#244 Gavin Glozier – Transcript

Episode details

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, people, practice, clients, community, licensee, solve, advisor, understanding, problems, important, typically, license, grow, years, sharing, staff, superannuation, implement, x y

SPEAKERS

Emily Blanch, Gavin Glozier, Capital Group, Fraser Jack

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome to the x y advisor podcast, a global community of financial advisors sharing and learning with one another to drive the positive evolution of financial advice. To get involved, go to x y advisor.com. Or simply download the x y advisor.

 

Capital Group 

What gives me confidence about investment decisions, rigorous fundamental research with portfolio managers focused on the long term, who looked beyond the spreadsheets to understand the companies they invest in from break room to boardroom, who know the only way to get a 360 degree view is to go around the world to get it can I rely on in depth research to give me steadfast confidence with Capital Group? I can.

 

Fraser Jack 

Welcome back to the x y advisor podcast. I’m Fraser Jack and today I’m joined by Gavin Glazier get a mate. Good to see and hear you again. It’s been a while actually, it’s been a while since we’ve caught up in person. But it’s also been a while since you’ve been on the x y podcast.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, it’s been. I’d say it’d be about three years, three and a half years since I was last week. Clayton, so yeah, great to be back. Thank

 

Fraser Jack 

you. Fantastic. And obviously things a few things have changed in over that time. So we’ll we’ll go and get through to but for those that haven’t heard you speak before, tell us about your journey into financial services.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, good question. My background is about 20 years in, in the financial advice world. I started my time in the institutional world. I started the world satellites in 2001 and worked with them through the asteroid transition in in 2004, I think it was and then moved across to Macquarie life when that business first started, spent three years with that group and went across to a MP a heavy insurance space up till then and then crossing a&p or went across to be the state manager of the IFA sales. And then we had the AXA merger. We inherited more staff and more team and, and more products that we were working with. And then went across to work with a large IFA business, which was which was my buyers business. Up till about two and a half years ago, we work together so I was with him for about four and a half years, I think it was it’s an opportunity to, to grow and do things that are different, which, which is a lot of what we’ll cover off the day. But I think what underpin everything that I saw in my title and institutional world up till 2014, when I left was working with advice practices, creating efficiencies, and businesses that would strive to the next level was always passionate our focus. In the last two and a half years, this, this vision and plan that I had, has really come to fruition. And now we’ve got a really good core of businesses that that work together in the community. And it’s been quite exciting. We did work in some ways with the IFA through the latest four, we did a lot of work with with them over the years building up this peer to peer community, which I chaired for for since inception up to a couple of years ago, which was, which was a great experience and got to work with some really brilliant businesses across Australia. And then yeah, for the last two and a half years, I’ve kind of taken that concept and that idea and, and really taken it out to the right businesses that I felt could get the most value out of it. And yeah, here we are today.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. It’s been a heck of a journey, isn’t it? I guess all the way along, you’re working with vise practices, just just trying to work out how to do things better. And what a great little things you can do to tweak or what you know, where there is a whole structural reach change or whatever it might be. So yeah, interesting journey. And then of course, you spent some time in an advisory practice actually working becoming an advisor and working on even even a licensee.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, advising now as well. So I’ve been an AR for the last three years, which is which is a different learning experience on its own, I think from working with practices on their business and then working in a business. B, being an AR working with advisors, so working with clients and understanding their needs and their pain points but also really what their what they want to get out of life. It’s it’s quite a special journey. I think when you get to work intimately with people’s finances and and see the you know, the relief when they achieve a goal or relief when they avoid something that could have been avoided. It’s a really good thing. That’s a very simplistic way of saying it, but it really is.

 

Fraser Jack 

It’s interesting, isn’t it when you’ve seen a lot of practices And you know, worked out? Well, I guess it’s really easy to see a practice from the outside. Yeah, I wouldn’t ever do that, oh, that’s something I’d avoid, avoid, it’s probably a little bit harder to find that the good part and they actually say, that’s great. I want to start using it and knuckling it down. What was it like for you, when you first come in advisor wasn’t what you thought? Yeah, look,

 

Gavin Glozier 

it’s a really good question. The I think one of the things that on the institutional side, we tended to get blinded with is we’ve seen these really good things. And one of one of the kind of lead, I suppose, yeah, kind of tools I would use is I would I would share with advisors, this is, what other good practices do, I would never name them or talk specifically what they do. But now we will talk about concepts and ideas of tried and tested ideas that would work really well and try to implement them in practices. But actually going in rolling up the sleeves and working on those ideas with your own businesses or working with clients is very, very different. And I think one of the biggest learning experiences I had was learning to say no. And I think it was so easy to say yes, yes, we should, should really be doing this, I should be doing this. And now I’ll get onto that next week and all the rest of it before you know it. You’re saying yes to everything. And you’re the only person who is there to actually deliver and implemented. And I think for me, that was a real a real learning experience. Because I think you know, as much as you’d love to be everything to everyone. At the end of the day, there’s only so many hours in a day that you can really be rolling your sleeves up working in the trenches, working on your business, in your business, and trying to be with clients and be their trusted adviser. There’s only so much you can do. And I think you you you can be guilty very early on just trying too hard to be everything to anyone, and achieving very little in the same time.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yes, it’s certainly one of those say no things that sort of something that I probably should be working on myself. But but it’s like, it’s really interesting. I think what you what I got out of what you just said then was it’s really about the implementation of stuff, right? Not, you know, it’s hard to say yes, but so long as you’re saying yes. And getting that actually in place.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, absolutely. I think if I look back to all the PD days, that I’ve worked with insane, brilliant speakers and saying suddenly great ideas and concepts, you know, like everyone does, he rock and all these great ideas. The Missing Link, I always felt was when he got back to your office and seeing practices, get back to their, you know, be a you business as usual, and not implement these really simple things. Because they’ve just got so much other stuff and things in their way it was it was always such a waste. And in what we’re doing now, a lot of a lot of kind of what I’ve seen as being important, and a benefit to the businesses I work with, is being that linchpin, able to help them implement hold people accountable, and getting them focused on what is really important to them, and filter through some of these amazing ideas. They may get it, you know, we’re not going to as many conferences and definitely face to face activity. But there’s still ideas and concepts out there. It’s about drawing out the right ones, seeing what the cream looks like, what’s the high gain? What are the big wins, and then from there, helping helping those practices implement, because, you know, I know kind of, you know, when I started the advice practice from scratch, you know, there was only a couple of clients that I had had, that had come home with me to start with all the time in the world, very quickly by saying yes to everything, I had only a couple of clients, but not a lot of time in the world, and was thinking very quickly. So prioritizing, and being very clear on what my vision was, and sticking to it. And making sure I didn’t stray too far was was a really important thing I learned.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. And I want to get this story out of you a little bit later than the old How did you start this advice practice? Because it’s a difficult thing to do. And it takes a lot of time and effort. And as you said, a lot of a lot of, you know saying yes, but also working on a few things to say no to at the same time you’re trying to you know, raise a family etc. So let’s before we do that, let’s get to go up a level your, your, you know, when we when we spoke to you last time you were the last on the the Expert Advisor podcast, you were running a business, it was all around sort of employee benefits, it was around sort of a it was a bit of an overview at that moment and what that business was, yeah,

