Engine Room Unpacked #2 – Transcript

Andrew Rocks
Hi, I’m Andrew Rocks and welcome to another edition of the Engine Room Unpacked. Today we’re going to go through the next batch of wonderful practices who have graced our engine room podcast studio. The practices that I had the pleasure of speaking with was Pride Advice, led by Brett Schatto, based in Adelaide and Sydney. Burke Britton, who has Practice Manager Aimee Lucas, down there in Gelong.The Yarra Lane business, led by the Head of Financial Planning David Moloney in Melbourne, Absolute Wealth fronted by Paul Barrett, who has a head office in Sydney, and the WealthShore business by the wonderful Brad Rogers, down there in Wornall. And I’m joined here today with my partner in unpacking these practices. Dean Holmes, good Dean, how are you?

Dean Holmes
Hi, Andrew, it’s great to be here again, to unpack the next five episodes of the engine room. Very excited today. As always, this is big, there’s a scale within the firm’s that we’re going to run through today. There’s a lot of growth ambitions across the firm’s, and some board and governments governance themes as well as we go. So, Andrew, just remind our listener, what the five themes that we want to unpack across the firm’s

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, it’s hard to actually, you know, try and get some sort of structure. But we tried last year, and I think we pulled it off. So the themes that we’ve articulated is the vision of the practice and the practice manager, the values that that company in those people have the process, lifting the lid on how they’re doing their processes, a bit about ownership, motivation, and what drives you. And finally, the biggie, the People section. So vision, values, process, ownership, and people. Now with that as a framework, Dean, what jumped out of you.

Dean Holmes
Thanks, Andrew. So we’re starting today talking about values. And so one of the most interesting things that I picked up in going through this series of podcasts, Andrew, is that we’ve talked, we talked a few times last time about values and how they’re going through the most of the firm’s. Now, the interesting thing will for David Maloney is that they’ve not only got the values, they’ve introduced this concept, which with corporate pillars, and we put that under wind values, and we wanted to share the quote with you, and then have a discussion around it. So we’ll share the quote now,

David Moloney
we’ve established four corporate pillars, which is the client experience, Digital First, operational excellence, and people and culture, or people in community rather. And within those pillars, we’ve got a range of initiatives that we’re looking to roll out. It’s about prioritizing them right now.

Dean Holmes
And so I found this really interesting as a focus of the firm, so the values drive behaviors, but also the corporate pillars actually allows for the business to understand what’s most important. And so what was really interesting, obviously, the client experience is one of those one of those pillars and, and the team focusing on on that, but digital first as well. And that was a really interesting thing with a multidisciplinary firm is that it’s, it was hard to align service dates of tax returns and ongoing service agreements and then bookkeeping obligations to create that digital first service offering and so the team down there, we’re doing a lot to try to align all of those things. things and these processes were as well at the end of the day. But I found that really interesting as a as a thing to focus on first and foremost at the business level.

Andrew Rocks
And look, I’m being a multi-discipline practice. And we do have some multi-discipline practices on our engine room. And they, they fill a really wonderful space. And in fact, my background is I had I had a big multi-discipline business. And you’re absolutely correct. Sometimes the, the accounting software at the mortgage broking software, the GIS software, and the financial planning software has not been built with connectivity in mind. So, so putting that as one of your core pillars, I think, really demonstrates that they want to be problem solvers. And they’re looking to solve, solve the problem, which is creating efficiency. And with efficiency means that obviously, you’ve got happy people. But it also means that you can price you can just you can price your your services at a rate that is fair value to the client. And we’ll come back to potentially, where your Elena’s come from later on in the podcast, because they never started as a multi-discipline practice. They’ve got a bunch of different disciplines coming together. And I would like to do a section on that. But when you talk about the values of of the business and creating those pillars, was there any other practices that stood out to you? From the get go that you went? Ah, they’ve got a reasonably clear articulation of what they’re all about.

