Engine Room Podcast #12 – Tim Benson – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, my name is Andrew Rocks and welcome to another edition of the Engine Room Podcast. I’m really excited to be interviewing Tim Benson from Infinity, who is flown all the way down to Sydney to see me he might be the lure of a potential beverage afterwards. So, Tim, welcome to the engine room podcast.

Tim Benson
Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, good to be here.

Andrew Rocks
We’ve had a bit of a chat beforehand. And you’re one of the more aspirational planners that I’ve come across in the last couple of years. And that’s going to play out over this, this podcast. But before we start with where you’re going, and all the excitement associated with that, I’d love to hear the backstory of Infinity because it doesn’t it predates even yourself, doesn’t it?

Tim Benson
It does. Oh, no, I was 1 years old. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So my father started 34 years ago now. And in life insurance, obviously, retired agent. So I always grew up around financial services, always wanted to be in the business, and then read 2425. And I was going to start with dad, and he said, Look, you’re not ready. You’re old enough, yet? Not enough.

Andrew Rocks
So when you were four or five, when he fought, okay. So

Tim Benson
yeah, so then I said, you know, you’re not quite old enough yet. So I came back to the business. When I was 27. And I just had to cut my teeth. He said, once you can do every job once, correctly, or then you can move on to the next one, so forth and so forth. So it started out with paper applications and hand filling them out, sending them off to products and make mistakes and having to fix it. So I’ve definitely learned some good lessons through that, and then obviously progressed into being an advisor.

Andrew Rocks
And pray that what was your what were your jobs before you came back into the fold?

Tim Benson
I like sport school a lot. So I didn’t really study too much, and ended up doing a school based apprenticeship. And then started my own maintenance business off the back of that and had three or four carpenters running around and doing some laboring work. So yeah, it was it was good.

Andrew Rocks
Okay. Okay. So quite entrepreneurial from an early, early sort of start. Yeah. Very good. And, um, so you’ve joined up at 27, you look a little bit older than 27, not that much older, a little bit older. So and so after those paper based applications, sort of what was your journey? Or from employee to boss, effectively? How did that go?

Tim Benson
Yeah. So that if you if you can’t put bums on seats, and talk to people, you can have all the amazing strategies in the world, but you got to play them out in real life. So go find some clients,

Andrew Rocks
and and what sort of clients did you find at the tender age of 27,

Tim Benson
yet, not great clients, but back then obviously, giving advice is a lot less expensive. So I was able to help out some mates really pushed hard with referrals. And then my wife fell pregnant. So I thought, well, you know, it’s really important have life insurance, and my sister does the marketing for our company. always talks about hanging out where your clients are, and you’ll find more. So ended up doing a baby show and stood there for us. Madmen for doing it. He turned up and laughed that they are booked 68 appointments that day. So it was that the toddler and

Andrew Rocks
Baby Show? Correct. I remember it vividly. There you go. I reckon some of my businesses went there as well. Great time people have got people have got big decisions they’ve got to make and they’ve come on, in the twinkling of an eye, so to speak.

Tim Benson
Yeah, my wife wasn’t he would have been 30 weeks pregnant and standing there. But if you backed me into end up working out well, and it was a good organic way to build a client base.

Andrew Rocks
I quite often asked, you know, what were the events that shaped shaped you? But that sounds like one so that was in the Brisbane exhibition centers, correct? Yeah. Very good. And and many of those clients back then I think there would have been what 2013 or 14? Correct? That’s it? Yep. And how many of them are still in the Infinity stable?

Tim Benson
We’ve got a pretty good retention right around about 97%. So I was only speaking to well, who’s looking after those clients today? And he said, Yeah, actually, one of them was a nurse. And she applied for a job with us yesterday. She’s a client that’s over being a nurse, she wants to find services, that’s really

Andrew Rocks
interesting. People coming out of nursing, actually make really good financial planets there. They’ve got the empathy. They’ve got the human side and the skills can be taught. This is a whole other podcast subject and, but what I might do is, is get back to the actual engine room, and your business now is is has grown, it’s multidisciplinary. But what I’d like to do is just ask you a bit about the type of clients that you currently love taking care of, and the the range of services that you have, just paint the picture for me please.

