#369 Justin Hooper – Transcript

Jess Brady
Guess what? Ensombl community, that’s a wrap. Yeah, this is my very last podcast for 2022. Thank you so much for letting me be in your ears every week. I mean, we’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve done everything from copywriting to cancer survivors. We’ve done death dollars to design experts to covered mental health. We’ve covered personal branding, and almost everything in between. I really hope that at the end of this, you are feeling healthier, your business was feeling more robust, and you are genuinely excited to bring in 2023. I feel enormously privileged to have been part of this experiment really, and I certainly am living better because of it. So no pressure. But to wrap up for today. And the very last podcast of the year. I wanted to introduce you to a man who has been, I guess, in some ways a mentor for me over the last five years. His name is Justin Hooper, he runs a business called Sentinel wealth. And every single time I speak to Justin, I come out smarter, I come out with insights that have me percolating on what he says for weeks, if not months afterwards. I wanted to understand how does he get to really, really know his clients? And how does that actually infiltrate into his life. It’s a really lovely conversation to round out the year. So I wish you and your family and your team, the most wonderful festive seasons and ensemble are back early 2023. To keep giving you all of the insights and expertise you need to have a cracking Year. Merry Christmas. Hi, Justin.

Justin Hooper
Hi.

Jess Brady
Hello. Hello. So today’s conversation is really exciting. Do you know that you’re my last podcast guests for 2022?

Justin Hooper
Oh, that’s good. We’ll hopefully finish on a high. Yeah,

Jess Brady
no pressure. But if you could just make sure that this is the most valuable podcast of the entire year, that would be amazing. Something tells me it will be because I’ve known you for a little while and every time I speak with you, I come out of conversations, a wise wiser than I was when I walked in to the conversation. So thank you in advance. For the people that don’t know you though, I would love to start with learning a little bit more sharing a little bit more about your story, Justin.

Justin Hooper
Okay. It’s quite a long story. But I’ll give you a very shortened version, the stepping stone version maybe. I grew up in, I grew up in South Africa. In hindsight, it was quite a privilege actually to grow up in a time where there was such a massive transition of society and of the political elements of society because it really opened my eyes. I was at Cape Town University, which was one of the most liberal universities in South Africa at the time. And so I was really at the coalface. And the point about it is it really made me think a lot even as a student that I then had to do two years in the military, like cricket at a sort of professional base or preferred professional level for a little while. I was an Air Force. went overseas a bit then came back after that, and in my early 20s 24, to be precise started a financial planning business, but I didn’t like at the time, the way It was done because it was, it was. It was all done on the on the on the on the commission basis, which didn’t really suit me. And, and so I changed the way it was done and focus more on you know, I’m really looking after the whole being as it were the whole person. So that was my approach, I linked up with Ernst and Young for a while. Or 10 years, actually, the business was 50%, unbiased and young. We worked with them. And and that’s really the background. I mean, our process was It was developed as a result of some more personal experiences, which I couldn’t tell you more about. So that’s a bit of a background,

Jess Brady
you’ve had a very varied career, I didn’t know about some of those other pieces interesting. And and now it makes sense, knowing what I know a bit about you in terms of your holistic approach. So I feel like I don’t know where that maybe has come from. But let’s talk about that. So central wealth is your business. And it’s your approach to advice, I would say is quite unique. And obviously the longevity or how long you’ve been providing that advice, style for, you know, you would have been doing this in a time where it would be unheard of to do some of the things that you did, can you talk to us more about what is your approach to giving advice to clients?

Justin Hooper
Yeah, and, again, I’ll keep it keep it as short as I can. But basically, the philosophy behind it is that that all of us as human beings, particularly those of us in capitalist societies, which is really the whole world, I suppose now. But we, we grow up, and and slowly, but surely, it’s a concept called the hero’s journey, which which influenced our approach quite a lot. And the key, the key component of it is that we are born into what I would call our authentic self. So there’s very little difference if there’s no difference really, between what a toddler shows the world, their public persona, as it worth, as it were, and their authentic self. And that’s why toddlers are generally so happy. And so what then happens is that we as we grow up, we have sort of painful experiences. And those painful experiences, force us to develop strategies to develop with that pain to try and avoid that pain. And as we do that, we develop a public Persona Persona, that we show the world. And that persona becomes a little different, we sacrifice what’s more important to us to survive in the world as it were in quotes. And as that gap gets larger and larger, we become more and more unhappy, actually. So the further away from our authentic selves we become, the more unhappy we become. And then what happens is that we learn or we think we learn that the key issue that will close that gap is money. And so we go after the money thinking, as soon as we get enough money, we’ll close that gap. And that’s when we can start getting back to our authentic selves. But by that stage, we’ve become so habitual in who the public persona is, we don’t even know who we are anymore. And, and so we often a lot of people often in the labs fairly unhappy. So that’s kind of what our process is based on, sort of based on the hero’s journey, and it’s all about finding the treasure, which is our authentic selves. And, and using money to facilitate that process. That’s, I mean, it’s a very short summary.

Jess Brady
It’s a short but interesting summary. And so you take people on quite a journey. But before we get into the client journey, because I have many questions about that, I think probably upfront, you’re quite comfortable with the idea that your business is not for everyone, because you are going to take them through a pretty robust process. And you’ve kind of developed a, you’ve developed some sort of way of being able to assess whether they are a good fit, or whether you’re a good fit for them. Before we get into the journey piece. Can you talk a little bit about that, so that how you’re deciding who gets to go on that journey with you.

