#27 Anand Sheth – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today I have with me a non CEF anon is the CEO and founder of pulse 360. And it’s one of the only technologies where people like Michael Kitsis is saying one of the most exciting evolving technology solutions out there at the moment. So stay tuned, we’re going to have a nun unpack how we got into financial services, what pulse 360 is up to, and what we can look forward to. Anand thank you so much for joining me today.

Anand Sheth
Of course, thank you so much for having me, Louis.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s wonderful to see a fellow African being able to conquer the technology side or financial planning and the FinTech side. And, you know, we connected, I think it’s almost a year ago, through a mutual colleague that stumbled upon pulse 360. But you’re based out in the US in California. That’s right. Anand?

Anand Sheth
that’s right. Yeah, I was I was born in Sudan. And I studied there, and I think moved to us when I was 16. So yeah, definitely a fellow fellow African. So when when I connected with you, and Ken, it was awesome. I was like, Oh, my God, there’s financial advisors in Africa, and especially South Africa.

Louis van der Merwe
Awesome. So young, very quickly, I think South African advisors are adopting global technology solutions. And I’d love for us to unpack that a little bit. But for the viewers and listeners that don’t know, you, please give us a bit of a background of how you got into financial services.

Anand Sheth
Yeah, sure. So it was about two decades ago, I, I was, you know, I was working from another company after right after graduation, I studied in England, I came back to the US then. And I started working for a company and they missed my few paychecks. So that hurt, and put me on the path to saying, Okay, how can I make sure that I can earn my own paycheck. And that’s when I started looking in financial advisor, there was a conference like a job conference, and I went there. And my previous firm, had a booth there. And I started talking, and they said, Come on, in. So I followed all that up, I still remember the manager there, when he hired me, literally through the Mercedes Benz keys on the table, I think boiler room had probably just come out or was, you know, to talk at a town. And he threw the Mercedes Benz keys, that means like, listen, it’s six months, and I already have a brand new car. And that could be you. And now when I’ve missed my paychecks, and that was very exciting. So I started looking into it more and, you know, got into the business that way. Luckily, for me, I wasn’t, you know, as, as keen on just trying to make a quick buck. I wanted to make a career out of it. Right. So I had a different take even with, you know, what was being thrown at me at the time, you know, being hired into the industry.

Louis van der Merwe
Did you know that it was probably going to be sales orientated? Because it sounds like this guy really knew how to close the sale, saying, We’ll take care of you. Was that what you expected?

Anand Sheth
Yeah. So it’s interesting. I know, my perception going in was not sales orientated. I’m not afraid of sales. I’ve all my life, I’ve done it. But my perception was professionalism. And a, it’s more consultative and advice driven, helping families with their, you know, financial situation, be it retirement education, or what have you. But once I got into the business, I started to realize, hey, it is actually more sales in the start, right? Just because you have to get going.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, and that is something that, you know, we can’t fast forward through. And we’ve had so many guests say, those early years, it’s tough. But once you get through, you know, they talk about the first 10 years or the first five years, once you get through that big hump, things start getting easier. Was that the same for you?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, for me, it was actually a little bit different. I remember, I was on the phone, cold calling, trying to get a prospect to set up a meeting with me so that, you know, I can then tell them what I do. And you know, hopefully they hire me. So for me, what happened was the first you know, prospective client that walked through the door and met with me was, I think, close to in age wise, close to the 50s. It was a couple and here I am in my middle 20s. And I still remember the feeling that after the meeting was they hired me. And I was like, oh my god, how am I supposed to have and help these folks who are in their 50s and have 15 to 20 more years before retirement? I don’t know enough. So for me, I took a different path. Actually, right after that meeting, I dropped from my financial advisor role, because I felt like I needed to find somebody who can mentor me and teach me what I need to, you know, do for helping for retirement planning or education planning. So I actually took a step down right away after my first meeting, basically,

Louis van der Merwe
that’s brilliant. And I’m just saying, Hold on, I need to go back to the drawing board bold, a little bit. Was it the technical side that that was worrying you at that point? Well,

Anand Sheth
it was, this couple trusted me for helping them figure out their finances to get them to the retirement. And I felt like I just didn’t know enough, I was too green. There was too many different things happening. So I decided from a technical perspective, I didn’t know from also just as a human being, I didn’t want to BS my way through it. For them. It’s their lives. Right?

Louis van der Merwe
That’s wonderful. Just hearing you, you take their perspective saying, Would you want to deal with someone with a bit a bit of life experience? And there is no way to fast forward that than to then to experience life? Right? How long did it take for you to get back into advice? Or did you change your course.

