#373 Phil Thompson – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey, guys, Ben Nash from the ensemble team. And today I’m very pumped to be here with the man with the plan, Phil Thompson. When I say plan, I mean topknot. Phil is the financial advisor and founder of sky wealth, based out of the great state of Victoria. Phil, great to have you, man.

Phil Thompson
Hey, thanks for having me, Nashy, good to be here.

Ben Nash
By the thoughts. A good place to start is is really just your advice journey and how you ended up where you are today?

Phil Thompson
Yeah, cool. Yeah. So I got into advice around 2011, I think around about then 2011 2012. And early on, I earned an advice business. So the the advisor I was working for exited pretty early for me getting in and I just took the plunge and took over the business, which was fun, interesting, whole bunch of learnings there. And then early on, I was AFA rising star nominee alongside yourself and a few other good friends of ours back in 20 1314, or whenever that was, and so that’s when we first met and then have did holistic advice for quite a number of years for like eight years, and then was getting a little bit frustrated with advice for thought on maybe I’ll get out or just saw the writing on the wall. And my view on advice was that you really need to go real high end market. So ultra high net worth worth worth clients. All you need to focus on one thing and do that one thing really well. And so my kind of desire and passion is to work with clients, just like myself, you know, average average Australian average income. And so I saw that kind of, you know, one of the only ways to do that, or not the only way but but I found that a good way to do that was to move into insurance helps people make a really difficult financial decision, which insurance is, and we can do it at a low cost for the client. Because the alternative was you gotta charge really high fees to add value and to, you know, execute the services that advisors need to do. So that’s what we did. 2019, kind of 2020 we didn’t we don’t work with any clients other than insurance only clients.

Phil Thompson
Yeah, so we partner with another advice firm, actually up in Brisbane, because there was a bit of time where we went insurance only for new clients. And we were managing the existing client, and just got too difficult, I realized that it was a little bit unfair on the clients to kind of not, we, you know, I was still servicing him, still helping them. But if that wasn’t my future, then maybe it’s not fair on the client. And I kind of realized that, you know, as much as I think the clients love me, and you know, and we and, you know, I’m important in this relationship, at the end of the day, it’s one of the best for them. And so that’s why we moved into just partnering with another firm in Brisbane, and who were setting up an office in Melbourne. And so we, they work with, with our clients now. And it’s and it’s best for the clients best for us. And this for the for the new business as well.

Ben Nash
And so what’s been the impact of that change on business? Business Growth, Team growth? Like, what did you What did your business look like? Then it was it look like now?

Phil Thompson
Yeah, so the business end looks crap. And the business now looks like good. So one of the one of the big learnings and look, I wish I did it much sooner, like the reason we did it is, you know, I saw, you know, another thing is in the advice space, you know, insurance advice, there’s fewer advisors wanting to do it, revenue or drop with regards to Commission’s and so it was really difficult kind of space. And I thought if I come in, and try and put a lot more kind of emphasis on the client’s executing a lot of the tasks, and we kind of share that burden of getting insurance in place, we can make it a much more efficient business. So we’ve grown like, significantly since we were doing like I was trying to pretend to be an advisor back in the day and had like two staff. And now we’ve got over 25 staff in the team and and plenty plenty clients, I kind of wish I did it much sooner because the benefit is we know exactly who we work with. And we know exactly the people who should be working with us back in before it was kind of a little bit gray on the financial visor can help in A, B and C. But if you want a and b we can kind of do that. If you want C and D we can kind of do that. And so we weren’t really clearly articulating exactly who we work with and who should work with us. But now it’s very, very simple and easy what we do.