Justin Hooper
I mean, it sort of is for everyone, but but everyone might not be quite ready for it. But but in a strange way, I mean, maybe there’s a metaphor I could use here, which is, which is imagine that you’re at the bottom of of a of a hill, it’s a fairly fairly extensive Hill and, and you stuck in a in a quagmire of deep, sticky mud as it were. So that we would call your cycle of suffering. That’s the that’s the painful experiences that you’ve had and the belief systems that you’ve created that’s got you stuck in where you are and you’re not enjoying life. That’s called you’re there to recall your, your cycle of suffering, but you in this mud, okay. And you know that at the top of the hill. If you get to the top of the hill, it’s absolute bliss. It’s the most wonderful place. It’s almost like you are in heaven at the top of the hill. That’s your authentic self. Now, our role is to help to free yourself from the mud, get up the hill as quickly and easily as possible. And, and by doing so what we what we try to do is make it as easy as possible to get up the hill by focusing you on your deep motivates What are you going to get when you get to the top. That’s not goals and objectives. That’s not the doing in the having or it’s not the pleasure as it were, it’s more that the being is the who you are authentically. And I use the word authentically, maybe too much. But it’s, it’s really just, you know, it’s becoming more of what makes you happy, which is doing which is being rather than doing and having. And so our process, almost everyone is ready for it. If they if they don’t, they don’t get almost if they don’t get confused, or confused by the onus is on us to explain it. Well. And that’s one of the challenges is,

Jess Brady
yeah, yeah. Because I’m sure there’s plenty of people stuck in the mud going, I definitely want to be on top of the mountain. But I’m on a chairlift and I want to go straight there. And I don’t want to do any hard work. And you’re probably saying to them, oh, no, there’s no chairlift, you have to walk up the hill. And it’s gonna be a lot.

Justin Hooper
Yeah, but but knowing what’s up there is almost a chairlift, right? So if you know why you’re doing something, it makes a lot easier to do it. It’s when you don’t know why you’re doing it, that becomes hard.

Jess Brady
Totally. And so you’ve developed a way to try to understand whether people are ready to be taken on that journey.

Justin Hooper
Is that correct? Yeah,

Jess Brady
yeah. What does that look like?

Justin Hooper
Well, it’s, it really is. It’s largely of what they’re mostly focused on. When we sit down with them, we have a very first meeting we have we, effectively in our, in our own minds, what’s happening is that we are asking them about their concern, or you know, we talk about it as concerns, but it’s really what’s keeping you stuck in the mud, as it were. But what worries you what are your top of mind concerns? What do you think’s holding you back. And that’s the, that’s the conscious or conscious incompetence is call it. But it’s that’s the conscious concerns. And then we also uncover the the unconscious or subconscious concerns, all those things are the things that are holding you back. And then we say that that’s like freeing you from this ankle, this restriction. That’s the one part of of freeing you up. And the second part is then saying why we’re doing it, what we uncover. And if it comes from within the person, it’s incredibly invigorating and powerful. So it does become almost a chairlift. If they know why they’re doing something, I’ll give you a simple example. If I do believe very strongly that the only time people ever learn about unconditional love is when they have a child, I don’t think before that you really know what unconditional love is. So when you have a child, when people have a child, then they will kind of do anything for their child, especially in the early days. You know, you hear the stories about women picking up a car to get the car off their child, their child, for example, right, so they get the superpower strength. And that’s what happens when you know what your deep motivators are, you know, I’ve just had a situation literally this morning with somebody who I’ve known for a long time, who went through the deep motivation. And I got a text, literally not an hour later, saying, and I’ll just tell you right now, what it said, that was really good, thank you, it’s put a fire under me. So that’s what happens, you know, get really invigorated and powerful, and therefore the goals and objectives are so much easier to achieve,

Jess Brady
do you find it can be for some people quite hard to get them to really get to that deep motivated place where they’re feeling like they can a be vulnerable, but also really unpack what is a deep core motivator? And what do you do when people really struggle or don’t know, tell you that they don’t know what motivates them?

Justin Hooper
I believe that, that everybody knows, at least at a subconscious level, so it’s in there, we just have to get it out of them. And so I don’t think that, that the approach should be almost a confronting or judgmental approach. I think that there’s a massive difference between values and deep motivators. And I think it’s very often confused.

Jess Brady
So we stop there. Can you elaborate more?

Justin Hooper
Sure value values, literally my definition of values to me are values the word values has a moral overtone, and, and that’s not what this is about. This is not about being judgmental or moralistic about things. This is about trying to understand who this person is, in their purest form, and what type of person what what kind of person do they need to be to make them the happiest version of themselves? That’s all. That’s what it’s about. Now that’s in them. So you have to just find subtly Easy ways you can find ways of getting getting it out of it. And you can do it very easily. I can do it over a coffee, I can do it in a pub when people are not even, I don’t even know that I’m doing it. That’s how easy it is.

