, then, let’s start what is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis? Well, absolutely, I use emojis. In fact, I think that there are a whole nother language, the top three for me. When I took a look on my phone, they are the smiley face with the three hearts around them. The nerdy face with glasses, no surprises there. I’m a massive nerd. And actually the smiley face, that’s those swirly eyes with the tongue sort of sticking out, you know, sort of got the offbeat eyes and everything. So that’s another one I use as sort of like, things, things are a bit crazy. In fact, my husband, who is not on any social media, he doesn’t have a single social media app on his phone or anywhere. And he actually uses his phone for calling people would you believe I mean, who would have thunk it, but he’s actually been infected by my emoji use. To the extent that he now gets great joy in messaging people only using emojis. Right? And trying to stump them. And so recently, he actually messaged his brother, who lives in the states and who’s coming out with his family to visit us. And he just sent them these emojis. He sent them, a runnin woman, soccer ball, a world a trophy, a ticket stub and a party hat. Now, unfortunately, their emoji game is not very strong. And they didn’t realize what they meant. And so we had to actually ring them to tell them, but he was actually telling them that he’d managed to get tickets for all of us to go to the Women’s Soccer World Cup. So we play a lot of emoji games in this family. And so we use them heaps. Now the second question I normally ask guests, is, if you had to delete everything off your smartphone, and just leave three apps with the only apps you’re allowed to keep, which ones would you keep? All righty. Well, you know, it’s not until you do this, that you realize how much it each share is about who you are and what you love doing. So the first one, the first step, I’d be keeping his Google Maps. Not for quite the reason you think, yes, I need it for directions. I’m hopeless. I’m not one of those people that once I’ve been somewhere once I can find my way back. I don’t pay enough attention for that. So and it’s Certainly for directions, but the main reason is every restaurant, every venue, every fun thing I have ever done or want to do globally, is tagged in Google Maps for me, so I could ever make that says all Peter, we’re heading over to Iceland. For a bit of a trip, you know, we’re going to drop into Reykjavik. Is there any way you’d recommend to go to a restaurant in Reykjavik and I’ll open up Google Maps, I’ll zoom into Iceland, and there it is, there’s a star and I’m just looking at it now. For a restaurant called grill. Maka Durden, which was this amazing, funky restaurant I went to in in Reykjavik just before the pandemic. So I’ve got that for places everywhere I’ve ever been all want to go. So you know, possible activities or venues get saved this way. If we’re watching a TV show, and they talk about you know, might be a chef and they talk about restaurants or fun things to do or anything like that. They go in Google Maps, and I star them or flag them as basically a target list of things I want to do. Now the second step I’d keep would be IMDB. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a huge movie buff. So IMDb, which is the Internet Movie Database is my go to place to check, you know, Where have I seen that actor before? You know what so and so in that movie, all those sort of questions he haven’t, you just can’t quite sort of tip your tongue and he can’t quite remember. And basically, it’s just a really healthy adjudicator of a debate that my hobby and hobby and I might be talking about movies. So it’s much easier just to check rather than arguing over something neither of us are very confident about. The third app I’d probably keep would be Bitmoji. This is actually an app that creates, they get you to create your own cartoon avatar. So you pick your hair color, and your eye color and all sorts of things. And you create your own sort of cartoon avatar, Avatar, and then it sort of loads you up into all these designs of these sort of little cartoon images. They can be, you know, ways to wish people happy birthday, it can be you dressed up in green for St. Patty’s Day, all sorts of fun cartoon images for all sorts of situations. And, you know, there’s been days where the only way I communicate is with Bitmoji. So those would be my three. So now, you know, we’re a few minutes in and I’m sure you sort of wondering, you know, what in damnation is going on Peter, why isn’t there a guest on this week’s episode? Well, what you might not realize is today’s episode is in fact, the 47th episode of the Ensombl AdviceTech podcast. And therefore, today, we’re going to take a quick break from our regularly scheduled program to do a bit of a look back at our journey together over the some 46 hours of me jabbering away about technology and sincere apologies for that, by the way. Now, why is it 47? Well, I sort of wanted to pick a milestone that was a bit more, I guess, creative and unusual than, say 50 episodes or 100 episodes. Now. My Geek is going to start really showing here, folks. So strap yourself saying strap yourselves in. Not only is 