Tim Benson
You Yeah, we’ve got a wide variety of clients who wouldn’t say that we try and niche into an area Exactly. You know, we’ve got clients that dad took on, some of them nurse me at appointments, and they’re still there today. And they’ve got small pension accounts, but obviously do the right thing and look after them, we’ve got some larger business clients that have kind of grown with us over time. So if I was to say what we’d ideally, what we’re really good at looking after is that 45 year old professional time poor, got a house got young kids, you know, it really want to spend some good time with an advisor in accounting and a broker in the one spot, not waste too much time. So I

Andrew Rocks
might just leave it at that point. So an adviser an accountant and a broker in the one spot. There’s no one more time poor than someone who’s is full time employed, raising children are probably looking after their elderly parents as a sandwich generation. So as far as an organizational structure, if I’m a client of yours, do I see all of those people at once? Or is there a process, maybe get a give me a feel for how you how you roll out those services, please? Yeah, that’s

Tim Benson
the holy grail there, I suppose if we want to go back to how we got to that part, we serve our clients in third and seventh day and said, we always ask our clients, what can we do? What can we do for you guys? And they said, if you can have all this in one spot, I’d be really good. To them. We went on a process of acquiring accounting firms. Some, it’s more so that a client is God, what am I putting the superannuation this year, we quickly turn out to the back and get the information off the accountant and give the advice there. Occasionally, we will have all people in the room when the advisors giving advice, but it’s not doesn’t happen all the time.

Andrew Rocks
And maybe give me a feel for your organizational structure. How many hours do you have an invoice? 770 hours and and how are they supported?

Tim Benson
So we’ve kind of gone with a corporatized back office. So we did split them across the three sites we had but now we’ve kind of pushed them all back into into the Brisbane office. More so to get some stuff redundancy. So if so you’re two people just implementation, three or four power plants just doing Power planning work. It’s all going to come through one process gets vetted that that team sits together and then goes back out to the to the office or to the advisor

Andrew Rocks
and with your multi locations. You’re based in Brisbane City and also the Gold Coast is that Gold Coast and Cleveland, Cleveland. Okay, so north north and east Brisbane. Correct. Okay, and where does the engineroom set

Tim Benson
the engine room sits in Brisbane in Bowen Hills, let’s move offices 12 months ago, so

Andrew Rocks
and so you’ve moved? You moved off? It’s just at the end of COVID? You’ve made a call

Tim Benson
Correct? Well, we’re growing and that the officer got a bit small for numbers. So we need someone that could accommodate the growth over the next five, six years.

Andrew Rocks
And what’s the headcount?

Tim Benson
Good question. I did you did four interviews yesterday. So one of them will get a job. I think it will take us to 40.

Andrew Rocks
Shout out to those three who are getting a job in cash.

Tim Benson
And we’re just finalizing another acquisition, which would be another headcount of five. So 45 Mark? Yeah. Okay.

Andrew Rocks
And that is that. So you mentioned, you know, yourself and your father have come through the financial planning, sort of background. So have you acquired accounting businesses or financial planning businesses,

Tim Benson
we were acquiring small accounting, risk books, then the Royal Commission hit and we didn’t know where valuations would would land. Yep. So pivoted, and went into acquiring accounting firms. Very hard to get the first one away. But yeah, we’ve done too. And this will be our third one coming up shortly.

Andrew Rocks
So are you are you acquiring the people as well? So Correct. Okay. So and how we’re gonna talk about people and culture later on, I’d be very interested in how not only have you integrated accountants into your business, but also how you continue to bring them in and how they fit into your culture. Because that’s that one. Yeah, it’s one of the more difficult things you know, and also to stay true to yourselves and not be sort of pulled off, of course. Now, give me a bit of a feel for you know, the delivery of advice. So you’ve got your you’ve got your ayaats. The types of clients that you have would have quite dynamic statements of advice requirements. They’ve been wealth accumulators. Yeah. How do you deliver advice? Is it is it a lot of people have their hands on orders, or does one person take it all the way through?

Tim Benson
We were big believers in advisors. Talk, we should be talking to clients and giving advice. filling out paperwork is not really what they’re good at. They’re good at simplifying, complex and delivering to a client. So they’ve got a lot of support. They generally run to people in a meeting that we’ve got to Pay what your two P wise at the moment, and they support the advisors. And then we’ve got some associates and other support people that kind of do all the file noting with the advisors, ideally two meetings a day, five days a week, and that keeps them pretty busy in front of clients.

Andrew Rocks
And we’re talking off here that you’ve, you’ve made some mistakes, yeah. In relation to putting your engine room so to speak together, maybe if you could share the learnings from those mistakes. Now that you’ve stopped crying exactly, it just so give me a feel for the learnings at the most first of all the mistakes that you felt that you made and, and what you’ve learned how you’ve changed the structure of the business.

