#297 Matt Bazzica – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey guys, Ben Nash from XY visor here. And today I’m pumped to be here with Matty Bazzica. Matty is superstar advisor recently relocated from rattle aid up to the Sunshine Coast. His business future best future best sorry. He’s the founder, Senior Advisor there. He’s been running his own business for about six years team of Ford. Matt, thanks for joining us, buddy.

Matt Bazzica
And I’ve always been thanks for having us.

Ben Nash
mate. Look, there’s some there’s a bunch of stuff that I’m keen to pick your brain on. But I thought a good place to start was just to talk about your business story and sort of the evolution how it came about? And what’s happened over the last six and a bit years.

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, no worries. So um, yeah, the last six to eight years is just the business name itself. But I’ve started in the industry in about two, I think it’s 2001, when there’s about 21. So very green and a young buck just worked with some of them at about 30 years experience in the industry was more of a life view as they refer to back then. So I started in in the admin role and learn the ranks of all that and how the insurance policies work and so forth, along with superannuation, then then move into a power planning role within within the business while I was studying, I guess, the financial planning degree. Correspondingly, while I was working in that firm, so I worked there for about three or four years until they retire, and then decided to go out on my own in that regard, and worked with another gentleman in his business side who had about 30 years experience. So I was very fortunate enough that learning from two guys over about six years, with that kind of knowledge and experience in the industry was second to none, because you don’t get that out of a textbook. So I was very fortunate that for someone who’s got a baby face, and looked very young, I was quite privy to, I guess, getting the knowledge from some guys that have been there and done. And also, you know, I did get a small slice of the old customer advice, record days and through to the FSR into where we are here. So I’ve seen some really big changes in the industry. And look, a lot of it obviously was warranted, especially when you look at some of those old customer advice, record documents that were provided back in the day, so. So technically been self employed for a while, was aligned with a mortgage broking firm for quite some time. And we use sort of piggyback their name from a wealth, financial planning business name. And then over time, you know, things changed. And then we’re just on it solely on our own change the business name more targeting, I guess, you could say, pre retirees. But then it’s probably over the last few years was sort of realized that, you know, being 40 to myself was really more giving advice to people probably, you know, 10 years, either side of our agent and more than that accumulation phase. So, so we did our event change a business name to future list, and more targeting, I guess, people that are still accumulating wealth. So really more trying to help people, you know, build their wealth, obviously protect their assets along the way and get them in the right place for retirement in that respect. So, so it’s it’s been a fun journey. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the industry. Obviously, some, you know, people can question at times whether they’ve been right, but at the end of the day, I think, you know, the industry is moving in the right direction to where it needs to go. Just needs a bit more fine tuning in some certain areas. So yeah, so yeah, so yeah, it’s probably a more 1415 years of self employed now. And yeah, got a team of four with us. So we’re still, you know, small business in that regard. But but always looking to grow as well.

Ben Nash
I was gonna say talking to baby faces, you still look like you’re 21. So something you must be doing something?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, it’s just in the Jains mode. I’ll take that live, folks. I think, you know, initially, though it does, it doesn’t hurt to have a few gray hairs, because it actually shows, you know, you’ve been around and you got a bit of experience as well. So, but they’re slowly coming with four kids, so don’t worry.

Ben Nash
All right, you got your hands full on all fronts there. But I’m keen to hear like you a long time in, like master of your own destiny in terms of your service solution and what you’re doing. You mentioned that the sort of the target demographic for your business has changed a bit over the last few years in particular, but what’s changed in terms of what you deliver for clients, like what did you use to deliver and what are you doing now? What’s and what’s driven that change?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, no, good question. So, look, it’s probably fair to say, you know, back in the early days, we were really just winging it. You know, there was no real set structure or process involved. Obviously, isn’t

Ben Nash
that all yours? But what you’re supposed to do when you first start you’re supposed to Well,

