Engine Room Podcast #2 – Belinda Good – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, my name is Andrew rocks and welcome to the engine room podcast by Ensombl. Today we’re joined with a little legend, Belinda Good. From Boutique Advisors in WA. Good afternoon, Belinda. How are you?

Belinda Good
Hi, Rocksy. I’m great, thanks so much for having me.

Andrew Rocks
You’re welcome. You’re welcome. And look, part of this is getting to meet practice practice and general managers and actually lifting lid on the industry, and really putting putting a bit of power behind the people who really drive financial planning. So I know that we’ve got a lot of people, you know, eager to hear your story. So maybe just give us an idea of, of how you’ve got to be where you are, and then how you’ve managed to get to that position of General Manager inside your advice, practice. Over to you Belinda.

Belinda Good
So Well, I’m a girl from Tassie grew up there and I started in the bank, as a lot of people do in the industry, straight out of school, and moved to Melbourne, with the bank in 1999, and worked across a few different organizations and institutions whilst living there. In 22,005, I moved back to Tassie and secured a job with the financial planning team back at Westpac, supporting two senior advisors, so mainly admin, but with a few MS DOS, quote, life insurance quotes on the old system for the guys. Place that I was headhunted for repair planning role by an XP T BDM. Tim Scott and he moved back to Tassie to join with another guy and set up his own firm Ford Scott in Hobart. And that was my real learning and development into the industry. So paraplanner there.

Andrew Rocks
And then from there, Beinda, what year was that, that you were doing? paraplanning that would have been

Belinda Good
2005 2006. About then. Yeah, so quite a while ago now. And yeah, then I wanted to move back up to the northwest coast and managed to get a job with ANZ as an advisor, which was great deal at the time and looking after based out of Bernie branch, but also looking after when you didn’t sneak it in and the west coast. So you know, came with the car, and the laptop and the phone and all those things that they used to do back then. And then as a result of the GFC, I was one of the lucky ones who got a redundancy and no compliance breaches on my record that they could find. And then made the move back to Melbourne, which is where I ended up working with zest advisors, which was with Todd Clifford and Aisha Pike, very good Operations Assistant with him. And that’s sort of morphed into an ops manager role when he moved on and moved over to wa herself. So that’s where I sort of really found my niche with them and moved back to Tassie with them, as well and just maintain that role because we had offices in Tassie and Melbourne.

Andrew Rocks
So tell me, I’m jotting this down. So you kicked off your career in administration, which is quite normal then into power planning, then you actually went into financial planning. And then you’ve then you’ve changed gears back and you’ve done operations again? And then and then. So where did you go to from there? So and, and I see a lot of best straight jumping, by the way in this one. But yeah, so as we speak, now you’re back in an ops managing. And where did that take you?

Belinda Good
Yeah, so the role that I came to with boutique was seven years ago, December last year. So ops manager initially was my title here. And during that time, more so when we move to our own license in 2020, it was when I sort of my role morphed more into the general manager role with that edition of the self license management side of things as well.

Andrew Rocks
And did boutique have this particular role? Or is this a role that you have evolved into

Belinda Good
the operations manager role was already existing. So I replaced someone who’d left the business. And then it was a matter of really Nutting out what needed to be changed, refined, added to with the business to help it sort of grow and become more efficient, especially around the processes and procedures, which is sort of what I find I’ve got quite a strong point and experience with

Andrew Rocks
and do you find because because you have had experience as an advice giver? You’ve been at the coalface Do you find it more difficult? Or do you quite often second guess yourself when you’re trying to, I suppose herd the cats that quite often can be the client facing advisors who we all love and who are all listening. But did you find that a benefit having that experience or a hindrance?

Belinda Good
Definitely a benefit? I think that there’s a lot that you can help bridge the gap between the admin, the admin staff and the advisors. I think a lot of the time the advisors through no fault of their own think that things are quite easy to get done for clients. And then when you talk to the client managers and support staff, they’re like, Yeah, this is a little bit more detailed than what you you think it’s going to be.

Andrew Rocks
So coffees and whiteboards. That’s exactly right. Well, I mean, look, we’re all it’s all part of the ecosystem. And that’s the purpose of this series is, is, you know, we want to look at what’s the positive evolution of financial advice, and you know, how advisors have moved forward. But, you know, they just can’t do it without a good platform. So yourself, you’ve moved your entire family over TWA, seven or eight years ago.

Belinda Good
Well, it was just me, my husband, my now husband was here already. So yeah, yeah, packed up and gave it a shot. And he’s, his daughter is here as well. So it was sort of like, oh, well, I’ll just give it a go. Perfect Louise.

Andrew Rocks
And you’re here and running quite an impressive business. And with that in mind, the company that you’re with now that you’ve found in our real home boutique, maybe give us a bit of an idea of that business, you know, where it is today, and maybe sort of the influence that you feel that you’ve had on growing to here and into the future.