Anand Sheth
So I was lucky enough for Mark, who was my who became my mentor later, to hire me as a power planner. And I started working on financial plans. So I started, you know, number crunching, and doing all of that. And he had me sit in all meetings that he was whatever meeting he had with a client, if I wanted to sit in the door was open. I think that is very powerful. And I think what our industry really should take on, especially helping new generation of advisors Come on, is let them see what’s happening behind the closed doors, right? I was quiet. I didn’t say much, right? Because I didn’t know. So I was respectful in that sense. And I didn’t butcher anything. But I think it took me three to four years, just because I was really excited learning financial planning. So it took me about three to four years before I jumped back into the financial advisor world, right as a financial advisor.

Louis van der Merwe
And how was that second time around? How was it having a bit of a real life experience with clients having a bit more technical knowledge? How did you find it? The second way around?

Anand Sheth
I would say it was night and day difference? Because first of all, I understood, hey, I needed to go out and get clients, right. And I was more confident and self confident, as well to say, okay, I can handle different elements, because three to four years of experience with a larger advisor who’s who has a variety of different sets of clients, right, you know, some folks who are younger, some folks who are close to retirement who are retired, you know, I had seen quite a bit so it prepared me for meeting outside anybody and just kind of knowing, hey, I can help you, you know, so it definitely was a big difference.

Louis van der Merwe
And and what would you say to advisors that are maybe bringing in a young advisor that want them to be shadowing those meetings? What are the things that you think might they might be missing? Or the tips that you would give those advisors to make that process really fruitful?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, I would take the example that you know, what Mark did for me, I, after the meetings, like I was part of the meetings, and then after the meetings, when we were strategizing, I was able to openly ask, like, Hey, why did you recommend this versus something else that I was thinking of? And he would walk through the reasons. And I think that open communication really, really helped expand my knowledge. I wasn’t questioning him, per se, it was more, I wanted to learn why this versus the other right options. So it I think having somebody especially senior advisor, who’s able to give that type of feedback was instrumental for me. And I think that what as an industry we should be, you know, striving for is bring in the younger advisor knowing they’re going to have questions and answer them.

Louis van der Merwe
Right. It almost sounds like you’re trying to get them to have a certain way of thinking not to get to the same outcome, but just to, you know, get them to understand how you should be thinking as a financial adviser.

Anand Sheth
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, the reality is, there’s multiple ways you can solve our clients, you know, challenges it could be retirement is, you know, they’re not going to be on track and whatnot, right? They can cut expenses or they can save more or they can boost their return. There’s multiple aways and it’s nice to be able to kind of go through that conversation say, Hey, how come not this versus that. So you can form your own thoughts later,

Louis van der Merwe
you’re brainstorming and, you know, you’re trying to actually check each other thing, hey, two people can work better. And and during those times, like, was there any frustrations? What did you find difficult during those years? In your financial advice? Second time around?

Anand Sheth
Yeah. So when I, you know, one thing that I did not expect, and I don’t think the industry really talks about is the emotional toll, the job can take on ourselves as financial advisors. You know, I’ve, I remember, one of my second and third clients, were my favorite clients. And I, you know, so much so that I was looking at their marriage as a an example for what I wanted to do with my life and with my marriage as well. And they ended up getting divorced. And that was heartbreaking, because here with hell, you know, work for a few years, helping them craft out a strategy to get them to retirement. And now when you get divorced, all of a sudden, we all know, that is a mess, all of us, you know, for them, they’re not going to be able to retire as they wanted to just because the incomes and assets are split. So I think from an emotional toll perspective, that took a big toll. And then 2008 2009 happened. And I still remember me handling phone calls for senior clients, saying, hey, the money that we’re sending on a monthly basis is not going to come this month, because the Reserve Bank at the time had broken the buck, as they say. And so cash was frozen, literally, luckily, our company came through afterwards. But I still remember those phone calls with the senior folks. There were crying like they can’t, you know, buy food or, you know, they’re, you know, they can’t go out and get their medicines and things of that sort. I literally wanted to take money out of my pocket to send them of course, that’s a big no, no, in our industry from a in the US, you just can’t do those things, right. But it was, those were tough times. And I think as, as an industry, we need to focus in on personal challenges that we will have as well from an emotional side. So I think to me, that got me the 2008 2009 and my first client getting divorced. And my second favorite client also then again, going through a divorce, it was just like a trifecta. And that’s when I decided to step away from the advisor role because I felt like, I think it would just drive me crazy trying to help everybody get to retirement, and then them getting divorce. Like what, that’s not the plan.

