Engine Room Podcast #26 – Alysia Laird – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Engine Room. Now I’m gonna start with a quote which you don’t normally do. But this particular business has a fair bit of sort of just a good vibe and you know, and it’s an award winning business. But let’s start with one. No two zebras have the same stripes. No two humans have the same fingerprint. No two individuals have the same needs. And this is the byline of zebra tailored wealth, which is headed up by the powerful Alysia Laird. Who’s with me today. Good morning, Alysia. Morning. Well, the good news is it’s this is not your first rodeo with ensemble. Can you remember what the last time that you came on?

Alysia Laird
I can, I can’t. It was the end of 2020 December 2020. And I was chatting to Clayton,

Andrew Rocks
and it would have been remote back in the back then

Alysia Laird
it was definitely remote. Yep, COVID times.

Andrew Rocks
And Kieran, the sound guy and I we did a bit of stalking, we went and re listened to your podcast. So throughout this interview, we’re actually going to be able to go back like a Polaroid picture, and figure out, you know, what you thought was going to happen and where you are now. But the reason that we spoke only recently is that I think some of what you’ve learned has happened. But I think way more, I think you’ve probably progressed in the three years, a lot further but with without me stealing your thunder, I’d love to hear about you know a bit about your backstory of how you’ve come into running zebra tailored wealth. You know, you’re with an institution for many years, and just get a feel for you know, if anyone has helped you along the way so, so maybe you regale us of way back when please.

Alysia Laird
Alrighty, yeah. So I was with a and Zed for 16 years or so. And it was

Andrew Rocks
a preschool sort of internship. Is that right?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, I had I had one year at Commonwealth as a power planner and then straight into ANZ at the age of 21 or 22, or something like that.

Andrew Rocks
Did you know what financial planning was at 2122

Alysia Laird
I actually didn’t. So funnily enough, I got this Commonwealth graduate program. And I went away to Canada for seven months, and I got back the day before my graduate program started. And I was in the waiting room with a beautiful girl, Monica Monahan, who’s still one of my best mates now. And I leant over and I said, Do you know what a power plant is? And she’s like, nope, do you? So

Andrew Rocks
Well, the good news. The good news is it’s not a financial planner in Parramatta, of which there are quite a lot. But no, I didn’t know. I mean, the whole concept of power, I think, was something that was quite remote, because, you know, there’s paralegals and power brokers paraplanners. But back then, it was like, I wonder what that is. So you started in at age 21? What kind of financial planning were you? When? When so which bank were you working with?

Alysia Laird
So that was CBA, down in Canberra, Canberra grad program. Okay.

Andrew Rocks
And what brought you to Sydney where we are now?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, one year at CBA grad program, and at the end of that CBA was like, Oh, you guys all want jobs. And they couldn’t quite work out where to put us. And so we all having had this amazing year of training. We were all kind of out on our own to work out what to do. So I grabbed a three month contract at A and Zed. And I left 16 years later.

Andrew Rocks
Sounds like Gilligan’s Island. You went on a three hour tour. You’re washed up in a desert island with the hands in and you graduate and you left their 16 year later. And what was the impetus for leaving because from from memory if I do the maths, that was before ANZ had shut the doors.

Alysia Laird
That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I the impetus was, so I had a daughter in 2015. And I was going to take four months off work. And my husband was going to be mum dad, for a couple of years or something. So it was going to work really well. And she was one month old when he got offered a really good gig in New York. And so we went, Ah, so my four month maternity leave ended up turning into three years living in New York having another child. Yes, I got back at the beginning of 2019 to a and Zed. And the world was very different. And I was building up my essentially building up a business anyway from scratch. So I thought, Oh, gee, I should probably do that for myself. Yeah. And

Andrew Rocks
I imagine, you know, the lens that you look at being all of a sudden with two more responsibilities that didn’t exist, you know, five years earlier, you kind of think, well, what can I do in order to make sure I’m there for everyone and running your own business has that allure. Although sometimes it is a double edged sword, which I imagine will we’ll touch on today.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, I mean, it always seemed like a good idea to start a business but I ended was amazing to us all. It was such a such a great place to work and so we just never had any any reason to leave. But beginning in 2019, I had a pretty good reason. So I’m very

Andrew Rocks
good and whilst To wrap up just go via instead of wrapping them, you know, it is relatively rare we get people in here robbing banks. So, but bank is only an institution where there any people in that period of time that when when you were sort of honing your skills that really helped you you’d like to give a shout out to.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, we had so many amazing people. One of them still my one of my best mates now, Neil Duncan Hill, like the shout out. Yeah, I mean, it’s so many of my colleagues at now have their own businesses, which are amazing businesses, and we all still catch up, and we’re having our own little PD day this Friday, and just a great group to share with and, and they really did teach us the value of advice. You know, we were we were, it wasn’t all, obviously, we all had to move to fee for service away from commissions and things like that. But they actually taught us how to be proper advisors. It was pretty amazing. I’m a bit I’m a bit sad about the future of the newer generation having to learn but not having that, that platform to learn with, I guess,

Andrew Rocks
well, I think they definitely have the desire. And you know, one of the things that we might talk at the end, when I asked you, you your thoughts and opinions of the industry is that, yeah, there’s there’s not that big institution who has the ability and the pockets to train the professional planners for tomorrow, it’s been left to small, medium business owners that have, you know, increased compression of time and resources, b capital or otherwise. So, I’m not sure how that works. I mean, we I always give a shout out to the ensemble platform for being, you know, as second set of hands for small business owners when they are bringing people through. But more more helps needed, I believe. So then you kicked off zebra, okay, where the name come from?