 

Gavin Glozier 

so your wealth hub started as an employee engagement program that helped employees in the workplace feel more confident, comfortable with their financial positions. financial stress, still, I believe is is one of the main causes of marriage breakdowns, issues, issues financially, when people aren’t on the same page is just not having a basically TriCity of, of things that are going on and taking that basic education into the workplace was aimed at reducing the impact of stress in the workplace. So we wouldn’t get as many people off work, which inevitably, the impact would have been because of some kind of financially related issue that they were experiencing. So that was usually at the heart of it. So that that was working well for a number of years and

 

Fraser Jack 

when I I just jumped into it. So that and that was of necessity that you guys found off the back of, say, corporate superannuation books that you had. Yeah, the business. Is that right?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, absolutely. I think when you’ve got the common denominator being superannuation, we’ve large corporate super plans. And seeing the impact of choice, there was a diminishing focus on having these corporate super plans in the workplace, but employers were still looking for solutions and an outcome. So we will, we will merely joining the dots between the stresses typically related to finance, the common denominator is so far, if we can help people, you know, understand and decipher their annual superannuation statement or look at, you know, basic information about, you know, what is an offset account? You know, what, what do you do at the end of financial year with the tax return? Or what, what are some really simple concepts that you should be considering or thinking about, people will be more informed, people who are more informed, will ask more questions and inevitably get some of the solutions that they, they end up needing. So, in the workplace, it was all about enlightening people. And it did serve a purpose that and I think that the employees are really bought into it. And there’s a couple that we still work with. They really get that and they really value that. And they see it as if it’s any one person we help in a year, and then they’re super stressed. That’s a good outcome if we get someone on the right track. And that’s how, that’s how I saw it.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic. Yeah, no, it’s still obviously a neighbor. It’s also one of those things from a business point of view. And this is a business that you’ve recently sort of either wound down or welded into your your existing practice. But as a supply and demand thing, some sort, as you said, some employees, employees get it and others just don’t see, you know, they’ve got to put maybe they’ve got too much or give them the benefit of the doubt they’ve got too much else on and they don’t quite see the benefit of brings. Yeah, when it comes to actually, you know, like paying for the product, etc.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, I agree with you. I think some people see superannuation as a tax and anything to do that’s beyond kind of the bare minimum for their employees, I see as being a bit of a pain in the backside. Yet, typically, they weren’t the businesses that we wanted to be dealing with, we wanted to see businesses who really cared about their staff. And those two camps, when you go and see an employee, those typically that the HR manager that absolutely saw a need to do this. And they would have signed on the bottom line in a heartbeat if they could have fit. Typically, the person who was you know, signing off on what couldn’t couldn’t occur was the CFO, the CFO was never seeing how much financial stress was impacting their workplace. So signing off on a reasonable check to invest into their staff members was always seen as being superfluous. So it was it was kind of met with this kind of mixed emotion, people who really wanted it and have the gatekeeper was typically the CFO who didn’t really want to pay for it. So there was that tension point there. And against the CFO, as it got across the line. Here, we typically, we had, we’ve got a calculator actually off the back of some research in the UK and Canada. And we’re able to identify the the wastage in, in, in a workplace based on, you know, the prevalence of financial stress. And that tended to work pretty well. But again, at the end of the day, CFOs was sign off on it, and we didn’t always get the outcome that we wanted there.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, fair enough. So. So that was one part of the business, obviously, the other part of the business was the financial advice business. And the third part really, was the license or the last year as a licensee. Tell us about that.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah. Yeah. So that, that the licensing evolution has been an interesting one, we started the license model, I saw the license in 2016. It was it was really meant for our firm at the time, and then the ID grew into something bigger. Mark and I went our separate ways a couple of years back for for different reasons. And I wanted to take this concept of community to the next level. And I wanted to do two things on to solve two problems. One is provide a platform where like minded businesses could come together, they could exchange ideas, we could not recreate the wheel, but enhance on best practice and create an offering that effectively I could be able to go out into their firms and be able to implement and allow them to see the benefits of what this kind of group thinking would do. And the second was to build a community that would would cost and feel how I think licensee and groups should be costed. And that was really taking a modular approach to get what people actually required. And effectively you pay for what you what you get. So there’s a there’s a core function there. And anything beyond that, you would effectively scale up or down based on what you needed. So that’s that’s effectively what we’ve done. So in building this licensee, we call it our vinaka advice. community, we have people that are both in our license young practices that are growth focused, that really want to deliver a really good outcome to their clients. They focus on not being technically perhaps the the most extravagant advisor, but they really focus on the holistic needs of the client. And they bring in specialists from various areas to be able to deliver the the outcomes they need for their clients, but they know that they must invest in their business and they know that they must, they must be nimble enough to to grow. And to do that in the community, the best way to do it is not individually or work on our own solution, but all discuss the challenges that we’re facing. And find the the common denominator between all of us and create this best practice, and then kind of move forward together collectively with it. And that’s, that’s what we’ve tried to create. And so far, we’ve been able to attract some really good good young businesses. And we’ve been able to create model office, we’ve created this offshore program. For administration tasks, we’ve got centralized power planning services, we’ve got a marketing team, we’ve got a new HR function that’s just started up for practices to tap in as well. So it’s a it’s it’s building every day, and where we see a need to expand the service offering, we simply go out and search for the results we need and plug in those services. So it can help the greater greater group.