Belinda Good
So we’re a team of about 28. At the moment, we’ve got eight advisors, then we’ve got associates and also support staff within the business. So it’s sort of led by myself and Gary Hassler, the managing director, were the sort of two leaders but we’re not in the sense leadership on the top down. So it’s, it’s very much a, everyone’s involved in decision making. And where we want to make changes to the business, we create impact groups so that everyone has a voice, and to the direction that boutique takes or any changes that we may look to adopt. So we’ve been around this July, it’ll be 20 years for boutique, which is super exciting. And that’s a massive feat in any business, let alone financial planning, particularly with the way things have gone over the last few years. So we’re really excited about the next phase for us as well.

Andrew Rocks
And before we get into the nitty gritty, you mentioned something very interesting there about the way you’re the management style that you have. And, and you know, I think sometimes the stereotype of the the Chief Operating Officer, the GM is the fund Buster, right? So the CEOs, the visionary, they’re they’re doing whatever they want. And then and you know, you come in and be a bit of Doctor No, we’re not doing that. But so you have a collaborative approach with with your CEO. And when you mentioned these socialized decisions, how do you how do you mean that like, what what does that mean?

Belinda Good
It look, I definitely feel like I have the doctor knows sometimes they only mentioned the other day that I feel like all I’m ever doing is telling people that they’re not doing things the right way, which can sometimes just, that’s just part of the role, unfortunately. But fortunately, as well, you can help try and guide people, but we’re very much if we look at things to do or change with, with teams, then we will certainly involve those members of the team because there’s no point mean dictating how things should be done. Because they’re the ones doing it day in doubt. So there are always going to be things from a business or a licensee perspective where we need to tell them how things have to be done. But in terms of processes and how things work best. It’s the people who are in those seats, doing it day in and day out, that are the better judge of how things work and will work for the better, to make their lives easier.

Andrew Rocks
And you mentioned a bit about the scale of the business. And the advisors, you are purely or maybe give us an idea of where you fit in the marketplace. Are you a multi-discipline practice? Are you specifically financial advice? Just give us the the boutique advisors sort of perspective, if I was a client?

Belinda Good
Yes, so we holistic financial advice business, we do have specialists in that we’ve got a broker that we deal with, exclusively to refer our business to, and also with the insurance side of things as well. So we have varied niches across our advisor team as any practice would with that amount of advisors that we sort of target clients, I guess, are around professional families, and, you know, executives or business owners or professional individuals even so, that’s sort of where we’re targeting but our existing client base is wide and varied due to our advice advisor team being wide and varied as well. But they all do have their own niches as well.

Andrew Rocks
Where it’s and you know, what, what kind of process does use boutique have with their with their clients and, and, and how that relates to how Do you organize the back office, you organize the procurement and whatnot. So maybe give us an idea of, um, how a client comes on board the process, they go through anything that you think is unusual or special, and would be really useful as well.

Belinda Good
Sure. So we take our clients through our boutique, five pillars journey. So we’ve built a really strong advice process around that the goals, purpose and legacy needs for our clients. And we spend time to really understand and model out for them or their options that will help them to meet those needs. So we have anywhere from one to six meetings with clients initially, from that, you know, conversation zero, where we have an initial phone conversation with them to the next steps through that that five pillars that we refer to. And that from there then stems through to the support from our paraplanner, Sarah, and also the client manager team and the associate team that work closely together. So we work in a pod basis with our business. So we’ve got advisors, client, managers, associates that work together as a team.

Andrew Rocks
So you’ve got one on one advisor, one, client, manager, and associate, and then you refer out to a poor paraplanning. For advice delivery. Is that right?

Belinda Good
Correct. Okay, we just had the one paraplanner, Sarah, who’s an absolute GM, so she’s busy all the time. But yeah, so the three work together with the pod, but depending on client numbers, there may be some client manager split across two advisors. And same with the associates as well. But we always have an advisor and associate in every client meeting.

Andrew Rocks
And given the length of time this business has been around 20 years. Is the majority of the advice retaining existing clients? And if so, how many family groups does does your advisors look after in that pod system

Belinda Good
depends, depends on the type of clients that that advisor is dealing with. So we’ve got, you know, near one of our retiree clients, advisors, he’s probably dealing with about 140 client groups. Whereas we’ve got one of our new business advisors who’s still bringing on new clients to the business. And she’s probably sitting at around 35 client groups at the moment as she continues to grow. So the more strategic, less clients obviously, that the advisor will manage, because there’s more time that they need to spend on that on those clients.

Andrew Rocks
And in relation to some other information, watch the tech stack that you operate your business with.

