#282 James Wrigley – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey guys, Ben Nash from the XY visor team. And today I’m really pumped to be here with James Wrigley. James is a Principal Advisor at first financial or one of the Principal Advisor First Financial. He works with high income families and retirees, helping them be smarter with their money. He recently has taken over tick tock so we’re gonna dive a little bit into that, as well as talking about some of the things that James focus on now. James, thanks for joining us, buddy.

James Wrigley
Thank you for having me here. It’s it’s exciting to speak to you, I watched you on LinkedIn for quite some time. It’s good to finally meet you actually, and and have a chat. So thanks for having me.

Ben Nash
Good to be with you. I’ve been stalking you from the shadows as well. So you know, here we are.

James Wrigley
LinkedIn, LinkedIn gives it away. We can’t, you can’t stalk too much. They give it away.

Ben Nash
That’s right. Yeah. But no, it’s funny that stuff that you you follow people and their stuff from afar for a little bit. And it’s like you do build that virtual relationship. And it’s like you, I know that we all see it, I know that you see the end of it, like we do with clients, and then they come in and they’re saying all these things, they understand that stuff. And then like we said that, and it’s a bit weird, but I suppose it’s it’s just the way of the future, especially now that we’re all clamping down in our COVID shelters. So. But James, look, I’m I’m keen to dive into some of the business growth, some teams in team growth, because I think in the current environment that we’re seeing that, you know, as you start building a bit of traction, that the you realize that your team becomes an all important part of what you do, and particularly for a lot of businesses at the moment that are doing well that they’re doing quite well and particularly busy. I think that partly the COVID situation has got a lot of people thinking about their money, obviously, we’re, you’re probably across them as well, if not better than I am. But some of those savings stats for households that people got a few extra pennies in the bank, which is you know, when turning half percent in a bank account that they’re realizing that there’s an opportunity there or an issue that they should be addressing. So it’s it’s keeping us all on our toes, and you realize that your team and the people that you have around, you become all important. So I know that in your business that you know, you work in a business that’s been around for a long time, you’ve been around for a long time in that business. And you were just saying to me off air that you work in sort of a pod type system where you’ve got your, you know, got advisors associate support that sit underneath you that you directly look off for and then there’s other pods doing similar things. So can you pick your brain? Like what have you found? What are the some of the lessons that you’ve learned around building a great team of people around you?

James Wrigley
Lessons that I’ve learned? I think you need to spend the time with each individual person, first and foremost, to kind of understand them and where they’re at and what they want to do. We work in financial advice. And by default, you might assume that everyone has aspirations of being a financial advisor, but they don’t. And that’s perfectly fine. So I spend a lot of time I spend a lot of time with my team. Just working through what pay each individually want. And that’s nothing new. Hopefully, most people are doing that with their teams, but how can I kind of help you be the best version of you in whatever job it is that you want to do? So whether it’s you want to be an associate advisor for for, you know, for your career, fantastic? How can we support you and continue to grow? Because I think once people stopped growing, that’s when they start to get bored and, and look elsewhere? So how can you how can we support you to continue to be the best at what you want to be and continue to challenge you so that you want to keep showing up for work each day, particularly at the moment when we’re not all getting together in the office. So I’m in Melbourne, we are slowly getting back into the office. But like I was in the office three days last week, and I think Wednesday was the busiest day there was five of us in the office, whereas before COVID, there would have been 50 of us in the office in the first financials of business of about 50 people. So it is challenging, but it’s kind of making that time to to just check in with each individual person and what are they want to do and how can we continue to support them? That’s the best I’ve been able to come up with in the last couple of years. It’s it’s worked. Okay, my team’s going along. All right. I’ve had some people come and go. I actually had a may be talking about that, that later on. My team had a big change over in the last in the last 12 months prior. But since we’re going to Kenya

