Engine Room Podcast #4 – Corey Wastle – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, my name is Andrew Rocks, and welcome to the engine room podcast, a podcast where we leave the lead on practices to find out how they work, why they work, why people join them why people stay, and what makes them successful. And I’m really happy today to have Corey on from Verse wealth. And I’m going to start with a debt Jack, as we sort of predicted the beginning. So for an organization called ensemble, you can be the verse and I’ll do the chorus. How does that work? Terrible start, isn’t it?

Corey Wastle
That works. And they’ve got three boys. And I’ve got two boys with a third child coming, and I’m all over the dad jokes. So yeah, I think that’s the right place to start. So they could

Andrew Rocks
great well, we can we can simulate the set, I roll at the dinner table every so often. But I suppose we’ve had a good chat beforehand. And I’m really, really looking forward to this. You’ve got a great dynamic business in verse wealth. And I suppose I’d like to kick off with just a little bit about yourself, how you’ve come to be in the position you’re in? And what made you sort of start this business? And more importantly, I suppose the real purpose of it.

Corey Wastle
Yeah, sure. So I’ll take you back to the start, Rocksy, so got into advice in 2011, started at CBA, which was, I guess, in hindsight, the tail end of a well documented bad period for them. And, you know, I kind of went into financial advice, thinking it would be one thing, but then when I started realized, at least where I was, there was something very different to that, you know, I felt the role of the advisor, you know, as long as you sit down with, you know, perhaps husband and wife have these great conversations about who are you? What do you value? What’s important to you? What are you trying to achieve? What goals have you got, what stresses have you got the driven wholly or partially by money, and then when you know those things, then you’d work with people to help them build plans, make choices, put strategies in place, have investments, products, if they need it, and so on. And that’d be I guess, the, the nature of the relationship and the role. And when I started CVI, it was really more so sales, masquerading as professional advice at that point, and it was a real, it was a real contradiction for me, I had a great experience there. And I learned a lot of things. And I think I sharpened my focus as to what kind of advisor I want to be, and what kind of advisor I don’t want to be. And I think in those, you know, three and a half years, I was there, I think I spent the majority of the time with the intention to leave and start my own firm. And, you know, my motivation in doing that wasn’t to be self employed, or have all this, you know, freedom that they that so called business owners have wasn’t to deal with my own client, but it really was to, to change what it meant to be an advice and what it meant to get advice.

Andrew Rocks
And can I ask you, did you did you? Did you just think that you’re gonna go out there and start a little business? Or? Or, you know, what are your five? How many years on? Are we now? Quite a few years?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, we started in 2015. So where is it now?

Andrew Rocks
And it’s, you’ve got a significant business. So was that what you thought of from the outset? Or what was your mindset when you as far as the company mindset that complemented the way in which you you wanted to deal with clients?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, well, I always wanted to build an enterprise. I wanted to build a brand. And as I said, I wanted to help shift what it meant to be an advisor, and what it meant to give advice. And I know that sounds lofty as I say it, and to some people, it’s going to sound grant grandiose, but I guess for me personally, they were, they were the main motivators that and probably a fair bit of ego as well, I’d say, looking back and being a little more self aware now, perhaps. But yeah, I wanted to I wanted to build a national business that had not just myself, but that many advisors giving advice in a way that we all really felt proud of. And, you know, and, you know, had more people seeking advice, resultantly.

Andrew Rocks
So a real Jerry Maguire, who’s with me kind of moment, is that right?

Corey Wastle
I will, no one will say no one will say no, I did have someone leave with me. I had a co founder of the time, James O’Reilly, who, yeah, that that partnership lasted three years. And James has gone on to build another another business, which is doing its own good things. But we didn’t go by a client base, we didn’t want to inherit any of the traditions of financial advice. And that was something we were saying at the time. We wanted to start with what we’re calling was a blank canvas approach. And really start with the end in mind. Like if this is the role of the adviser as we see it, like what would the adviser do? And how would we build a business around that and it’s taken, like a really long time with a lot of work and effort and mistakes and so on, to get where we are now. And I guess where we are now is you know, it’s an evolved representation of like what we had in mind when we when we first started

Andrew Rocks
and in relation to the type of clients and advisors that that that you desired have in your business? What’s what’s what’s the what’s the offering adverse, maybe gets give us a bit of a high level of what it is that you offer?

Corey Wastle
Yeah. So Well, firstly, in terms of who we offer to, so our clients tend to fall into one of two camps. They’re either high income professional families typically 35 to 55. So, you know, ambitious time poor, good free cash flows, mature high school fees, correct. True, true, they might tighten it up a bit. But you know, I guess that, you know, they’re not sure on what the right strategy is for them, they want to make sure their money’s really working for them. They’ve got, you know, they’re in a dynamic, really dynamic phase of life with all competing priorities. And resources are limited time, energy and money. So that’s one camp, the other camp is more the traditional financial advice clot the pre retiree, you know, they’re kind of, you know, early 50s, to 67, one of the main motivations for reaching out is, hey, you know, I need a retirement plan, I’m thinking about retirement, I want to make sure I’m doing the right things now to make that make that a reality, so that the pre retiree would be probably 35% of the new clients were on board. And that high income professional, which is probably top 5%, household income, would be, you know, kind of two thirds of the clients for onboarding at this point. So that’s, that’s, yeah, that’s how we’re doing it for now, you asked me a couple of questions, the so in terms of, I guess, the approach, so you know, we’ve, we’ve built the whole client experience around three pillars, and they are values, intentions, and financial well being. So values being the things that are really important to do that could be family, freedom, health, and well being balanced community security, intentions being the things you intend to do or achieve. So a lot of advisors will call these goals. So we want to travel, we want to upgrade the House want to have more kids, we want to start a business, sell a business or play or work less all those things. And they’re the things that we’ll strategize around or plan around, well model out, the values are just a reference point for when they need to be really important decisions a client might make. So example, one example might be client values, health and well being family freedom, there are 45 year old executive, making really good money, setting plenty of money, making really good progress financially. But those things are important in their life. They rate them out of 10 how well they’re happening. It’s a digital exercise. And they might rate them as like a four, three and four out of 10. And it becomes really obvious to them that even though they’re making good progress financially, it’s not leading to contentment and satisfaction, so they’re not making the right choices. And if they’re not making the right choices, we’re probably not giving the right advice. So that’s why we just have the values as a reference point where they need to be along the way.

Andrew Rocks
And you may or may not know this, but this morning, I went on to your website, and I did my own financial well being score, which was a very useful exercise even for someone who’s been in financial vise for a while. Would you like to know how I scored Corey? I actually thought

Corey Wastle
Rocksy I was actually on the tram of the wave at lunchtime, eating some sushi. And I saw that come in. And I thought that he’s Rocksy looks like he’s doing okay, and I think he needs any advice.

