AdviceTech Podcast #56 – ProductRex Update – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the Ensombl AdviceTech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And this week we’re diving into one of our new advice tech sequel episodes. Yes, when our franchise folks, we’ve got sequels. Just like Marvel, right? Where exactly like Marvel, the sequel episodes where we bring back a previous guest on the show to get an update on any new features, enhancements, and all the other exciting things they’ve been up to since we last heard from them now here today, to keep us up to date on all things product. Rex is the founder himself. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Nick, Tom.

Nick Topham
Thank you. Thank you for having me. Again. It’s been a year, I believe it.

Peita Diamantidis
It has been you joined us back on Episode Seven. And this is number 56. So cheese and crackers, folks. I can’t believe that you they’ve let me talk for this long.

Nick Topham
Well, hopefully we’ll be at 106 Next time.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly, exactly. Now, before we dive in, let’s get to know you a little bit better. Again, through your use of technology, we couldn’t possibly use the same questions again, we’ve got to make it a bit different. AI is the thing everybody’s talking about. You know, if someone came to you and said, Nick, I’m gonna build you your perfect AI buddy. It’s designed just for you. What tasks would you want it to magically do for you?

Nick Topham
I think, look, I should have looked this up before he started, it might already exist. But this probably does. But what really annoys me is is if I have to buy something online, and I don’t buy a lot, and it’s just a common product, and it’s stocked by multiple people, I just want to be able to type it in and someone just give me the cheapest one with the cheapest shipping. Happy that hard. Surely it exists? I don’t know. But it just frustrates me a lot. Not with the combo with shipping, right? Yes, it’s because I live in a regional area. Right? So there’s big differences in shipping between places. So for instance, Silvia probably pretty straightforward. But look, you

Peita Diamantidis
think but I’m not so convinced it is to be honest. That’s why I’m so addicted to Amazon Prime. Because that takes a whole lot of steps out of the process, which I’m not a fan of generally, because I prefer to you know, back the little guy, but sometimes you just want the person that’s got a massive logistics chain

Nick Topham
consistent, right. It’s the consistency. Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

Peita Diamantidis
Now we know that all you know, new tech isn’t good tech necessarily, right? Some things are better analog, is there some version of our analog technology you prefer to the modern version?

Nick Topham
I don’t know if it’s analog technology. And I’m probably not alone in this, but I really don’t like cars beeping at me. So it’s a bit of a I don’t know, it’s not really technically analog and digital. But just I just want to be able to drive a car along without it beeping at me or telling me things, you know, that’s a car that talks I don’t really not even to talking. It’s just the beeping. And it just I don’t like it so judgmental, or just irritating, just irritating. I just want to drive I don’t I don’t need it to tell me tell me things. And you hit me. So look,

Peita Diamantidis
I’m with you. And it’s like, I mean, the GPS stuff cracks me up. I know, use Google Maps, I’m just because they think they keep it up more up to date. Except in Sydney, they’ve put in loads of freeways recently in tunnels that are also coming up online quite quickly. And Google Maps does not know what to do with that, like it’s sending you all over the place. So it makes it a bit exciting with directions. Alright, let’s dive in to what’s going on with product RX, shall we? So for those of you who aren’t aware, I’m hoping you are but if you aren’t aware, can you just give us that sort of highlight on where you guys sit in the advice tech space? And what the you know, what the tool gets compared against? Or what’s the category it’s in just so that we can cover that off?

Nick Topham
Absolutely, absolutely. So look, basically product tracks is essentially a product research and recommendation tool, we talk about product, thinking about investment products, you know, at a at a platform level at an investment level ended at an SMA level, which I guess is somewhere in between. So you know what that looks like is when you’re an advisor, and you’ve got a new client or an existing client, and you need to find out more about their investment products super, or whatever they’ve got, you come in to use product Rex, you know, so we’re talking about things, you know, primarily things like fees and asset allocation. We do a little bit of work on product features, we got some interesting stuff around subjective opinions on platforms that advisors can put into the system kind of structure that but really, it’s all about those product recommendations. And obviously getting that then through to the potentially through to the advice piece. So that’s kind of the part of the market we sit in.