Ben Nash
Yeah, look, I think that the COVID situation has got a lot People one that it’s it changes the work dynamics and how we’re working, you know who we’re working with businesses, I think, in particular, my my own included, like, especially at the start of lockdown so much uncertainty out there, the world sort of seized up a little bit. And that really, you know, freaked me out, I think I freaked a lot of people out. And a lot of businesses were making sure that we were, you know, doing all the things that we could to set up for the future. It also is a situation, especially when you’re forced into remote working without a considered sort of calculated approach to get there that it can and did. I know for us, like highlights and cracks and gaps in terms of how we were doing what we’re doing. But it interesting what you say, because I think sometimes it’s the simplest things are the best things and the most effective things, I know that we see that when we’re talking with our clients, it’s like, what’s the what’s one of the most things that the most powerful things you can do with your money? Well, it’s spend less than you earn, and then just invest, you know, regularly and consistently. Like, it’s sometimes not earth shattering. But there are things that it’s easy to get caught up in all the hype and you know, all the shiny objects that you can do it, then then you can lose sight of the basics. And that’s when those cracks turn into crevices. And you know, it’s it creates further challenges from there. What I’m, I’m keen to pick your brain, you mentioned that this might tie in with what you mentioned around some of the changes in your team, but from a recruiting and, and hiring and onboarding perspective, I know it’s something I feel like we’ve been hiring for a couple of years for advisors in particular, you know, like, We’re trying, I’ve been trying to recruit for two good senior advisors for a few months. And it’s I’ve learned a TON TON TON about hiring from picking people’s brains and reading and learning and just also just having the experience around that, that especially for advisor hiring, I find that sometimes you got fantastic advisors that are not necessarily going to be fantastic advisors in your business, because there’s a lot of different ways to, to do advice. And, you know, I know that I’ve had a few of those conversations. And now we’re focusing on trying to make sure that they can not only do the work or the clients but fit in with the team have the skill set to be happy in the role and in flow, as well. So selfishly, I’m keen to pick your brain what what do you see have they when it comes to effective hiring and advisor,

James Wrigley
I’d see your, your name on LinkedIn, like I, it seemed to me from the outside is that you are hiring every single advisor in the country, you’re building this army, or you’re all you’re really trying to find that the the right person, the thing, so. So in our business, we very rarely hire a financial advisor, very, very rarely, I’d be able to count on one hand, the number of times we’ve hired an advisor in the nearly 15 years that I’ve worked in, worked in the business. So we skirt is always saying well, we kind of have the luxury, First Financial in different names is a bit older than than than your business. We have the luxury of a big team. And so that that does two things, we would typically hire two, maybe three grad top university grads each year into our Client Services team. Some of them will stay, some of them won’t. But we would hire we tend to hire internally. And so we’re more often hiring in that kind of client service manager type level, into the into our Client Services team. And then we grow them through through the business as we were talking off air about the first financial way meetings that we have about, you know, this is the particular way that we would like to explain certain topics to clients, so that they’re getting this similar kind of message. And so they they growing in their learning in their in their in their understanding, as well as their careers through through First Financial. So most people tend to come in there. And then they progress on to be associate advisors and they’ll do their few years as associate advisors now they’re having to do their professional year studies as well. And then ultimately become an advisor. I’ve actually had and kind of you’re doing this already anyway, it doesn’t doesn’t help. I’ve actually had a lot of success in the last 1218 months or so we’ve hired some really amazing people that have come about just through my LinkedIn network. And so like I started putting content out on LinkedIn to try and attract clients and say that I’m talking about these types of things, and it’s going to attract a certain type of client and eventually they start to reach out. I put out an ad to one of the one of the advisors in my team was going on maternity leave. Her associate advisor had just resigned. And we were looking for a placement that was going to be a bit of a hybrid to be to be advisor to some of the some of stiffs clients when she went on maternity leave, as well as being associated advisor for for some of these other clients. And the guy that joint joined, the joined us had just saw my post on LinkedIn and watched a lot of my staff before. And then it was only because of my post on LinkedIn, with the job add on sake and put in an application. And since then, we’ve had another few other people have joined in different areas. We’ve had a really great new hire and our associate advisor and your business, someone else in the client services team. They’ve just come through that network. But they’ve been seeing the stuff that I’m talking about and the stuff that we’re doing. Again, that’s really interesting. And they they kind of gel with it, and have applied for jobs, and have been absolutely amazing people in the in the team. So it happened that way. We’re finding recruiting through recruiters. There’s not the recruiters fault. But but the the markets really tough out there for client service managers, for us, for associates for advisors. The good ones are being snapped up within a couple of days. It’s so tough at the moment. And salaries are continually going up. Yeah, yeah, it’s a challenge.

