#371 Cara Brett – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey, guys, Ben Nash from the Ensombl team. And today I’m here with Cara Brett. Cara is the founder, financial advisor and wealth coach had Bounce financial. Cara, great to have you here.

Cara Brett
Thank you for having me.

Ben Nash
Look, I thought a good place to start would be could you just talk us through your journey and advice and how you’ve ended up where you are today?

Cara Brett
Sure, so I did start bounce financial about eight and a half years ago. But prior to that, I worked in a stock broking firm here in Brisbane.

Traveling and do all those fun things. And I was working there and I kind of looked around and went What is this? This industry looks really interesting to me. And ended up staying and kind of working my way through there doing RG 146. And eventually a degree and things like that. So I kind of stumbled into it like I guess a lot of people did, and and kind of found my way through here. And then obviously starting the business a little while ago. So I’ve been in it longer than I care to admit. But But yeah, definitely found my way here by chance, not by choice.

Ben Nash
Well, I can’t believe it’s been eight and a half years. It’s amazing. Like having conversations, like you doesn’t seem like that long ago. But you know, those years, just just roll on. Tell us a bit about the journey of the business over over that time. Because I know that when you kicked off that, and I know that you still are heavily into like cashflow management around advice. At the time. That wasn’t as it wasn’t very common at all, certainly not as common as it is today. How did you go about sort of, you know, planning that and figuring out what you’re going to do? And then how’s it evolved from that?

Cara Brett
Yeah, so I mean, when we started the business, or when I started because it was just me at the start. The plan was to work with the younger demographics, right. And when I say younger, I talk about my demographic, and I realize I’m not so young anymore, but but let’s just call it the Gen Y demographic. And because most financial planning firms at that stage, barring a few were kind of older, so I went into it with that in mind. And of course, we look at the usual thing, like I was looking at the usual things that people would look at with financial planning, so superannuation investment, insurance, etc, etc. But every client that I saw was asking me about budgeting, and about money management, and some really what I considered simple questions that I realized so many people didn’t really know. So it kind of evolved the way that I started providing advice and giving advice in those early years because I started from nothing, right. So every client that I got, I, you know, evolved, how I was providing advice to them. And it ended up becoming the centerpiece, I suppose, of what we do is this cash flow management and strategy piece, and all the rest kind of plugs in the back is hygiene really. And so over the years, we develop systems and processes, and we have a very strategic way that we go about it. And then incorporating technology into that as well by our apps and different programs to be able to, you know, be really hands on with clients, because it turns out that they, you know, well, we provide this high level of service, but they really love the fact that we’re there and we can see what they’re doing. And we can guide them in real time about decisions that they’re making with their purchases and the way they manage their money. So like it’s almost like the the clients told us what they wanted. And we then listened and developed the service and the way that we do things with them. And it just got traction, like it really it took hold and you know, they referred clients, etc, etc. Because it’s the service they actually wanted. It’s most of them aren’t coming to you saying I want to look at my investments in my superannuation. They’re saying how do I manage my money and get ahead? And that’s really where it where it came from.

Ben Nash
And so practically, what does that look like for a client today? What is the journey look like? How do you get involved in their cash flow? You know, what, what tools do you use? And where?

Cara Brett
Yeah, cool. So I guess at the start, we do some pretty solid fact finding in in relation to figuring out what their life costs to live. So, you know, a lot of people say I spend $1,000 a week and that’s a lie. Most of the time, we know that it’s going to be more than that. So we go through a very thorough process of getting information from them so that we can then you know, realistically understand what they’re spending, which most of our clients you know The average client is anywhere from 120 a year to 180 $200,000 a year spending right? Now we really want that information so that we can then project out what’s realistic for them in relation to other things. But how we track that is through my prosperity. Not perfect, we use it, we’ve created systems, you know, reports, etc, to manipulate the information to line up with how we’ve provided advice and how we track. But then, of course, they’ve got access to that app, we have the data feeding through, and then we can provide them with quarterly reporting on how they’re going relative to the plan. If there’s anything coming up, if there’s any changes, you know, we can basically say to them, you know, you’re spending more in this area than we anticipated that you were going to so do we want to change the plan and adjust the time horizon on what we’re trying to achieve, or, you know, change some of our behaviors to reflect the goal that we said that we had. And so there is like, we’re very hands on with this kind of thing. And we are making sure we’re touching base with our clients on a quarterly basis for that, as opposed to giving them you know, investment updates or market updates. Yes, they get that stuff. But I think they’re more interested in how they’re tracking to their plan. Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Nash
I find that obviously, it’s such a big part of the decision making for wealth accumulators, and the main driver of how quickly they’re, they’re making progress. Like, it’s great to get great investment returns. But ultimately, like how much they save, and how much they invest is a much bigger driver. It is a tricky one, though, to to systemize. Across a business, I’ve found like we’ve been heavily into cash flow for a long time with clients. And I’ve found it to be quite challenging, particularly as we’ve grown our advisor numbers in the business to create system. And I’ve tried all sorts of different ways to do that. We’re also using my prosperity as the back end, and but not perfect in terms of like every business, I think looks at different things and focuses on different things. So how you mentioned that you sort of customize your reports and align the data with what were the things that you focus on? How did you go about doing that? And how do you do that in a way that’s efficient for the business and efficient for the clients?