Ben Nash
Oh yeah, I think there’s a lot of obviously different ways to do advice, but I would agree with you that over time like Where we seem to be heading is that people are either you’re an investment specialist, you’re an insurance specialist, your business owner specialist, or you’re a Planning Specialist, but a Planning Specialist needs to sort of cater for people that can pay an appropriate fee for a good quality planning service, which is, you know, sit now significant such that as you say, it does sort of cut out a lot of the the average income type. Australians, it’s, they are probably priced out, I’m hopeful that maybe they can’t, obviously won’t be able to see my fingers crossed on the the audio recording, but that this QR stuff is going to move the dial a little bit, but I think we’ll continue to see advice businesses play more in higher value higher fee space, and it means that there is a large market that are probably not not getting service as well. Tell us when you when you think about starting an insurance only business essentially, almost from scratch, even though you did have an existing business. How did you actually how did you tackle that? How did you figure out what you do what you wouldn’t do what you do differently, and how it would roll

Phil Thompson
Changing all the time, and still still changing, which is the beautiful thing. So we can’t I kind of just delve into it headfirst and we, you know, the last, you know, holistic client I worked with I charge, you know, 20 30% above what I should should have charged or what I what I would normally charge. And I still said yes. And I still regretted doing it. And I still like you know, procrastinated and found other things I wanted to do. But so that was kind of the real the last advice client, that wasn’t just pure insurance. So when we moved to insurance only, we just kind of just started solving problems and going okay, what, what some issues so we, you know, originally we weren’t charging a fee at all. So we would say, hey, we will do a rough guide, a proposal for you to kind of go, there’s roughly how much cubby we think you need, and roughly the cost, and here are maybe the terms and then we did a lot of work. And we kind of build that out where we Okay, as a part of that we would do a pre assessment. And then from that kind of proposal to the statement of advice, we would, you know, get the clients to commit, hey, if you if we do the advice, and then you pull out, we’ll charge your fee. But we still weren’t charging a fee up until then. And then we realized that that proposal stage, we actually did most of the work to, to advise, we actually pretty much were getting everything ready and doing all the research to provide advice, full pre assessment, full, quote, analysis and everything. So I just was like, why don’t we just give advice, then, which we did. And then and then we started charging for that and going well, there’s huge amount of value here. Whether they go ahead or not, it’s you know, it’s not up for us to decide for the client, there’ll be sides of themselves. So you know, we’ve moved to a stage where today what we do is we do a 15 minute phone call with clients, just to give them an idea of what we do. And just to really help them understand that we’re only doing insurance advice. So if they indicate our maybe I want help with super cool, we’re not the right firm for you to work with, you know, we’ll we’ll refer you on to someone who’s kind of more suitable. And then, so that 15 minute phone call, we understand and then and then we charge them a fee. So it’s, you know, we charged $330 for individuals and $495 for couples. For weeks. We still call it an insurance proposal, but it’s a statement of advice. And then yeah, and then from there, they either go ahead as we tell them to they change the code if they want to, or they choose not to go ahead with any of the cover.

Ben Nash
And then so if they do proceed with taking up the insurance, then you just take the Commission on the policies and there’s no further fee at that point. Is that right?

Phil Thompson
Yeah, there is a little asterix, so we do say hi, if we if you sign off and say you want to go ahead, and then we do a whole bunch of work and then you pull the pin at the end of the day, you don’t have to go ahead with it. But we’ve done more work we’ll charge you a fee for that. And so that’s in the the advice where we say individuals it’s $750 once off cost, if they go ahead and pull the pen so it’s certainly three reasons we charge that So reason number one, they just decide not to proceed after signing off on the advice. Reason number two, they get declined for anything we don’t know about. So they’ve you know, having told us about drug use and go until the insurance company about drug use. Well we did extra time we asked you the questions. So we charge your fee or we say cancel their policy and the Commission’s are clawed back. So there is an asterix I’ve charged like five times in 1200 clients that we’ve worked with so we almost never charge it. But yeah, our standard process 330 for individuals 495 For couples and then the Commission’s on it.

Ben Nash
I’m just just trying to do some mental maths around those. Those numbers the axes mentioned the youth With 1200 clients, and you started doing this in 2019, so how many how many clients? So you guys typically, onboarding on whatever cadence makes most sense for you to think about?

