Engine Room Podcast #23 – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi I’m Andrew Rocks and welcome to another edition of the Engine Room Unpacked. Today joining me to unpack five fabulous financial planning business is Sue Viskovic from Exlixir consulting. Good morning, Sue, how are you?

Sue Viskovic
Hey, Rocksy, I am fantastic. I’m really looking forward to this,

Andrew Rocks
You know, when I was started this process and you know, with Ensombl, we’re all about the positive evolution of financial advice. And specifically, we were talking about practice management. I’m not sure if you will, listening. But several of our practice managers, I definitely know Belinda from boutique and the Burke Britain team, they were desperate, desperate need or desperate desire for a practice manager specific course or or a community. Now, we’re not going to touch on that straight up. But as it turns out, Alexa is doing it, which is why I couldn’t possibly have a better guest. So onto the unpacked.

Sue Viskovic
Thank you so much, Roxy. Yeah, real pleasure to be with you. And I must say, I’ve been loving these, this theme of your ensemble podcasts and just love the different firms and the variety that you got there. So there’s five great ones that we’re going to be talking about today. And

Andrew Rocks
yeah, absolutely. And what I thought we’d do is just to just to give some structure to today’s session is we’re going to look at the different businesses, and we’re going to run through three key themes. And the first sort of a large thing is, are they running it like a business? Okay, and that might be something to work the right people in the right roles. And then, you know, the role of the practice manager. The next sort of big mega theme is capacity planning. Okay. It’s, it’s, I think, practices over the last three or four years have managed to actually build their engines rooms. And just to get a better feel of is their capacity scrapped constraints or whatnot? And then finally, once we’ve got all those, right, are they serving their clients better? So once they’ve taken care of their own affairs? Is that actually having a positive reflection on what’s delivered to the clients, whichever you want today? Are all of our employers?

Sue Viskovic
Indeed, they sure are. And look, I think it’s a great place to start is talking about this aspect of these businesses running it like a business. I mean, we talk a lot around, you know, the old ways of running an advice firm and not going to cut it in the future. I mean, that’s just that’s just a given. I think everybody knows that. And these five firms, what I was thrilled to see is that there was a lot of variety between them. And I love that you’re not saying hey, every one every firm that we’re going to feature as a firm that wants to take over the world and, you know, end up globalizing the advice profession, you’re not doing that, because you and I both know, the reality is, is great businesses are those that are built around unique visions of the people that drive them. And for one person, you know, the Ben Nash’s of the world, he’s got a huge B hag to grow, I don’t know 100 times what he is right now. And then for the next practice, and fact, we might play a quote from this one in particular,

Andrew Rocks
And which practice is this one?

Sue Viskovic
So this is Moran. Paul and Alex. Great. And Alex. Yeah. So it’s funny because I had actually written down in my notes from listening to all the others running it like a business, they’re all doing that. And million, this particular coin came up from Paul Moran, so we might play it.

Dr. Paul Moran
That’s the thing we do when I trade, this is a business somehow, I have a strong view that I’m a practitioner, and this is a practice. And that’s different to other people, other people treat their businesses as businesses business first, in a financial planning. Second, we’ve always treat this as a practice. And we’re practitioners first and foremost. And that allows us to focus on their clients, first and foremost, and focus on our staff. So so we genuinely treat them like family, we know that birthdays, we go out together, we, you know, we care for them, you know, we really do care for everyone. And I think they know it, and they care for us. You know, it works both ways. You know, and so we cover for each other, we know what’s going on. It’s a little tight knit community and people, people like that, you know, we’re we’re pretty flexible in how we how we operate, you know, if someone can’t come in because they’re sick, or they’ve got kids look after we just cover it. It’s just it’s done that way and works well together. But it is, you know, is a personal business we’re in. And the more we try and commercialize it, the less personal it becomes, well, to us. It’s not how we want to operate.

Sue Viskovic
So isn’t that fascinating? He ended there, the less personal it becomes, the more we commercialize it. So the concepts that I’m kind of talking about here is is to be successful. And in whatever definition of success is to you, whether it’s more profit, whether it’s better client relationships, global domination. To be successful, you have to really run it like a business and that doesn’t necessarily mean can nationalizing because I absolutely agree with what Paul’s saying there is that a large part of the personality and the success of their firm is they do treat everybody like family, it is about, you know, putting their clients and their people first. You know, I love the way that they describe their business, they’ve got such a beautiful culture. And at the same time, they also say they haven’t documented their culture intentionally, it is just how they roll and who they are, and that personality flows through. And yet, as we discovered, they are all about improving the way they serve their clients. You know, I think Alex used to be an advisor, he now runs the business, he does that that practice management piece, I believe,