 

Fraser Jack 

Fantastic Neela, I just want to clarify this part of the licensee. And then because it’s a little bit different between the the, the hub, I guess, you could say or the group, and then license itself, right because your your license. And under that you’ve got certain amount of advisors who are using you as your as your afsl. And then you’ve also got additional advisors that also use use the group or a part of the group or what the different FSL there, right?

 

Gavin Glozier 

That’s, that’s correct. So we have nine firms under the afsl, we’re going to additional five firms that tap into the group collective that may be either self licensed or licensed under another FSL. So it’s a it’s it’s a group of 14 at the moment practices. And in in that those principles, or subscribe to a quarterly summit, where we come together and discuss critical business issues that that we’ve been kind of throwing about unofficially through the quarter, and then in that meeting, and that summit, we will have a deep dive into how we solve those problems. So yeah, absolutely. There’s a delineation between the two, it’s intentional. Obviously, there’s a there’s a regulatory element to it, obviously, for businesses under the license, and there’s different conversations we have on a quarterly investment and compliance committee meetings. And then the summit is all about business. The summit’s are all about getting together and solving issues and focusing on your practice, there’s no compliance speak, it’s very much about solving problems that relate to better outcomes for clients, better outcomes for practices, profitable business activity. And you know, that positive kind of conversation about, you know, how we how we get together and going forward.

 

Fraser Jack 

So just just when you do that, as you said, you know, solving problems, but and we touched on it earlier, they actually implementing have something to solve that problem, not just talking about the problem. Give us a give us a couple example or an example of something that you might have worked out and then solved and then created available for the whole group to use.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, sure. So the annual summit we hold in August each year, we’re about to have a third. Last year, we list the critical issues that we expected to be discussing over the next 12 months. And obviously, how you engage through COVID was was awfully Hot Topic last year, funnily enough, it’s a hot topic again this year. The how we manage our administration staff and how we delineate between core activities, and how we delineate between activities that we can utilize a lower cost resource to solve the problem. So you know, how we manage that and how we kind of work around that. There’s issues around how we market ourselves, you know, how do we get presence on social media? How do we get presence through building better websites? You know, how does SEO work who can help us with that, that type of thing. So there are kind of three key topics that we talked about, but the one that the one that Shawn to the top of the tree, in that last annual summit was all about building a model office, it was all about how we manage our workflows. We most of us use advisor Wes midwinter, and in that there was opportunity to utilize what’s there but there’s also opportunities to utilize that best practice around now some people had used monday.com as a workflow processing tool. What we did was after that session, we made a commitment to solve a number of problems, but this one was the most, I think was the most important for us or we want to create a model office that we could all follow our processes start to finish. So we We basically invested a lot of time and money into building Monday up to be model office, and then allow us to download the different streams of different tasks. So everything from kind of clap prospecting, to client implementation, to client onboarding, to annual reviews as the four key kind of processes to start with, map that out into and download and upload it into everyone’s on Monday. So then they can start following it start to finish as well. So now, anytime we make changes, we make changes to one process, as opposed to everybody kind of going off and doing their own thing. Now, one of the elements that I said up front that I think, never really worked well, after having conferences, and plenty days and so forth, it was actually the implementation. My job is not just to kind of hold people accountable, it’s actually going and work out how we implement these every month, you know, to remove the speed humps understand what they are acknowledged, we need to, to work with them, but it’s actually going in and help actually implementing these. So every, I think the vast majority practices now actually use Monday, which is great, or at least reflect on the processes that we built. And then from there, there, they’re they’re rolling through the motions and using in their business, and it’s happened a lot quicker, should they have, have they not have had the help of the community because we’ve all worked on this and refined it, which is good.

 

Fraser Jack 

So instead of instead of Sapphire join as a practice, but instead of me having to reinvent the wheel and go and do the research and work out what I’m gonna use and then work out how to use it and then put the workflows in place and see if then testing and all those things. You just go and do all that for all of the practices.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yes, yeah, exactly. So when a new practice comes along, now, we’ve already got those workflows set up. And it’s been licensed to prove community proved everyone’s working together, that they would jump in. And you know, if they’re a new practice, perhaps the lifter, a bigger firm starting on their own firm, and they’re starting from scratch, like I was two and a half years ago. Now I would have loved to have a product in a box so to speak. We could pick up and run with it. So yeah, that library of resources is growing, which is great. Now,

 