Ben Nash
Yeah, it’s an interesting space. And we’ve got a great recruiting partner as well. But like you say the sort of the market is the market is the market. For us, where we’re now in the process of growing our own advisors, it’s just that we have a need. So I think that these advisors that we hire, probably the last advisors that will hire, but it’s like you like you say that the advantage of an established business has been going for a long time that that’s been growing for a long time is that you bring people in and they can develop, you can grow them into that role. And I’m pumped that I think that the you know, the associates that we’ve got now will grow into advisors and pick things up probably more quickly than even someone with 10 or 20 years experience, because they already know our way of doing things and all the different aspects of the of the role. So

James Wrigley
definitely well from Yeah, from our experience, you’ll have you’ll you will have a much better experience with those that are growing within the business. It’s just hard to get there now that the problem that we can come across at some points in time is if we got these clients coming in, and we desperately need another advisor, but the next person that’s kind of you know, on that career trajectory, isn’t, you know, maybe 12 months or so away, particularly professional. Yeah, it makes it really tough. If you’re aligning on promoting within Max, it makes it really tough to feel that cap.

Ben Nash
Yep, yep, you definitely need to make sure that you’ve got plenty rising up to fill things at that at the right time. So yeah, well, what’s the hold the phone on that one? James, I’ll be sure to fill you in when we crack the code. But Mate, I’m keen to you’ve been in your business for some time, like a decade and a half, pretty much not that you weren’t old enough to have been doing anything for that amount of time. But maybe I’m keen to understanding you, you were telling me that your business has gone through a number of evolutions. Clearly, it was a fairly, you know, established business has been around for a long time. The question that I sometimes asked in these conversations is like, how have you built out the service solution? But what I’m keen to hear from your side of things is like what’s changed in that time? What have been the key? Yeah, the key progression of what you’re actually delivering what problems you’re solving and how you’re going about it in the time that you’ve been in your business.

James Wrigley
But I think, I think for the most part, the broader first financial business is still working with the same demographic of clients that we always have. So we have a long history. And then in the part of the business that I that I work in a long history of bank execs retiring lots of money, and super hundreds of 1000s of dollars in bank shares and saying, James, what do I do now? I’m used to collecting my salary, what do I do? How do I? How do I re shuffle things? So we’re still now like, there’s just this. There’s always new 60 year olds or 65 year olds that are faced with those same type of problems. And so sure, the way that we deliver advice is a little bit different now than than what it was but it’s still solving that same type of problem. In addition to that, there’s me and a couple of others that are of a similar age to me, and you’ll see this yourself, you tend to kind of attract clients that look and smell a little bit like what you doing and going through similar kind of things that you do. So I now find myself working with a whole lot of higher income families their late 30s early 40s couple of kids, they’re often at school, they’ve got the house, they’ve settled into it, they’ve got some money in there offset, and they’re saying what’s next, you know, we’ve, we’ve bought the house, kids are settled, we’ve done all those, those things that someone’s told us, we should do all these kind of life events. And it’s how do we make the most of the financial position that we find ourselves in now, so that when we are 60, or 65, or we are 70, we can have that, that that ideal retirement whilst enjoying life. Now, it’s this kind of balance of spending time and money on doing things now versus versus later on. We never used to do much in that space. So, so doing a lot more there now, with mortgages and borrowing money and offset accounts, and you were talking off air, about your employee share scheme, videos and things that you’re running, like a lot of that type of stuff. Whereas 10 years ago, 15 years ago, we did not we did none of it, if you weren’t 60 years old, and knocking on the door of retirement, we can help you go go somewhere else. Whereas now there’s a few that are mid to late 30, something year old, early 40 something year old advisors that are juggling those problems themselves, and they find themselves working with clients that are juggling those same problems, too. Which is exciting. I enjoy. I’d be bored out of my brain defaults, just dealing with 65 year old retirees. I don’t know if it would be born out of my brain if I was just dealing with 40 year olds, but I like having the the mix.