Andrew Rocks
I think that was the envelope from time to time. But absolutely,

Sue Viskovic
yeah, so all of that comes up from their passion to make sure that they can do what they do better. And that is, I think, one of the the core elements of running like a business, don’t just keep being an advisor and just have the personality and run by the seat of your pants, and everybody else has to pick up behind you to maybe deliver a good client service. They’ve very close clearly looked at exactly how they deliver what they want to deliver to a client and improve it. So much so that he invented the Ifat fine, as a piece of technology that they’ve now rolled out to the rest of advisors. So

Andrew Rocks
You’re absolutely right. And you can you can have scale, or you can have innovation. And I think when I look at the Moran business and the two gentlemen who, regardless, there, they were really early adopters, sma 10 years ago, they saw a gap in in fact, fall and so so they’ve been quite innovative. And while I’ve got this opportunity, probably remissive B, I probably give the framing up of the practices we’re talking about. So clearly we’ve kicked off with That’s right, I know right now we’re so excited. So we’ve kicked off with Moran FP we’ve productive Paul around Alexandar with our great guests and, and you know and one of one of my successful free three person podcasts which sound guy Karen loves those ones I look at the higher on there. So and then the next one we backed up with which tin Benson team is the managing director of infinity financial consultants. It’s been in his family for years. And what he’s done is he’s he’s taken the approach of the multi disciplined practice and building that out. And he’ll be quite honest with the trials and tribulations of you know, talking to an accounting person is not the same as talking to financial planners as an example. Then we followed by just a job anyone you know, and insurance only specialist business could ask brokers life we’ve been Donald and he’s, you know, incomparable GM as she I’m sure. We broke her podcast virginity and she didn’t absolutely hit it out of the park. That business is a pure play life insurance business and, and they assured me that there’s sub 200 People who are just life insurance people in there, there have a massive scale. So it’s interesting to see that one, you mentioned Ben Nash and pivot, apart from being a founder of ensemble, which we will all give Him thanks for. It’s why we’re all here. He’s got some really interesting ways of thinking. And if you listen hard enough, everyone takes Ben as the front guy, but he’s happy places in front of a spreadsheet. So and absolutely. And then the last practice, another really quality multi-discipline practice. And the story he is quite cute. Right? So Belinda I think, was the second or third employee in the tube that two blokes last Lauren Jeff, and they’ve grown into their roles and grown into maturity. So I just thought I’d frame that up, because probably remissive me earlier. And with that there, what do you have any other ones that are running it like a business you might want to touch on?

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, yeah, I do. So so we talked about this a lot in in providing that external assistance to firms, right. So if we’re working a firm with a firm, they’re accessing our consulting services, they’re saying, Look, we are doing certain things really well. And we’ve got growth plans, or we’ve got efficiency plans, and we want to do things better. So I think that culture of continuous improvement was absolutely a theme that really played through some of them didn’t actually say those words. But you could hear in the what they were describing around how they were evolving their business. Everybody believes in this, you know, we’ve got to find better ways to do things that continual improvement aspect of the the business.

Andrew Rocks
You know, I love the whole notion of topology on what to port. You know, as far as I didn’t want any port structure. It’s one of my favorite questions. Yeah. And, and some people definitely love doing it. And some people are half in and half out, and I think they struggle, and some people are gardener. So there’s a few of them that have been running a puppet. What’s your thoughts on on creating efficiencies through a pod? And is there any of these sorts of people I in the last five engine rooms that that stood out as far as running it like a business.

Sue Viskovic
Yes, yes. So the pod thing first, I think most of the Muse pods in this regard. And that’s where you know, they have, some of them had an advisor or para planner, Client Service Manager, others also had associate advisors that sat in. So we’re seeing that as being a really great way to grow talent. But I think that comes down to making sure that there’s ultimate responsibility for client files and delivery of work. Because if everything is pooled, I think you I think there was a quote there from you if if nobody’s if everybody’s accountable, nobody’s accountable who went through this? I’m not quite sure me.

Andrew Rocks
Word is the most powerful one, around ability and getting the right people doing the right things at the right time. And in which way you frame it. If you’ve got accountability, from the bottom to the top, from edge to edge, you’ve got a chards. Yeah, don’t, it just leaks.

Sue Viskovic
Yeah. And it’s so it’s partly around the structure of your operating rhythm. So those pod structures quite often those pods, it might have that kind of group that sit around the client, but then there’s certain tasks that can be pulled. So it might be implementation, it might be administrative tasks that anyone can pick up that file and do it. But then it goes back in through a workflow. And that’s the key, right? Like these businesses, having structured processes. That is one way, same way. Everybody in the business, implements things, we have personality, we have relationships. But when it comes to actually getting work done and finalized, each one of those firms had worked out ways to capitalize on the best way to deliver services. And then people follow that same process and backed up by the technology and automation wherever possible.