Fraser Jack 

part of that, I guess, from a mindset point of view, from a practice coming in, is that you have to have belief and trust in the person who’s going out and doing all the testing and checking and those sorts of things. So I guess it comes from your I guess we covered that with your years of experience working in practices.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, absolutely. Part of it is me and what I use in my practice, but also partly through the feedback of the collective. And that’s where the community comes in. So I think, you know, you’re only as strong as your weakest link, that type of analogy definitely prevails. But you know, that you only get out of it, what you put in it at the same time. And I think it’s very hard. And we don’t have this in our community, because everyone is very clear from the outset, if you join this community, you’re a contributor, you’re not a wallflower. You know, you’re not sitting back waiting, you are contributing, and everyone has different elements, that they contribute at different points, because we know what everyone’s strengths are. And if the businesses are joining, the expectation from the community on me is that we’re finding people who are culturally aligned. And we’re looking very much at the, at the future, we’re probably not worrying so much about some of the things that some parts of the professional are concerned about. Because for us, our businesses are probably more growth focus younger client base. And some of those other distractions on a on a focus for us at all.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, very, very interesting. I couldn’t agree more when it comes to communities, I think you have to be a contributor. If you don’t like I mean, we’ve both been part of communities before. And we’ve seen that happen. We’ve The more you put in, the more you get out. And if you think you’re coming along to the community, and he’s gonna put dollars in and expect that that’s going to give you a return. It doesn’t quite work that way. Doesn’t

 

Gavin Glozier 

know you can’t you can’t sit back. And I think this is a, this is a common misconception, I think I think people are throwing money at solution. So that is not going to give them what they want. Because they’re not putting their own blood, sweat and tears into it. We have 25 staff now who are based overseas. And as I say to every practice, who’s kept who’s coming on, and they want to look at offshoring, and they want another solution. It’s not up to the person offshore to solve your problems. You have to tell them what the problems are. And unless you can tell it clearly identify and articulate what it is that you’re trying to solve, and work with them and show them how we can replicate the issue. And it’s easily quantifiable. That person overseas isn’t going to solve your problem because they’re going to be just as confused about what to solve as you will be. And I’ve seen plenty examples where people have kind of shied away from offshore because it hasn’t worked and all the rest. But the question I’d always ask is, how have you prepared yourself? Have you fed your team? Are the people you’re working with treated as a member of the team? What do you what are you doing to ensure that the ongoing education and track up to speed all these types of things. And obviously, if you’ve met with a few kind of confused, look, you know that they’ve really just thrown money at a problem and not really got the result. They’re after Surprise, surprise. So the community collaboration pieces is important and is the backbone of why we do what we do.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, fantastic. I love the idea of getting involved in the community, the sense of belonging to me, that we’re belonging to a community is is that you know, you give any receive and you feel like you feel like you’ve given value with other people in the community value you because you’re having input, as well as you’re getting input out. So it’s definitely a two way street. Now, you mentioned the offshoring in the in the Philippine side, having having an office or group of people working for you over there. Tell us about how you set that up and how you went about finding that and implementing it. Yeah, yeah, good

 

Gavin Glozier 

question. So we’ve, we’ve worked with different groups offshore in the past, and there’s a couple people that I’ve worked with, for some time, who decided when I transitioned across to my own business, they wanted to come across and work with us. So that’s, that’s where we got started. And from there once the community started to build out, and we had people coming in, and we started realizing there was problems that needed to be solved. And we can do that efficiently by having an outsourcing solution, through word of mouth initially, was how we tracked down key resources, that would solve problems offshore, the practices here have had a really, really good time with all the staff that have come on board. We’ve focused really hard on trying to source good people and, and recently started a new process to really go deep into sourcing really good talent, to join a number of our teams, Viet paraplanning, marketing, administration, etc. So I feel, I feel at the moment, we’re in a really good period where we’ve been able to attract some really good caliber staff. The issues that they’re facing over there are not too dissimilar here with, you know, lockdowns and travel restrictions and things like that. So there’s a lot of really good staff that had been working in, you know, big call centers that unfortunately, can’t continue, they may have been camping in the offices or camping close to the office and, and doing things like that. But realizing that, you know, it’s not a great outcome from a family perspective, not seeing your family, you know, for months on end, and things like that. So looking for a home based solution is is a good option. Now, all our staff are decentralized. And they certainly relish in the fact that they can be close to their family, but still have good internet, good security measures to be able to track all of the all the activity that’s going on. So from a privacy and security perspective, it’s, it’s it’s very secure. But the the issue for us has been, you know, trying to find the good staff, which I think we’re in a period now where we’ve we’ve got the formula, right and where we’re growing, and we’re certainly solving the problem. So the community a lot easier, a lot easier now than we had been in the past.

 

Fraser Jack 

So you find, let’s say, let’s pick on the, you know, the marketing or social media posting type person and that that person works across the different businesses within the community, but in the in specialty area.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, absolutely. So we have specialists, people that solve that basically solve different problems for us. Some maybe full time, some maybe contract that they come on and work a couple of hours a week, but they solve that particular problem, the way we structured our agreements is that we can scale them up and scale them down. Based on on what’s needed. It means that the community has access to resources that individual they wouldn’t have had access to before. And again, that’s part of the scaled down to bring where you’re not just working for one business through a fiver on a task or staff relationship, we’re actually structured or structured it through a specific financial services relationship. And we just slot in the work as needed, based on what’s required. The great part about it is a lot of us are now using the same style of communication. So it’s then interchangeable based on you know, newsletter topics that we may want to use, you may want a different one businesses just started using us, they want more of a business ownership flair, as opposed to a personal finance needs. So a template is set up, we track everything through the back of Active Campaign. And through that, were able to just chop and change for the different businesses based on their their style, the timing, etc, thereafter. So it becomes highly personal, but we’ve set up structures, that means that it’s interchangeable through templates, etc.