Matt Bazzica
yeah, exactly right. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. You’re winging it in that regard. Look, I suppose to the conversation You know, we try to peel back the onion a lot more now as well, with clients to really get nitty gritty, and you find a lot of the times, sometimes, you know, if it’s a husband and wife that they haven’t had these kinds of conversations before. And you know, you, you can open Pandora’s box a little bit with it as well, because it might be that the wife’s mentioned something that she’s never mentioned to her husband before, but it’s good to get, you know, all the all the cards out of the deck, so to speak, and then work out what is it that the clients ideally trying to achieve? Were probably in the early days, we didn’t focus too much on the retirement planning, it was more around, I guess, the specific needs of the clients obviously, you know, get try to get an understanding of what they wanted in retirement. But I suppose as time has gone by, we’ve learned more and more of, you know, I guess more of a holistic advice and going through all the different areas that are relevant to a financial plan for a client.

Ben Nash
Yeah, I think it seems a bit like a bit of a natural progression, especially in that accumulation space. And I know for me, when I first started giving advice was the real basics, I was absolutely winging it. But the basic sort of fundamentals, you know, your super uninsurance advice, and then investments and then building from there, but I think, as people are sort of looking for more, and then there’s more things that you can do. And then when you learn more, as well, that there are a lot of a lot of ways that you can add value around those more traditional, I suppose basics there. I’m one of the thing that I think that you do quite well, and probably better than a lot of people is, is around your referrals and their centers of influence and driving referrals into your business. How has that all come about? And what sort of growth strategies have you used to, I suppose, get to where you are today when it comes to that?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, good question. So, look, I find in the industry a lot, you know, you don’t really generally get a walk in off the street to come in to talk financial planning, a lot of it comes from a referral point of view. And I find that that’s generally sort of how it’s been the whole time I’ve been in the industry for over the last 20 years. So I look at it though, when we’re when we’re looking at holistic advice for a client and you’re looking at the whole bigger picture. You know, we talk to clients about having that 18 Having the right professional in all the different areas. So for example, you know, most people don’t have a will, generally seems to be the case. So you know, you need to address your estate planning. And when you discuss people’s lending, you know, we don’t give lending advice, but it’s pretty quick, that you can pick up to see whether there’s a need that can benefit the client, to structure that in a more appropriate way. You know, even more layoffs, in the questions around people with their accountants, and I find a lot of the times people aren’t actually interviewing their account to actually ask what they want. So we talked about having that 18 And having the right professionals in all the different areas that we don’t give advice. So that way that things can get implemented, and they get the right advice upfront. So they’re structuring things properly from day dark, where we’ve had times where you meet a client, and they’ve just been given the wrong advice, and you’ve got to unwind things. And sometimes it can be a costly exercise for clients once you’ve made them aware. So we do bang on a lot about having that a team and having the right professionals in the right area. So we found that our business has really grown more from a referral point of view. So what we’ve tried to do now is have those meaningful meetings and conversations with, you know, if it’s a mortgage broker or a lawyer, get more so getting an understanding of their business, what’s their business involve? Where’s gaps in their business? How can we actually offer value to their clients, because I think too many times in our industry, we go in trying to get the referral. And just expect them to send referrals, too. But you know, you need to build that rapport and relationship and be trusted. Because at the end of the day, if you’re going to refer someone to someone, you need to have trust that that person is going to take care of your client and look after him. And I feel too many times in our industry, we, we just want to get that referral relationship and just one want to get leads from someone and but we forget that it’s got to be a two way street. Right? So when we go and have conversations with referral partners now, we speak very minimal about our business, we explain what we do and how we do it. But the the main focus on that conversation is really, you know, where’s your business? Where do you see that you’re taking it into the future? You know, what gaps you finding in your business and then trying to find ways and where what can we do that can help add value to the referral partner. And I find by doing that, it’s just a natural transition that you will then get leads back because if you’re actually helping their clients in terms of more business being done for them, but obviously adding more value to their clients, it then is a transition where then you know, they start sending referrals your way and then what I find over time is you start working together more in terms of some people might be in a position they’ve got equity, what do you do with that equity to build additional wealth, you need to go back to your broker, ESRI, it gives them additional business on their books. But at the end of the day, we’re all working toward a common goal to get to that end criteria that our clients trying to achieve. So it’s all those little steps along the way to help clients get to that end goal, as well as you know, maintaining your lifestyle and living for today, because I think COVID If anything is taught us all that, you know, we don’t want to be stuck driving in a car for two or three hours a day going to work, like Life’s too short and more important. So I think the biggest key that we’ve had with referrals, and we’ve got some really good referral partners, now we’re all on the same page. And it’s the same common goal is how to actually improve our clients position. But the best best tactic we’ve found is actually going in and talking more about their business and not so much else.