Ben Nash
Yeah, absolutely. I think that it’s for us, we working with a lot of clients in that similar demographic as well. And it’s generally pretty interesting work. And like you say that you really relate to the the issues and challenges that they’re facing. And I think that, well, I think everyone can relate to wanting to save tax and, you know, boost their passive income, that when you’re helping people work through those decisions around schooling and family, and where do they leave and getting that dream home and being mortgage free that it is just a little closer to home? So it sort of helps to relate personal experiences. James what what’s different? Do do you do things differently? Or is it the same approach? I know that you’ve got your the first financial way that you were saying, you know, communicating things in the same ways, but in crew essentially creating a service solution that’s going to be relevant and valuable for people that are at those earliest stages of their life? It was there any significant differences in how you did what you did?

James Wrigley
Yeah, yeah. So. So we were dealing with different things like it used to all be about superannuation and pensions and retirement. And a lot, a lot, a lot of SMSF work, a lot of strategy work around SMSFs. There’s still a lot, still a lot of that. But yeah, there’s there’s a lot more about, about, you know, spending less than what you were talking about before spending less than what you earn and doing something productive with the different it’s not do with the difference. It’s not not huge. But then individual circumstances will will will dictate different things depending on what people are going through and what it is that what they’re trying to achieve. So I had to build out a way of a way of doing that some some tools for interacting with clients to try and make it a little bit more visual, and understand what we’re what we’re doing. And that a lot of we never used to do much of this in years gone by some type of like modeling earlier on in the piece. And then some people will say you crazy. You’ve never did any of that before. But we never did any of that before because we were dealing with people that would come in and say James, I’ve got one and a half million dollars in my Superfund helped me sorted out. Yeah, it was there was no more future planning to be done. It was they were they’ve retired yesterday. Yeah. So So now visit these, these kind of more interactive tools that we’re using with, with clients, which is really just a glorified Excel spreadsheet is for the most part of what we’re what we’re using, but pulling a whole range of inputs to say, Okay, well, if you just keep going along in the direction that you’re going, this is likely where you’re going to end up. But hey, if we change this thing, and we do that thing, and we get a little bit more creative, and with what you’re doing, what what type of difference can we make both now and for you in 1015 20 years time, we had to build out that part of the engagement. And so we spent a fair bit of time on that. And then training internal is this first one agile way meetings that we run monthly to get everyone doing, talking about the same things in the same way. Yeah, we had to, we spend a lot of time working on on that and to different levels of success. Some people are doing it better than others. When you’ve got 16 or 17 advisors in the business. That’s always going to be the case not everyone’s going to be doing the same things at the same time. But at least everyone’s got the tools to To be able to do the work if they, if they choose to be engaging with those types of clients.

Ben Nash
Yeah, I’ve found that for the younger ones in particular that scenario, stuff is is really key and what they want, and it actually blows me away that people still make such big decisions without having that in place, like, people talk about, like, you know, you buying a million dollar property or a $2 million property in they’re doing it from sort of like, Oh, I think that works, or my mortgage broker said that I can this is the payments at this level. And I think that sort of fits that. Just like holy crap, like these decisions are so big, an impact if, like a decade or, you know, a couple of decades, potentially that. Yeah, it’s sort of when you see the power and what people change when they do have that clarity, then. Yeah, I just wonder, like how it’s just seems crazy that people do without it,

James Wrigley
you get lucky, just constantly bring it back to this idea of why you’ll come across people who’ve got the house and bought investment property. Why, like, what is it that you’re trying to achieve by buying this investment property on negative gearing? Okay, well, let me tell you what it actually meant, what negative gearing actually means. And unless you get into growth on the other side, then then you may as well just be donating money to a charity. Yeah, so bringing it back to this y thing, and having these tools to interact with the clients earlier on in the piece is really powerful. And people listening will be saying you mad, we’ve been doing that for years. Yes. We hadn’t been. And now we’re doing

Ben Nash
nice. Yeah, no, it’s definitely the way in the future. But James, I’m keen to shift gears a bit and talk about sort of marketing and business growth that you you’ve been at it for a while, I’m keen to hear like, from your side, what are the channels that have worked for you? And what have been the key drivers of the growth of your, your client group over time?

