AdviceTech Podcast #20 – Adviser Ratings – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello and welcome to the XY AdviceTech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis and the guest joining me here today to deep dive into advisor ratings is a paramedic eels fan and we’ll forgive him for that was once a financial analysts like myself and in fact took part in the Australian digital currency commerce Association. A very long acronym it has thank you so much for joining me on the show, Angus.

Angus Woods
Hello Peita, I finally get to be on the show. I’m so excited. And I love it in music to this podcast as well. So isn’t it in

Peita Diamantidis
really fun, really fun? We didn’t go to corporate there, which I love. And you should have your tech so Exactly, exactly. Alrighty, so we’re gonna dive into all things advisor writing, but let’s just get to know you a bit better through the tech you use. What is your most used emoji? Do you even use emojis?

Angus Woods
I do. I’m a bit of an emoji Fein. I’ve been using emojis. But I got told off by my mates many years ago for using it too often, but I don’t mind. So I think, you know, I think it creates a little bit of fun and a little bit of emotion for us or to sort of engage with each other a bit better. So yes, I’m a bit of an emoji fan. And I no question because it was a prelim question coming in here. The the emoji that I used to use a lot, obviously, and up to the generic one that I think everybody uses is the thumbs up. But I’ve moved away from that. I’m very much in the vein of the heart emoji. And I know that sounds. I know, that might sound a little bit trite, but coming from an industry where we all seem to care about each other and coming from an industry where, you know, there is an element of a lot of small businesses that are operating. That heart emoji, I think speaks to a lot of element around not just obviously the love that you would say a heart emoji to your to your wife or your kids. But it also talks to kid the care factor, you know, as founders as well, especially, you’re going through hard days. And it’s also good to have that emotional connection with someone that they go, You know what I care for, you actually understand where you’re coming from, you’ve taken the time and effort to respond to me or you’re taking the time and effort to to write a post. So the thumbs up to say, Well done, mate. That’s great. Don’t get me wrong, I get a lot of thumbs up mates. But, you know, I’ve sort of moved more into if I really think it warrants it, which I think a lot of it does. I’ve moved more into the heart emoji.

Peita Diamantidis
No nice. I’m a bit the same. Actually. I like the ones with a bit more warmth or energy, or something that just sort of really transmits how you’re feeling. So I like it. I’m right there with you. All right, so I don’t want to freak you out too much. But let’s imagine you had to take everything off your smartphone. All of it, all of it. And only three could you retain what were the three apps you think you’d keep.

Angus Woods
Yeah, I wish I could be really eccentric on this but I’m quite functional in my in what I do so I could probably give away Believe it or not email in terms of at least on my phone because I’ve I’ve moved more into a Slack person This lack is something I definitely need to do just because of my day to day interaction with my staff. The other one, given I travel a lot would be Uber. So getting around, making sure that I’m coming to meetings on time and I know some of you listening to this will go Angus, you never on time, but I’m trying to. So the Uber app, I’ve tried all the other apps when it comes to travel, and I think that one’s that one that I seem to keep relying on. And Spotify Believe it or not, I’ve become very much as a podcast sort of guy. I’m listening to one podcast that Dante de Gori got me on to the former CEO of the FPA, who’s now heading it up overseas, but is how other dad’s dad. So I’m trying to try to improve myself at the moment with the Hamish Blake, podcast, but I get that from Spotify. So I like to when I exercise is Spotify. So probably those three apps that are staples in my, in my life,

Peita Diamantidis
if there’s anything that I think could teach all of us in this industry, that there’s so many voices and ways we can communicate. It’s the depth and breadth of podcasts that are out there not about money just about stuff. Like, look, it’s just yeah, so broad and so interesting, and so unusual. And it’s like, there’s a lesson, you know, those people have an audience and a big one most of them. Yeah, so we could do you know, if we communicate that well, and we can tell stories, you

Angus Woods
know, with latest ones that this one is now a staple of mine paid around? I’m not just saying that. So there you go. Yeah, no, storytelling is one of the things I’ve hopefully we as a business do quite well, because I think, you know, to have a business, you have to be a good storyteller.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, I think so to to connect, right. That’s what it’s all about.

Angus Woods
Exactly. All right.

Peita Diamantidis
So let’s talk about advisor ratings. For those that maybe aren’t aware of what it is, let’s sort of take a step up, you know, and sort of be back. Where do you guys fit in this sort of ticker advice, tech space, you know, what category do you fall under?

Angus Woods
And while it’s interesting, we like, well, fundamentally, we’re a lead generation tool. So think of us as a marketing tool. That’s plainly and simply I’m not going to try to say that we’re nothing more than that at the moment. But there will be an element that we are moving towards, and we could probably come to that later. But we are a lead generation tool for financial planners. And, you know, it’s about getting reviews, it’s about getting recognized, it’s about the industry getting recognized, we know that 85 Or sorry, 95% of people that see in a financial advisor are well looked after. And you know, there are some bad experiences out there. But really, it’s really showcasing the value of seeing a financial advisor. So it’s a it’s a repository for all the information on financial advisors in Australia and for consumers to connect with advisors. Perfect,

Peita Diamantidis
perfect. And there’s not really many similar out there. I mean, there’s not many doing this sort of, you know, across the industry, bringing them all together. I guess the associations have sort of played with that. But really, you guys are the few that I’m one of the only that I’m aware that are doing this on such a big scale. Yeah, well,

Angus Woods
I think, you know, yeah, I guess he looked at from a review point of view, the competition would be people like Facebook and Google, but you know that they’re peripheral in terms of just at the five star moment, they don’t do a lot of the verification of veracity as for those small businesses that know that they’ve suddenly been hit with a one star review, they have no idea Joe Bloggs has suddenly been and then getting that taken down from Google is very difficult. So that’s sort of one competitive landscape aspect. And then you’ve got the marketplace which is I’d call call the Find and advisor tools and we wanted to create a better experience or a single place where consumers feel comfortable that they can go to I always use the analogy here, Peter when people asked me so is it like Rotten Tomatoes? For Have you heard of rotten tomatoes?