Cara Brett
Yeah, so we have, I guess, a standardized, you know, budget calculator, you know, really boring word. But from an internal standpoint, it means that we’re doing it the exact same for every client and we categorize, we basically come up with the perfect budget for that individual client, but based on the categories that we use, and there’s there’s a lot of them, but we segment it very specifically. So when we’re working with each client, we do it the exact same way. And in that we create the internal budget within my prosperity, and the internal, like headings in areas that they’re spending money, exactly the same across the board with our systems. We input that for them, then we set the different rules, which you know, you can set and again, they’re not perfect, like you said, we do have to do some tidying up each month on that. So even though it’s personalized for each person, we do have the exact same system across the board. And what that enables us to do with our power planner is that other than a bit of tidying up the data that we pull out from a cash flow perspective, like the the budget data, where it says how much you’ve spent relative to how much we’ve anticipated kind of comes out exactly to match our reporting and our system that we have created for them. So we don’t really get the clients to go in and categorize or do anything themselves, we actually physically prefer to do it for them so that it matches, our, our budget or our template that we like to use. And that’s kind of the best way that we’ve been able to, to systemize it to some degree, like, it’s not perfect, like you said, and if if fully open banking came across, it would make our lives easier, but we’re still dealing with that sort of screen scraping situation that does have its bugs and unfortunately, we just have to manage that on a case by case basis. But you know, we’re constantly liaising with them to give them feedback on what we need and how it will be better for us so like because technology I think we can all agree technology is going to play a part for advice going forward regardless, like we are very pro on that so therefore we want to be involved in helping shape it so you know, they hear from us in terms of what we need and and what we need them to be you know working on in the future as well. So not perfect, but it’s kind of the best that we can do but we’re always reviewing it basically

Ben Nash
it’s amazing that they’ve been talking about this open banking for so long and it’s like it just seems like such slow going like he can’t help but think that the banks are holding on to things will make hear, you know, slower than it needs to be to get there because I feel like there’s so much application for that stuff. But it just, it just does not seem to be happening. So fingers crossed, I

Cara Brett
think it’s in their best interest is it right? Like, from, you know, there’s, they have their own, like internal tracking for you know, a lot of the banks do so it’s probably not necessarily a high priority for them to be sending it to a third party. Which I you know, from a business perspective, I understand, but obviously, for us, it’s makes it a little bit harder.

Ben Nash
Absolutely. How is it received from your, from your clients? And do you get any any pushback from them in, in getting all in their grill around their cash flow management?

Cara Brett
Most of the time, people really like it. Like we’re not brutal about it. We I always say to people, Look, I’m not going to get you in trouble for him having KFC last night. But we try and focus on the higher level, like as an aggregate, like, are we loosely what you what you’re supposed to be spending across the board. Sometimes it’s higher, sometimes it’s lower, if it’s more around going is this completely out of the scope of what we thought because it 100% changes your long term projections, right. So I think sometimes when people get their first report, they’re a bit surprised. Most people think they spend less than they do. And I don’t know, if you have the same experience, but in our demographic, they really don’t realize what they’re spending. So that’s always a bit of a shock. And they, you know, on the odd occasion, they want to explain why they’ve spent things and we always sort of say, look, it’s that’s not really why we’re here. You get to spend money, how you want to spend money, but you just need to understand how this will impact the rest of your plan. So most of the time, people are pretty good about it. Sometimes people just want to see it, they’re just happy to sort of see what it says and don’t really have much to say. But generally speaking, it’s taken quite well. But I think maybe it’s because yeah, we’re not getting them in trouble for the little bits and pieces, we just might highlight highlights and stuff to them.