47 a prime number, but it’s actually several different kinds of prime, it’s safe prime, a super singular prime, it’s an Eisenstein prime, you know, it also happens to be a Lukas number, a carol number and a case numbers. So for math geeks, like me, it’s a pretty darn special number. So I therefore chose this number Episode Episode 47 to be our milestone episode, where we take a moment to just revel in our journey so far, and then even talk about what we’ve got coming up in the future. So you’re going to hear from some listeners like yourself, today, we’re going to reminisce about the guests and the apps we’ve had on the show. And I’m also going to share the single biggest insight on advice tech I’ve picked up thus far. And if you’re a superfan listener, then I’m betting you’ve probably picked up on it too, as we’ve sort of traveled along along together. First up, let’s just hear from one of our listeners who kindly sent in a voice message to the show. And he would they’ve got to say,

Alisa Burns
Hi, Peter Alisa Burns here. Thank you so much for recording your podcast every week. I really enjoy listening to all of the new things, all the new fun things and seeing if they will work in my business. I would really love an episode about projections or modeling tools that you have seen or that are available. We currently use x plan but it’s so clunky and not client friendly. So looking for something that’s a bit easier to use, and hopefully a bit nicer to look at. Thank you.

Peita Diamantidis
Thank you so much for your kind message unless I’m completely with you. The interviews have caused a fair few things to be put on my wish list actually, both the interviews and the curiosity corner apps. In fact, in my ideas vault which is the place where I sort of collect all the future growth ideas for the business. I’ve been adding all sorts of things so that when the right moment arrives, I can go back to the vault and go or write, you know what might be the best solution for this particular challenge that the business is creating. So I’m right there with you, I’ve been adding a lot of things into that ideas vault. And when I saw look back, actually, at all the curiosity corner apps and websites I’ve shared those little weird and wonderful things that I’ve come across, then the top three for me have are all things that I’ve ended up actually using myself, that weren’t just things I looked at, you know, I came across and said, Oh, that’s interesting, I’ll share it with the audience. These are actually things I’ve used brain FM, which is one of the ones I mentioned way back in episode three. This is music that’s scientifically proven to increase your focus. And I use it all the time. In fact, when I was brainstorming what I might cover in today’s episode, I set a timer in brain FM for about an hour and chose some deep focus music and sort of really knocked out the work, you know, knocked out what I was going to cover and what the sections would be, and all that sort of thing. So I use it all the time and get some huge value out of that the second app is in, I still don’t know how to say that sand key art sa N ke y AR T, that was a more recent one back in episodes 38. And I’ve actually since used it in a load of cash flow conversations I’ve had with clients, this tool actually is basically creates diagrams that show the money flowing in and out. Now it’s used for, say businesses to sort of translate, you know, p&l and other tables or assets and liabilities and things in a simple way. But it can also be used for personal cash flow situations. And I just find that it makes these wonderful graphs that are much easier to grasp than most spreadsheet driven graphs. And so I’ve been using that a fair bit, the third curiosity quarter that’s actually got used a bit. And this is just because I love being the cool RT, right. And so love, you know, sort of making the kids really excited about stuff. And this was back from Episode Seven, I think. And it’s an app called Bricket, br IC K I T. And basically, you can hold your phone using the app over a pile of Lego bricks, just random, you know, the normal random pile, that’s, that’s what happens after the first time you buy Lego anytime from that point on, it’s just always random rubbish. And it will give you instructions of what you can make out of those bricks. Not just here’s a design, but also the step by step of how to pull it together, which is beyond awesome and makes you look awesome as an adult doing Lego with kids. Now, if you do want to check any of those out, or any of the other curiosity corner apps that I’ve mentioned in the past episodes, then our wonderful Podcast Producer, Kieran makes sure to include the links to those apps in the shownotes for each episode. So if you just head to the ensemble advice, tech podcast landing page, so you could just literally Google ensemble advice tech podcast, it’ll take you to a page that sort of has them all listed one after the other, then you’ll be able to find the episode that I’ve mentioned and the link directly to that particular app. And he’s actually another listener message for the advice tech podcast. And thank you so much for sending these by the way, folks, I’m really, really grateful for taking the time.

