#364 Vince Scully – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey guys, Ben Nash from the XY advisor team. And today I’m here with a great friend of xy advisor Vin Scully coming back for your fourth or fifth appearance.

Vince Scully
It will be the fifth, will be the fifth least the fourth if not the fifth.

Ben Nash
Vince also hosts some streams of our XY content, but I’m keen to turn the microphone around and you know, pick this man’s brain, Vince, or anyone that’s been living under a rock is a founder and chief Sherpa at life Sherpa who are totally dominating Tech Lead advice. Vince, great to have you here.

Vince Scully
It’s great to be here, Ben.

Ben Nash
Well, that’s actually great for you to have me on.

Vince Scully
He’s sitting here in our studio here in North Sydney studio

Ben Nash
With this lovely chair, and I flush up a blue chair love Sherpa blue. I’m not used to this level of comfort while I do my podcast. But anyway, well,

Vince Scully
You know, this is the home of the future.

Ben Nash
So there we go. So look, we’ve been chatting, caught up, actually, for the first time since COVID. Like just a couple of months back and had a few conversations. I was asking you how everything was going and I was blown away to hear that you’re just about cracked eight figures in revenue. I know just to count those

Vince Scully
digits for a moment, just marginally counting the ones after the decimal point.

Ben Nash
That’s right. Yes, just marginally short of that. Lovely, lovely $10 million. Mark has got such a nice ring to it. And how big is your team again?

Vince Scully
Was total team of nine of which 234? are on the advice which did

Ben Nash
does that? Do you know where you compare to Apple? Because I know that they’ve got that thing where they’ve like across their business, they run a million dollars of revenue per employee. I’m not sure where that sits in the current environment getting close. Yeah, you’ve basically zip code is slightly different. But that that is amazing. I know that you’ve been on the podcast before and talked a bit about that. But I feel like you know, any advisor myself included, it’s like that’s like the Holy Grail. You’ve got basically four, four advisors on the advisor register and running that level of revenue. How on earth are you doing

Vince Scully
that? Well, it’s partly mostly tech, but the thing that possibly differentiates it is we cover a broad range of services. So we do home loans as well. So when you look at where that revenue comes from, you’re probably a third of his home loans. A third is insurance. And the rest is digital products,

Ben Nash
subscription fees, basically charging a subscription fee fee for service you’re doing things like rebating Commission’s on insurances and Home Loans membership fee to lock them in, which I think is genius to to build up your member base. How many how many members or people member 3700

Vince Scully
And something at last count that that’s so someone who has a membership is $547 a year? It may sound like a strange number, but it’s $1.50 a day, and it’s just less than the Magic Stick $100 That Asik reckons people will pay for it. So it was actually all deliberately priced to get under view of what the consumer is prepared to pay for it.

Ben Nash
Ego. This is why I’m fighting an uphill battle telling our clients that it’s $10,000 for their financial plan, and you’re just leaning into the $600 figure and coming into but yeah,

Vince Scully
but I mean, it’s it’s a very different business and quite deliberately. So. When I talk to VCs and investors, they will say, Oh, you’re disrupting financial advice, and they go, Oh, no, we’re not. We’re not here to take business from Credit Suisse or Macquarie, private or any other face to face advice here. And because what we’re doing is something completely different. It’s still financial advice. But it’s to an audience that would otherwise not not be buying financial advice, either because they don’t recognize it. They don’t trusted. Advice is something their parents have. Or they think it’s not for them, or they’re not prepared to pay more than 600 bucks. And so, we are about broadening the audience. And when we did our initial micro research, there’s 1.7 million households in the country who are an above average income from PAYG activities and are under 45. And big number it is that’s one in five households, which is about the same as the number of households who take advice today. So this is a cohort that’s at least as big as those who currently take advice. But they’re not getting in. And there’s a whole bunch of reasons for that. Yeah, in my view, legislation is not one of them. But for most of them, they don’t know that financial advice, advice is the answer to the problem they have? Yeah. because to the extent that they’ve seen financial advice, it’s something that parents have done? Well, I