Louis van der Merwe
That is such an important point. And I think we see it over and over people get into financial services, because they want to help people. And then you get to a point where there’s there might be this massive disappointment, and I’m wondering like, how did you process those emotions? Or even how would you process them? If you went through that now? Is there anything that you could maybe share with us?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, so, you know, I wasn’t, I guess, smart enough to go out and see if there was any resources. I don’t know if the CFP Board has any resources or what not. I’m not a CFP. But you know, I don’t know if they have any resources or not. So literally, it was just life as it came. And, you know, processing it internally and going through it bulldozing through that right. You know, same thing, not only just divorce, but there’s death, there’s medical issues that our clients have had, right? You help them retire, and all of a sudden one of them passes away. And it’s like, oh, no, there goes all that plan. So I think for me personally, what happened is I went through more and more and more of these experiences. And that built the you know, sort of the quote unquote, I guess toughness to go through it. Right. I was also not in the advisor role capacities, I took myself out just because I don’t want to be disappointed in myself by always saying, Oh, we’ve helped these clients. And now everything’s gone off the rails because of either death or disability or, you know, divorce. I mean, these are not things we talk about in our industry, we talk about right returns and all of those things, but there’s the other side as well. So, I think you kind of have to maybe find somebody that you can speak with now, and hopefully somebody has some resources, you know, for for younger advisors specifically,

Louis van der Merwe
you know, these these ton of resources out there now, you know, things come to mind like Mary Morton’s mindfulness for financial advisors, and I think it’s really building towards that emotional resilience to be able to be there for clients during these times. and to get them through it, it’s almost less about a there’s this one event, but let’s get through life, you know, and all the curveballs that life throws at you. But going through that process saying, Hey, this is this is some hectic stuff that we’re dealing with for our clients. How did your role then change? What did you transition into?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, so I moved into more on the operation side of the business, and financial planning, that’s was my stronghold, as well as investment research and trading. So I took on all of those different roles behind the scenes, and I did compliance as well. You know, so I became more of a support person to the primary advisors, you know, that I worked with, so and what I done, what I done was, I sold my, what I had on my side, as far as you know, clients and whatnot, the business I was generating, I sold that practice, into the practice I was working, just so that we can still continue to serve those clients is just, you know, another primary advisor was out there.

Louis van der Merwe
So I love what you always say, I’ve served coffee, to come from coffee, do compliance. So what do you what is your tagline that you always use? Yeah,

Anand Sheth
I tell advisors all day that, you know, for two decades, I’ve done everything right, from serving coffee to clients, all the way to compliance, you know, so I’ve ran 1000s of financial plans put together portfolios of hundreds of millions of dollars. So a very, very deep experience, right practice acquisition, we moved location I wired up, you know, since I’m Indian, I also wired up a, you know, our new buildings with technology, ethernet cables running all over. So

Louis van der Merwe
that’s brilliant. And it’s so valuable to have that background. Because with that black background, you segwayed into pulse 360. Tell us a bit why that was created in way the need originated.

Anand Sheth
Yeah, sure. So, you know, with so much of an experience from an operation side as well, I started to recognize that has advisors, we were doing more administrative things than advising. And it’s like, Wait, that’s not the business, all of us got into, right? If you were to ask an advisor, like, Hey, you’re getting into the thing they’re gonna say is I want to meet with clients. And I want to provide advice, right? Oh, wait, but do you gotta go in, you know, write up something from scratch and send out an email as a follow up, for example, or put an agenda together, all manually doing all of that. And I just saw that the tremendous value that advisors provide is in the, you know, when they sitting with clients, and afterwards, when they can send out an email saying, This is what we talked about the administrative part, even if you have a team, right, and we had I worked with teams as well, well, they’re also just doing things manually. And I also had a tech background. So one thing we didn’t cover, and I’ll just mention kind of sad, because it ties in here. When I was 1213. Back in Africa, I actually sold my first software sold in quotes, because it was actually to get a job at that store. It was a window video rental store. And I wanted to work there. In it, they had a computer that we’re not using, so I actually built a software or rental software, so they could keep track of you know, who they’re renting the movies to and whatnot. So I wrote the software and sold it. So I knew from a coding perspective, what technology could do, right? So I seri went back into coding, and I coded in Excel, what pulse has now become, that was a baby version, back in 2012 2012 2013, roughly, and I started seeing how much technology can impact productivity. We literally ended up not having to hire somebody for a year, a year and a half, because of the technology that I built. And for that advisor. I think six, seven years later, he’s still using that Excel method. Right? That’s when I moved to a larger firm. And I realized this is a pervasive problem for advisors in the industry and worldwide now, right? And so I just jumped ship and say, you know, what, how can I replicate? What I’ve done? What my knowledge is, to all the advisors and software was the answer. So I’m sort of replicating my experience my knowledge into the software, because I’ve gone through so many conferences, best practice conferences, top conferences, where you learn so many amazing best practices from you know, other folks who are ahead of you. And I decided to just say, I can build a lot of this into the software and so that’s where pulse 360 The idea came about and say, let me just go and help About the entire industry, do less admin work and do more advising work by introducing automation.