Phil Thompson
Well, yeah, I thought you’re gonna ask me this question I looked at so at the end of the financial year, what we did is we did a report that we sent back to the insurance company and say, Hey, this is where our business is going. Here’s the issues we’re finding with you. If we don’t hit the business, great, but there’s still things that we’d love to see improve. And if we’re not, and I think we place what was it five, just just less than 550 individuals last year, I like a couple if they both got insurance, that’d be two people.

Ben Nash
Yeah, that’s a huge number. And on advisors we have.

Phil Thompson
So at the moment, we’ve got three advisors, we’ve got a p y, as well as a professional year as well. And we’re trying to recruit another advisor at the moment.

Ben Nash
And so you mentioned that you mentioned a little bit earlier that one of the things that you do is get the clients to do a bit of the more like some of the heavy lifting to make it a little bit more efficient from your end. What does that look like?

Phil Thompson
Yeah, so we do we get the clients to film the fact find on their own, so full fact find on their own via an online form. And then and it’s, it’s comprehensive, it’s not just gives you income, debt and super balance. Because we do a full pre assessment off the back of that fact, fine. So we, we get the factfinder completed by them on their own. And, you know, we’ve got videos explaining why it’s important and everything. And they can email us back and forward if they’ve got any questions, but we’re not they’re sitting there doing that. We do tele interview for every clients. So we don’t do any personal statements with clients. So some of that stuff. We it’s not like it’s not revolutionary, most client advisors would be getting their clients to do that stuff, as well. But you talk to some advisors who will do like for for meetings, like like your business, you do a number of meetings. That’s right.

Ben Nash
Wait, yeah, well, we we do get the clients to complete their own fat fine, but then we review that in detail and discuss it with them in detail. Not every point but anything that we think needs to be clarified. We do that after though they’ve they’ve signed on as a client and paid the deposit on our advice, fees, and that sort of stuff. But yeah, we don’t necessarily sit with them to to do that. But we do spend an hour and a half asking them questions before we go before we go into doing our bit of the work from there comes from that.

Phil Thompson
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, you know, we will still go back. Like, if someone’s got a BMI of 50, it’s probably they’ve, they’ve, you know, put the wrong number in, because it’s a really high BMI. So we just, you know, tactfully go back. And it’s just because we had a client the other day, who put in pounds, and then and centimeters for the height, and pounds for the weight. And so BMI was massive, everyone came back or declined. We had to just go back and say, hey, just, you know, is this correct? And she’s like, Oh, no, I put in pounds? Who puts it? Who’s in pounds is my mom. Yeah. So you know, we go back. And you know, there’s a there’s, we still need advice. There’s heaps of work and going back and forth to the client. But we try and make that that process as efficient as possible.

Ben Nash
Yeah. And obviously, it’s important and get with insurance, like you got to charge a fee. I think people people respect that they appreciate it, they take it more seriously and take the decision to engage in the process more seriously, for sure. But also before they before they purchase, and because as much as we like to think otherwise, it is a bit of a grudge purchase, you want to try and keep that as low as possible to get them until they can see what they’re you know that they’re gonna get all the peace of mind that they want.

Phil Thompson
And also from a from a client experience, it’s because we genuinely say you’ve got three options after the meeting, you take out everything we told you to you change the quote, or you don’t go ahead with any cover. And when they pay us a fee, and everyone in advice understands it’s not we would go broke tomorrow if if no one’s will get cover, because there’s no way we can make that profitable just on the advice on that. That 495 for a couple. Yeah, but at least it helps the client walk away without feeling like oh, I kind of owe you something because you didn’t I didn’t pay your fee, and you’ve done this work for me. So I kind of owe you something. So maybe I’ll go ahead with insurance. Our clients if they don’t want to get insurance, we comfortably feel okay because well, we still got paid for our work. And they feel good walking away because there was a value exchange. I paid you money for this and I got this and I walk away. And so it’s actually good for both the advisors not to feel like there’s any kind of For Sale, and the clients that feel comfortable with a genuine decision that they’re comfortable with. And what’s