Andrew Rocks
And who do you think have the best guidance? As far as all those things? What was your What was your, your thoughts? Maybe a cracking quote?

Sue Viskovic
So So one of them, who was that team from infinity? Now, he, I would actually wrap up to have this, it’s partly around the operating rhythm of their client at their staff meetings, and what they’re talking about in focusing on whip and so forth. But it’s also one of the key elements of running it like a business and that is know your numbers. And Roxy, I don’t know how you manage this, but I am going to be slow in what I say this, I love his hot sheets. Let’s play that one.

Andrew Rocks
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’ve got hot sheets on 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

Andrew Rocks
written would you call them your critical numbers? Oh, yeah. And we have a 15

Tim Benson
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
for those of you who play podcasts slightly faster than other people at 1.2 times? Yep, I’m not. So it’s a hot sheet. So it’s the most challenging linguistic part of our podcasts? Yeah, if you know, Tim, he’s so full of energy. And you can imagine that probably it was named, like, you know, our daily sheets or something like that. He’s gone. We’re calling on the hot sheets. And he’s probably got that all flames around him in his office, but for listing. Right, so is that what do you think that’s it? Oh, look,

Sue Viskovic
I actually think it is hot shit, right? It’s fantastic. But what I see for fans is sometimes they just cannot get their fingers on that data. So when when when you’re planning out strategies for a firm when you’re making some significant change, or if it’s just around your operating rhythm, we know each of our advisors needs to be saying this many people, we need to have this many client review or update meetings, we need to ensure that the turnaround time is X number of days, whatever your critical numbers are. It’s one thing to set your benchmarks to make sure that everything’s running smoothly. But then if you can’t get your hands on the data to actually track whether you’re achieving that, then that’s a real problem. So I love the fact sheets and he was talking to about they’re implementing, I think it was a WebEx as a new piece of software to manage the revenue that’s coming in to the business. That’s really important. So whether or not you’re you are trying to grow and you’re wanting to win a significant number of new clients or new referrals from a center of influence, whatever that is, or if it really is just about tracking the delivery of the promises that you’ve made so that you are ensuring that you’re meeting your service standards, having an eye on those numbers share Bring it with the team, because this is the other thing too, right? All of these firms have a practice manager, there’s somebody that is responsible for for deriving the management of the business. But the people that are responsible for doing those things, so advisors should be responsible for the clients that they’re seeing. These guys need visibility on that data as well. Because you know that a word again, the accountability piece, if they don’t know what they’re delivering, how can I stay accountable to what you’re asking them to do?

Andrew Rocks
And, you know, in my various businesses, I always call them critical numbers. And there’s normally five or six of these critical numbers and you’re live and die by them and, and then just something that everyone knows like that in your role of elixir, or maybe you’ll be your coaches roles. What’s the what’s the languaging that you guys use? When you’re engaging clients for that that style of critical number cadence?

Sue Viskovic
Exactly that critical numbers.

But interestingly, what makes up those critical numbers exactly which critical numbers we track for each firm might vary. Because you know, whether whether it’s a multi, give me some examples. So one of my clients working with this morning, I was out there this morning, they are a multidisciplinary firm. So we’re looking at not only and for those guys, it’s it’s an update meeting, we don’t do client reviews, because that’s looking in the revision mirror where it’s actually a great client review is looking forward. And where are we going now where it’s a progress meeting. So for the advisors, that’s how many progress meetings they have, they’ve got an SMSF audit team. So it’s around how many SMSF set up to date and tracked and how many new clients they’ve won. They’ve got referrals coming in from the accounting side of the business. So that’s a multidisciplinary or to the language that a lot of the these guys use the super firm, that might be different to just a pure financial advice business and they’re just really looking at the their financial advisory numbers.

Andrew Rocks
So let’s talk about multi-discipline firms is there was two in the five here there was the Alesco team in Sydney and the Infinity team which are in Sydney but also in Brisbane, but also in Sydney as well. And one of the I suppose the home truths that Mr. Benson told me was that that the way in which accountants think is different for a financial planner, we could he really needed that, that that numbers as a base. But what I what jumped out at me with Belinda was just the dichotomy of leadership there and having the right people doing the right things. What was your take on that? With Belinda and Neville? ESCO?

