#380 Emily Jenkins – Transcript

Clayton Daniel
G’day, Clayton here from Ensombl, I’m with the one and only Emily, thank you so much for coming on.

Emily Blanch
Thank you for having me. I’m a little bit disappointed that I didn’t get your classic podcast introduction. But it’s alright, I’ll forgive you this time.

Clayton Daniel
Yes, yes, striking lights, I still actually don’t know what that means. But it was fun at the time. And it just kind of stuck. I interviewed Ben the other day. And I did bust it out just just to sort of really great him. Because I think that was really kind of where it’s, you know, I did it once and he was there. This is back in the day when we used to do multiple people in a podcast. And, and I know, that annoyed him. So that became a very good reason to continue. But regardless, I were I’m just doing a handful of podcasts to kick the year off. Trying to touch base with the team and the broader team here at ensemble. Really, just to get a handle on what it is that we’re up to what it is that we’ve done, where are we headed, what things are looking like on the horizon, I’ve had a chance to speak with Peter and Jess and Ben and Roxy, and Ruthie, because we’re thinking about launching a debt and property podcast with him for financial planners. So all of those people are very important to our, to the ensemble company, but there’s really only one, employee number one. Employee Number one, Emily, now Jenkins, formally plants, and you’ve been employee of the week, every week, I think for the last five years. So at some stage, someone’s going to serve you. So, you know, cuz we’ve recently grown quite a lot. We did kind of a small bit, you know, decent equity raise last year, and we’ve had like, five new people join, right. And so the company’s growing. And, and we’re in a position now, where and we were discussing it just before, you know, we jumped on, we’re in a position where people can kind of start to focus in. And so you have gone from someone who was given three paragraphs, which was invents a Facebook group and podcasts and asked just to improve them. And technically, your job has gotten a lot bigger, but on bid, your responsibility set has become more and more narrow, right, as it as any company, you know, as any growing company. You know, has people within them, they get more and more specialized. And so coming from a position where your original role was the entire company.

Now we’re now you’ve become far more specialized over time. So I’m kind of keen just for those that don’t know, you know, where you’ve come from before ensemble, what you’ve been doing an ensemble and you know, where you see what you do with ensemble and the company as a whole? Where is it going to go from here? So let’s start with rather the beginning. Where are you from? What’s your background? And I know we did this many years ago, but they might not might not have heard. So yeah, let us know. This is true.