Belinda Good
So we’ve got explained for our source of truth, and how advice Doc’s modeling all of that jargon, because really, there’s not that many other options that that are all encompassing. And then for our CRM side of things, we utilize EPO. So when we moved to our own license, we adopted that, that was a great tool and and similar style to the x plan, but was able to provide some cost savings as well. And more flexibility for our team who use it.

Andrew Rocks
And in relation to moving to your own license. That was 2020. I think you mentioned how do you run because you’re your general manager, not just the the advice process, you’re obviously getting oversight with the AFSL as well? How do you run your license efficiently?

Belinda Good
So we deal with AFSL compliance with Stuart Chandler. So he was, he’s a great support to our business. So he helped us do the license application, everything from where to go. So provides quarterly updates for us, and reviews with advice documents, and we’ve just gone through a bit of a change with our advice document template. So he’s revealing all of that along the way for us as well. So he makes it very seamless process to be able to manage our own little pay for sale.

Andrew Rocks
Shout out to Stuart. And when when you’re actually placing business, does your does your for sale? Is it wholesale or retail? Do you use MBAs or SMEs? Maybe this gives a bit of a feel. Imagine that I was an advisor in your business, and you’re sort of laying out all the tools I’ve got, what what’s kind of how does it look for your particular business?

Belinda Good
Yeah, so we’ve created our own investment philosophy and in line with that, we engaged Zenith investment partners to create our own SMEs. And we basically engaged with Macquarie as the platform to move those SMEs to that was all in line with us moving to our own AFSL as well. That was something that was really important to us as a business. So we’ve got an internal Investment Committee as well. And then we meet with as NS quarterly to discuss any changes or recommendations.

Andrew Rocks
And, you know, people always hear about that as a strategy but On the ground operationally hasn’t actually achieved the operational efficiencies that that you guys desired when you sought out to sort of run that type of platform.

Belinda Good
Most definitely, there’s a lot that it removes the need for particularly around additional advice when changes are made, or it makes it so much easier to be able to have those changes applied. And it just takes a whole lot of burden back off the client manager team and the the and the associates that additional things they don’t need to be doing any longer.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, great. And look, the clients only get the value from what they see, which is, you know, never never it has never changed. And slightly. And so you mentioned you’ve got a lot of professionals as clients, is life insurance, something that you offer, or do you outsource that, as you mentioned earlier to professional partnerships?

Belinda Good
Yeah. So we have holistically included that. And it is something that we are working with specialists external to the business, to introduce that as an option. So that we’re sort of halfway in the middle of making those changes at the moment. So

Andrew Rocks
you didn’t I sorry? I should probably talk before these. Well, let’s get this up. Because you now you’re in you’re in Perth, Western Australia, you’ve got 28 people, are they all located in the one office or your multi offices? Tell me a little bit about where where you guys located and sort of what the vibe is?

Belinda Good
Yes. So we’re in Subiaco. Everyone works in the office, we do have a couple that occasionally will work from home, we’re we’re very lucky with COVID, that it didn’t really affect things with us and having to move, you know, home and work for one or two years. So we are very grateful for that. So out of that really for us, it hasn’t changed things from that requirement of employees to really still maintain some of that. In saying that though, life admin happens, and you can’t always make things work for you during working hours. So that helps that we’ve got that flexibility that people can work from home if they need to do to tradesman or what have you that they need to be at home for during the day. So yes, in CB echo. And we’re also going to be expanding and doing a bit of an office refit as well. So we’ll be having a bit more of a cooler space and a nice breakout area for our staff to be able to take time away from their desk for their lunch break and introduce a table tennis tournament every Friday afternoon. So which will be a lot of fun,

Andrew Rocks
perfect I can, I can feel a tech firm coming on. And a big shout out to all the all the Victorian and New South Wales people who had to be at home for the last three years, it definitely was a little bit of a different experience. Out West, I’m moving gears a little bit. Thank you very much for giving us an overview of your of your business, it is an established business and it’s well done. I’ve actually had a bit of a stalk on the on the website, and you’ve won a few awards. So maybe, maybe take us through not just what you’ve what you’ve won, but I suppose why you go in and because ultimately, you know, bright, it’s a bit of a thought bubble quite often from the leader to go on an award and they dump it on the general manager to actually do it. So So of the awards that you’ve been in and beat, you can disclose those, which are the ones that you gained the most benefit out of the process.

Belinda Good
Luckily for me, a lot of that is led by Gary, which is really good. So I definitely provide oversight and input into that, but probably the one that really resonated and made the team really proud and myself super proud was the nomination for professional practice of the year last year with the FPA. So that was just a real testament to what we’ve put in over the last few years, particularly since moving to our own AFSL. The team that we’ve really built and the business and the process that we’ve really built because even though we didn’t win, even being a finalist was just enough for us to know that we’re on the right path and that we’re doing all the right things to progress and really stand out I guess in a little way into how we do advice and deal with our clients.