Alysia Laird
Well, yeah, it all started with a T shirt that my daughter had, which was kind of somebody painting a rainbow zebra that said, express yourself, and I was like, Oh my gosh, I really love that. And yeah, just I love art. I nearly became a professional artist rather than a financial planner,

Andrew Rocks
or more information, Ellis more information. So So was that when you first graduated, university, or Yeah,

Alysia Laird
yeah, I nearly went and did fine art instead of finance. So but then I decided I do enjoy having money. And I thought, no, you know what, I’ll do art as a hobby. And I’ll do finance as my career, which is good.

Andrew Rocks
Well, it’s good. It’s, I suppose it gives you that balance? And if you can do so. So back to zero, but you had the you had the colorful zebra had

Alysia Laird
the colorful zebra. And then yeah, I was just brainstorming, how do I get a zebra into it? And then we thought about the no to zebras have the same fingerprint of the same stripes. And no two humans do have the same fingerprint. And it just kind of worked. And then I designed the logo where you’ve got kind of looks like a fingerprint, but it’s actually two zebras. It does indeed,

Andrew Rocks
that’s right. And I did when I listened to your podcast in December 2021 of the things that you stated, which was quite profound is that you like to have, you know, each client gets individually tailored portfolios, which you said, with great pride. But you also then said, but I will need to figure out how I’m going to make that scalable, so that I end up with a highly paid job that ended up with a business. And we were talking off air. And, you know, you mentioned that they’re sort of where to in the future. And you still want to be able to personally maintain that. That ability to work with clients. And you made reference to you’ve, you’ve also not just worked with, with clients, but you’ve helped a lot of individuals, a lot of other women in particular, over the last couple of us, I think you’ve quoted in the hundreds of people that you’ve you’ve assisted at quite a vulnerable time for them. But you’re looking to potentially build your engine room, but you stay as the advisor and bring someone in who potentially it really enjoyed doing that. Is that correct?

Alysia Laird
Yeah. Yeah, potentially. Yeah, we’ve got a no, we’re going to talk about the team and stuff like that. So yeah, we’ve now got three advisors. So I guess the question for the future is, yeah, if the three of us want to continue to be advisors, then yeah. What do we do to allow that to happen for us to keep helping more and more clients? And the answer is probably getting a CEO or somebody over the top, who can kind of sort out the rest of our business and help us keep getting better.

Andrew Rocks
So just the fact that the self awareness of saying that the fact that you said a CEO over the top, rather than underneath you, is, is means that I believe you’ve probably got a chance. You know, I sometimes see your really powerful founders who are great with revenue and clients, and then they hire a general manager or CFO, and then they spend all day telling him exactly what to do. And you know, it’s like, oh, yeah, so, so no, well played, well played. And tell me your look, I reached out to you because I was some I was on my link. Dean has been my want. And notice that you want practice of the bloody year this year. Congratulations. Tell me more about that.

Alysia Laird
Thank you. Yeah. So we’re with our advice, who we love. So shout out to Joseph a route and Peter Hornsby and things are changing a little bit for us next year. But yeah, we’ve been with them the whole time. And I just, I feel like I’ve had so much support, there’s no way it’s ever would have succeeded the way it has without their support. And they obviously like us, too, because, yeah, we got the practice of the year, which is pretty cool. And did you know, I knew a couple a couple of hours beforehand. Right.

Andrew Rocks
Okay. Okay. Yeah, make sure that you’re not having an advertorial. That the MCS nightmare. I guess we’ll go back. Next one, but

Alysia Laird
But yeah, that was amazing. Because we had that was at a conference in Auckland, and they had April and Zoe, who were the the well, if the next to zebra, like the first two zebras that came on board, and they’re still with us now.

Andrew Rocks
Oh, fantastic. And we’ll talk about that as well. And I remember in your, the podcast from from a few years ago, you the rationale for picking IWF, which is ri advice was that had a lot of that a and Zed sort of lineage and, and although you were moving into self into your own business, you still had a lot of those resources and whatnot. And, and you know where we are today, we’re talking about your two new partners that have come into your business, Scott and Ross, and they’ve come in from a and Zed but but I took a while to get here. Is that right? They did. Tell us that story?

Alysia Laird
Yeah. So when I when I did decide to start the business, there are only two planners in Sydney that I that I trusted and kind of approached and thought, yeah, I think I could work with these people. And one was Scott, and one was Ross. But at the time, for various reasons. They just weren’t quite ready. So yeah, a couple of years later, when I ended financial planning closed down. And then also six months after that, because Ross was in private bank, but that hasn’t shut down. But yeah, both both kind of decided at different times that they would quite like to have their own businesses or not be with the big, big bank anymore. And thankfully, they kind of came to me and said, Hey, can we still do that things? Like, yeah,

Andrew Rocks
so tell me though, before that you were you’re running your own business, you had some support, that we’re helping you you’re building up your client base, you’re managing your client base? Did you really want to grow a business? Or was it just when they trusted you with their future? That you thought there’s something more in this? Maybe I’ve got a little bit of that in that in me?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, I think the letter? Yes. Yeah, I was pretty happy. Like I’m very happy with Zoey in April. And we were all having a lovely time. But, but the writing was on the wall about single advisor businesses as well, just hard to