Dean Holmes
Yeah, absolutely. So one of the one of the firm’s that you interviewed, Andrew is obviously close to my heart for those people that are listening. And so absolut Wealth Advisors have done a lot of work as well in making sure that the values are documented, but more importantly, that they flow through the entire organization. So that’s in the activities that all of the staff do both to use the onshore and offshore analogy, but the values flow through all of the staff members, regardless of their location. And the second element is that it also drives our behaviors. So all the way up to that management team, the any problems that we encounter at that business level, Paul’s able to use the his values filter to make the right decision and do what’s right at the end of the day. So that that was one as well, in terms of the values that that sat quite well, in terms of the business overall.

Andrew Rocks
The other thing that I mentioned, or the other the other observation that I had is that these businesses aren’t aren’t all startups, there’s some businesses there with with some quite serious history. There’s some businesses that have come out of Uriel, traditional AFSL. So I think there’s a couple in there that are in the in the Ri advice camp, there’s a couple in the ANP camp, there’s a couple we might talk about worst self licensed and now are out. But what they’ve done is they’ve reinvented themselves over the last five years. And this is going to be a common theme of the engine room is whether it be less of a legislative change, or whether it be looking to, to match up with what the current client wants. These practices have reinvented the way in which they do things. And they’ve done that by putting their values as the pillar of their business. And once you’ve got that, right, the people in your business get you they understand the context. So when when the practice manager or the GM then puts in tools such as technology and whatnot, everyone’s on board. They understand the reason why they’re doing things. And it also means that you can have team members who are located everywhere. And when we look at these practices, I think we’ve got businesses in Adelaide, Geelong, Melbourne, Sydney, and warble I think it just throws the stereotype of you’ve got to be in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane just out the window. There’s such successful businesses that post COVID now are in those regional areas, but servicing a particular type of clientele.

Dean Holmes
Absolutely. Absolutely. I’d love to just talk firstly, about the business that is focused solely on pharmacist, although they they do have a few other clients are now but the idea that you can focus on pharmacist as your target market and I did a little bit of googling just so I could understand the numbers but there’s 31,000 pharmacist and so you have to assume that they’ve got a higher than 20% penetration that more than 20% of pharmacists need and want advice, but it just shows that the ability to specialize in a particular occupation can build an 80 person business and with their ambitions that they want to go to 300 staff and so I don’t know exactly how many clients they have but it’s amazing thought exercise to say well could 300 people solely sir Have the pharmacist of Australia? And most likely the answer is yes. And so that is a combination of understanding where their vision is. They’ve built those values. And obviously on top of that, that corporate pillar, but then being really focused on that target market, and we should talk now as well about how they brought three businesses together. And also then, bringing three businesses together is very difficult. Three different industries as well, not not merging. So Andrew, they brought three different businesses together, and then they had a name change, which was to try to bring everything together. So we might start with the quote, about this and then and then unpack it a little bit

Andrew Rocks
are this is the aeroplane the evolution of the airline? Yeah, great. Um, when David articulated that, to me, because they had three strong brands, I really think that they will have used that as a touch point with their people going forward, that this was the moment. And it came down to getting behind something. So So absolutely, let’s hear from David.

David Moloney
But ultimately, it became a bit too convoluted and confusing. And what we needed to do was to rebrand. That was a 10 minute process, we had a lot of consultation, we had a fantastic group, called at collective and agency that put everything together for us could not have done it without them. And when went through a lot of names, ultimately settled on year alone. We think it’s a beautiful name, it ties into our roots as Melbournian Melburnians. But, Yara Is there a fantastic indigenous word for river and slow. We’d like to think that we go with the flow of our clients. And lane, it’s a bit of a homage to Melbourne as well. But Lane also represents structure. And that’s what we ultimately give to our clients. We go with the flow, but we give them structure as well to help them achieve their goals and objectives. And so we love the name, we’ve got the collective group now under that one banner, the messaging very clearly outlined, and it allows us to go into that the next realm, we did grow from approximately 30 staff three years ago, we’re now seeing it about 80. So we’ve had rapid growth under that known. And that’s been a big part of it.