Ben Nash
And practically, though, what do you do? Like it’s well, and good to go? Yes, I want to add value to your business. But what does that actually look like?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, good question. You know, and different businesses will have different requirements when we’re dealing with a mortgage broking business, as we speak, where they just want their clients to be educated more about how to actually structure their money and understand their cash flow better, because I find that’s a big area where a lot of people just don’t even know what their fixed costs are to live and just spendthrift Lee and don’t actually have a set plan in place. So we’ve been doing some workshops and some webinars just on that alone around, you know, how to people actually manage their money better to get them in a better position to look more attractive to the bang. So that way they can, you know, then do other financings for them. We’ve got another broker we’re working with at the moment, which is, I guess, clients are at that next step to generating more wealth, and they’ve identified clients that have got equity in their home. So we’re doing some workshops around, you know, what do you do with equity? How do you leverage off that, to build more wealth? You know, what tax deductions could potentially be involved? You know, do you have additional income streams to come in other than your super when you retire? So it’s more around actually educating their clients on different things. But we’re segmenting it for specific clients. Because you can have a conversation around something that’s too generic for everyone, and it’s only working towards a specific target. So we’re more being named towards who those conversations and workshops are for just to help educate people to then go, actually, yeah, we need to actually get more understanding and advice around and what’s the next step, because too many times you find people that might have some equity buying investment property, and will not necessarily be the right investment property for what they’re actually working towards, for their own goals. So we just find, if we can help educate people in their business more around specific criterias, that then is going to help add value to their clients, and then potentially, that’s going to help give them more loans to write because they may want an investment property or, you know, we might do a debt reduction strategy or something along those lines. So it’s really more I guess, identifying what their clientele is where value can be added and then what can be done to help add value to those clients?