Tim Benson
Yeah. So if you’re sitting across it sporting advisor from start to finish, you’re doing a little bit of implementation, you’re doing a little bit of applications factfinding file notes, as opposed to sitting down and concentrating on one task and owning that one task. So originally, our associates as a port, people were just floating across roles. And mistakes were happening. So I’ve now brought that back and corporatize it back into the office. And we’ve got redundancy in the role. So sounds sick, or someone leaves the business, there’s always a second person that kind of can pick up where that person’s left off.

Andrew Rocks
And the concept of owning the task is just plays into that accountability piece. And when everyone’s accountable, no one’s accountable. And I think that, you know, if we had $1, for that, and what other tools have you been using? So maybe give us a feel for maybe your tech stack, whether you use any kind of sort of contractors Yeah, gets a feel for, you know, how you’ve, you’ve managed to bring that corporatization in

Tim Benson
place. Yep. On one for giving everything a go. I don’t really mo on decisions, we decided to work with intelliflo. In 2019. I saw them present in London, they said the country Australia.

Andrew Rocks
Little Birdie tells me you’re their first Australian client, we

Tim Benson
were we’ve been working for a very long time now. And it’s been good. It’s hard. It’s bumpy roads. But in all, it’s a good CRM, we’re very happy with it. And it’s got a long runway of development to go and a really good team to work with. So tech stack, we use CDM, which is another tech that’s come out for insurance. It’s pretty popular in the market now. So what makes it good. It just pulls all your data and puts it into one CRM dashboard, where you can see what policies are lapsing. What’s up for renewal, and then you can quickly get a get a price if you need to reprice a product. So we’ve only just started using in March. Insurance is hard, right? So any any kind of leg up you can get to streamline the process is a win. So we’ve been happy with that one.

Andrew Rocks
And look, that’s a bit of a common theme. With with practices. So you definitely still are a life insurance focused business.

Tim Benson
No, not now. We were we would be 70 wealth, more wealth. Now we brought out SMEs with their license. So definitely gone pivoted down the wealth part.

Andrew Rocks
Okay. And any other pieces of technology outside of those.

Tim Benson
Just all your like your typo forms your things that sit around the edge Pipedrive to manage the advisors pipeline. Rev X is a new revenue processing that we’ve just brought in, probably two months ago.

Andrew Rocks
I suppose that leads me into the question, if you if you’re doing revenue processing, you’re obviously now moving down the self license. Yes. So is that something that maybe give us an idea of what drove you to do that and where you see the benefits for your own practice of being so fast?

Tim Benson
Yeah, it was a big decision is probably one of those. In 2017 2019, the business transformed a lot. And in that period, we went self license, I was over in London on the net wealth to up and I was the only one in a license there. And Matt Hein said, you know, if you want to scale the business and get to the right size, you need to have accounting, you need to have self light, you need to have an SMA. So we came back from that and pulled the trigger in 2020. And haven’t looked back been really happy with that.

Andrew Rocks
And what’s the what’s the main sort of benefit? Has it been the ability to be the master of your own destiny with with investments? What do you say is the main benefit?

Tim Benson
Yeah, well, we again, outsource the compliance framework to smart compliance Brett Walker a lot of people use him is he does a great job. But yeah, it gives you that bit of flexibility I suppose. And obviously able to run your own SMA is in and create your own investment menu also through insurance process. So yeah, it’s

Andrew Rocks
and with the SMA what how did you put it together? It’s so you’ve only been going since 2020. Who do you use for investment? What’s the platform? Yeah,

Tim Benson
again, we’re good at outsourcing. I think we’ll find your planners, I don’t think should be building investment portfolios. You don’t have time to sit there and do the research on a fund or equity and put together a portfolio. So we interviewed three external asset consultants and landed with evidencia. One of the best decisions we’ve made. Again, because of their Scott sighs we’re able to drive down the total portfolio cost to our clients and pass it back to them. It’s been really good. But advisors, it’s hard enough to keep up legislation and make sure you SOA is structured correctly, let alone sitting there and trying to build and throw darts at a wall on a on a portfolio. So

Andrew Rocks
and what was the platform you chose,

Tim Benson
net wealth that will have been net wealth are up there, but

Andrew Rocks
shout out to Matt Morris, he might have taken four or five years. But he got there in the end,

Tim Benson
is more of a thank you to the network to a kind of really gave me the right ideas to pivot the business.

Andrew Rocks
Right. And with your operational hat on, because you do some advising as well as operations or

Tim Benson
you know, clients. Okay, so

Andrew Rocks
you’ve transitioned to running the business of the business. Okay, great. We, we might talk about what your view of sort of financial services businesses are, towards the end of this podcast? How do you measure your operations? How do you know it’s a good day?