Ben Nash
think it’s similarly with our clients. While it is a very different sort of cohort. It’s the same same thing that we, you know, I for a long time have been and had some great coaches that have taught me that educating the the uninformed people, like if you’re starting a business, or you launching a solution, it’s like, you could go and there’s good business in certain areas for people specifically targeting those people that are seeking out financial advice, you know, you start advertising for keywords on financial advice, Sydney, and that sort of stuff, you got people that are actively looking for a financial adviser, whereas the approach that I’ve always taken is, let’s, let’s educate on what’s possible with money and then create a people realizing that they they need this or that this could potentially benefit them. And then you’ve been there on that journey. And then, you know, it assists with with conversion, but it is it is different in some ways, but not in others. And I think we were just chatting a little bit offline that yeah, it is a different market. Because for for an advice. For an advice business, there’s not a lot of incentives for us to go and start launching a $400 a year solution, you know, for exaggerate. 547 47 sorry. So, yeah, because you can advise the selling plans for $10,000 $5,000 $3,000. Even like, they’re like you say that we’ve got one in five households buying, you know, the higher end financial advice or like, you know, higher price point financial advice, their advice businesses go well, there’s, there’s millions of people there with where we could expand that market? Are you really gonna go cannibalize your clients by launching something that’s, you know, at a significantly lower price point. And I’m keen to talk about how you built your solution, which I appreciate is not something that you just do like financial advice, where you draw up a nice little process map and then go cold, call a few people or do a bit of content marketing and get people through the door. But yeah, I think it is different. And I think like, if we think about that affordability of advice, and where things are going, I feel like, you know, obviously we’ve got this QA are happening there. It’s talked for a long time about this glass ceiling and financial advice. And then we’re talking about diminishing advisor numbers and all of these things. And yeah, people people are looking at, well, what is the answer? And I think tech is the answer. I think you guys are doing a better than than most, if not all people in this space. But if I think if I fast forward, I’ve been saying this for some time, if you fast forwards five years from now, 10 years from now, what does it look like? Well, it’s sort of like what you guys are doing just with maybe a few more of those interactive Yaks that you’ve got in your head? Yeah.

Vince Scully
You got to be careful about tackifying traditional advice that most of what we do in advices psychology, the technical investment management staff is all all well and good and obviously essential. toric but most of what we do EAS client psychology. So it’s leading them to the solution. And if you want to have a higher end consumer who’s prepared who is looking for one on one therapy over lengthy periods of time, then you can’t really take a phi that without devaluing the price in their mind. So if, if it’s completely take your fi then Well, why would you buy it for 547? Rather than trs? Exactly. And it’s about go back to my previous business, your my typical client was 65 and had a million dollars in paid me nearly $30,000 a year. But they pay that for their quarterly meeting, the tailored folio there, we did all the self managed, super fun, we organized the audit and the tax return and all those sorts of things. It was a true one stop shop, which is what they were prepared to pay for. Whilst they jetted around the world.

Ben Nash
Yeah. And I think around the world also what they need as well, because it’s yes, it is psychology for sure, and coaching and those sorts of things. But ultimately, why why psychology? Why coaching? Well, it’s because what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get people to take action to take the action that they need to do to get the results that they want. And we know, as advisors, it’s like what do people need to do to be successful with their money? Well, they need to invest, they need to invest more, they need to invest smart when we’re facing market conditions, like what we’re seeing at the moment, or like what we’ve seen over the last few years. But what do people do in those conditions where they, they do what everybody else is doing? And they shoot themselves and they do nothing? And then they missed opportunities? And then they’re missing results? Like yes, sure we come up with these awesome strategies that are really smart and save tax and do. But ultimately, it’s like, you know, like I did the ton of content like you do as well.

Vince Scully
You still haven’t cracked tick tock? Not yet. Not yet.

Ben Nash
Yes. Although I’m scared for when you give it a nudge, based on your track record with with the other platforms. But I think like, you know, to be a multi millionaire, you just need to invest small and invest regularly and do that. But why do people not do it? Well, it’s because they’re fearful. Because they because they don’t have confidence. And I think that the more Yes, like you say, those your old clients, the 6065 year old clients with a Million Dollar Portfolio 85. Yeah, but they and similarly for accumulators that a young guard that are working with really high salaries or significant like, inheritance or, you know, employee shares or whatever. Like, if they’re making, if you’re making a $5,000 decision, you need different inputs to get comfortable, then if you’re making a $50,000 decision, or a $500,000 decision, or a $5 million decision, it’s different. So like, there’s probably a strong argument, as awesome as your solution is that if you’ve got someone that’s looking to invest $3 million, maybe they’re not gonna get the amount of confidence that they need to pull the trigger for a tech lead solution that, that he’s there. And I think that they, they’re both solutions are important. They’re great. They have their place. I mean,

Vince Scully
I always maintained that there’s only one thing we sell as advisors. And it’s confidence, the confidence that I’m making the right decision today, and confidence that I’ll be okay. Yeah, and what every client you work of, that’s fundamentally what they’re looking for. We call it lots of things. We call it an investment plan. We call it a budget, we call it a cash flow forecast, we call it whatever it is, but ultimately, it’s about delivering confidence. That’s right, the one thing we can’t deliver is certainty. Yes. And what we need to do is be able to deliver confidence, that clarity,

Ben Nash
that leads to action, and that leads to results and outcome. And

Vince Scully
how you do that will depend on the client. And yet there are millions of clients who are more than happy to pay five to $10,000, to get that in person. And that’s a different market. So these two live quite comfortably, side by side. But I think if you start putting too much client facing tech in the way and other people are behind, you probably going to kill me for these comments. If you put too much that in front of a client who is willing to pay $10,000, you do run the risk that they go, well actually, do I really need to pay $10,000 If I’m not getting been sitting across the table from me.