Peita Diamantidis
Now we had a great conversation so but like we were saying back in episode seven so listener, if you really on across the detail in the background of product wrecks, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to episode seven Nick and I really went through a whole lot of the detail because what we’re going to go from here on is new stuff and updates. Since then, so I’m sure there’s actually I’m aware that there’s been some significant projects. So let’s cover the big stuff. First, what are some significant things that have changed for products? Product wrecks recently? I mean, I know one of the ones was some scenario structures that you put in place. Yeah,

Nick Topham
yeah, it’s funny, since our last one, you know, the first, that wasn’t even our first year, the lat the year we kind of talked about last year was a whole lot of us, not smaller projects, but you know, add ons or enhancements to what we already got. And this is all been about basically new big stuff. So, you know, like, like you mentioned, what we had was called the base of the families and clients review. So essentially, I looked at the entire structure of product tracks, and you know, when you when you go through product tracks, and this might be difficult for a non user to imagine, you know, essentially we talk about scenarios, so you, you, you’ve got a client, they might do a rollover, and move some money around, or pension or whatever else, that’s we call that a scenario. And you’d have in product tracks, you know, all these different scenarios, if you’re a user over time that you’ve done. Now, what I felt was kind of missing is, if you had, you know, John Smith, who’s doing a scenario and his wife, Jane Smith, right, we didn’t really have a great way to structure to kind of group all of John’s scenarios together, and to actually link them to Jane, you know, or the rest of the Smith family. So essentially, that’s sort of implemented, it’s kind of like a very light, CRM kind of functionality. But especially for those longer term users, we’re looking at, you know, couple of 100 scenarios in there, over the the two years we’ve been running, or a few 100, it just makes things much, much cleaner. And it actually leads the way for some big kind of enhancements we’ve got coming up in the next, you know, 12 months or so, so

Peita Diamantidis
awesome. And, you know, for us, and look, it’s so funny, when you having been on this journey with you guys from fairly early on, I guess, is that’s actually the thing we were hitting is we’re now into our second go at clients for this, because we’ve come up to review time, right. And so, so we we had done the thing that everybody does, which gets, you know, get a bit anal about the way you name scenarios, just so we could clear out everything. But you know, it’s great to have as you guys evolve, and we’re all sort of, you know, getting a bit more embedded with the tool. And it’s great to have these things that just make it a bit more organized. Yeah.

Nick Topham
And it’s just, it was just good. And there’s nothing wrong with the, the structure of just having individual scenarios, I tell people, like, if you like it, keep doing it, you know, but it’s like you said, it’s about just trying to have a bit of a standard structure, just trying to make, you know, the whole point is hitting, hitting pain points as users, that’s always been the, our approach, you know, what are people struggling? How can we resolve that? Those are always the questions we asked. And that was, that was one of the things that came up, you know,

Peita Diamantidis
and certainly one of the things that those sort of features help with these, look, lots of these tools, I think, advisors say, some advisors will only use themselves, you know, they sort of it’s just to them, whereas I you know, I’m a big fan of using as much of the back office as we can. So they’ll set the new scenario up, get some data in, and then of course, the adviser or the power plant, or whoever might go in and, and actually take a good look. But the more you can do that the better. And therefore the more structure. And the more obvious what things are and what the historical ones over this is all those sort of things help with handover, you know, really clean hands. If you don’t have that, it can get pretty messy.

Nick Topham
Yeah. And that kind of ties in with one of the other tools. You know exactly what you said ties me one of the other tools we came up with, which was sandbox mode. It was it was last year, late last year, we brought that in. But basically that’s all about the same kind of thing. You know, that handover you got your sign might come in and pumping all your initial data or import it from another software or another platform. And sandbox mode basically lets you go in and kind of play around with your actual recommendations. And it’s just, you know, again, it’s just trying to respond to those user demands. They said, You know, we want to review accounts that we’ve already got, we make it easier. So that’s sandbox mode. That’s another big enhancement. Yeah. Okay,

Peita Diamantidis
exciting. Is there any other those sort of chunkier ones in the last 12 months? Yeah,

Nick Topham
I mean, I think another another big one was when we brought in what we call bulk importing, or bulk actions. So that’s kind of no one else really does that in the market now, except us. But basically, the idea was, you know, maybe you’ve got 20 clients to review on a particular platform, or maybe you buy a book, or maybe you just want to do a whole lot at once. And basically, what that will let you do is import a whole lot of scenarios at once, right? So you can import 1020 100 scenarios, if you like, right? Let’s say they’re all the platform a, okay, and a new platform that’s come out Platform B, and you want to see the price difference between A and B for these scenarios. So you can basically go through input, you know, 50 clients in platform a, click a button that says What if they’re in Platform B, and it will do a bulk basically a bulk price comparison for you, which is really, really powerful. When you’re making those kind of macro decisions. You’re not just kind of going through one by one because that’s not Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
absolutely. Absolutely. It is. And it’s um Look, I’m actually curious. And this is just off the top of my head, I hate to put you on the spot. But it must be challenging for you guys as much as it is for us with all of the all we’ve upgraded the product to this new thing, and we’ve just moved everybody across, oh, we’ve combined this with the other one and everybody’s consult like, that must be as much as a disaster for you as it is us right? Because far out that’s hard to keep track of. Yeah, it’s

Nick Topham
look. It’s funny as as we’ve evolved, it’s I don’t know if platforms have gotten better at communicating with us or just on the radar, but we’re lucky enough to have those contacts at platforms. Now, it probably does help a bit. But yeah, I mean, it all comes back to our initial data collection, you know, we collect all of our own data, except Except manage funds. But all the platform level data, you know, it’s all automated, we check it regularly. It’s not just like 20 people sitting in a room or all automation. So when those things change, it’s much much easier for us to pick it up and obviously, then deal with it. Yeah, perfect.