Andrew Rocks
And look, I really think the FPA and the AFA over the years who have run those those those practice orientated awards have done a really good thing for the industry. You know, it is it’s good to have aspirational goals. And it’s good to go through that that process. So just changing gears again, let’s talk about what it’s like to work. Not just in particular, but in relation to your team. And maybe I suppose the questions I like to ask, you know, why do people join you? Why do they stay? Why do they grow? And why do they go and the last one could be they go because you want them to so so why they join why they stay? Why they grow.

Belinda Good
Culture is huge for us. So it’s one of those things even like I told About with having everyone involved and having a voice. It’s really important that people feel that for us, but we gain people because of who we are as a business and the people that we are and what we’ve built from a culture perspective, if we are recruiting for a role, we don’t just put a bum on the seat, just for the fact of filling it, we really take the time to make sure that the people that are coming on board are the right fit for us. And they will be with us for the long term.

Andrew Rocks
And what does the right fit look like? Belinda

Belinda Good
varies, but just smart, talented people who really are passionate about the industry and passionate about financial advice. It is getting harder to find good people, it has been quite a tight market in in Perth over the last probably 12 months. Probably our hardest role to recruit for our client managers, because they are very unique and bespoke in in their roles and their experience. So the team that we’ve got now most of them have been with us for five plus years. So they love their job. And the people you know why people do stay and grow with us is because we give them opportunities to internally grow should they want to. And throughout a transition of if they’ve wanted to move into more of an advice focused role. Most of our flight managers brilliant at what they do, and they’re happy to stay doing that role.

Andrew Rocks
And and you know what, with thumb because we all know what advisors do and how they get trained their CPD points, and a lot of us know how paraplanners what they do and and what we can do to train them. But in relation to client managers, I think they’re kind of I think they’re almost a blind spot in our industry. So there’s no real forum for training them. They don’t get invited along to paraplanning conferences. They don’t get invited there. If you could wave a magic wand. Belinda, what would you what kind of things would you like to see our industry in still for the operations and client managers who are genuinely specialist at what they do in financial planning. And what kind of support would be awesome as an industry for them to be able to have

Belinda Good
definitely when I was with zest, Genesis introduced, practice managers forums as part of the PD days and conferences and the likes, and they were so beneficial to meet with other like minded people. Recently, Simon Burke has actually kicked that off in WA, because he deals with us all the time. So we’re now got a practice managers forum for Perth based PMS, GMs ops managers, and I will next one I go to, I’ll be taking one of my senior client managers with me, I think that kind of sharing of knowledge is a really is really lacking in the industry, because I think client managers have so much to offer and so much to give, particularly with fund managers and platforms and the likes, because they’re the ones day in day out that working and dealing in those systems. And I think that there’s not enough feedback that’s gained, they talk to the advisors and the advisors don’t use them. So it’s what eight why talk to them, you need to talk to the people on the ground. Yeah.

Andrew Rocks
Well, as I look, I’m coming from a defendable position, and that I was that person for a long time. And if we had $1, every time, you know, willing tended person from a fund manager or life insurance sort of said, how can we help you practice? Well, it sounds like the answer is actually help grab the client managers and give them some tools, give them some resources, because can that’s what the engine room is all about, these days, the practices of the present that are achieving goals for clients. And how I preface that is, is that it’s you have to be self sufficient to be able to deliver good quality advice at an affordable or actually even a palatable price and to clients. So it really, I think you’re right practice management forum, this podcast, getting that awareness that that it takes a village to raise to raise an advisor who looks after the client is part of the journey, isn’t it?

Belinda Good
Oh, definitely there now client managers are involved in the, in the meetings with the, with the clients towards the end, you know, they’ll they’ll go into the SOA presentation meeting, and they’ll complete all the implementation with the client. And they’ll also sit in on the comfort meeting that we have with our client to make sure that they’ve got all their online access set up and everything’s all ready to go and kick off but internally for us as well. It’s around making sure that they’ve got that bit extra to do outside of their day to day job. So some of the things that you know, I’ve pushed down there was a lot I had to get off my plate to be able to help me help the business. So there’s a couple that we’ve sort of promoted to senior Like managers and some of those tasks and duties I was doing, I’ve pushed down to them, because they’re smart, brilliant people. So good. Make sense?

Andrew Rocks
And is there anything in our process of operations with our suppliers that just irritate you, that could just be done better?

Belinda Good
Not off the top of my head. But I know if you asked my team, they would definitely say, the length of time it takes for insurance to get through. That’s that’s one of the gripes. And there’s just, I think there’s always ways to make things better and, and do things better, particularly when it comes to platforms and processing and forms and some of the restrictions that get pushed back on practices in terms of what they need, and just being able to work with them. So the quarry have been great with how we’ve dealt with them. And we’ve got our account manager who comes out and spends time with us, and to really more spend time with the client manager team, because they’re the ones dealing with it and working with that. So

Andrew Rocks
call that sounds awesome. And so, um, with your recruitment process you’ve met do you sort of insinuated that you’re out sourced that you’ve got to a person or go to in relation to recruiting for your business?