Ben Nash
And I think people can fall into the trap of thinking that they can do more themselves or that it’s just about choosing good investments or that it’s just about doing these things. But we know that that’s not the case. But if they if they don’t know that then sometimes they can waste a whole bunch of time by thinking that and trying to do it and floundering in the results. And I think everyone’s seen those clients that they’re doing things thinking that they’re doing all the right things, and then you shine the light and it’s like Hold on What about this thing and then like discover a massive opportunity or a massive issue and it’s like, well, that’s where the money is and that’s, that’s why we’re here, but what’s your take on you know, With that there’s two potential streams of advice. And they’re talking about, you know, affordability, we’ve got Q AR, we’ve got tech, the rise of technology and the rise of the client in the rise of content. Like, what how do you see things playing out from,

Vince Scully
I’ve always mentioned that education is an important part of getting to that level of confidence that they, they have the confidence in you as an individual. And that’s what they prepare to pay to sit across the table from you and have a cup of coffee or a beer every quarter. Or they get comfortable that they know enough that you can do it with them. And that’s probably more what we see. So the things that go with confidence, your clarity, To what do I really want? And capacity, that is the ability to make those decisions. So some people need more information to make those decisions. Some people will go, Ben, don’t worry about you just tell me what to do. And I’ll do it. Yeah. And, but there are others who need comfort that you do know what’s best for them. They can have confidence in their network technology has a role because a you can deliver the education. So rather than spending half an hour explaining to someone how insurance works, they can go and watch our animator Yak, explain it to them. And before they come and visit the advisor, so that advice process then becomes one of fulfilment rather than one of education. But that’s not cheap. In crew, whether people prepared to pay $10,000 for Yes. Where’s the one on one tailored delivery of that is something that people who have the money will pay for. And I think that’s how I would distinguish between what we’re doing and what the traditional advice business does. And that’s not to say that we’re creating it to to advice industry, which is sort of where the FSC white paper was going. And we’re some of the QR QA our recommendations are going if you want them in the FCC, in particular, we’re saying here’s how we’re going to cut the cost of advice, we’re actually going to remove all the consumer protections from younger, poor clients, and keep the protections for older wealthier clients. And this notion of simple advice, is really a recipe to discourage people from taking. If it’s really that simple. Why do I need to advise it? Yeah, there is no such thing as simple advice. It’s, it might be simple, technically. But it’s still the same psychology exercise. Yeah, there’s no difference really between investing 50,000 investing 50 million.

Ben Nash
And there’s an argument I think that with when you’re working with people that are, you know, on the average income below average income, that then it’s more important more, is it more important for them to get it right, but it’s just it’s demand is more to definitely just as important because they’re not going to have any take to like if they realized six years from now that they’ve they’ve gone down the wrong path, it’s going to be harder for them to unwind. Whereas you’ve got someone that saving 10 or 20 grand a month, or they can go okay, well, that was a bad decision, I’m gonna, I’m gonna close that off. And then now I’m just gonna keep smashing this other thing, which can be a good idea and get me

Vince Scully
getting a 29 year old, who does not own their home, and is spinning everything they earn, to save $1,000 A man’s will make a much bigger difference in life than making 50 basis points extra for 70 year old retirees, yes. Because they won’t notice the extra 50 basis points. And they probably won’t thank you for it. If it means that they will lose 2% more in the next downturn. But the biggest difference you can make to someone’s life is to get them on to that term onto the path. And there’s a whole audience that doesn’t have $6,000 to pay for that. Yes. And so how do we deliver that service to them? Without it being a second rate service?

Ben Nash
And so do you think in the future, do you see there being more companies like life Sherpa, like offering it at this sort of market at that sort of level?