Andrew Rocks
So what I took from that was that, that, although they have three successful brands, their ambition of bringing new people, I think they wanted their new people to realize that they’re there, when they join, they’re joining a multi-discipline practice, not one. I think they also when talk about the engine room, just because you’re in administration or operations in financial planning, or you’re in the accounting doesn’t mean that you you’re limited to career ambitions of maybe jumping the fence, I’m sure they all sit in the same room, I’m sure they all gather around the same water cooler. So. So basically, opening that up, really just gives you some more flexibility and redundancy in your engine room. And I think is well well worth it. So that’s that’s a great example. So everyone out there who’s thinking about a name change. And yet again, for the second time in a row, we have no financial planning practices in our engine room that are called something financial planning. So I think that’s a real departure. And I’m wondering about your thoughts on the names do

Dean Holmes
ya look, I think, one day I talked about names in the first context of saying that Dean Holmes is a financial adviser and Proprietary Limited, could have been a very simple business name for for me

Andrew Rocks
when it’s available on godaddy as we speak, if you can believe it.

Dean Holmes
Absolutely. And so the context when I first started thinking about that was that the name of the business and the advisor is very much linked when you’re talking about a small practice. So the fact that you call your business Dean Holmes is a financial advisor is actually really valuable. And it makes sense when you’re a one man or one woman operation, when we grow the business name become somewhat relevant in order to communicate certain things. So private advice is such a such a powerful name beyond the animal that stands for, but the fact that we use that and the business stands by and is proud of that name is a great example. And book Britain has a has a great history of a of one of the names of the financial advisors that started the business, of course, but the name is, begins to be it’s the first steps of the journey of the business being its own entity separate from the founders of the business. And so it’s one of those challenges as as you grow, to separate the fat founder of the business, the CEO, the business from the name of the business over time.

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. And when you talk about pride there, they will base Natalie but they now have quite a big business in Sydney and if you don’t know If you don’t believe that, that vision and values, then then having that disconnect, can be can be quite difficult. The other facet is I’m looking across at these names here, there’s quite a few businesses that do have more than one office. So, you know, back in the Lord as the Cretaceous period, when I started in financial advice, culture was all about the people in the four walls in front of you, and how you can control the room. But you could do that out of charisma, not that I had any, but you could do that out of out of some charisma, and, and really sticky tape it together. But when you’re in multiple offices, you know, think there’s a quote about ethics, which is, you know, what happens when you’re not there or something like that. But I think also that that values ties those businesses together. And I was also then looking at Pride, just in relation to the way in which Brett has had his own values translate into the way in which they engage and charge for their services. Now, a bit of a if you didn’t listen to the pride, podcast, Brett, very interesting, very interesting person, very lovely person started off in the police force in forensics, investigated financial planning misbehavior, and made his way into here’s a guy who’s precise, who’s straight up and down, ethical, etc. And very interestingly, and I’m going to maybe play a quote, if we can please clear in the magic Sangha, on how Brett and pride price their businesses to align with their values,

Brett Schatto
we decided that we would actually strip it right back down to the basics. And to actually have a file open, like a lawyer does know there’s a there’s a cost to that there’s a compliance cost and the burden, so and so there has to be a fee to that. And then then it’s up to the combination of the advisor and the clients saying what they do and don’t want in terms of the scoping. We then created modules. So what’s the core service, and then there’s modules that we put on top of it. And if there was a particular module that we thought that the client should we should discuss with the client, what would be an example of a module, portfolio management.

Dean Holmes
So that’s really interesting, Andrew, I think the idea that they’ve disconnected their price, from certain conflicts to say, say it that way, or certain percentage based fees and saying, what we’re going to do instead is is separate and split up the service offering so that you can choose, the particular advice path that you would like to go down is great. And obviously, he’s been doing this for many years, which is ahead of the curve of a lot of other practices. And so the idea that you can have a core core offering at pride, but also then on top of that, pay for extras, that is in your best interests, and the advisor is there to not necessarily sell but guide the advisor, guide the client through that process, saying, here are your options, we can manage money for you. And if you’d like us to manage money, we will do it in this way. Otherwise, if you don’t want us to manage money, we can do it in this way. And and you can keep your existing investments. And so I know that absolute Wealth Advisors has a similar model in that we’ve separated the the funds under advice, part of the business, from the strategic advice, part of the business, I happen to get that idea from my former employer of 15 years ago, announcer in terms of splitting the two caught visionary to the visionary of of announcer, but splitting the two offerings so that you could actually communicate to your client, what they’re paying for in each of those different elements. And so I think that that’s, that’s been a great growth in the business for pride as well, in being pretty clear in their fees upfront.