Jess Brady
And if you develop these questions over time, or is this a model that you’ve used, like, how have you been able to develop a way to be able to extract it easily, when you

Justin Hooper
know what you’re looking for, it’s very easy. But after we left the methods myself, I found that a lot of the other methods don’t work as well as some methods within sort of 10 or 15, or 16, or something. Alternatives, and all roads are going to lead to those, those those alternatives. There’s not you can’t have any deep motivators beyond that range. And I don’t believe in that, even though people are human beings are quite common in a lot of their desires and motivators. I mean, you know, the whole Maslow approach tells you that as well. And I agree with that, but but at a more detailed level, I think we are quite different. So for example, you know, somebody who wants to make a difference to society, or somebody who is a parent, they will, they will describe that motivated a very different way. So somebody, one person might say, you know, I want to be a very good mother or something, another person might say, I want to be the father that I would have wanted to have had subtly different. And as we would capture them, in the words literally, that the person uses.

Jess Brady
And so they become the deep motivators that are obviously really integral to the advice that you give. But how does this form part of the broader client journey that you offer? Because you’ve created? I’m going to say it wrong, sent us how do we say this process that you’ve

Justin Hooper
got? Yes, yes, the endless Yeah. It’s actually, so the word Santos is a sort of angle for anglicized combination of two ancient Greek words, which, which actually mean to shift the weight of a burden. So the idea behind it is that we often carry this burden around, and and if we can, and the burden is related to our belief system. And often it’s around our belief system about money, and what our role is to shift that weight of the burden in order to clear the way so that this person can can have a clear path to their authentic selves and to the end to their happiness. Again, because there’s a big difference between happiness and pleasure. So Pleasure, pleasure is the doing in the having. Happiness is the being. So so when you uncover somebody’s deep motivators, what you find is they will use the words being, I want to be the father that I would have wanted to have had, or I want to be a contributor to society, you know, so that those, those are deep motivators, and they never have money or time in them, never ever. So that’s the sort of answer uncovering those is relatively easy. And we will, depending on the situation that we’ll use, if you’d put, too if you put so much money or no money in a question, then you can you get that’s one way of doing it. So if I say to you, you know, if I give you total freedom, because often people will say, you know, what, they want money for us to give them freedom or independence or whatever. Okay, well, let me assume you’ve got the freedom. Let’s assume you’ve got the freedom now. So what? How does that change your life? And so, and now they start contemplating their start thinking and they go into their own world. And what happens in this process is you can literally, physically see them starting to drift into a whole different thought processes. If you’re not even in the room, this advice is not even there. They are in their own world, and you’re just literally facilitating their experience. That’s what they’re having.

Jess Brady
And so because freedom is actually more well defined, when you get them thinking like that, I presume that they then start to think about, well, what would they actually do if they were free of needing to do the things that they feel like they need to? Do they then form the goals that you start working on? From an advice perspective?

Justin Hooper
Again, that’s a really good question. Okay. So this is where the skill of the advisor is required, right? Because, as I sort of keep saying is there’s a big difference between goals and deep motivators. So in the conversation, they will they will intermingle both. So, and a deep motivator, is when there is no next question, right? So, for example, if somebody says, Well, you know, you know, I want, I want to have some money, right, I want money. Okay. Well, and there’s obviously a next question. Well, what’s that for? And so I want to travel. There’s a next question. And that’s all Why do you want to travel what’s at all? And they say, Well, I want to go to different countries. Okay, there’s another next question, which is, what is it about going to different countries that there It is so exciting for your interestingly, well, there’s lots of different cultures there. Okay, and then you keep going, and eventually they will land on something like, Well, isn’t that what life’s about? Okay, then, you know, you’ve learned there’s no next question after that, right? That’s what life’s about for them. And so therefore, that last answer will become one of the deep moments. And the way to test also is you take it away from it. So if you say, you have this fantastic life, you know, for example, you, you travel a lot, you see all the countries in the world, you are very successful financially, your business is great, your relationship with your spouse is fantastic. Attempt and, uh, but you and you have everything in other words, but you’re estranged from your children, you just have to let it land, there’s no question even, you will see the response? If it is, if it’s a deep mobile, if they go nananana, that wouldn’t be good, then you know, that’s part that’s part of who they are. If they go well, that’s okay. We know if you say for example, you never ever leave Australia ever again. And they go, Oh, that’s okay, I could do that. And that’s alright. Well, then, that that is not not a big thing for that sort of the moment.

Jess Brady
And so how long does this process take to find the date motivators, and to really learn and understand the person that’s in front of you.

Justin Hooper
So we do is two elements of what we really focus on. So remember, earlier I spoke about the the hero’s journey, and the and the, the painful experiences, okay, now, that’s painful experiences around money or experiences around money form, the frame of reference or the belief system around me. So we start, then usually, it will start with uncovering and understanding what the client’s frame of reference around money is, what they what their beliefs are, their frame of reference, and then their patterns of behavior around it. So because obviously, patterns of behavior, so if you think about it, at a very basic level, if you have a belief about something, if you repeat that belief, it becomes an attitude. If you hold on to that attitude, it will become behaviors, if you hang, if you could repeat the behaviors, they become patterns of behavior. And if you repeat the patterns of behavior become outcomes. So your outcomes are directly related to your beliefs that applies to anything. And so we try and uncover those beliefs and therefore the pattern so that we can explain the current outcomes, because the client has come to us, because they’re not happy with outcomes. Clearly, they’re not happy. So is that point in only dealing with what we what we call we call the nuts and bolts of money. That’s the mechanics, the strategies, all that stuff, right? The investment, the tax, the superannuation, all that sort of stuff, that’s the mechanics are the nuts and bolts, you have to also deal with the interior of money, which is the way people think about money, because the thinking is actually more important than the nuts and bolts. So we start off with the thinking in two things. One is the frame of reference, we see whether that’s leading to a consistent problem. That’s the first thing and then the second thing is we uncover the deep motivators. Right? So those two conversations for one person will take about 40 minutes, 40 to 60 minutes in total. That’s what both of those conversations that’s quicker than I thought. Yeah, by the end of that, I can tell you, we know them very, very well.