Peita Diamantidis
I live in Rotten Tomatoes. movie fan? Yeah, so

Angus Woods
I’m a massive movie fan. So I always go to IMDb or Boston. Or I go into it and go into a movie that will determine whether I slept through it or not. So Rotten Tomatoes has two parts of their review website. It’s it has the critics review. Critics look at things like our cinematography and things you know, all that it has has. They’ve got all the emotive element that you really want and yeah, look at it from that perspective. And I like to think that’s what we do it right at adviser ratings, we’d go deep on some of the data and we get to the crux of the advisors, I guess qualifications, experience, advisors expertise, those sorts of things. We scour the net to make sure that that you know, we’re comfortable around the quality of advice of around that advisor and then the consumers will have their own view. blow them up there. It was a great kissing scene in that scene, and all of these sorts of things that made me feel really good. I came out of it feeling pumped. And so they’ll have their own perception of what constitutes a good quality movie. But think of it like that is how is how I always use that analogy. So that’s where to that’s where this sort of, that’s where this program really comes into play. Me. Okay.

Peita Diamantidis
And, you know, what caused advisor ratings to be born? What was the trigger point? Or what was the thing that that turned it, you know, into something that you guys, you know, were doing in this really proactive sort of structured way?

Angus Woods
Yeah, good question really was. So two things I’ll add to that, and up two pronged approach. One was really off the back of the GFC, we saw the issues around advice, the disparate nature around the quality of bias, you know, you had strong financials and those sorts of things. So we wanted to create a place where I think all of that all the data was synthesized in one spot. And all the information and all the advisors were all in one spot. So yes, yes, the FBI had their thing the AFA had their thing, all those sort of dealer groups, you know, whether it be a MP at the time, and the banks had their find an advisor solutions, but there was no one that was purely I would say, independent, but also not deep. I’m looking at it from a deep angle perspective. So that’s why we wanted to create this single place for and I was always being coming from this background, I always wanted to ensure that, you know, people would set themselves up for life and be comfortable in terms of who they would relate with who they would correspond with. So that’s how it adds to that. From that universal financial planning sense. But in addition, I originally looked at this business model from a doctor’s point of view. So I came by I come from a really deep medical family. So and sort of the same issues exist, you know, who are the good doctors? Who aren’t the good doctors? Where do I go do to see really good GP? Who do I go to to see a good specialist or referral partner? You know, if I’ve, if I’ve got a heart issue, if I’ve got a colorectal issue, if I’ve got whatever it is, so and there was no, again, there was no single point of clarification around that. Now, I hate to say this, but it’s changed now. But 14 years ago, 12 years ago, when I was looking at this, the AMA, were a little bit difficult to work with they were trying to get there. And also there was a bit more stricter regulations around that element of testimonial websites now that that has been relaxed since. So that’s where I was looking at. And also, so I’ve melded the two really, I thought, Okay, I like business and planning come from basically from a business investment background, my family comes from a medical background, how can we bring the two together, and I looked at it from the context of this, this goes through our organization, there’s this woman that we’re our core product, our core data product is based off his quote, Florence Nightingale, and everyone knows Florence Nightingale. She’s the founder of nursing. So she, you know, it’s a Qatari her hometown, she was looking at criteria crime meet the Crimean War, hospital stats, though, she was looking at things like sanitary methods she was looking at, which was which soldiers were dying at which points in time, what were their war wounds like, and those sorts of things, as she was really focused on using her statistical and her nursing background, to actually better care in the hospital to get better care in the hospital. So to extend survival rates and good quality care at the hospitals, not just then in Albania, but also then globally, and that became adopted across the globe in terms of standard quality care for hospitals. So I had this ambition to do the same in financial planning. So that’s sort of where it all comes out. It’s a long winded way of saying, that’s where the whole sort of 10 year journey has come from.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay. And so the I mean, you know, an informed consumer is good for everybody. And I mean, you’re right, it’s so hard. Like, if I think about my husband’s a carpenter, he’s a chippy and the minute like we can have we can be at a networking event that he’s popped into maybe pick me up and it’ll be some industry thing. Somebody he’s he’s a chippy, they don’t even know me and they’ll be asking for his card, that the desperate need to connect with people that are connected to somebody else just because we need the expertise, I think is similar and advice and to sort of inform people such that they can do proper research like actually get to almost know somebody before they reach out is so powerful instead of this, you know, random referral or just randomly picking somebody because they, you know, you walk past them at the shops or they’ve you know, storefront or whatever it is, I think I love the idea of really giving consumers information, you know, real information on who these advisors are and, and almost matchmaking, right? I mean, that’s sort of what it becomes. It’s a matchmaking exercise.