Ben Nash
Yeah, I think ultimately, the end of the day, it’s the clients plan. But we know when someone’s working to a plan, that they’re going to be able to make better decisions and be more confident in what they’re doing. Ultimately, it’s and it’s funny as you made that comment, like, people say I spend $1,000 A month or I save $1,000 a month, but it’s really just sort of finger in the air type stuff. And one of the things we say to people is like, we just need it, we need a starting point. And we want to make sure that that’s an educated one. But then we need a feedback loop to say, Okay, what’s actually happening? If something’s out of line, it’s like, do we do we need to change the plan? Do we need to change of behavior or Has something happened that’s out of our control. Either way, as long as you got that feedback loop there, then it allows you to decide which lever you want to shift at the end of the day, it’s their plan. So let’s just pick a plan that you’re happy with. And then let’s work to the plan that you’ve picked for yourself, essentially, but it does take time to, you know, shift those shifts and shape the habits and behaviors that sit around that. But in our experience, I found that the juice is definitely worth the squeeze on that one.

Cara Brett
Yeah, and I think like it’s, it’s that behavior change component of it that takes longer than like, that is really the coaching component of what we do. You know, like, in some respects, if we want to make sure that there is excess cash to work with, whether that’s investing or whatever it is, right, sometimes it’s going to change, check out and take some behavior change. And I guess that’s where we become that, like, go to person for them to have these discussions. And then we have the data to back it up, right? Because it’s all well and good to say spinless. But when you can actually say, Hey, these are the areas that you’re spending in. And what we want to do is try and align your spending to your values. So if you really value travel, then great, let’s put money there. But if you don’t, you know, like you can cut back on takeout or whatever it is right? That kind of helps to have those discussions, because it’s actually based on data and not just, you know, the vibe of what they’re spending.

Ben Nash
Absolutely. Car changing gears a little bit. Whether you’re new, where do your clients come from?

Cara Brett
Yeah, so I mean, luckily, because we’ve been in business for such a long time. Most of our clients come from just referrals of other clients, and they usually come direct to us. So, so referrals from clients, a lot of it comes from, like social media, in our marketing strategies, I guess. We tend to find people talk about us in Facebook groups that we haven’t even heard of which is which is fun. And then like everyone we do have a few referral sources that send us is the odd client but it’s not really it’s not really something we rely on. It really just does come from, you know, natural people reaching out to us from other clients.

Ben Nash
And I know that you Got a just trauma on the marketing side? How did how did that sort of come about? And what are you guys doing from a marketing perspective today?

Cara Brett
Yeah, so, before I started the business, I started a Finance Blog. So maybe nearly 10 years ago, um, because I wanted to start getting some content together, and I wanted to start practicing. And so that was really like, I started this blog, I would put it on my Facebook, I did it every week, for solidly for, I don’t know, well into the business five years or whatever. And so I started with that, but a lot. Obviously, Incorporated social media. So Facebook, Instagram, because that’s where our clients are a podcast, we still do blogs, and we do a newsletter every single month. And I think that whilst they’re all pretty like standard, you know, largely boring things that people would anticipate you do. From a marketing standpoint, the thing that probably has been really successful for us is that we have been consistent since day.so. I have never not sent a monthly newsletter, I have never not had, you know, four posts on Instagram every week. And I’ve never not had a blog at least once a week on our, you know, website, so that we’re always visible, and we’re always available and in the peripheral of our potential clients, I think makes them comfortable that we are there we are active. And again, I just I honestly think it’s the consistency play because a lot of people will do it for a short period of time and then drop the ball because they don’t see the the exact outcome. But it has been so beneficial for us, we will find someone who follows us on Instagram, for example. And you can almost say that within three to six months, they’ve reached out to us. So yeah, so boring. But the consistency for us has been really good.