James Wrigley
Yeah, so so so by and large, most of its referrals from existing clients. So that’s where most of our new client work has come from, historically. A few years back, I started, I had this thought go off in my head that I had a really good year, one year from from a new client point of view, had lots of referrals from a particular accountant, which was fantastic. But I had this kind of thought went off in my head, too. So what if for some reason, Mr. ganda doesn’t like me anymore. He likes the other guy better. And all of a sudden, he starts referring all of this work somewhere else. And so I didn’t want to be reliant on a new client work coming to me from like, one particular source. I wanted clients to come and work with me because they wanted to work with me not because someone told them that they should come and work. And then, you know, seeing all this stuff going to Gary Vee, and he’s, you know, videos and stuff. No, you know what, I’m going to try this. Try this, this social media type of stuff and, and started posting things. And so it’s been going for years now that I’ve been doing it is it’s either with LinkedIn initially, mainly because no friends or family saw my LinkedIn stuff. So I could, you know, I wasn’t likely to go to mom and dad’s place on the weekend. And that’s how I saw you. And like laugh at me. So I always try to avoid that. I’ll try like a, just I did that. Like, you know, written posts on the shorter form videos, the live ones, I know, you do a lot of live ones. And that the live it’s, I found the live video itself on LinkedIn. Like that itself was almost a waste of time. But that using the audio for a podcast, putting the video on YouTube, chopping up a particular segment and making a short like if you’re repurposing that then became worthwhile. I’ve had a I had a meeting with someone last last week that said, I reached out to you because I’d seen your videos on YouTube. Like I got a whole 140 people that subscribe to my YouTube channel. There’s hardly anyone there. But the videos that are there were all all either interviews or longer live streams that are done on LinkedIn and put them there. So so that was worthwhile. And then more like more recently, LinkedIn, been driving a lot of new client work for me. In the most recent fortnight, two to three weeks. It’s it’s been tick tock, which is just completely unbelievable to me. I put up a video a few weeks ago about how do you how do you go from having that the house that you live in with a mortgage to that upgrader house and you want to keep the first one how should you go about doing that with your mortgage and your offset accounts and those kinds of things and that that video blew up. I went from about 120 followers on my Tik Tok account. I think I’m about seven and a half 1000 Now in the last three or four weeks, and the number of new clients that a number of people that have been booking in phone calls to have with me to ask some questions, and some of them are progressing to, to advice is just unbelievable. I can’t even comprehend. It’s huge.

Ben Nash
Yeah, that’s amazing. And so because you’ve only been at it for how long? The Tick tock,

James Wrigley
I did the TIC tock accounts in some point last year, but I wasn’t really using it. I just joined tic tock because I saw this thing. And I put a few couple of videos and I get 100 views or something that just didn’t go anyway. But I had, I had one video that I think it’s up to something like 70,000 views by now. And that kick started a whole lot of people connecting with me. And then you get a lot of people asking questions. And Tik Tok has this amazing feature where you can reply to the question with a video. So someone will ask some question and I just point the camera at my face and spend 30 seconds to a minute and a half responding to their question. And that then drives more questions. And so now I’m finding that I’m probably doing like, I might do one original video a day and maybe three or four responses to questions each day, and I’ve been doing that for the last three or four weeks. And, yeah, we’re getting lots and lots and lots of people inquiring, like booking out, reaching out directly from Tik Tok to booking meetings. Our new client is sorry, our Contact Us web form that we have on our website is just like we’ve had four times as many people go through there than what we what we normally would at some. That’s amazing. Well,

Ben Nash
that’s great. And what when you when you started going heavier into the steam, how did you go about sort of planning out what you’re going to cover and what you’re talking about is considered strategy or

James Wrigley
not considered at all. But you get but mine I’m just found in the last few weeks mine has gotten to a point where people are asking certain questions like, well, if this person’s asking that question, there’s probably someone else out there that’s that wants to know the same answer. So some of them will just respond back to like answering the question. I did literally did one this morning walking from my house to the gym down the road at 630. This morning, answering someone’s question and I think that’s got like 1500 views on it already in today. It started out with I was I was recording some more videos for LinkedIn, I was just set up here at the desk where I am and I had the camera set up and I was going to do some more more videos. I thought you know what I’ve got I’ve had these ideas. I’ve just recorded something I’m going to spin the camera around to make it vertical. And I’ll just record the same thing but just a bit more concise to post on Tik Tok. And I did that I had three videos that I put almost word for word, the same thing some were landscape, I put on LinkedIn, some I made it vertical and put it on Tik Tok. And, and one of them happened to get some traction, and it’s built up the following from there. So as far as it goes, my pages tiny, but it’s more than our financial planning business can cope with?