Louis van der Merwe
I love how you have this vision from a young age to say, this could be done better, we can use this system. And you know, as financial planners, I think sometimes we feel like glorified administrators, you know, just having to actually move documents around, and Maura summers, Dr. Maura summers that wrote advice that sticks, talk about delivering advice in a way that we can implement, but also then following through actually implementing that advice. So explain to us a little bit more detail. And then I could waples fits into the advice process, when would you use it? And also, then, what does it actually do for someone that hasn’t seen it?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, sure. Thank you. So one of the things that drives me is as advisors, you all provide a ton of value to your clients. However, being in 1000s, of meetings with clients, and afterwards, handling 1000s of phone calls, with clients, clients forget how much value you’re generating, literally in an hour, they’re forgetting half of what you’ve just said, and you may have spent three, four hours prepping for this particular meeting. Right? You and I understand this. And there’s I think, Donald Miller, if you know, if you follow story brand, he mentions, there’s something called curse of knowledge, right? You and I have a curse of knowledge, we know this stuff. And we think that when we’re explaining the other folks are understanding and getting it. But that’s not where the regular folks live, right? That’s not their day to day. And, and so being able to send a follow up email, for example, just a simple four or five bullet points, hey, client, this is what we’ve done. And what we discussed during the meeting was very helpful for our clients. And we got thank yous from clients afterwards saying, Thank you. Now they have a written record of what they discussed. Sometimes they didn’t feel like asking questions, because they didn’t want to feel stupid, asking, you know, an advisor, some questions, this kind of highlights, and now they can come back and say, Hey, can you clarify something more? So it gave the clients more empowerment, you know, for themselves. And so when I started looking at that, it’s like, oh, but client advisors have to write this from scratch every time. And there’s a certain voice you have that you want to translate, there’s a certain brand voice, so practice voice, what have you, you can’t just hand this off to a junior staff, for example, and say, Hey, write a follow up, they may not have had enough experience to know what to write. So I started looking at that problem. And I said, Okay, let’s start with the entire meetings. Because really, meetings are the lifeblood of every practice. And that’s where a lot of this work is coming in from meeting prep. So for example, putting in a simple agenda together, it sounds simple, but a lot of advisors don’t do that. Because they don’t have the time or it’s five minutes before the meeting, you know, you’re looking at what’s going on, you don’t send it to the clients, and which also causes another problems for the clients. So clients have told us when we started sending agendas, they started giving us feedback that I took and internalized it and said, Oh, that’s what’s happening. When we send an agenda out, the clients now know, hey, they’re not going to get some bad news coming into this meeting. Right. And that’s a huge point that we miss, as advisors, we think, Oh, they’re gonna be excited to see the returns. But the clients are afraid that are you going to tell them they can’t retire, they can’t, you know, buy that home, or they need to save more or what have you. But when you put an agenda together that dissolves a lot of that, and it gives them an opportunity, say, by the way we change jobs, or, you know, we want to also talk about something else. So that’s the meaning prep side, which you can now easily do with Polish 360 and have it very streamlined and automated. Then the follow up part is you can utilize pulse 360 to build out a lot of these, what we call note templates, and then customize and hyper personalize them to make your life easier to send that follow up. And we then automatically create tasks and trigger workflows in your CRMs either Redtail Wildfox, or Salesforce for example. So in sorry, this a little bit long winded there. But what pulse 360 does is help you automate and streamline your meeting preps and follow ups for financial advisors,

