#377 Warren Strybosch – Transcript

Ben Nash
Hey guys, Ben Nash from the ensemble Team and today I’m here with Warren Strybosch. Warren is a founder and MD of the Fine group. Basically, he’s a man that likes to keep busy accountant financial planner also runs a non profit. Warren A is listed in the top 50 Most Influential financial advisors in Australia and IFA award winner. Warren, great to have you here, mate.

Warren Strybosch
Thanks, Ben. I’m really pleased that I was able to come on today. Thanks.

Ben Nash
I’m someone that always likes to keep myself busy as well that I feel like he’s taking it to another level with the amount of stuff that you’re involved inside. I’m keen to have a chat about how you’ve ended up there. And yeah, so some of the lessons along the way, I thought a good place to start was really just I suppose that journey really how, what your journey looks like in advice and how you’ve ended up where you are today, essentially.

Warren Strybosch
Thanks, Ben. So it’s been really actually an interesting journey. So my background is I started studying accounting. And halfway through my canning course, I actually ended up getting into the army. And that’s probably another whole story there. Because I’ve got an identical twin brother who, from my perspective, Oracle got tricked to going into the army. But anyway, so I actually got into the Hungee. And unfortunately, when I was in the army, I taught this and my back and so I got medically discharged from the army because all the time this and and so I left the army. And for some reason, in hindsight, I decided just to ramp Deacon say what course you’ve got offering because I was living closer to deacon at the time. And they said, We’re going to teaching course, I just actually just jumped into teaching did a double degree, majored in psychology and statistics. And I always thought I would get back into business and most likely accounting. And then a couple of years into teaching, once I started studying, again, this guy came along in the regional town that I was living in, called himself a financial advisor, and back then ASIC didn’t have their registered, really up to date. And unfortunately, that guy who knew a lot of people in the community actually took everyone for a ride. And so a lot of people in their community lost their homes, people got divorce, marriages broke down. And people got sick from this whole incident that occurred. And it just made me really realize that a lot of these people were at 1015 years older than myself. And thankfully, I did get involved actually found out about it. And so it made me really think about, okay, if I’m ever going into business, I really need to make sure that this never ever happens again, to any of my clients. And so I kind of did a segue and went into financial planning first, and so became a financial planner, and then eventually finalized or finish my accounting qualifications. And so I’ve had the benefit of being a financial planner, going into accounting, whereas a lot of other accountants try and do financial planning. And so that was my journey into the whole sphere of financial planning and accounting included on

Ben Nash
it. So you’re in, you’ve got like, you’ve got your fingers in, in a lot of pies. What does your business look like at the moment? And what sort of people who are you working with?

Warren Strybosch
Yeah, so obviously, on on the main accountant and financial planner in the business, we’ve actually got Aaron, who joined us last year as another financial planner, we had, overall, about 15 staff. And I’m actually we’re about to hire another two staff. So well, we’re hiring another person to help in the accounting side of the business shortly. And we’ve actually got one of the paraplanners, who is going to become a financial pilot, so she’ll be working in financial planning business. Some of those staff they’ve had at least 15 staff, we have about seven or eight who work in the non for profit business that we set up a number of years ago. So it’s a bit diverse in that regard.

Ben Nash
I’m keen to talk more about that. But in terms of the financial planning in an accounting, you know, insurance super and the more, you know, financial advice, the side of the business, what is the what is the client look like? And what do you do for them?

Warren Strybosch
So, when I first started out in financial planning, it was very niche. And I, you know, obviously, the, the words that we don’t talk about now was double gearing and all that kind of stuff, and cash flow management and debt, we cycling it. So I used to do that when I first started out. And so obviously, from there, I actually decided to move away from that and actually become more of a, I suppose you would call it more of a generalist financial advisor, I was, the things that we do well is obviously the personal insurance and the superannuation, but our business has changed over time. So we now do a lot of retirees so we look after retirees and pre retirees. And so that’s our focus of our financial planning business now. And so we yeah, we concentrate on more of that side of the business while still looking after our accumulated.

Ben Nash
Okay, and how did that how did that shift come about? What What drove it and how to do end up there?

