Engine Room Podcast #27 – Unpacked – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, my name is Andrew Rocks, and welcome to another edition of the Engine Room Unpacked today yet again. Joining me literally and physically at the desk. There is Sue Viskovic. How are you sir?

Sue Viskovic
I’m fabulous. Thanks, Rocksy. Nice to actually see you in human form.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, like when when when you’re doing an unboxing video, it’s sort of the virtual unboxing really doesn’t do it. But look, I’m really excited, as always, for our five practices. And part of the reason is this just a genuinely, very, very types of business. And yeah, you know, like I looking at the five, which I’m about to list off because it was remiss of me to take a few minutes and but last time, but I’m looking at the practices, and they all kind of awesome in their own way. And there’s very little overlap. And maybe just maybe that’s the new normal, because people have got more hyper specialized in what they’re offering and that the target market. They’re, they’re sort of getting to it and I suppose it’s also a function of just the industry just maturing. Without any further ado, I will for the listeners out there, run through the five quality practices that we’re unpacking today. The first practice is your Gordon, who’s the CEO of Ri, Newcastle, Noah Hunter, he has a fantastic team, we had the privilege of going up to his lovely 150 year old Maitland residents. And wasn’t it Kieran this young guy, nice fun time. The next one was also another Newcastle business and we were treated like royalty up there

Sue Viskovic
hang on you might have been it didn’t sound like Kieran the sound I was treated like royalty.

Andrew Rocks
We bought Karen a shirtup next time we got so that to clean really from from the Fitz business up there. Then we had a an unusual one. Um, not only are our sponsors the good people at Zurich, insurance, obviously, and I’ve been asking a lot of people about insurance and, and the comments have been varied and some are really into it. But some of them are sort of just trying to figure out, you know how you can drive that cost of service down. So I was introduced and met a chap called Brett Wright, who has a business with his father in life insurance for many, many years. And he built a piece of technology, which we’ll talk about missing could live bid, which is which is coming to market and supported by some of the industry best, then just as a complementary, but sort of mixing it up with Drew burden from MBs. Insurance, they’ve got a really significant business, and it’s the way in which they articulate their place in the ecosystem of financial planners is probably the good take out there. And then to round out the five, I have Hugh Robertson, from Central on the Gold Coast, who just has a great all round approach to financial planning. And since we recorded his podcast was I believe, and he’s probably gonna listen number 38 in the Barron’s list, so shout out to you as well. So with that in mind, Sue, what jumped out for you?

Sue Viskovic
Well, it’s interesting because you say that they’re such disparate businesses, and they’re all doing really different things. And you’re absolutely right. And there are definitely some themes that were playing through this. So I thought I would package up three different kinds of themes for us to play with. The first one is sharing the love. And this actually I’ve kind of taken a little bit of liberty with this one. It kind of goes a long way but it’s sharing the love of around critical numbers sharing the numbers with the team and the EBIT. And the business metric

Andrew Rocks
You’re obviously very romantic person

Sue Viskovic
Very. But the good part about that is often also Sharing equity and bonuses linked to performance a bit. So I want to talk about that. But also sharing problems and sharing challenges. There’s definitely a common theme through all of these with that. Second theme we’re going to flow through is the power of process. We talked about this all the time. And there’s some really, really great examples in these firms about absolutely nailing down their processes and their operations for efficiencies and better client service. And the third one, which is always my favorite is the client engagement piece. So a couple of the firms are using some great techniques to actually create that client engagement and the client experience.

Andrew Rocks
And look, I’m gonna, I suppose, kick off with sharing the love and and it’s, it’s, it’s funny, you know, we talked about putting the client first but you know, out, that’s our last topic, because in many respects, if you can’t make the people, or help the people who help the clients happy, where you’re going to not really be able to get the last bit, right, so. So what do you mean by sharing love, and maybe a parlay into, you know, an example from one of the five that you thought sort of stood out for that reason? Yeah, for

Sue Viskovic
sure. So I think this first part is, is around the sharing with your team members. So quite a number of these firms had explained how they, their employees have equity in the business, that they share the important facts about the business. So it’s no longer and we see this a lot in firms, right, it’s no longer we’re the boss, we run the business, you just do what you told the end of the day financial advice, you don’t have warehouses of widgets, and you don’t have stock, what you have to deliver to your clients is in your human capital. So you’ve got to have great people around you. And in actual fact, I think it was who was at Drew, I love the quote that he talked about. And I’ve wrote this down here, and I love how he said it was an American guy from so. But he said, this quote, really struck a chord with him, if you’re growing a business, the one thing that he would recommend is that if let’s say you got a role that requires someone for $100,000 salary, go find someone that’s worth 150k, pay them 150k, and back them to cover that spread. I love that. And so that, that really inspired him to make sure that he found great people paid them well supported them well, and then enabled them to deliver great outcomes for the business.

Andrew Rocks
And you know, because most of the practices have grown started small and grown up, that’s just a such a confronting thing. Because you know, most of the time, they’re ambitious, and they just got enough capital to pay the next person. And they’re probably thinking about, well, if they start them at this, and they do a good job, I’ll pay them more. Whereas kind of what drew insinuated, he’s just bring forward that three or four years, yeah, just find the good ones, they’re probably good somewhere else. And target,

Sue Viskovic
yeah, back there. And then they’ll help you grow it, and then also share what’s going on in the business. So they’re motivated by the right kind of things. So I might actually ask us to throw to a quote from Hugh in this spot, it took

Hugh Robertson
us a long time to get to this spot, we, everyone kind of thinks about the business development, how to get more referral sources, how to get, you know, more leads, and all of that, and then I’ve kind of flipped it on its head a little bit in my own thinking and thought, If I can just get the best people. And the most important resource, we need someone who’s going to manage their, their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations, and really build out their capabilities. So

Andrew Rocks
can’t afford three second pitstops

Hugh Robertson
Can’t you cannot afford. And if you do a three second pitstops, your other three guys who do in one second pitstops will leave. So that’s probably been our evolution that we can’t have, we talked about eight layers, and then all we want to really just be them. The number one that the thought was that a player and a player is going to have to do a lot more work. But they’re going to be working in an autonomous environment, they’re going to be self directed, they’re going to take accountability. So our evolution has been that if we can get those guys and not have the C’s, or even, you know, you look at I know you’re a fan of scaling up as I am. And you know that if we’ve got that attitude and those core values right on on one, one axis, and on the on the across axis, you know, the x axis, the performance, we really want those guys that are doing the high performance and high values. But if we have to choose between a performance or values will always choose values, because we can train the performance we can teach people.