Ben Nash
And how do you go about finding the right people though, because I think in I’ve been fortunate to have a few really good referral partners at the moment that we know do great work and that they, they introduce people to us when they you know, when they come across someone that needs that help. But I we haven’t really done it extremely consistently or, you know, in a really structured way and the people like the referral partners that we build I built them from finding people that I know will do good work finding people ideally that don’t have existing referral relationships with the same professionals to improve our chances of actually getting referrals back. But other than that, just sending them there and I I was having conversation with our roof these these referral partners recently in saying like, I know that I can help you do more business like I know that if I was to sit down with your clients like I could help them understand stuff that’s going to make them as you say, like with the brokers do more loans for accountants, obviously there’s a lot of people that need their tax work done, etc, etc. But find the people in my experience people are busy business owners, you know, they got their own businesses that they’re focused on and of course, they’re focused on their clients as they should be. But yeah, I don’t know that it ends up up the priorities list as much as I would like it to to go well, how do we actually who do we set noon and how and when and you know, what are we doing there? So it sounds like with your approach, especially if you leading with all the help sounds great, but do you find that like, one it’s hard to find people that receptive Okay, or what’s like your strike rate? Or there’s a there’s a, you know, does it fall down in some cases, and you just move on to the next one?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, it’s it’s a good point. You know, what you’re mentioning, you know, that probably used to happen a lot in the early days where we generally got referral partners, just through connections of people we knew and, and sort of just having a conversation and then start referring and, you know, hopefully it all works out. And you know, some of those are still referral partners. I’ve still got mutual clients, and we still do stuff together. I found over time that these questions are the answers. So we actually need to ask more questions to the referral partner, or potential referral partner to actually find out what where are they at with their business? And what are they looking towards with their business moving forward? Because you’re right, you if it’s not overly a priority, for potential referral partner, because they’re too busy with their own business, you need to sort of have that further conversation to go, Well, if you’re going to grow, what’s it going to look like? And ask more questions around going? Well, if you were to get another five or 10 mortgage broking clients, I’ll just stick on the mortgage broking side of it. You know, what, what needs to be done in your business? So I think it’s uncovering what potential growth, I guess issue someone might have in their business and how that’s going to look and getting an understanding of what direction they’re trying to move forward. Because if you’re someone that’s sort of just happy to just maintain what they’ve got, well, it’s, it’s not really going to be a viable relationship, because they’re not hungry to try and add more value to their clients. By doing they’re just concentrating on their business. So you will find that’ll happen, I just think you need to just ask more questions about them and their business, to get a better understanding whether this conversation needs to stop and move on, or whether there’s further conversations to have, and it can be similar to having that conversation with the client, you know, to then work out well, are we wasting our time continuing having this meeting? Or does the meeting continue to go through and, you know, so many times, we almost know, within, you know, 2030 minutes of a meeting, that this isn’t gonna go anywhere, but we continue to finish the meeting, where, however, you just approach the question upfront and, and ask them, you know, is this something that really needs to be done now, or, or later in the future, just just to get an understanding of, like, serious or not. So I think it’s very replicated towards these business owners is where you, where you wanting to take your business where you wanting to go. And that’s what I’ve found, over the last probably five or six years, we’ve found some really good referral partners, because we’ve got an understanding of what their businesses and where they’re trying to go. And then we’ve sort of explained to them sort of, this is what we’re trying to do with our business. And this is how we can help your clients and move them through those stages of life from accumulating wealth and in doing what needs to be done to, you know, to meet the, I guess, the retirement goals, but the goals along the journey as well. So I just find your questions or the answers by asking more questions you get, you get a good feel. I think you got intuitions pretty good as well. Because you know, sometimes you meet these people, you don’t have a buyer, so they don’t know you. I think you got tells you a good instinct, whether this is someone who you can work with, and that’s going to look after your business. And I don’t think it happens too often where you go, No, I’m gonna work with this person. But I think intuition has a big, big planet as well. Thanks. So

Ben Nash
I and what do you do? Like once you’ve kicked off a relationship, and you see that there’s a sort of broad philosophical alignment and you know, clients are aligned you both wanting to grow like it makes sense to keep keep talking, as you said, Do you with your and you’ve got a number of different referral partners? Do you have a structured approach as to how you, obviously you’re working back and forth with clients, but sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in that like, if your your aim is more just like looking at how you can be helping them and adding more value on an ongoing basis? Like, is it an ongoing basis type thing? Or? And how do you how do you actually practically do that?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, it’s a good point. Because at the end of the day, you need to instill your business as as front of mind into their business. So from our point of view, when we’re dealing with a client or someone we can go, right, there’s an estate planning need there, there’s a mortgage broking need is a genuine insurance need to be addressed. And all of a sudden, we’re just looking for other areas that clients haven’t quite, I guess, reviewed an address that so it’s like, Well, speak, speak to a professional and then you can sort of look at, I guess, the overall umbrella to go well, these are all the different areas that need to be addressed. So what we find is we supply the templated documentation to them, so they don’t have to, I guess, spend that time to create that information. So when they send a joint email, introduction, it’s just templated in that respect, so we try to, I guess, reduce as much work on their end to give us that referral. So that way, it’s a much easier process because if you make a chunky you It’s almost gets to the stage where they’re not, it’s too hard for them, you want to make it easy. But you want to get to the stage that you install yourself in their business through their process. So yes, we’re offering value to their clients and how we can help them. But you’ll generally find it’s a natural progression, that there’s going to be financial planning, discussions needed, because if they’ve got equity, and there might be a debt reduction strategy that might be of value, they need to speak to a financial advisor. And that’s when they go, we, we deal with that firm, and they have that discussion, to then introduce that introduction. So the biggest thing is to get yourself installed in their business, and make it part of their process, not just willy nilly make it part of their process for each client. And I just found that that seems to work quite well. You know, even if it’s just a conversation that, you know, it might be something to do later on in the track, at least you’ve been brought to attention to them from a financial planning point of view.

