#280 James Millard – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey guys, Ben Nash from XY Adviser here. And today I’m I’m really excited. I’ve been actually nervously excited for the last little bit cuz we’re chatting to Australia’s most relatable money guy, James Millard, James runs a business called sufficient plants. He’s the head financial advisor there. And yeah, I’m keen to pick Jimmy’s brain. He has been going for how many years you’ve been going there, Jimmy, self employed for about six, we pivoted into sufficient funds about three and a half years ago. And so yeah, just talking about some of the lessons on that journey, the things that James is focused on today, and some of the things that have driven his business growth. So James, thanks for joining us, buddy. Good to chat.

James Millard
Thank you, Ben. Thank you very much, and what an intro. Wonder who wrote all that.

Ben Nash
I just pulled that directly from your website. So I think that was you.

James Millard
It mighta been.

Ben Nash
But mate, you, as you say, you started, you start the business about six years ago. And the Yolo brand, bouncing out of one of the big sort of, sort of not institutional, but a bigger advice, shopping, and yeah, been a lot of sort of evolutions on that path, I’m keen to get into a bit of that, and some of the lessons that you’ve taken from there, but keen to pick your brain on Team stuff. Initially, I know you lead a fully remote team, which we’re just chatting offline, you know, used to be a little bit different to the norm there these days, everyone sort of realizing that we’ve lost our competitive advantage, that’s for sure. But so, you know, you’ve you’ve grown from essentially yourself, you know, when especially when initially had a couple of business partners then transition to the sufficient funds brand, running yourself, and you build a pretty chunky team behind you. Now, I think, you know, we realize as a business owners in particular that, you know, as your business grows, that it sort of Team ends up being the business. And yeah, it’s an interesting environment. At the moment, I think that focus on Team people working from their bunkers, you’ve been doing it for a bit longer than most with a fully remote team. But I’m keen to Yeah, sort of get your learnings on some of the lessons that you’ve you’ve found on how to actually ensure that you’ve, you know, got a rock solid team that’s not only filled with great people, but a team that’s working really well together as a team.

James Millard
Yeah, awesome. So yeah, I mean, you’ve nailed it with the intro. I think that’s that pretty much sums it up. We it was probably three and a half, four years ago, it was kind of mid 2018. We, we pivoted into our keep saying your business name, as I’m trying to describe mine. We moved into sufficient funds, and it was me and Laura at the time. And Laura is still with us. She’s been with us, I’d worked with Laura, back in the back in the in the commercial days back when we were in the institutional world, or the bigger business that you mentioned before rolled out of that, and and I guess, I mean, for me, I’d come out of this, this environment where it was a national light, fairly large business, you know, multi multi million dollar revenue and running big teams. And I got back to the core of we were just the we were the face of it and doing everything and slowly it’s moved from there. But I guess I you know, I never really sought out to build a big team again, my my gut feeling when I was kind of launching things, and even pivoting to civilian funds was trying to think about how I could outsource absolutely everything. So I could be the only advisor. And I learned very quickly that that that goes so far. You can’t and and so we Yeah, I mean slowly started to bring on more. Randy was one of our first hires, who was actually the mortgage broker because I was trying to do both. And, and again, that was that was a bit crazy. And so the mortgage broking side of the business was basically doing nothing for the first year until we found Randy and luckily, he came on board and I’d known Randy for a while as well. And then it went from there. And so we built there’s a couple of brokers now and three advisors including me, and the rest is support. And so we’ve got 13 In total, we’re trying to find a power planner and more of an entry level admin assistant at the moment. So I mean, if that all goes well, we’ll still have probably five client facing and 10 support which for me has been, I guess, so imperative in in making sure that like my the way I’ve always described it for me and you got to you got to play Practice this idea of pseudo laziness, you can’t try and do everything in. I mean, everyone knows this, but it’s hard to actually put it into place. And I think that you really got to focus in on trying to not do anything that you absolutely don’t have to do. And that’s where we, you know, we brought in support, we’ve been lucky to find a good crew in the Philippines over time through five elk. And we’ve got four there now. And the rest are on shore. But yeah, so I mean, it’s been a slow a slow growth to 13. And most of that happened in the last 12 months. But we doubled the team in the last 12 months. And, yeah, from here, I think more advisors, hopefully. But you know, as we were just talking offline, it’s, it’s, it’s really, really important to find the right people.