Andrew Rocks
why is it hard

Alysia Laird
to well, just probably higher expenses. Harder to scale, obviously, because it’s kind of just us sitting there. I was I’m very lucky that my my partner is also an our advice. Owner. Sorry, rates. So he’s up in Queensland, but that was amazing for like camaraderie and just being able to kind of bounce ideas off each other and things like that, which I hadn’t really had. But still the the final decision was down to me, right. And then the actual implementing was was still kind of just little old me sitting there. Whereas now to be able to share with the boys it’s, it’s pretty great. Yeah, more done.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. And also, I think what you know, you opened with the cost of got more, and that’s that’s just the mechanics of how licensing works and, and technology and whatnot. So maybe we can we can sort of change gears and talk a little bit about sort of how you’re running your business because the Scott riddle and Ross Falconer came on how long ago?

Alysia Laird
A bit over a year. Okay.

Andrew Rocks
So the honeymoons over gentlemen, if you’re listening, so, we’re now going to talk about sort of the your mutual philosophy on how you’re operating your business. You clearly very happy with Ri and Ri has got a new incarnation. Is that somewhere where you’ll be headed? Fisher ASC? Okay, great. And I think that that sort of happening in the next six months from from just from a viewer from afar. Awesome. So let’s talk about sort of the business. Do you like when you obviously add your own clients? I imagine Scott and Ross came with some some of their own trusted clients over the years as well. Yep. Okay, so do you run your business as a collaborative? Do you have your own p&l? Is it to pod or not to pod maybe give us a bit of a feel of how how it operates today, and then later on, we can talk about you know, your wish list? Yep.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, I guess we do have the pods because when Ross and Scott came On we already had. So we got April who was the originals Empress. She’s with VBP. And she’s amazing. So it’s been nearly four years now. And she’s like family, like she literally has come out and stayed at my house and my kids still talk about her now and you’ve ruined

Andrew Rocks
VBP. You took her to New Zealand. I took her sorry, the screen well noted. Carry on.

Alysia Laird
That was difficult. Getting visas for New Zealand. But yeah, I worked about 24 hours prior. So yeah, so April. And then I’ve also got Zoey who’s amazing. So she’s a Sydney girl. And I was kind of at the point, I think it was about six months after that first podcast. So it was kind of mid 2021. And I thought April and I are amazing. But I really need person sitting sitting with me right? Now I can pass them a file or say, Hey, could you do the brainstorming here? And so I think it was May 2021. And I spoke to my mate Alistair bar, who’s founded Stryver

Andrew Rocks
he’s not the first time he’s been a guarantee. I’m gonna you know what to do with check the link in.

Alysia Laird
So yeah, I was literally I was like, I’m not sure what to do. Maybe I’m thinking of maybe getting a part time person or maybe I’ll get a mum who’s come back from maternity leave or something like that. And he said, I’ve actually I’ve got I’ve got the person for you already. And I was like what he said yet? Do you want to meet her at eight o’clock tomorrow morning at your office at Macquarie Park? And I was like, yes. And by that afternoon, I pretty I said to Zoey? Yeah. Like I’m unsold. And she took about a week to think about it, and then came back and said, Yep, I’d love to come. So apparently I didn’t offer the most money, but there was something about zebra that she loved. So that’s been amazing. That’s now been two and a half years. So um,

Andrew Rocks
one of my questions is, you know, maybe explain how you later on how you do your recruitment process. But a lot of you, you rock up there and say, yep, I want you today. And then she comes back to you in a week. So it’s, it’s, it’s, I get a feeling that you’ve got a lot of what you do and is deep relationships. You know, you mentioned that the two advisors that are involved with you at the moment are the two that you trusted, you probably work with them for a decade, you lean in on relationships a lot. So that’s a double edged sword, which which, you know, we might ask some questions about but yeah, but shout out to Zoe’s Aang who’s, who’s still punching along there. So, so you’ve now got three, three advisors. And are they running their own p&l under your overarching Zimbra structure?

Alysia Laird
Yeah. So we’ve we’ve all got our own kind of client bases and p&l? Yes. Yeah, we love the fact we don’t necessarily have to deal with each other’s clients day to day or anything like that. But we love the fact you know, we’ve we’ve both Ross and I have been to Europe this year, for a month each. And it’s just lovely to go away and know that zebra could actually give you a client advice if you needed to, because otherwise, the minute you step on that plane, you can’t give advice when you’re overseas.

Andrew Rocks
It’s like having a locum if you’re a GP in a town, you know, so sometimes it’s been really hard for them to go away. And look, that’s an interesting byproduct. And wasn’t something that was mentioned when we talked about the struggles of being a single advisor is is that ability to have someone to cover you.

Alysia Laird
Yep, yep. And succession, or what kind of stuff just the what ifs. So we’ve all we’ve done our Buy Sell agreements, and all that kind of stuff now, because if something did happen to any of the three of us, we would just love to know that our clients actually looked after and now they will be

Andrew Rocks
whereas so you’re practicing what you’re preaching to clients with Buy Sell agreements in funding. Okay, awesome. So how do you apportion the engine room? The the currently the people in your team who are doing advice, production or research? How do you manage that between the three headed dragon so to speak?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, so at the moment, so April and Zoe are still just because everything was working so well, April and Zoe, it’s still kind of helping me. But we do have another lovely girl at virtual business partners mu. And she helps Ross and Scott with some of their back offices sort

Andrew Rocks
of building again, sort of

Alysia Laird
what we did there, and we’re finally we’re all coming together. We’ve kind of there’s so much in April’s head and Zoe’s head in my head. And it’s all just worked for four years, right, but it’s not down on paper. And so well, now it is where we’re getting there

Andrew Rocks
where you can put it down on video as well, right? So you can do those sort of things.