Ben Nash
And what about on the actual though, the side of how you’re helping the IRS, the other referring party’s business? So like, he talked about some of the things that you’re doing around, you know, doing some workshops for broker or some, some work with clients around restructuring cash flow, do you? Do you just do that on an ad hoc basis when things come up? Or are you regularly? Like, do you make a sort of specific time to talk to these people about, you know, revisiting what they’re thinking? And as that as their business evolves and grows?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, yeah. So we were we touch base quite regularly, with our referral partners in that respect, it’s not just see how it goes, and then come back later and go, Oh, what about an opportunity. So we’ll do a bit of planning with that. So with with one of the brokers that we’re dealing with, at the moment, with the cash flow side of it, we’ve actually put in some set dates and some structure to when we’re going to do these programs and implement it. I feel if it’s in the diary, it gets done. If it’s not, it just gets to the wayside, because we just get too caught up in in life and in business in general. So you do need to set some perimeters around timeframes of catching up. Because if you just see a referral partner, and then you just do your thing, and you don’t hear from him from six months, well, it’s not really a great relationship in our eyes. So you need to be fun and center with them and set time aside to have catch ups, you know, how things go, is there any way we can all improve in any URL? You know, is there a designated sort of bunch of clients that we could, that you could target in your business, that we could do something specific for them. So we’ve always got probably three different workshops sort of planned out in advance. So that way, there’s a structure, you need some structure in place, when you’re doing it, it can’t just be a conversation, and then just start referring to each other, you want to have some things in place that, that you’re always constantly, I guess, you know, working with them, so that you become more installed into their business.

Ben Nash
I love that. And as you’re talking, I’m just thinking that you could almost make that like, almost like a condition of you having them as a partner. And, and, you know, making that commitment upfront to go well, actually, with our partners. This is how we work that we do this periodically. And we want to have a you know, yes, we want to be talking to clients, and we will but we want to talk big picture about our relationship or planning for the next how we’re going to collaborate moving forward. Yeah, I like that. I think I’ll try that on with our guys. And I think at

Matt Bazzica
the same time, you know, unfortunately, we’ve got a business as a whole heap of different referral partners. And, you know, there are a few different mortgage brokers. So how do you referral three mortgage brokers, it makes it hard. So that’s why we sort of take more of the approach of, you know, how can we add more value to you guys, into your clients, because obviously, as home loans are dropping, reducing, I guess, you know, they’re their trials reducing from that point of view. So if there’s an opportunity to, you know, use some equity or whatever it might be, to look at, you know, producing other growth assets to build their wealth, well, that, that allows them to try and keep a client long term as well. But at the same time, you’re working as a team collaboratively to get that client to that end goal. So I think it’s important that from where we’re we see is, you know, we want to be in contact in connection with our referral partners. And I don’t think it actually hurts to sort of say, Look, we, you know, our business is built more around that. So we say, you know, our expertise is more how can we help you generate more business that that builds your business, not so much getting referrals back the other way? Because sometimes if like I said, you know, we’ve got three different mortgage broking referrals. You can’t just send them all one, not the other. So it’s more about how can we help them to build their business and in turn, I guess there’s financial planning discussions that are needed for their clients, which then obviously come to us in that respect.