Vince Scully
I’d be very surprised if there weren’t there challenges. Yeah, who’s got an incentive to solve this problem? I think everyone in the industry recognizes that foolproof advice is a problem. Yes, or lack of affordability of advice is a problem. But when you look at the players with the money to fix the problem, very few of them actually have an incentive to fix the problem. So the obvious players in this space are the big super funds because they have every adult Australian as their customer. So there’s 24 million Superfund accounts in the country. The 16 million adults 30 million taxpayers and And if you look at the big six superfans, they have 60% of those. And they’re the ones who’ve got the capacity to fix it. But is it really in their interest to fix it?

Ben Nash
Why do you think they’re not? Because they might change their supervisor here? Well,

Vince Scully
what a suitor would a well advised 29 year old choose one of the my super balanced funds from the big funds? They’re probably not given that asset allocation is the number one driver of outcomes. should you really be buying a Balanced fund that you can actually determine what the ESA allocation is? To solve that problem? So that’s, that’s a big challenge. And you’re taking the FSC approach of a two tier system is very an Australian who’s going to do this? Do the big dealer groups have a big incentive to do this?

Ben Nash
I wouldn’t be banking on them necessarily for the future, because I think the dealer groups are under a lot of pressure at the moment. And like, where is that business model with the move to self isolate the strong move to self license advice practices, where it seems to sort of be heading?

Vince Scully
Well, that’s a bit of a fashionable thing. Like in the pre GFC, period, like in the 2000s, there was a bit of a rush to boutique, smaller licensees. And it sort of drifted back post GFC, where the brand actually meant something to the consumer. And now we’re seeing it drifting away. So I don’t know whether that’s a permanent shift. There’s still only 2000 licenses in the country.

Ben Nash
Yeah, well, I think though, that as the the PII costs seem to increase considerably, when you’ve got multiple offers firms, and then multiple business firms as well, because the compliance processes, it’s harder to run a consistent can compliance approach that fits for a whole bunch of businesses and the more businesses you’ve got, the harder it is to make that fit and then adds

Vince Scully
a lot of cost. Now, especially when you’re trying to overlay on that a desire for, or you desire to use advisors as distribution. So if you’re a product manufacturer, regardless of what the long individual advisor says, there’s still a strong incentive to sell your licensees products in your best interest duty, not withstanding costs. And so that creates a much more expensive compliance environment. Whereas if you start with the actually what is in the best interest of the client, and then work from there, compliance becomes sort of easier. And that’s probably where the tech takes the biggest cost out of our business. Yes, that no matter who you talk to here, you get the same methodology. So the same set of circumstances will give you the same outcome every time. Yeah. Now, it’s not to say that everyone gets the same outcome. But given the same set of circumstances, you should always get the same outcome. Yes. But if you get a different outcome, that’s actually a QA problem. And that’s a compliance problem waiting to happen. Yeah. And we all know that it’s, the outcomes are often a function of the biases that an individual advisor brings to the table. Yes. And a lot of academic research supporting this. I’m not.

Ben Nash
You don’t need to, you know, anecdotal researchers. So this

Vince Scully
is not me just making this app or using an excuse. But if you give the same set of circumstances to five different advisors, you’ll probably get five different answers. Yes, as it should be. But when you have it within a practice or within the license, you How do I manage that? Yeah. That’s where a lot of that tech came from. So if x plan coin gives you through that templates and dealer group login and oversight of revenue standards, to give you a bit of a picture about what’s happening on happening in your practice, yes, but it’s really expensive.

Ben Nash
And even still, then it doesn’t really necessarily drive consistency in client outcomes. Because, like, I know, for us in Pivot, like we have, we hire advisors that are all sort of broadly aligned from advice, philosophies perspective, but we have to spend a lot of time focusing on Okay, well, what actually makes sense for these clients? Like what, what would you do and the, how I used to sort of tell advisors to tackle those decisions is to say, I want you to imagine that it was you if you’re in that exact situation, and you you know, you have X dollars in the bank and you have X dollars in property and you have X dollars in debt, and then you’re grappling with this decision. What would you do in that circumstance? But what I realized in asking people that question is that it depends on the person. It depends on them in many