Emily Blanch
This is true. And while you’re making me think I haven’t had to think about pre pre XY for a while, so I the shortened version is I studied a business degree at University. I went straight into financial planning. So my first official full time professional gig Post University was in financial planning, and I enjoyed it. I really I enjoyed the work. I enjoyed the people, but I had an itch that needed to be He scratched which was traveling, I then spent two years overseas. And that really started this process of working out what it is that really lights me up, like what really gets me excited. And through a couple of years and a process of elimination, working in all sorts of industries, I came back into the industry that I really love, like, I’m genuinely excited about financial planning and financial advice and the transformational difference that it makes to somebody’s life. But in a way that really aligned with you know, what sets off the fireworks in my belly. And for me, it’s client experience, it’s customer service, it’s human connection, like bringing two people together that I know can collaborate and create something magical that they couldn’t create themselves. That was really it. And the universe works in mysterious ways, connected us together, and hence, I was introduced to what was x y advisor. And so that started a journey of what it’s been six years now, I think. Yeah, yeah. And to just elaborate on what you mentioned earlier around getting three paragraphs. So when I joined the XY team, I specifically remember receiving an email from the guys said, Hey, so we’d like to offer you a job, you have no idea how much time is involved, we have no idea, like what exactly is involved. But here’s what we do so far. And it was just a Word document with three paragraphs on it, if you can make this better go for it. And I mean, maybe I was naive, but I was also very excited. And I was like, I’m in I’m in. So it really went from there. It started small. I think I started moderating the Facebook group, which, you know, looking back, in hindsight, it probably took, I would say, at least 10 to 12 months to really build that rapport with people totally. And build that, I guess, authority in a in a respectful way, where people really then knew I wasn’t going anywhere. And we started to get a really good flow, so that organizing events, and I, yeah, I wore every hat didn’t I, it was organized this event, look after the Facebook group duel the execution on the podcast. So I had a finger in every possible XY pile that existed. And over time, it’s just slowly been this process of, I think, I refine the work, like what needs to be done. And then as we build on the resources, we’re able to bring somebody in, to then do a handover so that someone who can create far better work than I can create can take it and run with it. And that’s really been the process. It’s just this process of iteration over the last six years to get to where we are now. So most people would know of me as Head of Community, that’s been my, my title, my role. And now I’m chief product officer. And I was thinking about, you know, what is it that I do? Like, what is my role of chief product officer. And fundamentally, it’s, it’s not overly different to what I’ve just naturally been doing this whole time. But now, it just gets a lot more scientific. Yeah. So it’s been a very interesting journey. And I’ve loved every minute of it. It’s been really hard, like hard work. There’s not too many people that would be doing this for this long. But I wouldn’t change it. And I love I love that I get to do what I do. And I’m really excited to see where this role of chief product officer and the amazing team that we’re building underneath us. What we’re going to create, I say this every year 2022 was big 2023 is going to be even bigger, like every year. It’s just this, like compounding result of just just sheer amount of what we’re able to execute on what we produce and just the quality of it. Like I’m really, really proud to say that I work with some absolute amazing minds and what gets created and produced the output is sensational. Like, it’s yeah, I wouldn’t switch it for the world.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah, I know. You mean, when you were talking then just about sort of the level of the output. I was just before we jumped into this podcast, I was getting a picture from Shutterstock of a a Camera Crane. Do you know what a Camera Crane is? I do. Yeah, it’s for those that don’t know, because I didn’t know what the name of it was. It’s the it’s a camera on the end of a massive poll that highly trained technicians swing out over people at like Coldplay concerts and Grand Finals. You know, we’re in the NRL and things like that. And, and this, this next event that we’ve got coming up has one. It has, it has a, it has a camera crane that’s going to be sweeping out over people and sort of zooming in and, and the goal is just to turn it into because our all essence, CPD days are virtual first, which is a really interesting take on an event that we put, like six figures into the into the event, right. So technically, you can either have a Zoom meeting, which costs an annual zoom subscription, and sit at your house and talk to someone. Or you can put $100,000 plus into hiring a massive venue, and a gigantic AV team with Canberra cranes, and put on put on a digital event. And and it’s the only reason that we’re doing that now is, as you said, it’s this is, I guess it is an exponential growth curve, of the effort that we have been putting in with prey is and like with you going from Head of Community into the chief product officer, the way that I kind of think about it is like you’re and you’re very well known for this in terms of creating individual experiences for people, but then there’s only one, Emily. And so there’s only so many individual experiences that you can create. So how do we scale you in your in your ability to create experiences across 1000s and 10s of 1000s, and hundreds of 1000s. And ultimately millions of people? Like that’s, that’s the name of the game. And I think it’s, it’s a case of, as you said before, it’s being scientific. But the science, as with everything we’ve learned over the years, is only as good as the art, right? The art and the science. And the science, the way that we’re sort of approaching growth and engagement and value delivered is scientific on the back end. And we’ve got a team that does all that now. But really, it’s the art up front, it’s what are we testing? And why are we testing it? And who is benefiting from it? And and what are the tests? Like the question, what are the tests is kind of the thing that delivers what the output is getting tested? Right? And so I think, yeah, we’re kind of in a really exciting place now where we’re building up the more scientific side of the company to better support you, and what it is that you deliver. And I think I think that’s a kind of a great way to look at it. I think we will know were successful. When were scaling. Emily?