Ben Nash
And I think we’re in a fortunate position as our then obviously the any potential partner doesn’t need to, you know, want to work with us or choose to work with us ultimately, but there’s enough people out there that you should be able to find someone that aligns from a philosophical perspective that is, you know, a line from a how you want to actually work together perspective as well. So, yeah, it came to change gears a little bit. What are you? What are you focused on moving forward? And I know that you just sort of made some pretty significant changes in your business license, partly relocation, relocation for yourself are not so recent. But what are you focused on moving forward from here from a business perspective?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, good question. I know, there was something posted not long ago about, you know, being a one man band being in the middle and sort of, you know, be excessively big, I don’t want to get to the stage where we’re really big, to the extent that we haven’t already become a corporate, but we lose that sort of self touch within within the organization, like, you know, having the right team and making it fun for everyone within the organization is important. So we still want to get to that stage that, you know, we’re a decent size, but we don’t want to get too big, then all of a sudden, you know, I’ve got 40 people that I need to manage, because I think that’d be a headache in its own right. And I don’t want to have my role specifically, just doing that. You know, I love meeting with clients. And I’m sure a lot of advisors where you meet people, you find out their situation, and then obviously, we can then add value to help put them in a better position. Our main goal is if, you know, if we can help clients to meet their short medium term goals, but also get to their retirement goals, then, you know, that that’s a tick in the box every day of the week, for us, so it’s more about how do we make sure that we one bring on the right clients moving forward. So I know, we learned this early in the piece, but it’s, we actually put it back on the client that we’re actually interviewing them and all about it to say that we don’t take on everyone, and we actually need to see if you’re the right fit for us. And, you know, and in allowing the clients to understand that, you know, it’s, we dictate how things are done, not not the client, which you know, potentially was, that’s how it was done back in the day. So we’re really specific on who we want to take on, we want to take on the right clients. So that way, you know, we’re building a really good, good team, but a good clientele that we can work with, as well. So so we’re in that growth phase now. And you know, it, there’s always a balancing act, we set things as you go in that respect, but we want to get to the stage that, you know, there’s other advisors to meet because ideally, the more people we can meet, the more people’s lives we can improve. So that’s the endgame for us.

Ben Nash
Nicely, I think it’s, it’s, we sometimes lose sight of, we’re so busy in our financial planner Lambo, you know, people come to us, especially these days, I think, where advice is more, maybe more transparent in terms of what people can expect. And when they’re actually shopping around for providers, you know, what they deliver. But I think that it’s something that I talked to our team about that it’s like, people come to us, because we’re the experts. And they’ve come to us, because we we’ve clearly articulated what our philosophies are, and they’re bought in with that. It’s like, you don’t go to a doctor’s, like a specialist doctor and tell us, you know, dictate when you’re going to meet them on how you’re going to meet them, and what the what the course of proceedings is, but we, we sometimes lose sight of that when it comes to the planning. So I think you’re the need to lead the clients and they need to follow as well, because you’re guiding them. And as much as I’m all about, you know, empowering the clients, and I’m not telling them what to do. I’m not telling them what to do when it comes to their money. But I am telling them what to do and to how to make their money decisions. Like they have to follow the the our approach because they come to us otherwise, we’re just trying to follow their approach. And it’s like, well, why are we having this conversation?