Ben Nash
Yeah, absolutely. And I know, I like you, when I started my business, I wanted to keep it small, I didn’t want to really run a team, like an inside a business trying to build a huge machine or anything like that. But you do realize that it’s challenging if you’re the one that’s that’s doing it all. And I think that works. If you’re self employed, it also works if you’re an advisor within a business as well, that there’s only so many things you can focus on. And I know that, yeah, we started bringing people in because you go, Okay, there’s this work to do, and then the work needs to get done. And then you bring people in to do that work. But one of the one of the big shifts, for me, in particular off the back of the COVID stuff is that having a real focus on how a team works together, making sure that people are they have a clear progression plan, that they’re not just, you know, just going okay, there’s the job, but it’s like, okay, well, you’re, you’re a person, you’ve got your development goals that you want to do the things that you’re interested in. And one of the fortunate things, I think, in a growing business is that you can sort of shape people and sort of push them into a role that you can carve away over time, the things that are that are less exciting for them, and then put them more into the things that they’re they’re more interested in. And then that ties back to, you know, the satisfaction and how people are working and, and ultimately, you know, that that works to the success of the actual business. But look, you know, it’s, we’re just chatting offline, like, it’s challenging out there at the moment to find good people. I think that, you know, my take on it is, and we’ve been, we’ve been hiring for, you know, senior financial advisors for like, five months, and associate advisors as well looking for like, it’s, I think that there’s a bit of fatigue with all of the COVID disruption, especially last year. And we’re obviously Sydney based and looking for someone that that is around Sydney, that that and we’re a bit sort of precious here that we’ve got it a little bit sort of easy ish at the start that we had our lockdown, and then sort of got to the other side, but but then thrown back into lockdown for longer time. And that Yeah, I think, like I say fatigued and just sort of a bit over it at the back end of the year starting to see a bit more activity now with the new year and people sort of thinking about these things again, but for you like in, I know that we’re just chatting offline, you’re saying that you built your team primarily through your network. But I’m interested in like what have been some of the big learnings for you from a from a hiring and recruiting perspective in growing your team from essentially the two that you started with to 13 today?

James Millard
So mate, I think naturally for me, I my personality ends up being that I really care about people and I want I’m interested, right, I’m interested, I ask a lot of questions. And I think naturally, and this is how it’s always evolved with clients for us is, we we’ve built a business model around really digging into who they are and what they want. And spending a lot of time on that. And I guess it’s the same thing for staff. And so for me, I mean, once you’ve hired them, and and we can go back to that part in a sec. But once you’ve got them on board, it’s the it’s the holding them, that’s really important. I mean, knowing if they’re the right fit, and obviously making sure they are but if they are then just doing whatever you can to care, showing interest and like you say help them progress, help them see what that path looks like, talk to them about what they want, don’t try and fit them into whatever that box might be that you may need. And if they’re, you know, for us, I mean, we’ve had staff that have moved, shifted direction a bit over time and, and that’s been more driven by their talents and their interests. And I guess ideally, that means that they will stay. And so hiring I mean, we we’ve got a couple of interviews this afternoon for paraplanners. And we use the jobs for the XY jobs board for that. And it’s been phenomenal. It’s the first time I’ve used it. And like I said before, you mentioned that with the networking. We’ve been really lucky and I would encourage everyone out there to you know, I know it’s been tough in the last couple of years but just get to those industry events and you Meet people. And you know, we were lucky. I mean, we, you know, you and I worked with the AFA for a while, you’ve done a lot of work with that industry side of things. And those hard yards are paying off, right, you get exposure by doing that type of thing. You meet all the other potential staff that could be coming in they and they, you know, if you take an interest in these people and show your face enough for eventually, there’s enough out there for it for us. So far, it’s been the network from previous business through to doing a lot of work in industry as well, to now having a decent pool of people just go, hey, it might not be you’re hiring them in particular, but you can tap them on the shoulder to ask who they know, and, and run it from there. And so that we’ve been lucky one because I mean, Laura and Randy, both work I’d worked with previously, and that was an easy one. And from there, Randy’s been able to build the team through his network in the mortgage broking side. So yeah, the, I think, I mean, in terms of hiring, you’ve got to firstly, you’ve got to really understand what you need. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and really make sure you’ve got the right strategy around the business and the route structure and, and thinking about where you want to be, and, and what those immediate steps might look like. But also, what are the two to three, four year timeframe? And what might this person be able to help you do? With advisors? I know you’re talking about trying to find a senior advisor at the moment, that’s probably I mean, we’ve got Cara, who’s, who’s amazing. And if I could clone Cara Williams three times, I would, and, and we’d have, we probably have some of the work that you know, the work to do for them to cover off on but and, and one reason that works so well is car has really good personality wise, she gets it and she understands people, and she’s got really high EQ. And I guess on that note, that’s something we’ve always looked for. I want people with emotional intelligence in every role, because of course, that then drives the ability to talk to people, and that means the team or gets along. And obviously, whenever they’re dealing with clients, it’s that’s imperative.