Peita Diamantidis
Because it is, it’s just so frustrating. And, you know, it’s if you’re dealing with one major platform, maybe you know, once in a while that’s traumatic, but you only need to have a few across your clients. And it just seems relentless. It’s like, they’re all just playing, you know, dance musical chairs.

Nick Topham
Yeah, you’re all, especially at the moment, you know, we’ve got obviously the launch of edge, we’ve got changes to net wealth core, and we’ve got changes to my north as well all happening at the same time, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of a lot of things happening for advisors, and thankfully, we’re kind of able to give them a pretty quick answer to a lot of their questions on what’s what’s happening, you know,

Peita Diamantidis
perfect, perfect. What about any other sort of tweaks or adjustments you’ve sort of made over time? Is there other things that you’ve been maybe they were, you know, feedback from users or anything like that, that sort of come, you know, over the last little while that you sort of upgraded the system for? Yeah,

Nick Topham
I mean, it’s always, there’s always things happening, you know, we’re never just sitting there. twiddling our thumbs, there’s always there’s always things happening, you know, there’s little things like we adding, you know, cash minimums and alerts for that, and the abilities to, you know, someone came to once they said, I look, when our clients come in for review, I don’t really change the portfolio, much we just reduce the cash or to the minimum, we didn’t really have a function for that. So, you know, there’s little things like that it’s like one button, but you’re saving a lot of time. And obviously, that’s applicable across a lot of users. You know, we’re talking about like, you know, if if they’re going through making a recommendation, they drop an investment in and it’s not available and platform, telling them, it’s not available, what are you gonna do about it, you know, just those little things that will just, you know, ease of use enhancements, and they’re just relatively easy to code most of the time, but immediately kind of add value can help people out.

Peita Diamantidis
Awesome. And what about, I mean, you’ve now had a bit longer to see how people are using it, and I’m sure you’re getting feedback and questions and like you say, requests from the users? Is there something you’ve seen that, you know, a practice has just done something that really blew you away? Like, I can’t believe that this is the way you’re using it? Or this the way you’re implementing the tool?

Nick Topham
Yes, sometimes it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s funny, you know, we talked, I think we talked last time about what was a new feature, then auto wrecks, which is like the ability to Bulk Add platforms and model portfolios. So I think you use it as well. So it’s, it’s a really easy way to kind of bulk out all that stuff. But before we had that people had their own kind of ad hoc ways of doing that is the same with rebalances. You know, people have like, ad hoc or interesting ways of doing things. And then we always think what’s quite good. And basically try to riff off riff not rip riff off that to kind of make automated functions to support that. So those are kind of the ones that springs to mind. But there’s always interesting things that people are doing that we try and try and support where we feel they can add value across the whole user base.

Peita Diamantidis
And I guess that’s the other thing that look, we’re starting to see too, is, is, you know, there’s been a lot of work on say, advice, production, right. And I guess you guys are sort of firmly in that category of pulling it together and doing the research. But to date, and I guess CFSA just one of those things that’s part of this sort of focus is, you know, the whole implementation side of things has been fairly unloved, you know, for some time. And so even for me, you know, I can see place, you know, times when we might have done some analysis, there’s been a switch recommendation or something like that, and it goes to the implementation team. But of course, things have moved in that time, even if it’s only a day or two. And so it’s, you know, thinking of ways that we can just make it so streamlined across the whole team, you know, so that everybody can just step up without any tweaking without any, without as much sort of individual applied nows only when it’s necessary, you know, particularly for calculated things. Yeah, a lot of this stuff or calculations. Human beings shouldn’t be doing those should be tick,

Nick Topham
you know, and it’s yeah, it’s funny that the kind of Why don’t you cold call it basically like you say bringing through research and recommendations through to the actual implementation phase is something we’ve looked at the technology for the kind of products that we need to implement it for is sometimes a little not lacking. It’s sometimes a little protected or a little bit. Yes. Use the word now see, you know, a little bit esoteric and how it works. So yeah, it’s, I guess, a bit of a stumbling block for us. I think that’s going to improve. Certainly, a lot of the platforms are signalling, they’re going to improve that area. It is we’re going to definitely, definitely look at in the future. Yeah, hopefully, as advice gets easy to implement following Cuellar, and all that sort of stuff, you know, so

Peita Diamantidis
well, and I think particularly when we can separate if we separate, you know, establishment type of advice versus reviews or adjustments, you know, once somebody’s in a platform, then it sort of feels like it would make sense to, to be at a stream sign, streamline some of that comes through, you know, like it’s, and from there, and surely, you know, they’d love it. I’m sure they’ve got a team that it just like, far out, there’s a lot to process here. Yeah, so we’ll look, it’ll be interesting to see. I’m really curious. You know, we’re not exactly fast moving in financial services. So

Nick Topham
it look, yeah, it’s we’re keeping an eye on it. It’s, you know, from a technological from our point of view, it’s not terribly complex from the platforms, I understand it is probably quite complex. But yeah, it will be interesting to see how it evolves.