Angus Woods
But we know, we still know that this is a singular sort of relationship for most people in their lives that, yeah, switch and change. Most people don’t switch and change advisors unless they’ve had a really dire experience. Yep. But then at the end of the day, there is that element of I want to know a little bit more about who I’m basically going to get married to. So if there is an element of that, you know, if there is a bit some pre dating material that you can look at to go, Okay, have they got the same element of meat, you know, my neighbor down the road, or my mum in law may not have the same value sets, as I do yet? I’m being referred to that advisor. Right, just just basically gives you a choice to ensure that okay, well, that referral, I’m going to put them on my list of people to see but you should be seeing three or four at any one point in time. Yeah, you know, and that happens, you know, that happens in any professional industry and happens, you know, you should happen in the carpentry industry, right? Oh, yeah, definitely.

Peita Diamantidis
And I think that I think, um, you know, in our, you know, advisors, we can get a bit sensitive, sensitive to that thinking people are shopping around on price, and I just don’t think that’s what it is. This is a, if we think about it more as matchmaking, this is about a vibe, and they just need to get the right vibe. And that doesn’t mean that other person is a bad person, it just mean the vibe is off, it doesn’t quite match, you know, it’s just all it is.

Angus Woods
Exactly. Well, I bet I but I see I see I you know, I life coach regularly and it took me but it took me ages to find the right person that I dealt with and that I want to speak with on a day to day basis that I open up to the same with doctors like on again, speaking going back to my medical analogy, I’m always asking family and friends too. And I will shop around from the doctor’s perspective, when it comes to someone I feel really comfortable with, you know, you’re this, it’s the same sort of relationship, you get to tell your doctor something or the specialist, something that you feel that you wouldn’t tell anybody else. Yeah. So, yeah. And Peter their heads now actually, the heads are in the power of the advisors at the moment, because there’s so many consumers wanting to speak to somebody, you know, the amount of volumes or leads coming through our platform is out of control, and they’ve all been turned away. So, you know, that’s one of the challenges. I think we as a platform basis, how do we start to making sure that we can put them into the hands of the right people, you know, whether that’s new advisors into the industry to try and get them ahead of a leg up because everyone needs, I think, ultimately help with financial advice or planning at certain stages in their life. But if it starts earlier, the better then great, though, yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
for sure. So then, in terms of so clearly, I mean, we’re sort of discussing what it means to the consumer, from an advisors perspective, then what is their experience, you know, then setting themselves up on the platform? Yeah.

Angus Woods
Well, the main thing he is, as I said, a lot of this comes down to being a validation tool. Yep. So we don’t know because we don’t have a money, monetary model on the front end. Right here. We don’t get advisors to pay for where they’re positioned on our website. We don’t get advisors to basically pay for a lead with nor do we do consumers. It’s more about once you get a referral. That person is going to check you out. Online, and they gotta check you out on their LinkedIn profile. If you’ve got one, hopefully they can check you out on your advisor ratings profile, we know they do because we get about 2 million profile views a year. Okay. Even if and retaining those clients, advisors, clients, believe it or not, we’ll be in the background looking at you even though they will say Yeah, thanks, Peter, I think you know, thanks for that, that was a great, that was a great experience, that will hear something in the media about financial planning, which is often sometimes negative. So they’ll just go and sometimes go and have a trigger moment to go. Actually, I’m just gonna check peter out again, right gonna have a look at where if they’ve done anything, you know, those sorts of things. So they’re constantly looking at your profile, irrespective of you even if you’ve got a deep good relationship with them. And then obviously, there’s the lead gen site, don’t get me wrong, there are those that have no idea that don’t have a relationship with anybody that would actually prefer a third party review website to be the base that they can go on. Go and speak with someone because they don’t like and no offense to, hopefully we’ve got no 95 year old advisors. So that’s why I’m picking 95 years old. But you know, if my if my grandma and says go and see Uncle killer Uncle Joe, he’s a financial advisor, and he’s 95 and he’s not up to speed and he’s still doing things in Excel. You know that your, your sort of those referrals probably aren’t the referrals you’re sort of looking for? In CMR?

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. Absolutely. So then, is there so you know, you guys sort of confirm who the advisor is the details background, I’m assuming that education, that sort of stuff, you know, it’s like, let’s just make sure they are who they say they are. Then beyond that, is there any capacity? So any capacity advisor do to add more materials to provide any context or, you know, that sort of stuff? What’s the next level?

Angus Woods
Yeah, so so that, think of it like when you okay, if I’m an advisor, I’ve just joined the industry, or I’m an advisor, and I got, I’ve heard about this advisor ratings platform, I should jump on there. So you know, there, there is the financial advisor register. So if your return on a ladder in Australia, your license, if you’re a license it yourself, you know, you have to put this onto the financial advisor register, that has an open API, and there’s a few companies that use that we are one, so we get all that data, and we have then have a team of about 12 people that clean that up that make about 15,000 changes every month, because that data, it’s a bit like you, it’s a bit like filling out your LinkedIn profile, someone will do it and then they’ll do set and forget, and they won’t ever update it. Even though you’re legally obligated as a license to actually change that. Unfortunately, for ASIC, they don’t have the policing in place to go, is that data accurate? And I can tell you, it is highly inaccurate if you’re a consumer. But if I’m an advisor, you need to do that anyway. But then you we basically encourage advisors to come into our environment, to then in, I was going to use the word embellish, not embellished, but to make your make your profile, flourish it a little bit more in terms of ensuring that what you’re articulating to the end consumer is who you actually are. This is a relationship. This is a relationship game. So we check all those things like standards, memberships, qualifications, and then we get you to sort of go, well, whilst you’re there, why don’t you upload some of your YouTube videos? Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself? What’s your expertise? What are you actually really good at? Are you, you know, are you a post retired type advisor, tell us a little bit about your clients. Tell us a little bit about your F QA, that then helps us do a lot of that, as you were saying at the outset, a lot of the matchmaking so if we’ve got a consumer at the front end, you know, we’ll come play around with the filters. So we go okay, well, Peter is more likely to be matched with these 10 advisors are exempt. You know, the consumers can drive that as well. They can go Oh, hang on. I don’t necessarily want. I don’t necessarily want to an advisor my age. Yeah, believe it or not, most advisors want someone their own age, because they can relate to them. But am I got I want someone that’s 30 year old tech savvy, that’s, you know, basically might, you know, he knows everything about the, you know, the world of you know, Tesla shares, Facebook shares, and that’s my that, those sorts of things here into