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, so So a great business and I love you know, Belinda, I think she’d been there 15 years. And her role had evolved over time, I think she started out with admin, she’d actually come out of a risk only firm started out in admin. 15 years later, she’s got a seat at the leadership table with the two guys. She’s running the firm. And we see that a lot. And what what I find around that role of practice and and it could be a practice manager, it could be Operations Manager, whatever people choose to call it, I think the key is not assuming that that person now is going to have the weight of the whole business on their shoulders, right. So we see quite often usually most firms are started by a practitioner, they’re a great adviser, the business grows, they end up running and having a client load. And then they get to a critical mass stage where they can afford to have somebody in that operational management role. So they either put somebody on like Belinda or steps somebody out in the role like the lender, or the principal. And there’s a couple of examples in these fives. There’s actually I love the management side, not the client work. So I’ll transition my clients. But they then have a rhythm and a way to get the each other around the table to share the leadership responsibility, get the best of ideas from all of them make critical decisions together to move the business forward. And with Belinda in particular, there was an awesome quote, that we might throw suicide or

Andrew Rocks
there’s something about how she interplays with the two founders. Is that the one you took? Yeah, okay, let’s do that one. That’s a good one.

Sue Viskovic
And I love it too, because of course, they’re getting external assistance in to run it as well. So let’s throw to that. Karen, why don’t we Why don’t we hear what she said about the consulting piece?

Andrew Rocks
So although you share AFSL does your business have a board per se? Or is it just the the senior leadership of you three that sort of make the decisions? Yeah,

Belinda Marley-Wallace
we’ve got this the three of us. We’ve also, in the last six months, six to 12 months, engaged with encore advisory. So we’ve got Mark as part of our board as well, which we have identified as a leadership team has been a bit of a game changer. For us as a group. It just helps us stay on track holds us accountable, accountable, far more than it ever did. We’ve been able to set out project plans and that sort of thing, all the stuff that We just having conversations and it would typically fall back on me to track and make happen. We’ve got someone else to help us push those along,

Andrew Rocks
look and a shout out to encore and we’ll give put some details attached this, of who they are. And hopefully they still open for new clients, because they’ll probably get some. And look, I’m a mad fan of having coaching. In fact, my current business partner in VBP was my previous business coach, as a financial planning owner. So Holding, holding owners to account remember the word accountability. What we’ve learned talking to practice managers is they’ve got to hold people technically below them in the org chart accountable. But the ones that do it well hold themselves and the people above them the org chart accountable. Would you say that your role?

Belinda Marley-Wallace
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That’s spot on. And it’s only really come to light. That that has been an become a clear focus, since we’ve started working with Mark and Tom. So

Andrew Rocks
you’re right. It’s it’s it’s it also demonstrates that, that giving giving someone else a third party or another lens in there, and I think she referenced the the Encore team. Is that right hook?

Sue Viskovic
Right? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

Andrew Rocks
So yeah, shout out to those guys it’s holding is the best sports teams are well coached. And and you know, coming from a coach, I’m sure that that’s something that you concur.

Sue Viskovic
I most certainly do. I think the best thing that a coach can bring is not only bringing everybody to the table getting, getting the ideas out in the table, helping them make the best decisions around the strategies that they want to implement. But it’s then that accountability piece as as, as Sean said, Sorry, as Belinda said, is then being able to say, well, what are the things we’re going to track, we want to bring ourselves back to the table, if we’ve got any roadblocks, let’s work out how we’re going to get past them, and just keep moving forward. So we don’t have these talk fests where we do an off site. And you know, we have some great wine, and everybody throws the big ideas around the table. But then we come back the next year, and nothing’s moved, we’re in exactly the same position.

Andrew Rocks
And sorry, so one of the other things that you mentioned about running like a business was decarb be all things to all people. Yeah. And I’d really liked your take on on us brokers life, you know, just as a bit of background, that they’re, they’re one of the few, or they’re a financial planning firm, that get referrals from financial planning firms. So increasingly as worth practices. And I know there are a few other notable companies out there, and they know who they are. And I love you guys as well, and girls. But the way in which they have become a specialist arm is is kind of another direction. So you started off with saying that, you know, there’s no one size fits all. And some are multi-discipline, we’ve just spent some time about the multi-discipline practices, but some of them have chosen to be hyper specialized this thought, What’s your take on that? And what did you learn from from Ben and Shawn’s podcast?

Sue Viskovic
Well, you know, Ruoxi, that’s a really beautiful segue that is the absolute connection between the running it like a business, and then the capacity planning theme that we talked about, right? So we talk a lot about the fact that we know that the numbers of advisors in the profession have gone down where, you know, we’re, that’s been decimated, we’re not having enough people come through to do their professional year even these changes with the education recognition. We just we all know, there’s more clients that require advice than there are advisors to give them. So one of the key challenges every firm is faced with is how do we lift capacity per advisor? Even if it’s not a high growth firm, even if they don’t want to, you know, grow to 100 advisors like Ben Nash does, those those advisors who are running great businesses want to keep it as a family run business, do need to crack this code of how do I get my advisors to be more productive? And as a firm? How do we serve more clients? And one of the critical triggers or door openers to that is making sure you got the right people doing the right roles in the business. So Karen, we might actually cuz Sean said some some gold around that. Why don’t we play that?