Emily Blanch
Absolutely. We’ve always joked, can we clone? And like, can we just make clones. And I’m sure we could probably do that if we wanted to put a truckload of money into it. But there’s no fun in that. But it really is this blend of art and science like that has, like, guided the way we do things since inception. And I think I’m in a very unique position, because I have spent so much time on the art. And I’ve had my finger on the pulse in a financial advisors world, in depth for six years. I am on the frontline, if you want to call it that, like I really truly understand what their challenges are, what are they struggling with, like, outside of actually working in an advice business, I would have a very, very robust idea of what you’re struggling with. And advisors are so open with me like I have earned the right from the work that I’ve been doing to open up these conversations. And so I know you’re familiar with this, but for any of the listeners that maybe aren’t, I host multiple hour long interviews with advisors every week. So I jump on Zoom or teams with someone and we go deep for 45 minutes to an hour. And I always say like brutal open honesty, like I welcome it with open arms and they will tell me they will tell me what’s wrong in the world of financial advice. They’ll tell me what’s not working in ensemble and like, where else can you get that kind of honesty so I really take it as a like it’s my responsible Ready to take those insights? To really understand what are those problems? What are those challenges? And then bring the science into it, right? Like how can we find use our ecosystem and conduct tests and try different things that will ultimately serve and solve those problems. And one thing I never let myself like, don’t fall into this trap of thinking that it’s the same every time every year, every time. Because what an advisor was struggling with even six to eight months ago is not what they’re struggling with now, and it certainly is not going to be what they’re struggling with in another 18 months time. So constantly iterating constantly changing. There’s a reason why our events, like we’ve never ever had a process for organizing an ensemble event because it changes all the time. Yeah, but it’s the reason that they work is because we’re constantly like, were taking on the onus to change our processes all the time. But we do it to ultimately solve the advisor problems. And, you know, the fact that we delivered over 20,000 CPD points at our first to all licensed CPD days last year. I mean, that kind of speaks for itself. So yeah,

Clayton Daniel
but even the event, even the Alesund CPD days are the result of those interviews that you do, like I remember clearly going through some of the because we you know, we’ll catch up on on an on a regularly, probably once every six months, maybe even more often than that once every three or four months and discuss some of the things that are going on. And you said once, advisors are struggling to get their CPD. And it really meant it really took me by surprise, because if you go back, I think it was maybe the first online iteration of Ensembl. You know, x y at the time was we created a CPD like website. Right. Like that was the that was our entire reason for being online. At that stage. It was it was all our development went into creating a platform where people could get CPD, and it bombed. Right and did it bombed. And we put so much effort in over a long period of time we had next to next to no money back then. And the small amounts that we had, we were still throwing everything at this CPD environment. And we thought it would work because we knew advisors like to learn from other advisors. So that was a big tick. We knew advisors needed CPD points, that’s a tick. So we just put those two things together, we thought, well, if advisors are creating CPD courses, surely that will work bump or just just did not work just did not land. And, and I remember walking out of like walking, walking backwards out of that environment. And thinking I’m never touching CBD again, like it the reason. The premise was, clearly, people don’t need CPD because because what we offered, we assumed would work and because it didn’t work, my natural conclusion was then people don’t need CPD. And then you with these interviews, came back. He said, Look at all these advisors are gone from these large licensees where they were regularly doing PD days into these smaller licensees, which don’t do PD days. And I remember looking at you going, Wait a second. We didn’t do a PD day. Like is that is that what we’re going to do? And then the first question was, was a non licensee? Are we allowed to do a PDD? And we’ve got some legal advice yet. There’s no reason why we can’t. That did it. But let’s go and and yeah, it’s kind of it’s kind of weird, because a lot of people now I think that we’re a licensee PD day company, which is what the truth is, that’s like the last that’s the latest thing that we’ve built. Right? We’ve only ever done two of them. We’ve, we’ve done over 600 podcasts. Yeah, for context. And so obviously a lot of people know us from the from the podcast, but you know, with 7000 Plus members now on on the ensemble platform, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people know us from that as well and, and so, yet it is inch This thing, I think a lot of companies talk about knowing what their ideal market wants, and or doesn’t want. And, yeah, I think we’ve been doing it for years now. And just you engaging with the advice community, the way that you do, has really helped us sort of set up to deliver as much value as possible to them. Well, what