Louis van der Merwe
that piece around the agenda so interesting. And you’re saying that just by setting the agenda, you can reduce your client’s anxiety because they have some clarity in terms of what to expect. We’re not holding Doing away their portfolio and saying, surprise, this is what the market has delivered. And we’ve seen in our practice, just starting to ask clients, you know, what is it that they expect from this meeting? And, you know, the range is so wide, saying that, Oh, they think, you know, things are actually very bad. So I want to maybe unpack that a little bit in terms of reducing client anxiety by setting agendas, how detailed do you go? So someone’s setting up their practice? It’s just building out these templates? What would be a good guideline in terms of things to discuss in those meetings? Like, what should be on the meeting agenda? Should you keep it super high level? Or should it be super detailed?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, I would say you want to try and keep it super high level, because when you go super detailed, most folks are not going to have the time to read through that. But also high level not in a sense, like, oh, you know, you have a standard, we’re gonna review your portfolio or, you know, we’re, we need to update your risk tolerance, you know, those are kind of more on the basic level, I would say, add to the basic level, a little bit more personalization to the clients by saying, hey, last time we talked about this, we’re going to relook at it, you know, so they know that you’re talking to them. And this is a very specific agenda to that. Right, and you want to definitely try and cover what they may think about what you need to cover for them what you’re helping them with, right? You can also of course, you can say, Yes, we’re going to review your portfolios as well, but add some other material that relates to the clients directly. So they know you’ve been listening, but keep it at a higher level rather than very detailed. Because I can tell you, from my experience, when I’ve had a like, I mean, the reason we built posts 360, the way we did with the bullet point ideas is because from experience I’ve seen, if I just send paragraphs upon paragraphs, God, they don’t read any of that. And it’s just like, I’ve wasted my time putting that together, and they wasted, you know, no type of reading any of that, right. So, but as bullet by bullet, identified by, hey, investments, education, taxes or estate planning, it keeps them focused on this is what we’re going to cover got it right, and then makes them think what else could be in their life that they want to add to either, you know, some of those topics, for example,

Louis van der Merwe
there’s this famous saying, of a client that was seeing their financial planner four times a year. And this, this financial planner was checking in with his clients saying, How often would you want us to communicate and see you and the client said, How much do I need to pay you to not have to see, it’s finding that balance between between outsourcing and also getting the client on the same page? And I love what you’re saying about personalize it, you know, make it feel that it’s true to that person? For the things that’s most important to them? Is there an element that comes before the agenda, you know, to almost pull out what is important to them, like personality assessments or other kind of best practices that you’ve seen, to craft into that agenda?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so when, when I was in the field before power 360, we used to, you know, have this data in Excel sheets that we would go and see, like, okay, what are some of the important things for this particular client that we want to make sure we address, right? You want to for example, if you’re going to be asking for a mortgage statement, yet, if you look in their financial planning, they don’t have a mortgage, that’s gonna put you in a bad light, right? So you want to have systems and this is where pulse 360 can help you as well be more organized with these things. And you can add in like, okay, you know, what this client probably traveled, you know, to South Africa, or, you know, somewhere else recently, or they’ve had a grandkid. Let’s make sure we talk about that. So you can add some of those hyper personalization notes in the agenda saying, Hey, I know, you know, you went to South Africa for a safari, for example. You know, we’d love to see some pictures, just bring, bring them with you. Right? So,

Louis van der Merwe
yeah, pulling those things from your CRM and saying, Okay, let’s have a meaningful conversation. Let’s connect. And so now you have the agenda. Like, do you use pulse 360 During your meeting? Or do you you know, try and remember and jot notes down? Like, what what have you learned over the years in terms of skills of documenting client meetings, because this is a piece that I think a lot of financial advisors, myself included, struggle with and took quite a long time to figure out a right rhythm between do we record it you know, do you ride during a meeting? How much do you ride like we did you say that? So I’d love to hear how you unpack that.

Anand Sheth
Yeah, it’s it’s very Interesting, right as as advisors were in the meeting, we want to be fully 100% present and focused on the clients. Right? So how do you do this. And so the default has been for the advisors is to have a notepad and just handwrite it on it right. Now, some advisors will, of course, with COVID, Zoom has changed all of all of this, right? So you could have the option of recording that if you’d like. But what advisors that I’ve worked with before, and what the streamline method that, you know, I’ve seen really worked well is, you know, have 10 minutes after the meeting as a buffer. So not only have you taken your handwritten notes, for example, or maybe in zoom, you’ve typed up some key words, but you can then either do a, you know, like a mobile assistant dictation, right? Or just write further down more, you know, notes like, Hey, this is what we talked about what not, with both 360, we’ve built the handwritten part in post 360 itself, because the idea for me was, if you write it on paper, now that’s going to sit on your table. And that has to somehow get to if you have a team to them, or you have to scan it in, organize it, put it in a full file folder, I mean, it’s just such a waste. Take get yourself an iPad, you know, with a pencil and take handwritten notes directly on impulse 360 in that client. And when you press Save, it’s just done for you. And you can always come back later and pull it up with COVID. And all of that, if you have a remote team, well, now they can instantly see your handwritten notes from the meeting and start working on it right away. Right. So

Louis van der Merwe
yeah, that’s such an important point. You know, I think having communication in your team around one central place to be able to view plant information specifically, because we’re not all working in the same office. And it seems like that might still take a very long time until we return to this kind of normal. What have you seen great businesses do in terms of communication internally, specifically around clients? Like, how have they collated it? And what are they? How are they using the client information in a good way? Yeah,