Sian Shaw
So the STAT is to ensure that advisors can do as much client facing work as possible, obviously, that might be over the phone or zoom. But generally speaking, we want to keep the advisors advising, engaging with clients and doing what they can. So the support team worked extremely closely with the advisors. When

Andrew Rocks
do they cut in?

Sian Shaw
So when did they start? So our support teams start as soon as the advisor meets with the client. So effectively, they may know prior to the meeting, if they don’t, they’ll know as soon as the meeting is over. They’re introduced straightaway so they’re always a second set of hands to catch them if they have any questions or need to go from there. And then the support team just ensure the entire process runs smoothly. Lay, we’ve got all A’s across the business without audits this year. So everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to do with a really robust, solid system that runs behind them. I’d love to

Andrew Rocks
see you consider hands. That visual, wasn’t it, you know, like, and from the life insurance thing like you do want that day?

Sue Viskovic
Yes, yeah. And it’s, again, back to this, you know, working with pods or some different pool tasks is making sure nothing’s falling through the cracks. It works for a workflow perspective, who’s doing the task, but it also works from building this relationship around the client. Because what we do need is advisors spending as much time doing the client delivery work as possible, because we know there’s certain elements of services that you provide that have to be done by a licensed advisor, and their relationship focused. So why would you even want them doing file notes? If it takes them hours to type with one finger on a keyboard? Why would you want them following up product providers when they get got to sit on hold for two hours? And equally? Why would you want the clients having to wait three hours for a call back from an advisor that’s in back to back meetings when you’ve got a client service manager that knows the client just as well, that is beautiful on the phone that is really friendly and can get their problem solved? Within a moment? Right?

Andrew Rocks
And you know, what? I’ve just had a cursory glance over the five businesses that were were reviewing. And I have global teams. Yes, some of those global teams with the good people at VA platinum and someone with VBP. But yeah, every single one of them have made a decision to do that. I think. I think that’s because most of these people aren’t focusing on super high net worth clients, they’re not looking at the sort of the $10,000,000.50 Grand fees, which, which other practices do so they need to be able to have a palatable entry point for their clients to be able to get into their business so they can grow with them. But yeah, that concept of, of having the right people and the global team, it’s not all the time, but when I looked at them, every single one, there you go,

Sue Viskovic
they do Yeah, and you know what it makes commercial sense. You know, if you can have team members that can do a role for 30 grand a year, as opposed to having to pay someone 80 grand a year, and the extra on costs, or whatever that is, commercially, it makes sense. But also, you know, there’s some key success bankers for people to pull that off. And one of the big things that was a common theme I saw is that these firms don’t consider them to be outsourced staff, they consider them to be team members that happen to be located in the Philippines or in another country. They’re working from home, they’re working from an office, but they’re remote. And they’ve worked together as part of a team. And the only way to get the efficiencies of that. And the scalability of that is coming back to what we talked about before with the consistency of these firms having one way, same way, we follow a process, we put ever build everything around with the client at the center of it, and we deliver our advice and services in the most effective way as we can. And so I would see that as being a commercial success factor. But it’s also quality of client delivery, it means that you see a Simpson relationship, people have more time to spend on those high value relationship based tasks. And somebody else can do some more of the admin stuff that doesn’t necessarily need to be manning the phones or any of those other elements.

Andrew Rocks
I think my comment on that is is that that the last part of the motivation, which is having the right talent doing the right things, was by far the driving force. Having been in all five hours of these ones, I don’t think anyone mentioned the commercial vacations. I think it just meant that, you know, the the talent crunch in Australia is yeah, the fact that also that if you are an AR or a py or a paraplanner anyone, and you’re in an inefficient business, it’s just not fun. So, so they’ve kind of like what comes first, the chicken or the egg or a horse in the car will be anyway we’ll see I’ll go get to work a bit more on these things. I’ve only got two up my sleeve. But if you don’t build a team and have some people doing those repetitive time consuming jobs, and make them feel like culturally This is really awesome. So this is the person who is on hold to the good people at Zurich who was sponsoring this podcast or one or Harboe never right, or the good people at CFS who sponsored the py program for ensembles shout out if we don’t have those people getting those questions and getting those answers we don’t have paraplanners We don’t have advice every we’ve got no revenue got nowhere. So so. So there is commercial outcomes but but from what I’ve sort of ascertained is that it doesn’t even form part of how they feel the relationship is managed to be brutally honest.