Ben Nash
That’s great. And you wouldn’t think like I’ve you know, I’m not really a tick tock. Although I see that the the massive popularity of that sort of platform, but I wouldn’t have thought and you and I have had a bit of a look around and like to you know, look at an article and see the fin talkers and people that look at stuff. And a lot of them are talking about some you know, how to make quick money in a short amount of time, or how to be incredibly frugal. And I think that one of them I think is a bit of bullshit. The second one is probably has some merit, but is, you know, not sort of its typical client subset that you would consider engaging a professional financial planner. So what sort of Pete what sort of people are you talking to? Is it right? Yeah,

James Wrigley
so it, it, it’s that. So I’m putting out stuff that I’m talking about with my clients. And so it’s that demographic that that’s coming back, so like high income families, you know, $400,000 plus income families, they’ve got a two and a half million dollar house 800 grand in their offset account. They got their employee share scheme, these kind of things. So like a few of them have. For all of the clients that I do advice for it, I do a strategy diagram that starts with me, like literally with a pencil drawing on a page and circles and lines and stuff going over the all over the place. Yeah, I’ll then just turn the camera around and say hey, I’m working on Some advice for this client, they look like ABC and D. Let me show you what we’re doing. And I just spin the camera around and show the page to say you are going here to there. And there’s lines and stuff. I’ve had to be careful to not put like the names of supervision that might be using and take that product stuff off, because early on had a few calls going on which What do you mean net wealth? Which net wealth? Is it this net wealth or that net wealth? No, we need to be careful there. And so then then that’s then attracting a person that looks like that, like I would have had a dozen phone calls with people, a lot of them from New South Wales. 300 $400,000 Plus incomes. And then and then there’s a whole other older age bracket that are late, mid to late 50s. And I think that’s more just timing more than anything. They’ve all got every phone call I have with them today. Our kids are 21 or 22. I reckon what they’ve done is they’ve spent time with their kids over Christmas, that yeah, 21 year old daughter doing these videos and they know what the hell’s this? Yeah, joining tick tock mum and dad a mid to late 50s. And and now saying, oh, you know, we’re looking at retiring in the next five to 10 years and up comes James talking about superannuation and pensions and investing for retirement. And then they’ve booked in some, some phone calls. So I was amazed as any, to their the people that are on there. But it’s working for the moment, it might stop tomorrow morning. We could all stop tomorrow. But

Ben Nash
know that at that algorithm? It could it could get you but I don’t know. I? It sounds like it’s delivering some great results. And it’s interesting to hear, especially with the older demographic, I wouldn’t have picked those you would think people in their 50s and 60s cruising tic tock looking for out or for direct

James Wrigley
questions about when can I access my super and the age pension? And what if I take out all my money from Super to buy a house? Can I then claim the age pension after like all of the like lots of these types of questions popping up all the time? From 60 year olds? It’s, it’s amazing.

Ben Nash
Yeah, interesting. And look, I think that, you know, it’s one of the things that I struggle with a bit is, and we do a lot of content marketing, but it’s hard to be present everywhere all the time. And I love a good process. So I try to put a process around our marketing, but you know, how have you tackled over the last little bit you said, you’ve gone through a bit of a progression between different platforms and channels, like how do you actually tackle it so that you’re you’re doing the you know, the things that are delivering results, but without trying to be everywhere all at once and ending up being nowhere at any time.

James Wrigley
So the the repurposing of content is, is really important. So putting this putting, like, I’ll do a video and put it on LinkedIn, and then I’ll put it on my Instagram page. And some of the longer stuff, it might have been a live stream that’ll sit on my LinkedIn profile, and anyone can go back and view the live stream, but then using that audio on a podcast, so just just trying to put this content in, in the places where people might want to consume it, and everyone’s going to be different for that. So just trying to put it in in these different places. But then if I’m if I’m putting the same thing in different places, then I’m not having to reinvent the wheel each time I’m not having to come up with a new idea to talk about in half a dozen different places. And then it’s just time so I do it all myself like we have like First Financial has a has a marketing group, I guess that that we work with that help. And I write articles for our newsletter and keep our website up to date and coordinate all of all of that type of stuff. But but the James Wrigley social media things that’s all me and it used to be when I was commuting backwards and forwards from from the city on the train. I used to spend my time on the train doing it so I’d record a couple of videos on the weekend and then I’d sit on the train and I just edit them I did everything on my phone I did it on my phone and put captions and stuff on do it on my phone so I was using that time backwards and forwards for it now that I’m not going into the city quite so often at the moment.