Peita Diamantidis
Awesome. Now, you clearly been pretty busy. So you probably need a little lie down. But um, what are the challenges? You’re sort of users facing? You know, what have you got on the future sort of wish list or things that are coming down the track?

Nick Topham
Yeah, it’s interesting question, something I’m working on, actually, right now, around estimates, actually. So if you’ve, we certainly seen a huge growth in SMEs in the last probably, you know, 3624 months. And then more recently, the last kind of 1812 months with what we call what I call white label SMEs. So you know, practices have their own private SMEs, big, big growth in them as well. There’s basically no tools out there to support them at the moment, as far as I know. So we’re looking to basically expand our ability to kind of support those SMA is both the what I call the kind of the professional ones and the white label ones. So that’s, that’s on the immediate radar for the future. I’m literally coding it right now. But I think that’s a big area of growth. And it’s a pain point. And yeah, it’s it’s on the medium right now. That will almost certainly be our next major releases some work in that area.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay, fantastic. Anything else? Further? What, how about integrations? Where are you guys out with integrations?

Nick Topham
Yeah, look, integration is a good one, too. So, you know, we’ve got all the platforms recently, just just put on CFS edge and I platform. A platform integrations, I say all the platforms are the kind of major rap platforms. Yeah. So they’re all kind of ticked off. We did them ages ago. But recently put on software integration. So we brought on intelliflo and dash, which are all which obviously, you know, intelliflo is coming up in Australia dash, quite a popular tool as well. Now. Yeah. So we’ve got integrations with those guys. But you’re gonna get the kind of push pull integrations always looking to expand our software integrations to Yeah, because there’s a lot of new players coming up. And, you know, the what we do, obviously, we have the big advantage in that. It’s very accessible for users, you know, we don’t have a membership fee or anything like that. They just come in create an account and the way they go, that’s good for them. And our open API is very, very easy to use. So yeah, the software integrations is more of a focus at the moment and platform just because we’ve got all the platforms basically.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And is it fair to say, I mean, well, look, software providers, as you know, I’ve already got a long list of things to do, right. So there’s always a lot of demands and upgrades and things like that. But I’m assuming that they’re understanding or an ability to make decisions on an integration is going to be smoother than a platform merely because you no one’s in the game or one’s not so. So I am imagining for the big platforms, there’s all of those layers of people, as well, which must be a bit of a challenge.

Nick Topham
Well, yeah. And the interesting thing is, especially with the platform integrations is it that’s more like we do most of the work for the platform integration, right? You know, like almost all of it. Whereas the software integrations, it’s usually on the opposite. You know, this one that we just did with with Dash really, really comprehensive, comprehensive, I was trying to say, really, really comprehensive and what they’ve done in terms of bringing data backwards and forwards. And they did 95% of it, because we’ve already got the open API’s there. You know, it’s basically we just say, Here’s how to access this. Here’s how to read it. Here’s our flows. So that makes it you know, the imperative if they want to get the integration going, and they’ve got the staff, they can just get stuck, you know?

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And look, there are going to be more I remember, I’m sorry, some while back, Clayton actually said to me, I’ll pay Do you think there’s going to be enough tech to interview for the advice tech podcast to continue and it cracks me up, because like, you’re only the second person we’ve had back for a second time. And that was a year ago. And there’s just more and more and more, which sort of surprises me to be honest, because there’s not that many of us as advisors, so it’s not a massive market. But there just seems to be more and more tech. Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s crazy, crazy stuff. And is there any, is there any plans in the future? So you’ve got that sort of, like bigger tech, you know, so Dash and intelliflo Absolutely fall into those sort of bigger tools that are multi layered for practice? Is there anybody else that’s on the, on the radar, things like that, maybe you’re doing a similar comparison, as you are, but say on, you know, ESG, or things like that, you know, so you might be able to work a lot alongside somebody looking at a portfolio and it might also then, you know, be able to feed through and say, Well, hey, actually, based on the client’s values that’s got, you know, these challenges, is there any anything like that you’re looking at?