Ben Nash
Yeah, and how I’m interested, because that’s something that I was, you know, one of the things that I did in over the break was just looking at our roles and figuring out essentially, like, what is the ideal person? What do they look like from a values work, approach to work, you know, skill set all of those things. And then I’ve been reading tons of books about, like, you know, recruiting and hiring and teams and management and that sort of stuff. And then obviously, the emotional intelligence thing comes up. And I think we broadly understand that that’s important. How do you actually how do you how do you dig into that, because I feel like you can tell when someone doesn’t like is has a really low emotional intelligence. But then there’s like, there’s this range between like, okay, to really amazing, which is sometimes well, often, it is certainly my experience been sort of a bit challenging to figure that out before you before you spend tons of time with them and get them into the role and see how they work with with people, team and client.

James Millard
I think I mean, I think just purely by the nature of the fact that you’re talking about emotion, it is there’s a lot of sensing that rather than, you know, the check box of what you’re trying to find, and I think you’ll get I mean, if you’re interviewing someone, what I found is you’ll, you’ll you’ll vibe them, right, you’ll be feeling it’ll be, it’ll be that, okay, these people click with who you are, you’re trying to create a business, you’re the center of the business, you know, what the business needs. And then and there is a I mean, there is a gut feeling that needs to be relied on there. And, you know, as the business owner, or the hiring manager, or whoever it might be, you’ve got to, you’ve got to be fully in tune with what you need, and what the business, what drives the business and the core values of you know, who you’re looking for. And then I think from there, it’s probably more asking a lot of questions. And it might not be strictly EQ. But I’d be more kind of looking at well, you know, you’re not necessarily diving too deep in in a job interview, but understanding what makes people tick. And just like clients, if you get that, and then you can give them the the solution, for lack of a better term. I hate that word. But if you give them what they need, that links to what they care about, everything comes together. Right. And so, yeah, I mean, I think emotional intelligence. I mean, I haven’t been reading as much, but I would say that it’s probably a lot more of a sense rather than a checkbox. But, but in saying that, you know, like, you know, you can you can cross them off straightaway, you know, if they don’t need it, it’s that it’s kind of that middle ground where I think pushing a bit harder and asking a lot more questions about who they out. And if they’re not giving you the answers that you feel will gel with either the team or the clients will, then that’s when I think you probably need to move on.

Ben Nash
I actually I’ve got to make this an organizational psychologist and I hit him up. But after doing a bit of this reading, I was like, Hey, I was like, is there because I’m like, I like quantifiable, you know, data lead stuff. And I was like, let’s say he helps us with a lot of the psychometric testing that we do when we when we hire a team to make sure that their fits for the roles that we that we’re looking at them for, and was asking him about the emotional intelligence stuff he did with the rat, but there are some tests that you can do for that, but they need to be administered by like a proper, like, full on psychologist and I feel like it’s might be might be like a bit of a bridge too far to you know, do your interview. Send them off with a psycho session off the back of it. But you know, I don’t know, you never know.