Vince Scully
ways, the wrong question that may lead you the right answer. So, yeah, it’s possibly the wrong question in so the way we approached it in the way we built the tech was to say, if I have this set of circumstances, like, if I picked up a box with 20 dimensions, or whatever it is, the number of circumstances they put someone in that box. Now, what’s the solution for that box? Yeah, so now my advice process is actually working out which box, this customer fits it, there might be hundreds or even 1000s of boxes. But every customer fits into, for every customer that’s within our universe, will fit in one of those boxes. So the advice process is, first of all, is this person within the universe of boxes that I’ve got solutions for? If they’re not, then when we build a new one, or we need to reject them as customers? Yes, then we do it. So we’re going to submit Superfriends, we’re going to family trusts, we don’t do individual stock picking. So if you want one of those have to go, Well, you got to get people well. Or one of the other 15,999 advisors. In So, once you’ve worked at that they were in the universe now all you can do your advice process about working out which box they’re in. And once you’ve worked out which box they’re in, then you’ve got the solution. So your quality control is actually built into that process. And I think the technical challenge that most other people who’ve tried this is actually trying to solve for every possible outcome on the fly. So if you try and build a solution, while you’re investigating the current circumstances, you create this massive sequence of decision trees, where you actually say, look, here’s the few 100 boxes 1000 boxes that we have a solution for. Now, is this person in the universe? And if so, then box 693 Is their answer. And that makes sense actually takes a huge amount of research. So maintaining that, yes, is a big job means you need to have big flows coming in this side, if you try to solve for all these boxes, then you’ve got 20 3040 clients a year 10 out? Yeah, that’s too expensive. But if you’ve got a few 1000 clients turning up the tree doing the answer is a building into the tech is how you how you get that cost down. But it doesn’t mean you’ve got to identify your your niche as American friends it the riches are in the niches. And so we were very clear about who our audience was, at or above average income PAYG in the workforce, generally younger, as you can tell that most people in the workforce are younger than me. But that generally means they’re going through three of life’s big changes, which I call coupling, nesting and parenting. And that triggers a whole bunch of financial needs. So starting to deal with money as a couple. So we start with a, we have a pre Marriage Course that deals with all of that sort of things. They’re paying off debts, they’re putting a budget together, they’re saving to buy their first home, they’re dealing with, they’re taking time off to have a baby, they’re dealing with investing for the kid, and they probably have very large homeless relatively, and very limited assets, and longtime to retirement. So they got a big requirement for for risk insurance. And risk insurance. And HoloLens is two thirds of the fees and commissions paid for financial advice in the country. So let’s not underestimate the size of this market.

Ben Nash
Totally. IE, I’m sure like looking at the stuff that you guys have done. I feel like, obviously you keep combat. So I don’t know how much you’d change. But like if you were to go back to day one, and do things differently, what would you change?

Vince Scully
I mean, we’ve learned a lot along the way. I mean, the luxury of today is not the last ship of 2014. I started this journey actually about 2010. I think I’ve probably told this story before, but I had sold my previous business and I was sort of retired for the second time. And I came to this realization that it’s financial planning because it can’t be rocket science. There’s got to be a formula here that you we do stuff because that’s how we’ve always done it or that there’s a process we go through. So actually built this algorithm on paper on the wall in my other office at home. So these big a zero pages stuck all over the wall with this flowchart on it. But I couldn’t work out how to either implement it or make money out of it. So I sort of forgot about it for some time. And then in 2014, the Tech had sort of improved. And I’d worked out how to make money. But the business back then was very, very different. And so, yeah, it would have been great to be able to skip over those five years of trying to get to probably 2018. It’s been relatively settled, although growing since about 2018. But, you know, still trying to solve that challenge of, or the biggest challenge is getting Sophia avatar Yeah, so she’s got a professional creative job. She wakes up on 29th birthday. And he’s, you know, I’ve got a, I’ve got a good job, how come? I’m not getting ahead? And why can’t I afford a house to go from that realization to Oh, actually, I needed to see a financial advisor. When Sophie probably doesn’t know what a financial advisor is. She certainly never had an advice relationship before except maybe an accountant who did her tax return. And so you got to create the the knowledge or the insight that financial advice is the solution to that problem. So she’s got a problem. But she’s not googling financial advising me know. And but she’s got this what the Germans called Tor shorts panic, which is the fear of Doors closing. So it’s like, the midlife crisis type concept. And so on the nine, so 2939 49 years that create that sort of

Ben Nash
panic. Bach, I got one of those coming.

Vince Scully
And that’s why marathon runners are over represented in those nine years as I write. So if you actually look at the ages of people who run marathons, yeah, there are peaks and nines. I have to, because that’s what we do. So what what would Sophie do today, she’d asked her parents, and what got them there and kind of get her there? Because the world’s changed. And she doesn’t know what financial advisors do. And since most people who talk about financial guys talk about investment advice, she doesn’t have any money to invest. So she doesn’t need an investment advisor. But she needs someone to help her with her finances. And she needs to discover the dance the answer

Ben Nash
is and what would you do differently? Well, I

Vince Scully
think we’ve yet we got closer to that messaging now. But that was the big show. I still don’t think we’ve cracked it perfectly to maybe the actual door. Maybe the actual many the ACK? Because that’s the Yeah, she could have a yakitori Sherpa.