Tim Benson
How do I know it’s a good day, I have lots of little sheets I call hot sheets on a hot sheets for financial planning, which I get Monday at 12 o’clock productivity sheets for counting and lending. I get hot sheets as well. So it’s one page. And it’s got reviews, meetings, fee renewals, lost clients, one clients, and new business written?

Andrew Rocks
Would you call them your critical numbers? Oh, yeah.

Tim Benson
And we have a 15 minute but I hate long meeting. So zoom in, call in or be in the 15 minute meeting and 11 o’clock for advisors, level 15 for lending and accounting after that.

Andrew Rocks
It does smell suspiciously like daily huddle. So if I think we did speak off air, we do share the same cult, like at sort of adhesion to the Rockefeller habits. Is that, is that something that you’ve you’ve been involved in? And if so, how has that taken you through the journey?

Tim Benson
Yeah. So when your businesses and business partners, Dave Carney I was we were using some outsourcing in another location, which ended up jumping a plane, it wasn’t really working out. And so I said, I’ll give this one guy one more go and ended up going to VPP. And met Dave Carney. And he said, You can do the you do outsourcing, but you can do it successfully. This is the way I would run it. And then he ended up you know, I got on quite well and said, My Father, and he ended up giving us a lot of advice quarterly around the Vern Harnish, you know, scaling up process. So we’ve adopted that infinities a little bit and run off the back of that fee structure.

Andrew Rocks
Did everyone just get that? infinitus? Yeah. Okay, that’s a take out. And look, I think it’s well known that Dave Carney was also my business coach. Yeah, as as well. And, and it’s, it’s getting those critical numbers, making people accountable, and empowering people, but making him accountable. And with an expansive mind, like yourself, sometimes it’s also just getting those 100 things to do. And getting those rocks are those priorities. Yeah, incredible. Great. Yeah. And so I don’t know if you’re listening, Dave. But if you’ve got another successful one here, we might need to touch base from time to time. But we’ll do our best now. I’ve noticed that you’ve got an investment board. Yeah. And that’s come I imagine as part of the journey being self licensed and a bit more there. Do you have an overall board for running your business?

Tim Benson
Yeah, yep. So dad’s still in the business, obviously, he’s the major shareholder. We’ve got an external accountant advisor, that sits on that. Dave Carney gives a bit of commentary to that board as well. James Meads helped in the past and other x MLC corporate, pretty much to make sure I stay on the straight and narrow. You know, I can I’m good at chasing projects. And so get put up there, the financials and the projects, you know, we always say one thing a month, two things a year. And that’s enough to change. So

Andrew Rocks
and with with that in mind, when did you start down the path of becoming multidisciplinary?

Tim Benson
It was a long journey, because if you’re not an accountant, and you try and buy an accounting firm, without an accountant to run it, no broker will talk to you. I was very lucky. I was a firm that was looking to acquire some of our business and merged into an accounting firm. It just didn’t make sense at the time and I was negotiating on acquiring this other accounting firm down the road at the same time and kept asking me who’s gonna run the firm? That’s, that’s, that’s my problem not yours. So good. It’s all sorted and had no idea. Anyway, when I did the tour of the business try and acquire US. I saw regard to school with which happen to be the son of the other firm that I was trying to acquire for me as part of this one. Yeah, it was a Hail Mary. I just said to Mr. Lee happy he said, Now, I want to be a partner somewhere. So well, you can tell me to piss off if you like, but we’re actually in the process of acquiring your father’s firm. Very lucky.

Andrew Rocks
And what’s this gentleman’s name? Will Clark. And he’s now your accounting part? Yes.

Tim Benson
Correct. Yes. He heads up the accounting division and run the tax Lawson’s

Andrew Rocks
and and how many years ago was that? That was in right at COVID. Right. Okay. 2020. So we’re three years in, how’s the integration of clients been? And so it’s always a next question. It’s always the hard thing is integrating the clients. And if you built up sort of a rhythm of how you do that,

Tim Benson
yeah. So Matt, who heads up our lending, will heads up the accounting. And myself, we take half an afternoon off every quarter, and just to redefine our strategy. So we’ve decided last year that we’d run a one team one dream, and we’re getting really intentional about that. The one team, if you’re an advisor, and accountant, you’re a broker, you’re you’re one team, with the clients and dream, you know, build more wealth, pay less tax, and buy a house. It’s not complex that isn’t. So we, that’s I picked it up off the ice, we run that theme through the Office front to back tomorrow afternoon, we’re going to end of month one team one dream meeting. And we were theming. I think the theme yet Mexican style or something tomorrow, so they’ll cook nachos, and we’re crazy hats. Breakfast to kill your breakfast. The key rightfully noted, is that started four o’clock last Friday of every month, or like this time, it’ll roll over it, will the team zoom in? And we talk about our referral rate.