Anand Sheth
it’s, it’s, sadly, it’s a mess. In a sense that, you know, there’s I tell, advisors that I think five places they store their information, CRM being one of the natural if you’re able to get it in. Awesome, right? But you don’t get there many times. So Excel is another one or your note paper, right? The handwritten notes. And then a third could be basically some you have somebody else in your team who’s taking a note on a Google Docs or something of that sort. And the fifth, which is the worst is in advisors heads. And, and that’s like the worst place, right? So having a centralized system that can be that can be organized, the way you’re running your practice was very key for me when I was building pulse 360, as well. So with that in mind, I’ve built a lot of the features so that you can have one central place for all your notes that can be filtered and searched, like within split seconds, right by anybody in your team anywhere in the world. But outside right now, if you’re not using post 360, I would say it’s very challenging, because you have to try and figure out where do you go for? Hey, what did we say we’re going to talk about our next meeting, right, that’s next to impossible to find in a timely manner. Right? Yeah, of course, it can spend 2030 minutes going through all the different things and pulling that up. But we’re making that impulse 360 A split second, you just find that, you know, next meeting items, and there you go. So I would say there’s a lot of ways to go for advisors to get more organized around the information. One of the things that I tell some advisors is, look, we all know this is the information age, right? The information technology, it’s information, age, data is everything. Yeah, but you got to be able to find it. Right and not spent half an hour 40 minutes trying to locate and trying to think where is it have one system where it’s centralized. Now with pulse 360, we’re also sending all of it back into your CRM is automatically for you. So you now have the information sitting in pulse that’s really easy to access, but you can also if need be, go into your CRM and find that.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, I don’t know if you remember David Allen and the Getting Things Done system was famous for increasing productivity. And he starts with an inbox saying all your files, everything and so bolts 360 becomes your client inbox when it comes to client notes that ties in with your CRM. And so like you saying you need to find Find the data and you need to have a good quality of data. But do you think we’re getting to a point where we have too much data on our clients? And we’re maybe missing the client conversations, you know, you were talking about your days where some of the emergent conversations got really emotional, yet, I go, how does the data help us feel those compensations?

Anand Sheth
So, you definitely can have a lot of data. But I would say, one of the steps that you need to look at from your practice perspective is to see how can you have an organized set of data so that you can refer back and pull that out? You mentioned David Island. In fact, that’s a book that’s sitting right here on my table, because some of his ideas is what I’ve also implemented in pulse 360, right? Being able to find the data, so let’s, let’s take an example right in, let’s say you were talking about a client about their goals. And now, you know, let’s say it’s, they want to buy a home in Alaska. Okay? That type of information is normally buried somewhere in deep down in some notes for advisors, maybe handwritten notes. And or if you’ve forecasted it out in financial planning software, it sits in finish planning software, not everybody in your team is going to know how to operate the finish buying software. And I was trying, I think, to go spend looking through your handwritten notes trying to find that nugget, right. So the way we’ve built post 360, with it was this idea that, hey, get all the data in. But we give you the power to organize it so that you can literally find anything later. And I think that’s the key part is if you have a lot of data, and it’s not organized, it’s a mess. But if you start forming a system, like okay, I’m going to put a next meeting tag for any time that I know that we’re going to discuss something in the next meeting, or a future meeting tech, or hey, this is a goal. Let me put a goal tag on this particular note. And what you can now do is pull up all the goals easily with pulse 360, for example, in fact, you can send out an email to them saying, by the way, here are all your goals. And it won’t take your your team that long is probably a couple of you know, a couple of seconds to do that. So organizing your data is going to be very, very key for financial advisors.