Jess Brady
And then what happened? So you’ve, you’ve gathered this really interesting information, what do you do with it?

Justin Hooper
Okay, so, so, our, our first we were three phases of our process, there’s three phases of the Santos process, there’s the planning phase, there’s the implementation phase, and it’s a renewal phase, renewal, not review. Right. So renewal, because it’s a journey, and we’re renewing the journey. So the first phase, it breaks down into three stages. And those stages are visioning, which is that what I’ve just been talking about, that’s really the interior of money. Then there’s the scenario planning, which is where we map out the different life scenarios including putting into me, because at the end of the day, it is about cash flow. So we put into cash flow models and into scenarios, which comes to some extent, from my experiences in South Africa back in the 70s. And 80s. When we’re in South Africa was scenario plan, or we will use all of that, that to those techniques. And we’ll build models to show them eventually to land on what we call a call to adventure. Now the call to adventure is where the client in the first or the first stage they’ve they’ve, you know, we’ve allowed them to dream into into paint. They’re the ideal scenario, paint a fairy tale, as it were. In the second stage, which is the scenario planning, we end up with them go in again, you see it in their body language, where they go, well hang on a second. So that’s actually possible. So the dream becomes reality in the second stage, and in Hero’s Journey parlance, that basically is the call to adventure. And that that’s whether they are now being called to their ideal life. They’re being called to their authentic selves. They’re being called All too, that there is no longer and money excuse for not being happy in their life. All right, and that’s what happens in the second stage. And then the third stage is where it all gets pulled together into an action plan. And and and that’s when the rubber meets the road about this is what is it required to be done. Then the next the next phase is implementation, we start doing it. And then the last is an ongoing thing with the renewal of that journey where we basically refresh all of us those first three stages,

Jess Brady
and presumably advice documents are given in wav format format. Yep. Okay. In trusting and so this renewal that you do, is this once a year, or how do you make sure people are renewing when they need to, I

Justin Hooper
It’s a minimum of once a year, but it can be more frequently, and then then the meetings that we have with them will all be broken down into different categories looking to renew. When renew the visioning every single time we meet as often as you know, it’s, it can be more basically, are we just dealing with one topic or something, you know, but, but it all the strength of the process is it everything relates back to the deep motivators. So, you know, for example, if you’re doing their investment, or their superannuation, or their, their estate planning or their insurance, if if a strategy, you know, if you think of it, you get stretched, when it comes to the nuts and bolts of money or money management, you get strategies, tactics and tools. So you know that and so when you are applying those, any one of those strategies, techniques or tools, they have to be able to relate back to a deep motivator, if they don’t relate to the end, the clients almost saying to you, you are recommending that I do ABC, tell me how that is going to ultimately make fulfill my deep motivators, and therefore make me happier. Right. And that’s, that’s why it all links back to the deep moments. And so when we are meeting with him on a regular basis, that you know, we are basically relating it all back. So you don’t have to refresh the deep most, but you’re at because you really know that. But you can do it refer to them. And you briefly you know you in the conversation, it becomes clear that that you know what’s important to this client. And then you you know, when you implementing the strategies that comes out,

Jess Brady
you know, this might be too practical. But I have a question about capturing those. And using them in the advice documents, do you put them in your advice software? Do you have them in, I think referenced in the statement of advice through the strategies?

Justin Hooper
Yeah, very much. They, they we do break documents and the three categories. The one is the visioning, we do a vision summary, where we, where we have the money, beliefs, and patterns of behavior and the deep motivators, we actually do a life vision for each client. So that’s where that’s where they really, you do see some emotions there where you capture the, you know, in a, in a descriptive terms, you know, you sort of capture what the ideal life looks like. And usually they react very strongly to it. You know, where you can just see if you’ve got it right there. So if they don’t react strongly, what yeah, if you think that practically, if you’re talking about something, that’s the most important thing to somebody, then there should be some emotional response. And if there isn’t, you must, you can’t have it right. So we would go back to it then and just see where we’ve got it wrong. But we to answer your question, we have a vision summary. In the first document, we then have what we call the strategic pathways, which is the the various models, cashflow models, and the conclusions of the models. And then you have the actual plan, you’ve developed

Jess Brady
a, obviously a really robust process, what have been your learnings? Like? What have you learned? If for people who don’t have a process anywhere near as sophisticated as yours? But want to go on the journey? Can you help us understand things that have really supported and helped you to build what you’ve built? And also things that perhaps didn’t work out? Like you’d hoped? What I think, you