Andrew Rocks
And so when you say all the teams you mean, you’re in four physical locations, plus you’ve got a global team. How do you maintain sort of the culture? Or Or do you do to get togethers or what’s one of the things that you do to to bring post COVID to bring people along on that journey? That one team one dream?

Tim Benson
Well, we nearly because it’s quite a sizable office now. For reports, and underneath that there’s teams underneath there will contemplating going down the corporate path, yes, if you’re not at work, you’re not here. No work from home struck, really restructured and bit like a bank. And then we kind of stop for a minute. So this just snuck the father and I we just easygoing cruise around, let’s just let that run through the office. So engage a consultant, we’re looking at maybe one day off a month for staff, you can work from home, dress for your appointment, dress or dress for your day, they call it and introducing that. So we’ve got our annual half day last year strategy at Stradbroke. Island in July, and we roll it out to the team. But again, we’ll consult with them. So this sort of thinking, Do you like it or not? And then we’ll implement off the back of that. So I’m more relaxed theme.

Andrew Rocks
So moving on to the people side of it. And you know, you’re a bundle of energy. And I do I do think the self awareness that you’ve got to put people and processes in place mainly to slow down your expansive thinking is, is genius. But what why do people? Why do people join you? Why do they stay in? Why do they grow?

Tim Benson
Yeah, I was saying yesterday, if you’re coming here to be managed is not the place for you. We run off TPR towards patients respect. So it could you say that, again, T times patients respect is our three core values that my father I grew up with. And so if you’ve got that for your staff, and for your clients, or your teammates in your clients, and then just you got to be autonomous, we’re not going to sit there and ask why 15 minutes later, or don’t ask me you need to go to the doctors, you don’t need to pick kids up from school, just do it. Just do your job. Like if it takes you five hours or 50 hours. That’s up to you.

Andrew Rocks
And does that reflect if in the way in which you’ve structured people’s job descriptions? Yeah. outcome based or the

Tim Benson
outcome based? Yeah, because I don’t want to sit there and and I’m not in the office all the time on the phone. I can work remotely so I want to staff can have that too.

Andrew Rocks
And just on the communications between all this stuff, and what’s the platform do you use?

Tim Benson
Teams? I’m not great. I

Andrew Rocks
just Microsoft Teams. Yes.

Tim Benson
Pick up the phone ring. Yeah, I know that they’re these teams in the office. Yep. Another tech stack or sorry, I should have mentioned Zippo. I’ve been speaking to some of your team over the Philippines and we will keep integrating Zippo as their master spreadsheet that the Hydra game gave me that tip to look at how can where our clients sit and how it can impact Write them better and know where we’re at a daily basis.

Andrew Rocks
Okay? So it’s just knowing what you want to do for a living and knowing where you are and having that full information. You can’t have people to have an excuse but to do their job, do they Aircrack and hot sheets don’t lie. That’s right, that the hot sheets that you’ve got, you’re going to enunciate that correctly. So it’s if it’s definitely not not a phrase for now, tell me about your recruitment process. It’s hard.

Tim Benson
That’s what it is. Yesterday, I had I had four interviews,

Andrew Rocks
we’ve been told three of them are going to fail, you just start there. And actually, I’d have these ones are different.

Tim Benson
Yes, we’ve got sake, we’ve just paid a very large recruitment fee that unfortunately didn’t work out after four days. Our best has come from the university. So we’ve got a scholarship with Griffith University. So we’ve actually got a candidate starting in the accounting side of the business it came from from that process last week. Word of mouth, I say to people, put it out in your little Facebook groups, whatever, that we’re looking for people and

Andrew Rocks
we have 40 people in plus people in your business. Tell me about the Griffith University. Is it like an internship or is it what in turn

Tim Benson
into full time?

Andrew Rocks
Okay, okay, that’s

Tim Benson
been our best. We’re looking at our best staff that have done really well with our business will Bray it’s where they will come from southward just go back to the source.

Andrew Rocks
No worries. And I know from from anecdotal history, you manage a global team. What What tips do you have for other people who are looking to, to manage teams in different countries?

Tim Benson
The daily huddle? If someone can work out of Cleveland, why can’t they work out a Philippines? If so can work in Sydney for Brisbane office? Why can’t they work out the Philippines. They’re very efficient. They’ve got a lot of support around them, if they can’t get something, right. And they’re lovely people, that very honest, truthful people.