Belinda Good
Yeah, so we predominantly deal with Simon Burke, we have the we also have a careers section on our website as well. So we’ve actually had a few people contact us directly from that as well, which also is LinkedIn too, with our evolution program. So that is a program that we’ve designed to be able to bring on new graduates to our practice. As a result of them finishing uni, Curtin University and WA offers the financial planning degree, stand alone. So we had the end of 2021, we had Andrew Pope join us, he was our first cab off the rank with the evolution program, and he joined us as a fresh new graduate out of uni. And now we actually have two guys who are live candidates going through the evolution program, we seek

Andrew Rocks
the this is something boutique specific the evolution program. So if you have you done something with Curtin University, or what’s the what’s the affiliation, or it’s just absolutely convenient that it’s around the corner and ready to go? A bit

Belinda Good
of both. So as a result of Andrew coming on, we we sort of looked at it and thought, well, how can we do this and continue to bring on people, maybe one or two graduates a year to help backfill, we’ve got some of our associates now who want to progress to an advisor role. So with that we need to be able to bring people through and what better way to bring them through and teach them the way we do business and our advice process. And now this year, I think Gary will be guest lecturing at one of the sessions at the uni, but also just sharing about boutique and what we do. So as I said, we’ve got two guys who’ve just started. So they sort of will spend time with each of the teams within the business, because it’s important that they understand how everything works within boutique, they don’t just jump straight into an associate role. They’ll spend time with the client manager team really understand that role, what they do, and then transition into the associate role, learn that role, and then eventually they’ll be aligned with an advisor.

Andrew Rocks
So you mentioned you, you know, a lot of organic growth of your advice network or your advice team, sorry, yes, does boutique in the market for for looking at maybe established advisors who might really enjoy advising their clients but or maybe in an environment that subscale or doesn’t have the efficiencies? Is that something that that you guys are in the market for or have done?

Belinda Good
We have in the past? Definitely, because we’ll the way that we look at things is that we are always open to talking to talented, smart people, no matter whether we’ve got a role available or not. A lot of the time, some of those discussions do take a little while to come to fruition anyway. So it’s something that we have always sort of stood by and just said, We never say no. So even we’re dealing with Simon, you know, he might just flick across a resume and go, Look, I know you’re not actively looking. But I’ve come across this great candidate, great advisor, if you want to have a chat with them. So it’s something that we are always open to for sure.

Andrew Rocks
And we’ll take me through so take me through sort of the business of the business. So do you know as the GM Do you have meeting rhythms with your team, or your list person, you guys, give me an idea of how you manage the people in your team so that they can achieve their goals.

Belinda Good
We have lots of meetings we have, but it ranges from everything from all in team meeting every fortnight to keep everyone abreast and update with what we’re doing. Advisors meet once a month to go through their sales and we also have an alternate monthly strategy technical meeting with the advisors and Associates, then each of the teams we meet with with the client manager teams, and we have for the associate team meetings as well. And then individually, the pods meet once a week to be able to go over their workflow and what’s happening with the calendars and make sure they’re on top of the work. So that keeps everyone everyone knows what’s going on. We we always want to be transparent and open with the team and not everyone to sort of say I didn’t know that and no one told me and

Andrew Rocks
and how do you celebrate success? Oh, we

Belinda Good
did lots of fun things, Roxy, we’ve done trips to Bali, we’ve done family Christmas functions, where we will go and do things last year we did 80s 10 pin bowling, everyone dressed up we had a great time. We do monthly morning tees where we celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, one of our associates a D recently got married. So we celebrated that we have Friday afternoon drinks, sometimes we took helicopter ride over to Rado for our Christmas party a couple of years ago. We’re big on celebrating when we’ve done some really amazing things and to really celebrate and thank the team for their important and what they’ve done. We don’t sort of really do bonuses as such and things. But you know, we will maybe endorphin year or Christmas time we might, you know, surprise the team with some gift cards and things to just say thanks. And,

Andrew Rocks
and the other thing is like, these days, working for someone’s not just about getting an income. And I know that you guys are a certified great place to work and, and part of that is also, you know, you mentioned, you’ve got things like the evolution program for young people, but you know, what your purpose is what your what your, your, your, I suppose impact on the community, you’re giving, maybe I have had a bit of a look there, you guys definitely are in that. But maybe this gives a bit of a feel of, of how you guys have structured it, you know you’re giving back and how you’ve involved your team members in that because some, I think it really matters.