Warren Strybosch
Yeah, I just think, you know, I’m 51 So I’ll just you know, they talk about the you start picking up clients 10 years, either side of yourself, and I just think that’s partly my age. I also played long Also, and I get on well, with a lot of people who are a bit older than myself, I’ll sit down have a cup of tea and that discussion. That that’s one way. Also what happened as part of my journey is that, you know, in the work that I did, that I’ve started to get recognized, you know, obviously, when the ifI awards and one of the other things that kind of helped me with the whole retirement side of things was that I got invited by Australian super to be one of their representatives, so to be put on their website and to look after some of their clients. And so that’s obviously led towards more retiree clients for our business network as well. So it’s, I’ve been really fortunate to, you know, pick up those awards get recognized for the work that we do from the for profit, you know, write those articles in the local community papers, etc. And so it’s just just getting that brand out there or getting known in the community for someone or for the advice that we that we do.

Ben Nash
Yeah, I think it’s natural. I’ve noticed with our clients like we’ve been going seven years at pivot wealth. We’ve been over seven years, and the the client sites get older as you get older, which seems like a weird thing is it’s certainly partly a natural thing. We’re in tell us about the non for profit, and how did that all come about? And what is it that you guys are up to that?

Warren Strybosch
Yeah, so this, it’s an interesting journey for me. So probably about six, seven years ago, I actually had a friend of mine who I used to go to prom school with, she used to live across the road from us, from will good friends, our family, family, friends, and, and she passed away about six years ago. And once she had cancer, previous to that, and she was, you know, she got through that, but then all of a sudden, she passed away. And so I didn’t think I was gonna be so affected by anyone who might pass away, you know, you know, death is part of life, so to speak. But it actually really had an impact on me, I actually had to sit down and kind of like process this whole situation and what had occurred. And, and it just made me start to think about, well, what am I doing with my life? You know, what am I doing with my business? And, you know, you talk, you hear about triple bottom line, which is the whole commercial thing of doing something socially and environmentally. But for me, it was about a legacy, you know, what am I doing that? What am I going to leave behind? When I pass away? What are my kids going to say about me? What’s the community going to save me? And so I really gave some thought about what can I do that will have an impact locally? And what can I do that will have an impact also overseas. And so we’re, I’ve made a deliberate decision within my business to actually put funds towards doing community work. And so we set up a non for profit, we call it the fine Foundation. And what we do within that non for profit is that we actually set up community papers. So it’s not a newspaper. So we’re not trying to be a newspaper, what we’re trying to do is provide a platform where every nonprofit school and sporting club can get free advertising but in one place within their local Shire, and start to then get that word out there so that those organizations can tell their story. And also provide a platform where they’d like to say they can do their free advertising, to, you know, let people know that they’re running events, you know, would be a school fete, or be a bowling event or something that might help them with their organization as well. And so that’s the community side of it all. And so, you know, and then obviously, from that, we set up in a networking group to run alongside her to try and help to support that community paper. And then obviously, overseas, I’m trying to help, you know, in a developing country to provide work so I can’t give sewing machines, it’s not my thing, but what I’ve identified is that I might be able to help provide jobs to other people, so that I understood my work or getting other small business owners to support or hire people overseas, because I’ve got that teaching background. So I’ve got that connection with universities over there. And also, you know, we’ve also got, I’ve got to that church link over there and overseas as well. So that’s part of what I’m trying to achieve is do something more than myself basically.

Ben Nash
And I love that I have been using offshore team based out of the Philippines or you know, for three years and I actually just I was just wanting out for a trip over there. I had been to the Philippines about 12 or so years ago, but was just winding up after starting working with this offshore team. Just when COVID was kicking off and COVID obviously put a pin in that just got there for the first time over the Christmas break to catch up with our team there and yeah, it was it was really eye opening. They’re based out of Cebu in the Philippines and you know the area where the offices are is one of the BPO it Park type areas and like really lovely but it’s amazing that you see you don’t have to go too far from from those areas and you’re seeing people that you know, really poor Now you see the difference and even talking to our team, some of the stories that, you know, family and that sort of stuff that you see that it really does make a difference. And, you know, looking at numbers, what people get paid in BPOS versus national average incomes and all those sorts of things, you see that there is a real life changing impact there. So that’s really awesome to see. What’s that? What are your plans? What are your plans in that space moving forward?