Andrew Rocks
But getting back to it, it’s that having that daily huddle, you’re only 24 hours away from from a solution or sorting out a problem and, and having that cadence, that regular cadence creates comfort,

Tim Benson
and having managers that manage them. So Aaron, he’s an integral part of the advice team, he manages the power plant and compliance. Aronson manages the support and implementation team. So and he’s regularly communicating with them all day.

Andrew Rocks
So your your stereotypical back office, effectively, our logistics, they’re managing flow of information workflows, as well. Okay, that sounds pretty good. Now, how do you reward your people? What What does? What does? What does success look like for your firm? And if you are successful, what do you do for fun?

Tim Benson
Yeah, we do like to keep a bit of fun in the office. We’re going to blow said there are half to get this strategy trip came about when we open the Cleveland office. And every time we do an interview video, everyone just talks about the funny stuff that happens on that trip. So they enjoy that we do it. We tried to have a nice Christmas party. And then we’ve got to be tap in the beer in the lunch room.

Andrew Rocks
Okay, even my sound guy he’s not in he’s he’s absolutely had no passion at all, for the last 30 minutes. And now he’s nodding and smirking. Let’s go. So it brings people together

Tim Benson
really on a Friday, Thursday afternoon, they sit around there for a couple of beers. And it’s might be an accountant talking to an advisor or broker. And yeah,

Andrew Rocks
yeah, look, I think that it’s still a relationship, business. And relationships can be with you and your client. But it can also be with you and the team that services that family group. And I think that if I was a client, I would like to know that the team that I’ve got going on with each other, and there’s trust and, and a real common desire to to achieve for me, that would be my thoughts.

Tim Benson
And then we also like sending our team that have worked really hard to VBP conference. I think hands going over these in the power planning team. We are number one intelliflo user because intelliflo has that data to see who’s using what when and how they are Bri he’s off to the intelliflo conference in London. Next week. I think she jumped on a plane and

Andrew Rocks
she noticed

Tim Benson
this is hot off the press, because he’s the flexible tying on a bit of time, I think in Paris. Good honor.

Andrew Rocks
Well, that sounds I mean, that sounds awesome. And we’re in relation to your your business. You say you do the daily huddles, you’ve got quarterly meetings, the types of clients that you have, how often do they require their meetings? What’s the service sort of? Rollout figure?

Tim Benson
Yeah, I don’t know. Big Blue. and your reviews. Like if something happens to me now. And I’ve got to wait nine months to see my advisor. It’s just not, you know, doesn’t make sense. The annual reviews are booked in because that is the way the industry is set up. But we’re very active. Your lowest service agreement would be a phone call every six months. But most of our clients, you got stuff going on. They’re buying houses. They’re coming to us anyway. So we find out

Andrew Rocks
every three years, yeah, every three years, yep. If something happens, they’re having kids, they’ve driven house, they’re changing career.

Tim Benson
They’re doing their tax law and do their tax with us. They’re coming in for that as well. So they’ll pop in and I’ll talk to the advisor for five minutes. So they’re really quite close, tight relationships. So their clients,

Andrew Rocks
and with the business you’ve got with the 40 people, you know, going to work in a business is is is wonderful. And in this country at the moment, almost everyone has a job. So these days, people want to work for business that has a bit of purpose, a bit of heart. Do you run a charitable program at all?

Tim Benson
Yeah, my wife and I are heavily involved in the children’s hospital. She meets she donates every Thursday. She’s part of the committee. They’re our last fundraiser. 280,000 Oh, wow. Yeah. So if we were part of a committee, so I think there’s seven of us on that. In Fraser, Dr. Ian Fraser, who caught the cervical cancer vaccine. If we raise $5 million, he’s gonna donate his time to you. So that’s the funding I need. I think

Andrew Rocks
he won the Australian of the Year. Yeah, he did. Yeah, that’s Wow.

Tim Benson
So he’s committed. So if we can get $5 million together, he’s gonna work on children’s brain cancer, magnificent side. But we started that in 2019. We were at hospital, my youngest. And he had a said to have a simple operation of four weeks and the child next door, got brain cancer. Wow. And so I just got curious and then asked, we just need money. So we ended up I did a lunch I think we raised 30 or 40 grand and we bought a fridge that stores the cancer cells. And my wife is up there the other week and she had a look The fridge is still there and we filled with bank our brain cancer samples you

Andrew Rocks
did you bring your clients on this, this journey with you? Is that part of it?

Tim Benson
We are so 2019 We there was a client event. The we had our launch event the other night that wasn’t a climber but got a big 300 People gala thrown a few two people Gala, de Howard Street wolf later in the year. So there’ll be involved in that.