Belinda Good
And so we’ve this year, created the boutique advisors philanthropic fund. So that has been that’s run and managed from by the Fremantle Foundation, which is a not for profit that Gary has been heavily involved with and was the chairman for a long time with them. And out of that we’ve formed an impact group. So we meet every sort of couple of months really to go through what we’re what we wanted our giving theme for the quarter. So we have forgiving themes with the philanthropic fund. So we’ve got community, financial literacy, health and well being and next gen. So we’re just coming to the end of our financial literacy, quarter. And we’ve there’s a great company called Communicare, that we will be our organization that we will be looking to lend out or give our quarterly donation to, but in line with that as well. We’ll be looking to tee up some presentations for their staff. And also we’re running some workshops for our existing clients, children, grandchildren, young people, related to them, that our advisors can just run through some really basics. You know, we’re targeting those those kids who are just starting their first job or just coming out of school, and they need to know about what is super, how can I save my money? What do I do to have to do to save for a house, all of that just something that we can give back and and provide that to our existing clients as a nice value add

Andrew Rocks
or look? Absolutely. And the irony is lost on no one, that it takes a philanthropic effort to teach basic literacy that should be taught in schools. So this is not the podcast for that but there’s plenty there. But But if anyone’s listening yet again, another example of where preventative sort of teaching of financial literacy at schools would be a good thing. And I’m talking about impact 100

Belinda Good
Yeah, so that’s part of the fill the Fremantle foundation, so that’s another arm of what they they work through. So that’s a spin off from them. And then there’s also been our ability to be involved with them and they’re giving themes so that was something that Andrew Bolingbroke attended last year to their presentation and where they basically decide who they’re going to assist within the community. So as part of our themes with our giving themes, we go to the Fremantle foundation as well to find out who they can suggest in line with our giving theme for that quarter, some organizations that we may be able to direct those proceeds to,

Andrew Rocks
and you’ve got 28 people in your team do you find that that this Do you find that that this sort of brings them together? Because is it? Is it a democratized choice of, of where you guys focus your energies and fundraising? Or is it sort of a part of part of a development team there? Yes. So

Belinda Good
the the impact group that we created within the businesses got representatives from each of the, you know, we’ve got couple of advisors, associates and client managers who are part of that. And together, we make the decisions on, you know, everyone will come with suggestions, and we put it out to the team as well. And part of our monthly morning tea is that everyone donates at least five bucks to come along. And that money goes into the fund as well. So they’ve everyone’s contributing. And in line with that, to our team have also got two volunteer days a year that they can avail of, should they wish, so be it something through the philanthropic fund or a cause that specifically, you know, close to their heart, they can do that as well. So that was very well received when we introduced that a lot of the team came back and just said, such a fantastic idea and really appreciate it.

Andrew Rocks
And just I suppose a bit of a searching question. What have been the what have been the failures when you’ve rolled out stuff to as the as the GM? So what have been your mistakes or your failures? And maybe the reason i Why don’t ask that is that hopefully, there are other practice managers listening to this, and they can learn from it. So yeah, tell us your blunders.

Belinda Good
There was one that was sort of kicked off before I just before I started my role here, which

Andrew Rocks
worldwide worldwide, okay.

Belinda Good
It was something that we persisted with for for 12 months, and it was a move to another CRM, I won’t mentioned it, but it was just something that just did not work for us. And it was it pulled us back. And it was just, unfortunately, it wasn’t aligned with when I was starting here. And what I was told was happening. And so that sort of brought things undone.

Andrew Rocks
So that said, the classic move of licensees move of CRM, BIM, fire conversation, so but we read that, so you’re saying that put you back 12 months? Is that what you just said? Well, we

Belinda Good
we persisted with it for 12 months to try and, you know, adapt it and take it on. And what was,

Andrew Rocks
without naming, what was the thing that was, was what was wrong with it. And in hindsight, it was always wrong with the way in which you wanted to use it,

Belinda Good
it just didn’t support a business at our size, it was just not enough granting it and there was too much, that was still a manual, a lot of manual handling with it. So yeah, it was just something that it was just a step backwards for us to try and take that on. And then so we basically unwound it all and ended up moving back to X plan anyway, and, and keeping on with that. So, but a lot of the time, I think there’s always things that you you sort of go, let’s give it a go. And that didn’t work. We’ve done it a few times. In terms of paraplanning, we’ve tried to sort of get some additional support for Sarah, but with it and with the contractor or the likes and the way that we do our business, it is very hard to outsource. We don’t we use a very a shell of a template, really. But our SLA is telling a story. And there’s less tables than what there are. And it’s not a tick box selected licensee version, you know, big licensee version of an SOA, which is what we’ve put together. So we find that that’s quite hard to outsource. We’ve tried it a couple of times, but it’s just ended up taking much more longer than what we anticipated it to so

Andrew Rocks
and you find that heavy lifting is done by your client managers or your associates in terms of assisting with with with the preparation and assisting with your peril planning.