Peita Diamantidis
crypto I want to do

Angus Woods
exactly well. So maybe, unfortunately, at the Bible we haven’t solved have solved that one yet. But fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you view that. But yes, in short, we get advisors to tell us a little bit about more about themselves and to enrich their profiles, that also helps us from an SEO point of view. When I say presumably, them, yeah, so sorry. I mean, the collective us, as opposed to advise the ratings, the collective us, ie, the industry gets elevated on Google, you get to see and you become a bit of a thought leader, your existing clients go Oh, okay. Well, Peter, I’ve seen you there. I’ve seen that you’re representing the industry in a way and I love the way your brain thinks, and I love what you’re putting out there. And I love that my money is in your hands. So

Peita Diamantidis
perfect. And so there’ll be a lot of things I’m betting that somebody could so consumer could search on one potentially could be location, do you guys have the capacity to match for because there’s more and more virtual practices now? Right? So do you guys have the capacity to cope with that too? Yeah, we’ve

Angus Woods
just we’ve just got face to face online. So what do you prefer if you’re a consumer if you’re just online, we’ve also implemented we’ll keep we’ll keep refining our filters based on user experience. You can as you know, you can be so feature heavy on certain things. This is one thing I always say to software tech providers and I’m guilty of it, I put my hand out, hand up myself you build these features and no one ends up using them. So being getting a little bit better there. But yeah, you can filter on you know things like gender, you can filter on experience or expertise. You know, weather as I said before weather You’re very good at margin lending, or you’re good at potentially, you know what, I’m actually quite good at derivatives or options, helping you with options or protecting your portfolio, you know, around tax around budgeting, cash flow all of those elements, you know, and we’ve also implemented things like, you know, languages spoken, How many languages do you speak? Which languages do you speak? And that was one of the big feedbacks that came through from consumers, especially how multicultural we are people, right? Different types of advisors that speak different languages? Yeah. So you know, the online digital experience, whether you want to do whether you want to transact in a different way than having the advisor drive out to your home, or, or you’re driving out to the advisor. So yeah, there’s different filters that we’re building in. But we, we, we tweaked them, we go, Okay, which one’s being used more? Which ones are, you know, those sorts of things?

Peita Diamantidis
Right. Okay. And I think, I mean, I love the idea of languages being one because I think it’s, you know, our, our industry is not as diverse as it could be, but we should celebrate the people that can connect this broader multicultural part of Australia, we’ve always been a bit weak on that in financial services, but if they’ve got those skills, you know, they need to be doubling down on them, you know, extra languages are so powerful, like, that’s just fantastic. As an advisor, they just they made, and I think some people may not even like it, they recognize that that skill they have, but I’m not sure they understand that potentially, they could be the one that can serve those clients. Yeah, no, it really could be that rare.

Angus Woods
You know, we see we see more and more, especially, you know, let’s say this delicate, I won’t say delicately, you know, where, you know, the average that says we’re a 50 year old male, white male advisor in the, you know, in the metro cities, whereas you see, coming through the universities, now you’re seeing all types of, you’re seeing the, you know, you’re seeing loads of Indian heritage, those of Chinese heritage, even the Italians and the Greeks coming through, out of the paraplanning worlds and those sorts of things, he’d bring us such a diversity, and can potentially open up that angle of advice to a reflection of more the type of Australians that we want getting advice.

Peita Diamantidis
Correct. And I think what I love about it, too, is, is we might think that, well really isn’t that different, you know, so they, they, well, they speak English, or they need that it’s more than language. This is about understanding, it’s understanding their culture, how they come at things, even, even their paranoia. I mean, not only is my husband a chippy, but he’s Greek. And there’s, you know, in parts of his extended family, there’s this paranoia about certain things with money and to understand that innate thing, you know, if that proved to be a cultural thing, that’s powerful, you know, and it’s, and it’s really important as context for client conversations. So you know, I think celebrating, that is fabulous, and diversity of all types, you know,

Angus Woods
ya know, and hopefully paid at the end of the day, people come to a website, such as ours, if you’re looking to get into the industry archive, these guys have actually thought about that, you know, and, and, you know, it’s great that, you know, it’s been a little bit more universal in that respect.