 

Fraser Jack 

And you mentioned earlier that time units, when you’re finding something like this, you really have to be very clear on what your problem is. I find sometimes it’s really hard to be clear on what your own problem is. It’s easy. It’s a lot easier to be clear on what somebody else’s problem is.

 

Gavin Glozier 

It’s easy to grandstand. But, look, look it’s a valid observation. I think. I think he did right. For us, having people joining the community and understanding what They’re solving often has more clarity after you’ve mixed in with the community itself, because others will have experienced the problems they’re looking to solve. So by meeting and greeting and kind of understanding what others are doing, you’re able to articulate it far more eloquently. And I think I think for them, you know, understanding what they’re trying to achieve out of it, you know, it’s likely someone else has probably gone through the same process. And then it’s more of an aha moment. I need to do this. What can you do? Oh, actually, we’ve done that before. Let’s roll out one of the guys and they can explain how we did it. Why you go. So it’s, you’re right. It’s, it can be hard in isolation. But I think through again, the value of the community and seeing what others have done, you can certainly point itself in the right direction. Now, there’s

 

Fraser Jack 

a group of as you mentioned, 14 practices. How does it work? Practically? from a practical point of view? Are they all around the country? Do you How often do you get together? How do you communicate?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, we, we, we try to get together every quarter. In the last the last six months, we’ve done two virtual, we’ve got gonna have our next one into this month. It was supposed to be a physical one, we’re just kind of understanding what the landscape looking like at the moment. We have our WhatsApp chat that we’re that we talk on. We’ve been talking to the guys at x y about utilizing the new licensee solution, as well. So I’ve been talking to Emily, she took me through that last week, actually, it looks really good. So it’s likely that we may shift and utilize the x y platform, because I think it will solve a problem around kind of an ongoing engagement piece that perhaps for us is a little disjointed at the moment having multiple platforms as opposed to one. So that’s certainly something that I’m that I’m looking at the physical, the physical presence, I think, by far gives us the best value, it’s that fireside chat. Yeah, there’s little conversations that you’re having in the breaks and things like that, that I still think you get the most value out of bringing people together and kind of going through the critical issues, I think is the fuel for the fire. digesting that with everybody and talking about those after over a beer or whatever it may be, I think is where the most value is. So for me having a physical presence is critically important to success when navigating how that works constantly, because of obvious kind of issues that are going on. But in my mind, and as the community grows, we will get to a cap, where I think the community grows beyond what would be an intimate environment. So we don’t want to grow too much, because I think you will lose that. That fireside chat conversation and that having, you know, kind of hives of activity and silos form. And I certainly don’t want that. I think that’s where you become I don’t think it’s obvious, I think the right words obsolete, but I think you have issues with people doing their own thing and not kind of contributing to the pot that contributing to their silo, as opposed to the to the broader community. I think that’s where my job is to, to make sure we don’t grow too fast. And we don’t lose that intimacy.

 