Ben Nash
Yeah, I think it’s that that virtual sort of tap on the shoulder that it’s like, you’re still there, you know, and people think about their money, I’ve found I’ve had this conversation with a number of people that they might see something and go, Oh, that’s interesting, maybe I should do something about that. And then life gets in the way, and then they move on. And then it’s like two weeks later, that pops up again. And they’re like, oh, yeah, I still haven’t done anything, I’ll probably get to that, I’ll probably get to that one soon. And then life gets in the way again, and then it’s like, he’s still just there and still just there and people go off, eventually they say, Oh, I’m gonna actually have to do something about it. But I found, like, he say that that consistency is all important. We obviously do quite a lot on the marketing side as well. And I get chatting to a lot of advisors, and they’re sort of asking for ideas and, and tips and saying, like, how do you do all of these things. And all we did was start with one thing, and then just do it and build it into the business as usual. And then, you know, keep going with it, and then over time out another thing. And another thing, but I think like you to your comment that people go wrong, that they go, I’m gonna, I’m gonna start a podcast, or I’m gonna start doing blogging, and then they do it for a bit, don’t say anything, and then they get distracted. And there’s always something else to focus on. So it’s easy to get distracted, but they don’t build attraction, and then it sort of, you know, starts to collecting dust in the corner. And then it’s all that time and effort is wasted, not not getting the results. So 100% agree that you just pick one thing, keep at it, and wait, wait for it to bear fruit. Because the great thing about marketing, it’s sort of like advice, you can tweak slightly what you’re doing, you get immediate feedback on whether it’s whether it’s doing better or worse than what you were doing before. And then you can just keep constantly changing things until it does what you want it to do. Essentially, I don’t know if that if you’re experiencing similar with,

Cara Brett
look 100%. And I think like, you know, you’ve probably had this too, and a lot of people go I don’t know what to, to do in my marketing. I don’t know what to talk about, or to put in my social media. And honestly, we think about the questions that we’ve been asked this week from our clients. And we write something about that. Because these are the quote, If the clients are asking us this question, and it might seem really simple obvious, then it is the same questions that our potential clients are asking themselves, right. And so if you just think about some of the emails or phone calls you got in the last two weeks, there is so much like ideas and you know, content that you can put out there that helps to educate and make people feel comfortable with you. And understand what it is you actually do. And you might be saying the same thing in five different ways over the next couple of months. But it might be that specific way that someone needed to hear it too, to actually get through to them. And that’s that consistency thing like you said,

Ben Nash
totally and it’s like as advisors, we’re always saying stuff all the time. Like we’re just constant li saying things to people. So the things that you say, you know, over and over again, that’s your content right there and things that you say that people go, Oh, that’s interesting, that’s probably a good place to start. And it’s like, there’s, there’s hundreds of those things, I think, people, really, if you, if you think about it this way more way more things that you couldn’t talk about, then you probably didn’t have time to actually, you know, create content around. So I think that sometimes we can overthink it and and think that it needs to be this this thing that’s bigger than Ben Hur, that just exactly what you said, and what are you talking about? What are people asking about? Get it out there. And that has the big advantage, though, when someone consumes a whole bunch of that, and then they come to you, they’re already aligned with the things that you’re saying, because if they weren’t, then they wouldn’t be talking to you about it as well. So it means that it’s easy. It’s not like you get randomly referred to someone that just wants a financial advisor, and then you start talking about your philosophies. And it’s completely inconsistent with what they’ve got, it’s like you cultivate that person in the way that you’re gonna make them into an ideal client, for you as well.

Cara Brett
Yeah, like 100%. I feel like most of the time, when we sit in front of, you know, potential clients for the first time. They reference a podcast that I that we did, or an article that we wrote. And so most of the time, it’s really just a formality of sitting in front of us having the chat before they decide to go ahead. So like, it’s just a great filter to for getting your ideal client.

Ben Nash
Absolutely. Car again, changing gears slightly, I know you work with your husband, I also work with my wife, we’ve worked really closely together at startups, just just the two of us and things have sort of evolved over time. But how do you how do you find that? And how do you guys manage that you’re in?

Cara Brett
Yeah. So it is actually really great. And it’s probably a question I get asked all the time is how do you? How do you work with your husband, I think like, this plan of us working together was a plan we had from the beginning. So whilst I started the business independently, and then continued to work as a solicitor in financial services, the intention was always to bring him into the fold. And so hence, the way we started, it was very intentional with that. When he joined the business in, you know, four years later, or, or whatever he came on, as an advisor, where, obviously, given his background, he’s, he’s pretty across it anyway. So we both work as advisors. And we both essentially have our own clients, meaning that whilst I see him every day, and we’re doing the similar work, we’re not necessarily across each other’s clients. But because our process is exactly the same, and we’ve, it’s well documented, you know, we can help each other if we have to. But I think like, in relation to the day to day stuff, we kind of have our own clients in relation to the business management side, it’s a really good partnership, in that we we take off our advisor hats, we put on our business owner hats, and we go and do our 90 day business planning every 90 days, the two of us, and he’s got his strengths, I mean, coming from more, that’s really handy for for certain things and contracts and stuff like that. And then my background really is obviously the longer term advice background. And so and the different strengths that we have with that, it allows us to kind of, you know, integrate that part of it. And then again, we take our business owner heads, and we go back into the advice, the advice side, and so I think, because our goals are aligned, in terms of what we’re trying to achieve on a personal level, as well, as a business level, it actually works really well. But probably, you know this as well, you need to be really good at communicating and communicating on a business perspective. And then, you know, switch it over to a personal perspective, so that there’s no, you know, no conflict on that side of things. And I think we’ve managed to to do that really well.