Justin Hooper
know, the I mean, that’s a very, very interesting question from a number of perspectives. But but the, I suppose the, the answer I’d give you is that it’s almost like there’s a lot of fakes around but there’s a lot of people who, who pretend to to do this kind of work, but they’re not actually doing it, they’re using it as a sales tool, rather than as a planning process is a big difference between a sales tool where you pretending to take an interest in a client and genuinely taking an interest. And so my learnings are, you’ve got to actually first of all want to do the work if you don’t really want to do the work. If you don’t really have an interest in the human as opposed to the money then don’t do it. Rather become the technician or the mechanic and stick to your stick to your name. Okay? Because you because because you’ll be found out eventually and you won’t enjoy it. You really will not enjoy it because you people I can see what people have done really Enjoy it, they feel uncomfortable doing it. And then they try using techniques and then they take a list of questions to the, to the meeting, you don’t need a list of questions, if you’re doing this if you actually believe in this stuff. So that’s the first thing I would say is start off with whether you really believe it, we really want to want to do it within. And that’s a philosophical, philosophical piece of work you’ve got to do to really understand what it’s about. And then you go from there. And then you you know, you work out how it’s done. And you and if you understand what, what you’re where you’re trying to get to, then you can develop your own technique or your you can learn from others. How do you

Jess Brady
bring the technique that you’ve built into your life and your team’s lives?

Justin Hooper
into my life? It’s well, I mean, the bottom line is, we love it. We, you know, I mean, I love it, and I’m very familiar with my own deep mobos all the time. I don’t have to repeat them daily, because I just know what they are. And, and so it’s it’s a good reminder, always when you know, something’s, something’s happening. It’s like a, it’s like the North Star to use that sort of cliche, right? It’s your D motivators are your North Star. So if you’re not living, if you’re not living your deep motivators at any time, then you, you are likely to be unhappy, right? And so you know, something’s wrong, then if you’re not actually living them, if you if you got to be aware of them, and you’re going to continually be aware of what what your ideal life looks like, and be heading towards it. So I mean, part of the reason why I do this work is because doing meaningful work and having having meaning in what I do is one of my deep motivators, that’s the reason I do it. I don’t do it for money. I mean, I, I intend to be successful financially. But that’s a byproduct. I mean, I don’t Yeah, so yeah, sorry.

Jess Brady
No, I think it’s interesting. And I would imagine, we’ll actually, let’s not imagine, when you have people join your team, presumably, you’ve got a way to try to figure out a culture match before they join your team anyway. But if they’ve been advisors before, and they say to you, yes, I really do want to do that type of work that you’ve identified, do you find that it’s an easy transition for them to start having these sorts of conversations? Or do you feel like there needs to be quite a lot of training, to get people to learn until listen and understand what people are really saying, when they’re saying something? Yeah, so

Justin Hooper
my simple answer to you is no, it’s not easy. And so there’s an extension to the answer. And that is that, I think it’s it goes back to that comment I made about my learnings, the I think it’s back to the does this person really want to do this kind of work? Or they or are they trying to convince themselves that they want to do this kind of work. So if you take somebody who really is focused on the technical side, and you know, the mechanics of money, or the nuts and bolts of money, it’s very difficult for them, if they’re, if they believe that is actually what it’s all about, to break out of that mold. But it’s very difficult for that to occur. And so you have to find somebody who really, really is committed to it, and you can see that, but it’s not easy, because there are very few people around actually that that do believe in this stuff. Very few people.

Jess Brady
Yeah. And I can imagine, you know, this is years of you testing and trying and learning and observing. And yeah, it would be quite challenging to bring someone in and try to train them on something that is probably quite intrinsic. And, and easy for you now, but not easy to articulate, or have a manual for, per se,

Justin Hooper
if it’s if it if somebody is if they are self aware, and they really want to do this kind of work, they’re very easy to train, incredibly easy to train. Okay, that’s the difficulty, right? If you get somebody who, who really is, is open to this, and they understand it, and they and they get the philosophy of it, and they get all of it, and then never easy to try. Very easy, because it’s it is actually relatively simple stuff, you know, that we call them conversations on purpose, you know, so if you open to it, so for example, you know, you know, I’ll give you something I can see, there’s a lovely picture of a horse behind you. Now, if I if I decided that I wanted to talk about horses to you, just as a topic, and I’m coming into this conversation, and I want to talk about horses sometime, and I don’t have to plan it, I just plant that seed in my head. I want to talk to this about horses, okay. And along the way, there’ll be somehow the conversation will go in that direction. And I’ll say, well, that reminds me Oh sort of thing or whatever it is, or it’ll just it’ll just work. But that’s a conversation on purpose. And why I say that is because if you want to find out what is most important to somebody, and you know what, what those did what deep motivation mean as opposed to goals and objectives. And I’m constantly correcting people about the on the difference there. If you already know that, then in any Congress Session, it’ll go there. If you if you’ve got, if you, let’s say you go, you go for a drink every weekend or some of you go for lunch or something, you know, let’s say and you, you, you’ve known somebody for a long time, and you want to know something, you want to know what’s more important than what is really important to them. And you just plant that seed in your own mind, that becomes a conversation on purpose. And you’ll find that that conversation will end up going to the place that you you thought it would go without it without a specific plan to get there. So you don’t have to, you don’t have to know. Okay, this is exactly the question, I’m going to ask this person, you just have to have a deep interest in the person in the human. Right. And and then now, it’s important to me to know what’s really important to this person, and then you’ll find it, you don’t have to have techniques. Good.

Jess Brady
I like that. Because sometimes I think we make things more complicated than they sound like they need to be. Can we just because you’ve talked about it so much, and I think I have understood it. But let’s just be really clear. So you develop or discover someone’s deeper motivators. And then you obviously figure out through your process, how this is getting modeled and turned into a goal. And then the tools and components that go with it. And then how do you track progress in the renewals? Like how are you making sure that people are staying true to their Northstar? Not just from a financial perspective, but from a date motivated perspective as well.