Andrew Rocks
No, hardly none of the things that all planners and dreamers are good at is I’ve sorted out all my long term goals, but I have to admit, the short term cash flow communications with your partner never goes away. So I thought, I’m glad that you did see it. I’m glad that it makes it all the way up there. But yeah, and it’s a really good tool as well. And gives a bit of self awareness.

Corey Wastle
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for saying, Roxanne Yeah, and in terms of the fighter wallbang being one of those three killers I was referring to. So you know, we think you can, you can have a plan, and you can have an advisor and you can have a strategy. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to feel as confident as in control of your financial life as you want to. So we track and measure how everyone feels about their financial life. And if that’s a couple that’s individually within that couple, because they’re going to feel different about different things. So they complete a quiz that typically on this smartphone takes on average, just under four minutes, it’s 27 questions, six areas of their financial life, gives them a score out of 100. And it gives the advisor this really nuanced insight into how someone feels about different aspects of their money. So you can start to dive into all those aspects are, where they’re coming from. And you can you then you’re well placed as the adviser actually not just be a strategist, but a great coach. And you can have the right conversations with the client and lead them to a greater sense of control and empowerment. And ultimately, I think more than anything, that’s what clients really want, they want. They just want to feel good. They don’t want to feel stressed, they want to feel in control and confident. Well, thanks

Andrew Rocks
a lot. And look, I think the the whole premise of this particular series is the building of the business of the business and from what you’ve said just then that you actually started. This business with an enterprise building an enterprise in mind is actually quite unusual than the well worn sort of path for Financial Services and Financial Planning businesses is the person who’s really good with the clients who starts off they then realize that that The Practice Management, general management is something else. But it’s quite unusual for someone who struggles both, and enjoys straddling both. So I’m just going to sort of change up the gears here and maybe just get a bit of a, for everyone listening. You’ve mentioned how you treat your clients. But let’s lift the lid and find out how you actually you know, how you can how you can actually deliver for your business. So maybe it’s give us a bit of an idea of the organizational structure in your business, and just how that marries up with with the way in which you want to deliver to your clients? Sure. Well,

Corey Wastle
I think the first thing to note is that we’ve got our own if Ansel and we’re an independent, both those things been important to us there for AFSL for the autonomy and the independence, I guess, just being an input representation of how we think advice is best done when those conflicts are removed. In terms of the organizational

Andrew Rocks
side, once we get one quarry, just just in relation to the overseer, I love asking this. Do you? Do you have an external person who helps manage that that business? Or do you run it yourself?

Corey Wastle
Yes, I mean, we’ve got our head head of operations slash head of compliance within the team. Daniel, who’s brilliant, by the way, shout out. Yeah, it’s certainly we’ve got, we’ve got Gail from rmtc, based in Perth as a compliance consultant, who I know also work as mother with some great businesses. And yeah, if anyone’s looking for a great compliance consultant, and you’re thinking about getting run over, sell it, absolutely recommend talking to Gail.

Andrew Rocks
Awesome. Thank you very much. I always like to ask those questions because it’s if you’re if the sale is not structured properly, and your governance not structured properly, it’s very difficult to be able to deliver

Corey Wastle
out also so so in terms of the organizational structure, Rocksy, and the team’s evolved a lot in recent times, we’re a team of five, about two and a half years ago, were 10 to 18. At present, we’ve gone myself that’s evolved into the chief executive role. We’ve got dinner Donovan, who’s had our wonderful head of operation. And we’ve got to this point, we’ve got six advisors on the team, and four of those have started in the last nine months, we’ve got another one, hopefully coming on board next month, as well. We’ve got three associates in the team supporting those six advisors. And we are a little bit associated heavy at the moment, we think we can probably run on a ratio of three advisors to one associate based on like the current roles and responsibilities. And we’ve also got seven teammates in the Philippines. So we’ve been, we’ve had Philippine teammates now for almost always from the get go, maybe, you know, going back about five or six years ago, when you started. And I don’t like the term outsourcing. We’ve got Philippines teammates, and they’re really integrated into our team, into our culture. They’re high performers with high standards like like the rest of the team. And they do our planning, they do our implementation. And they help a lot with the onboarding, we get a lot of leads will probably touch on that, as well as the the management of what we call the journey service, which is in traditional in in normal speak, ongoing service. And that’s the makeup of the team at this point.

Andrew Rocks
And do you mentioned that you’ve got six, six hours, but quite a few have come on recently. And you’ve just threatened on on on an open carriage that you’re about to make the A’s do Nora work because you you’re going to mix that ratio up? Do any of your current Associates is that a sort of a path that they move into advice through a py? Is that something that you envisage

Corey Wastle
differently? So the most recent associate rehired Tiana Rhodes, who started last month has just finished her py just before she came on board, she’s got the intention to better advise them not too far down the track, we’ve got the same intention for her. One of our Associates has just been promoted to advisor. So he’ll go through it, I guess the transition was in kind of like a hybrid rollover, probably 12 months before being a fully fledged advice in terms of his time, and we’ve got another associate named Stu, who I still deal with, it’s just over two years, we all love him to death. And he had his first role and advice with intention to be an advisor and self and studies KY on one July with the view to once that’s done him, you know, hopefully, soon after, you know, beginning to move into the advisor role as well. So it’s absolutely a pathway but it’s one we’re kind of building over time as well.

Andrew Rocks
I’ve got two questions to ask. And the first one is, yeah, well put the people who are working for you aren’t who aren’t necessarily working out of your office or might be working from a different country that is part of your global team and, and a quick look on your website. It looks like you’ve got a one team one dream philosophy there as far as having them but having them there and having making people if you want to create a culture which we’ll touch on later, then it has to be all one in all in. It can’t be a two tiered one. So congratulations on that. And then what Bernie Question is, with all of the internal promotion with with bringing on new advisors, will we get new clients?

Corey Wastle
Yes. So we we’ve got at this point, I think a really effective digital marketing strategy. So, like I mentioned to you, when we were chatting, where is somebody? Yeah, we’re getting

Andrew Rocks
between you and I don’t worry about it. Just tell me how you do it. No one else is going to figure that out.

Corey Wastle
Yes, I won’t. I’m librarians about that. But yeah, this one, we’re getting around 130 to 160 leads and referrals a month, a lot of hours, a lot of those, the lion’s share of those come online. And it’s through a combination of sources. You know, we do a lot of advertising across Google other search engines, social media, and so on, and that doesn’t get your lead, it gets your traffic to your website. So then you’ve got to be able to convert traffic to inquiry that a good rate to make an effective strategy. We’ve been doing this now, using a digital marketing agency for about two and a half years, we’ve been doing that with increasing increasing effectiveness over time in terms of cost per lead, quality of lead, and so on. And so we’ve done that we’ve scaled up our ad spend, and but we also get a lot of good, a lot of organic traffic to the site as well. So like, I remember when we first started, and in the first few years, I get Google verse wealth, and yet, it’s read to the first page. And there of course, you click the page too, and you keep going in a method like being on page 13. Or one point think it isn’t wonder what it’d be like to like get to get the page one. Because if you’re not on the page one kind of not not not read, really. So

Andrew Rocks
the good news is no one would know you’re on page 13, other than you because no one would have got that far. There’s no doubt so so don’t don’t stress. And when I was about to ask you, do you do that in house, but you don’t you have an external company who you pay for, and they achieve monthly goals for you. Is that right?