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. And just repeating basic business 101 How you get to your EBIT, da, or your profit is the revenue you make lists the cost that you incur. And I think historically, financial planning has been very much hopium, where you just hope that the revenue that you you derive covers the cost, there hasn’t been this real forensic to steal a Brett’s sort of history, forensic method, methodology towards pricing that potentially our friends in accounting and law, were all over. Now, I know that a lot of that grates on it, but there’s probably a halfway mark. I just thought that that was a pretty special way of doing it.

Dean Holmes
In the past. It didn’t matter. Andrew, if your business was valued on the top line, why do you care about the bottom line? Whereas we’ve flipped that around now that the larger companies that are coming in to partner with financial planning firms, which we’ll talk about a little bit today, they don’t care about the revenue Exactly. They care about what the multiple of the EBIT is or the EBIT at the end of the day. And so it’s great that we’re starting to talk about this as an industry to keep everyone focused on what the profit to the shareholders are, as opposed to what the revenue of the revenue Have the businesses

Andrew Rocks
100% agree and later on in processes, we’re going to talk about just the cost structure, and how people have implemented their cost structure and utilize utilized people in a way that’s actually pretty poorly put isn’t utilizing people that’s not very humanistic. So how they’ve motivated their team, we can edit that out injury, and we probably won’t, how they’ve motivated their team to do the things or the top priorities for the clients to practice and themselves, which comes back to having firm values and vision. So with that in mind, I’d love to maybe have a quick idea of what jumped out of you out out out to you sorry, in relation to processes, ones that are great.

Dean Holmes
Yes, absolutely. So the processes, if we think about it, in terms of the pod structure versus the pool structure, in terms of how that’s operating, there was a couple of different options there. And also, when we started to understand the ratios of supports at advisors, and support staff, so firstly, a week had a great example from Pride, whereby they’re using the, they’re not using a pod structure, they’re essentially using a pooled structure underneath the advisor. And so that was to build some redundancy in the team, because there is our staffing challenges across all advice businesses. And so having the pool structure meant that the advisors were going to be better supported over that period of time. And so that was a good learning, we were constantly seeing different models. And Brad himself said that he’s happy to change back to a different model, or the pod model later later on. But the ratio seems to be different across all practices. And so that’s the idea of that there’s one advisor, there was two advisors, I think, in David’s business in in Yarra to advisors one CSO one power planner as a, as a team pod, in order to get work done. And so that was a great example of how the business might operate there, as well as going back to Brad is that his goal was to essentially have advisors that that just doing a file notes, and that really solid engine room back office, taking the variety of the work off the advisors, and that in his context will allow him to scale much better. So couple of different models in terms of business process about how are we handling work between, let’s call it the front office in the engine room? How are we handing work back to the engine room?

Andrew Rocks
Absolutely. And I think there’s a couple of themes here. So if rewind the clock and I’ll go through some of my history is that when, when I was quote, unquote, building my engine room, I really looked at the tasks that were involved to deliver for the client. And I thought at the time that all I needed to do was get people to do the tasks. And, and if they did them, and they all stuck together, then the client will get an outcome. But what you dropped the ball on is that if you’ve got 10 different people doing 10, different tasks, that commonality of relationship and knowing the client, and knowing the context of what you’re doing, and even also just the caring level. So if I’ve got a task to do when I finish it, I’ve kind of done my job. But if I’ve got Mr. And Mrs. Smith, who I need to completely achieve a financial outcome, I become invested in the client outcome. And I think what that leads to is the difference between people who have in engine rooms who have potentially either INSOURCE or outsource tasks specific business. So that’s sending over you know, whether it be tax returns, or paraplanning, or any kind of things and people that have moved towards bringing people into a dedicated team. And I think there’s a really good quote from your partner, actually, Paul Barrett from absolute wealth on exactly that. So the journey that he’s had, and I’d love to maybe let Paul take center stage and tell us that journey. When we

Paul Barrett
knew that model was broken, we looked to go outsourcing that we went first of all to one of those outsourcing teams where you’ve got two or three allocated staff, but they work for other practices as well. And you put it put and that was terrible. We spent two years trying to make that work. And because they’re working for multiple practices, they wouldn’t, we couldn’t control them. They were doing the same thing three or four different ways. So there were errors, there were delays. It

Andrew Rocks
was just when you say it out loud, sounds crazy, doesn’t matter. It’s um, and they’re also not aligning with your culture and your personality. And it’s not their fault, not their fault. But yeah, so then how did that play out?