Alysia Laird
Zipper zippers kind of Yeah, have been in the same room for the last couple of weeks, kind of one day a week for the last few weeks, and where hopefully by the end of the year, or the processes will be all documented. And even though so we’ve got Ross as a private wealth advisor, so very high net worth individuals, Scott’s kind of 50s plus kind of lots of retirees and a lot of my new clients are actually more 30s and 40s. So we’ve actually got very different businesses but we have worked out that really were the same kind of breed of advisor. And we, we can actually make it so that zebra does things one way, but we can tailor tailor it to the client.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look. And, you know, the one commonality with those three types of client base is that every client’s been in every other sector. And we’ll be, you know, your 30 to 40 is will end up being in the 50s, or 60s at some stage, specifically with your own client base. Because this is the one that you took in you kicked off well, what’s what’s the methodology, or what’s the, your preferred type of client,

Alysia Laird
I tend to find that I’m mainly dealing with people like, like myself, and my friends, I guess I kind of say, like, usually, usually, it’s people in their late 30s, or 40s, or sometimes early 50s. And just dealing with all the complexities of life and kind of always had always had a pretty good and usually a couple of good incomes and never really had to budget, but now we’ve got maybe high debt repayments and $60,000 worth of school fees. And, you know, we’re getting a little bit older, maybe haven’t thought about the Super and sorted that out, maybe haven’t thought about the estate planning and sorted that out, we just kind of come in and help fix their entire financial life. That’s really all we do just the holistic. Everything.

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely not I love I used to love those clients. And, and fundamentally, when people asked me what I did, I would always sort of say, I make people do things they know they should do in a timeframe they otherwise wouldn’t. It’s true, isn’t it? You know, and but but but sometimes it can be you know, I used to feel sometimes maybe the same that I felt sometimes I was more motivated to get this person to succeed than they were sometimes. And I suppose now, that’s very much your filter for what kind of clients that you guys want. Now, we’re about as we mentioned, Macquarie Park is probably in Macquarie Park in every state of Australia. So where are you located?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, so we’ve got an office in Macquarie Park, which is kind of four minutes from Lane Cove, which is where I live. So North Shore is Sydney. Got to got there eventually. But yeah, we’re also Ross’s in O’Connell, street and Sydney in the city. So to kind of two real offices, and then obviously, good old zoom, so my dog prefers me to be on Zoom. So

Andrew Rocks
Oh, What’s your dog’s name? Oyster? Is your dog, black and white dog? No.

Alysia Laird
No, but she does have a zebra costume.

Andrew Rocks
Okay, so that’s going to be one of the promo pics right? Yeah, I’m, I do like I do like the leaning on that. Now. How do you measure so with with with your engine room? So you’ve got you’re very happy with with your engine room? And you’re looking to then replicate that across your two partners? Who are coming in? How do you measure sort of operational success? Do you have sort of workflows? Or what’s what’s the mechanics of it for you?

Alysia Laird
We probably don’t do that enough at the moment. So with all the new processes that we’re implementing, we are going to be doing like 3x, plan threads and tasks and all that fun stuff. So shout out to Gil Gordon there. I was listening to the podcast that you did recently with him. And yeah, we’ve kind of got everything appropriately timed so that every task comes up at the right time. And so then we should be able to measure if, if for any reason, we got 30 tasks outstanding. Well, something’s not working, and we need to go back and fix it. So we’re hoping that helps with Yeah, all the timing of things and processes, so explains

Andrew Rocks
helping you deliver on what you’re actually delivering X plans, a platform for delivering advice. It’s pretty driver. Yep. And you’re you’re not I mean, you’re not getting visuals here, podcast listeners. But we’ve got a very bright Vivacious Lady here. What do you use, when you’re presenting to your clients,

Alysia Laird
we use wealth central now, which is, is owned by insignia. So they’ve been developing it. And it is amazing. So it’s that real goals based visual projections. Cash Flow