Matt Bazzica
I shouldn’t be there then should they say, exactly. Now you got to lead them down the path and you’ve got to teach them what to one in that respect, but at the same time, you know, we are the expert in this area. So it’s, you know, I just find the best approach is making clients aware and giving them as much information as possible. Here’s the different options available and how you can proceed moving forward to put you in a position to reach your goals. It allows him to make better informed decisions on what’s going to best suit them. So I just find by helping educate them, and giving him that knowledge, it gives them more peace of mind to then work out what’s the direction that they need to go and, you know, we use a bit of a process of here’s all the different things that need to be looked at. Do you want to do this? Or do you want us to do this? And generally you’ll find that there might be a few things that they want to do and then you know one other partner look at the other one go, you know, we don’t even know I have any time to do any of this, how are we going to find time to do that? And it’s just having that conversation and helping, I guess, guide the client to where they want to be. But also understanding that, you know, we’ve done this for a long time where the expert in this is sort of the guidance on how it’s going to be done. You know, one thing that we both learned, we need a course quite some time ago, Ben was, you know, getting clients to actually understand that, you know, this is how it’s going to be done and the way it needs to go. So it’s total instead of instead of them dictating it the other way around.

Ben Nash
I was gonna say when you’re outlining that, that it sounds like Steve salvias magic wand lists, where it’s like, here’s all the things it’s like, do you want to do this? Or did you want to pay someone else to do it? Oh, yeah, of course, you don’t want to do it, like most people don’t know. It’s like you outsource we do it faster, easier. And with less stress and let no time have their input. Like it makes sense. But people don’t always know while there is that transparency, I think is increasing. People don’t know what’s possible. on that. You mentioned, were just chatting a bit offline. And you talked about, you had changed your sort of let go of a number of clients in your license transition. And you said that you’re sort of retargeting at the front end of this conversation, like the ideal clients that are consistent with what you want to be doing? What have been some of the learnings from what you’ve done in that space?

Matt Bazzica
Yeah, no, it’s good point. So I guess what we really it was went back to the drawing board, and just basically went right, what are we delivering for our clients? What are we actually doing for them? And we sort of segmented sort of, I guess, the different packages that we offer from a servicing point of view, and sort of demographically, put them in those different packages from you know, someone that’s in their 20s to 30s to 40s, and then towards retirement. And then from there sort of worked out well are, what is it? What is our main target, and we sort of found, you know, it was sort of a 30 to sort of 55 year olds, we still didn’t get the older client here and there as well. But we sort of went well, this is really the nature of the advice that we’re offering. This is really where we should be focusing. So what we did was in Go, right, these are the ideal clients, we want to focus this is generally the advice that comes with those type of demographic. And he was he was the different things of services that we’re gonna offer them. So we sort of decided to, I guess, make things more niche in terms of what we’re doing. Because it’s very easy just to get any new client that you that comes along. In that regard, as we used to do that. Now it’s more targeted to then go right, this is sort of the target market we’re looking for. And here’s all the different things that were going to offer these clients throughout the process and throughout the year of servicing these clients.

Ben Nash
And what’s been the impact

Matt Bazzica
of my It’s been phenomenal, like we dropped off a fair few clients that probably were just not quite the right ideal fit, or just, I guess, in terms of the work that needs to be done couldn’t justify, I guess the fees in terms of the value that was going to be given to them. So we had an open honest conversation with them. And some of them still sit on the books and that we’re just not physically servicing them. Because it wasn’t, we didn’t see that there was going to be valley to them. And you don’t want to come 12 months time and have that review. And then you’re going to get shown up pretty quick, if you haven’t done a lot for a client, because there was just generally not much to do for these people. So by skimming off that bottom end, if anything, it’s been better because we’ve actually been able to charge the right fees for the clients that we’re dealing with for the work that’s being done. So I guess you could say we’ve reduced reduced the number of clients we service but I guess overall, the the increase in ongoing phases is outweighed that loss as well. So it’s been really productive mode for us to do that change in the business.

Ben Nash
I love it. Our business coach says that if you put your prices up, I forget the actual numbers. But it was something like you put your prices up by 10% or 20% or something, you lose 30% of your clients, but you increase your profitability by you know, 50% I’m just making these numbers up at this point where it’s like you lose a big chunk of clients, but your profitability goes up because the numbers go down and then you’ve got better margins with the clients that you’re working with. And a lot of the ones that will tend to drop off or opt out that they’re they’re the ones where there’s no margin or potentially not even getting paid what you need to with them. So I made a love Yeah, it’s so good.