Andrew Rocks
You know what, at the time when you did that anecdote, I just had a big smirk on my face. And you know, you’re only as sort of you’re only as fast as the slowest person. And you know whether you’re rowing a boat or when our pitstop, which is what the reference was there. Yeah. And I think that that’s sometimes businesses don’t want to address the awkward conversations. And sometimes businesses aren’t really sort of set up for that. But what did you take out of that particular quote? worked

Sue Viskovic
well, you know, I love this fact about having great people, but then also rewarding the right way for the right things. And I actually put a post up on LinkedIn this week, I’ve seen it. And I hear it all the time about this. You know, the cost of delivering services is increasing, but particularly people complaining or getting really frustrated by the fact that the cost of wages is going up. And there was an article that came out this week around, you know, there was some firms finding, I mean, we know it’s hard to find great advices in the market, but that they were seeing people offer things like 50 grand increases and paying people so much. And, and I kind of look at it, maybe through a different lens, and that is to say, look, we are a profession now, right, all of your advisors, they’ve done their studies, they continue to do good studies, you are only as good as the people that are sitting in front of your clients, you know that you’ve got to make sure you’re getting quality people delivering credit quality services. So rather than worried about the fact that they’ve got to keep earning more, and you got to keep paying them more, that’s just a business function. You want to pay them well to get the best people. And that’s not the only reason people come to you. But build your business in a way that then you can afford to pay them and still generate healthy profits and sustainable profits. This is not just about making more money, but it’s building this long term sustainable business. And so I know, if you look at that, it’s also about sharing other parts of the love. So Gil Gordon, he has advisors owning equity, he’s also got a Zed mgas. In so he’s owning the equity with this equity partner, which we’re going to talk about. I know Glen is part owned with Fitzpatricks. Brett, you know, he’s raising capital, and we’re going to come back to Brett, but that’s all about also,

Andrew Rocks
at the time of this podcast, he has raised capital. Correct? Yeah.

Sue Viskovic
And Drew what MBs, you know, he has both advisors owning equity and merchant who’s an accurate external partner, all of this with the exception of Hugh in that group of five. And yet, he also said that he is going to going to be bringing in capital and his people are going to be buying in. So I think the thing around this is, you really do not have to do it alone, there are ways to access capital. And there’s also ways to access expertise as well to support you and your business. But I think if we come back to the sharing the love with the team and rewarding the right things, there’s a great book. In fact, I’m not even sure if I mentioned this last time. The great game of business. In fact, Dave Carney from VBP, put me on to this. It’s phenomenal. You’re part

Andrew Rocks
of the cult. Yeah. It’s confronting at first because you’re sharing every single line of your p&l with every single member of your team. Yeah, yeah. It works. Yes.

Sue Viskovic
And what was fascinating about this, like we do it with our coaching clients all the time, we’re often you know, we’re sharing the critical numbers. And what the critical numbers are depends on the individual business, it is usually the money numbers. But there’s also other important numbers within the business as well.

Andrew Rocks
I think Wang spoke something about that. What did Glenn mention he did, so he talked

Sue Viskovic
about sharing the revenue and the EBIT with the advisors. So they have I think he was saying their advisors have a four year EBIT bonus. So their focus is not just making sales, then it’s not about top line, they understand what’s happening, they understand the profitability, they’re building sustainable business practices, they’re working as a team. So it’s, it’s this, they’re thinking like a business owner, even before they become part of the equity participation plan. And that is, then what helps you build a sustainable business, you know, I know, it’s almost false. It’s not almost full circle is what I was wanting to say there. I’m in fact, one who was at one of them in the, in the five works talking at some point about when their very first started, they were part of the banks. And so it was all about sales, sales, sales. This is not full circle back to those days. This is about saying, bring people into the tent, share what’s going on in the business, so they can be rewarded for great business practices, because let’s face it, if you’ve got a sustainable, profitable business, it also means that you’re delivering great outcomes to your clients, because you can’t have one and not the other. But it is really important that you then choose the numbers that you are going to reward people on. And in fact, Drew is the quote that I want to share from here, because it doesn’t always have to be about the financial numbers. So

Andrew Rocks
what did you have to say,

Drew Burden
we expect that they will have a certain level of activity. So we don’t look at dollars, we look at the number of lives insured, so we’re not seeking for them to hit you know, to because they’ll prioritize, then a bigger case or a smaller case in terms of dollars when to the accounting firm of the wealth firm that might be a key client that only needs a small amount of cover. And so we can’t have them persuade or consciously or subconsciously driven to write bigger policies. What we need to see is activity so we want to ensure people

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, That That sounds really powerful. What do you think?

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you if you’re linking people’s financial reward, but also their KPIs, potentially their bonuses if you’re linking that to productivity. And I think, you know, if you’re rewarding the right behaviors, then people are gonna be doing the right thing by the business. I mean, you get good people. So you, they’re going to do the right thing by the client anyway, regardless, you’ve got the same values, but then you reward them for the things that help you grow sustainably. And, and I would even look, you know, we see in firms sometimes that it’s, it’s can be complicated to create a revenue structure for the advisors. But then sometimes people are saying to me, it’s really complicated to then figure out how to reward my support team. And so if we’re doing KPIs for people in the support team, then those critical numbers might be around turnaround times, you know, future paraplanners, it might be around the quality of the documents and the error rate and making sure that that stayed really tight.

Andrew Rocks
And look, one of the things that I’ve seen, which is not it is an emerging trend, to be honest, but probably always should have been there is having equity, not just in the client facing advisors, I think that the the 20 or so years of doing that really hamstrung than when they wanted to have succession planning anyway. And because the incoming buyer didn’t have the buy in of the rest of the business, from memory, and I think about one of the probably the largest practice that we spoke with as far as advisor numbers, which is, you know, if you put your stereotype on, which would mean the most amount of people who aren’t shareholders would have been MBAs. From memory, I think there’s a quote there around their shared value in the business.

Sue Viskovic
There is indeed, so we’ll come back. This is Drew, I know, we’ll come back to his voice again. But let’s have a listen about this. And I know there’s lots of you in here to Roxy. So people are going to get really confused about they’re listening to Roxy now or listening to Roxy Andrews conversation, but I don’t care because the movie Inception.

Andrew Rocks
Hopefully it goes faster, not slower when you go in.