Andrew Rocks
gives an example I hear that all the time, but give give like one or two examples of the thing that the go to in the software that you go to and just know that there’s going to be a bit of magic in the room.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, well, it’s I mean, it’s so good even from the fact phone face. So before if anyone is coming to meet with me, they’ve already popped all their information in the in the software for me. But it literally only takes them 10 or 15 minutes. And it’s kind of fun. Like they’ve made it a bit like a game. So they’re dragging themselves in and their kids in their house and, and all that kind of stuff. So they’ve already met turns into our wealth portal. So they’ve essentially before they’ve even properly met me, they’ve already met the wealth portal and entered all their data for us. And so then in that meeting, once we’ve clarified all the data, we can literally switch to something called projections and they can see you know, that their money is going to run out by the age of 67 or that their money is never going to run out or there’s even a little postcard from the future so they can actually actually saved themselves and their house and all this kind of stuff. So it’s just yet for those visual people who may have otherwise been bored, you know, you can you’re sharing your screen or you’re turning your monitor around or whatever. And they can actually kind of visualize their lives, which I think just keeps them. Keeps them more on track for the meeting as well.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, absolutely, we’re gonna come back to your infants of visual people. And I had experienced using that actual piece of software. And the bit that I liked was that when you did send the link, people would fill it out, because it is. And I know that developers spend a lot of time on that gamification. And it’s something as simple as once they’re finished entering that piece of data, the very next thing that you suggest them has to be awesome. You know, it’s a bit like, and so and by having by bringing in in humanizing it, I think, from memory, it even, like linked into Google Maps and stuff like that. So they Yeah, yeah, yeah. So or even their aspirational house, you could put in something like that. But we’re talking about people who are visual. And, you know, the way in which the industry has ended up is it’s, it’s basically been built by legislators that that are a completely left brain that, that are very wordy that, that haven’t really paid any real heed to people who are creative for all right, Brian enjoyed visuals. But when we go back to basics, visual learning is the highest percentage auditory is the next highest, and kinesthetics ties it all together. So do you find that you get a lot of cut through, especially with your clients that come to you maybe in moments of vulnerability? By having these tools?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, yeah, I think some of it’s got to do with the clients. I think a lot of it’s got to do with us, too. I look back, I don’t even know how I was a proper plan. And without this kind of software, you know, in the past, you go out and do a financial plan for someone, they come back to you. And they’re looking at all the projections, and they’re like, oh, and you know, what, if this happened, and you’d literally have to say all, I’ll be back in a week, you know, yeah, because you have to go away and do it all again, and pop it all on a piece of paper or whatever. And

Andrew Rocks
yeah, I’m sure that I’m sure that to the letter of the law, you were a perfect planner. But the impact and the I suppose responsiveness

Alysia Laird
to the client be able to show them what Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah. And

Andrew Rocks
look, that’s what’s needed. And it’s interesting that it’s um, it’s an shout out to yet again, your your licensee who’s incorporated that, and I imagine that’s dragging across to the new cow as well.

Alysia Laird
It is yeah, yeah. And then you add things like DocuSign and everything into the mix, you just go wow, it’s just amazing time savings.

Andrew Rocks
Someone just went well to a piece of technology. Okay, so I normally ask you about your tech stack. Now. Other things. You mentioned zoom. I’ve been coming across a lot of people recently and they’ve really lent into the Microsoft sort of platform. Is that part of what you’re in? Yeah, we

Alysia Laird
are. We are Microsoft 365 We we security in depth slash tech in depth. So Michael Connery, we, for all our cybersecurity and IoT stuff. We shout out to him. Great.

Andrew Rocks
What’s What’s the name of his business? Again,

Alysia Laird
security in depth?

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, don’t don’t sound guys nodded. That’s, that’s

Alysia Laird
a lock. So he does all the cyber audits for our advice and stuff. They got a great, great company there. Where are we going with that? Oh, yeah. So yeah, Microsoft 365? Yes. The only reason we use that for everything, except for some reason we’re on Zoom instead of teams, I just find it slightly quicker. And I don’t like wasting time.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, I was on Skype before zoom. I was on Slack before teams, these things change. And what’s what’s what’s really good is the fact that the contracts now very much SAS contracts means that you pay per month B, in the old days used to have these big sunk costs of technology, potentially you still deal with x plan with building threads and whatnot. But I imagine in your community of like minded businesses in your licensee that there’d be a bit of an ability to, to leverage off each other would that be right?

Alysia Laird
Sure. Not not even just our community. Really, it’s, that’s that’s the whole ensemble thing, isn’t it? Just all the sharing, it’s amazing that

Andrew Rocks
see that drinking game has begun were one nil. So now, it’s the positive evolution of financial advice is the positive evolution of financial advice practices. And perceivably. The general public and the clients only really see the bit that they see. And they don’t they don’t see that much value. When have you been on hold for 30 minutes to Centrelink or whatnot. So the more efficient and the less friction we can deliver to the frontline representative. So we are wonderful industry, the better so, yeah. And then I also asked a question, as far as people that potentially hold you to account like maybe a coach or a mentor, is there anyone who you touch base with from time to time and say, Am I mad?

Alysia Laird
Um, yeah, I’m good friends with Sharon McCafferty from slipstream coaching. So I’ve kind of they’ve helped me out a couple of times, and we’d probably love to use them or someone like them in the future. Yeah, the boys probably just spent the last 12 months kind of bedding down their businesses. And yeah, I’d say probably the next probably in what in six months, once all the processes are all sorted, and all that kind of stuff, we’ll probably look at a big where to next. Things are going really well. But yeah, we, if it ain’t broke, fix, it was something we heard the other day in the conference in New Zealand, which we thought was pretty good.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, no worries, no worries. And then let’s talk more about the sort of the human side of people. And thanks for sort of out laying out sort of how you like to run mechanics of your business. You also got the self awareness that as it grows, you’ll need to put other people in. I asked off air, you know, what would be the great thing that came out of this podcast? And you mentioned that many of you, by the way, you’ve just referred to your business partners as the boys three times. But you mentioned that potentially a little bit of different color as far as maybe bringing in a female advisor or two. Is that something that you is on your wish list? Or you’re really passionate about? Yeah,

Alysia Laird
I mean, we help a lot of women, we have a lot of women coming to us who do prefer women.