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, that word relationship, it really is there. They are humans that are a part of their team. You know, I love the, I think it was Tim was saying it’s one of the performance rewards for the great team members on the Australian team, they get to go over to the Philippines and catch up at the client conference and meet their people face to face and build those relationships. So I think all of these elements come together to start lifting that capacity of the advisor. And look, you know, some clients, I know, some advisors will say, Oh, you know, we maxed out about 80 to 100. Clients, we can’t see any more than that others will be 150. You know, we’re trying to encourage firms to say, look, we know it’s a finite resource advisors, and we’re wanting to grow more. And I’m glad you mentioned the py program to from CFS, because we want to figure out a way to get more advisors into the profession, although one thing and I hope he won’t be upset by this, I’m sure he won’t is Paul, Paul made an off the cuff remark that if it’s hard in a small business to bring on a py person, because they’re not productive. That doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.

Andrew Rocks
It’s it’s true. And I think, one py first coming out, there was you know, we were still sort of in that you must do this, you must do that. And people were a bit gun shy around, you know, the extent to which they could help clients. But I think as we’ve settled in you add to it, they’ve realized that there is some productivity that can be done. Plus also shout out. I mean, if you’re a if you’re a self license business of which bear there are lots of them. In fact, I think four of the five of the notable exception being icebreakers that are licensed through Australian unity shout out to both icebreakers ASX listed company and Australian unity 156 year old AFSL. They, we’ve got some scaffolding now. So, there is some scaffolding around the py. So I think it is starting to work. Now. I was also then thinking, you know, getting, getting some the manifestation of once we get the capacity, right? Yes, we give these bloody advices. Not as a CFP, you know, probably Australia’s worst for 20 odd years. So now I’ve got some extra hours. How do we serve the clients better? And that? Yeah,

Sue Viskovic
well, I loved one of the things I wanted to try to ban actually for this because so many national bene Donald Bernie Nash wanted to again, I had to rename one of them as our Garen. So Ben had a really interesting way of separating out the responsibilities for the different roles within the business. So we might might actually throated that one. And then and then we’ll come back and have a chat about that.

Ben Nash
Look, I think one thing that is a little bit different with how we do things a pivot is that we separate out our sales function and our advice function pretty distinctly. So separate people, even separate people. So I think that advisors need to be able to sell I think everybody needs to be able to sell, they need to be able to sell ideas, they need to be able to get their point across, they need to sell people to, particularly with clients, getting them to do the things that they want to need to do to get the outcomes that they want. But one of the things that I realized in growing a team is that it’s actually quite a different skill set from for what you want from an advisor, and what you want from a salesperson. And for for an advisor, at least at pivot wealth. We need someone that likes people, sure, but like someone that’s into the detail around technical strategies and supporting clients, you know, nailing their file nodes and making sure their SOA is a rock solid, and all of those sorts of things. That’s not necessarily in fact, it’s not actually the same as someone that thrives on, you know, building relationships and selling people just talking to people all day, every day, we actually for an advisor, we’re looking for someone that’s probably a little bit more detailed, orientated, maybe even a little bit more introverted, that is going to nail all of that detail so that the clients can rest easy knowing that we’re all over that stuff behind the scenes. Whereas first salesperson, burn someone that can talk your ear off and just loves being in conversations. But we don’t really want or need someone that needs to be super detail orientated. In fact, you probably don’t even want someone that super detail orientated because when people are buying, they’re buying, you know, on an emotional level at a bigger picture level, rather than an ultra detailed level, at least in my experience. He’s good at articulating

Sue Viskovic
who he really is. And what I love about this piece is that there’s so many so many bits that I could talk about here, right one, recognizing natural skill sets and personality types, right? Recognizing the value in different people’s skills. So So yeah, if you’re awesome with a spreadsheet, and if you are a brilliant technical technician, then then there’s a place for that. And we want to leverage that and do the best make that work the best way for the clients. By the same token, there’s some of the elements of a client engagement process that you don’t necessarily need to have that that technical proficiency to deliver. And this comes back to having this team serviced approach. I know and I went and check this actually, because I was thinking, as I was listening to Ben, I’m thinking, Oh, I’m not sure how happy the clients would be to know that they’ve been put in front of a sales manager so they can make the sale. But as I suspected, they’re actually called a relationship manager. So so so pivot, introduce people has been, you know, you may talk to your relationship manager, or I know, Ben was talking to people behind the scenes within the profession

Andrew Rocks
at MGM. And you know, what, if I get back to sort of one of the iconic financial advice practices, the pork with real AIPAC? Yes, listen, you did the money show. And it’s probably the reason why people understand what we do. In the late 90s. He had a similar model. He had a he had a similar model, where he had some people because, you know, you’ve got your left and right brains and some people need some clients need just a little bit of motivating to get started. But that’s once they’ve started though, they’re gonna get deep into detail. So I think what I’ve been saying is is that that they get a bit of a feel for who is going to work best with with those clients and he has a lot of as he quiet ease what a tech requirements. So you got to think I mean, they might be all trendy and, and, you know, turtlenecks and whatnot. But their day job is pretty, pretty detailed. So you’re going to need some some pretty, pretty robust sort of detailed orientated, sort of ongoing relationship people. And when she quite often is a counterpoint to the salespeople, we all know which one is eating sushi. So

Sue Viskovic
be able to guess which cat

Andrew Rocks
we can cut that bit out. Yeah, that’s sort of how we roll. Isn’t that so? So So what else are your thoughts about pivot?