Sue Viskovic
So this one, I think we’re actually going to start out with you talking Roxy. So let’s bring in you and Andrew

Andrew Rocks
equity, and you’re still awake. I’ll put you to sleep over to you, Andrew. And so So then if you’ve if you’ve got those 360 feedbacks, yeah, after a period of time, then then, you know, what, what’s the methodology? Is it is it synthesize equity as an ESOP? Is it actual equity? What does? What does the MBS playbook look like? If you don’t mind me asking?

Drew Burden
It’s actual equity. So they would, they would set up a, you know, more commonly a family trust, and they would borrow the buying.

Andrew Rocks
Okay, and how many shareholders do you see you’ve got 55? Team members, and some of them would be recent hires, and some of them been there forever? What’s the shareholder footprint look like? Yeah,

Drew Burden
sorry, one last comment to that, and we would guarantee the debt, because for a younger person, you know, maybe in their 30s, or maybe in their 40s, that that might have young children might have a mortgage? Or maybe they’re looking to buy us, you

Andrew Rocks
know, crimping their borrowing capacity to buy a house.

Drew Burden
Yeah, correct. We want to support it.

Andrew Rocks
So and you’re also backing your own business? Correct? Yeah.

Drew Burden
Yeah. And the business also, you know, it needs to be a worthwhile investment for them as well. So we’ll be transparent with them, you know, not just, you know, just in time in the days or weeks before, they’re offered the opportunity to, to buy in, but we will want them to have full comprehensive knowledge of the business financials and the investment they’re making in the business. From that perspective, and the opportunity to talk to their accountants and have their accountants engaged with our accountants,

Andrew Rocks
there’s level of transparency on the p&l and where you guys are going, but, you know, given the nature of your business, most of them who have a calculator can probably work it out to a certain extent. So I imagine they’d be quite enthusiastic, given that opportunity. Yeah.

Drew Burden
So we have 10 shareholders currently, and we also have bought on a capital partner, a US group called merchant, which have assisted in in strengthening our balance sheet. So what that means is they’ve they’ve taken care of Macquarie’s debt for the moment, and given us the opportunity for a bit of a reset moment. So again, you know, none of the existing shareholders wanted to take money off the table or wanted to sell down but what we wanted to do was strengthen our balance sheet for what we see is the next, the next run of growth and investment and reinvestment, you know, we need to reinvest in our policies in our tech stack in our processes in our talent. And we do believe in acquired growth and organic growth working together.

Andrew Rocks
And I believe that what we just mentioned there with the capital partner of merchant, there are a lot of other capital partners out there and it really is the growing up of this industry. Yeah, it’s Meanwhile, that businesses in financial services haven’t had, you know, Capital Partners, because at the end of the day, there’s only a couple of ways to grow, and that’s debt, or borrowings or equity. And there’s only so much equity that can come from internal people. So I think that’s a pretty shrewd move, it’s gonna it’s gonna give you the firepower to be able to actually do that in organic growth, as well as you know, give you the ability to weather any storms that that potentially could be in the horizon.

Drew Burden
Yeah, absolutely. And they, and that was the right fit for us for a couple of reasons. You know, the two obvious ones were, you know, they’ve come in at 19.9%. Ownership. Yep. But what they have done as well, as you know, that they’ve, they’ve filled that brief, because we have sort of a 10 to 15 year plan and vision, none of us are sort of looking to exit out in the shorter term. And so we would have been very hesitant to do any, any sort of bringing any capital partner for a more material amount than then 20%, or an under that.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, the great irony with what drew mentioned was that after he mentioned that they took on a capital partner a very hard he made a phone call to Sid capital partner saying, not sure, you’re aware that one of your people have just done a potential press release. But as it turns out, and as many of you follow the series, David Haines from merchant has come into Australia, they’ve they’ve their capital partners to get a particular type of target. And you can learn more about that if you listen to his podcast. And what it’s then cascades is that a lot of the people who are your engine room of your engine room are in their 30s and 40s. Now, it coincides with that period in your life where you have a dirty big home loan, you may or may not have kids, both of them are expensive for you might want to educate them. So So yeah, so it’s kind of the businesses have to really get creative, and how they can manufacture meaningful avenues for non foundation shareholders to share in the game. Yeah,

Sue Viskovic
that’s right. And, and, you know, this is we’re really seeing this proliferation of opportunities here for firms, there’s, there’s so well, so many, there’s there’s a significant number of equity partners in the market now. So it is it does mean that access to capital is easier nowadays, but we’re also seeing a lot more ESOP. So employee share ownership plans. And sometimes it’s around having the right growth partner to help you do that. Because that, you know, we know that great businesses are built off relationships, not only to your point earlier, not only with the advisor, and certainly we’re encouraging firms to make sure that it’s a team service approach, not just relationship between client and advisor. So when you’ve got great practice managers, when you’ve got great, you know, Korea, client service managers, you’d love for them to stick around for the long term. And you know, when I talked to these business owners who were doing this, they also want to reward them more than purely just by salary, you know, they should be able to get some of the capital upside of this fantastic business that they’re building. So I think it’s really interesting, because I remember not that long ago. And you know, I’ve been around it a little while, but it wasn’t really that long ago that people were starting to worry about, I’m building this really big business, I’m gonna get to the point where I’m too big for anyone to have the money to buy me. Well, that’s certainly not the case anyway, or it

Andrew Rocks
used to be actually, that the only people who could buy me was a bank, which is kind of the exact opposite of the philosophy that I built my business or my clients. So So you kind of you did feel that that was possibly the case. And I think there was probably five or six years in the wilderness.

Sue Viskovic
Well, I remember talking to advisors saying to me, now that the banks are out who’s going to buy my business because I’m getting we’re just going to the only option is to list we’re going to be

Andrew Rocks
clear, who’s going to buy my recurring income of my base as opposed to a business. Yeah. And then when they started thinking of it as a business, yeah, the great irony is, guess what investment advisors do all day. They identify investment opportunities for their clients sustainable earnings barrier to entry, government regulations, which is exactly what financial planners are. Exactly.

Sue Viskovic
And so they are great businesses, great, profitable businesses. So it’s no wonder you have this interest in in equity partners coming in. So you know, that example was with merchant and I know our previous one, or the next one we’re going to turn to is Ace at NGA. So Gil, from our new castle, and I think it was only in about the last year that he actually brought AZ in. So yes, these groups and look there’s quite a few a number of licensees are purchasing equity in firms now. Now you’ve got a broad leaf. And they all have different propositions of what they bring to the table.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah. And Gil, already had some employee share. In fact, if when I say employee, he would not frame them as those theories, business partners, their long term partners of his, you know, that’s the languaging that most of the people would would use. I think. I think when you say ESOP, they’re probably what’s a partner SOP POS? Okay, we’ll come back. We’ll workshop that later. So yeah, it’d be great to, you know, get a vibe for Gil plus. Gil has been around for a while. But like, I’ve found with a cohort of advisors that have been doing this for a long time. They’re still open to new ideas and new adventures.