Nick Topham
Look, there’s a few out there. It’s, it’s, it’s difficult, I don’t, I don’t really keep us better go to track as I should have the other software providers, and then you ones that come out there. But

Peita Diamantidis
it’s probably down to your users. Right. So hey, listen, is this something you think would be great? You just need to send Nick that email? Yeah,

Nick Topham
we certainly tried to bring that ESD specifically tried to bring that ESG capability in with a couple of different providers, it’s always it’s always challenging with the smaller teams to get the development resources on their side of things, you know, both intelliflo and dash are not. They’re not small players anymore. They’ve got resources, you know, they’ve got these development hours. That’s always a contributing factor. But you know, in the end, we’ve got that open API, it is available. So when they do have those resources, they can just jump in. There’s really no work for me to do.

Peita Diamantidis
Yes. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Now, everybody talks about AI. And there’s all sorts of uses for it. I’m becoming a bit. I mean, I’m struggling to have an original thought on marketing stuff without using chat. So my whole brain is like rewired for that. But is there any role? Do you think for any and of course, it won’t be necessarily Chechi beauty, but any role for AI? You see playing in product wrecks down the track? Is that do you see that happening at all?

Nick Topham
It’s funny, I saw, you know, it’s funny, you asked that question, because obviously, when I started product races, you know, this is, you know, June 2021, right? I was not people. Were gonna think I’m lying. I was not on the radar, in terms in terms of chatbots, which is kind of what we talked about. We talk about AI, right, yeah. You know, chat GPT for and all those sorts of things. When we talk about AI, it’s it’s more really chatbots they weren’t on the radar. They kind of existed, you know, you had like Jasper, but it wasn’t really as loose as the chat. GBT is now TBD. So can it play a role? Yes. However, when product tracks launched, I developed it basically to avoid, avoid the role that chat that chat bots filled because they weren’t really developed. And I was like, Oh, I don’t really want to try and stuff around with it. You know, could it? Possibly it really, it really depends on where he, where which direction we take the tool in the future, you know, we deliberately kind of avoided things like long, long narrative, which is perfect for what chatbots can do. You know, I see a lot of tools coming out now, which say they’ve got you know, this, you know, they’re an AI tool, or whatever it may be. I mean, I think 90% of them are just chat, just using a chat GPT for rapper, you know, which is, you know, it’s available. It seems pretty straightforward to use. So we may look to utilize that as well. Yeah, so a lot.

Peita Diamantidis
And it may even be not the course so, you know, because I I think for right at the moment, the AI tools that that are intuitive, or you can use quickly, like you say these conversational things, but also, they’re not for deeply technical things. No, right. So generally, you’re not using them for something deeply technical, but where I have seen that apply is when it’s at something in parallel, so Okay, you’ve done the analysis. You’ve done the work in product wrecks, and maybe the AI is coming up with a whole lot of cool graphical ways you could represent that or didn’t mean like it’s the it’s the adjunct rather than the core.

Nick Topham
Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think the kind of the thing you have to keep in mind is that there’s no objectivity with these tools. Right? If if you if it if it reads data that says one plus one is four, then one plus one is four. Right? So it just has to be very careful, I think with how its utilized. Yeah, I’m not again, not rolling out. I personally would like to explore it in the future. It’s just kind of thinking about how that will fit in and fit in well.

Peita Diamantidis
And is there any other sort of technology sort of headwinds you’re seeing? Or even maybe seen from the requests, you’re getting, you know, things that, that advice practices are either asking for more or facing, you know, frequently as challenges is there anything that’s popped up that sort of, like, oh, okay, that’s a bit different, or that’s a new one that they’re facing.

Nick Topham
Again, I think the SMA or the SMA is are a real, their pain point, at the moment, they’re very, very popular, you know, there’s basically limited tools to deal with them, we’re in a really good space to deal with them, because people are using it, we can handle estimates at the moment without any issue. But I’m talking about more about building them out and showing that next level of data, right, you’ve got a custom estimate, you want to use product tricks, you can handle it with zero issues appropriate, it’s very, very easy. But it’s about having that additional level of functionality to do some really interesting things and some, some cool things and make it a lot easier for them to do things like reporting. So I think that’s definitely something that’s still on the radar, that we’re gonna be that we’re gonna be looking at, for sure.

Peita Diamantidis
Cool, cool. And anything, you know, anything that you else, that you guys are being involved in anything that you’re seeing out there, that adds value to advisors, or, or things you’re seeing down the track, you know, as you interact with all these different platforms and providers?

Nick Topham
That’s it. That’s a difficult question, isn’t it? Things that are adding value to advisors at the moment? It’s again, I because I’m not an advisor. I don’t I don’t come at things with an advisors perspective. You know what I mean? And when I talk to advisors, it’s typically just about product, rather than about rather than about the the market as a whole. So I’m not really sure I can answer that one. Yeah, I’m sorry. I know, that’s a bit. Oh,

Peita Diamantidis
no, no, no, not at all. I am curious, though, if there’s any so outside of advice, just you know, as a business owner, really or as an as an individual, is there any take you’ve come across that caught your eye? Like something like, that looks cool that, you know, that saved you some time? Or? Or that you’ve sort of changed change the way you’ve operated?