Andrew Rocks
Well, that’s magnificent. You know, I often ask these questions, and you get a real range of answers. But the one commonality is something I always bring up is that the day and I have a financial planner, so in his case, we have people, you know, we’re much maligned, but But ultimately, there’s that deep care, and congratulations to you and your wife, for putting it in. And, you know, every Thursday is not a token gesture. No, it’s not throwing, you know, $2 tax deductible. It’s something so, you know, a big, big, big shout out there. And how have you ever had thoughts about how you could bring that into something that your your team members can get involved in?

Tim Benson
Yeah, we’ve been toying around with the idea. It is because my sister, she runs your marketing, and I’ve kind of handled that one off, which I do very well to her. So she’s looking at different ways other businesses have integrated that in, and obviously doing a big website rejuvenation at the moment. So we’ll push that message out there. But yeah,

Andrew Rocks
and the business that your, your children, your father are founded, it’s owned along the traditional kind of format. What’s your vision for the future with with the business as it gets bigger and bigger?

Tim Benson
Yeah, as it gets bigger and bigger. Dad is, I think he worked to 75 He can’t sit still. He’s not in there every day, but he’s always about, he’s the nice guy. We want to bring up our younger advisors and staff members, we’ve been talking to private equity firms about you know, producing some capital and moving myself from a father selling down to equity.

Andrew Rocks
Okay, so Okay, so it’s not just a thought bubble, you know, and

Tim Benson
as we’ve bought and sold businesses, it’s it’s a long process and lots of tax issues, compliance and things that you got to get through. So yeah, we’re working working with at the moment.

Andrew Rocks
Well, I hope you’ve informed your team that this is on the horizon, because they’re probably going to listen to this now, and I will damn well, that’s, you know, a big part of my question is is all about the people and culture, you know, you might have built this this best practice operations, but unless you’ve got people willing to put discretionary effort and ideas in future, you don’t have that 111 Team One dream, so well done on the front end, what I was also going to ask the what’s an error that you’ve made in relation to people in culture, you know, if you had any kind of learnings that you’ve done.

Tim Benson
Yes, yeah made a lot of errors on where to start,

Andrew Rocks
which it this podcast doesn’t go forever. So I’m just gonna pick the top 30 years now, for everyone that you’ve got to learning now, I wasn’t

Tim Benson
part, I remove myself from the recruitment process there for a bit. And some of those stuff might not have been great for the business. And then obviously it didn’t didn’t last too long.

Andrew Rocks
But why What do you think you bring to the recruitment process

Tim Benson
our DNA, you can teach anything, but if they don’t have the right culture and the right purpose?

Andrew Rocks
And is this this harks back to that tolerance? Patience and respect? Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And do you ask people you know, have examples of when they’ve had those things in their life?

Tim Benson
Yeah, you do? Pretty much. That’s most of the interview. If any, you can tell. Yeah, you gotta have respect for the the Woolies checkout lady when you get your groceries Thank you. You have a smile, you start our day they’re having so you can tell when someone walks into the, to the room, they speak to the receptionist, the way they ask for a coffee or water. You can tell if they have that.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. And I think that if you can tell from first impressions and your clients aren’t dummies, they can tell as well. Great. Yeah. And coming from from from Brisbane, it’s it’s a pretty, it’s a big country town. A lot of people say that. So I think that they are very down to earth in the way in which they conduct themselves. Yep. So that’s fine. And the industry. Okay, so you don’t mind me asking you? How old are you now?

Tim Benson
Nearly 36. Okay, so

Andrew Rocks
you’ve been in this game for 10 years? Oh, you actually 35 years? Because you started with your one? Yeah. Yeah, that rough patch? Yeah, between nine and 11, where you drifted off to probably play some sport for a while. But so you’ve got a good business, you’ve got a good platform. And you’ve you’ve, you are at least you know, 15 to 20 years in this industry. What do you see as the vision for financial advice? Practices? Yeah. Maybe start with what you think would be the ideal, and then also, where you think the spin offs will be in building a practice? Yeah,

Tim Benson
Paul Baron, or I think your last guest on the show, released some good content, disrupting these super firms, which we kind of read religiously, when he releases the information, it’s really hard to run a practice as a single man band and to keep up with compliance and keep the lights on. So you got to have some scalability, and you got to be able to pay people the right money for their expertise to work in the business. The margins of the running 2030 years ago is way gone. So expect good return on investment, but you will have the right scale to get that.