James Millard
Oh, food for thought for sure.

Ben Nash
Yeah, exactly. Make last quick teams based question for you. But you’ve been running a remote business for for a while. And I think now all people are running, running pretty much running. So to some level of remote teams or working in remote teams. What do you think of that the top sort of one or two things that that make that work? Or that they can make that work better, that are important when you are working in this sort of non sort of traditional office type setup environment?

James Millard
I mean, I think number one, it’s the social factor, right? Because I mean, you need to create that social factor. And I mean, we, the base of that, for us is just using something like well, we use Voxer, and everyone’s on it. And Voxer, for anyone who doesn’t know is the walkie talkie app, where it’s a lot of everyone’s on the one crew in the morning, and everyone’s a good morning. And there’s a lot of chit chat, there’s a lot of gifts being shared around, there’s a lot of the fun stuff that just keeps people kind of feeling like they’re a part of a team, rather than sitting in their own bunker, as you say, in the middle of wherever, right, so Well, I mean, we can hire, I don’t care where you live, doesn’t really matter. It does cost a little bit more when we try and bring them all together. But that’s that’s the point of it. Right? And so look, that there’s there’s that part, and there’s there’s sheduling, whether it’s and one thing kind of we’re looking at now, as at the moment is now that the team is the size that it is, is it’s not just one big team meeting all the time, but making sure that there’s random sheduled one on ones or or two or three for people just put it in the calendar and catch up, catch up randomly, it’s not about work, just put your and we kind of have started to think about bringing that in as a as a just another way of just kind of making sure there’s always a contact point. Everyone knows what their role is. And we could probably get by for months and months without worrying too much about that. I mean, I think we attract people that are very clearly we’re telling them that they won’t be in an office, we’re telling them that, you know, some people just Bob the office environment, right, and those people aren’t going to come and work with us. There are others that might have, you know, a young family, and just be looking for complete freedom and never want to travel. It’s not everyone, but there are a lot of those people that they’ve got enough, got them either got enough going on at home, or they’re very comfortable just knowing that this is this is the role and the flexibility outweighs the social aspect. Yeah, and the face to face. But we’re also really careful to be I mean, we’re highly flexible in terms of not clock watching. If you need to be somewhere during the day, just go and do it. I don’t want to know, I don’t care. Like we, you know, I think the key is managing based on outcomes rather than hours. And, and just making sure that you’ve got that part, right. So having a good structure and system and understanding of things like KPIs and, and how much work people should be getting through is pretty important. But that that comes back to also, I guess, when you’re talking about the hiring side of things, you’ve got to be able to trust people to be able to be autonomous as well. So there’s a little bit of a different factor there. And I guess for us, we didn’t have the challenge of moving out of the office environment where you could be shoulder tapping and, and or watching the staff and making sure or hearing the conversations on the phones and so we didn’t have that anyway. And so that wasn’t an issue for us. We you know, we had that was dealt with many years ago. And and so yeah, I think that for us, we were lucky in a way with that part.

Ben Nash
But yeah, I think that I think definitely like the outcomes focused is is more of a trend and I know that like for us when we were talking to a team and we’re constantly trying to get feedback on like, how can we make it you know, create an environment where people feel comfortable to, you know, work work at their pace, but then you have to have those the output is, is the key measure there. And we know that, you know, clients are going through the, as long as that’s happening and they’re getting the outcomes and not issues then for us, like sounds like for you, like if someone works late isn’t a morning person and does that and knocks it out. And that’s okay, if they’re not, then that’s okay, as well, so long as the things are getting there. But I noticed that for us, and I like the boxer idea that one of the things that we’ve noticed from the transition from the office environment to the bunker is that you just don’t get those micro interactions through the day that if you constantly working at home all the time that you don’t get there, someone hangs up a phone call, and then you have a little bit of banter about something or something happens, and then you just shoot the breeze, even if it’s only 10 seconds, or 30 seconds or something that that gap is there. So I like I like that idea of, you know, throw a little gif, and there’s something there to make the distraction, because otherwise, it’s just zoom, zoom zoom, and it’s all work and, you know, I don’t think we’re built for for that.