Emily Blanch
what you get from what I get from these interviews, and I and we don’t just solely based out company decisions on these interviews, there’s a few things at play, they are certainly a big proponent to the discussions we have of what we’re going to do next. But we also take the 1000s upon 1000s of words and conversations that happen on the platform. And so the, I really look at these interviews as peeling back the layers, like that’s how you get the context, because you can easily say advisors want or don’t want CPD points, because they advisors are craving CPD points. But they don’t want to log into a training learning management system and do it on demand by themself. But they do want to acquire as many points as possible, as efficiently as possible, without having to leave my house, I can order UberEATS for lunch, I can smash out a quarter of my annual points and get it done. That is the kind of CPD that I want. So unless you’re actually peeling back those layers and understanding or asking the questions, why do you why are you demanding CPD points? And how do you want to receive those like, you could totally be off course with what you implement? Because you haven’t dug deeper into what is the context? And what’s the why behind that actual desire, which has been really powerful. And also, I learned something new, every single time I have these conversations, it’s fascinating and it my mind starts going crazy with ideas and and I’ve obviously got to rein those back in and go, okay, like God do all of those things. But I honestly I just went, I think I understood what an advisor was dealing with, I learned something new. And I would just, I would just say to anyone listening, because a few advisors that I’ve interviewed have said, this was an amazing process, I should do this with my clients. And my response is always yes, yes, and you don’t necessarily have to do it yourself. But if someone in your team could make contact and talk to your clients, because one of the responses I received from advisors is, thank you for letting me be a part of this, like, I really feel like I’m contributing. And, and I always say like, you know, we are advisor, first we’re advisor LED. So your input really helps us direct the, the way that we shape this, this organization. And people really feel attached to our brand, like they you know, it’s not about us, it’s about the 7000 Plus members that are on ensemble. And so you think about an advice practices just being a smaller version of that. And, you know, when you’re thinking about new things to implement for your clients, what better way than to actually oxygen, and the response that you’ll get more often than not, is that they’re happy to contribute? Because they feel like they’re a part of the process? And if they feel connected to your brand, like, Who wouldn’t want to get involved with that? So it’s just an extra touch point as well. There we go. The classic human connector, just, you know, putting together all these little ideas of things you can do. But yeah, it’s something that’s, yeah, it’s been one of the one of the greatest things that I’ve started doing in my role, and it’s certainly something that can be replicated from others and and other businesses. Absolutely.

Clayton Daniel
And for those that don’t know, it’s, it’s basically what do you what does ensemble do that you like? What does ensemble do that you don’t like? What is it that you’d like us to do? And what is it like that we’re not already doing? And what are some things that you that we’ll kind of go into, because you’re the one that obviously asked these questions in and I think you’ve got like 10 or 20 of them, right? So

Emily Blanch
yeah, so yeah, so they really guide the conversation, if we hit all of them. Fantastic. If we hit some awesome, and anyone that’s interested in this, I’m more than happy to share my questions if you want to replicate this in your own process. But I, the things I want to uncover is what do they like and dislike about using the ensemble platform in the ecosystem? What are some challenges that they’re struggling with in their day to day or in their advice process? And if they could wave a magic wand and change or add or take something away from ensemble, like, what would that be? Or what what is one thing that would help you do your job better? Yeah, and those, those key things really guide the conversation. And so you, you start to dive a little deeper into what did they like or dislike about the platform like how often do you log on? Are you logging on because you have a question, a burning question that you need to find an answer to? Are you logging on because you’re Seeing my emails coming through. So you start to dig deeper and uncover what are the behaviors? And that’s the other thing I would say is, wherever possible, focus on the actual behaviors and actions of somebody, rather than would you like? Or would you want to do this because I can say, I really want to eat healthy. But then if you will put a bowl of fruit, and in the office lunch room, I’m probably not going to, like I may not eat it. It’s like, Well, you told you said you want it to be healthy, but actually follow someone’s actions and their behaviors. So, for example, if you think about the PD day, have you been to a professional conference in the last 12? Months? Yes, no, like that guides behavior versus saying, Would you go to an event that did X, Y, and Zed? They’ll be like, yeah, no, I might, I might, when really what you want to focus on is the actual behavior. So if you can frame your questions up to elicit that information, you’ll you’ll get, you’ll be able to have a lot more clarity in the ideas that you do actually pursue.