Ben Nash
So do you think you would have focused more on on that on that?

Vince Scully
I mean, I think getting the Get your sofa when someone rocks up you. So she wakes up on a 20th birthday or gets engaged or has a baby or, you know, all these life events, those three in particular? She knows she’s got a problem with her money. But what’s the answer? Maybe tick tock, tick tock may very well, and that’s a good year. So that’s where if she’s not getting it from a parent, she’s getting it on social, I can only hope and the more people who are spreading the word that advice is available. And it suits people like her. The better. So that’s why we love free influences. In so we are in the business of licensing.

Ben Nash
Final year, you’ve got Victoria divine green, James,

Vince Scully
it’s your money at Millennial Money. Victoria Devine, she’s on the money invest with Queenie.

Ben Nash
Maybe we need to chat. I want to be part of the cool kids. So

Vince Scully
we are. Yeah, that’s not so much of lead gen or marketing tool. But it’s about building this education piece. And, you know, a network of creators. I mean, you’ve been to fin con in the US, if you just think about the power of those networks, in delivering the message to that, like, it’s okay to suck it up. No one’s ever taught you how to do it. So, here’s how you can do that. And without falling into the get rich, quick krypter MLM

Ben Nash
or just beating yourself out of the gate. That’s the other part that people think that they especially like, we work with so many people and they’re super smart cookies. They’re you know, we work with a lot of people in tech coders sales, great with people great technically, super switched on, but then they feel super dumb when it comes to money. And then I think because they’re high achievers already then they they feel even more reluctant to go and seek out support to help them make their decisions. then it’s like, they think, oh, I should be good with this. Because, you know, it’s just money and I get paid every month. So it’s, you know, it should be easy, but it’s not easy. And that’s why this whole industry exists. And I think the more people that have got that message out there saying it is okay. And yeah, we’re all in the same boat, like just, we’ve just been doing it for a little bit longer. Let’s talk about it together.

Vince Scully
And calling it financial literacy is probably making the problem worse. Because Because being functionally illiterate, you’re not being able to read or write a really shameful thing for a lot of people. So to say, well, you’re financially illiterate, sort of implies that you didn’t pay attention at school. We were a bit a bit dumb. was so we always talk about money skills, so developing better money skills, money education, as well. Yep, money education, but the use of the word financial literacy, which is very common among government and NGOs trying to work in space. Yeah. Which, which creates more shame around money.

Ben Nash
I’d never thought about that. But that actually does make a lot of sense that once that the banner on from the vocab so not that I use it

Vince Scully
a lot. So we don’t use financial literacy here. And the other word that’s banned from the vocab here is the word wealth. All of our all of our focus groups at the beginning said, we don’t have wealth, we might have money, we might have assets, resources, our parents or wealth, but we don’t. And what’s the industry done over the last 15 years, well, rebranded everything we learn from funds management, Wealth Management meant from insurance to wealth protection. Yeah. And with a whole generation who does that doesn’t like the word wealth. Yeah. So yeah, we got to get focused on our consumer here.

Ben Nash
It’s funny I was, I created one of this silly distractions that I involved myself in at some point was creating this course on savings, which I never really launched. But anyway, that’s a whole nother story. But when I was doing it, I did some research. And because we were always talking a lot of people like new inbound inquiries and stuff, the ideas, I just asked, like, 20 people, if I could just ask them, you know, five minutes worth of questions at the end of our initial sort of discovery phone call. And I had these questions queued up and asked them about, because it was about cash flow, this cash flow calls. And I was like, what do you need? Like, what do you call equal to cash flow? Or like, what are you calling? They’re like, Oh, no, never never cash flow. They’re like, money. That’s my money. You know, that’s my money, my cash maybe? Yeah, but I think we any, I think any industry is the same. But you get Utes talking about it in the jargon, and then you just ingrained in that jargon, that it’s hard to step away from it. And I still, I think the last piece of really negative feedback that I got on one of our workshops, this is a while ago, because they couldn’t be because my workshops are awesome, which is what I’d like to think but it couldn’t be because I don’t do them in person and handout feedback forms anymore. But they they said too much jargon. And I was like, What the hell. So I had to call this lady up. And I was like, Look, I was like, really appreciate the feedback. I just, I feel like I really need to understand this, because I was like, I put so much thought into trying to de jargon. And she said that I kept referring to Blue Chip shares, and she didn’t know what it meant. So like shit, because it’s like, it’s so easy. Like, I feel like I’d stripped out so much stuff from the things but some things you just sort of just like wrongly assume that people just know that and they just don’t. And then you throw those terms around. And then people are sitting there thinking that they’re the dumb one.