Ben Nash
the you might not have this number on might not have a handy, but what proportion of the people that you do the proposal for end up taking up some level of power, but do you know,

Phil Thompson
love and love our CRM to give us better data? It’s for sure. But as you know, anecdotally, it’s probably you know, 70 to 80%. The takeout because I mean, they’re all they’ve all paid a fee to be taught they all want insurance. Yes. Why is it paid his money to tell him? Where and what and how? So what needs to be portioned but some people you know, it’s reasonable, I’m maybe I don’t do it just yet. Maybe I’ll come back in a year’s time or, you know, we get a lot of people who we work with who say no, and then they come back later. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. pays another fee again. I say this again? Yeah,

Ben Nash
I think Well, it’s obviously the market changes pretty quickly. So it sort of makes sense that you’ve got to redo the work. And I suppose, understand that. Also, the fact that I think that the premiums go up each year, it sort of keeps peeking keeps a bit of an anchor point for people as well to know that, you know, the more runs away, the more they’re going to end up paying their pay more. It’s not like just paying another 330 or 495 bucks, it’s they’re gonna cover as well, tell us what some what’s been the most challenging part of that the not so much the transition, but, you know, rolling out essentially, insurance only solution. And, obviously, now you got to the point where you’re, you know, onboarding, that amount of clients, you know, in significant volume? Yeah, what’s been the biggest challenge in that for you?

Phil Thompson
I mean, efficiency is hard. So, yeah, this is something that we’re kind of working on and thinking about at the moment is, you know, we’re working with all the insurers, we, we, you know, we hate them all, legally, the insurance companies, so we don’t discriminate with insurers, but, you know, which means we’re working with like, 10 different companies and their processes and got to gotta manage that. But also, you know, insurance is a space like advice is, you know, very compliance driven. But within the investment space, you know, there is a matter of like, if someone in the team accidentally takes, you know, a diff of the wrong Vanguard ETF within the investment portfolio, it’s probably not going to make that much of an issue, you know, you find out a year later, we invested in the wrong fund. Alright, let’s just fix it work out, was there any performance difference and your paycheck to the client for you know, 10, grand, or 20, grand, or whatever it is, with the insurance. If we make a mistake, and we cancel a client’s policy for a million bucks and they uninsurable, then then that’s a million dollars that we’re on the hook for. So making sure we’re an efficient business, but also with the right checks and balances. And I feel like a lot over the last little bit, maybe we’ve gone too far, and the checks and balances. And now our our our staff are experienced and understand what they’re doing. We can kind of maybe scale back on on the you know, let’s check this policies in place correctly. Seven times. Maybe we can do it five times. So I feel like yeah, how do we build efficiency without any downside to the client experience or downside to kind of, you know, making sure we don’t make any mistakes?

Ben Nash
Yeah, it’s an interesting one. And obviously, there’s a lot that goes into it. A lot of things to check as well. How? Because did you have an offshore? You got a big offshore team now? Did you have did you have those the same team members when you started this journey? Or is that something that you build out with the insurance piece?

Phil Thompson
Yeah, we didn’t have a big offshore. I mean, we didn’t that I didn’t have a big team, full stop. It was a baby business, basically. And so we’ve kind of grown pretty significantly in the last 12 months, really. I felt like last year, I was just interviewing people, and just onboarding people. And so yeah, it’s just been about like, how do we grow and learn and change on a consistent basis? That’s really what I’ve tried to learn and but yeah, onboarding people and training people is really hard.

Ben Nash
what’s your what’s your top tip re re offshore team onboarding in particular.

Phil Thompson
Oh, top tip. For me, like it we we think about we my business, I think about like, how do we just build systems and processes like one of the things that is great about doing one thing is like, the list of things to improve doesn’t get smaller, but it just gets narrower. So you know, if you’re doing a lot of different things for clients, it’s so hard to fix our How do we fix our mortgage broking? You know, process in this little area? Or how do we help our investment Implementation Team fix that, like, the list is very wide and very long. But in our business, the list is very narrow, but massive in terms of what we can improve. So it’s, it’s good because we can build in a lot of processes. Like I read the book system ology last year, which was really good kind of thinking about how do we build out better systems and really bring the team along that journey, because we’ve got people who are experts in the team, and they can help build out the systems. So maybe that’s my, my top tip, read system ology, and follow some of it.