Corey Wastle
Yeah. So that’s in part, right. So yeah, we have digital marketing agency that we’ve been working with really closely for for two and a half years. And they run, they run the ad campaigns. And they build ads in collaboration with us in terms of the narrative and the copy, ie the words and imagery and so on. But like running, running a digital ad strategy, by itself is not going to be a winning strategy, you have all of these things that need to underpin the ad strategy. So things like you’ve got to have a really clear differentiated value proposition because when someone goes to Google, they’re not sloppy and versatile to Toppy, in financial advice, Melbourne or time and planning Sydney and they’re going to find hates the results. So they’re probably going to look at multiple website, and they’re trying to identify as a consumer, like, who resonates with me the most, like who will, based on my instincts, where do I think is the best place to go and get go and get advice. So to help them do that, and for that to be asked a, you’ve got to have a compelling message that that speaks to them, you’ve got to have some social proof. So things like your online reviews, Google reviews are the most powerful for about 140 Plus five star Google reviews now, and it’s just not the numbers that matter. It’s the commentary, where people talk about the experience they’ve had and the impact that it’s had had on them, you know, you know, started winning multiple awards, and so on, fortunately, in the last few years, and all of these things create great kind of credibility, they create authority, they create confidence for people that that are in the right place. And, you know, if you can get them to your site, and then get them to move their way through your site, and ultimately, Walker chatted, you know, all of those things working together actually creates a creates a winning digital strategy.

Andrew Rocks
None of that happens overnight, you know, not getting reviews, having social proof. You know, writing articles that get published for the greater good, is a lot of foundation work. And, and I imagine you’ve been doing that since you started and you’re now reaping the rewards there. That’d be correct.

Corey Wastle
Yeah, definitely. I and I say that to people when they say hey, like, you guys are getting so many liens, like, how are you doing that? I kind of feel like I need to explain well, it’s in part a reflection of all the things we’re doing five, six years ago, like boasting I got trying to give people the best possible advice and record the best client experience, we could, you know, and you’d start to get these Google reviews. And because of that, you might start to be asked to contribute to different publications and things like that. So it’s kind of like this big melting pot, and I think he’s just kind of keep putting good quality ingredients in this melting pot and just kind of keep stirring it. And, you know, over time, you you create something that the words will taste good. I guess that analogy what?

Andrew Rocks
What Yeah, absolutely. When I’m looking at at the engineering, part of driving a business is also knowing what you’re you’re not good at so can you maybe just ask, do you do every aspect of the financial planning journey or do you have joint ventures or partnerships maybe just to get a bit of clarity because you did mention earlier that 35 to 55 executive COUPLES IS your zone. Those people consume a lot of stuff. What is that you have sort of driven for execution in your business. Yeah, we

Corey Wastle
women, we do all the financial planning advice. But there’s a lot of referral partners we have to refer to really regularly. And that we collaborate with, like the firm and accumulate a client coming on board in the first 12 months on average is that three referrals to other other professionals, so they are across accounting or across property, they’re across the state planning their across personal insurance, which I know is something that a lot of advisors or firms do in house from our perspective. You know, we don’t we don’t think that personal insurance is financial plan. You know, people need insurance, just like they need a will as part of being financially organized and responsible. But when it’s viewed as the responsibility of the advisor, advisors job is to help the client set goals, set intentions, put strategies in place, make those choices, and so on. So we’ve got some great partners around insurance that we refer to the one service we’ve recently bought in houses mortgage broking as flow so closely correlated to the plans and the strategies of a lot of our clients. So as of September, we bought Tim, into the team. And, and that’s been, I think, an improvement to the client experience by streamlining it, and just creating more collaboration between the advisors, and in this case, our mortgage broker,

Andrew Rocks
and you find that from the clients really expect that, because they don’t know what they don’t know, quite often you would be the first planning experience for a 35 year old potentially. Do you feel but sometimes they just expect that you would look at their debt?

Corey Wastle
I think to a degree, I mean, I think that, like you said, they don’t, they don’t know, they don’t know. And they’re coming to us saying, Hey, here’s the resources of God. And here’s what’s important to us and what we want to achieve. Let’s work backwards from that. That’s how we think about it anyway. And then pretty sure that’s how most consumers think about it. So then our role is go okay, well, in helping you achieve that, here’s what we can do. But here’s what you need done by others. So we’re going to link you up with others, and we’ll collaborate with them to make sure we execute on the execute on the planet. And always shout

Andrew Rocks
out to Tim Mike, Tim, the it’s going to be it’s going to be a fun time joining a dynamic team that said growing so so quickly. I just might change gears for the moment. And I’d love to hear what’s what’s the tech stack that verse wealth uses. And I’ve heard whispers that you’ve experimented with video SOA, so maybe kick off with the tech stack and sort of how close to that unicorn moment of video and user friendly SOA is have you got?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, so with the tech stack, and tech stacks, pretty pretty poor Salesforce is the centerpiece on sale, our CRM, and we produce the advice documents via cell forth via conga. We use Zoom for virtual meetings with the oversell, we take a lot of payments ourselves for direct debit payments from bank accounts and trust us I want to dump last straw. Um, Calendly is useful online bookings type form is a very integral part of our client experience. So let’s just do you’ve quite passionate, what did I do? It was online, someone it’s sinful, sexy. Ali, get online surveys Rocksy, so we’ll use it for things like investment preferences, ie your version of risk profile, a pre meeting question is a financial snapshot that someone has booked in an introductory chat bar or website will complete before that introductory chat. We use it internally for things like questionnaires before teammates slash performance reviews. So we use buoyant for modeling, which came out from the UK. Only about 1518 months ago, we were part of the beta testing phase. It is the best simple easy to use dynamic modeling software that iron advisors have seen by a mile and I’ll have the same good modeling elsewhere. So maybe it exists but if you’re looking for better modeling solution, we’re absolutely in touch with the team and voyant that’s vo Wyatt, a anti digital cladogram is all done via Kula sterile templated to take about 60 seconds to do and then you’ve got the ancillary staff get are things like MailChimp for email marketing, zero Trello for Kanban boards and yeah we use score up for the for the financial well being quiz to track and measure and people feeling about the finances so there’s a bit there. But then you know the I guess the the main things that

Andrew Rocks
is very passionate and a shout out to voice that sounds like the only sort of individual with a better model strategy is Leonardo DiCaprio as we speak so I’m not sure it’s the same same vibe but

Corey Wastle
debatable and subjective I’m sure not all of our listeners will will think that he’s he’s doing well with his modeling strategy but

Andrew Rocks
I thought I’d change gears then what about video so as you know this is that I see a fair bit of you some LinkedIn, people are talking about it. I’ve never seen it in practice as a client or as an advisor so maybe just give us an idea of how that operates.