Peita Diamantidis
Perfect. So in terms of, then, you know, there must be some practices or advisors, you see that really, really use the tool? Well, you feel like this. It’s just not something that’s static to them. It’s dynamic. What are they doing? Like, what, what does it look like when an advisor really gets on their game? With advisor? Right? Yeah,

Angus Woods
well, it’s interesting. So those that do exceptionally well are probably those regional practices that have a little bit more tech savviness than say, the adviser, the fellow advisor down the road. So you know, that they tend to get, they tend to get a lot of attraction because the competition in that those regional areas are a lot smaller. And the fact that obviously, this this actually bigger, become higher affluent, sort of non Metro people that have moved into the country, you know, whether it be farmers and the like, in terms of setting up so what they have been doing really well is really, really pinpointing what they’re good at and talking to their individual community. Yeah, so if I’m, I take some advisors that I know, in WA, they’re really being a mining state, you know, they really understand, you know, things like the way they’re positioned themselves and the content that they’ve got on our website. That is very much around understanding what the mining sort of situation means to them. And they, they put out video content around that. They put out things like understanding manage funds that are exposed to those sorts of because their constituents do care about that. You know, as opposed to and then you got, I think it’s really talking to what Continue constituents that you wanted to in your area. I’m speaking very political here. But it is a bit of a political sort of minefield in terms of being an advisor. And we talked, I think it’s not once said this at the FPA conference, I think it was Danny this from the XY talked about as an advisor. Now, it’s not, it’s really about understanding the politics of your client base as well. So understanding those sorts of things and articulating what you stand for, but as an advisor, and as a person as as a value set. So that is, who’s winning the race in terms of leads and who’s doing really well, using aging, it’s the personal, I’d say, it’s the personal element, beyond just it, is what the market stayed overnight here is what how I can help you, here is how I can help you retire, it’s actually talking to you as an individual, but also acknowledging your values may not be the same as some of the values of your clients. So acknowledging that as well, you know, everyone’s gonna have a debate, I have a debate with my wife, I’m a different generation to my pet. My parents, and my mom. And I often have these debates, Peter, and I won’t tell you which side of the fence I lean on. But yeah, I had these debates. But it’s also acknowledging that, you know, as an advisor, you’re going to have to have a knowledge that values is a is an important consideration set.

Peita Diamantidis
Yes. And it’s something that I probably, like you say, I mean, a value exercise or business values and things like that people might have experienced if they’ve been in a big corporate, right. And generally, it’s quite a dull and dry exercise. But in small business, they might not have done it. And so to sort of explain, like all of us have, like 30, or 40 of these things, like they sort of what frame our character and our personality and who we are, all you’re really looking for is that four or five that overlap, you know, like, it’s something that consistently overlaps with the type of clients you get, it doesn’t have to be all 40. You know, it’s just those John’s Yeah, that resonate. It’s finding that you know, and I think that’s important, because I think some people like oh, like, if it’s exactly like me, then won’t that narrow it down? No, no, no, no. What are your four or five? What are the things that are really meaningful, that you know, are meaningful to the clients that work well with you that you enjoy that they enjoy? You know, that sort of thing? How does you know, how do you frame that better?

Angus Woods
The moment, the moment, you can have that dialogue, where you feel comfortable with someone, they’re going to tell you a lot more about themselves, and you’re going to tell yourself, you’re gonna tell them a lot more about you. And then there’s absolutely, and then they get to understand you as an advisor and get to understand, okay, what really is important to this person that I can help them with.

Peita Diamantidis
In terms of somebody you know, anything they could do before they sort of dive in to really enhance the appropriate profile is any any homework or anything that you think, gee, if you just took the time to do this in this beforehand, it would help

Angus Woods
to a certain extent, I’d, I’d have a look at who does who does it? Well, we’ll have a look at Fisher round on the on the adviser ratings website, how to think about which clients that you have a deep relationship with that you feel comfortable with talking to i, this is the this is the one area I think is the biggest feedback I get from advisors is I don’t want clients reviewing me, I feel it’s intrusive, I feel like very uncomfortable. And I, I get that I, I feel a bit the same. When I get out with Google reviews, I’ve only got six of them, by the way. But in terms of getting signed, but it’s your way of telling it. Think of it as your way of telling your clients and telling prospective clients more a little bit about you. So I think most clients have you’ve got a good relationship with break out of that anxiety. And at least get the ball rolling with a couple that you actually feel comfortable with is what I’d say is going I’m thinking of thinking of getting my advisor ratings website up and running my profile up and running. Obviously, if you do have a team help them with things like having the appropriate photo that’s up there that makes you look appealing. Don’t get me wrong, ones still got that factor that you know, I like I want to engage with someone that feels warm and friendly and those sorts of things. So those sorts of things do count. Making sure the tone of your voice, the tone of what you put up there from an introduction perspective, is the right tone for you. Yeah. So you know, whether that’s working with someone internally, you’ll go well, I’m not a great writer, they might be a good copywriter, that’s a mate of yours down the road, or even within your team. So those are the sorts of things you start should you should start to do in terms of how do you want to present yourself to the world so and it

Peita Diamantidis
is look I’m I’m right there with everybody where you know, I love having great feedback. Like I love it when we do that, but the next bit of would you mind? You know that next step is hard. However, what it was dawn broke for me it was the only reason if I’m perfectly honest. I won’t go to surrender. This is not your everyday restaurant where you just sort of walk in, if I’m going to go somewhere nice, I won’t go unless I can look at reviews. And I’m like, wait a minute, Peter, if you won’t go to a good restaurant without looking at reviews and the menu, then what are you thinking? You know, clearly, this is how we all behave. Now, this is how we all choose where we holiday, where we stay, where we, you know, all that sort of stuff. So, you know, I think it’s probably, I’m guessing that the people that do this, well just make it part of the experience in the process. So it sort of just becomes automatic, almost, it’s the next step. This is what we do.