Nick Topham
Let me have a think. I mean, I don’t I should have I should have a good answer for this question. But

Peita Diamantidis
maybe not. I mean, maybe what you’re saying is you’ve really streamlined what you use on a day to day basis. This

Nick Topham
answer is in the chat bots and in things like GPT. But I guess that’s the standard answer. And I didn’t want to give the standard answer. But obviously, using things like that is is hugely powerful. And I mean, I use it a lot for for, for writing texts, or writing. Mostly text to be honest with you a little bit of analysis and that sort of stuff, and testing out seeing what that can do. But I guess that’s, that’s the big one for me in the last 12 months. And probably that’s the same with everyone, which

Peita Diamantidis
is funny. As you to your point, you know, even when we were talking the first time, you know, back a year ago, then it just wasn’t anywhere near the radar. Whereas now, it’s just for some of us, it’s just become well, why wouldn’t I at least start there? Yep. You know, and I think that’s, that’s probably where I’ve seen advisors and hey, listeners, if you haven’t sort of gone down this path, honestly, I think you need to just start digging around. There’s loads of LinkedIn posts on ideas of how to use chat GPT for all sorts of ways, but, you know, writing text writing, I mean, even if you’ve got something that’s a summary on the markets, or something you’ve written, push it in and ask it to, you know, revamp it and turn it into I don’t know, you know, bullet points or turn it into, like, just ask her to do something different and see what comes out. Yeah. Because it’s, it’s certainly, it’s certainly challenged my thinking on a number not the way not the answer. It challenged me on the way I presented it. Yeah, the language. Yeah, yeah. And I find it really powerful for headlines, you know, like, you need a name of a webinar or a headline for an article or you know, that sort of stuff, which you can just spend hours, navel gazing on that stuff. I don’t know about you, but I just find that really hard. So,

Nick Topham
yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely right. And it’s the little things like that, which draw you not to like I used it for choosing. I hate using icons and graphics for when I’m doing things. So I use it for that, which I thought was extremely, extremely useful. I was like, here’s what this is supposed to do. Give me some icons of this icon set we use and it did cite that but, you know, it’s I think that’s the answer if the kind of the flavor of the flavor of the year is and it’s the you know, it’s the truth. Yeah. More interesting. thing than that I’m afraid.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, you’re you’re busy dealing with all of our upgrades that were requested. Head down, bum up, is there anything we’ve missed in terms of updates or things that, you know, have either been happening or coming down the track for product wrecks?

Nick Topham
I can talk about, you know, it’s all it’s all a lie, there’s nothing really secret to be honest with ya. It’s, you know, but, you know, it’d be interesting, I think we didn’t really touch on it, it’d be interesting to see what what happens with the QA, er, it looks like we’re not, you know, we’re probably realistically, probably 12 months off any legislative changes. But it’s gonna be interesting, what happens to that I think we’re gonna get a kind of a solid draft early next year, that’s probably going to change directions for a lot of software providers, probably including product tricks. So yep. I think everyone will be interested in what happens there. Because basically, what I think the writing is on the wall, if people deny it, the writing’s on the wall for the SOA, and I think we’re going to see a very, very reduced format document, like, you know, 234 pages realistically.

Peita Diamantidis
And I think, you know, for me, and this could just be my approach as a business owner, right? Because we all have to come at this, from what while there’ll be our deliveries or whatever, having things that we’ll be told we need to do, I still think we’d each need to come of it, come at it from a risk assessment. And to me, I think, really, the SOA had become an evidential, like evidence of our thinking, and that’s not going to change in that we’re still going to need to be able to do that, you know, why did you come up with that? How did you come up with it? What do you just, you know, that sort of stuff. So it’s sort of, to me, it’s just sort of shifted it behind the curtain. So so there’s still a whole lot of work that’s gonna have to happen and all that sort of stuff, it just might not need to be in one word document?

Nick Topham
Absolutely. Absolutely. You’re absolutely right. You know, you’re not saying you’re going to do whatever you want, just, you know, it’s just going to, you know, reduce the actual formal preparation, which I think is, you know, we looked at some data. And again, I hate to go off on a tangent, we looked at some data from from product wrecks, and we’re looking at, I think, I put a quote the data wrong, but I think we’re looking at 60 to 90 days from the time where they basically get finalized their recommendations in product wrecks, to when they actually implement the advice. That’s the lag. So that was based on some data we pulled out. But, you know, if we can reduce that, then obviously, it’s gonna be better for everyone. And it’s kind of back to what you said earlier, where you’ve got the data, and by the time it gets to the implementation teams, they have to kind of massage it. So