Paul Barrett
So the next thing is we we went to be a platinum and that’s been amazing. So from day one, we had dedicated staff and we literally call them our staff. This is not offshoring outsourcing. These are just our staff who work overseas. Yeah, so

Dean Holmes
that was a Good morning for us, Andrew and I can speak firsthand that the mistake that was made and the learning from it, and we always had constantly learning as Amy would know, as well and she spoke off is that we chose to get tasks allocated or outsourced, as we use that word, we chose to get tasks, outsource, which meant that we lost a little bit of control around the timing, the quality, and also the client outcome at the end of the day. And so our learning was to pivot away from outsourcing a particular task and lean into humans doing the work for us. And so that was where we partnered with VA platinum. And through that process made sure that we were having great people in our business that once again, knew and understood our vision and vision and values, wanted to help the clients at the end of the day, and help the advisors to see more clients. And so that was a great learning for us through this process. And I think that that’s interesting as well that besides Amy’s business book, Britain, the remainder of the businesses have gone through and our journey of partnering with firms to get the remote staff and Amy’s learning on the flip side for her honesty was actually that it didn’t work for them. And that’s amazing a because in business, we need to learn when things don’t go well and be open and adaptable to change. And unpacking as they I’m sure they have done and will most likely look at it in the future, again, is unpacking Why did that particular thing go wrong. And that was the same for us. In absolute Wealth Advisors when we unpacked what was going wrong, it was all around the path that we had taken around the chart, the choice to delegate a task or outsource a task, as opposed to get everything done within our business with our team.

Andrew Rocks
Yeah, look, I think, with the Burke Britton team, they do actually have people in their power planning business that they they they call contractors, but you know, is a contractor someone who’s been doing the same job for you for 10 to 12 years, as Burke Britton so I think it might only be in name, I think if you ask those paraplanners, you work with the lovely team at work Britain, they will probably feel like they’re part of the greens. So it might be in name only. And they’ve chosen to do that exercise, and then bring their their client sort of governance and, and oversight and care in house, which also works as well. But the big thing there is how do you how do you manage to look after your people, okay, so as a CEO, or a practice manager, and let’s focus on the practice manager, because they’re, they’re the sandwich role, okay, so they’ve got to look after all of their team, and also babysit the CEO or the board, right. So and some of the people on do perform both roles. And as we’ve said before, some of them will have been in advice as frontline advisors and gravitating across, and others, such as Amy have come through the pure play into practice management. So I really enjoyed talking with Brad Rogers. I’ve known Brad for many years. And the good thing is he’s practicing what he’s preaching as far as growing his business. But he’s growing it by building out the capacity in his engine room. And following on from Paul’s learnings in relation to how to build people who want to work for you. There’s actually a really lovely section where he goes on to how he’s managed to motivate his global team. Okay, and read Brad is a is a client of VBP that I I’m involved with. But here’s a standout in some of the things that he’s done to make their team feel part of the Wilshaw team. And I’d love just to play a quick excerpt of that

Brad Rogers
we brought our first VP who name is Cha. She’s been with us for over five years now. And she’s now doing she now in our office. So she’s come to Australia for a month just to be part of to be to be part of the team.

Dean Holmes
So that’s a short quote from Brad about how he’s managed to bring one every staff member over to Australia to experience the office environment in where’s he Wamberal? Yeah, the cheese you get cheese down there as well, I think. But the ability to bring your staff member from Cebu in the Philippines across to Australia to get them to experience what it’s like here, what a great execution of their their company values. And that people retention is going to be so valuable now because my team is going to be listening to this as well. I will remind them that part of their 10 year retention plan like a long service leave is that they all get a trip to Australia. So Bentley and Katie are at five years so they’re halfway to that trip to Australia as well. And we think that that’s a great way of continuing to support our team seem and also letting them know that they’re going to be on their way to Australia as well. Well,