Angus Woods
Well, they do. And most and most, most practices have a, you know, a client engagement mechanism that’s already either from their licensees or from their, or they just want to basically improve how they should be running the practice. So So my view is, can you incorporate this into an existing process? Any view if it’s a new process? You know, I think consumers these days from where you were 10 years ago, I’m bombarded with, can you leave a review, every time I leave a hotel, every time I leave a restaurant, even my doctors now asked me, you know, through hot dog, or what have you, can you basically resent your experience? And I’m, so I know, that’s part and parcel of everyday life these days. And I think as small business owners, you know, we’re used to it consumers are used to our it’s not daunting, like it may have been 10 years ago to to feel uncomfortable asking for someone to actually do that. But if you do, if, if you are going to do it, why not just do it in incorporated into an existing process or an existing conversation? Because if you’ve got that relationship, your clients will be more than happy to do that give you that feedback.

Peita Diamantidis
And it’s interesting, I noticed this with a place actually we went to in Hawaii, just before COVID, would you believe we were in COVID? When it all went nuts here in Australia with toilet paper? And I thought you guys were all crazy. What’s going on with toilet paper? This is ridiculous. And what they did well, was they, you know, we were leaving the fun thing we did. And they asked me, I was like, did you enjoy this? Or how did you find that? Some people were like, oh, no, that was really good. We really enjoyed that. And they connected that to the review of, oh, if you do a review, would you mind mentioning that? So they, you know, when it was their thing that they know other people struggle with? Or that they really value and they were looking for? And so it helped the review go even all the feedback go even faster? Because I mean, oh, yeah, good luck, I pluck three sentences done, you know, whereas when somebody says, Oh, can you give me a testimony like, oh, yeah, they’re really good. I liked them a lot, you know, like, it’s this horrible, awkward, awkward process.

Angus Woods
And and the the one thing, and just on that page, I just, the one thing advisors do get nervous about is maybe that disgruntled client that’s come out of the woodwork in the past, or they you know, there’s, there’s someone that had didn’t quite have the experience that they that they should have or could have, or they view things differently from you. So that’s really good feedback for you to actually address. And also, because we’re like most review websites, you have the last right of reply, you think I’m sorry, you felt that way. So that empathy that comes through in terms of responding to negative feedback is actually really powerful. And you’re more, believe it or not, advisors who have had the occasional negative review, one or two are getting far more leads and those who have a consistent five star rating, no bad feedback. You want to look for more genuine to you get to actually showcase the fact that you how do you deal with adversity? How do you deal empathetically with someone that hasn’t had that experience? And it also gets you to think about your practice processes and something that you know, you may be your best. But it gets you to go up publicly, I can respond to that. And, you know, people will see me addressing that issue upfront. So yeah, don’t be afraid to get out there and get amongst it. And then suddenly, if someone does come out of the woodwork, because someone will, unfortunately someone will. And then you’ll be on the backfoot. So why not get on the front foot and do it first? With the 100 clients that love you? So yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And is there anything that you feel like even your current users don’t quite take advantage of enough? In the tool? Is there something they’d like?

Angus Woods
implemented a few things to try and again, that thought leadership to try and ensure that so that’s that, you know, ensuring that you’re putting your videos up there, making sure that you’re monitoring, getting onto your profile, even if it’s logging in and changing your intro and that, because what that does is Google will crawl you and index you on our website and ensures that whilst we do what we can in the background, it ensures that you’re maintaining relevance. The other thing is, we’ve implemented a review process so it’s not just getting a client to review you. And then it’s set and forget. It should be part of your sort of process every couple of years. We would say every two years, yeah, you could do it every year, I think it’s every 12 months, we can but say every couple of years saying, Does this review still stand? You know, can you basically update it for me, please, you know, ensuring that there’s a history of the same clients that are coming through and reviewing you and ensuring that you’re still upholding the relationship upholding your, you know, upholding the, I hate to say it now the opt in mechanisms now that you’re all obligated to do. And that’s a good way of them also saying, can we also, whilst we’re opting into the fees for the year, can you also opt in to, you know, ensuring that I’m looking after you as a client from a review point of view? Yeah, so those are, those are the sorts of things that we’re doing, we’ve also got social media integration, now, so you can actually post in a nice delicate way that you can post your, all your reviews, through your own channels. Nice. So that, that helps from an optics perspective, as well, in terms of, as I said, ensuring that you’re putting yourself out there.

Peita Diamantidis
And that I think the refresh thing is a really important point that I mean, I realized once I started focusing more on LinkedIn, is how bad a lot of LinkedIn profiles are, because they just get out of date, you know, let’s ignore what’s written, that’s different, but but they can get woefully out of date quite fast. Right? I mean, they happen quite quickly. Whereas if you do it once, and you could say, Alright, I’m going to update, get all the info into my advisor ratings, well, then I’d recommend also making sure your LinkedIn profile is as good, right. So it should all be consistent and have the similar sort of energy and messaging, but then also just scheduling to update on either front makes such a difference, you know, and people call me on it.

Angus Woods
Yeah, and I would say don’t do I would, I would say don’t do necessarily advisor writings in isolation, you’re right paid to, like, take a take a day, or you know, not maybe you but take half a day, out of your days to get you know, a need to get my public profile assets all up to up to date, whether that’s your Yeah, if you’ve got a company Facebook profile, if you’ve got a LinkedIn profile, you know, those who use Twitter, I’m not a Twitter, person, but I do. I’m avoya When it comes to Twitter, but some people might have ultra high net worth that you that use twitter quite a bit. All their clients are on Twitter, so go where your clients are, and make sure that you’re putting something out there and making sure that you’ve got nice assets. And when I say assets, your you know, your photos that you’re putting your presenting up there, your your introductory sort of elements and those sorts of things. So do it all in one hit rather than sporadically going. And then having a consistent plan in place.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and look even further. Even if you’re you know, you might be a small practice or, or even you know, you’re working in a practice and they’re not going to get photos done. Or like all of that seems like a big deal and difficult. There’s even websites like think it’s simply headshots, which is basically online, they teach you how to take photos with your phone of yourself, and then they tidy them up, give you a decent background. And they’re actually really good looking headshots. So there are solutions here that are not expensive. You don’t need to go crazy with a photographer, but updating those, and then being current of how you look is really important, because it’s a trust factor, because we’ve person meets you and he looks significantly different to your photo. It’s not great, you know,

Angus Woods
we’re making me feel guilty, because I think I need to update my LinkedIn photo that’s now about six years old.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, maybe you haven’t changed a wink, it’s alright.