Ben Nash
It’s a bit tougherall happening on that walk to the gym

James Wrigley
A two year the walk to the gym and and I guess that’s where tick tock makes life a little bit easier. It’s nowhere near as polished and no one’s expecting it to be anywhere near as polished. Yeah, I can. I kind of just rolled out of bed and my voice is croaky you walk into the gym and and that’s perfectly fine. No one cares. I’m sure no one would care on LinkedIn either. But I don’t know. I just have a perception that people

Ben Nash
would. Well that’s the thing and I think that we think content marketing and I see the stuff that we do. It’s just that constant virtual tap on the shoulder and you know, maybe people pay attention maybe they don’t but you just just They’re and it’s sometimes it’s just they might not even listen to a video but they they’ll see the headline or they see the grab or the hashtag or something like that. But sometimes it’s just, that’s enough. And yeah, I think it’s easy to I know that when I first started doing content, I was trying to script videos and like, nail them out and shopping together sentence after sentence in green screens and all this stuff and really like you just go, Okay, well, there’s a phone or there’s a webcam like fire that bad boy up and off you go. And you know, it’s gonna connect with people, if you get hit the right person at the right time with the right message, and probably doesn’t matter too much what’s happening behind you, or whether there’s some guy drilling in the roof above you or? Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s sometimes like I say that that’s enough.

James Wrigley
It is. Yeah, it is. It’s just the I’ve had a few conversations with people that have reached out from LinkedIn that said, said, You know, I’ve seen your stuff for like four years, or, you know, we connected so long ago and no interaction with them whatsoever. But it’s like, if, if James’s face keeps popping up, he must be doing something more, right? Otherwise, he would have gone out of business. And if he keeps showing up, well, then that’s this whole kind of know, like, and trust thing, if it keeps showing up, you just subconsciously they build a level of trust. And eventually, when the time’s right will reach out?

Ben Nash
That’s right. Yeah. I think that that when it comes to content marketing, in particular, there’s so many fly by nighters that people come and they’re talking talk a big game, and they say, spouting off this stuff, but then, you know, they go away, or things change, and they just don’t focus on it. Whereas when you just consistent and near that people see it and go, Oh, that person they don’t they don’t look crazy, or they don’t look too crazy. And then it’s just like six months later, or a year later, two years later, three years later, four years later, like it’s still there, and they’re going okay, what non throwing stuff at this person, like you say they haven’t gone out of business, so they must be doing something, okay, maybe it’s worth worth the conversation. But may, I very much look forward to our next conversation where you can tell me about the Tick Tock domination, and how that’s progressed. But really appreciate you sharing your your insights, it’s great to see it coming together. My last question for you is that if you could go back to, to your you know, little James, the advisor first starting off fresh faced in what you were doing, what would be your one piece of advice that that you would give yourself

James Wrigley
I’d say just Just take your time, like it just, it will happen. And you’ll eventually get there and feel like it’s only just the beginning. Like I’ve been doing this for a while now. And and the things that are things that are happening this year versus last year versus the year before, every year kind of just feels like the beginning things that just keep getting better. So just take your time, there’s plenty of time ahead of you. It doesn’t have to happen tomorrow. And yet, you’ll you’ll get there and you’ll go past where you thought you might have gotten been able to get to.

Ben Nash
I love that just like our clients that I think that it’s common that we have this constant frustration that you’re especially as someone that you sort of bit master of your own destiny, that you’re always looking at the next thing and the next thing and sometimes you can get frustrated with things not coming together the way that you want. But often when you look back at what’s happened, then you see that all the progress that has been made and give you the motivation to keep on that path. So made very, very wise words, James. Well, thank you, sir. Really appreciate you sharing your insights. And like I say look forward to that takes up domination in the next one, bud.

James Wrigley
Thanks, Ben. Thanks for having me on.