Fraser Jack 

What do you what are your thoughts around numbers in that case?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, look, I’ve tossed the idea around of 20 practices. That’s, that’s kind of been a number that I’ve thought really workable. I’ve seen small to medium sized licensees, boutiques, etc. Grow and lose that intimacy, you’ve got the people that were there first, the new people that were brought in after you tend to see in us and then situation, you don’t get that mixing of ideas, because there’s too many of them and not enough of us and so on. So I think I think you need to be realistic about how that goes. Definitely in the community, I think there’s like a 20 practice limit. For our annual summit, we bring in other advisors that perhaps are a part of those groups as well. So there’s there’s more people coming on to experience what’s going on, it’s a great kind of tool to expose them to what business principles are thinking, which I think is an important part. In the license, you know, we’ve always talked about this 12 to 14 car number, which may have 18 to 28 hours in it as well. So therefore, you always have pie in the license and part external, I think it’s important to have that mix as well. Yeah, I think if you spend too much time in your own pointed out not understand what other people in their ponds are doing. You can tend to be a little bit siloed in yourself. So I think that external license with that community feels important. And I have an eye for sales, people who are in other afsl. So larger life licenses coming on as well. I think it’s a really, really good thing as well for for diversity.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, we’re really interesting. And okay, so you’re slowly growing, I guess is the is the outcome of it. Yeah, absolutely. Very, very good now. So that’s sort of the the group or the licensing or the coaching that you do. How often do you get together? You mentioned you mentioned that quarterly catch ups. What are you doing more regular catch ups?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, we do a coaching session with each of the principals once a month. And that’s really where the rubber hits the road. The the think tank is the solid. The action is that the catcher And it’s all about understanding what happens from a cash flow perspective, what’s happened with that initiative that you said that you were going to deliver? Because it delivered x results, you know, it’s, it’s that catch up after is where we understand if it’s working, if it’s not working. At the moment, we’re hitting, we’re about to, we’re about to catch up. Again, as I said, we’ll go through the end of 5g results. Everyone’s given us the numbers we catch up quarterly in the first session, we have in our summit, as always, how is everyone tracking? And it’s, it’s, it’s not designed to, to beat one’s chest and to talk about how good each of us are, none of us in the group have that approach. It’s about understanding how we’re going as a percentage to the goals that we set at the start of year. So I, I have no interest in understanding the dollar figure from from except to understand if you’ve actually cheated for a percentage, and that’s the important part. And the plans that are in place, we’re able to shift and modify along the way should the results that we’re after not be occurring. And it’s those shifting conversations that we have in those, those monthly catch ups and changing tax, you know, might be changing subtly wordings with referral partners, or it could be understanding how better to engage and we went down a path of these newsletters, but perhaps the content isn’t hitting the mark. So it’s about understanding, well, what else could we do? Let’s let’s really pull apart the types of clients you’re trying to attract. And you know, where are they going? What are they reading? You know, what topics are of interest to them, you know, what can we do to solve these problems that they’re having, and then tailor the newsletter articles appropriately to that group? So it’s those types of conversations. That’s where the rubber hits the road. And that’s, I think, the most important part.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah. So this is next level, actually, now that we’re getting into it. So obviously, if you can’t measure, you know, you can’t, wasn’t that we can’t measure it. You can’t. what’s the what’s the saying? can’t measure? You can’t anyway, okay, great. So, obviously, you talk about goals into about helping advisors and the countability. word comes in here. I guess you’re keeping them accountable. But you mentioned that everybody’s sharing metrics. So what does that mean? Does that people talk about whether it would do with their goals? And then it’s now it’s now open to the groups? I guess you’ve got to if you say you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So on the six month mark, study, we did it. So at the four year last year, in the August summit last year, we did as well, it was what was the operational goals. And what were the financial goals. So financial goals, were setting it for the new financial year, operational goals were set at the start of the calendar year. So we set out to understand what it is that one of the problems they’re looking to solve, and how we’re going to solve it. And when we when we caught up to talk about these things, there was one practice that was talking all about HR engagement, there’s they’ve merged with a couple of firms. They’ve wanted to work out how to engage, they’ve actually brought in an external business coach to help them as well on more of the HR philosophical pieces that they need to work through. But then setting KPI setting job descriptions, setting bonus structures and things like that. We’ve talked about how that how that works in particularly a new fussier world. For them, operationally, they want to see all these all these KPIs aligned, they want to see all the staff members come in, sing from the same hymn sheet. So they’re all heading in the right direction. And they’re working as a cohesive group as opposed to three separate practices. But they were at the start of the year. So that’s just an example of one. back six months for that practice, it was it was all about what are we trying to achieve financially one of them one of the goals was they wanted to merge with another firm, they wanted to buy in a, they want to bring in a mortgage broking firm as well. So looking at those goals, the financial benefits to their existing clients and whatnot, deciphering how that was going to work. How much time would be taken away from their ba you work with clients, part of the another project they were working on was repricing that middle end of the clients, they felt that they needed to increase their average fee. So doing that there to create new propositions that people that would or wouldn’t pay the additional additional costs. So once you start kind of scratching the surface, the goals are, you know, they’re aspirational, but what powers the goal? So the conversations we will be having is and sharing with the group is, okay, so what is it that you need to do in the business? What needs to shift? How can we make this happen? So that’s what we try to look at. And then from there, the collective understands the goal runs across everybody’s goals, what they’re trying to do both financial and operation. And then that’s where the think tanks start because people have shared their experience of when they’ve done something similar. Or maybe they want to understand what it is that you know, they could do, because they’ll be in the same situation at some point as well. So it just it lifts the lid, and it becomes quite a deep conversation.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, well, so it’s really around their transparency and accountability and just saying, Well, you know, don’t just come here and say, Oh, yeah, it was going was going fine. That doesn’t actually help anybody if it’s not, then we actually get in there.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Exactly. And then the numbers will show that, you know, if the numbers have been calibrated accurately, you will see how those transitions have gone, if they’ve actually followed through what they said they’re going to do. And now it’ll, it’ll, it’ll show up and the numbers don’t lie in that instance. You look at staff turnover, you look at, you know, expenses. So we typically tracking flows. So total revenue, will track expenses, will track different business lines, you know, for people focusing on financial planning and insurance and different different elements, they’ll have different business lines that they’re tracking to make sure that either retaining the right number of clients, but the attracting the right number of clients as well. So that’ll that’ll flow through the metrics that we share. And there’s a there’s a fair bit around that. And as much as the guys, they all they all love me asking them for their numbers. Yeah, they do appreciate once they’ve done it, looking back to see what they’ve achieved. And irrespective if they’re over or under the fact that they can visualize it and see it, they know exactly where they are. And I think I think the challenge for practices in the years gone by has been not knowing your numbers, not understanding the metrics behind your business. And, you know, profitability has been well, what’s leftover? But that’s not really the I don’t think that’s really the the figure you should be looking at. It’s understanding what’s gone into that number. What I should be looking at shall be managing my expense line more carefully, you know, you start a third of your expenses, because typically that’s the case or is it higher, why is it higher? What can we do to solve that problem, and that’s where things like outsourcing staff and bringing in a reduced cost for a headcount can be more advantageous in a practice that’s growing, that is of a decent size, where they do need that support, it’s just being able to identify it. So all those metrics are pulled apart, and they’re challenged in a constructive way. But it means people I think, I think the community a far more comfortable with how they run their business now than they had been before.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, well, that’s, that’s incredible. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. You know, it’s not easy opening up your metrics and sharing them. And so, but you’re doing it for all the right reasons. And you’re doing it for the reasons of so that you can physically grow your practice or grow the metrics, the right metrics, and then well done hats off to you. So just before I want to, because I wanted to come back and ask you all about selling your advice practice from scratch. But before we do that, if somebody is interested in that, that coaching group, or that that mentoring group that you run, what’s the best way to to get hold of you and talk about that?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, look, we our websites live. We can, we can arrange a catch up through the website, or reach out to me at so to be narc.com.au. You can catch us on there or reach out on my my mobile LinkedIn.