Vince Scully
And people won’t put their hand up and go, What do you mean being because of this timeless that, you know, in? I mean, when I was a teenager, which life was a lot simpler in terms of money, you got paid cash, you spent cash, and the cash was gone. You stopped spending? Yeah. And then we discovered credit. So suddenly, you’ve got a critical window. Any bank was handing out credit cards, like there’s no tomorrow. Yeah. And so suddenly, I had a 3000 pound credit limit. And that was a huge feat in those days. So let’s hear in words today, even when was the last time you had a note in your in your hand? I

Ben Nash
got on right here. Events are a great way. I like cash, although I don’t really spend it it just sits there as an ornament.

Vince Scully
I’ve been to a teller machine twice since COVID. began. Yeah. And both of those were went to the US and needed get some cash. They don’t do credit very well.

Ben Nash
But debit is fine. I spent on debit. I got my thing on Apple Pay By CBA every day transaction again, that’s not a financial product advice, by the way, but whatever that is the CBA everyday account and I put my no like 300 bucks a week goes into that account, and that’s my beer money in my pocket money. And that’s it. That’s my guilt free spending. I

Vince Scully
know. I mean, that wasn’t that wasn’t a comment on the goodness of Brandon’s credit on a particular problem with credit but he’s just changed the way we deal with, with money. That it’s no lie. Hunger is something physical, that you get your paycheck pay packet at the end of the month. Yes. And it’s got notes in it. Yeah. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. Yes. With today, it’s all just numbers in a major somewhere. And so we don’t have the same sense of reality when it comes to money. I’m not particularly anti credit. It hardly ever has been cashed like tap, tap, tap, tap, through my credit card statement. And they’re nearly all begin with Li ve or Sq, because they’re all cafes. And but it’s just changed the way we feel a bit. Think about money, yes, and the way we behave and the way we behave. And of course, if you don’t have very much money, you know precisely how much a loaf of bread and a liter of milk costs. So people who are on the breadline don’t need budgeting lessons. Yes, they just need more money. Yeah. Whereas people with good incomes, whatever that might mean. But yeah, average or above incomes. And your clients, they don’t need more money. They need education around how to manage to be able to get more life from the money.

Ben Nash
It’s almost like you need to live the life that you want

Vince Scully
with the money. You should write a book about. That’s why I call the book that, you know, when you see a lot of personal finance books, including the most popular, what they say is avoid credit, spend this new earn, get a side hustle. Well, actually, if you had the skills to get more from what you’ve got, in most cases, you’d be better off spending the time doing something that you love, rather than driving Uber on a Friday night.

Ben Nash
Yeah, and I think everybody can get a little bit more from what they have. And then you can get a little bit more and a little bit more. And that’s especially for young people. It’s like you lock into behaviors. And then you’ve got then in the future happens, and so long as you got the good behaviors, they serve you well. But the sooner you do it then

Vince Scully
but once you go Benz, you never go back. Once you go once you go Benz, you never go back once you turn left, you never want to turn right again. So getting these habits right. At the beginning, yes makes a difference. So unlearning that in your 40s is pretty hard. It’s hard.

Ben Nash
Yeah. It’s funny because our business and our clients have evolved a lot over the last seven years. And when I first started the business that we were working with a lot of people around sort of average income will probably young, like slightly above and focus heavily on coaching. And then over time, the business Scott more like really high income clients. And it’s funny because we’ve got this cohort of people that they created these behaviors and then stayed long standing clients, and they’re saving more money on a household income of 250,000, then another household on 750,000. And it’s like, who’s living better here? Like, these people might buy more expensive things. But really, these guys are probably living a slightly better life. Really, they’re certainly going to be more happy in what they’re doing, even though they don’t have that stuff. So

Vince Scully
and you look at you look at professional couple with three kids at private schools. That’s a huge spins. And I only had one. But yeah, I think the year he graduated e 12. was the biggest pay rise had ever had.

Ben Nash
Yeah, yeah, it’s true. I’m getting a putting out a few clients stories on Tik Tok at the moment, and a lot of people are going what you mean, people earn that much, and they’re only saving that much unlike? Yeah, but when I look at that budget, there’s not like they’re wasting money on things that you just go this, you know, immediately 20,000 or 30,000 or $40,000 a savings. It’s like, living is expensive. And, you know, you’ve got to do that. But making sure again, those those behaviors are in early means that as the as the income goes up, then you actually profit. Whereas if you don’t, then you just get more and you spend more.