Sue Viskovic
Yes. And that is the key. Right. So I think, you know, for Gil, it wasn’t just access to the capital, but the business intelligence, the emotional, the psychological support. So yeah, let’s just throw it to him. And he will talk about it.

Gil Gordon
Well, we’re happily part of the ACE nga family. So we do have a board of advice, or a board governance board meets every three months. And that’s wonderful. I love it. And it terrifies me because these guys are smart.

Andrew Rocks
And let’s talk about what they’re doing for you to keep you on the straight and narrow every quarter.

Gil Gordon
So obviously, we have very good board reports in Financials,

Andrew Rocks
because it’s the first time you’ve had to report to someone other than yourself. Yep. And that was challenge. He’s clenching his fist here for everyone who’s not getting the visuals. Just joking. Now

Gil Gordon
Fitzy Brian Fitz talks about it that there are, there are people that are accountable, and people that are responsible. Think of it as a football player, give me the ball. Trust me, I know what I’m doing with the ball. Monday morning, quarterback me, that’s something that I’ve had to learn how to do, learn how to actually be accountable for my decisions. They couldn’t be more supportive. These guys are very experienced Graham used to run count plus, and Paul Barrett, obviously, he’s been around the industry forever. But they asked the right questions, I’ve never found them anything other than supportive. They’ve got a great team behind me, behind us, that help us with m&a opportunities that help us with business model sort of stuff, hiring, recruitment, marketing, they’ve done a huge amount for us, what they haven’t done is interfere. You know, they, they’re not in here telling us how to do this or that they’re, they’re a great partner, because they ask us to have a plan. And then we explain the plan. And then they back us when we implement it. And it’s been, it’s been a very good relationship, as well as creating, and this is a big thing, as well as creating a succession plan for the business. So they’ve got the money, and they’re helping us with, you know, acquisitions, and things like that. But they also create the employee share plan, where the smaller partners in the senior people in the business have got an equity Participation Plan, which is terrific.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, one of the most fun questions I get to ask in this series is when, when an entrepreneur has grown their business, and they’ve been the boss for years and years, and then they, they then scale up, which is great, and they get a level of maturity. And all of a sudden, they’ve got to report to someone, or not someone but they’re reporting to themselves right there. But, but it just brings rigor Yeah, to the business. Ironically, it’s kind of what Alexei consulting does by proxy for many of your clients anyway. But without the overwhelming threat of an ownership intervention, maybe that might be your future model. So you know, to get some of these people to, what would I say used to say that financial planning was getting people to do things they know they should do in a timeframe they otherwise wouldn’t. So potentially getting financial planning practices to do things they should do, etc. And so yeah,

Sue Viskovic
and look, I mean, you’re right, I know you’re joking about it. But it’s absolutely right. Because once a firm has a rigorous process to say, No, we are coming back to the table, we are looking at our figures every month. I know in that example, they have quarterly board meetings. But once you’ve got this operating rhythm of knowing what your critical numbers are, and reflecting back on them on a regular basis, the fact of doing that, whether it be your coach or whether it be reporting that to your board, it means that you as that entrepreneur or principal has to stop and think about what are those numbers telling you? And that informs your decisions. And then it means that you get such faster progress because you’re not just coasting along and then looking back a year later going, Oh, my God.

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. And I’d like to say the engineering podcast was the first time there was collaboration between people to solve challenges or to partner. But the best thing that I’ve seen in financial planning industry in the last little while is peer to peer learning and helping each other. You know, when I look across a couple of the businesses here, and have I looked back and a lot of the questions, life insurance has been been been a very well loved part of the ecosystem, but due to reasons that are well documented, and has been a hard cost to serve, yeah, but did you see Did you see any sort of partnerships forming that jumped out to you to solve problems with each other?

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, well, we’re for sure. I mean, the obvious one, is, is looking at life beard. And we’re gonna get to that in just a second. But I think this is around specialization. And, you know, you’re absolutely right. I think one of the biggest frustrations, the biggest, most difficult parts in the market right now is life insurance. And we know that financial advisory,

Andrew Rocks
are you saying that based on the last five episodes, or you’re saying that based on your length and breadth of, of experience, both, okay,

Sue Viskovic
this is a key challenge that is faced by the industry. And what is really frightening is that we are still hearing advisors saying, life insurance has just got too hard. We’re just not doing it anymore. And we’re saying, that’s not right. Unless you’ve got completely self insured clients, or you know, they’re already in retirement, if you’ve got any wealth creators, you cannot afford to just pay lip service to it or just go, it’s too hard, which is why thankfully, there are some great alternatives for people in the market. Now. And this is part of this theory of specialization. You know, and we’re not just saying I mean, I do want to spend some time talking now about those challenges in life insurance. But I also know, we’re not just seeing it in that risk space, you know, there’s great alternatives for people having and in fact, you know, Gil, and a couple of them have relationships with estate planning lawyers, they make sure that their estate plans are sorted for their clients, and they get the specialists in the lending aspect is really good. And you probably can’t say this, Roxy, but I will, I know you’ve actually built out your Lydian mortgage services to be able to do exactly that people. Financial Advisors have the relationship and the knowledge of the client, they know they could be doing better, maybe on their home loan or their lending, or they need a specialist to support with that. They don’t necessarily have the skill set or the bandwidth or the scale to do it in house. But there are ways to do it through partnerships. And if I come back to that insurance space, you know, it’s it’s been decimated, really, it’s the only way to talk about it. And I guess as Drew said, and I actually wrote down this quote, because

Andrew Rocks
it’s the 10, negative 15.