Ben Nash
I think I know, like, I’m a very process minded sort of person. And for for a lot of years, in fact, until just just recently, I, I did take on all of that stuff myself. And it is, you know, as your business grows, I think the number of systems and I think we’re pretty streamlined with how we do things, but it ends up being like, a lot. Now, we’re at the point where people, different people in the business own the different systems, it’s a total game changer. Because when something needs to change, or or be updated, or refresh, then they do it and it doesn’t sit on your list for, you know, months waiting for for something to happen and end up overwhelming as well. So

Phil Thompson
and then yeah, there was something that we did last year, we’ve got someone whose only job is business improvements. And every every day anyone in the team can have ideas on how do we improve something. And then three mornings a week, we catch up to talk about what it is. And we kind of agree like whoever’s the stakeholder in the area that needs to be improved. We kind of say, Yeah, let’s do this. And there’s one person whose job is to just implement it, and do it. And because that was the issue, it was all on me, Phil, we need to fix this, we need to fix it. Cool. Just get to the back of the line. Everyone’s got suggestions. So yeah, we’ve got one person whose only job is just to fix, you know, improve the business.

Ben Nash
That’s an interesting role. How do you how do you hire for a role like that?

Phil Thompson
We didn’t we hired for a different role. And she was very, very good at it. And I was thinking about how do we how do we do this, and I’ve gone, you’re good at doing this. So I want to basically, that can be your only job is fix these little issues, because I just want to always be moving and improving. But it’s gets as it gets bigger and the Beast gets a bit bigger, you kind of can like, I feel like I need to be a bit more cautious and thoughtful about these changes. And so but I still want to move quickly. And so that’s why I’ve just got one person to implement it. And then also understand that the beast, and so we can chat about any change, because everyone in the business has got great ideas like, like the best ideas, because they’re the ones doing it all day long. I’ve got no idea what most people do. So I want them to come up with the ideas of how to improve it and think creatively. And then just suggest that and then and then it kind of goes through this filter process. And then we change it all the time.

Ben Nash
Is that an onshore role or an offshore role?

Phil Thompson
offshore? Yeah. Awesome. That’s great. Yeah. So she, I mean, she came on to as our marketing and kind of, you know, CRM kind of expert, so they help us with our automations and stuff. And then And then, you know, we had a chat and say, Wait, you know, if you could be if you could do one thing, long term, because as we grow, you start to hone into one area and be specialized in that one area? Or would you prefer marketing or like operations and improvements? And she said, Yeah, operations, and I geek out on that stuff. So that’s what I want to do. And I said, Perfect. That’s what you do.

Ben Nash
Happy days. That’s one of the advantages, I think of having a growing business and a growing team is that it does allow you that flexibility with with where someone wants to take their roles, so there’s a lot of opportunities for different things you can be doing more of so I know when we’ve been baking that into our, our progression planning with the team, it’s like, they can just take it wherever makes the most sense for them. And it and it sort of gels. So

Phil Thompson
I mean, I’ve got a I’ve got a question for you about that. Like, how do you think about that when you’ve got team members saying I think I want to be here, but as a business owner, like the business will probably prefer them there and you see their skills working better in a different area. How do you manage that with those with those team members?