Clayton Daniel
That’s a very, very good point. Um, and so if, if I put my financial planning hat on going to my existing client base, and going through this process of, hey, what do you like about what we do? What don’t you like about what we do? If there’s one thing that we could add that would make your life better? What would that be? And that’s super interesting process. And yeah, like, probably the not the advisor would be the best way to do I would imagine, like, someone in the team. That’s, that’s not the advisor would, would make that a little more accommodating. Yeah,

Emily Blanch
I agree. Here’s a very practical example, right, just to try and put this into context. So I put my beautiful dog in for training last week. So he did a board and train. So from Monday to Friday, he stayed with a trainer, and learned all the ways so lots of training. And it was amazing. And then on Friday, Craig, my husband and I did a training session with the trainer so that we could learn all of the commands. Now, me sitting here with my product, hat on, post that whole experience. I’ve already got ideas. And me being the person I am, I’ve already reached out to the trainer and said, Hey, I’ve actually got some feedback, if you’re open to it, like on how you can make this better, because that’s the old trust in me, right? But not everyone does that, like 99% of people are not going to do that. But I’m sitting there. Yeah, I’m sitting there thinking, you know, what, what would have been more valuable than us doing an hour session, as truck owners would be to do half a day, because there’s so much information to take in. And you can totally relate this to an advice process, there is a lot of information that a new client has to take in. Which is can be very overwhelming. And it’s like, the easy option is to just go i Yes, I understand. Yes, I understand. Yeah. And then later on think Holy crap, I like, I’ve got to go through all that again. So it is it can be quite an overwhelming process. So there’s one thing straight off the bat like i My suggestion is, hey, you should actually like do four and a half days with the with the dog and the do half a day with the owners if you can, that will be so much more powerful. So imagine that from a client in your advice process, like just asking the question, How did you find that experience? Or is there something we could do differently? Or better? And just in

Clayton Daniel
not just in this feedback form as well?

Emily Blanch
Yes, correct. Yes. Have a conversation? The one on

Clayton Daniel
one interviews is the golden rule, the gold standard of data collection? Because you can you can break it down into, you know, like, we’ll ask financial planners, at the end of our say the your lesson CPD day, how did you enjoy it? Never, you know, it gets 4.6 4.7, whatever. But when, when we sit down and ask them, Did you go to it? Did you enjoy it? And why did you go Why didn’t you go and all that kind of stuff, then it really allows us to, to better improve for the next time. And and I’m not even messing around? Definitely add in the question. Did you like the camera angles of the latest event? Because Because what I’m trying to do, right, what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to set this event up to be such like leagues ahead of any other digital or virtual event that is done in the world realistically, like I think the fact that this is a virtual first event, so we’re designing it for the virtual experience. And I just want make it the best in the world for a virtual event and I, and I think camera angles and like, we’re going to introduce, we’re going to introduce our sort of artificial intelligence to start introducing the problems that the present is a solving from the advisors point of view. And you know that that artificial intelligence has this horrible poxy Australian accent, but it is what it is, we might change it to American who knows. But because the American was not as bad, a bit, like there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that we’re going to include this time around. And I and I do truly hope to create something that, you know, obviously, we’re where we need to track engagement so that we can accurately deliver the CPD points at the end, you know, from the very beginning, we never wanted someone to be able to open their computer, stick it in a corner and not watch. And so, you know, we took care of that very early on. But now, because they’re watching I, I can set it up so that, you know, someone just puts it on their TV at home, like casts it to their big screen TV, just sit there and like I would love for the experience of it visually, even virtually visually, to be really impressive. So that’s, that’s what we’re going for.