Sue Viskovic
Roxy, he’s it when you get 15 consecutive negative points of regulatory intervention for life insurance advice, practice distribution falls off a cliff. And that’s exactly that’s

Andrew Rocks
a very eloquent way of saying, they keep effing it up. Yeah,

Sue Viskovic
well, you know, and I think you use the words, it’s been a perfect storm and has, you know, between reduction in insurance Commission’s between the difficulties of underwriting between the process steps between the education piece and not enough, you know, so many risk advisors have left the profession, it’s difficult and the actual process of getting life insurance in place. And of course, the other thing to write is, people have got risk insurance books, and they have clients, if they’ll, if their insurance as part of their financial plan, it’s fine, because they’re reviewing the client circumstances, they’re generally paying a fee as well, they can afford to make sure those services looked after. But if they’ve got a risk only bog, and they’re only getting a small trial from it, there are really big decisions happening around the country. In advice practices every day, at the moment, because they’ve got a book, they know they need to be servicing it, they can’t sit back passively anymore. But if you reach out to 10 of those clients, and three of them, say actually, I need to reduce my level of cover because it’s got too expensive, you’ve got to do the work. And then the clients reducing their levels of cover. So you’re reducing your costs. So you have to figure out how to charge for it. Or, for many of them, it gets too hard. And if you can’t systemize if you don’t have the bandwidth, or the energy or the scale, there are other options to making sure that you can take care of the the needs V clients. So thankfully, now you can refer it out, you could sell your risk book and then refer your future clients back to the successor or you could do a joint venture. So this is actually the second risk specialist firm. I think the last time we unpacked your interview with Ben and Shannon from us brokers. And of course, this this set of fire that had drew in there from MBAs. So I thought he made some really interesting points, not only about the process of delivering risk advice, but also this specialist expertise to

Andrew Rocks
absolutely and we might take a quote from from drew on that specialization because I’m gonna back in the answer quote with with a conversation I’ve subsequently with with one of the largest providers of financial advice in the United States so far So let’s hear from Drew,

Drew Burden
we absolutely see specialization, we see the need, I’ve already addressed that the need continuing, so we think the market is going to grow. But it won’t grow quickly, it won’t grow quickly from as far as writing insurance, we haven’t, I had a look at the most recent June quarter facil data, so the productivity per AR, and it’s tiny, you know, the top 20 if it sells and distributions, you know, most we’re distributing 10 grand in life insurance premium for the quarter per AR is nothing. So this is long, long tail insurance companies. And technology, hopefully will help those who are doing part time life insurance advice, increase, but the true growth, Roxy will come from specialists. And the reason being, if you’re a wealth advisor, you may be seeing your clients once or twice, or three times a year. So your capacity is limited. Whereas if you’re a specialist risk advisor, you have a much greater capacity. You know, if you are providing a really comprehensive quality high portfolio, then maybe you’re making adjustments every 234 years, particularly if you’ve got a more stable premium environment, right. So it’s touching base, but it’s not the same depth of of meeting and advice process that the wealth advisor would have. So even

Andrew Rocks
within within advice, people are now getting hyper specialized into industries that their clients are coming from, for instance. So I just think it’s a growing up of the industry. And I think that you know, being able to serve as a one size fits all is pretty tough. And the platform of that is the case.

Drew Burden
But I just don’t think you’re sorry to interrupt you, I don’t believe that you can do as good a job as someone for your client, you might be able to do a portfolio structure that is excellent and and onpoint. But how can you be adequately across the wealth creation and the wealth protection. Equally, if you invested all of your time in the wealth creation component of the business, then surely, you’re going to be better at that than if you spread yourself across multiple disciplines. And you’re dealing with different stakeholders.

Sue Viskovic
So if you have got the specialization, you’ve got the ability to deliver those services within your practice that is fantastic, whether that be someone that has got the time to be able to devote to continually updating their knowledge on risk, whether you have a risk specialist sitting inside your firm, or doing something like you know, bringing in an MBs, like Drew, you know, whatever happens, insurance advice is just too important to ignore. Absolutely.

Andrew Rocks
And look, the theme of coming together is is not just in the horizontals, which you’ve mentioned, where one particular practice might, for instance, outsource their investment management committee, they might outsource their debt advice, they might outsource their insurance, but the coming together as also in the verticals in and what Brett right brought to the table and apart from a you know, a great lineage of a risk only business with with his father and doing a lot of like buy sells a lot of that kind of more strategic risk. He just identified that, like everyone, that the cost to serve was going to really, really be a struggle, especially when you’ve got an artificial cap on how much you can earn. Which yet again, I think was a perfect storm was the reference. Let’s quickly throw to the perfect storm just for those playing at home. And we’ll come back. Yeah, look, and it was a perfect storm. And for those for those who are new to the game, the the LRF sort of framework reduced the Commission’s to 60% for upfront down from what everyone was typically taking around 80% on a hybrid, and it was that extra 20%, which really was probably the the wriggle room if you were slightly inefficient, but now there’s nowhere to hide. Is there in the engine room for life insurance businesses?

Speaker 3
No, no, there’s not. And, and you might think going from 80 to 60 year old that’s not that significant, but the actual work around the compliance piece. So the advice process and the documentation and SOA started blowing the learning out and and so when when you cut that revenue, and you add the complexity in the advice process with the compliance, it becomes unviable and most of you know, that’s where we’ve seen a lot of advisors say I’m just not going to offer life insurance advice anymore. Or I’m not going to see new clients and just service my existing clients and it’s quite, it’s quite alarming, you know, out of the 16,000 advisors in the industry. I think it’s 1700 right 75% of the industry’s new business and I think you know the quote an advisor ratings report from earlier this year there’s 150 risk specialists left Yeah, so the the stimulation or the you know why we founded it was is just immense frustration, frustrated by how complex and expensive it’ll become for consumers to access the advice that they need and the products that they need. And then equally as frustrated by how risky and time consuming and unprofitable become for advisors, and licensees and insurers to help people protect their families, their incomes, their businesses, as well. So that’s where you have to spend, right? And how are we going to fix this industry issue? No industry stakeholder can solve the problems on their own. So that’s where we started. That’s where we formed together the lifeblood working group. So