Warren Strybosch
Yeah. So obviously, our aim is with these community papers to we set up one locally for where I live, which is in Marinda. Show, then we got invited to do one in Geelong. And so now, obviously, there’s the vision, because initially, it was just I was just going to do my local area. And so now, there’s a potential that we could probably set one up for communities all across Victoria. So that’s obviously just going to take time to do that. And we’re not really trying to rush it, because we’re trying to still work out how it all works, even for the ones that we’ve already set up. But for overseas. Yeah, so Philippines is where we were, I’ve actually decided to try and support those people. But we’re not in Manila, we’re in earlier we now or just outside of which is in a province called Honey Why. And it would be like you were talking about, you know, more of the poor, and people are poor locations. So you know, for instance, some of the people that we’ve hired you, you go to their homes, and so I made it to a decision that last July when I went over there that I actually would go and live with them. And so I would go stay there homes, and you know, some of these rooms would be like a single room, a toilet, but no kitchens. And that would be it, you know, like, so love these people. And that was a good place to live in. But that’s a good place for them, you know, in that regard. And so I have a vision where we want to try and buy land for these guys. And so they staffing or the group of people who who work over there, we call it find hope today, they would own that. So it’d be like a co op type thing. So nobody actually particularly owns it, and like no one person, and then we would build the building. So we build combination, and then the stick and second storey would be where we would try and provide a place where they can work. So we currently have so I have my own building in honey white. And I’m the two storey building that we renovated. And so we have, like I said, about 15 people working in that building. And that’s really great, Mike. So, you know, the first time I hired someone, that’s probably five, six years ago, we had one and so now we’re 15. And we’ve actually invited other businesses to start looking at what we’re doing and to support what we’re trying to achieve. And so yeah, that’s the vision is to get the land, build these buildings, give them better accommodation, and then try and find other small businesses, or find it within myself to try and provide ways where I can give them work. Because if we can give them the BPO equivalent wages, it makes a massive impact to them and their and their immediate families and also the communities around them. So at some Yeah, that’s that’s one of the things I’m trying to do.

Ben Nash
Man, I love that. Changing gears a little bit, you’ve been at it for a while, what would have been the what’s been the most challenging part of your journey to date?

Warren Strybosch
I think everybody would say, you know, Compliance would be probably one of the biggest challenges. It’s ever since I joined financial planning. It’s never just been a status quo. No, there’s always been changes. Something is always occurring, something’s always happening from a legislation point of view that might have an impact on our businesses. And so yeah, so that’s been quite big. But I think for myself, especially in these last few years is because the business has been growing. And we’ve we’ve obviously got the accounting, financial planning, and the non for profit is always something to do. And so there’s been a lot of time spent working on the business rather just in the business, per se. My challenge is that I’ve got to do less than 70 hours a week. And so and, and that’s, and that’s been a real challenge. And so I’ve made it, look, one of the things that I’m looking forward to doing and I’ve been starting to do is actually trying to just cook meals every night, because it forces me to, you know, this is sort of family, it’s forcing me to stop earlier, prepare the meals, cook the meals gives the kids a chance to talk to me, you know, and have that time because previously, I would literally be, you know, eight o’clock at work. All right, so dinner time, had dinner, go back to work, and it’d be bedtime. And I’d literally do that probably five, six times in the week. And so that wasn’t self sustainable. And so it’s having to make deliberate choices about how I would, you know, reduce that workload, and you think getting extra staff would actually help you to reduce the workload. But, you know, having that extra stuff means there’s a lot more things that you’ve got to check or approve, or, you know, look over. And so it actually creates another whole set of work that you you didn’t think would occur. So it’s just trying to work all that out. And so spending a lot of time on the business to try and free myself up is probably one of the things that I’ve been trying to work on over time. So