Belinda Good
Then Sarah just basically does some more herself. So she just takes it all back on board. So we do email ROA so we’re our associates are sort of they take care of those. But in terms of our written ROIs and our statements of advice, they’re all dealt with by Sarah so,

Andrew Rocks
so I’m not sure when this podcast is going to launch but Sarah, just a shout out there. I’d be I’d be booking my my annual review with your boss for the next day. Buying a car a drinking game, we probably would have had quite a few. So nice shout out to Sarah and to all the other paraplanners out there who are complementing those advice practices. So if I was to ask, you know, sum up your culture, or the culture in your office and you are all in the office, in a couple of words, what would you say?

Belinda Good
Supportive, open and fun.

Andrew Rocks
And which by the way is awesome, okay. And I do like the fact that you started with supportive. Yes, I had fun, just because it ain’t fun. When you’ve got no resources, and you’ve got no structure, and the other servers zany, everyone is in the office. If you have to stay back, just to make up for inefficiencies, it’s not fun. And, and the whole purpose of, of building good quality practices is allowing everyone to work at their best and highest use, allowing advisors to advise and everyone else to do that to their job. Now on that, how do you judge if your team are doing a good job? Do you use a Do you have, like 360 reviews? Do you have job descriptions? You know, if you’re running the shop, Belinda, how do you know if your people are doing the right thing? And and what does success look like?

Belinda Good
So from a workflow, workflow perspective, we I monitor everything via Zepo, and workflow and what we’ve got going on. And we’ve also managed all of our, our leads and sales through there as well. So we can see how long things have been sitting there. So the idea of the pods is that things don’t sit there too long, and that they have those meetings each week to make sure things are on track. And from a review side of things we catch up and do face to face reviews every formally every 12 months for the annual which includes the salary review, as well. And then every six months after that every usually before Christmas, we’ll just catch up for an informal and see where people are heading. As I said, we’ve got that path, you know, pre 2019, we didn’t have associates in the business. So there isn’t our real clear path if people do want to progress. So earlier this year, like last year, we had one of our client managers who moved from a client manager role into an associate role, which is great. As I said, there’s quite, the majority of the left of our client managers are happy to remain in that client manager role, they really enjoy that they don’t have any desires to become associates or advisors. And same with our associates as well. Even with the evolution program, the idea of bringing on the graduates isn’t necessarily for them to want to be as an advisor one day, they may get into the associate role and just go, I just love this, I don’t want to actually be face to face with the clients advising, but I’m happy to be there in a support role, because you still need really solid, great associates as well, who are content to remain in that role, because we can’t support people progressing through all the time, because otherwise, you’d have 50 advisors and, and I support stuff,

Andrew Rocks
we’re gonna find the clients and you got to figure out if you can, if you can do something for them. So what would you say the big differences so when I was chatting to you about your personal journey, and I think me started in the mid noughties, roughly. So the the the new financial advisor coming through, then versus the graduate financial planner that you’re seeing, what kind of difference in type of personal mindset, if any, are you witnessing,

Belinda Good
it’s interesting to see what they’re sort of taught in the studies and in comparison to what it’s actually like in real life. So I think the internship side of things is really important because you can have people sit down and learn it’s like it anything, it’s you sit and learn something from from a textbook or from a teacher or a lecture. But once you’re actually in living it and breathing it and, and doing it, it’s there’s quite a contrast a lot of the time. So I think that from you know, the naughties, it was very much an investment based kind of role, the advisor of that kind of era, even though there was still the discussions around goals and things, but it was, you know, there was there was been investment performance based and discussions around what had happened with portfolios and things which I find is a complete shift and swing now. And the even from what Andrew commented on when he was at Curtin, you know, he said, There is a lot of that conversation around the goals purpose, you know, goals based advice, and, and, and really having that understanding and the investment piece runs alongside of that. So yeah, and

Andrew Rocks
I think that’s, that’s, that’s evolved hand in hand with fee per service, and charging by professionals and whatnot. So in relation to the interaction between yourself and Gary, and it’s Gary on Andrew there, they’re the two heads of your business with Gary being the founder. How do you operate with them? What do you have? Do you have a form of meetings? Do you do you run a board style? I’m just interested in, in always asking how you’re you’re working with with the founders, because quite often they’re forceful, charismatic, and kind of pretty, pretty strong characters. How do you work with with your team and anyone else who might have missed them by