Justin Hooper
Purpose. So our value proposition is to alleviate any anxiety around money, or, you know, you don’t have to stick to the specific words. But basically, we have to free the person up, I mean, to put it in an in an in another more blank bow, which I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t put your client like this. But basically, we want to take away any excuse around money for them not to live the best life they can live. Okay, so we want to do that on the one hand, and then we want to, we want to use money to create leverage or an easier way you use the metaphor of a chairlift to create the chairlift to make it easy for them to get to their ideal life as soon as possible. So how do we do it on an annual on a regular basis? Well, the first thing we have to do is focus on alleviating any concerns they have, and using and then creating leverage. So if they will come in for a meeting or nothing for 10 years, one of the first things we’re going to ask them is do you have any concerns? Is there anything that’s that’s that you’re worried about? That is distracting you around money, because we’ve got to get rid of that we actually say to clients, if you ever think about money in a negative way, stop there, pick up the phone and say, I’m thinking about money in a negative way at all, I’m concerned about money, you my advisors must be your fault. Because I shouldn’t be thinking about money in a negative way. You should have sorted that out. Okay? Because I’m my job is to concentrate in my life, and to live my happiest life. Okay, and to focus on what’s important to me, your job is to make sure I don’t get distracted by money. Okay, so that’s the first thing that we do when they come in, we ask them, Is anything distracting using it? Let’s assume they say no, no, not at all. Okay, well, the next thing for us to do is to optimize their financial strategies. So because obviously, we reminded them of the deep manual, as we’ve reassessed and re agreed the goals and objectives. So let’s say for example, this may link a few things together, let’s say that the deep moderator is, is to be the best version of myself, okay, I want to be the best version of me. Okay, that’s the deep motivated. So the goals and objectives will change as you go through life, the deep motivators will not the order in which the demon rays appear might change, but the actual deep virus will not change. So being the best version of myself, well, okay, at that time, it might be, well, I want to, I want to do a PhD, okay, I want to study and do a PhD in money beliefs, okay. And, and so that’s now a goal. Well, how much money does that cost? Let’s say it’s going to cost $20,000 A year for four years or something like that? Well, where’s the money going to come from? So we map out the cash flow modeling, okay, and we see, okay, this is where the money is gonna come from. In order to do that we’re gonna have to implement these particular strategies, and so on. So that’s how the strategies and tactics, and so when the client comes in, that’s sort of the path that we’re on. Okay. So we know that you want to be the best version of yourself, we know that currently your goal is to do a PhD. We’ve got this plan in place, are you implementing the plan? So let’s check the cash flow tracking. And let’s check that everything’s in place and doing what the model or the projection assumed it would do, because the assumptions on our targets, the assumptions we made, which all worked out very nicely, it was all very pretty imperfect and all worked out that but now we have to make those assumptions that we have to turn them into reality. So the assumptions become targets. are we achieving those targets? If we’re not What are you going to do?

Jess Brady
I want to ask what might be a stupid question wouldn’t be my first one. What happens in your experience with people that you’ve been working with for a long time, what happens when they get to the top of the mountain? I, they

Justin Hooper
never they will veteran, they are happy, but they’re not going we’ve got a few people like that they are perfectly happy and they, but they continue to be and it’s a continual journey, it doesn’t stop, there don’t, they don’t suddenly go all down and they have arrived. That doesn’t happen. As you can imagine, it’s a continue. So let’s say you’re deep motivated, because you can never actually achieve a deep moment as opposed to a goal. So you live a deep motivated, you don’t achieve it. Hmm. So being the best version of yourself, for example, or contributing to others, or animals, right? Those are things that you love, and they’ll never achieve.

Jess Brady
I asked because I have people who are probably significantly younger than the people that you’re working with the mountain feels very far away. And I think it’s, I think you’re 100% Right. And it’s just, it’s good to validate that what I thought the ultimate being is, is the answer. And that it’s a continual journey. And also with us living longer, and being able to live better lives for longer, people are getting the opportunity to you know, go back to uni when they’ve finished work, you know, do fun things that maybe people wouldn’t ever have given thought to before.

Justin Hooper
Yeah, so just Just a quick comment on your point about young people thinking the the news just made me think about something as well but about that, you know, we when I was younger, but you know, young people that are the mountain feels a long way away, they are focused on goals and objectives. They are in that classic thing I was telling you about where when I when I am in this situation, then I will be happy or then I’ll be able to see the mountains a long way away. Now the mountains right yet. The mountain is it the top of the mountain is available tomorrow, or today. But because there’s no reason why you why you can’t live your deep motivates from now, you just need to know what they are and then you start living them now. If it feels a long way away. That’s because you’re focused on the goals not not on the deep lows. You can live your best version of yourself right now. You can contribute to others right now.

Jess Brady
Why don’t we call it date motivated mountain? Yeah, I feel like that’s what we’re gonna call. That’s what we’re gonna call it rather than goal mountain. I feel motivated, deep, motivated mountain. Interesting. Okay. Did you have something else that you wanted to add? While I was asking my question,

Justin Hooper
I was just thinking about what I was like, when I was younger. And I was like that. I was, I was always like, uh, when this happens, then I’ll be happy kind of thing. And that’s probably what the what your your question made me think about that may have been a catalyst, one of the catalysts for me, you know, ending up doing this kind of work.