Ben Nash
yeah, I think in any business, there’s always more to be done. And you’re right that it is that that pay off waitstaff that they’re doing more, but then there’s more things for you to be across. And I think until you build a team to the point that you can bring in leaders in the team that can then, you know, again, take over the those responsibilities that is sort of inapt more time before you, you get the time back, but I know it personally, I’ve I’ve found that, you know, having to put some barriers in place is, is really crucial. For me having kids was a game changer, because it forced me to, you know, be there to help Wi Fi out and, and, you know, that preserved family time, meal time before that. I was really struggling to find those boundaries. But it is obviously important because you do all this work. And it’s great to have an impact. But you’ve got to be upbeat, you impact the people around you as much as the people through your clients and the people that that are around them as well. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. And I think they’re doing a lot, a lot of work in a lot of different areas as well that have made this sort of compounds as well. I imagine, though, that you mentioned you touched on at the start is bringing another advisor into the business now promoting an advisor are that that that’s a that’s a really important thing that at least she then don’t have to be the advisor that will the only adviser to those things. How have you gone about tackling that because it’s something that isn’t easy to do? And add do in a way where you’re maintaining the consistency in and of the things that you want from from a business perspective? How did you tackle that at your end? And you know, what had been the learnings on that journey for you?

Warren Strybosch
Yeah, so I made a deliberate decision to find another advisor who was probably at a similar space where I was at, you know, and so I mean, I’m big on partnerships. And so I tried to partner with as many people as possible to find those people who have the same values and worth ethic and everything that you might have. So I was very fortunate that when I was, you know, when we all had to upgrade or do our skills without similar qualifications, and back then I had six and I still had to do my upgrade my financial planning qualification, so did my post grad. And during that postgrad, I was very fortunate to meet Aaron. And, and so she was single practice financial planner was in staff, and I just approached her and said, and she happened to live close to me. And so I think that was also ideal. And said, Well, why don’t we join forces? You know, why don’t we basically bring our businesses together, and consolidate and, and, you know, save on costs, and also, you know, find synergies and all that kind of stuff. And that’s, that’s what we’ve done. So we’ve been doing that now for I think it’s over 14 months, now that we’ve been together, it’s been a fantastic experience, I’m pleased to say. And so now, just, I’ve just had another discussion last week with another advisor, and to Railgun. And this advisor has a different story, she’s actually working for an industry fund, looking to potentially set up or go in or on their own. And I think because we’ve really got some really good processes in place, and a lot of support from staffing, all that kind of stuff that we could probably offer that service to an advisor who either wants to set up themselves or has a small practice, especially with the community papers, we’re able to quickly set that up and give them give them support and set up a networking group and everything to help them to get the clients as well. And so I feel as though that we’re in that space now that we can actually offer that kind of service to others. And so Aaron and I are talking about how, you know, that’s something we would like to do. But also we’ve got an internal power planner, who is becoming a financial planner, she’s going through a professional year, this year. And so she’ll work for both of us in that regard for the cross of both current client base. And so yeah, I am actually looking forward to because she’ll be able to take up or do the work that I was doing from the financial planning side, because I didn’t have another financial plan, per se. Looking after my client base, I’m actually really stoked that this is going to be the next step. They probably won’t know what to do with myself, to be honest. I’ll be handing all the work over to her and going right. Okay, here we go. Thanks very much. So then the, like this the hell that works out. So yeah, I’m quite looking forward to that. And having this other lady Jody Hill helped me on the accounting side as well. And so she’ll, you know, you talked about leaders and so it’s just bringing those people on board. And I think that’s my next step. And certainly, these other people who will be able to do some of the work that I had to kind of check off and do and yeah, that’s exciting.