Corey Wastle
Yes, I mean, we people use the term video SOA is and we’ve got what we’d call our own version of video. SOA is because SOA it isn’t isn’t just a video so did a background FPA has been in promoting and educating advisors around the concept of video so always a little bit of time now it’s been headed up by Ben Martian and Fraser Jack, both passionate advocates and leaders and advice. And, and I am all about advisors and practices and firms or whatever you call yourself, educating yourself around, what are the legal requirements of an ESA? Why, and How can that be delivered, and then going through either one of the FTR workshops or if you’re a member jumping onto the portal type in SLA V. San SLA production and look through the 16 videos and put together to help educate you. That’s where I started. And this was November last year, we launched our own version of video video SOA, so without making this too, too long winded Rocksy, in short, instead of our SLA being what it had been in the past, which is this long ad page, jargon laden document detraction, from the client experience full of duplication, unnecessary content, and so on, that you don’t feel proud to give to a client, we’ve replaced that with our SOA is now a digital folder. So think like a dropbox folder, or Google Drive folder, and that folders called statement of advice, Andrew rocks, right. And within that digital folder is a number of different documents that work together to satisfy the criteria of an SLA. So in terms of the things in that digital folder, we have a video recording of the meeting. And we have a document called a summary of advice, which is like this super condensed version of what you would think a normal Soa looks like as a PDF. But instead of 15,000 words, which is what we had, it’s 3000 words, there’s no jargon, there’s plenty of pictures, it just gives the client the valuable stuff, nothing more. And that goes that goes into that folder, along with PDFs and slides from from the meeting.

Andrew Rocks
And this is where your your operations team really do a bit of the heavy lifting is that is that prepared in conjunction with the the advisor and the associated and your your team abroad?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, so I mean, there’s a few people that that have involvement in putting putting that together. So paraplanning team for some great advice document together, the associates give them all of the inputs, they need to put that document together, the associates will also put the modeling together and record a video of the modeling to show the client how on track they are for their intentions, or their facial features looking like at this point in time. And they’ll record a video that goes for about 10 minutes. And they will send that video along with the summary of advice to the client a few days out from the meeting with the advisor to say, Hey, you’re meeting with your Stevie Jade, or Ellie, or Hannah or Lucy or whoever, on Friday, have a read of his summary of a bias. Watch this video to walk you through the Model A. So that will make what that means is when the client gets to the meeting, they’re pretty well versed but pun intended, you said you’ll do the course 101. And in your end, it means the meetings can be a lot shorter as well. So just that the last one to touch on there is I think when people hear that term video SOA, a lot of advisors immediately think oh my God, that sounds crazy. That sounds risky. You know, what about this? What about that? What about this? What about that? So much of really what happens already in the client advisor conversation is what’s meant to go in a video as a way, here’s your crop, here’s your goals. Here’s my recommendations. Here’s the basis of my recommendations. He is the concessional contribution you should make and how much and the benefit is it’s going to save you this much tax move you towards your retirement goal. Disadvantages are preservation age and not having access for a period of time 15% contribution stacks, just by explaining that verbally, you’ve covered off slide six of the eight SOA requirements. And if that conversations just recorded, you’re 70 80% the way that so you don’t need to go and duplicate all of what you already tell the client in your meeting in a long winded 80 page 80 Page document. So

Andrew Rocks
um, and thank you for that and you’re passionate it’s really really evident quarry when it comes to that and, and quite often, you want to build something that you’d like to receive as a client and it feels that way with with that. Now I’m going to talk about the people and the culture in your business and before before today, you sent me through your culture, deck verse culture deck it is it is an awesome is an awesome document. It goes through lots and lots of different things. I’ve actually got open a page here one of my favorites, which I’m sure you’re gonna regardless on the structure, but a couple of things here, you mentioned is team first and team last. There’s a few things here leave your ego at home. Be open minded to your teammates, ideas and perspectives. That’s a real change from the command and control kind of top down approach. And I love this one. If you need to shovel shit get a shovel. Right? So with that particular highly professional and not labor hour at all kind of entrance, how is it that why do people join you? Why do people stay? Why do people grow with first wealth?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, well, there’s a lot to unpack there. Firstly, just in terms of the team, first team lost value one of our five guys here at verse, the things you were just kind of reciting there are the guiding principles of behaviors, and every value has gotten principles and behaviors. And the idea behind that is, you know, I think in a lot of organizations, values are just kind of things that they’re words that hang on a wall, they’re ultimately largely meaningless. And I think that’s in part, because they’re not committable like, if you’ve ever used like innovation, like how does someone like do innovation everyday, like how do they keep that fun to center and how they kind of show up and how they make choices during the day. So the guiding principles and behaviors are designed to make the values committable but also aspirational as well, because you know, that you don’t live them perfectly, they are set our best. And those guiding principles behaviors as a team, we come up with it so then all my words that you know, if you need to shovel shit, get a shovel, that was Daniel Donovan, a head of operations came up with that, that guiding principle, and that really was born out of the fact that, you know, we just venture COVID, we had some hard times. And sometimes you’ve just got to do the things you don’t want to do. For the team Dig, Dig heels in grid a little bit grind a little bit. And, you know, that was the language that he put forward. And we agreed upon was a representation of kind of what that meant. Yeah, nothing’s below you. So you’re gonna jump in there.

Andrew Rocks
I was just gonna say look, come I suppose to whine about what what, when, when you yet again, you started this business, always dreaming that always anticipating that it was going to be an enterprise that had people? And what does culture mean to you? And how do you integrate it? Because as you pointed out, slogans on a wall are just terrible. How does it play out in everyday life? At first?

Corey Wastle
Yeah. So in terms of culture, how do we how we think about it? I mean, I think for so many people culture feels wishy wishy washy. And you know, unfortunately, for a lot of people, I don’t think they’ve ever been part of a great culture. There’s not enough of them at this at this point. But for us, and really what culture is, it’s just what it’s like to be adverse. That’s what the experience is, yeah, it’s, it’s have teammates describe the culture to their family and friends, like that’s, that’s our culture. And the culture is defined in large part, but not completely by the five verse values, and it’s underpinned by purpose, which is help people live the life they want. And if that doesn’t resonate with you not aligned to the need to fit in the culture so that values reflect they reflect who we are, and who we want to be. And like I said, the job is not to live imperfectly is that it’s to live them as best as

Andrew Rocks
you can. Well, the floor is yours. What are your five values?

Corey Wastle
Yes, the five values transparency, team, first team last client of says, Make it simple and never settle.

Andrew Rocks
Okay, so the quiet one has been evident, since we’ve started this, this podcast. What was the one immediately after the Comeget? Simple was that right?