Andrew Rocks
And why is that? Why have you got a referral source? Or what’s the,

Alysia Laird
we help a lot of girls. So Verve super, has a super squad, they recently went to Ken Starr award for it. That’s pretty cool. So they’ve got kind of a business coach and a divorce coach and myself who help any of their girls that need help to

Andrew Rocks
slow down. So they’ve got that’s a virtue. Prusa is a product, it’s a place where you invest money, but they’ve got additional services that are promoted on their website, or what yeah,

Alysia Laird
they’re just, they’re amazing. So there’s three co founders there. And they they started this super fund, and then all the women were joining and saying, This is amazing. You’re my financial community, but they they are a super fund. They’re not the financial community. So so they built a financial community for these women. Okay. They’ve since also done yeah, Verve money, which is not super obviously, just investments. So yeah, we’ve just got to know a lot of lot of those women over time. It’s not exclusive to women. Men can definitely join too, but it is predominantly women. So we don’t yet we do just happen to help a lot of women. Zoe has done her perfect or just finishing her professional year, which is pretty cool.

Andrew Rocks
Sure, Joey. That’s it. That welcome and welcome to whiteboards.

Alysia Laird
So, yes, she doesn’t quite want to be a planner yet. But we’ll get there whenever she’s ready. So yeah, in the meantime, if we were going to get another, another advisor, probably get a female, I imagine.

Andrew Rocks
And tell us about then the cadence of, you know, are you working from home? You’re at Macquarie Park, I mean, you’ve come in very graciously today to, to the city to talk to me. But do you work from home some days? Do you advise this as hybrid if I was coming to work for you in the future? Which would be a fail for you. But if I was, we know, what would be the proposition? The non negotiables as far as where I’d work? And

Alysia Laird
yeah, I think we’d very much say hybrid, because we, most most of us, yeah, we might go into the office one day a week, maybe otherwise, predominantly from home or just when a client needs us in there. So very flexible, where I have complete faith in my employees. I do not care when they’re working or not working. I know they get their work done. And I know they work more than they probably need to anyway. So yeah, it would just have to be someone who’s who’s kind of happy with that flexibility and has such a good work ethic that we would never have to worry anyway. Kind of thing. Yeah, they’re all They’re all perfect, right? Nobody’s nobody’s left zebra yet. Oh, you guys want to keep that going?

Andrew Rocks
Now that’s that move. It’s a great testament. As far as the meeting rhythms, so I’m going to ask you the question, and I’m going to I’m going to paraphrase asked the answer into two parts. So what are the meeting rhythms of what I described as your vertical which is your personal engine room? And you know, what’s the cadence is weekly, daily, of how you meet your team? Yep. And then potentially the horizontal, you know, when you get together with your two other sort of advisors to share information, okay.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, so within our pods, it’s more we use Zoom message. So we’re always kind of chatting April and only have one scheduled meeting a week. But yeah, we wouldn’t be chatting a few times a day on on message. Zoey, and I would have a few Zoom video meetings a week to talk about various clients that we’re both working on together and all that kind of stuff. The directors, we have a six weekly kind of directors meeting where we kind of walk the entire day out. And

Andrew Rocks
typically a face to face meeting. Yeah, yeah, we

Alysia Laird
are there, either in the city or Macquarie Park. Okay. And

Andrew Rocks
every six weeks, so then, is that, uh, have you subscribed to a sort of a business cadence philosophy? Or is it just the timeframe that you know that that’s long enough to be able to achieve the things we agreed with last time? Yeah, exactly.

Alysia Laird
It just seems to be, it just seems to be a good length of time that you are forced to get done all the action items that you’ve kind of addressed or, or talked about in the previous meeting. But it doesn’t come around so quickly, that that you want to cancel it because you worried that you don’t have enough to talk about or something, we just find that six weeks works really well.

Andrew Rocks
And let’s talk about some of the tools that you use, because you mentioned that in between yourself, You’ve almost got a cradle to grave sort of client base. Do you run your own collective SMA or MDA? And is only platforms that really have helped you and your business? Especially in its infancy?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, we don’t, we don’t run our own, we do have, we have in the last 12 months developed our investment philosophy document, and it is the same for the three of us across the board. But it’s very tailored still, you know, it’s not just Oh, everybody uses this, you know, we’ve got the very tailored approach for the high net worth. And then we’ve got various SMEs, we’ve got a lot of clients that love the ESG approach. So we’ve got probably a lot more many more options there than many other advisors would feel that they need. So yes, we have the same investment philosophy, but it’s quite a long document. And and it’s very tailored for each client.

Andrew Rocks
Let’s talk about the ESG, for instance, because we’ve we’ve historically, we’ve had, you know, podcast series on ESG. Who do you work with there? Because I know I value your judgment there. And who do you think’s doing? Well,

Alysia Laird
we allowed to do proper product shout outs here. And we

Andrew Rocks
of course, we can do whatever we want. We even kindergarten security snoring.