 

Fraser Jack 

I can spell to Vi in a RC. That’s it. That’s fantastic. Okay, very good. So if you’re interested in catching up with Gabe about that, give him a buzz or get hold of him. Now tell me about your your practice. Obviously, starting in advice, practice from scratch is not a thing to be sneezed at, talk about your process of you went through to start that and to do what, let’s start with the decision to do it itself.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, I think stunning advice, practice looking back at it. Now, I always think that was at the time when I was in another practice and your safety net of a good salary and whatnot. It seems like a pretty good idea at the time. And you, you really, you really don’t realize how do these. And look, I was studying at the time when I was going through, I started on all the fussiest stuff early. I think I was just about finishing my advanced diploma. There’s a whole bunch of other things that were going on. And it was a really, really interesting time looking back at it now. Since then, my wife and I’ve had a little little girl, she’s one and a half the licenses grown, the planning, business has grown. The community has kind of blossomed and we’ve got some fantastic businesses. All that going on. And I’ve got my little old advice practice that I kicked off you know, year and a two and a half years ago, it was it was quite a quite an experience. To start it off. To me, it seemed like the right thing to do, because I really cared about the clients that I was working with. In the other practice that I was in, I didn’t want to lose contact. I didn’t want to let them go, so to speak, because I really valued their friendship, and I really valued the work we had done previously. And I really saw that I saw some gaps in I suppose that some of the advice processes that were out there and you know, I really believed in the cash flow story. I really believed in understanding where people spend their money. People could make more informed decisions around you know, what they shouldn’t shouldn’t be doing. And it wasn’t about saying no, but it was it was about letting them make the decision and having a having a really good constructive conversation. I think people make their own choices. And I really wanted to build a business, which was underpinned by cash flow. And there’s a couple of guys who do it really, really well. Yes, Stephen in Melbourne, Adele in Newcastle date, they killed the space. And I think, for me, I saw that as an opportunity. And I think that they’ve done really well. So when I looked at building it, I really wanted to have that in mind. And I wanted to just be that kind of concierge point, that that that trusted advisor everyone talks about, but you know, getting the questions about our what I do with like, my offset account what I do get people calling and say, oh, I’ve got this, this home and contents insurance, should I bundle the scene with, you know, my car insurance, you know, they’re really simple things. But I found that a lot of people just didn’t really know where to turn. So I wanted to be able to have those really simple conversations that were really empowering for people. But I also wanted to really help people long term build wealth and set themselves up financially. Our tagline you know, is live the life you want to live, I really believe that if you can control your finances, you can do it. So that dream or be it was bloody hard, was what powers it. And I thought I could do it. And in doing that I started from scratch. Built, be able to license community and the license itself. And yeah, it’s been been going since.

 

Fraser Jack 

Yeah, well, I mean, that’s obviously it’s a small feat styling financial advice business, when that’s what you’re doing 100% of the time, but you know, when you’re running a licensee and working with other businesses and coaching and doing all these other things, and I knew that raising young kids, it’s, um, it certainly is a lot of extra.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, yeah. I’ll make one comment that one thing I did do was, I got into that saying, No, it was something we talked about earlier. And that’s one thing that was always drummed into me for years is not know your worth and know, what are the values you’re bringing in, don’t be afraid to charge a fee. And if people say no, then obviously there’s a there’s kind of a disconnect between what’s value to them, and what’s value that think you’re delivering. And at the end of the day, it can only prove that with communication that the other day, if the client doesn’t really want to go down that path, I don’t think you should be chasing or undercutting your fee. So that was kind of one thing that I saw. And I didn’t set myself to lofty expectations, either. I wanted to get one new client a month that I could really manage and manage well. And that’s pretty much been my run rate since inception. So from that, it’s been really good. I didn’t, I had been working with an accountancy firm as well, we started the joint venture that went well for probably the first 18 months, and it kind of tapered off after a period of time. And we still work together, we work with mutual clients, it’s been great, but we’ve recently moved those clients in with it with your wealth of advice. So from that side, there’s a lot of work a lot of activity. And I wanted to again, you know, see those clients through and make sure that they are getting the right advice, and we can still continue. So I think I think part of that is result of wanting to be everything to everyone and kind of Yeah, it was it was challenging juggling both of those businesses. Yeah, exactly. And

 

Fraser Jack 

there though your wealth of advice part is the the Employee Benefits slash Sham, the work that you’re doing within a sort of with groups or a larger amount of a lot of financial education in that space, I guess you could say, and, and you mentioned that you went heavy on cash flow. And so you got cash flow systems in place. Now we use that that’s where you start with any financial plan.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, a lot of it, a lot of it, I have to understand their budget to start with. And if I understand where people are spending their money, and a lot of time, people don’t understand what they’re spending the money. I want to say first and foremost, the high level, what’s the inflow? What’s the outflow? Is this consistent? Is there a surplus or a deficit on average? Okay, we’ve got the run right. Now let’s scratch the surface and go under, and go deeper into where that actually is, and share using, you know, I used my prosperity is our cash flow tool. It’s, I still think probably the best one out there, from what I’ve seen, and there’s different different kind of carriers coming into the space regularly. But for me, it’s just it’s the one that works for us. And in the first meeting, or second meeting, we’ll be getting people onto there and getting them comfortable with the concept and letting him Can he jump on and look at where they’re spending their money. It’ll give us a good indication of what’s going on. And I always, I always position the budget spreadsheet that we’ve created. I get the client to fill that in first and that’s more of a this is where you think you are and then get onto my prosperity. And then we see where you actually are. And it’s more of a rk radio. Okay, we get we get this now. So we have to go through that process so they can The value, the benefit of having the tool. And once they get the tool and they see the source of truth, then from there, you make an informed decision. And then from there, we start looking at their saving for your first home and or buying investment property or whatever it may be, even people have younger, I’ve got a half a dozen clients who are retiree clients or pre retirees are through retirees, three pre retirees. they’ve not been aware of their spending habits. And you know, running into retirement without a handbrake is dangerous. Particularly when you cross the line, and you’re a sudden trying to live on typically what people were saying, you know, 1000 bucks a week, that’ll tie me over, she’ll be right. But then you realize you’re spending now 13 1400. So where’s the shortfall going to come from? So it’s a bi big eye opener for?