Sue Viskovic
Ah, look, I love what Ben’s building there. And his gorgeous wife I love on the website, too. She’s called the boss lady. I love it. And and I observe in listening to the way Ben describes his business, he’s absolutely building now for scale. So even though I think when you recorded it was the app to it, ah, should have written written this down on my nose. He was talking about getting comfortable on a podcast, he said, he’s got three advisors that he’s building for getting to the point of having 100 advisors. And so rather than going, Oh, we’re just gonna say yes to everybody, and then backfill our problems later, he actually talks about the fact that he, they got to that point, he’s got brilliant marketing. As you say, he’s a prolific writer, they’ve got these sales funnels that are converting digital leads off Tic Toc, that come in through their process that people are met, where they’re at in that process to be able to get more information to move forward. But what that does is it drops out of the bottom of the funnel, a whole bunch of really qualified leads, he got so many at one point that they had to pull back and stop so that they could serve the people that they were getting through. And so now he’s got this beautiful infrastructure where he knows who’s doing what in the advice process, he knows who is recruiting, he knows how many, and when he has to bring people on, that is a really curated way of building a scalable business. And I know he’s like got little duck legs, you know, going like man underneath the surface. But he’s he’s doing it building it with intention, which I love.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. And I think he calls it smart money accelerator. So yeah, they do. They do. They feel solid, you know, they think it’s $30,000. But they don’t, they don’t keep rolling. And, you know, every year, they’ve got to go back and, and justify, and some years people will stay on that. And some years, they won’t be as much work. So they’re hyper transparent. And I think that comes across in that but but to be fair, all these practices are very professional in the way in which they’re engaging their, their clients. And, and when I think about the ongoing management of these clients, I kind of think, well, you know, what does it mean by servicing a client better? So, one end of the spectrum, Ben Nash is very much a we’re going to do a lot of work and you’re going to pay for it today. And then we get to the bit where we don’t do much work, you don’t pay for it at the time. And then when we do it, right, yeah. And then you’ve got icebreakers. They’re like, well, we don’t do any more control in relation to their partners. They’re worth partners will bring them in, as the surgeon to come in as part of, you know, a whole family office where they’re doing the risk. They come in, they do best practice. They sit that piece of risk up, they then work with The partner, you know that and they work to manage the ongoing, you know, craziness around renewals and life insurance and whatnot. So and claims, I think, yes, they

Sue Viskovic
mentioned a specific claims manager,

Andrew Rocks
correct? Correct. Yeah. And, and just some, some really confronting statistics coming out of COVID with mental health claims and, and a Deloitte Survey, which I’ve got another podcast dropping in a couple of weeks, and you’re gonna quite the same thing. But there’s a Recent Deloitte Survey saying that over the last, I think, let’s say two years, right, say confident, no no’s over the last few years, there’s 1 million less insured people in Australia, it’s gone from four to 3 million. That’s that is frightening. That’s frightening, right? So so, you know, making sure you’re doing that and delivering that that community service is very important.

Sue Viskovic
Yes. And to your point there Ruoxi, it’s, it’s it building out the best way to serve clients better. It depends on the different business that we’re talking about. We’ve talked about the whole capacity planning to have the right people doing the right things. And we saw that through so many of the firm’s, but it was also then making sure that the client’s needs are met in the best way possible. So there’s the there’s the soft element element of it in that, you know, people have a relationship with the client service manager, they don’t just have to speak to the advisor when they need something. But then the pure, technical aspect of it when somebody needs insurance advice, you know, there was one of the firms that had an insurance specialist, and they worked in house and I think that was only a than the last two years, but already he’s, you know, he’s showing incredible knowledge and expertise that they couldn’t do without him to, you know, the the Austbrokers model where people then bring in the specialists when they need to, they they refer the client on. But I think what it comes down to is being really clear around the types of clients that a firm is choosing to work with. And, you know, everybody’s heard for years, the concept of the ideal client, try it. In practice, when we work on this with firms. You know, I always talk with quotation marks, and I think, is the ideal client. And I think people think, you know, ideal is like, you know, rainbows and unicorns, it’s not actually possible to do because people will create, and we help them do it, right, let’s create an avatar of the perfect client that you want. And let’s be very specific about who it is that you’re trying to create your business around. The act of doing, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to niche down really tight. But what it does mean is that you can create your service offering and the way that you deliver. So in theory, it sounds great, right. But the practical reality is, people will often create the definition of the type of client that they’re building the business around, but they’ve got an existing practice already. So a lot of their current clients might not necessarily meet the definition of the people they want to build the future of the firm with. But the thing that really struck out across all of these firms that we talked about it that were in the podcast, is that they’re some of them were quite niche, some of them were fairly broad, but they all had this view of, we don’t have to be all things to all people, right, don’t necessarily need to niche really tight. But we’re okay, if clients coming asking for things that don’t suit the value proposition that we’ve got, they don’t, we don’t need to win every client. And that also extended to staff, like quite a few of them talked about how important it is to ensure that they’re culturally aligned with their people, that you get great people, you’ll let them do a great job and trust them, and they will excel. But it doesn’t mean everybody is the right fit for every business. And I think that’s, that’s really