Sam Woodhouse
Hey, Sam Woodhouse, founder of Intune financial services. Before listening to the show, I thought it was all about finding the ideal software. I tried, you know, finding that perfect CRM, I never quite found it. And then I listened to the show. And what I thought it was, after listening to a couple is why don’t just try a few of these. So I grabbed my prosperity product rep. fluido, soft, and just start implementing some of these. And what I found is, it’s really about that tech stack that you want. And I think that’s a mindset change. For me. It’s like a client coming in and thinking, there’s one ideal plan that there’s no one ideal tech stack. It’s really about building them together and what you want your experience for the clients to look like. And I’ve really enjoyed the portability of changing providers at time and really thinking about what do I want my client experience to look like? And what tech is writing that at that time? Because I know, in five years time, it’s not going to be all the providers that I used today.

Peita Diamantidis
Wow, I so agree with Sam here asking ourselves, you know, what do we want our client experience to look like, is such an important touchstone for us when we’re considering our tech stack. We can spend a lot of time thinking about us helps when we’re doing this. Whereas if we use the client experience as the touchstone, I think I can make a whole lot of those decisions a whole lot easier. And, you know, I’m in here I’m running, you know, I’ve been sort of doing this podcast with you and running, running past you all sorts of pieces of tech, you know, over 40 of them so far. And there’s loads I haven’t even covered yet, right? There’s still more new tech out there. But the last thing we should do is think that there’s one perfect thing we should just pick Yeah, so having a reason for looking before we research, and then just having a try of things can mean that over time, you can evolve your support infrastructure, meaning your tech stacks into something so powerful and really unique to your practice and your client base. Right. So this is an evolving beast, you know, we’re not in the hunt for the one perfect thing. We’re looking for things that can add value that can evolve with the way we do things and with the services we’re providing. In fact, actually, you know, now that I think about it, when Clayton actually asked me to host this podcast, it was really important to me that I made things easier for you the listener, not harder, right? I didn’t want to overwhelm. That’s the last thing I wanted to do. If I could just get the founders or experts from each app to chat about their specific piece of tech enough that you would just get a sense of it right? Then and work out is it even worth your time of digging further, all while maybe you’re out walking the dog or sitting in traffic, then I figure I’ve saved you some time and sort of narrowed down your research for you. So that was sort of my mission, when I approached this, the last thing I wanted to do was overwhelm, I just wanted to sort of do a bit of the legwork for you. So that then only if it was of interest to Could you take it any further and then expend a bit more time. In fact, it turns out that when it comes to where you the listener absorb the podcast from whether it is walking the dog or, or in traffic, or you know, maybe it’s exercising whatever it might be, interestingly or not surprisingly, I guess a significant chunk of you are listening from Australia, but we have people and a fair number actually listening from the US from New Zealand, from South Africa from the UK, and the United Arab Emirates. And everyone give a big wave across the ocean to Brett Evans and the team at Atlas wealth, who I’m sure are a good portion of those downloads over there. The However, what’s interesting is the numbers, of course, stop dropping off rapidly in terms of downloads after that with you know, a few in Greece and other parts of Europe, we’ve got downloads a few downloads in Korea, Nigeria, Kazakhstan. Okay, interesting. But when you look way down the bottom of the list of way the podcast gets downloaded the two countries globally, we don’t have any downloads, Mauritius and the Ukraine. Now I’m not sure that those two countries have ever been referred to in the same sentence. So that’s an odd but interesting combination. And clearly, I need to work harder over the next year to get that full global coverage happening. So we can say we’ve got listeners in every country in the world. Now in terms of what device you’re listening to the podcast on, you know, I’ve got to apologize to all the Android users as clearly, you know, Apple podcasts is a clear winner here with a massive proportion of the episode downloads. Spotify comes up a distant second, which sort of makes sense given they’re spending a whole lot of time promoting podcast content to you know, their members. So we’ll see if those numbers start to change in the future. In fact, next up, we have a lovely message from someone who is a podcast host himself and might have some views on what we listen to and what value we get.