Corey Wastle
Make it simple and never settle? Never. So

Andrew Rocks
from an operational perspective, making it simple, has to start in in making it simple for your own team members. How do you add as the company and yourself in your role? What things do you do that makes your advisors and associate lives? Simple or more or easier on a daily basis?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, a few things there. One is having a commitment to always refining and improving our processes and systems. I think as you grow, you can grow without chaos, without having really good systems and, and processes. And they’ve constantly got to evolve, because the business will evolve. And when we think about processes and systems, we always think about simplicity. So what is it we’re always as best as we can, and we don’t do that perfectly. Mind you. But why is trying to look through the lens of can we make this simpler, we make it shorter, easier, we make it more follow your notes. And when we when we when we think when we think about pairing the systems with technology, because quite often, they go hand in hand. When we think about the tech stack as an example, we are always thinking about or making choices around what’s going to be in the tech stack is what is going to give the simplest, easiest user experience for the clients and for the team not not not like not what is the software that can do a million things. What is the software that does the 234 things that we’re going to do all the time and doesn’t so well, that that that a five year old could follow their nose through it? So yeah, I think it’s the combination of that kind of thinking that, you know, helps us kind of keep things simpler.

Andrew Rocks
And how do you how do you ice get some perspective on how you’re going. I mean, I ran a business in financial services for many years. And, and you mentioned that you’re constantly open for innovation and whatnot. Who do you take advice from? And do you have forums for your, for your team members to, to maybe bring up suggestions? Or? Or do you have external people come in and assist the way you look at from a new lens?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, a combination of those things, Rocksy, so in terms of Firstly, in terms of team, we run a process called OKRs. Are you familiar with that? Go for it. Tell

Andrew Rocks
us tell us what, okay,

Corey Wastle
so it stands for objectives and key results is basically a really simple goal setting framework that any organization can adopt. It was made famous by Google, because they’ve used it pretty much from day one. And now it’s used by companies everywhere, LinkedIn, Airbnb, you know, Netflix, etc. And the idea is basically, you set goals as an organization. And then you say, Okay, well, if that’s a goal, we need to know whether we’re achieving it or whether we’re on track to achieve it. So it’s got to be measurable. So your goal is your objective. So an example for us is objective, to provide a world class glide experience. So how do we know if we’re doing that we’re on track to doing it. And that’s where our key results KR comes in. Somebody go okay, well, we’re gonna measure that through NPS Net Promoter Score. For those that aren’t familiar. That’s that, that common question of out of 10? How likely are you to refer a family member or friend to business X, and there’s a formula to work out what your NPS score is based on your small sub. So for us, the key result could be okay, well, over the next three months or six months, we want to increase our NPS, for our journey service, ongoing clients from 71 to 75. Right? And then we work backwards from there to go, Okay, well, if the goal is to move it from 71 to 75x 90 days, what are the actions we think we need to take to improve the quality of the client experience to see the NPS rise to that level southern as the team will sit down and say, Hey, team, the KR is to go from 71 to 75, for the NPS, er, let’s all take some time to give thought to and come up with our ideas around how we improve the client experience. And then we bring those ideas together in a democratic way we vote which we share them, we will vote on them. And we do this visually as well, because we have quote Philippine teammates who we need to, and then we then

Andrew Rocks
we it’s really awesome, by the way that

Corey Wastle
they will choose the actions and then we and then over and over that period, we try and do the actions and we see what happens to the results. And the results tells you whether the actions are working or not. And if they’re not working, you probably need new action.

Andrew Rocks
Cool. And do you have a so you’ve given us the process of how you make those decisions? From an internal perspective, is there a sort of a monthly or quarterly rhythm as to sort of when you take stock in your business?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, there’s a monthly quarterly and annual rhythm built around the the OKRs. So we’ll have annual objectives. And we will update the key results either quarterly or half yearly. And we have monthly OKR days, when we take time out of the business to share the okay up progress, what’s happening, what isn’t happening, what’s working, what isn’t working, get input and feedback from team and then we will set about the actions for the next month or for the rest of the quarter. So that kind of that loops on itself every month, every quarter, and every year.

Andrew Rocks
And what I might do for people listening is we might include a link to the OKR sort of overall philosophy and people can follow their nose and and figure that out, because I’m a really big proponent of having structure. Because structure does liberate you when you’re running an organization. So this particular culture deck that you’ve you’ve done when when did you start that? Um, is this a recent? And if I’m, I suppose the other one is, let’s say for instance, I’m looking to join your business. How do you profile? Sort of who gets let in?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, okay, so the culture deck, I would put that together about six months ago. Now, Rocksy, and I initially got the idea was inspired by Netflix, um, you know, people and culture, something that’s always fascinated me, in a way it’s felt like it’s the foundation of a great team or a great business. And so I’ve always been curious and tried to educate myself around. So Netflix is a culture that I really admire. And I came across now about 18 months ago, their culture deck, which just keeps anyone that doesn’t work at Netflix, this really great insight into what is life like at Netflix? Like, how do they define their culture? What happens in there? What kind of people here do they invite in and who survive who don’t survive in there? And so on. So I thought, What a great way to give people that might perhaps want to work at verse and insight into what it’s like here. So it was primarily built with the hiring process in mind and because we’ve really begun to accelerate them Out of hiring what we’re doing. We put this together the set about six months ago, probably nine months ago actually. And

Andrew Rocks
by the way, it sounds like it’s going well, you mentioned you’ve you’ve taken on three or four advisors and and this is a really super tight talent market at the moment. So did you interview many people to get to four or five advisors? Yeah, well,

Corey Wastle
we’ve hired we’ve hired set for in the last since one July. And we’ve accounted the other day, I’ve actually interviewed 35, financial advisors across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. So, you know, we are proudly really selective around who we let in and we have over time, coming back to you, I think other question around the the hiring process is we’ve kind of thought about the hiring process more. So now, kind of like the client experience, let’s let’s, let’s create one client experience, let’s create one hiring process that everyone goes through, and it’s constructed in a way to maximize the likelihood we get the right person on board. So, you know, and I think that’s the process we have now in combat to kind of step you through, it’s been born out of mistakes, more than anything else, you know, firing,

Andrew Rocks
tell me about your mistakes. This is the fun part. So because quite often, you know, the journey is your life lessons in your learnings, what mistakes in talent acquisition and retention, have you made that really have have instructed you to move into this new phase? Yeah,

Corey Wastle
I mean, what are the simplest way to say the mistakes is not getting not hire the right people? I think that I think initially I was with this focused on culture, I didn’t have enough focus on the role itself. And you know, where that crept into the have the capabilities and or the experience actually excelled in the role itself. More so thinking simplistically about what if, if they’re aligned to the culture, we’ll figure that to get the rest of our so well, that probably meant we didn’t have bonds on some of the seats along the way. You know, and, you know, there’s