Peita Diamantidis
yeah. And I do think what will be interesting is, is I heard somebody say, oh, but that’s, you know, I know, we’ve got to do the evidence, but you know, it’ll be, it’ll be so much better, we can just sort of not think, you know, pull it together and get moving. And I’m like, Well, the thing is, when it’s behind, when you’re not forced to go through a framework, that’s a document like the SOA, then you’re gonna have to have your internal framework, like, you’re gonna have to have something that says, This is how we save this thing. This is how we save it out of product risk. This is how we did it. I mean, like, you’re gonna have to have that structure. So I don’t know that the that the responsibility changes, it’s just that that lets us be a bit freer about those choices we make, you know, we’re not being told the document when, like, we need to make those choices, which I love, you know, because that’s where you can get more efficiencies. But I do think we all need to acknowledge is going to mean, we’re actually going to have to make some calls about the way we do that stuff. Yeah.

Nick Topham
Well, I mean, the alternative is you can keep writing 100 pages. So why is if you really want, I’m sure, prevent you from writing and it’s not gonna be in your best interest. Is it?

Peita Diamantidis
All your clients? For that matter? Yeah, Heavens to Murgatroyd. All right. Well, we have a curiosity. Hey, we’re hitting all the high points here. All right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about product Rex, then you can actually register for free via the link in the episode show notes. We’ve also included next LinkedIn details, and I’d encourage you to follow him because he does do LinkedIn videos and posts about the latest updates. So that’ll be a way to sort of keep on top of what’s going on. Thank you so much for joining me on the show, Nick and for keeping this awesome tool running and making our lives easier as advisors.

Nick Topham
Thank you, it’s a pleasure.