Andrew Rocks
thanks for doing your your annual review they’re doing, I’m sure that this is a very private forum for doing that. I’m sure there’ll be super pumped, and now you’re buggin. So you’ve got to do that. I also then wanted to touch on we’re talking processes, and we’re talking financial advice, and there’s no escaping that or that the AFSL forms part of forms part of the pillars of how each one of these businesses operate. And what’s what’s surprising yet again, there’s no common themes. But what I would be very interested in your thoughts is that that just from memory, pride, or with ri advice, they they’re one of the big practices, but they also so he’s so as well, sure. I know the book Britain or an a&p, high MP business, and yet another example of one of those a&p businesses that have that have reinvented themselves. Okay. And I know that the absolute wealth team recently went to Paris gym, and I think we touched on that, that last time from being self license. So what was your thoughts on choosing a AFSL as your business partner? And does it bloody matter?

Dean Holmes
Well, what I’m seeing evidence and my evidence is part of part of why I’m telling this story now is that we can see that large licensees, and large businesses are going hand in hand. So there was a theme, I suppose getting spoken about about once you get to a certain size, you should become self licensed, or that self licensing is is an easier path. And what we’re seeing here is businesses with 30. And, you know, 25, and 30. Staff are working with our advice. And so that is owned by IWF. insignia. And so that’s an example of where, where they’re still partnering with those larger firms, absolutes partner with power, Jim, we’ve given up, we gave up our way for sale to move to power, Jim, I know one of the other firms as well went through that same exercise of actually giving up their Alpha cell and moving moving into a licensee. And so we’re seeing this evidence that partnering with it with a larger licensee allows you to grow. And so it’s not the only path. But definitely the idea that that you need to get value from your licensee. And what was happening through that process is we were seeing that the firms that were getting that are growing, are leaning into their licensee to get something from them.

Andrew Rocks
Oh, absolutely. And you know what, the good licensees and not only allowing them to lean in, but they’re also bringing stuff to the table. And what I potentially might throw to you, Dean to talk a bit more about is, yes, there’s licensees in the ecosystem. There’s also now groups of organizations who are working with practices in as far as being a capital partner. So there’s some there’s some groups out there as Capital Partners. There’s some that are very well known. And there’s some that are emerging in the market. And I know in particular, there’s a couple of businesses that we interviewed, that do have a capital partner, and maybe I’ll get you to articulate how that is beginning to play out, and where you think that’s going. And then what I love you to do is, I look at this engine room, and I go through these for these five, and they’re all massively ambitious people. And you know, what jumps out at me is that when we were talking with Amy, okay, she’s not just looking towards financial advice to inspire her. She’s gone and done some some courses and whatnot, that we spoke earlier, are just really awesome, and really powerful. So I’d love you to touch on that as well. And then a bit about the people. So that would be fantastic. So Dean, maybe over to you, maybe we’ll start with a bit of the the new the new type of ownership structure that may or may not be linked to the AFSL, and then flow through that over to Dean.

Dean Holmes
Thanks, Sandra. So the first thing that we went through there is the actual ownership at the firm. So what we’ve been observing through the current participants in the, in the podcast for the last five years is a couple of corporate owners. And the interesting thing that’s happening as a result of that is, is the discipline around the creation of business plans, the creation of a framework and a board of advice. And so, as an example, we’re seeing that Brett was very happy to be partnering with an equity partner. And what he spoke about in the podcast in terms of what he was happy with, was actually the fact that he had an accountability partner who was able to take it forward in terms of having a Annual Meeting quarterly board meetings and monthly action items to have that discipline to continue to grow and run his business. So we’re seeing that theme come through the businesses. And that can that’s coming from an equity partner. And it’s also coming from business coaching as well as as a secondary theme of bringing in a business coach to set that framework and foundation in place, such that we’re actually growing the business in a disciplined way. So I know, absolute Wealth Advisors and example, have, we’ve had a business coach in that practice for about six years, focused on the discipline around the execution of the business plan. And from there, we’ve been able to focus on the future growth, growth of the business, when we turn our attention to Amy, and she’ll love the discipline words that we’re talking about today. I’ve got a quote from Amy, that I’d love to share with you now and then talk a little bit about what she’s done.