Alysia Laird
We do use the Russell sustainable SMS quite a lot. That’s that they’re probably our main go to. We use BT shares fair bit as well going to meeting with him this afternoon. That’s probably enough production. And I think all Moreover,

Andrew Rocks
I mean, remembering that, you know, the desire of running the engine room is to reward the people in our ecosystem, we’re doing a good job. Yeah. So it’s not necessarily an advertorial. It’s very much. If no one ever mentions you and you’re a supplier than then potentially, you might want to go and ask your people for a few 360 feedback loops. So your shout out to Russell and finishes so well done. And I’m assuming that, you know, I asked other questions now about the engine room to do with, you know, incentives and whatnot around that. But as, as you’ve brought partners on and they’ve brought their own revenue streams, I imagine it’s very much a partner structure. But how do you reward the people who are working for you, your employees, and how do you celebrate? What sort of fun Do you have?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, well, I have a feeling from now on, we’ll all be going to all the conferences because we all had such a lovely time this year. So that’s kind of one way of all having a bit of a holiday together, which worked really well because because we’re not in each other’s faces all the time. It was quite lovely to go away and spend a whole block of time together and we took a few extra days

Andrew Rocks
I was just about to say like, what I’m getting the vibe and I’ve done that as well with my other businesses is whilst you’re over there, you’re you’ve done your check on a day or two at the end of the beginning. Yeah. And you can just get a little bit of that such valuable time and you’re in a good location.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, we had such a lovely time. We we we all came home and couldn’t all our muscles were a little bit so we’ve done I think we’ve done 35,000 steps in two days something stupid because we climbed few mountains and all that kind of stuff.

Andrew Rocks
Actually Great. Mountains. This wasn’t just wasn’t just on a whiteboard. That’s right. We’re about New Zealand was

Alysia Laird
it was in Auckland. Okay, so we did Mount Eden and went out to the island. So it cuts it off. It’s really good,

Andrew Rocks
very jealous, very, very jealous. In relation to the so going going on conferences is one but you know, how do you measure the output of your team members? Is it because you would have you all of you would have new clients coming in, you probably have a target for new clients. You’ve got your existing one If so you have to keep happy and resign their fee. Engagement every year. What does it what does a good week or month look like for yourself as far as productivity?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, to be honest, we we don’t have specific targets. I mean, we, I’m fairly certain we see more clients in our week than the average bear. Because we’re just happy being really, really busy. And I know that the girls are probably busier than the average assistant as well. So we are not fasting having any targets there or anything like that. At the end of the year, we we’d love to look back and kind of see how many clients we’ve helped, how many new clients we’ve helped and stuff like that.

Andrew Rocks
We don’t know the number from last year.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, it’s not a massive like, kind of, I think we were 30 clients or something. So more than one a fortnight, which, for us, is quite a lot, given how much time we spend on each client.

Andrew Rocks
And what’s the number of retained families or executives that you have each.

Alysia Laird
We’re only we’re probably only at 200, between the three of us. So, you know, when I first started the business owner, my number was 80. I didn’t want to necessarily go above 80. So fortunately, or unfortunately, I’m there. So I’m like, Oh, okay. But with technology, and all that kind of stuff. I think that number, obviously can definitely be exceeded. I mean, I know, I do know, a lot of advisors that do look after 150 or 200 clients, I don’t know, I don’t quite know how the two hundreds

Andrew Rocks
that I speak to lots of people. And I think the 200 might be a little bit ambitious at this stage. But there are some that have got that 150 As an aspiration, but they’ve built an engine room around them, and they’ve got they’ve got a lot of help, you know, they’ve got a variation, you know, in the wealth accumulation space. The one thing about that is they’re very rewarding clients, but their life does change. That’s right, you know, like, it’s it’s, they can meet someone, they can unmeet someone, they can have children, they can make an empty nest. It’s actually it’s actually I think it’s the fun part. Don’t get me wrong, pre retirement is very important. And, you know, I speak to a lot of advisors that love to get people five years before they get them in retirement. But yeah, it’s a lot of moving parts. Yeah. And yeah, it’s quite time. Do you have a tie in with an accountant or estate planning business or anything else?

Alysia Laird
Yeah. So I have I have some wonderful accountants down in Canberra.

Andrew Rocks
So this is from your early days from your because you left Canberra, what, perceivably 18 years ago? Is that right?

Alysia Laird
Yeah, well, this the founder of this accounting business, which is bond seller business solutions in Canberra, he burn is the brother of a best mate of mine from school. So yeah, I’ve known him for relationships. 35 years or whatever.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. So so and what what are you? So what’s if I was to ask them the role that you did for their clients? What do you think they would say?

Alysia Laird
The role that I did for their clients? I really know the answer, then just keep swaying, you will know Sorry, I keep sending to them. Right. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So,

Andrew Rocks
well, if you’re listening, if you’re listening friend from 25 years ago, it’s on the record as politely as like a plus.

Alysia Laird
I think they’ve got their own advisers. So I’m okay. I’m not I don’t require the I don’t require the leads back. I just, I just need to know that I’ve got a training team that will help my clients and what yeah, I’ve got, we’ve got an accountant. I’ve got a beautiful solicitor, or an amazing mortgage broker who I’ve known for 15 years, and she she’ll help any of my clients with anything. So yeah, I’ve just built that anything that my clients need they can get.

Andrew Rocks
So let’s play the legal side out of it. Because you mentioned that you do quite often come across a lot of women who are going through separation, for instance, is there anything specific Is there any specific sort of lawyers in Sydney that you’ve dealt with?

Alysia Laird
Will Jacqueline Wharton is the kind of divorce coach for Super. So she probably one of the main ones I know. But that’s more for more for amicable stuff. So we do have a couple of contacts for the not too amicable. But

Andrew Rocks
it’s always wonderful as a planner, if you can, if you can facilitate an amicable separation, because you just get frustrated that you took that long to help build this wealth and then they burn it on legals. It’s a it’s a little bit from my experience, I’d be like, ah, if we could just like took me ages to get that $100,000 Don’t turn it on us.