Ben Nash
Sounds like dinner at the stripe Bush House is about to level up from the south. Right. How have you tackled because one of the things that I have found challenging in my business is creating consistency of advice, you know, Across advisors, every advisor is an individual, and they, you know, they have their individual views on stuff. And when we hire advisors, we want to make sure of course, that they’re broadly aligned with the philosophies that we follow, like, we tend to follow a fairly passive investment approach. And so we want to make sure with any advisor that we bring in that they’re aligned with that as well. And we don’t want, you know, if we brought in a stock picker advisor, that that felt that their value was in, you know, finding out all instead that’s going to be completely inconsistent with that, that client experience. That’s sort of a bit of an easy one. But there’s also, you know, there’s a layer below that, which is like, how do they tackle certain decision points for clients? Creating a level of consistency in the app on the clients get? What What have you done to ensure that occurs through your business? In bringing new advisors in? Yeah, well, I’ll

Warren Strybosch
just need to take a step back and talk even about just the staffing. So we’re very protective about the staff that we hire, or anyone who works for us at all, because we’ve got, like a really, I consider like a second family. So all my staff are like family. And so we don’t see each other though, on the director or manager, director and the boss of the business. I don’t look at it that way, we’re all on the same level, and we’re all supporting each other. We all have KPIs that we’re all working towards as, as individual, different departments of each of the different businesses, but also as a total group. But when we do hire, it’s like Lindsay fox said, you know, you can, you know, you can train anybody, but you can’t teach them character. And so our first prominent thing, or the thing that we look for is, what are their values? You know, what, how do they come across as a person, because we don’t want the most qualified person out there, we found that sometimes have been the most qualified person, if they’ve not level headed, and if they’ve not humble can cause real issues within a business. And so we would rather have someone who’s not as qualified, who has really great character, attitude, will, will be loyal, hardworking, we’ll train them up, and we’ll get him we’ll learn later, then have a job for life, you know. So when we talk about hiring someone, we’re not saying we’re going to just hire you. And hopefully it works out, we’re like going, we’ve got to know that person. And we’re going to, we’re going to try and give you this job for the next 1015 20 years, if that’s the case, if that’s what they want. So that’s the first thing we do is look at from a perspective of character rather than qualifications. The other thing we do is we’ve set up obviously, processes. So from the insurance side of thing, we spent a lot of time going through all the different steps of what needs to happen. So anyone who comes aboard and personal insurance is one of those necessary evils in most financial planning businesses, and a lot of advisors now, don’t really want to deal in that space. Because to be honest with you, it’s fraught with difficulty, and you could get easily wrong. And you know, it does take a lot of time to get clients realize how much time there is, when you’re dealing with personal insurance. But we’ve, we’ve got a process now that everybody can follow known. So everybody goes through the same process, we do the same kind of reports, we’re talking about the same type of the way that we look at insurances. And so everybody kind of knows that process. And it’s the same with superannuation, we sat down and Okay, well, this is our process for superannuation, this is what we do. But when it comes to like you talking about stock picks, will I’ve got the qualifications to deal with shares, the other advisors might not and so you know, sometimes you actually have to still have someone who is the specialist in that area who is dealing with that type of task. But what you can do is you can everybody working on certain tasks, but then some people will be specialists in given tasks. And so we’ll have someone who, you know, I’ve got staff who work on super solid stuff, we work on personal insurances, but they don’t do both. We have some stuff, some stuff who concentrate on Sanderling. You know, and so, you know, so we’ll have that specific person, that’s going to be their specialization, whereas I do, you know, the shares Aaron’s shares as well. So that’s very fortunate. But we might have advisors come on board who don’t and so therefore, we’ve got to work with them, to, to support them, I suppose, from that perspective, because we’ll be those specialists, and then they might decide to become specialists in other areas. And so it complements the business. But the first and foremost, I said, you know, it’s all about character first, and working as a family, you know, and I don’t say that word loosely, is family, we really do try and cultivate that. They are like a family. And so we try and do stuff together and support each other on birthdays and all that kind of stuff. So it’s yeah, it’s important.

Ben Nash
I love that night. And from a business perspective, obviously Holy Grail as well that you bring people in you invest a lot of time and getting them into your way of doing things that you want to keep them for as long as possible. So makes a ton a ton of sense. And I see the benefits in doing that. Warren, what some what’s coming up for you. What are you guys focused on now?