Aimee Lucas
Yeah, interestingly, they haven’t been management courses, per se, and they haven’t been financial planning based. So one that I completed in Melbourne, pre COVID, in person was called landmark. So they’re focused a lot on not spinning stories in your head pretty much and not not diving into some spiral of what might happen or has happened. So that was, that was really good. It was, like I said, it wasn’t management based, it was more personal based and personal growth. So I did that one. And at the moment, I actually still do weekly at the moment Echelon front, which is around Extreme Ownership. So it’s about leadership, ownership, you know, taking taking control of your own decisions, and helping those around, you become leaders as well. So I’ve really focused on personal growth more than anything, you know, certificate based or financial planning based, it’s always been on my radar to do something like that. But for myself, in my role, I’ve really liked the growth side of things more than ticking a box for some sort of compliance, or, or knowledge.

Dean Holmes
So Amy’s having to be self taught. And this is a theme within the engine room, as we’re seeing lots of the business managers practice managers that are coming through there actually, there’s not a lot of training available to them besides what we call the apprenticeship or on the job training of working within the practices. And so Amy had to source a couple of different training elements in order to grow her grow her knowledge and position. And so I know the Echelon front is a great example whereby it has to be the furthest thing from financial planning. For those that don’t know. It’s a guy called Jocko Willick, who’s essentially an ex navy seal for in America. And he runs a leadership and coaching business. And he’s written a couple of books. One of my favorite is the discipline equals freedom concept. And so what that’s allowed me to do is understand the concept of Extreme Ownership. And it’s exciting when you say the word and get excited and see Jocko talk about it. But this is an example whereby Amy had to go out of the industry to seek a new level of understanding in in terms of how to work and then also how to motivate her team. And so she the example of of her career has been that she’s worked within the same business for a long period of time and came there at at a young age. And so at some point in your journey, you the vast majority of your career has been spent within one firm. And so if you’re not doing an element of training, externally, it’s very difficult to bring new ideas and new focuses within your business. And so Amy’s a great example of going forth and actually seeking additional advice are for external to the to the industry.

Andrew Rocks
So tell me about the rise of the practice manager.

Dean Holmes
So the other thing, Andrew in relation to the people is that we’re seeing a good theme of business managers coming within the firm. And so be it practice, practice manager, business manager are those couple of different roles. And that’s really interesting. So Brett’s had a practice manager within the business now for 13 years. And so that’s a great example of the longevity of the operational side of the business. Obviously, Amy is a is a part of that business as well. And so the theme around elevating these operational managers is is interesting. So we’re seeing that the salaries and the role descriptions of the people that are running the engine room are actually starting to approach the same amount of salary that you would pay a financial advisor. And so that’s really important because it’s it shows that you can grow your income and also grow your status within companies and not necessarily be the front end financial advisor. So there’s great people that don’t want to sit in front of clients that will be able to pursue a career within financial planning now and successfully earn sufficient to grow the grow their personal wealth. The other element of that has been the theme around employee share schemes and employees and part owners coming into the business. And so we’ve definitely seen this a few times across the business. It’s not easy to bring in an employee ESOP, as they say, but there’s, there’s it’s not easy. And the reason why it’s not easy as there’s constant questions on when the right time is, what we found, first and foremost is that now these questions have been asked of not only the advisors, but also the support staff within the business. So we’re seeing that the business manager is equally as valuable as one of the front end advisors. And so they’re both having the opportunity to participate in employee share schemes. The challenge and David was talking about this, the challenge is essentially, that the timing of when to bring the equity ownership conversation, you can’t bring it up necessarily on day one of the interview. But when is that right period of time that an employee should be working in the business before they’re invited into the ownership plan. And then when they’re in there? How long does they have to stay to realize that full benefit? I think that’s a challenge for a couple of the business owners just in relation to when when the right time is over? Thank

Andrew Rocks
you, Dean look, that was really, really well summarized in employee share schemes or just sharing part of success is absolutely part of building businesses into the future. Now, I’ve really enjoyed unpacking these five wonderful practices today. And without any further ado, I’d like to thank you Dean very, very much for being my partner in crime, unpacking these businesses and with the engine room. Until next time, Dean.

Dean Holmes
Thanks, Andrew. See you on the next episode.