Alysia Laird
Yeah. Well, I know personally, you can have an amicable separation because I had that. So

Andrew Rocks
congratulations. So in relation to so that’s the people now we’ve mentioned about you your aspirations for growing up The business you mentioned you’d like to have someone come in in that operational role being a CFO, you said to run the business and does that mean that you you’d look to grow advisor numbers or or is it you look for the personalities?

Alysia Laird
Yeah I’d have to be very I don’t think we would grow for the sake of growing I think just won

Andrew Rocks
Best Practice award don’t think that many people aren’t looking right now

we got one, I’m gonna start again. On Saturday, you just won Best Practice award. How’s that sound? Do you just won the Best Practice award, I don’t think that you’re not going to be on the radar of aspirational people wanting to join that’s a byproduct of, of having those accolades. So if you did have, you know, a stampede was ever a stampede if you did, if you did have a herd of people wanting to join you, would that would that please you with that scare you what would be your next step? Say three advisors wanted to join

Alysia Laird
It’s actually called a dazzle of separates by the three advisors all that have probably scare me a bit. Yeah, one or two. That wouldn’t. That wouldn’t scare me. Just have to be the right people.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. Okay. Okay. And interesting. What’s the right person?

Alysia Laird
Good question. honest, reliable, hardworking, all those. With fun is great. Yeah. personable. Yeah. Love what you do love helping clients.

Andrew Rocks
What about the timeframe? So when you’re quite a young person? So do you have a timeframe for how, how long that you want to be doing this? Or at this stage that is so enthusiastic after restarting your business that it’s free? Yeah,

Alysia Laird
no, yeah, no specific timeframe. When I did my business coaching with Slipstream, we had to have, we had to have a be hag like a big, hairy, audacious goal. And mine was that maybe in 10 years? I could, I could step back a little bit so I could do some of the art that I always wanted to do. What sort of art is it? Paper? quilling?

Andrew Rocks
Paper? quilling? Okay, Jacqueline soon. Check the links in

Alysia Laird
painting with paper. Yes, it will see, but no, no, no specific timeframe. Happy to keep going.

Andrew Rocks
And, um, as far as your your vision for the future. And, you know, when I listened back to the 2020 podcast that Clayton has hosted almost everything that you said, that you’re going to do, and all the observations that you made were correct. And probably the most wrong observations are the one Clayton did, which is, which is for me, is just hilarious. So if anyone wants to listen back or contact me as to how wrong he could be on a couple of things that please do. But what’s your vision for the future? For the role of non client facing individuals in a practice?

Alysia Laird
What my vision for the future? The role of non client facing people in

Andrew Rocks
do you think they’re going to be phased out? Ai? Do you think it’s good to have a second person involved with each client? Maybe just give us a feel?

Alysia Laird
No, I don’t think they’re gonna get phased out. I love people think we need to clients like people to plant love people to Yeah, clients love it. When you know, the minute a client comes on board, I send out an email saying, this is a problem. This is Zoey. They’re amazing people. You know, they’re also your contacts and clients love that. I think AI will allow us to be a lot more efficient to be able to help a lot more clients, which is awesome, but I don’t think it’s going to get rid of

Andrew Rocks
the people. Yeah. Well, I totally agree. It’s and I think it’s going to augment our ability to to service people better and more of them whilst retaining our sanity. Which is there. And would you ever entertain someone? Like a joint venture with like an accounting firm or or any other investors in your business? We didn’t speak about this earlier. You just gave me a look going. That wasn’t on the run sheet.

Alysia Laird
Oh, yeah. Look, I’d entertain anything. I mean, we’re, we’re open. We’re flexible. Yeah, we’ve come this far kind of being open to things that happened in life. So see what the next few years bring.

Andrew Rocks
I love it. I love the enthusiasm. I was really looking forward to today’s chat. Your story You know, for anyone who goes back and listens there, it’s his quite a determined lady who sort of harnessed where she was in life and and is pushed forward to, you know, create create your own sort of vision of what financial advice should be. Just just rounding out. If you were to click your fingers and get someone on to, to do that sort of chip CIO or GM role, is that something in the near future? You know, one or two years away? People are listening to this and they do like, people. So what’s your timeframe for someone like that?

Alysia Laird
Six to 14 months,

Andrew Rocks
14, six to 14. Okay. So six to 14 months, was probably going to be about three to 11 months by the time for those playing along at home. And in relation to looking for some more advisors, particularly to help you with your incoming clients. If I was a aspirational female advisor who was very interested in, in helping people go through those life stages, and you’d be open to an approach in the near future.

Alysia Laird
Yeah, for sure. Yep.

Andrew Rocks
Perfect. Perfect. Well, look, I’d like to thank you on behalf of Ensembl. You’ve been on twice now. We’re going to follow your journey, I hope to talk to you again in in three to four years, what’s the name of the new license that

Alysia Laird
ASE, ASE at the moment,

Andrew Rocks
forever, you’ll be the carryover champion of our IA advisors practice of the year, given that they weren’t. So and still, number one practice. We on behalf of all of us, we’d like to thank you for your time. We’d like to appreciate where you’ve come from, and your vision for the future. And thank you very much for being on the Intagram Alyssia

Alysia Laird
Thank you for having me.