Louis van der Merwe
It sounds like you’ve solved the curse of knowledge on saying, how do you know this? Well, I deal with the client, but saying, this is where we go to when we want information, important information about our client, not CRM, not contact details, but what actually is living in that client’s financial life and the things that are important to them. And and I want to spend a bit of time thinking about the future of boss 360 and our industry, where do you see Robo technology fit into the financial planning world? Is that something that a lot of advisors are scared of? Or they’re embracing it? And you know, making it part of the business?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, I mean, look, Robo, when the original Robo investing side came, right? I was in the business. And it was like, Oh, my God, what in the world is gonna happen to us? Right? Of course, now we’ve seen right several years out, we’ve seen that, hey, there is a place for human beings, right. And advisors. Basically, there’s a subset of clients, or prospective clients that are going to go that route the DI wires? Sure, I would challenge the DI wires. Actually, if they’re listening, you know, you may be a great DIY or know what it is. But ask your spouse today? No, because you have spent the time learning maybe, but have they likely not? In my case, for example, look, I can invest my own money, right? I have done it for two decades now. But if I’m not here, my wife doesn’t know how to navigate any of this, right? So for that, that’s just a challenge to the DI wires to think in that term, so that they have a plan to transfer the knowledge that they’ve gathered over to their spouses, for example, or their partners. From advisors perspective, look, the investments. Like for example, Schwab came out with this Intelligent Portfolios, that is going to keep happening and in fact, they’re going to keep encroaching all the different elements that can be repeated and can be, you know, optimized with technology. I think the advice part is where I don’t believe that that’s an easy fix. This is where we’re coming in right with the idea with pulse 360s You’re able to email out your advice using us as I see. I can incorporate automation for you so that you can become more efficient and not have to, you know, hire an army of people to work Run your practice, for example, in and use technology, the latest technology, the automation that’s built. This is why what I see from the future perspective and where I’m taking pulse 360 is being able to use your existing technology like let’s say, red tail or wealth box as CRMs. Today, use that by having them automating and doing things for you, you know, the tasks being created from Paul’s, or workflows being triggered for your practice. And as we, as we introduced new, we’re going to be introducing Riskalyze and others over the next coming years. The idea is, from your communication drive the automation, right. And I think that’s the future. I mean, that’s why we’re building posts, the way we’re building the name polls. 360. Just so you you’re, you know, folks have a bigger vision as well, the name polls, 360 is on purpose, I want you as an advisor to have a pulse on your business. I want your clients to have a pulse on the advice you’re delivering to them. Are there going to be technologies that are going to be automating route? Yeah, like look, trusts, for example, and wills. Now, they’re going to get automated, right? So the attorneys there are going to feel like they can’t just keep charging 3000 4000 $5,000 For trusts. And well, when they’re simple, right? When they’re complicated is different. So the easier part is going to be taken away. So you should really focus on where your value prop is, which is the advice, your experience in seeing how which different options. Clients can take. I earlier I mentioned, right? There’s multiple ways to get to retirement, right? cutting costs and boosting your savings or returns and all of that. But that’s where your value comes in, which is the right way for the particular client. And I don’t believe technology’s there yet to be able to answer those types of questions that fit a particular client and all their circumstances and nuances that they have in their lives.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you, Amanda, it’s wonderful to hear how you’ve thought through these things. It’s definitely not the first time you had to unpack this. But what struck me was saying, My wife doesn’t necessarily know how to manage money. And if you were to leave a set of instructions for your wife to select an advisor or financial planner to work with, what would that set of instructions look like? What would be top of your list for her to select a financial planner,

Anand Sheth
oh, she already knows I have already written down like, hey, you need to contact two or three of these advisors if they’re still in business and work with them just because of 20 years of my experience, I’ve come across so many, and I am become friends with some of them. So you know that she already knows that part, right? First thing, she’s I told her contact my previous employer, they have everything and they’re a great team, and you will be able to, you know, get yourself sorted out. So my advice to her is exactly that, you know, don’t try to handle this, don’t try to learn, go spend time with my daughter. You don’t need to learn this, you know, hire somebody for it.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s brilliant. So you’ve had selected these advisors to work with your family, when you’re no longer there. And also thinking about how that Vice fits into your life.

Anand Sheth
Yeah, I mean, look, I was a planner. Right? I was an advisor, that’s one of the things we do, right. Is is tell our clients succession planning, well, this is my succession planning in a way, right is something happens to me, she knows where to go. It’s not just, it’s not just an estate plan, or a will. It’s also a set of actions that she knows she can take right and where that’s gonna be. So