Andrew Rocks
important. It’s horses for courses. Now, speaking of courses, did you see what I did? I thought we were chatting more for air. And, you know, I got this. I got wrangled into this engine room podcast, the CEO and founder of ensemble Clayton, Daniel, who we all love, he kind of he said, Look, I think what the industry is missing is talking about the business of the business. And, and having a lens and being quite, you know, agnostic across tech and everything. And, and so about beginning of the year, like literally nine months ago, we said we’re gonna do this engine room one, we’re going to promote practice management. And, you know, I ran into you at a conference in in August. And you’re like, you know, I’m doing this practice management course. And when did you do that? Did you copy me? So tell me, when did you when did you start the course.

Sue Viskovic
We launched in about nine months ago. So it must have been about the same time that you that you launched the podcast. And because, you know, we saw many of the firms that we work with, you know, we come in, we help them define strategy. We help them you know, create their growth plans or their management plans, and then things fall down because they don’t get it executed, or they don’t have the bandwidth because the principals, you know, too busy with their client load. And they have people come up through the business that are really excellent team members that nobody has ever been able to train them in how to be a practice manager, half the time they’re employed as a practice manager in a firm way, nobody in that firm even knows what should be on the job description of the practice manager is like, hey, go, let’s run this, try it and see what happens. So we were finding our coaches, we’re doing a lot of work with staff members of the firms we work with, and then we went, hey, you know what, there’s got to be a better way to do this, there’s a, there’s a lack of training for us to improve these skill sets. No one else is doing it, let’s do it, we’ll invent it there we do.

Andrew Rocks
And look, as I’ve mentioned, um, you know, a lot of when I’ve asked, I asked about, what’s the vision of the future to practice managers and, and, you know, quite often they very complimentary of ensemble and unfought, they do and, and they all kind of sort of say, well, if you really good if we had like a bit more of a space, or a bit more, where we were talking about common language, as much as, as much as we can put up with our AI ours to, you know, going on about, which is the best investment strategy. And here’s my fancy whiteboard. By the way, as a reformed CFP, is our helping space, there is probably, you know, a fair bit a fair a fair gap in in some structured training, and potentially, before we might do carriers, we might pop sous sous link in there. And probably, so I’d love you to chat with the, the ensemble team about, you know, how, how we, because we’re all about promoting that. And why that yes, is that, that it takes a village to raise a business or whatever it was to try to get in there, right. But if you are starting right now, you don’t have to be you don’t have to want to work your way through to be the client facing advisor. You know, I’m a big fan of the fact that there’s some really powerful CEOs and general managers of practices that I’ve interviewed, and I am going to interview who basically run their business, they’re the ones that deal with the suppliers, who are the ones that the the BDMS nervously present to around will their practice, take their portfolio, you know, times have changed. So, you know, I’m very much very much that that would work really well. And the course if you’ve got there, you can have a look at it’s in the works. And what I’d like to, I suppose finish with is, look, it’s wonderful to to bring you on and start unpacking, I’m looking forward to, you know, rolling different sorts of guests in different sorts of insights. But I definitely know that the the five quality practices that we unpack today, we’ll really appreciate the commentary, and I hope that the listeners out there, sort of really get this infectious, kind of, I suppose, catch, catch what we’re all about, which is, let’s build the business of the business. Yeah, let’s build some decent platforms. Let’s execute. Right. And let’s move past the headwinds of the last 10 years. Let’s put the friggin Spinnaker up

Sue Viskovic
Here, baby. The opportunities are phenomenal.

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. And with that, I’d love to thank you, Sue, for unpacking, as always Kieran the sound guy, another quality one with all of us stumbling around without quotes. And we’ll be back to regular regular engineers next week. Sue, thank you very much for your time. Have a great day.

Sue Viskovic
Thanks so much for having me. Cheers.