Ben Nash
Well, I think you’ve obviously got to make sure that the short term business needs are met. So you bring someone into the business to do a particular role, but so that they obviously need to do that role until then you don’t need them to do that role. But I think if people if people demonstrated capability and enthusiasm for doing a particular thing and they’re good at it, then you Great, they can add more value to the business by doing that way. So we had like, Tim in our team, he joined the business as an associate, he wanted to be wanting to be an associate wanted to be an advisor. And he had then he had, he’s right into systems and stuff as well. And he’s he came to me one day and said, I think we could track the workflow better for our onboarding process through using monday.com. And he goes, this is what it looks like. And he goes, and by the way, I’ve just I’ve put together this, you know, rough outline of what this could look like. And I was blown away, and like, I’m a process skier as well. And so he showed me that and I was like, wow, this is amazing. Like, obviously, there’s a, there’s a skill set there. So I said, Well, great. I said, run with it, let’s, let’s do it. And we, he did, and we ended up using that approach. And it worked pretty well. Now, we’re not using it now, because we’ve sort of leveled up our CRM since that time, but that to me demonstrated capability. And then I started getting him involved in more things. And then we had our practice manager was going on maternity leave, we had a real need for that role to be filled. And for me, it’s much easier to hire a not that it’s easy, but it is easier to hire an associate than it is to hire a, you know, an operations manager. And he’d already demonstrated capability and had an understanding of the business. So he just sort of slotted into that role. And now he’s absolutely crushing it and has been a total game changer for the way that we tackle what we do. Similarly, our team leader work, our team leader, the first offshore team member that we brought on, she’s now running the team, like she’s a team leader for the for the offshore team, even though she’s moved, she was in the Philippines, she has now moved to Canada. But now she’s also she’s wants to do more on the on the operation side. And she’s basically being like an implementation manager running a bunch of client meetings, because we recognize that there was that wasn’t working the way that we wanted it to in the business. So she’s doing more on that side. At the same time, though, sometimes people want to go down a particular path, and there’s just not the ability to do that in business. And I think that if you, you need to call that out. And if there is a plan to get there over the over the not so short term, then you can work towards that. But yeah,

Phil Thompson
in our team, we’ve got, we’ve got some team members who say I maybe want to do paraplanning long term, and I see their role in like, you know, Client Services, and going well, you’ll be more valuable in the business where you are, you’re good at what you’re doing. And I can see more growth for you in this area. So I think personally, I think, and like, you know, and your personal, you know, salary and everything like that, it’s not going to increase over here. But but the idea that our that’s career progression for some people, when I personally am like, I think this is this better career progression for you? You know, for all of those factors, I yeah, those those conversations are really interesting. They go, you know, because there is this client services, then paraplanners number, you know, is a step above. And my philosophy is, you know, within our business, like, I kind of, you know, apologize to the advisers and say, Look, one of the issues of being an advisor at Sky is you’re not the hero, like most advice businesses are, it’s like, the adviser to the pinnacle. They’re the they’re the top dogs of the of the business, but it’s kind of the way we think about it is like, the the junior Client Services Officer is just as impactful in in doing what we do and helps us do what we do that they’re really important. And so this kind of like, outside thinking of like, what is the hierarchy in a financial advice business, and then what what I feel like is best suited for them and the business and their career is kind of, you know, there is a little bit of a disjointedness and had having these conversations is, is really interesting.

Ben Nash
I’ve had that same conversation with offshore team members wanting to move into powerplant seats as well. And as much as it is really unsaid, I feel and we know that it’s not the case, I think it is driven in a large part by the fact that paraplanners get paid more money in the Philippines than non paraplanner employees on average. And I think that their overall their their wages are, you know, relatively low that they’re not, you know, like super affluent, I suppose, from it from an income perspective that we’ve had and like implementation team members, and they go, I want to do that and like, you might you’re gonna make the same money. And when they really understand that and believe it, then they go, Okay, well, yeah, like it’s more of a, like you say that it’s a level up thing, but for us, like we’ve got, yeah, the implementation and they were, you know, we used to call them that move, but the now essentially implementation people that they’re as important perhaps more important when it comes to, you know, the business operator Unity then the PowerPoint up, maybe not more important, maybe just as important. So yeah,