Andrew Rocks
so you got culturally aligned people, but you, we might have been off the mark on the role that they were going to do within your culture,

Corey Wastle
yet, correct? Yeah. And maybe they just didn’t have the capabilities to do that role. Well, maybe they weren’t in the right role. You know, and I think about like an advisor, hire remounted. Couple of years ago, now, I’ve got the advisor on board, and we didn’t have the robust hiring process we have now. And the steps that if they had gone through that process, now they wouldn’t have gone through, we ultimately wouldn’t have made the hire. But we had that advisor on board, we were having some clients that really weren’t happy in why we had to had in the past, and we had to let that advisor go, which is a really crummy experience for them a crummy experience for us, you know, as the hard part of business. But you know, we we learned from that by making the process more robust. So I guess to run you through what what what the hiring process is, like, once we get introduced to a candidate, often through a recruiter but but not always, the first interview is with myself, is typically a coffee Suzume. If they’re understate it’ll go for anywhere from like, at least an hour, sometimes up to three if like we’re hitting and often we’ve we’ve got the time, and I’m trying to get to know them personally understand the story of the Korea, I will have sent them the verse culture that beforehand. 100 and 126 slides they can consume around the culture, the values, the hiring principles, the operations, the tech stack, the license, the investment, philosophy, cloud, express all that stuff. So it you know, it means that I get the same first 20 questions every time.

Andrew Rocks
And if they haven’t read you, coach index, normally pretty good indication of how you’re not doing a long meeting with those candidates.

Corey Wastle
No, I’m not sure that’s happened. I mean, I’ve had a few times where people have read the culture deck and said, Hey, thanks for that. I’ve had a read through. I don’t think it’s the right fit for me like great time. Yeah. So then the time saved me the time. So do the first interview. And if that goes really well, then what we’ll do is we’ll have a cultural interview, which is a really important part of our business. We’ve done it from day one. So the cultural interview, I’m never a part of the candidate will meet with three verse teammates, typically in different roles, and they’ll have a coffee with them for typically 75 minutes. And the whole idea of the cultural interview is the teammates adversity, are trying to assess is this person going to fit in our culture? Are they going to live their values? Well? Are they one of us, like, in their head asking simple questions like, Is my life going to be better if I spend 40 hours a week with this person? Because if the answer to that question is think so or probably not, then then they’re not going to be a fit. So at the end of the at the end of that cultural interview, the teammates will have a conversation amongst themselves. And the end, the question really is like, are they a cultural fit? And if anyone anyone says no for any reason, and I mean, any reason we won’t hire them as our commitment to them and it gives them this sense of ownership, which they should have over the culture because it’s not mine is ours and And our job is to not just grow it nurture, have it protected as well. So we do the cultural interview, and that’s a chance for the candidate to, to ask the teammates anything, I’m not there. And and I’ll always say to the candidate, here’s the cultural interview, you’re gonna go into next. Ask them everything, right, what they love, what they don’t love, what’s been the most difficult time? Are they support? And are they not? What would they change? What’s the leadership? Like? What happens when they feel overwhelmed? Because you want to know these things, so you can work out whether it’s the right place for you?

Andrew Rocks
Do you feel like government I get this a bit from people do you feel like that’s that sometimes, you want to hire people that share the same kind of personality, as the types of people that you’re attracted to, but might not be fit for purpose for that particular role. It feels also like, you’ve got a verse jury duty, and that and that you nervously sit outside. And someone comes and gives you a piece of paper saying it’s thumbs up or thumbs down, it must be quite weird to have, you know, be rooting for this person IDs. If they get through, I ended up told that sorry, no cigar,

Corey Wastle
or if it’s happened before, I mean, I don’t want to take up the team of my time of my teammates to go through that process, if I am not very confident, they’re going to be ultravid. But there’s been a couple of occasions where I’ve thought they probably would be but someone will often they’ll come out of there and said, I don’t think they’re a fit for for this reason. So I’m like, okay, great, I’ll call up and I’ll let them know that we’re not we’re not moving them forward. So. So that’s the cultural interview. If they get if they get through that Roxie kid to St. Then what we try and do is we try and get the rest of the hiring process booked on one day. So there’s about another three important steps and it takes about five hours. So we book it like Whirlpool will book the day out with a majority of the day. So what we’ll do is we’ll get them to do high performance benchmarking. So hiring is both an art and a science, the culture stuff is more the art. The science is more around trying to identify does the person have the capabilities to do this role incredibly well. So we use another shout out here we use people logic up for not what people might call like a psych test. Yes, hot calm has benchmarking. So what we what we’ve done there is with people logica is we’ve had our teammates do the assessment. And we’ll take say, two, three advisors in this diversity advisor role that are proven high performers in the role, and we test their cognitive abilities and their behavioral traits. And then we take those scores of those two, three high performers, and we blend them together to create our benchmarks. And then when a candidate for the advisor role does the assessment, they are getting benchmarked in terms of cognitive abilities and behavioral traits are dangerous, what we know leads to high performance in that role adverse, because like, even though, you know, when you’ve got people that are fantastic at a role, when you’re hiring, you’re like, I just wish I could get another one of that, or someone like that, right. So this kind of helps to kind of curate that. So we do the High Performance benchmarking, and then we’ll talk them through the results. We’ll we’ll get them to we’ll print it out for them, we’ll give them a highlighter and say, highlight everything you disagree with. And then we want you to tell us why you disagree. So testing self awareness to want to have done the High Performance benchmarking, we do a technical assessment, so 90 minutes, broad scope, advice, Sue bar family trusts, investments, tax, etc. So we we see what they know and what they don’t know. And we don’t need them to know everything, because they might be coming from a firm where they have different advice, different scope in this gap. That’s fine. We want to know what the gaps are. So we can fill them really quickly with resources. And then we’ll do a roll, we’ll do a roleplay. So like we don’t ever want to hire an advisor, again, and get into meetings with them got hired Jesus nowhere near where we thought it would be. So we do role plays, it’s not real life, it’s a little bit icky. But it helps us get to it helps us get a sense for how do you engage with the client? How do you navigate that advisory type conversation? How do you kind of hold the room with the client? How might they feel in your presence kind of going through the process with you even though your process now looks different? Different different outputs. And so that all happens on the on the last day?