Matt Bazzica
I think it’s important to go through a whole client database and work out you know, what are you actually receiving from each client? What service are you actually giving him and you’re right you identify ones where really you’re probably breaking even or even on him and he I guess you get to make that business decision to go you know, there’s no value in keeping these clients on side. You know, we did that process probably six months ago and you know, we did calibrate which You know, you do take a little bit of a hit, I guess, in your ongoing in that regard. But it allows you to be more tailored and concentrated towards the ideal clients that you want for your business. And if anything, it’s pretty one of the best decisions we’ve made in the business.

Ben Nash
Awesome. And yeah, I think that it’s not about like, sometimes as businesses evolve, and your services evolve, like the the clients are just better served by using a different solution. So there’s something out there, it’s just that as you change, and you grow that it, yeah, that there’s it doesn’t it, sometimes it ends up moving away from what they need, or, or want or want to pay for all can pay for.

Matt Bazzica
Exactly right. You know, it’s like anything, it’s very for money, right? There’s not a lot to do for someone specific situation, then you got to make that executive decision, whether you’re keeping him on as a client or not.

Ben Nash
And I think increasingly, as well, it’s like he can’t do he can’t offer all things and like you say, like work with clients in exactly the way like you can’t work with every person in exactly the way that they want to be worked with. Because there’s no way that you can run an efficient business in doing that. So it’s like you’ve got us, you’ve got to stick to your guns and say, Well, this is what we deliver, which means that it’s appealing to these clients. And as that changes, the clients potentially change as well. But thank you so much for sharing your insights there. My last question for you is, if if you could go back to that that baby face version of yourself, as you say, day one of going out essentially into the self employed life? And what would be your what would be your one piece of advice?

Matt Bazzica
Oh, wow. Jeez, where do you start? Right? I found a very important process was we created an organizational chart of how I’d ideally like the business to look. And then I’ve added those roles with within the organization chart are then also done a reverse financial chart on that to actually put in what income is to be paid to each talent member within the organization. But then it’s allowed us to work out well, where’s the procedures that are required for each of those departments? I love it, I think, I think that would be key. Because if you get your processes down, packed in all the different areas, it makes life so much more easy as you grow. You know, I guess having one employee back in the day, HR wasn’t really an issue, it was more just a conversation. And obviously, as you build HR is important, it’s a pretty big piece of the pie in this day and age. You know, so if anything I say to people, if you do an organization chart of all the different areas, whether it’s, you know, your accounting, your advisors, CSOs admins, you know, social media, like the whole box and dice, put in all those areas, and then create standards and procedures around each of those areas. I would say that would probably be a great starting point for people to, to, I guess, step back and look at their overall business in terms of where they’re trying to actually look to build. But having those procedures in place, because as you get bigger, and you’ve got other advisors and other teams, you need everyone doing the same thing. Because all of a sudden, is one person’s doing something different to another person. That’s where mistakes happen. Yeah. And it’s and it’s not great. So I’d say getting the procedures and all the backend infrastructure in place in your business, is just tenfold because once you’ve got that in place, it’s so much easy to grow. Otherwise, you’re building things as you go. And, you know, you don’t have time after time. And that’s when I think you can get too big and you start losing touch of what you’re meant to be doing for your clients because you’re stretching too thin. So I’d say they’re the two biggest things that I wish I could have implemented at the start to have a bigger picture of where I’m taking my business.

Ben Nash
I love it. Start with the end in mind later. Yeah. Well, many thanks for joining us, buddy. Really appreciate you sharing your gold. Yeah, I’m looking forward to the next stage and domination of the Sunshine Coast mate. We’ll catch you on the next one.

Matt Bazzica
Now for sure awesome Benny. Thanks very much, man. Appreciate it.