James Millard
No way. And yeah, I mean, we sometimes you have to force yourself to remember to do that. But it’s just sharing like, these clients, we just, you know, presented the plan, they loved it, blah, blah, blah, Well done, everyone, whatever it is, right, just little things like that as well. Throwing the, you know, snapshots of Google reviews in whenever they come through that type of thing, whatever it is, lots of that is really important. I like it. Tell me, James, you, you know, six years essentially, in, you know, in doing what you’re doing what’s how have you gone about, I suppose building out the offering that you’ve currently got for clients, and what’s changed over that over that period of time. So, I mean, we start I mean, six years ago, we were so naive and overconfident to what we were going to do and how we’re going to achieve it, we’d rolled out of a business that did absolutely everything, including property and all sorts of other stuff, to thinking that that was the solution, just throw everything in. And, you know, the more we do the better, which is clearly not the right way to go. And to be honest, we tread with Trump Waterfoot. For two years, we had a few clients coming through, it was not pumping in any way. And in the in the end, I mean, we were just trying, you know, three of us trying to do way too much and not really have any focus. And so, I mean, I’m probably looking at the negative side of it, there were definitely some positives to that. But I mean a couple things, the learnings from that was we went from the office to the to the remote work, that saved us rent at the time, it was things like that was just startup decisions that ended up being really key to who we are and where we are now. From there, I guess for me, I had, I had been blogging under the kind of sufficient funds brand personally and doing a lot of that more of a kind of what what makes me tick and talking personally about a lot of my story and you know, whether it was financial or life or a bit of both and, and I guess over that time, I’m starting to see that there was a lot of, I think there’s a lot of value in what in in just getting really stuck into the authenticity piece. And and for me, then the business has grown purely off the back of everything that I think should be an advice that aligns with who I am, and finding the team to then who you know, the ones that will get on board with that to then drive it forward. And so I guess the SF idea for us, I mean, our business model now is we have a paid starting session, we call it defining sufficient, I did a session with them last year on here with one of those Thursday chats where we dove right into that. So if anyone wants to go and check that out, we got really into the nitty gritty of what that looks like. But at a higher level. It’s it’s really about getting stuck into values and, and goals and all the things that people care about, and really understanding and so it’s a 90 minute session. And I guess the outcome there really is they pay for it. We send it back. So we build it all in Canberra and we send them a document that has a really good record of everything we’ve gone through and then we quote them at the end for the plan and we’ve basically got a straight one one fee two fees depending on sometimes we’re doing part that we won’t always do for clients depends if they need help with their cash flow are not strictly and so we give them the fee and most of them come on board. It’s probably 90% now and you know The ones that don’t might come back in a year or two, we’ve been constantly surprised with these clients, that just guy, we, you know, we these got in the way, and now we’re back on board. But I guess from there, it’s I mean, for the for the people we’re working with, we’re working purely with like really 20 and 30 year olds people in their 20s and 30s. And, and that core focus on life over money has been the key, I think for us. On top of that, and and you’ll know this, when you’re working with higher income earners, you have to provide value, if you if you’re and this is the funny thing about working, I think previously with people in their 50s and 60s, a lot of the time, they just think they need an advisor, and they’ve got a few things going on, they’re not sure what to do with it. It’s very different when you’re talking to millennials who like they’ve got sometimes limited resources most of the time not. But you like you are forced, absolutely forced to tell to show them how good it’s going to be and what you’re going to do for the minutes results driven. And so it should be so easy, but it’s a different, it’s a different ballgame, because and so the good thing for that is that just forced us to be really clear on who we help, how we do it, and what the results generally look like. And so yeah, we spend a lot more time kind of working on that part, stopping dealing with everyone, and, and just really focusing on that. So I mean, everyone knows you should be naysaying I kind of, you know, you probably told me five years ago to do it, and I ignored you. And then it was one of those things that we you know, we should have absolutely got stuck into that earlier. But now that we have certainly paid off. And I think for anyone out there who’s just kind of wondering what to do, or just focusing on one thing, focusing on one thing that you know, you’re good at, that you care about that you like doing that, you know, is valuable for clients, and build it around that instead of trying to, like, Oh, that’ll pay me this will pay me this works cash flow, you know, try and get away from that as hard as they can.