Jess Brady
And I think most of us have been taught to believe, yeah, that, that is what happens that you won’t get there until X, Y, or Z. And as you say, in this capitalist society, we’ve done a great job of explaining that that’s how you get there, which many people will tell you is wrong.

Justin Hooper
Yeah, I mean, the other element that that happened for me that that links everyone to is your is your belief system or your frame of reference? Because that together with? Well, I suppose Actually Actually, hang on that it’s the same thing. Actually, what we saying is either you get taught these things, then that forms your belief system. So it’s really the same thing. If you, if you think if you if you believe that that more money will, you know, will will free you up and allow you to be happier, which you know, it’s not untrue. It’s not completely untrue to say that more money, more money doesn’t make you less happy, it’s up to a certain point, it makes you more happy. And then beyond that point, it’s neutral. It doesn’t make you more or less happy. It’s just something completely different. You know, your happiness comes from other sources. But so that’s the issue with with money in retrospect, I mean, we’re all good. People have a lot a lot of money that they’ll never ever spend, but but they are not happier, necessarily, then people with a lot less than that.

Jess Brady
Yeah. Ah, I think this is fascinating. One of the things that you’ve said today that I find really interesting is I was asking you about how easy it is for people to do this. And you said, obviously, you need to make a decision whether you’re going to be someone who who genuinely wants to lean into these conversations or whether they’re going to do the nuts and bolts. And I think you know, we always should hold the mirror up and I think sincerely thinking about how much of this we’ve done to ourselves and learnt for ourselves because, you know, there can be some amongst us, Justin who have the leaky tap farmer analogy, but I think it would be really hard to do this kind of work. If you haven’t gone through this process yourself. And I don’t think These are conversations that very many advisors are having, at nearly the same level of depth and thought that you have.

Justin Hooper
You’re right, you can’t first of all, on the first comment you made, I don’t think you can ever do this kind of work. If you haven’t been through it yourself. And if you’re not living it yourself, I think it’s impossible. I think it’s inauthentic. But I think it’s impossible. Most importantly, and so because you can’t, you can’t, you can’t have the conversations with clients. If you if you haven’t been on the other side, it is not the end, the end, it becomes very easy. If you if you have been through it really well, the conversations become quite easy, interested in upset. So when I’ve done training of advisors in the sort of work, which I used to do much more of than than I do now. Two thirds of the training was designed around them going through the process themselves first. And then the last third was how it was some of the techniques that will be there had been used in that process,

Jess Brady
it makes sense. Makes no sense. I can talk to you all day long. You know that already. And the listeners will know that I can talk all day long. If people want to learn more about you and what you do, where’s the best place for them to find you

Justin Hooper
on our website is obviously there’s quite Our website is quite as good, quite a lot of content. So center wealth.com that I use is the one is probably the best place. I’m quite keen to. I wrote a very brief book a while back, but it’s not. I wouldn’t say it’s my best work on this sort of thing. I’ve evolved a lot since then. And so I’d like to write. Yeah, I’d love to if I had the time, I’d love to just get with what’s in my head out then in into a book, but our website is probably the best.

Jess Brady
Okay, before we finish up today’s podcast, which has been really interesting, and I’ve taken lots of notes, and which is why I’ve been first scribbling away. I’d love to finish with some rapid fire questions. If you’re up for sure. Yeah. I would love to know, Justin, what’s one thing that you do to look after your mental health?

Justin Hooper
I nature’s one of my one of my de mer. So if you’re not being an African out, I go swimming in the ocean and take your camera with me. So that talked to the fish, literally. I mean, I assume for exercise, but also, I also take pictures of fish.

Jess Brady
What do you mean, to the fish, we need to understand what does that have a little

Justin Hooper
conversation with them. And as I will as I swim past them, I sort of well,

Jess Brady
that’s not the best angle, if you could just turn so I could get a better shot, that’d be great.

Justin Hooper
So that’s one thing I’ve done nature is I find very, very helpful. The other thing is that I practice elements of stoicism. So stoicism is a is an ancient philosophy, which is basically, you know, for wildlife, there’s various philosophies. And one of them for example, is is a more fighty, which is which is Latin for a love of your fate, which, at a practical level, really, excuse me, just means that you accept to life is full of experiences. And whatever those experiences are, that’s all they are. They’re just experiences and, and you’re there to live them and there to actually enjoy them even when they’re difficult. Because without without difficulty, you never know is the Buddhists say no joy without suffering. So you actually can’t define joy without having the opposite. So I do that. So you know, I practice a more fighty and Memento Mori, which is another Latin phrase, which means, remember, you will die. Remember your mortal basically, which effectively means you need to focus every day on, on what makes you tick, or what makes you happy. In my own unique moments, you can’t always be thinking about the long term future because it doesn’t mean to say you shouldn’t plan for it. But it’s a pretty you do have an obligation almost to remember that remember that you you fallible and you will and you will die at some stage and so you need to enjoy every minute. Don’t waste a minute.

Jess Brady
Agree. Okay, these aren’t very rapid, but I love them. So I’m giving us permission to keep talking more about this. I’d love to know Justin and you sort of talked about this but in case you’ve got a different answer, what is a piece of advice that you would give to younger Justin?