Peita Diamantidis
So I’m betting some of you listening, our actual users of of product Rex, Nick, have actually shared with me that they’ve hit 2809 users, which out of whatever the figure of current advisors left in financial advice in Australia, it’s a pretty, pretty decent percentage for something not that old. And kudos to Nick and the team for for getting that traction. But I guess, you know, if you really have found that the tool works well for you. That’s something that you know, we’d love you to share on the Ensembl community platform. People need to hear about these tools, why they work, why it works for you. Any insight like that can save people a huge amount of time. You know, we do these episodes to sort of give you that Sneak Peek as a first step, but you know, second step Is pay reach out on the platform and go look, anybody else out there using it? What do you reckon? I’ve currently got these other tools, I use it, it needs to be used in conjunction with, what are the challenges, what are the benefits, you know, make sure you take advantage of the rest of us on the Ensembl community platform. So please get on there and get talking. Now as for my thoughts, and I’m really glad that Nick brought up that QR and all the things are going to be coming up in the future, because one of the things that’s interesting to me about this is of absolutely this is going to change, no matter what really happens, the intention is there’s going to be a change in the way we communicate with the public, right in terms of our clients, in terms of so that’s clearly a change. But I think something that may be hasn’t really been focused on as much is that when you don’t have this massive encyclopedia and size document that captures the advisors thinking and the support and the background on the research, and therefore customer, whatever those things are, but you require them to be able to provide evidence of that, should it be required down the track, then the you know, we’re still gonna have to be doing all these things. And what’s interesting about that is, there’s going to need to be processes and procedures in place that are extra, I know, it sounds like it’ll be less, right, because maybe, you know, there’s not as much focus on this big giant SOA, but actually, we’re going to need to give some thought to the same structure to that sort of pre SOA stage that we all do, which is the research and analysis and, and strategy, consideration and all those steps. So what’s interesting is, you don’t need to wait to see what they’re talking about to add, you know, to really add some value in your practice to that, because any work you do on that step, now will have benefit no matter what they come out with, right? Because it’s a given, it’s a given now that we do these things. So the sort of things you could be thinking about is really breaking down the analysis and research steps you go on, you know, go through, you know, breaking them all down. And seriously, considering, you know, is there any that could be delegated to somebody else? Is there anything that could be done at a batch at the beginning of the month ready for, for an advisor or apparent planner to get to when they’re ready, you know, it’s really think about, you know, what, could somebody else do three quarters off, and then the advisor come in and finish it. Also consider, you’ve probably got a lot of tech tools you’re using for that particular stage? Are you using all of them to the full benefit that they provide? Most of us aren’t? Right, most of us aren’t using all of them, all of the features, were probably unaware of a whole lot of features, make sure you know, what those features are? And then consider, okay, well, if the SOA is no longer, you know, providing almost that capture of a whole lot of the numbers and the outputs, then how else? Are we going to capture them? And how else do we want to document that, you know, do the current tools have a way to create some PDFs, or some other capture of that data that could be put on file against that client? You know, that then leads me down to another thought is, you know, do you is it worth doing a bit of a revamp a bit of a spring clean on the way you’ve set up the your cloud folders or however you capture, you know, files of clients, you know, so that would include the SOPs previously but it’ll you know, letters, anything that you’ve got there, that’s for the client, you know, really making sure that super easy to follow and grab what you need. Because, you know, just going for the SOA is no longer going to be the deal. Is it right, when somebody’s going through that stuff, so it’s going to need to be really well structured, easy to, to follow, easy to pick things up. And let’s sort of things that, that could be something we should all focus on is, you know, really getting tight on your naming convention. For files, you know, we use a reverse date naming convention on documents at the beginning, so that they’re always in order, when you go and try and grab something. So that is, you know, the year, year, year, year, month, month, day, day, dash, you know, and then whatever the name of the file is that sort of thing. So that can tidy things up. You may even want to think about, you know, if you’ve got a broad client folder or family folder, you know, how are you what’s your sub folder, you know, some people might start thinking about event based ones, because then you’ve got all of that research full, you know, saved in that event based folder, rather than maybe SOPs in one place and other things in another place. So just have a think about making sure it’s everything’s really well saved real well structured, because that’s going to be required when you take away the framework that sort of enforces that structure on us. So I think there’s probably an opportunity to get ahead of the game there. Don’t worry about so much about what’s going to come out. You know, the tea leaves aren’t going to tell us it’s just going to be what it’s going to be but there is some stuff that in the meantime, we could probably all focus on. And hey, if you’ve got some suggestions of how we could all do that better. Please share, I would love to hear because I’m always looking for ways we can do things that are either more efficient or more organized or save my team time or just stop them feeling you know, frustrated by something being a pain in the neck. So please share any ideas you have in that space. Now, as we all know, there’s only one skill to become a bionic advisor. And that skill is avid curiosity. And to help you build that habit, today’s curiosity corner app that caught my eye is called gamer ties. Now you can find it at gamer ties.com, that’s gamet, Isaac, Zed, ie, clearly not English, Australian English or, or English, English, it’s clearly in the US. But gametize is basically a simple gamification platform that you can use for community engaged engagement. So it will motivate target behaviors for a variety of purposes, it could be employee training, it could be performance management, or it could be consumer marketing. So anyway, anybody can create pretty quickly, like, broadly in minutes, certainly in an hour or so can create a sort of white label, web or mobile campaign or a game and taking advantage, they’ve got a whole lot of sort of gamification mechanics set up, it could be an interactive challenge, it could be a competition, it could be a social sort of competition, or rewards, redemption, all that sort of stuff, coupled with whatever your own sort of, you know, theme is. So whatever you want them to focus on. And, you know, these can be really fun. So there could be some fun social challenges that could be answering trivia posting a photo, you could have feedback loops, you might want to let people build up badges over time, they could even redeem prizes, you know, so they earn points and then redeem, redeem a prize. And it could be, hey, lunch with the investment Guru, I don’t know, I don’t know whether that actually would be a great price. But you know what I mean, you could actually have a whole point scheme that they could then redeem, in the reward stores. So I can see this applying in any sort of environment where you want to sort of get over change, management hurdles, change management can apply to employees. So that could be even taking on new tech, you could gamify that and give them some things they’ve got to complete. And they get points for doing sort of certain things, and they can have a leaderboard, and you know who in the team who’s further ahead, you wouldn’t believe how motivating that is, for a lot of people, you we’ve all been at conferences where somebody’s already on to the app and trying to get all the points to win whatever the price is for the app for the conference. So this is that type of thing that are much, much simpler. So certainly change management from an employee perspective. But think about, you know, change management for clients or consumer, is there a behavior you either want them to practice, or learn or change over time? You know, how can we gamify that, right. So any behavior, we need to see a shift in? Yeah, I’d love to hear what you come up with. Because I’ve taken an initial look at this. And I think even if it’s not this tool, things like this, we’re going to be able to put in our tool belt as another thing to help people make progress and help engage people with us in a far more fun way. Right and gamifying things is something we all actually understand and engage with really well. There’s loads of studies to prove that. So check it out. And let me know what you think. Well, that’s all we’ve got for this week. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, as always, so you’ll get your advice, tech fix automatically sent to you each week. And if you’ve got an event coming up in the sort of next six to 12 months, I’m actually having some awesome conversations with groups. Looking to get a speaker on talking about even streamlining tech said, tech stacks. Wow, that’s hard to say. Streamlining tech stacks. You know how they can almost get a bit of a minimalist approach to tech, you know, discovering what the next innovation opportunities are even just energizing their teams, right? Everybody needs a bit of a wake up call a bit of a energy boost. I’d be more than happy to tee up a time to have a chat, get a feel for your events. So and we can brainstorm something that will suit you. So please reach out to me on LinkedIn that’s forward slash Peita, MD PEITA MD. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explorers Stay curious.