Tim Henry
G’day Peita, Tim Henry here. What a cool idea. This is actually got SpeakPipe. And I’ve never thought of using it like this. I’ve just got it sitting on my website of the podcast and just doing nothing inspired me there. Well that, yes, enjoy the podcast a lot. Probably the one I enjoyed the most was one about Microsoft 365. Why? Because even though I do enjoy listening to some of the software providers out there and how they might add value, I just thought that one. It’s just a topic, and something that we use all of us use all the time, and how can we use it better? So if there was gonna be any thought on rolling out other episodes, Ivan record series on Microsoft would be unbelievable. Because we’ve actually got massive resources in there with Microsoft. None of us not even don’t know better don’t know how to use so that would be awesome. I am going to be trying to reach out to you soon to come on again. I’m going to kick off our podcast soon, but well, don’t keep going and chat soon. Have a good weekend.

Peita Diamantidis
Huh? Yeah. Um, with your team coming up. You know, in the next a lot of episodes, we have plans for a few things actually where we sort of evolve the way that we pull together, the interviews we do and the value that I want to make sure we keep on adding the first will be. We’ll be doing sporadically feature episodes. Now, this is where, you know, I’m going to have a debate with either somebody from the industry or an expert outside the industry on sort of topical tech challenges we’re all facing, you know, first up in a week or two will be debate on balancing the trade off between scaling our businesses through efficiency and creating bespoke and unique customer experiences. You know, what’s the line? How do we manage to sort of balance those two demands? And how do we make take decisions accordingly. The second thing we’re going to be doing going forward will be sequel episodes, right, just like movies we’re going to have, we’re going to have number two of those guests returning where we’re going to get the guests back again, for an update on their app since they last spoke to us. And what I want to do here is make sure you get to keep up to date on what they’re all doing, the pace at which these apps are changing, is accelerating. And they’re all coming up with all these wonderful ideas. And the introduction of AI into all of this has meant that’s gone even faster. So I want to make sure you guys have kept up to date. And in fact, when we do the sequel episodes, you will, I will mention the first episode that you can go back and listen to to get sort of that foundation understanding. So that then you can listen to the latest one is sort of like the update on the latest features. And the third element we’re going to be bringing to a future episode will be deep dives. You know, this is like Tim mentioned, we’re going to be taking your feedback and doing deeper dives into certain elements of tech, you know, whether it’s diving into, you know, an episode for per the individual apps within suites like Microsoft, or say just, you know, some episodes on the client portal features across various apps, just those features, then that’s something we’re going to be doing as we go forward so that you can really get your head around those sort of, sort of deeper understanding of particular elements. To that end, in the show notes for today’s episode, we will be including a link to speak pipe, which is actually how those messages you’ve been hearing through this episode. That’s how they got sent to me. It’s a simple tool with a link where somebody can just leave you a little 92nd message. And I’d love you to head over there to that link. And leave me a message letting me know which deep dive you’d like us to do first, is it a deep dive on Excel or Word or Google Drive or teams? Or is it on modeling tools available as per actually Ulisses? comment earlier, you can find the link@speakpipe.com forward slash Peter D. That’s P e i t ad. So please share your requests. If if I don’t get specific requests, I’ll just pick the ones I’m interested in. But I would love to hear which ones you would like to hear. And we’ll certainly bump them up the line. Now, last up in the voice messages I’ll be sharing today is one that speaks directly to my single biggest lesson from all of these interviews.