Ben Nash
But yeah, definitely, I think from an efficiency perspective, as well, that, you know, we’ve we’ve seen huge increases in the cost of running a financial advice, business and delivering advice and, you know, massive uptick in compliance. And you know, a lot of that stuff, which it’s good, like, it should happen, but the reality is that, if you want to run a sustainable business, or a sustainable offering, it has to be something that’s efficient, otherwise, you’re gonna have to charge you know, even more outrageous prices to be able to, to actually deliver that work. But for a business owner, the end for from a business perspective, even for someone that’s not a business owner and entertain like the, the more consistent you can be with what you’re offering and what you’re delivering for clients, then the easier it is to train people to manage your workflows to manage the work, the output, the process, the clients, all of that stuff. And then in addition, that you, you get really clear on what your value is how you can demonstrate that for clients, and then what your message to market is and actually get cut through and like, we like you like we deal with a certain type of people and a big chunk of our clients. In fact, I’d say it more than 80% of our clients 3545. Now, we can still deal with 50 and 60 year old clients, although we don’t have that many of them just because of the nature of how we position ourselves in the market. But the process ends up being the same as long as they’re okay with the process. And the solutions and the outcomes, the process is not wildly different. In fact, it’s exactly the same. But the the message cuts through to the peat to those 35 to 45 year old tech professionals making half a break, like as opposed to say, you know, a 50 year old person, so we’re going to do a transition to retirement strategy or something. So I think for that, and for clients, you know, for them to then refer the business as well that they again, they know you’re these guys work with these people and they deliver this, this and this.

James Millard
Yeah, exactly. And you might you might get the referral from the son or the daughter to the parent. Right. And yeah, and I mean, the first time that started happening for us were like, Should we do this defining sufficient session we like slapped ourselves around. And we of course we should, because it’s still, I mean, everyone’s got goals, right? Everyone’s got things they’re about. It’s a different way of talking about it. But you’re right, you’re doing exactly the same thing. It’s just not necessarily the market, but it could still work. Yeah. And James, where do your clients come from? Typically, what’s the sort of break down for the people that work with you? So starting out, I mean, it was very much just from anywhere we could possibly find. We made a few strategic partnership calls, especially around joining with podcasts. And so we get we get lots of introductions from different podcasts now, more client facing podcasts that started probably three years ago that was that was probably driving probably 60 70% of our new clients, that’s dropped away now to now we’re getting a lot more, I guess we kind of probably closer to that kind of critical mass point, which I don’t like thinking like that because it stops you wanting to grow. But like, if we’d stop now and didn’t grow, we’ve got lots and lots of client referrals coming through off the back of people we’ve started working with in the last few years. So it’s now probably closer to maybe 50% of new clients come from external sources, mostly referral referral partners, strategic relationships with those guys, but not not necessarily accountants and lawyers, and so forth more that kind of podcasting in the media side of things. And moving forward. I mean, I guess our plan now is to de risk ourselves further from those external sources a little bit there. I mean, they’re awesome. And it works really well. But I mean, my, my goal is to is to still be out there be the face of it, get a bit more off the tools and do a lot more of that stuff personally. It’s, it’s the one thing that I think is, it’s been my greatest challenge. In the last probably two years, as we’ve been growing, there’s been so much to do. And I’ve remained the advisor, at the core of that, for most of it, that, that it’s just been like, I know, last year, and when we got to December, and I limped into Christmas. And I realized, like, I’d spent probably 5% of my time on the business, and nowhere near enough. And so, yeah, that’s my challenge. Now, I think we’re at the point where, you know, we probably need to start thinking about who the coaches that we need to bring in, to really start to kind of shred what we’re doing, pull it all apart, look at, you know, where the inefficiencies and so forth. I could do this stuff if I stopped. But I think you know, sometimes, as as you’re well aware, and you know, I’m sure you support this is throwing money at the people who can actually do it way better than you and will force you to do it as well. Would you in a position where So yeah, that’s our kind of next challenge is kind of thinking about who are the people at least couple of starting points around that. Getting the right people in to kind of help us guide some of that stuff? Because my wife, she’s, she’s working full time, so tasks can’t test can’t do it. Like she used it? Yeah.