Andrew Rocks
when we’re talking about what Lifeprint is brought to the table, the reason why I brought this very interesting story to the table was that I very quickly worked out that a lot of advisors and what advisory practices were backing this, which is a departure from the way in which institutions had operated, there was now a very much a field of dreams, I build the product, and the advice will come a quick look at the life bid website. And I apologize if there’s any additional people since the recording of this. But as AWS brokers life, Australian unity centerpoint, Alliance Fortnum Syncron, an MBs. And noted as foundation advice partners, they put their brand on this. And it gives me a bit of a segue, I had the pleasure of meeting with Mark sprinkler who’s the CEO of a merchant in globally. And we’re talking a serious business, a very big business and and they’re just making inroads into Australia. And so when one has a very limited amount of time, I wanted to ask questions that I thought I could also leverage into this podcast. And so I asked Mark, tell me about the role of outsourcing in the in our eyes, which is financial planning in America. He said, Without hesitating, they outsource everything. Each individual practice becomes hyper specialized at the market, and the thing that they’re the best at, and they outsource domestically. So if they’re, if they’re in a facility, and they’ll outsource this task, they’ll outsource that it is very commonly accepted. The clients don’t mind when I go to my doctor, I’m pretty happy that he, he or she doesn’t say I can do your heart surgery and fix your knee, I want them to outsource. So if you have the trust of the client relationship, it’s almost expected in a profession for those to be outsourced. But that was very interesting. And what I think the learnings from that is, is that the sharing of clients for their best interest, you know, to use a term that’s been thrust upon us, probably will benefit the stakeholders in Look, when we talk stakeholders. And we all we’ve all learned about our stakeholders having to do the 75 times the ethics course. And I’m sure I’ve got another 100 to go. One of the stakeholders is clearly the clients, the other stakeholders, the general public and the duty of care we have towards the perception of our industry. Yeah. Now, it makes no sense that one planner can say that they’re the master of the universe. It doesn’t happen in engineering firms. It doesn’t happen in other businesses. It’s far more saying I’m really, really ridiculously good at this. And I’ve got people who are around me who are good at other things. Yeah.

Sue Viskovic
So did you like that theme of share the love? I think it’s, it has so many applications?

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. And what and so in saying that, what’s our what’s our next theme? Well,

Sue Viskovic
so I had a nice little segue with this one, because you know, what Brett is building is technology. And it’s bringing people together to fund this creation of a system that’s going to make life better. And I should, before I jump to the next one, I know you said before, that there is a cap on what you can earn. And of course, those who know me know I wrote a book called worth paying for which was about how to make sure that you can build a profitable life insurance advice business. We do know that some advisors are successfully charging fees for their advice, as well as for insurance advice, whether that be hybrid with comps or not, but we definitely are seeing that that is for those people who can afford the higher premiums, they can afford that fee as well. And it’s really that middle market of people, you know, it’s hard enough for them to pay a $3,000 life insurance premium. They really need the help. So I’m so glad that we are sharing the love and people are all pitching in to help Brett solve this problem because it’s a really important one to solve. Technology is going to solve all sorts of things for us. And in fact, you know, we talk about technology as being able to help us drive efficiency help us keep the cost of advice down and lift the service. The fact As we’re doing some work at the moment around AI and automation, and there’s some really exciting things coming out to the marketplace, but you cannot leverage tech, unless you have good processes. Did you like that segue? So that takes us to our next theme,

Andrew Rocks
the power of process.

Sue Viskovic
And look, you know, we, as coaches are talking about this all the time, you know, you cannot build out really robust service models and efficiencies without having process, people need to decide how they’re going to do it. It’s got to be one way, same way. You know, Drew, he’s systemized, to deliver their specialty, all they do is risk advice. So they’ve built their entire system and engines around doing that, Glenn, you know, he, from a Fitzpatricks, he brought his wife in over a period of time to systemize their business, and they run their whole business out of Monday. I love the description of how they do that. You know, I think when we’re talking about this, it’s also It might sound boring, but it’s really critical. And often when we talk about this, we’re talking with principals and advisors, and they tend to get it from a theoretical perspective, they know how important it is. But they’re not the right personalities to sit down and build out that end to end system that like, I would rather eat their foot. And it’s probably not the best use of their skills, or

Andrew Rocks
time or time, okay, and so I’ve just circled the practices. And yet again, and this is a reoccurring theme, every single one of those practices, through various suppliers have leveraged their time by working with an outsource partner, who has freed up their middle office, which quite often would be the person best placed to help you with building your process out. Yes. But historically, it was the last job that they got to every day and didn’t Yes, and they’ve leveraged that time. And they’ve had their person build a great process, which is then further leverage their time and they’re spiraling up.

Sue Viskovic
Exactly. And you know, what, why don’t we hear straight from the horse’s mouth? I know, I know, Gil quite well, he’s fabulous. He won’t mind me calling him a horse in this example. Let’s get on with this process

Gil Gordon
completely. I mean, I signed a new client up yesterday. And we introduce the client service team as the people that manage the process. And yeah, a bit of self deprecating, they don’t trust me with matches, that sort of stuff. And I’m not kidding. My daughter, Kate works for me. And Katie has lectured me three times this week about making diary appointments in my diary, she said, you stuffed up the system. When you do that, don’t do it. Don’t, don’t even try just to send them to us, because they have a series of threads that kick off. And we lean incredibly heavy into that. And just as a number, maybe I’m jumping ahead, ever since we engage with VP and one of the great things about VP is you’re forced to standardize your handover. So I said to one of our advisors, Steve a couple of years ago, and he picked up a yellow folder, which was a review folder. And I said to him, Mike, who did that review prep for you said, Don’t know, don’t care. And what he meant was, I know what’s in it, I know that the quality is there, and it really doesn’t matter who doesn’t, you’re getting the model you’re getting. And what we’ve noticed, since we’ve got that standardization, right and VBP gets a big shout out for this, that our advisor numbers, our client numbers per advisor have gone up by about 40%. And accordingly, our revenue per advisor has gone up by about 40%. So basically, we’ve just been taking on more clients without needing to hire more staff. Because we simply do more with less time, because the system actually works. It’s customized to this practice. So I’m not saying it’d be perfect for the next guy, I think might be good. But what we did was we figured out what how we wanted to run our business. And then we put a system in place. And we created massive efficiency, I had a direct impact on the profit and the turnover. And by extension, the value of the business.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, I think I think you’ll be the first person to, to sort of look back on that. And I don’t think he realized the impact of freeing up his best advisors time, there was never a motivation or client acquisition problem. There was just a time problem. And by streamlining it, and trusting his people in his office, and other people in other office, and I believe it was VBP I’ve just read the notes. He’s managed to free up that time and deliver a better outcome. So to him

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I think it was Gil but it said it took his advisors from being able to service maybe 120 clients to more like 150 and they’re doing exactly that now. So again, It’s, it’s not only about efficiencies, it’s about building the capacity for the advisors to serve more people. But I think what’s really a key theme through all of these firms is it’s also about making sure that the outcomes for the clients are better as well. It’s not just about making more money, it’s delivering a better service to the clients.