Andrew Rocks
Look, my observations there. The first thing was I was thinking that you said the role plays are a bit icky, but probably I would lose the fake mustache and wig. It would just be more natural. But But seriously, there’s this old adage of, of hiring slow and firing fast. And if I’m listening to this, and I’m thinking you did this exercise with 35 people at some various way over the last six to 12 months and and I put my CFOs hat on I’m thinking you know, that’s a lot of time. But it is dwarfed in the amount of heartache and pain that you have to go through when someone is in your role in your organization three to six months down the track. And you know when everyone around you knows they’re not going to make it. So congratulations on that. That really quiet What in depth thing? And I would encourage people look this is all about the engine room is why do people join? Why do they stay? And I think, from what you’ve said, Corey is, they make the decision to stay. At the same time they make the decision to join, because you haven’t left any rock unturned, really, you’re not going to find out surprises, and and that’s probably going to assist you with with my next series of questions is, once they’re on board, you know, how do you how do you manage top performance? You know, I get a lot of feedback that, that getting people to be top performers is half the battle. But when they when they become top performers, how do you manage them? Does does your business have? You know, obviously, you probably do have KPIs to have short term benefits. Do you have long term benefits? Is getting an ESOP or getting your team as part of your business in your future? State? Sort of maybe take me through how you and your operations team, manage your people on an ongoing basis? Please?

Corey Wastle
Yes, sure. I mean, like, like, you would understand that there’s a lot to that, like if you’re trying to cultivate a high performance environment. And it’s not just one thing of flexing, how do you have a great relationship with your spouse? It’s not one thing. It’s lots of things. And it’s a delicate kind of ecosystem as well,

Andrew Rocks
if I’m not sure I did a five hour technical, sort of sit down with with with my now wife, a shout out. I love you dearly. Please, please don’t leave

Corey Wastle
me that I’m mostly here for the past that night. So, so into in terms of liquid performance, because I think kind of like culture, like high performance is one of those things that can mean different things to different people can sound a bit wishy washy. I think there’s a lot of businesses that talk about having a high performance culture, but it’s probably more style than substance, I think so. Like for us, like, you know, we’ve documented in our culture decks that people read this before they have a first interview, like, like, what does a high performance environment mean for us, and like, first and foremost, it’s phenomenal teammates, you can’t have a high performance environment, if you don’t have brilliant, brilliant people. That’s the first thing we’ve defined what it actually means to be a phenomenal teammate. It’s about having great relationships and a real sense of connectedness within the team. So if we use the term team, teammates, we don’t talk about staff, colleagues, bosses, and so on, like literally the we don’t use the words and the language to us really matters. And, you know, we said to each other, like, we’re not a group of people that work at the same company we’re rotating in, there’s a real difference. It’s a nuanced difference. But it’s a really important difference. So in helping people invest in those relationships and feeling connected to get them. It’s high on autonomy and competence. So when you’ve got high performers that are aligned, and there’s a sense of purpose, that you’re kind of kind of share. I know there’s a lot of cliches here. But when you when you got those things, you can give people lots of autonomy, you give them lots of trust, you give them lots of freedom, they can put ideas forward like it’s it’s what we would call transparent yet psychologically. So they can say, I don’t agree with this, or I want to challenge this or I’m feeling this way or I’m feeling overwhelmed or Corey I don’t think you handle that meeting with you know, with a team very, very well then and I’m not going to get my backup I’m curious Great. Well, yeah, tell me more about it. What do you what do you think I got wrong that

Andrew Rocks
ladder, I’m gonna ask you whether your management style has changed. But the actual when I when I read your, your, your culture deck, it isn’t just wishy washy, you get into significant depth you nothing is by chance, you’ve you’ve mapped out your processes, your workflows. So in many respects, you’ve set your team members up, you’ve created an environment where they can’t that where they they have the tools to succeed. And, and the next step is, you know, the motivation. So you’ve got the old tools to succeed, which you know, whether you call it a carrot or a stick, but how do you add his verse then celebrate success?

Corey Wastle
Yeah. So when we have a good question, we have different rituals in the in the business. Firstly, we every foreigner we had that gratitude session, we used to do it every week. We’ve done it every Friday for about six years. And we’ve recently moved to to Fort Ali, because as the team gets bigger, take longer to get through everyone’s gratitude. So he didn’t do the fortnightly and basically, in short, mate, what happens is you share one thing you’re grateful for it could be a teammate, could be something worker could be your spouse, it could be the the weather, it could be, you know, a new app on your iPhone, whatever. It’s just gratitude and you share that with the team. And what happens there is quite often there is a lot of gratitude being given to teammates for things that they have done often align to the values for things that have been achieved. So it’s kind of this you know fortnightly rhythm where we get to celebrate acknowledge a lot of things. We also have our monthly SEO update. So everyone every teammate is in there, they complete a short survey which is on tight form beforehand, and they get to share like I guess what they think the wins have been anyone they want to acknowledge in terms of living diverse values and why and then there I’m not reading everyone’s answers and look for Going around the virtual room when so many people are sharing the value of here’s this is this when hit, I want to acknowledge, you know, Stu or Lucy, or, you know, Daniel for living this particular value. So, those kind of wins get celebrated, I guess, organically but then there’s also stuff like, you know, I’m just just thinking about this, you know, in the office here we try and we work hard, but we have a lot and we have a lot of fun. Because we, you know, I said, it’s gonna say we love each other to it to a very large degree we do. I’ve got teammates, I absolutely love and I love being a teammate and proud of being a teammate. You know, we had Joshua has been our associate for 12 months, just transitioning to the advisor role, had his first what we’d call workshop a fortnight ago, we could see that the client agreement got signed digitally during the course of the meeting, and we notice Josh was walking down the hallway to come back into the, into the office, we call him Who are you know, for those that are obviously cricket fans, they would know Glen McGraw Hill, Glen McGraw, Glenn McGrath, we were seeing just McGrath who are just with our Josh does something right. So just walks into the into the office, I’m sure feeling feeling great. Like this is a this was a milestone moment in his career. And we all just jumped out of our chair and started chanting while we were off high school frat house, oh, God, I forgot, oh, I just forgot. And I was just like, it was just this kind of 3040 seconds of just kind of pure fun and joy, something here where men bought, you know, and it’s just it’s finding little things and little ways to celebrate, you know, all the wins along the way, there’s so many good things that are that are happening and might solve the challenges.

Andrew Rocks
And you’ve got from what you’ve just said that you’ve got some people that are working in the office, some people that are working remotely or in a hybrid is that typically, the expectation in your business? Yeah. And so,

Corey Wastle
I mean, we’ve done a lot of remote work in recent years, I’ve got seven Philippines teammates, we’re all at home through COVID Chicly because we’re primarily Melbourne team. And, you know, since we’ve come back from COVID, we’ve, we’ve run a balance of working from home and working from the office that currently that balance looks like three days in the office and two days at today’s at home. And we just trying to strike the balance between giving people maximum autonomy, so that integrate their work into their life and not not the other way around. But also recognizing that as we’re bringing people into the team, getting them up to competence, quickly and integrated into the culture that happens when you’re in happens when you’re in person. Okay, and these relationships have built that building has. So there’s, you know, there’s there’s, there’s macro team and cultural things that we’re trying to nurture, and there’s individual autonomy and lives we’re trying to nurture as well. So that balance of three and two, I think is something that’s working for us at the moment, at least.