Andrew Rocks
And I think you just said something very profound, you’ve got to pay the people the right amount of money to do the job. And I think, you know, a while ago, in this interview, you said that you had people doing bits and pieces of jobs, you’re probably paying them bits and pieces of wages. And now Now, you know, you’re getting hyper, hyper specialized people who you then are also imagining scaffolding with this ongoing training and development. Yeah, correct. And get out of the way. And just Yeah, and just have that that sort of objective. So you’re, you’re a big fan of the super feminine super firms are the ones where, where you are building that engine. Yeah. But the counterpoint to that, is that your A your one on one business where people come in? Yep. Do you ever refer out for any speciality? Is there any, any need to I might imagine maybe estate planning,

Tim Benson
estate planning? Yeah. Legal clients come to us for a lot of things, real estate agents, but I will go to Cohen handler, I’ve got a good relationship with him for as a buyer’s agent. Yep. Lawyers. Yeah.

Andrew Rocks
So they’re going out. And they’re sort of a specialist for a particular transaction, and they come back into the fold. And since you’ve had the accounting firm, where people you know, are compelled to have to use you every year, have you found that that’s improved or or picked up on client developments fast? Or is it just still down to that ongoing financial planning relationship?

Tim Benson
Yeah, the financial planning relationship is the sticky one. They’ll generally come in to see their financial planner and go through everything. A lot of times, people just email their accountant. It’s I’ll send that backs on that and get it done. It’s a transaction. But because they’re coming in, we always uncover more things for an accounting wise. It’s helped with that by just running those joint meetings or being out of the accountants don’t like it too much. But come out the front and meet John and Rado in the clinic out there. Can’t really appreciate that.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, I don’t think so. Putting a face to it is correct. Now, with your growth plans, I know that you you flew All the way down to Sydney today just to talk to me. I wish that was the case. But you’re actually in Sydney, because you’ve got some other plans afoot, ma’am. Maybe may give us a bit of an idea of what what’s the next steps in your business growth?

Tim Benson
I suppose back to square one. For Sydney, we’ve we’ve got a substantial amount of clients not enough to have a standalone office and support team down here. Will, you know offers advisory there’s five or six years now. He’s actually add, maybe show setting up right now? That right, yeah, we’ll give it a test down here. And when the right acquisition comes up, so we’re intentionally here, we don’t have a footprint as such, but we’re definitely making a way to be down here permanently.

Andrew Rocks
What would be the type of practice that you’d love to get involved with? Would they be similar to you? Or would they be, you know, pure play financial planning or accounting that you’d like to bring into your business?

Tim Benson
Yeah, it would be a financial planning firm, we do like the insurance books, the advisors that are getting too stressed and too overwhelmed with no back office or no scalability, that one would want to join and slowly exit for retirement. So nothing huge, I would say, but just the right firm. And again, same way, same way interview stuff, we interview our buyers.

Andrew Rocks
And as far as organic growth in in Brisbane in head office, we’ve now come out of a COVID. We’re now getting that there, are you seeing an uptick in the organic growth as far as client numbers with your advisors,

Tim Benson
definitely, definitely, client referrals from other clients is been significant. The accountants do refer quite a lot to a lot does come from there. But I’ve never seen as many new faces walk through the door on my hot sheet, come through our office. So you can’t get we got an offset at Cleveland, some called bank branches there. So now they seem to be finding their way into our office. So it’s worked well. and wonderful.

Andrew Rocks
And in relation to the vision for the industry, you’ve mentioned, what you would say would be a super firm. But where do you see the industry going, given that you’ve got a lot of runway in front of you.

Tim Benson
i Your hope for all these things that all you can do is just play what’s in front of you. So I being self license, you stay away from a lot of the noise. The rules are the rules, I don’t think they’re going to pull them back like they sat on and they’re going to make it cheaper to deliver to deliver advice. Just get on with it, it’s you can still run a profitable practice the way it is. You can’t change it. So I don’t want to make a prediction in the next 12 months, that alone three or four years, just play with the rules that are in front of me.

Andrew Rocks
It was fair to say I mean, you’ve been in practicing proper since 2013, I think the future of financial advice started rolling out in 2012. So change has been your your only constant in your career. And, look, I’ve known you for a couple of years. And I’ve seen the growth both vertically and horizontally in the business and the offerings that you have. I’ve also seen how you care for your team and then how that responds as well. And so if anyone would like to reach out to these guys, there’s plenty of links there. If you’re in Sydney, and what the it’s called infinity ties, you filter and you want to be part of the infinity. That sounds like a no brainer. Sort of a like something that you can dance to. If you want to be part of that infinity causation. I just made that up. Then reach out as well. And Tim, on behalf of the engine, room podcast, thank you for coming in. We’re trying to promote the people behind the advisors, the people that that sought problems out create problems and sought them out again and thank you very much for your time.

Tim Benson
Yeah, no problem. Andrew. Thanks having me along.