Adele Martin
Hey, it’s Adele Martin here. And I just wanted to do a quick note to say that I have been loving the ensemble advice tech podcast, the host, Peter D has a unique gift of being able to make something complex simple, which is not easy to do with technology. There’s been so many valuable insights so far. But probably my top two has been the app tango, I was using loom but Tango to be able to capture process and turn it into a step by step guide, I think has been a great and a game changer. And sort of that step up from using loom to record processes. And of course, the second one is just getting me to look at my technology that I’ve already got and making sure that category do what I want it to do. Like if I’m already using x plan that’s got a new client portal, like do I need to reinvent the wheel? So I think I’ll do the other thing is to make sure I’m getting and using my tech fully that I’ve already got. So yes, so many insights, so many so much value, and yeah, definitely loving it.

Peita Diamantidis
You know, there are some great ideas and new tech valve available to us. But the truth for every single person listening to this podcast advisor or not, is we are using a tiny proportion of the technology we already have at our disposal. And we’re already paying for. So what do we do about this? Right? I mean, what action can you take? Well, we need to start treating technology, like the core asset it is, you know, it’s the equipment we need to do business. You know, do great farmers look after their equipment, maintaining it and keeping the staff up on their accreditations and licenses to use the equipment? Of course they do, right. It’s ingrained. It’s sheduled. And anyone who doesn’t behave that way is seen as a pretender not a farmer, right? We need to behave the same way ourselves. We need to bring some rigor to our technology approach going forward and treat it like infrastructure. What that means is we don’t expend a whole lot of effort once just finding the thing and implementing it. We make it a regular part of programming, you know, start building an infrastructure strategy for the business. How often do you do take Knology stocktakes you know, what’s the retraining shedule you have for technology in the practice for your team? You know, how often are you going to revisit your process design? And what does that look like? And what’s the discipline you’re going to put in place into how often you implement new tech and how often you’re going to let yourself utilize new tech, you know, we take so much time and effort, understandably, onboarding, training and performance managing staff. And we all do, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a small practice, like, like mine, or a huge practice, or even maybe you’re within a large corporate, you know, all of that we will expend a lot of time on recruitment and training and retention of staff, we need to apply the same rigor to technology software, you know, and I guarantee you, we’re going to unearth all sorts of value in the tech we already have. I mean, you know, if you think about how much you use a tool, like word, so just think about something like, you know, word or, or Outlook, when was the last training you did on that, you know, retraining, understanding all of the new features, all the new things you could do, most of us never have, we’ve net, some of us have never done any training on that. And we’ve just learned it ourselves, right? Maybe that’s a little insane. Maybe we need to take this a little more seriously. And I think, you know, applying some rigor and structure to that, we’ll make sure you know, every dollar we spend on technology, whether it’s advice tech, or it’s just tech generally, is getting as some wonderful bang for buck and making sure we can spend less time on the manual stuff, and spend more time on the wonderful interacting with human stuff. So Well, look, I hope that was a little bit of an off road advice tech adventure for you today. You know, it’s a bit of a shorter episode. But you know, next week, I promise we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming with, you know, a mix of apps you haven’t heard from before some sequel interviews on apps we have had before. And you know, another feature episode for a bit more chaotic fun. But before I wrap up, I do want to just sort of take a moment to thank you sincerely for the time you have so generously given me. I’m very aware of how busy and overwhelmed we all are. So the fact that you’re letting me join you each week to share my gibbering as we discover together. You know, the latest tech out there for advice practices is an honor that I honestly don’t take lightly. I’m really keen to continue doing this while you are keen to hear more advice, tech conversations. So please be sure to reach out on the ensemble platform to share whether you’re still getting value from the podcast, and any ideas or things that you’d love to have me investigate a little further for you. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week. It’s a short little punchy one, 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’d like a speaker at your next event or for a webinar for your group, perhaps running them through habits to streamline their tech stack set up some of that discipline around technology then or even to make innovation and everyday part of the practice then please reach out to me on LinkedIn at Ford slash Peita MD That’s PE it a MD otherwise oh look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explores: Stay curious.