Andrew Rocks
Thanks very much. And look, you mentioned before it before the session that you’d be looking at implementing an employee share scheme. What what’s what’s your motivation? And, and is there probably your team we’re on or listening to this? So this is news to them. But I’m in trouble, but what was your motivation? And then how you will construct that?

Corey Wastle
Yeah, so it’ll be used to a couple often been, but but most of them know that, you know, we’ve had the intention to launch a an employee share scheme, for some time, we won’t call it employee share scheme, because that is the word employee, and they called the verb share plan. But I mean, like, we’ve got got three motivations in in doing that. Number one is, and the most important is we want to reward teammates, I’m like, I’m not building this business by myself. And we’ve got wonderful people that are working hard, that are committed, you know, and if we are organized well, and we execute on that plan, as well, and we maintain our sense of kind of purpose, we’ll probably achieve a lot of really good things over time, and build a really good business. And you know, being entrepreneurial, like one of the consequences of doing that is to build enterprise value. But that’s got to go somewhere to some people at some point in time. And, you know, I don’t, I’m not driven by it. And I get excited thinking about selling a business in whatever years time and just getting the check, I want to share that with everyone else. That’s where we’ve got that together. So that’s the first thing. The second thing is that adds an extra layer of alignment. We didn’t need the alignment, per se, but it adds another layer of alignment, I think in terms of just how people think broadly about the business. And number three is to attract talent. So I get it. I like labor markets, really tight in financial advice, in particular involvement 26,000 advisors to 15,000 last couple of years. And, you know, I think for most firms, it’s really hard to attract great people. And then we’ve got to do a lot of filtering a lot of interviewing to find those great, great people. And, you know, sometimes they’re coming out of really well established firms, you know, where they’re making really good money and I think particularly for great advisors, for a lot of them. They feel like the next natural step in their career once they’ve got a good client base and making good money is to have a stake to have some equity to have some skin in the garden. Whether it comes with decision making powers or or not, so I think as a tool to help attract the best talent and advice, which, you know, we kind of don’t shy away from, you know, we think it’ll be supportive in doing that. Let’s hope anyway.

Andrew Rocks
And look, that’s that’s the premise for the engineering podcast is, is, is, in many respects to give, to give perspective is to give talent who are out there a real window into what you’re all about, and, and from the horse’s mouth and, and we want to get the best quality people gravitate to the best environments, so that as Ensembl, we can provide the positive evolution of financial advice. And when I suppose a couple of final questions there, as far as the vision for the future, and I want to ask it in a few ways. So you’ve got a business where you’ve got an operations or a general manager or practice manager, you’ve got, you’ve got people in accountability streams, and financial planning has really come from a cottage industry. So ironically, it was a cottage industry that also had the biggest banks in the world, sort of involved in it. But where do you think the enterprise of most financial planning businesses is heading

Corey Wastle
the enterprise? I mean, I’ve, I think that scale is becoming increasingly important. I know that sounds a bit like a cliche as well, but I think as a consultant is that because of cost of delivery, I think more than anything else, Rocksy, it is cost The cost to deliver a high end beans, the margins have a lot of downward pressure on them. And that means that to be able to do advice profitably, because in the long run, for it to be sustainable, it’s got to be profitable, you’ve got to have, you know, you’ve got to have some economies of scale. And I think, you know, the idea of kind of the, the small cottages, or the one man or two man bands, it’s getting hotter, and hotter and hotter. And I’m not the expert on the landscape, to say that that can’t exist. But I think that’s getting more challenging, where I’ve been getting easier. And I think what we’re seeing a lot of the One and Two man bands kind of integrating with other larger, larger businesses and so on. So, you know, I think, from our perspective, you know, we’ve had luck going back to the side of that shot, we’ve, we’ve always had the intention to build a real firm, to build a national firm, to build a brand. But we’ve never been motivated to do that, just for the sake of being big, like style, for the sake of scale. Like, we genuinely want to give people access to great advice that we’d love giving to people that we know is making a difference to them. And we want to do that for as many people as we possibly can. And then as many people as he possibly can, doesn’t mean a one advisor business, and means lots of advisors in lots of places. So, you know, so much of, I guess, the decisions we’ve made along the way, and we’ve intentionally probably gone slower than we would have liked to, but it’s been in part to try and just create some really good foundations understand the culture, but the client experience the Operations and Technology. So things are consistent, and repeatable from a client experience point of views. And I think now we’re kind of getting to a point where things are really accelerating. And we can add advisors in Brisbane and Sydney and Perth or wherever, give them all the tools on the client experience, put the systems and the people around them. And it can work and it can work quite quite quite quickly. So the intention is to continue to grow the grow the business out, not at the expense of of great advice. And wherever we get to in the end, um, I’m not sure but you know, it’s not going to I don’t identify with it in the way perhaps I did when I first started, you know, cliche coming, but genuinely enjoying the journey, love who I’m working with love what we’re doing. And, you know, if if all of us feel that way, we’ll probably do good things over time.

Andrew Rocks
So that well think of a call to action. So are you saying that you you’ve taken on advisors recently, but you are in the market for advisors, and in particular, you are going to spread your wings into different sort of states and areas. And that’s something that you’re currently doing. So if anyone’s listening and loved that sort of so far, what we’ve been speaking about, and in Brisbane or Sydney or other cities, you’d be open for a conversation.

Corey Wastle
Yeah, definitely. I mean, we’re interviewing advisors every week and either at this point, Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, we hired Ellie Fordham, who is a wonderful adviser. However, in April last year, she’s in Brisbane. We’ve just a couple of days ago, had a Brisbane advisor, come down here for full day of interviewing. So we hope we’ll be on our team next month. We’d love to get some advisors on board in Sydney, as well. So we’re pretty agnostic around the location and if anyone’s listening this podcast and thinking hey, I resonate with some of this stuff. You know, I’d love to learn more. All you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can check us out at our website verse Walther Comdata. You you can, you can even send me an inquiry via the aspx page, which is about about the team, I’m happy to shoot you the culture deck, they’ll give you some of the insights we’ve been talking about. And if it makes sense for you want to select we’d be more than happy to more than happy to chat.

Andrew Rocks
I love the enthusiasm. And the purpose of the engine room podcast is to give people an idea on the management structure and their philosophy that what you actually do for clients and if that’s sort of what you’re into. I’m how the team works and, and I’m only a journey today, the most delight I got, which is a visual thing is when I asked how you celebrate, you know, for for those of you on our podcast, you know, we exploded with happiness, I couldn’t control him, it’s you know, and it could just see him thinking of all the cool ways of what they’ve done adverse. Well, look, thank you very much for your time and for your passion and for sending me through the culture deck. And it sounds like not only a few generated a great practice and a great place to work at the moment, but you’re now looking to take that logical step because as you said, if you want to do this with his many clients and change their lives, you have to also change the lives of your own internal team. So thank you very much, Corey, and for being part of the engine room podcast. Cheers.

Corey Wastle
Thank you Rocksy have really enjoyed it and I appreciate being on, mate.