Phil Thompson
yeah, it is this interesting cure staff and managing, you know, what’s good for them what’s good for me what’s you know, and, and also putting, you know, I also think about how do I look outside of myself and go like, you know, they people are going to automatically think I’m being selfish telling him I think this is in your best interest because everyone’s innately selfish. But how do I look outside myself and go look, I actually do think like, and I say it straight, I say you’re paid better than than what you will be over here, I can tell you that today. And I think it’s best for you, the only benefit I can see you doing that is finding a job external from sky. And if that’s why you want to do it, that’s totally reasonable. And it makes sense. And we can move you in that area. But there is no benefit in terms of salary in terms of within sky. Other than you can tell a potential new employer, Hi, I’m a paraplanner, as well, I’ve got that skill and you become more employable. And which, which is a legitimate concern. And you know, and everyone’s got to think about where even I do, I’m the business I’m gonna think about with, you know, if everything turned to crap, what would I do?

Ben Nash
Sometimes, though, I think people just really want to do the work, like we’ve got a young and plaza that we put into a sales seat, and he’s crushing it in sales and relationship management in the business. And he, but he, I really want him to stay in sales, but he really wants to be an advisor. And so I’m like, I have to be supportive of that. So as much as I think he probably could earn more money can certainly add more value to the business he wants to go to. And that’s

Phil Thompson
yeah, it’s just about understanding is, is your motivation, because you want to do that work. If that’s the case, great. But if your motivation is these external kind of made up factors, maybe we have a chat about it.

Ben Nash
Absolutely. What’s what’s coming up for you, Phil, what are you what are you focused on now

Phil Thompson
continue to grow, we’re just going to doubling down really is our aim like for us, you know, there is a continual trend for advice firms to get out of insurance, less advisors are doing insurance, like, you know, when we caught up the other day, and someone tried to pitch you a service, that was really an interesting conversation we were in. And you’re just like, we don’t really do harm when someone’s trying to sell you an insurance product. I think that’s a big trend advisors are getting out of it. It’s too hard. It’s it’s very complex, it’s high risk. And so we’re just going all in on that space. And, and unfortunately, the the ability for clients to get insurance advice is only diminishing, and so I only see kind of, you know, upside in our business.

Ben Nash
Love it, man. It’s good to see you. i My last question for you. And I’ll put a caveat on this one. But it’s the question is, if you could go back and do one thing differently, what would it be other than getting into insurance? On the advice sooner?

Phil Thompson
Yes. Well, that’s my answer. Let me let me have a think about what would I do different? I would be, I think, I think when I first took over the business that I took over, I was I was very concerned about a whole bunch of things. Like, you know, our clients gonna leave, you know, you know, I’ve just been a whole bunch of money. That’s not my money, someone else’s money, who lent it to me on a business? How do I secure this? And just being less worried about that? And more thinking about, like, how do I just build a good business? How do I build processes? How do I, you know, actually grow and bring on new clients, that’s the hardest thing about advice is not as hard any at the moment, like, we’re kind of living in a golden era where there’s more clients, and we can ever anyone can service. But back when I started back in my day, it was I found it really, really difficult to find new clients. And I was focused on things that weren’t impacting that ability to find new clients, because when you got client, you’ll solve the problems

Ben Nash
later. Yeah, the business coach says, the answer to all problems is more sales. Or sales, more money, more ability to solve problem solver solve problems in different ways. So

Phil Thompson
yeah, and there was a case for us when we just started really getting a lot of leads, like that’s why we just iterated so quickly is because we had to, like when you don’t really have the clients and you’re trying to solve the client experience before you got any clients. It’s so stupid. What are you solving? You just imagining this idea that clients will love you for this or not like you for this? And and we all did it all young advisors did it. We thought about our amazing solution before we even had a bloody client.

Ben Nash
Absolutely, yeah. I think when you start doing volume, you immediately start seeing the pressure points and what can we improve or what keeps coming up or what’s the recurring issue? It’s a good way to identify things. It’s just that then it’s just resourcing. And if you’ve if you’ve got enough clients then you can reach also appropriately if you don’t, then you sort of can’t as well. So yeah, correct. My love that thank you for for sharing your your insights I. It’s great. It’s great to see see from the sidelines. And yeah, man. Thanks again.

Phil Thompson
No worries. Thanks for having me.