Emily Blanch
Well, that’s the goal, right? Like where it is absolutely wild to think that we live broadcast for 10 hours straight. And people like, I think at the last event, the average time that an individual participant tuned in was just over seven and a half hours. Yeah. So they’re essentially binge watching a Netflix series. So you think about the quality that you get in viewership from watching something on Netflix, essentially, our goal is to match that, and kickback slate, you know, put the recliner out in the lounge room, put it on the big screen, have your notes ready on your Trello board or air table, whatever you use, and just take that time to soak up some new ideas actually note them down. And ultimately, I mean, our goal is to make sure that the time and advisor spends in our world is time well spent. So yeah, there’s a lot like, there’s a lot of work that goes into the content for a PDD. Like we are not like any other industry conference that exists. And it’s it’s very interesting, going through that process with our with our thought leaders and our educators, because we are so unconventional, because we have a high very high standard, like, if we’re going to put this content in front of an adviser it needs to add value to their day, it needs to be relevant, and it needs to be engaging. Otherwise, what are we doing? What are we doing? So the visual element? Yeah, so the visual element is just I just look at that as we would like to create something that Netflix does, because if people are going to put that on their big screen? Yeah, we got to make it look good.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. And this this upcoming event I’m super pumped about super excited about. And then I wonder because we want to do like a giant, you know, kind of ensemble conference once a year as well. And I always think, I wonder if it ends up just sort of, you know, merge emerging out of one of these or licensee PD days kind of thing. Because what I can see happening is, you know, we build this for a virtual first event. And then, you know, our first goal was, well, I wonder if we can get an in studio audience. And then and then turns out that that wasn’t difficult to obtain. And so now we’re kind of like, whoa, like, how big do you want the studio audience? You know what I mean? So if 100 is 200, I mean, when the in studio audience starts getting around five 600 or 1000 people like is it still at in studio audience? Or is it just the job? So it’s kind of interesting, like, yeah, yeah, it is kind of interesting. And we’ll see it, we’ll see where it goes. But kind of coming back to, you know, your, your broader role in terms of Chief Product Officer. What are your What are your main focuses? For 2023? Like, what are your what do you wait, what are you trying to achieve on a weekly, monthly basis? And let’s go into it, you know, like, obviously, you’re in charge of the value that advisors obtain by being a member of ensemble, that’s kind of like that’s the overarching and we want to deliver that with technology, right? So it’s not an in person delivery. So it’s probably not community. It’s scalable. solutions. So it is more product. So how, what are kind of some big, hairy, audacious goals that you have in terms of what you want to deliver for, for for the membership base? And how are you going about doing this?

Emily Blanch
Huh? Great question. So aside from the two are all last and CPD days that we’ve spent a bit of time on in this conversation, we are hosting those two events. So they will at times be quite a focus for myself and the team. So that we can deliver that great experience, make sure that it’s a very nice experience for both our presenters, and also our audience. And I mean, there’s quite as you know, there’s quite a lot of work that goes into events. So I’ll certainly be some time allocated for those two events. But outside of those two things, my Northstar is always iterating and improving on the experience that ensemble members have on our platform. And there’s a few elements that make up our platform, there is the discussions, the conversations, the peer to peer learning. And so I’m constantly focusing on okay, what is valuable to people what’s meaningful, what brings people back, and so drilling down into those into what are those levers that we can pull to create a better experience, and one of those is our emails. So I have spent a ton a ton of work over the last few years, maybe more than I would like to admit, understanding and refining our E mail method. And I’m pretty confident in saying that we’re doing really well. The engagement that we receive the replies that I receive, are fantastic. So I will be definitely focusing on how we can create a better experience for our new members. So updating our welcome email series, we’ve got a few ideas for that, which I’m excited about. And then just that constant, ongoing communication that we because we do have this dialogue with ensemble members, like the amount of replies that I get to a daily email that goes out is absurd for for a type of like for, you know, an email communication from an organization to its user base is wild. So I would love to keep understanding how I can improve on that, because ultimately, I want to make sure that our emails are something that people want to see in their inbox. You know, we’ve all got those emails that we’re like, oh, no time for that, oh, that’s just delete, delete, delete, I want to make sure that when someone sees Emily at ensemble that it’s going to add to their day. So that’s a focus. A very big focus for this year is actually diving into the targeted spaces on our platform. So some people would be familiar with the professional year space that we have launched on the platform in collaboration with Colonial First State. That is a dedicated space for people for potential P wires, people going through their P Y and supervisors. And that that space is thriving, it’s got close to 350 members in there. Now, there is discussions and collaboration happening between P wise and P wise supervisors. And P wise, it’s been really nice to see a space that is a pure response to a need that existed in the market doing really well. And I really see 2023 as the year of the like, audit, I need to come up with a better word than space, but the year of the year of targeted spaces on our platform. So one of my big focuses in the first half of this year, we’re actually going to be launching a dedicated investment, education space. So this will be being produced in collaboration with Schroeder’s and I’m very excited for this because it is solving some pretty big issues. Some of the most prominent discussions on the platform last year, if we had a look at the analytics, and I pulled out the top discussions, the biggest threads of last year revolved around investments, and namely, questions about how is how was everybody else building their investment philosophy? How are others building an internal Investment Committee? Should I be looking with how do you pick a fund manager when there’s literally 1000s of active managers out there? And I was really starting to see this pattern of, of dialogue and conversation that were lots of questions and I mean, people can maybe call me out on this I could I could be could be wrong here but I think that there’s a lot of advice says that I think they like, think that they need to like their their education on investments. Like they, like, Hold on, let me articulate this properly, there’s 5% of advisors that deeply understand investments, and their investment philosophy and can really hang their hat on it. And there’s 95%, that there are some gaps. But at risk of asking a stupid question, they don’t ask.