Angus Woods
I certainly know that’s not the case, Peter. And I had a few You look different from your LinkedIn profile, then maybe it’s time to update it. So it wasn’t on your LinkedIn profile either was like that’s what I’ve aged a bit. But as we know, a lot of small business owners, we put all our heart and effort into the small business than we sometimes neglect to look after ourselves, but at least at least to update the photos. So people know that yeah, probably 10 years older than what you are.

Peita Diamantidis
That yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. So looking forward, what’s on the what’s on the development path, what’s out there in terms of what you guys are going to be working on or even a wish list just as some things you’d love to do down the track.

Angus Woods
Yeah, so one of the things that we’re so what a lot of advisors don’t understand is we are the white label so you can white label our site we are the white label for the stock, Australian Stock Exchange Colonial First State and Australian super websites. Okay, so we will be wrapping up and we will be putting more effort into referral programs across those entities. So we don’t whilst we get a lot of traffic through advisor ratings, someone like an Australian Subaru gets more traffic than us. In terms of so there’s going to be more effort on terms of lead generation, especially as part of the quality of advice review a lot of these institutions are going Who should we be partnering with from a refer Errol perspective. Yeah, the Watch this space in 2023. The other area that we’ve been getting bit of feedback on, especially if you’re a multi advisor practice is, Angus, I can’t maintain my profile constantly, and those sorts of things. So we’re going to have functionality where practice managers or marketing managers, you know, how you can actually have someone else help manage your protocol for you. My admin is sort of long at admin person. So there’s consistency across what especially if you’re a practice, and you want that consistency of tone and voice across the practice, minutes, whilst there’s the you as the individual, there’s also the practice tone that you want to convey as well what you’re good at. So there’ll be that to make it easier for for those. And the other thing is, I know we send out every year landscape reviews, we get everybody to basically comment. And thank thank you to every advisor that does this, because it’s probably what we think is the most in depth bit of research in the industry. But it’s also the most survey, bit of research is advisors leaving comments on things like research houses and platforms in which which tech providers do they use? And what do they think of them. So we’re basically bringing that we’re bringing that online, and that’s going to be more dynamic. And we’re looking to onboard and making sure that when you’re an advisor, you can get directly be on boarded with one of those solutions. So those are the sorts of I guess, they’re the probably the three big initiatives that we’re looking forward to in 2023. That will really help advisors. So some some six significant improvements. I’d like to think, look,

Peita Diamantidis
it’s exciting, because one of the things that that people always ask Peter, how do you come across all this tech, and the thing is outside of pure advice, tech, it’s really easy, because there’s so many comparison that websites out there, like you and I both use Slack, right and in business, but you only have to do if you type slack versus in Google, and that’s all you need to type. There’ll be all of these websites that come up with all these things. Like it’s all done for you. In our world. That’s not quite the case, you know, and so to give people more and more tools that help them do that research where somebody else has already done a bit, you know, and I mean, I guess that’s what the past has been for too, you know, is, is just giving them the insight, giving them a starting point. So yeah, anyway, we can help you.

Angus Woods
So think of that. Yeah, that’s exactly what I said. It’s just basically color. And this is goes back to my one big switch days, that was my previous job in terms of their collective group experience to go, how do you together, help each other. And then don’t get me wrong there. He does some great platforms, obviously, ensemble performer X, Y does that as well, we will be having an element of doing that will be basically ensuring that that’s all up to date, all the data is up to date on every single advice tech, every single platform and those sorts of things. So advisors, at least have that at the at their hands when they’re doing and then we’ll get down to asset managers. So around that. So that’s, that’s a big bit of work, Peter, but it’s, we were bringing six, seven years of data online and make it a little bit more interesting and dynamic.

Peita Diamantidis
And it is an interesting, I mean, the asset manager one is interesting to me, because I mean, we’ve got research houses but But what those tools are designed when you know exactly what what you’re looking for. It doesn’t help you work out what you want to look for. No, no, it doesn’t. It doesn’t help you shortlist. It helps you when you’ve already got the shortlist G let me compare A, B and C. But if you’re trying to work out what the shortlist is, good luck. Yeah, it’s just

Angus Woods
what does that is? Because for 5000 investment options across different platforms, you know, some of some of the platforms have the option, some dates. Are you on that platform? And also then, you know, these? Yeah, as I said, yeah, there’s two 3000 asset managers and yeah, it’s, it’s a minefield, so yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, absolutely. Anything else we’ve missed? We haven’t covered?