Ben Nash
Yeah, maybe I wasn’t so successful in that. At my end, I know my wife and I almost killed each other in the early days. But I feel like it probably helps that you guys are doing, you’re doing similar roles next to each other, whereas she was essentially like my CSOs slash, you know, doing everything else behind the scenes and my wife loves her to death, but she doesn’t like being told what to do at but she also didn’t know what to do. So I sort of had to tell her what to do. So it was a very, very tricky balance to find. But over time, as the business has evolved, she’s moved into a more strategic role in the business particularly as he started a family and stuff and I find that that that side of things works, well work works much better. And we were just chatting a little bit offline, but it said There’s a lot of decisions to be made in the business. And when you’re the one that’s making all the decisions, you sort of get that it’s almost like decision fatigue type type stuff. And sometimes you just want someone else to, you know, to make a decision or to support a decision or give input on it. So it’s not just you, you know, doing doing what you think. And I like,

Cara Brett
partner, like, you know, when I started, I didn’t have a partner, whilst whilst he was there, he wasn’t really in the business. And so like you said, making every decision myself, which, once you start getting a really big client book, and it is exhausting. And so like, you know, I always used to look at people who had started businesses who had partners, not necessarily romantic partners, but just like business partners, and, you know, they could divide and conquer. So, when Ben came in, it was a bit of a relief that I could hand off some, even if they were just boring, easy decisions, like what are we going to write in this week’s newsletter, I could like hand them off to somebody else, and just know that it was being looked at with the same amount of care that I would give it. And so that is definitely one of the benefits. And I think that as you get further in business and bigger, it would be quite exhausting as a solo business owner of whatever industry to be constantly having to make that that decision on your own. And I guess that’s where the likes it like business coaches and stuff come in as well. But yeah, it was, it was a bit of a relief, to be honest with you.

Ben Nash
Yeah. And also not quite the same. And we’ve got great coaches that support us. But I think that, you know, you’ve got someone that cares, cares as deeply and as is as invested in the outcome, like, particularly, you’re working towards the same sort of goals, whether it’s a life partner or business partner, like, I think it is a different a different sort of dimension on that as well. Yeah, for sure. Kyra, what’s, what are you guys working on today? What’s sort of coming up for you guys.

Cara Brett
Um, so we are, I suppose trying to get our business even more streamlined than it already is. We self license last year. And so as you probably know, that is a bit of a process and, you know, adjustment. So it was it was actually quite smooth in the scheme of things. But that was a really big project for us. And so we want to make sure that we’re constantly, you know, pushing forward with the business in relation to making it a streamline is easy, while still being, you know, really bespoke business. And probably look to hiring another person next year to slowly build out our capability. So, you know, with Christmas coming up, that’s fine, we’ll have a bit of a break. But I think next year, is a good time to slowly start the progress of bringing on some new people. I’m technically closed for new business personally, because I do have a full book. But you know, Ben still has a bit of capability. And then we sort of start talking about the next steps of, you know, do we bring in an advisor? Do we? Do we get more, you know, support staff? And how do we do that? So it’s, I’m not 100% sure what that looks like. But it’s definitely on the the next year agenda.

Ben Nash
Sounds like you’ve got some good 90 Day planning to do over the Christmas break?

Cara Brett
Yes, it is already in the calendar. So I look forward to that.

Ben Nash
Cara, my last question for you is if you could go wind back the clock eight and a half years and give yourself one piece of advice. What would it be?

Cara Brett
Charge more from the start? I think I undercut myself severely, but I didn’t know any better.

Ben Nash
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a journey. I know, we did the same and we probably charged four times as much as we did in the early days. Today, and obviously, you know, more inputs and and costs have increased and that sort of stuff. But yeah, I think we put so much on like we have these mental anchors to different Oh, we can’t charge 5000 I can’t charge 10,000 And then sort of evolved past that and look back and go Oh, shit. What was? What was I doing that for so long?

Cara Brett
I love it. Yeah. Yes, definitely.

Ben Nash
Cara, thank you so much for sharing your insights. It’s great to see you guys crush it up there. And yeah, thanks again for making time.

Cara Brett
No worries. Thanks, Ben.

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