Louis van der Merwe
you’re brilliant. And and you’ve mentioned a couple of times, that advisors aren’t really using the technologies out there to their full capacity, the mind only be using 20 or 30%. The tools? Are you seeing them missing a specific segment? Or do you just find it across the board that it’s difficult to adopt to new technologies and to include that almost in your job description to say you need to be able to be proficient in an advice stick?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, look, I’ve now that I have right a technology product as well. And I can see advisors using, you know, 3040 50% of pulse 360, for example. And I’ve spoken with other CEOs in the industry who also have tech products, for example. And that seems like hey, 20 to 30% is on average of the power they’re using right there’s a lot more power built for example, red tail and wealth box has a tremendous amount of power built inside but most advisors don’t end up using it for post 360, what I did is, I am creating these best practice videos that are short one minute videos that help an advisor think from outside, like, Oh, I could do these things from my practice, right? You need to as an advisor, think about, you know, think about technology, as in this gonna sound, you know, sound crude a little bit here, but need to think about technology as a person. Because if you’re bringing in a staff person, you’re going to train them on your business, right? Well, now here comes technology. And if you’re not using all the skills that it gives you, all of a sudden, you’re really not taking advantage of them, right, you’re letting a lot of resource go to waste. I know why. Because advisors are busy trying to meet with clients and not wanting to have to deal with this, trying to learn and you know, all the different technologies have different things going on, but maybe assign somebody in your team. And that’s what I ended up being, I would learn the technology, I mean, naturally, I know about it, right? I coded in it. So it’s easier for me. But I would say assign a single person, your team that may be a little bit more tech forward and say learn this as best as possible. Here’s what we’re trying to do see how we can use our existing technology to do so. And then have that person on a weekly basis, bring everybody else up to speed saying, Look, this is something new that I found in Redtail, I could do or impulse 360 or wealth box, I can do or Salesforce, for example, and then teach the rest of the firm on how to do it. And that I think will be very, very helpful for all advisors,

Louis van der Merwe
almost like having a champion in your business saying, Hey, you’re the pulse 360 champion, come and share the knowledge.

Anand Sheth
Yeah, and more questions will come out right. So that and then you’re always at the forefront, and you’re utilizing as much technology as as you’re paying for, for your practice to really, really help you. I have a blog post on my site, basically saying advisors think about cost, right? As far as technology, but I say look, reframe it. Think about what that technology is potentially replacing, maybe it’s not hiring that one person. Right? That’s a huge amount of savings, you know, compared to what the technology these days cost, right? So,

Louis van der Merwe
yeah, what’s wonderful to see is how all of the technology pieces are talking to each other and how they’re integrating and definitely feels like it’s gearing up for something big way. You know, everything’s just communicating and connecting to each other. What is my expectation, maybe too high?

Anand Sheth
Although I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think your expectation is too high. And that’s exactly what we’re here to solve. My goal is for advisors to get back to advising and do less admin, which means I need to look at what all your different software technologies you’re using, how can I build that integration and interplay and interact in pulse, so that you can literally have a symphony, playing just from Pulse 360. And having things trigger in different software? That’s our vision, right? So you’re not, I would say, know, what your expectation is, is like the low bar for us. And that’s where what we want to do, right, and we’ve already done it with Redtail wealth box and Salesforce Riskalyze is next for us. And then there’ll be others precise. FP, for example, is also another one that we’re going to integrate, we should have technology that talk to each other, actually create things in each other. I mean, that’s how it should be right? It should, it should all work like an orchestra.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, I think in South Africa, we’ve just for too long, become happy, or we’ve accepted standard technology. But actually now that companies like pulse 360 and acid map, who’s also a sponsor of the show, are opening up their doors and saying, Hey, we don’t care where you are, as long as we can take care of you. And the data is in a secure and we can cover your local jurisdiction. come on board, and it’s so refreshing. And I want to thank you for, you know, just opening up the doors to global users as well. And that is just not an exclusive product. Yeah,

Anand Sheth
of course, of course. And actually Ken Who’s the other advisor in South Africa that’s using pulse 360 He actually, it was interesting because he’s using pulse 360 with, you know, two languages, Afrikaans and English, you know, so it’s very, very interesting to see him how he’s using that. And, you know, that was not originally our intention, like we built it, but we didn’t realize that could be a use case, right. So there are some use cases out there. that are outside of normal use cases that you should also look at an exploring talk with that advisor. So with what you’re doing, and you know, with this podcast and all of that, I hope advisors can kind of start seeing what’s possible acid map, I forgot I failed to mention. But that’s also something we’re looking at and trying to do an integration with as well coming next year. So Adam and I have spoken and I think there’s great synergies we can have.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s brilliant, we have it on record. So Adam, if you’re listening, thank you for delivering that integration and working with none. And then for the people out there that want to maybe have a demo or want to see this happening live, what’s the best way to reach out to get to know you?

Anand Sheth
Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to our website, pulse three sixty.com. And there’s a Schedule button right on the top right, that you can just click and schedule a time. If you are international, you could just email me because that calendar timing may not work. So I have a separate link for international In fact, I should probably put it on the website. But you can email me directly at ANA a na nd at Pulse 360 calm and say, Hey, can you send me an international calendar link with you know more timings available. So I’ll make that available for you so that it can fit better.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you so much for offering up your your sleep time to pray for these sessions and have the recording. I really appreciate it. And I’m really excited to see where pulse 360 will be going. We’ll definitely continue to be users because it’s made a massive difference in our practice and the way we deliver advice. Anand thank you so much for joining me today.

Anand Sheth
Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.