Warren Strybosch
Yeah, so yeah. As you No, like I obviously I try and keep myself busy. So we’re still trying to work out how the non for profit works because I’m like the key person for that entity. And I want to try and remove myself from that so that all the staff have some ownership in that. And so something happens to me that that entity is still continuing on for the foreseeable future. But just other things that we’re working on is that, I mean, I was wrapped up to be invited on here. And I shortly after, got invited to be one of the panelists for the Advisor Summit coming up this year. So that’s gonna be exciting to go to Sydney, Melbourne for that. But my two key things I think I’m going to try and achieve this year as I’m actually trying to write, or finish a money financial planning book that I’ve had my thoughts on. Yeah, that’s, it’s gonna be big to try and just sit and complete it. So let’s see how that goes to the right. I wrote a novel A long time ago for my son, and I said, I’ll try and do it before we could speak. And then by the age of 10, I’d finished it, and that didn’t happen. And so that was a that was a dragon book, you know, for him. But yeah, so because that’s one of my passions is I want to, I want to write more. And so also, we want to try and develop a course, solid financial planning course. So, so writing the book and the financial planning course, for the financial planning business. I’m also about to buy my mentors practice her accounting firm that because she’s retiring. That’ll happen in first and July. So there’s a lot of things going on this year. So pretty exciting. And in regards to all that stuff that’s occurring. Yeah.

Ben Nash
I love it, I can speak from experience that writing is something that’s, you know, a very rewarding experience, but also the time consuming one. Yeah, I get it, but definitely good to get get it out there as well. So I look forward to seeing that made. So my last question for you. If you could go back, if you could go back and do one thing differently, what would it be?

Warren Strybosch
What would I do? That’s one thing different? I think there’s a few things that I might do different in that regard. I think I mean, one of the things I think I would have done, if I had my time all over again, it’s I probably would have finished my accounting course before I went to the army. And that was unexpected. So that was a journey to get back to finishing the accounting. But from a financial planning perspective, or when I first got into financial planning was a very niche business. And so I think for many years, I was concentrating or learning a specific type of financial planning. And even though that was great, and it was a good experience to do that, I probably would have looked forward to being more with a generalist kind of financial planning business that covered across like all aspects of financial planning. And I think that was helped, and probably even a larger firm. So, you know, I think it’s good to be under people who have had a lot of experience. And yeah, so looking back, I probably would have liked to have worked probably in a different type of business, and had more of a more of a generalist understanding already, because I think it took me a long time to get to where I am, whereas possibly that might have been a bit quicker for me if I’d had a different type of general experience. Yeah,

Ben Nash
there’s a right way there, but I think both have they’re both had their upsides and downsides. Oh, yeah. 100%? Yeah. Yeah. Warren, thank you so much for taking the time for anyone that’s keen, because I know that we haven’t really spoken too much about it. But as you said, you sort of touched on a little bit that you are looking to potentially, you know, expand the the audience, advisors, community, people getting around some of the processes and support structures that you put in place. What’s what’s the best way for someone to learn more about that? Yeah, look, I

Warren Strybosch
could just just reach out to myself, you know, like, they can look me up in LinkedIn or, you know, obviously, the find Foundation, they can look up. So yeah, there’s any advisors out there that run small practices that are looking to possibly consolidate or go with someone who’s a little bit bigger. You know, that’s a space we’re looking at, as well. I’d like I said before, I feel as though we’ve got some good processes and some other services that can help them to grow their business. So we don’t necessarily want to just take them over. What we want to do is we want to partner with them. So they still running their own business. But we’re all doing it together. You know, so that’s, so they can just reach out and call me or just via email or even, you know, through through this podcast, let me hear it. Like, just get my details from here. So yeah.

Ben Nash
Awesome, mate. Well, thank you, again, really appreciate you taking the time with those, especially with all the things that you’ve got on the go. And I very much look forward to seeing that book when it comes out as well.

Warren Strybosch
Yeah, great, Ben. I’m really pleased. I’m just thank you so much for inviting me to come on the podcast. It’s always humbling when people invite you to do this kind of thing. So thanks very much.

Ben Nash
Great to chat. Cheers guys. All move. We’ll catch you on the next one. Bye for now.