Ben Nash
Yeah, it’s, it’s one of those things that you it’s as you especially as you start to build a bit of good traction in your, you know, could be within a business or in your actual business, like you’re distracted. And we know that it’s, you know, you want to keep your eye on that 50,000 foot level, but you also need to deliver on the day to day. So finding that balance is not an easy one. But definitely something that you need to do at some point in your business, like my business, it’s like, you’re, you start as the face, you do the content, you do a lot of the partnership stuff. But ultimately, like you’ve only got so many hours in the day and your be beyond the fact that your value to the to the clients he’s like, can be more on the strategic side from a business perspective and what you do. And you could only serve as so many clients, but your value to the business becomes that in those strategic things and bringing the right people in to support the growth and doing all those things to to make it even better ultimately, for your clients. But it’s just that getting their part, which is tricky. So maybe once you sorted out, just let me know. That’d be fantastic.

James Millard
For sure.

Ben Nash
James, mate, thank you so much for for sharing your your insights, as I’ve made a few notes, there’s some solid tips. For for me, definitely on the team side, and they’re good, good to see you continuing to smash goals. My last question for you is that if you could go back to yourself at the start of your career in in financial advice, what would be the one piece of advice that you would give little Jimmy

James Millard
Love it. We’re going we’re going back about 14 years now in my gray hairs. I’m not sure if that’s self employment or, or to young kids are a bit of both. But mate, I mean, I had a very different start in financial advice to what most people had and were always working for business that just threw you straight into the deep end. And you know, we I spent, however long getting qualified and doing all of that and then we were just straight into it. And I guess that what I did get from that what was phenomenal and what I’ve seen a lot of people miss out on was the actual ability to have confidence and try and build a relationship really quickly. Things that that matter so much around how we engage people when we’re in front of them. But what I didn’t have straightaway, and it took a lot longer to get that was some of the technical knowledge. And so, you know, we’d studied it, but it was all about it was a lot more slow learning on the job. And there, I guess, you, we are now forcing the the slower progress through even though it’s not where I came from, it’s that it’s the startup, you know, Duke? Well, I mean, luckily, the legislation now forces it a little bit, because you’ve got the professional year, and you’ve got to do the degree. And you’ve got to do all of that. But I guess that idea of working in power planning or Client Servicing, but also power planning, and really understanding the core of how to deliver advice. Before you’re actually out there doing it gives you a different, I think it’s an appreciation that took me a very long time to get. And so yeah, I would say, dive into, you know, most people who land in this world have technically have the technical ability, or the potential at least and so dive into that a bit. But at the same time, do not do not lose the ability to learn to talk to people, you’ve got to learn that if you want to be in front of clients.

Ben Nash
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I’m sure that if you asked your team, they’d be happy for you to take a bit of the SOA writing off their hands if you want to get a bit more Foundation in, in the admin. But I think understanding those process, I know that I’ve got mates and they struggle with the people that go straight into that advice role without seeing the stuff that sits behind the scenes, it stops you from being able to manage the clients in the way that they need to because as much as we know that a lot of the value is in those conversations and the coaching and the guidance and those things but you need to know when the rubber hitting the road because that’s where it can be frustrating for clients if it’s not happening the way that they want. And if you don’t have that understanding of this push to the team like that doesn’t happen in the same way. So good advice there. Maybe Jimmy thank you so much for joining us, buddy. Really appreciate it.

James Millard
Thank you.