Belinda Good
the way? Yes, yeah. So we we’ve got the boutique advisors to the board, so we make each quarter for that. So that’s really important for us. And that sort of came about with us, again, moving to self license, because it makes sense to have that structure there. In terms of meetings, we sort of have functionality meetings each fortnight, which is the management team. So Monica, who is Gary’s client, manager, and office manager, she’s been my saving grace, since I joined boutique, she’s the one who always checks in on me and make sure I haven’t, you know, banged my head against the wall or jumped out the window. So. So we all get together, but Gary, and I meet weekly, and but we’re the kind of business that if things come up, you just grab a room and you have a chat or that, you know, we used, he’s been a huge supporter of mine, and also been a big part of my growth and development over the time that I’ve been here as well. And I just, you know, between the two of us, I think that were a pretty great combo to sort of late boutique into the next sort of era. He’s he’s got his vision, and he’s got his ideas for where things want to leave, you know, with lead with boutique. But you know, we’re a generational business, we’re not looking to sell off, we’re going to be here in 2030 years time with the view that people that work here now will eventually be part owners of the business down the track. So it’s very much about a long term vision. And there’s a lot that we feel aligned with, when we have those discussions as well about where to next for the business.

Andrew Rocks
Really powerful statement there, Belinda. And I feel that if I asked Gary that same question, then I get word for word, the same answer. So there’s there feels to be a real alignment there. And, and this is the lady who started as admin and paraplanning customer service. So you know, what I also like, to us, we’ve practice managers, and jmz is what your vision for the future. And I suppose just to QA the vision of the future of the role that you’re currently in, and how financial planning business of the futures will look through that lens.

Belinda Good
I think having a role like an ops manager, General Manager, practice manager, particularly once you get to a certain size is just paramount, because the business owners need to be focusing on the business ownership. And like in Gary’s case, he’s also still advising and seeing clients. So typical, very practices. So it’s really important to have someone who’s got that sort of more, maybe an operational background, or someone who’s got that focus, who can sort of look at things overall, and really focus on different areas. I mean, my whole role sort of encompasses so many things. And I basically just put the hat on whoever it doesn’t fit when something new comes up or hits for the business. So, you know, the general manager, office manager practice manager role. My time for example, is people policies and processes, AFSL management, business management, marketing, compliance, tech stack, and then the overall operations of the business. So if you take me out of the picture, there’s people that need to pick that up. And if you mentioned,

Andrew Rocks
we mentioned how you might jump out of windows, so we’d have to, we’d have to we’ll up all the windows, if you’re out of the picture, I think it should be okay. And blender in relation to what a lot of people have just heard a bit about your business, the way in which you’re all in the one office, the way in which you promote, you promote, from graduates up your own story. The fact you’ve got purpose around giving, you’ve got programs, you’ve got structure, you’re big enough to be able to have those pieces of structure in but you still are selflessness, you still take feedback from advisors, you you’ve probably got feedback from from all sorts of people, whether it be the investments or the strategy, etc. What would you be looking for, sir, if you could wave a magic wand is a call to action? What are the sorts of things that you’d hope anyone who’s listening to this podcast would get out of it? And if there is anything that you’d like to do, I’m sure that we can put some links in.

Belinda Good
Yeah, so I think for us, the biggest thing is growth. As you know, I explained that celebration of the 20 years this year coming up for us and the next step for us is future growth. So it’s be it bringing in another business or welcoming in, you know, new advisors to the team. Our refit is definitely going to support that you know, that growth and everything for us, but think we’ve done a lot of work around our website as well trying to really showcase who we are as a business. We’ve got lots of information on there on our socials. We’re quite active within LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. And not only sharing information and blogs and the likes from our advisors, but also in recognition of of our time. remembers and things as well.

Andrew Rocks
And you’d be very open to, to talk with someone who had some, some clients where they currently are. And would be looking to to find a new home, that you’re not just all about organically growing from the bottom up. If you’ve, if there are people out there in the Perth area, then you’d be very happy to have a conversation with them from what we spoke about earlier.

Belinda Good
Yes, yeah, definitely. And yeah, as I said, happy to talk to any talented smart people that are looking, be it from a business perspective, or an individual perspective as well.

Andrew Rocks
So from today, I also, I’ve written a few notes down practice management forum, I’m sure it’s not the first time that I’m going to be getting this. And for everyone listening and more resources in the middle office, more resources to the engine room that drive the advisor. So gone are the days where advisors make decisions in isolation, they make a decision with their team that’s easy to implement, because at the end of the day, their clients need a great experience. And that’s what they’re paying, you know, increasingly more fees about will end up it was a pleasure to chat today. Thank you, it’s, it’s always good to to meet the people behind the people. And by the way, it sounds like your team, and your leadership are very, very supportive of you. And I find that that’s a common, a common theme. And I’m really happy to highlight the role of yourself and, and the role of boutique. And with that in mind. Welcome. And thank you for being part of the engine room.

Belinda Good
Thanks, Rocksy, really appreciate it. And yeah, I look forward to listening to the rest of the people that you’ve got lined up. I think it’s going to be beneficial to all of us.

Andrew Rocks
Thank you very much should be a cricket. Have a great one.

Belinda Good
Bye. Thanks.