Andrew Rocks
So we’ve got to this we’ve got to the client. Whenever, you know, as a reform TFP, shout out to the CFPs in the world, yeah. You always started with the client. But we’ve done it the other way around. Because if you don’t have the systems in the time, and you’re not sharing the outcome with your overall team, you’re not going to get everyone pushing the same way. Yeah. So now that we’ve got the time, we can talk about client engagement, you know, so. So I think everyone, everyone here, just genuinely there, none of them mentioned, they wanted to target efficiencies to put more money in their bank. Now, they all mentioned, if they target efficiencies properly, gives them more time to help their clients more.

Sue Viskovic
Yes, that’s exactly right. And it means building out that proposition that they’re delivering to them, you know, whether it be from, as we talked earlier, that hyper specialization and partnering with the right people to solve the right problems for their clients. But the one that I really want to pull out is that interestingly, even though they’re from different groups, both Gil and Glen use the 10 three now, engagement process. Yeah,

Andrew Rocks
it’s pretty cool. Yeah, yeah.

Sue Viskovic
So and it’s from Brian Fitzpatrick, you know, and obviously, that through Fitzpatrick’s the licensee, but I think they I don’t know if they still do, but they certainly used to run training programs. So even if advisors weren’t in their network, they could go and do the train pub,

Andrew Rocks
or it’s called the Fitz way, I’m sure that they I’m sure that’s one of the key pillars of how they attract and retain their team.

Sue Viskovic
Yes, yes, indeed. And, and it is, it’s a beautiful way of taking the conversation away from the dollars and the numbers. And all, you know, that’s a theme through all really successful advice practices, we know that they’re not just talking about investment and dollars, it’s not just about a fact find, they have a really great way to get to know their clients properly, to have a far deeper proposition for them than purely investment or insurance strategies. And I mean, you know, you know, I love this because I am on the board of lumens. And LUMION is a fantastic system that enables advisors to really extend that conversation, not only through the conversation, but then capturing that data in the technology. And adding to that ongoing conversation piece tracking back to goals tracking back to people’s values. It’s so critical. And so what I really loved about this conversation that we had, that you had with Gil, is that he’d taken that 10 Three now. And I think within that there’s the four L’s they talk about live love, learn and legacy. And of course, as every great financial advisor does, they iterate and they put their own spin on things. And, and I love what Gil did with redesigning it to put people first and using people as that acronym to shape his conversations. And I had to write this down, I don’t want to get it wrong, Gil. So P for place, a for employment and career over offspring and family P for passions and hobbies, alpha liabilities, and E for expenses. So, you know, a great way to really round out what’s really important to clients and get to know them. And of course, that means he’s got a great conversion rate for his new clients. And of course, he brings that same philosophy into the client review process. And it gets fantastic retention.

Andrew Rocks
I think, you know, probably really good for our listeners. Now this basically here, what the, the the 10 three now philosophy really is, you know, because what I like about it is every time you meet with the client kicks off again. Yeah, so I believe Glenn probably frame that best he did

Sue Viskovic
indeed, in actual fact, I know he credits gem stack for oil. And I probably should have cut this as at a different point in the quote because he was talking about the way that he captures people’s whole life in a mindmap on one page. And that was he learned that through Jim and it’s a great way of particularly dealing with those clients with a lot going on in their life. And he has this really well structured page to put it all together way to put it in this mind map. And then he brings through this 10 Three now concept,

Andrew Rocks
you know what I actually saw him present, which I probably referenced in the in the in the podcast with him. And as he was doing it, he was showing the Mind Map. I’m like, I’m, I’m looking up there and I’m putting my own family’s numbers in his mind map. Yeah, like really engage me and I’m like, Ah, that would be awesome. Like, you know, so. Never Say Never Glen give me a call one day, who knows? I might be able to forge a lofty, lofty sort of aspirations. But let’s let’s listen to his quote.

Glen Reilly
Yeah. And I’ve got to give credit to Jim Stackpole for this framework that he taught us when he was coaching me. So we want to see their entire life on a page At the initial meeting, the context is to get really clear about what would make a great life for you as a client. So I want to take you forward 10 years, and I want you to paint me that picture. Where are you living? What are you doing? How much income do we need? What are your financial milestones? What do you want to give back? If you weren’t here yesterday? What did it all mean? What’s your legacy? So they’re the kind of things that we want to be understanding and getting really clear about what that looks like and why that’s important. We then going to take you forward three years from now, what’s going to happen for you to be on track for your 10 year milestones in three years? What are some of the milestones that need to happen there? And then in 12 months, what are we going to achieve together in the next 12 months? What kind of plans or advice Do we need to provide at execution time it is for you to nail your 12 month milestones, you

Andrew Rocks
know, what, let’s just keep listening to the you know, to Granny’s is he articulated the concept of coming to better get together and getting the right people working together. And each playing to their strengths might have been a sporting get background, but he really embraced that, you know, a team philosophy so you know, how he could service his clients better and scale. So let’s, let’s hear a bit more of what he’s got to say.

Glen Reilly
The one thing that’s kind of evolved since the Royal Commission is that it’s become harder and harder for a single man, you’re one man bands, you’re smaller practices to offer a profitable service, they need to scale they need to leverage their time and let go of some of the the things that they’ve got to do like compliance to other people that are better off doing that, so they can focus more time on giving advice. So again, if I bring you back to our model, where I want each of our advisors managing at least a million dollars of revenue, not making the final note, so during the paraplanner handovers, the goal is that they can walk in, give advice and walk out. So that model would look like a senior advisor, there might be two associates straddling each meeting, jumping across each meeting, an offshore CSO managing them. In a perfect world, this business, you know, we’re generating 30 to 35% EBIT. And there’s no reason why with that model, with the right kind of infrastructure, you couldn’t be turning over $10 million. And

Sue Viskovic
look, you know, there’s, so many businesses here are really trying to grow and trying to get scale. You know, for some advisors, we know, they don’t necessarily want to take up the world, they they’re quite happy to have a small business. But I agree with Glenn, you know, it’s one thing to have a small business, but if it’s a single advisor practice, there are so many more challenges on your shoulders. And you know, those who are a single advisor practice listening to this right now, if that’s because you’re a start up and you’re growing, and you’re getting there good on you, outstanding, keep growing. And if you use a single advisor practice, and you’ve still been in that, that size for a long period of time, in fact, you may even not be listening to this podcast, because what we find is they end up so busy, they’re working 80 hours a week, and they don’t have time to scratch themselves, which means they don’t have time to look at how they can do things better, and how they can improve because it is really tough, right? Let alone the risk of you know, if you can’t turn up to work, you have to turn your face off. But you know, don’t be disheartened by this. Because there are absolutely opportunities, whether it be looking at rolling your business in with a larger business and owning part of you know, this this behemoth that you can then tap into the scale and the things that they’ve built, or whether it be finding another advisor that’s got similar values as you that really want to build a similar kind of outcome for your client. You know, it’s not, it’s not the end, if this is just you with one advisor in a practice, look at the different alternatives, you’ve got to be able to keep doing what you do really well and

Andrew Rocks
look, with the ensemble app in your pocket at all times. You’re never alone. That’s true. You’re never alone. You know, when I scroll through the feed of questions and answers, some are very technical. But there’s a lot that very much. You just get the vibe that they’re smaller practices. And the best thing is some of them are good givers. And then they get much in return. So there is a way of scaffolding

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, that bridge. Yeah, and can be lonely. But you’ve got community.