Clayton Daniel
Right? Yeah. And I think that’s the difference between obviously there are insurance, like there are risk advisors. And then you have a wealth manager. And so a wealth manager is a type of financial planner, that would be one of those five or 10%, that really hang their hat on their, on their investment, performance and outcome. And, and that’s every every company has a niche, every financial planning company has a niche. And some of them do really well in that space, and hence why they take on the title of wealth manager. But if you’re doing if you’re doing holistic advice, right, if you’re if you’re really focusing on everything that encapsulates financial planning, like my God, then the burden to better understand investments, while you’re still doing everything else is very high.

Emily Blanch
Absolutely, absolutely. And the content, and this is what I’ve been hearing and conversations and feedback that I’m getting is that the content that exists that exists currently is very jargony. It’s very complex. It’s a lot of really detailed graphs that don’t really articulate the fundamentals. And so one of the things that we want to really bring to Ensembl to the market is a dedicated hub for go to fundamental investment education. So being able to confidently like take the principles from this curriculum from this education, to build your own investment philosophy, but have the ability to go and stress test those principles yourself. So instead of being instead of being given the fish, which the feedback I’m getting is that that exists a lot at the moment is, here’s what you need to do, go and here’s what you need to do. Just listen to me, just trust me. Yeah, versus let me show you how I constructed this. Let me show you why I believe in this. There’s a wonderful adviser Hui Lu, shout out to Hawaii who specializes in investments. And something she told me in a conversation was her and her business partner. They reevaluate and stress test their investment philosophy on a regular basis. So they, they are in the five or 10%, who would hang their hat on their ability to play in the investment space. It’s that’s literally what they specialize in. And every six or 12 months, they will literally look at their philosophy, look at the opposite end of the spectrum, and stress test their beliefs at every point in that process. Wow. So they’ll look completely at a passive view and go, Why do they believe in this? Do I agree with any of that? Does that fundamentally align with my beliefs, yes or no. And so that way, as they move through that process, what they stand for what they build into their investment philosophy stands true, despite any movements in the market. So things like that being able to give advisors a formula to be able to do that. So that instead of asking questions like, Hey, does anyone What’s everyone’s investment philosophy? Or does anyone have a template I can have, they can take those fundamental principles go and apply that themselves. Because if they can do that, then they have a far better, far better chance of being able to communicate that to clients. So our goal is to educate, to not indoctrinate, but to educate so that advisors can really understand the fundamentals themselves to a point where they can then go and communicate that to their clients. So things like this. So Sophie Metcalf, who everyone will be introduced to in time, she is the Schroeder’s she looks after the digital service offering that they have and I’ve been working very closely with Sophie and she is going to be the go to person in this Schroeder space to be the conduit between questions advisors have and leaning on the technical lens and the expertise from other Schroeder advisors from the Schroeder’s team from all sorts of elements and in bits and pieces to bring all of that together and have a targeted space for investment education. So that’s just one example. There will probably be more in the future. So that will take up a fair bit of time, but I’m really excited about it because it’s answering a lot of a lot of questions and challenges that are existing and popping up. And then the other thing I would say is talent hub. So we’re all very aware that there is a Yep, a definitely a over. There’s a lot of under supply. Thank you. Like my brain is not working, there is a shocking under supply of great talent, but they do exist, they are out there. And so focusing on talent hub, being able to pull different levers in that experience to better connect companies with candidates is definitely a focus for this year. And I know we’ve had conversations previously, and this will be something in time or down the track of starting to recruit professionals from complementary industries. I met with someone recently who is now doing their P Y, who joined an advice practice. She had been an optometrist for 10 years, and was a client of an advisor. And that advisor said, you would be a really good advisor. And she was feeling a career change and has since pivoted across and brings a lot of great skills and expertise from that experience. So wow, yeah, being able to be this conduit because the process of hiring is so cumbersome, and often quite stressful for advisors. So if we can help in that process, or to take a little bit of the weight off, to allow advisors employers to find great talent sooner, that would be a really good goal that I would like to kick this year as well. So

Clayton Daniel
yeah, certainly. Well, so. So not a lot for this year, though.