 

Fraser Jack 

Absolutely, it’s a great day, even just knowing where you’re up to is, is great therapy in the first place, you know, whether it’s behind, whether you going forward or backwards, it’s good just to know, it’s a very great step in the right direction. Now, you mentioned before that you value your worth, and you’re doing the work for free for this sort of stuff. How did you go about pricing, a cash flow model?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah. So for us, I had the strategy fee that we separate from ongoing, and for creating SLA, the minimum typically sits at three grand, that’s usually where we sit. And that’s a full review of everything. And depending on the complexity for including an SMSF, family trust, multiple investment strategies, etc, etc. That’s when the cost can go up. For the ongoing, I found that a core would always be around cash flow and the work that we do monthly to make sure people are aware of what’s going on. So we always charge that $200 base. If we’re managing insurance strategies, extra $100. If we’re managing a superannuation strategy, it’s another $100. family trust, it’s not 100 is super, super, super fun. It’s not 100, as well. So we’ve created it from a modular perspective. So it just scales up as you need to. So the more complex and the more work, that’s, that’s where the amount of time came in at roughly that $100 Mark per product set going forward or strategy going forward, where we per month or per

 

Fraser Jack 

meeting per month, per month, and how do you pay for them?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Everyone, we talked to at least monthly, the physical, obviously, less now, but we’re doing a hell of a lot of zoom calls and whatnot. So we tend to do 45 minute catch ups for a lot of the, for a lot of the younger clients who really want to talk through this stuff. And what I’ve what I’ve found is that there is a core of people that just want to bounce whatever comes up for the month and talk through what it is that they’ve done or want to do. And they’re considering different things. And again, that might be things like, I’ve got the car insurance here and the GI II, what do I do? What are bundling discounts, I’ve heard about this stuff? How does this work, etc, etc. So, yeah, let’s have conversations. Yeah, this

 

Fraser Jack 

is an interesting part of cash flow isn’t actually having regular catch up to start with to, to in order to actually have people go through a process where they change habits, not just change their mind or synagogue, or those sorts of things actually change the habits that they you know, form over over a lifetime. It’s hard. And without monthly catch ups, it’s really easy just to say, Oh, yeah, I’ll do that and never get around to doing.

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, we it’s an interesting one, because it’s very confronting for people who don’t want to do it. But for the people who people who kind of don’t want do it, and then realize it, they really value it. I realize, okay, yeah, I didn’t realize we could do that even just having all of their finances together in the my prosperity portal, I think, is a benefit for people who may not want to do the deep dive into cash flow. But now they certainly value seeing the income and expenses each month, they get to see a headline. Now they’ve worked off these complex spreadsheets for some time. And now they’re not having to do that. So it saves them a lot of saves a lot of time. So I think I think it’s interesting. We typically every month pull out and extract from the report the headline number, so they can see the income, the expenses, and anything that’s in the variance of more than 10% from each category, send across to them and get them to validate it. So yeah. Are you aware this is what’s going on? Any thoughts? any concerns? And typically, they’ll write back straightaway? Oh, yeah, no worries, I had, um, we had the annual payment for the insurance to come through. So that’s gone out. And you know what we’ve already provisioned for that. So we take that across from one of the bucket accounts. And that’s, that’s fixed up. So a lot of the time, people are feeling happy. I was with a client doing an interview two weeks back, and they said that they’ve never felt more in control of their finances, which was just such a beautiful compliment. Like I really, really felt good about it. everything’s working. Well automatic transactions are coming from different accounts all the time in your first seven accounts. Gee, that’s a lot. You know, how are we going to do all this? But once it’s set up, it actually does the work for you. And now they never run short birthday presents Christmas presents, all that stuff. They’re all provisioned for and there’s there’s no concern and chasing the tail. So yeah, that was it was really lovely to hear that and just really went to the heart of why we do what we do. And for them this is no concern anymore, which is great.

 

Fraser Jack 

It is amazing. It is a beautiful comment and in the fact that they feel valid, you know that you know that they feel it, I guess is the is the key there they felt never felt this this good before. And that’s the real value of financial advice, isn’t it? Absolutely. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. Well give it to the peers that your your advice practice sort of mirrors a lot of the work you do as a, you know, as a, as a, you know, for clients, but you’re also doing the very similar work for other practices when it comes to the work within within venac. So sort of, I can see that the parallels being drawn there of how you’re working with both, you know, your advice clients, as well as other practices. Yeah. Thanks. Again, thanks so much for coming and sharing your story today. I really appreciate you giving us an update of where you’re up to now. Obviously, things are changing in a couple more years and see how it all evolved. Yeah, lovely, Frank, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. No worries. And if you want to reach out to give, obviously mentioned the monarch website, but what are the ways in getting hold of your LinkedIn? Maybe?

 

Gavin Glozier 

Yeah, LinkedIn or communicate, communicate on the mobile probably the best way? So we’ll keep it we’ll keep it in the link, I think perhaps and

 

Fraser Jack 

if you reach out, fantastic, thanks again. Appreciate your time. All right. Thanks very much. Well, there you have it, another episode of The X Y advisor podcast. I’m Fraser Jack, and I’m joined by MLA get a Emily.

 

Emily Blanch 

Hey, Fraser, our favorite time of the week.

 

Fraser Jack 

It is. It is amazing. By the way, we get to shout out one of the amazing community members of x y who we’re doing today.

 

Emily Blanch 

Yes, so shout out to Michael Miller. He is an x y champion, constantly in the platform, adding value and answering questions but he’s also a wonderful resource for sharing important updates that are coming down from the top. So he recently shared some recital, some work for updates, I should say, on advice fees from Super now it really revolved around trustees, but had some really important takeouts that advisors should be across. It went bananas last week when we shared it, everyone wanted to make sure they were up to date on it. So thank you, Michael for sharing obviously very topical and very important at the moment.