Justin Hooper
I split off two things. Okay. Well, one is one is is specialized actually right. So I would there’s there’s dif different specializations within this work that that we know we are working on. So that’s the one thing so specialized at a deeper level really deep level I’d like to do a PhD on on money beliefs, because I think that’s the single most important thing, but so specialized would be the one thing and the more fatty basically which is which if the younger me was too intense, I was way too intense and focused on on goals way to focus So if I understood those deeper things at a much younger age, I would have been much more relaxed. And I probably would have achieved a lot more because I would have taken more risk because I wouldn’t have been worried about it. I didn’t take very much risk in my life other than going to business. I didn’t take much financial risk, because going back to school full time for another time baby can tell you about my some of my money beliefs that came out of my youth. And that might be very risk averse, actually, with with money. And so that’s held me back in some ways.

Jess Brady
I think it’s fascinating when you start realizing your own money, beliefs, and then you start realizing how they’ve helped and supported and sabotaged today. What is something that’s on your bucket list?

Justin Hooper
So bucket list is also quite an interesting concept. But I mean, I mean, animals is the thing that that, you know, sometimes I ask people, you know, if you’ve only got what if you’re going to do one more trip in your life? Ever? You know, where would you go? And who would you go with? Now, from the data question that we’ll get to deep motivators, actually. Okay, so So,

Jess Brady
what’s yours? What’s your answer?

Justin Hooper
I can sit in the bushes in Africa, in South Africa, probably against in the bush surround wildlife and not have my family in the in a car where we would just sit and chat and we would watch animals and then we’d spend three or four weeks in an African bush with animals and my my family mazing. So what’s left on the bucket? Oh, there’s lots of things. But we’ll be animal related, you know, swimming of the whales in Samoa is something I’d love to do after the dolphins four or five times in ocean a song of the whale shark. So those kinds of things would be what I would do straightaway.

Jess Brady
Amazing. Yeah. Are you ready for my last question?

Justin Hooper
Yeah.

Jess Brady
Ready to take notes? Because I feel you will have a very good answer for this. Question. Do you have a book recommendation for my fake book club?

Justin Hooper
It’s quite a difficult one. I’ll tell you why. It’s a difficult one. Because I’ve read a lot of books. Already, you know, Amina tossed out literally hundreds of books not that long, we’ve still got hundreds of books in the office, and I’ve got at home. You know, one of the things that are another piece of advice that I’d give to my younger self is Don’t read too many books. And so what I did was strange. Okay, and

Jess Brady
it does sound strange. I tried to read a book a week at the moment, what are you talking about?

Justin Hooper
Well, I think I, if I, if I did it again, I would read I would find one book. And this. As you know, if you read a lot of books, you’ll know that, that there’s a there’s an incredible amount of wonderful stuff in every book, right? For 30 bucks, or whatever you pay for a book. There’s wonderful stuff in there. And they are 1000s of wonderful books. They are right then there’s so many books, I read atomic habits recently and stuff like this. So many good books, Okay, wonderful book. But it’s not about the books and ideas. It’s about the implementation. So read one book 100 times, and implement it, just read it over and over again and implement it. That will

Jess Brady
mean that atomic habits, that is atomic habits, we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. That’s an amazing quote by James because I mean, it sounds like that is what you’re preaching.

Justin Hooper
Yeah. Yeah. So atomic habits together with essentialism, for example. I think those two seem two books go pretty well, together.

Jess Brady
essentialism?

Justin Hooper
Yeah, they’ve both very good. And they’re kind of the I think they go well together. What we’re different to what we’ve been talking about today. I mean, then, in terms of the context of what we’re talking about today, you know, one of the great books is obviously, Man’s Search for Meaning, right, which is a very old book

Jess Brady
to France, you haven’t read that you did tell me to read that many years ago, which I haven’t. But I do need to thank you. You did tell me to read a hero’s journey. And now I can’t watch your film again, without knowing exactly what’s going to happen within the first seven. I think you helped me to waste no more time watching films, because I now understand how they build plots. So thank you for that. I did go out and do that after you talk to about five years ago. So Tommy habits essentialism and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

Justin Hooper
Definitely. I mean, the other one, that’s an awesome old book that’s actually quite has more depth than one probably. What appears in the beginning is is the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Which is which is it to be quite honest, when I first read it and first went on a course on it. And always I thought I understood it very easy. There was no big deal. And then as I got to understand a bit more have it because I read it more often. I realized I had no clue the first time I read, you know. So that is because that talks about the private victory. So the first three habits of Seven Habits is all about the private victory and the philosophy is you’ve got to qualify to deal with other people. You’re going to get a victory over us Self, which means you’ve got to be self aware, you got to know what’s important to you, you got to focus on what’s important to you spend your time on those things, then you are in a position to think when when to synergize. And to, to focus to to seek to understand before being understood, you’re qualified to deal with the public, right? Or other people. And that’s why that books also very significant,

Jess Brady
thank you. Well, now I have four more books to know I’ve read, I’ve read atomic habits, I’ve only got three more. Justin, this has been a very, very good conversation to round up 22 And actually my podcasting journey with ensemble or XY advisors. So on behalf of the entire community, a huge thank you for being today’s guest. And I also just want to say a huge thank you to all of the listeners who have listened along for the entirety of 2022 I have had such a breadth of people come on and share their insights and ideas and I really hope that people have been able to learn and implement, as you say, some of the great insights so a huge thank you.

Justin Hooper
Thanks, Jess has been really nice.