Andrew Rocks
That’s right. And the businesses that we’re focused on, they’ve all taken that next step. They’ve all brought their people through. They’ve all Dare I say scaled up a little bit in their own particular way. In fact, some of them have turbocharged, they’ve all probably, you know, what’s the difference between buying a job and having a business? It’s probably a few things, but I reckon when you borrow and you have to sign a director’s guarantee. I reckon you’ve got yourself a business there and if you don’t Now you’ve got a business then your significant other OTL. Yeah, yeah. So, but

Sue Viskovic
this is the whole purpose of this podcast, isn’t it? And I love I love, love, love that you are doing this because I’m looking at the engine room of these firms. This is how we learn from one another and how people can get those great ideas and take them into their own space and keep growing this awesome profession.

Andrew Rocks
And speaking of engine rooms, so you’ve been doing this for a while. Can I ask you one thing? What’s What’s news with Alexa? And, and what’s your take on the engine rooms? Because you’re about to fly over the Nullarbor. And I may not physically see you for a long, long time.

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, well, I think as this episode drops, it will be out in the marketplace, we will have announced that Alexa has merged in with VBP.

Andrew Rocks
Congratulations. Thank you. And I suppose more than that, why? Well, Roxy,

Sue Viskovic
I’ve been running Alexa for 16 years now. And I’ve always been driven by this passion. And so to have my coaches this passion to support advisors to build better businesses. And there’s a couple of reasons why this partnership makes a lot of sense to us. In part, because it can get really frustrating when we’re helping firms. We’re working from a strategy level, we’re coaching them, we’re keeping them accountable. But the great ideas that they have either don’t get implemented, or they take too long to get implemented because they don’t have the execution capacity.

Andrew Rocks
I literally one of the other co hosts, I have Dean Holmes, who also helps me unpack, he seems from exactly the same hymn book. Yeah, yeah,

Sue Viskovic
I mean, it’s one thing to have the ideas. And for a lot of firms that are successful, that they may not necessarily have the long term need, or the spare cash flow to put on a permanent resource to be able to run projects and, and certainly the expertise that you might need to run the different projects that you want to have. You can’t get that all in one person. So we developed the GSD lab a couple of years ago, and shout out to my colleague, Lana Clark, who’s that that was her brainchild, and GSD. Can I Can

Andrew Rocks
you? Yeah, you can definitely provided that. Well, how far is this going from? It’s called the getting something done. Is that right? Getting what

Sue Viskovic
is looking at depends on who we’re speaking to the origin of it, it’s getting shit done nice. Because this is about let’s stop thinking about high level stuff. Let’s stop thinking airy fairy, at the end of the day, you got to get shit done, or you’re not going to move your business forward. But if people are offended by that it could be get stuff done. But the reality is, in order for us to really help people get shit done in the best way possible is there are better resources that you can utilize that aren’t necessarily onshore. So of course, VVP, I’ve got these fantastic team of people in the Philippines. And they are going to be able to really turbocharged that service for us. And for us internally as well. You know, we’ve got some awesome things that we’re bringing to market. But when we’re such a small team here in Australia, it was difficult for me to scale up, you know, talking about the capital backing behind us, you know, I had a few opportunities on the table. So it’s one thing about having the money behind you to be able to fund this, but then to have the infrastructure and our team there, you know, that

Andrew Rocks
you feel like you’re having the conversation now that we just reviewed some of the practices, going through that same journey, you know, we’re now you’re in a position where you can bring employee share schemes or team member share schemes that you can, you can make sure you can have holidays that, you know, like, isn’t it just so serendipitous. And I must say that there are plenty of plenty of really respected other other organizations like VBP, you know, as part of the ethical outsourcing Association, that provide this scaffolding for lots of other organizations. Well, we’re really pumped to have such great insights on the engine room. And yeah, so over to you.

Sue Viskovic
Yeah, I look at things i It’s really exciting what we’re going to bring to market and what we’re going to be doing, it’s to be honest, when VBP first reached out to me, I kind of questioned it, because it didn’t really make immediate sense to me, you know, hang on you you guys do outsourcing in the Philippines. That’s very different to what we do. But when I looked a little bit further, we actually have the same it’s pretty much slightly different words, but the same purpose. We are two companies that are driven to support advisors to run better advice practices. And so we put the power of these two businesses together. We can help advisors with strategy we can help them define what they’re trying to achieve with their business. We can power that with fantastic people. And of course my first thing It was really I needed to understand the values of this business. It’s, you know, I talk to my clients all the time, whenever we’re helping people pursue a merger opportunity or a growth opportunity. The first thing you have to get right is make sure you’ve got cultural alignment and shared values. And, you know, thankfully, I actually went up a couple of times to the Cebu offices, because you wanted to make sure this wasn’t just a firm that was exploiting Filipinos, and I know you’re involved. So you know, I’m sorry if that offends you. But that was the thought process that went through my mind, I needed to know that all the things that I was hearing, and you were telling me was actually true. And I’m so thrilled to say that they absolutely are, and, and I’m just so excited about what we’re going to do with this.

Andrew Rocks
And you know, what a great way to frame a podcast that’s completely devoted to the business of the business, and financial advice. I’d like to thank you, congratulate you. And thank you for sharing some time with me today in unpacking those wonderful practices. I’d like to shout out to all the practices that have been on the podcast, if you’re a listener, and you’re part of a practice and you go, geez, I tell you what, we should be on that podcast. You know where I’m at, reach out, I want to talk to as many positive enthusiastic beacons for engine rooms in Australia. With that, I’d like to thank you sue. Soundguy Kieran as always, yep, that’s that’s him nodding. Yes. And to everyone else, um, have a great rest your day. Bye bye.