Emily Blanch
No, not not Not much, just just a little bit here. And there should should be enough to keep me slightly busy for the year

Clayton Daniel
to see that feel each second as it passes. Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a big year. That’s a that’s a really big year. And there’s obviously a look there. And I mean, from, from my point of view, the stuff that I’m working on is or how do we move into the states? You know, how do we increase our capabilities on the technology? side of things? You know, how do we reach into accounting and seeing and pull people out? You know, ideally, creating some kind of a business school to help with the conversion, so to speak. Yeah, there’s a handful of really big things that we talked about, at our, at our offside at the beginning of the year. And even if the crazy thing is like, even if none of these big things come to pass, the trajectory that we’re on now is so I would call it stable and fruitful. That, yeah, that was the very first year in my business career of net I wasn’t worried to start the year with. And to be able to say that can compared to three paragraphs. It’s just like it, it kind of is amazing to reflect on a car. I think it was like Episode 23, or something of the podcast, where you were where we interviewed you for the first time. And now that we’re Episode 623, or whatever it is that we’re up to, I think in terms of like, the actual number of the podcasts, I think it’s 350 or something. But if you add up all of the podcasts that we do release, because we have multiple court channels on this, or multiple shows on this podcast channel, so it all up wherever 600 It is, it is amazing to think about how far how far we’ve come. So here’s here’s two things. What would you tell Emily on her very first day, right? So let’s say what would Emily today tell Emily that was starting at Ensembl or x y back then on the very first day? That’s the first question. The second question is, what does Emily say five years from now? Till you tell Emily today?

Emily Blanch
Gosh, big questions pick big questions to end. So if I, if I was talking to Emily starting on day one, I would say girl you are in for a ride. Strapping you are going to stretch yourself and create more than you thought possible. And there will definitely be moments where the only explanation To keep going is not logical, it is purely on gut feeling, and just drive. But it is all going to be worth it. And you’ll very, you’ll meet some amazing people, really broaden your professional circle in ways that you didn’t think you ever would. And you’ll get to a point where you’re able to build up the skills and the magic that people have within them, you’ll be able to build that up in other people, which is ultimately the goal. So that’s what I would tell Emily starting on day one.

Clayton Daniel
Yeah. And Emily, five years from now, what is what would she say to you today?

Emily Blanch
Goodness. So Emily, five years from now? insane to me. She is saying, your your Northstar, of creating something bigger than yourself as absolutely come true. And you can hang your hat on the fact that everything that you’ve done in this company in this organization, is done with a mindset of how can I make other people’s worlds better? How can I make other people’s professional lives successful, like it’s a very, it’s a very meaningful, impactful drive that you have had. And that has stayed consistent throughout throughout it. And there are now hundreds of 1000s Millions of professionals leaning into something you created something you think wouldn’t have survived you many years ago. And that’s their number one go to like when a professional enters their industry. The fact that they’re leaning into something you created is pretty special. So go and celebrate that.

Clayton Daniel
Oh, yes. Yeah, that’s super inspiring. And one of the one of the things I’ve been sort of shooting around to the team just recently is, despite the intense size of the of the mandate, you know, which is global financial planning, and then ideally moving across into complementary professions like mortgage brokering, and things like that. It, the fact that we’ve got more than half a chance of pulling it all off, I think, is quite a wild concept, considering you know, where this all started, so yeah, I pre like it’s lovely to hear from Emily five years from now.

Emily Blanch
Let’s cross check this in five years and see what happens.

Clayton Daniel
Exactly. Well, that’s everything. So thank you so much for jumping on sharing with us today. Emily, it’s been a pleasure to sort of get you back on. I think this is probably like the third or fourth in total that you’ve done, but it’s always a pleasure to have you. Considering you know, you are the you’re you’re the heartbeat behind everything that’s happening on the advisory side of the company. So thanks for coming on.

Emily Blanch
Of course, always a pleasure.