Vince Scully
And this was one of one of our philosophies. And the core of that book, really is to say that success or failure with money is not not your morning ladder. There are sort of a handful of big decisions that if you get them right, the rest sort of falls in place. That’s what most of our advices are. So yes, the way you live what you drive, are you prepared for the unexpected how you prepare for retirement? How do you make a living and who you marry if you get those decisions, right? It really doesn’t matter how many coffees you drink.

Ben Nash
What you do with the kids I think is one of them. I’m not sure that that’s in there but

Vince Scully
in knowing where you live comm does drive that a lot. So if you if you live in a neighborhood where all your neighbor’s kids are going to private schools, and they’re going to ski camping Smiley’s it just affects how you feel The ban a lot of things and how they feel. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I grew up in a very comfortable middle class existence in a very good suburb of Dublin. And I always thought we were poor. Whereas it was only relative to the people around me. I mean, we live well, yes. Many people wanted freezing. But you know, a lot of the boys I went to school with were a lot wealthier. Yes. Yeah. So what you’re, what it’s those sort of things do drive a lot of these behaviors. Absolutely. Back to the psychology thing.

Ben Nash
Yeah. And making conscious choices, I think as well. But look, I’m sure we could talk about that client stuff all day. But maybe that’s time for another podcast. My last question for you. What do you guys focused on now? What’s coming up?

Vince Scully
The? That’s a really good question, Ben. I mean, there’s a lot of constant tweaking of stuff. from a content perspective, we’ve starting now, and then he’s got many, many the ex coming along. But that’s more about focusing on content outside the paywall. So most of the work we’ve spent on content so far has been in terms of starting with product. So group coaching courses, all that sort of webinars, will have sort of content stuff that people have painful, and what we call navigational content. So that’s the content that guides people through the process so that when you book, when you book a call with an advisor, you’ll get an email that says, yeah, thanks for booking a call with Justin. Here’s what’s going to happen in the meeting. In the meantime, you want to watch this video, so that when you get to that meeting, the client is prepared. And all that stuff, it’s about shaving minutes off those call solutions. So like every minute of this call is $3. And you just keep spending. So we’re absolutely focused on that whole time in motion stuff. So if we can do a video that takes a minute of every discovery call, then it’s something that’s worth doing. And now we’re starting to focus on content outside the paywall. So you’ll see a lot more on them. Maybe even Tik Tok, but certainly YouTube podcasts and working with our creators. So I’ve definitely focusing on the growing our network of creators who operate under a license. And then probably the biggest thing that we we just launched it this year is our corporate program. So we’re offering a corporate financial wellness program, where your employer for 399 can deliver it all you can eat financial advice for their employees, including a whole bunch of onboarding and webinars, tailored to their salary, packaging, and share schemes and stuff.

Ben Nash
I think I’ve just found the theme for our next podcast as well, that

Vince Scully
corporate financial wellness see how that I mean, that’s becoming a huge deal in the US. In the US, it’s largely paid for out of the health insurance budget, which is 20 30% of payroll. Yeah, we don’t have the problem here. In you know, the stuff that was getting paid for out of their corporate super trails, that so much just doesn’t exist anymore. So any employer is the natural place, or the workplace is the natural place to do this, because your employer is in your pocket. They are the main source of your income. They’re generally the source of your super many provide insurance, many are providing salary packaging, saying should I salary package my car, should I you know, all these decisions, then, given that most of the providers have are incentivized to sell car leases, which is where most of the money in salary packaging comes from? Where do you get advice that’s in your best interest, I was almost about to say independent advice. But again, you know, that stops getting more complex with super stapling. Because when we see this a lot of the big law firms where they provide very generous auto acceptance insurance to their employees. And so when you but you got to be in the staff Superfund, yes to access it. And so previously, given that most people didn’t make an election, they were defaulted into the corporate scheme, and therefore body insurance with now with super stapling, all these young graduates who’ve worked in hospital or in retail while living at uni, or coming in with a wrist or a host, super fund and getting stapled. And how does HR have that discussion? It’s really hard.

Ben Nash
Well, I think that on the financial wellness side, the employers have got the most to gain with there’s just been a piece this morning like cost of lost productivity in the workplace because of financial stress like $66 billion or something.

Vince Scully
Financial stress is the number one cause of stress and under 40 parts and Australia, workplace stress comes a long way down the list for most people.

Ben Nash
Yeah. Well, I look forward to that conversation, Vince. Well, it’s awesome to see you kicking goals made and I look forward to also to hearing about what $10 million feels like next time. We might actually get some a great to have you here.

Vince Scully
Great to be here. Thanks, Ben.

Ben Nash
Cheers, guys. We’ll catch you next time.