Angus Woods
No, I don’t think so. I think I think I think we’ve covered quite a bit but you know, I love these chats and keep them up meeting because I like I like, actually, I was I was gonna lead in with this because I’m feeling inspirational. And for those that don’t know, it’s a Monday that we’re doing this podcast. So every morning, I always have this quote that comes up and I thought I’d share a quote that comes up on my phone, and conveniently was from Florence Nightingale. And it said, so for some inspiration, whenever you’re actually hearing this is ignite the minds spark to rise the sun in you. Nice, which is actually from Florence Nightingale. So, yeah, that would be my if you’re if you’re listening to this on if you’re listening to this on the bus So on the way to work or something, the I got inspiration from it. So maybe if one or two other readers do then then great.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic. I love it. All right advice explorers. If you’d like to find out more about advisor ratings, and I highly recommend you should, then the website link is in the episode show notes, along with Angus is LinkedIn details. So feel free to poke and prod him. And I’m sure it’ll direct you to anybody if you need assistance or have some questions. Thank you so much for joining us. I’ve, you know, we’ve become an even more compact industry. And it’s become even smaller and tighter knit, I think, because there’s just less of us. And so, you know, any, any more tools we have any more reasons we have that help us both connect with each other, and for each other, and then to the public. An absolute winner, from my perspective, so kudos on on all advisor ratings are doing and I can’t wait to see the next evolution.

Angus Woods
Thank you, Peita. Yes, it’s very exciting. It’s exciting time to be an advisor

Peita Diamantidis
It is. Thank you. Thanks. So are you a current user of advisor ratings? Are you on the website? Have you updated your profile? Do you agree or disagree with what we were chatting about? About the app, please, please, please share your insights on the ensemble community platform as I know, I’d love to hear your take. And if you have any tips, you know about things that you’ve done that you feel have worked or even profiles, you’ve seen that you think rock, if you see one, and you think this is fabulous, I love what they’ve done, hey, why don’t we profile them on the community platform and, and help everybody else see what’s working, you know, for some of the advisors doing really well out there. Now, in terms of my thoughts, look, I’m just going to be honest and share what this is sort of initiated out of me the process of updating your profile, you know, and other information on a tool like advisor ratings, I think is just such a great way to keep all of our internet presence, you know, really fresh and up to date. And it’s prompted me to do that across the board, you know, of all of the things that I’m on. So that’s LinkedIn, social media, website, and everything. So you know, rewriting your bio, updating your LinkedIn profile, adding some personality do a video doesn’t have to be long, just do a quick video that really shares either your process the people, you talk about a story that you think’s really valuable, anything to just personalize your content. And I’m honestly going to use this episode as a prompt to read revitalize the way in which I describe myself and what I do, you know, then once you’ve sort of done the basics, then perhaps write a blog, you know, and maybe a series of videos, you know, you could load them up into YouTube, and then embed them in that advisor ratings profile, create something really appropriate for your target market, you know, and and add that to your profile too, right? And then, you know, let’s not stop there, add the link to your advisor ratings profile to your email footer to your website. And look, this is all prompted me to really carefully think about how we can organically ask for testimonials and feedback. And I’m even considering whether there’s a way to just ask for feedback first, right? So, hey, what did you like? What do you feel we could do better? You know, what did you think of this element of the process? And then once they’ve done that, then asking them if they wouldn’t mind capturing that as a testimonial on a site like adviser ratings, you know, they’ve already done the thinking they’ve already captured it, they won’t be writing it from scratch, they just sort of giving that summer, you know, summary of their feedback. So that’s sort of the way I’m starting to think about how we’ll just embed this in our process, so that we can really capture people’s insights into how we do things because like we were saying in the conversation there, for me, I’m less interested in the year Peters great feedback, right? I’m interested in, in the insight into what worked well, the way they did this just made such a difference for the decision we had to make on that right. So something that’s really insightful will mean you’ll attract the right people by their testimonials. So look, I’d love to hear the ways in which you either asked for or thinking about asking for getting testimonials. So please reach out on the ensemble community platform and share any ideas you have. That was Angus and I were talking about the importance of understanding our sort of key values, you know, maybe our unique skills and how narrowing down on these can really make writing your profile and attracting the right clients to you so much easier and reminded me actually of a wonderful exercise we went through with our whole team. This was a team building exercise where we got the whole team to complete or individually complete a Clifton Strengths questionnaire and then got together we talked about our respective profiles, how they came together as a team and and how we could really take advantage in it. So today’s curiosity corner app that I think could be really helpful is Clifton Strengths. You can find them@gallup.com forward slash Clifton Strengths. Now, you may have already done some sort of profiling tool before, maybe it’s like a Myers Briggs test or you’ve gone to an interview, and they’ve, you know, poked and prodded you and tested to see if he’s serial killer sort of thing. You know, we’ve all sort of tests and look back. And really, that can get you thinking about how you interact with the world, and maybe specifically with your team, right? The thing I always struggled with them is that they, I felt they didn’t really identify your uniqueness. In fact, often they attempted to put you in a particular box, or on a newer one of four boxes, or areas in the box or whatever, which just didn’t feel it just sort of didn’t resonate with me. Whereas the Clifton Strengths testing, is trying to identify your unique combination of traits, you know, your personality, DNA, or even talent, DNA. And in fact, I would describe it as capturing your superpower. You know, it’s so incredibly powerful to do this as it can really help you enunciate why you amongst all the adviser options, someone can choose from, why you might be the right one for them. Now, when I say unique, the combination of my top five strengths that came out when I did the testing, in the specific order that they come out, right, so the top one is the strongest trait, and they come down, so the top five, have the odds of one in 33 million of being repeated in somebody else again. Alright, so this is true uniqueness. It’s really capturing what makes you you, right, and not just what makes you you or who you are, how you impact those around you. And as if that inside isn’t enough, or exciting enough to be honest, the content they then send you afterwards, you know, your email newsletters, of course, are tailored to your strengths. And they have headings like what gives you an edge over others, how you contribute something unique, you know, all of this stuff is incredibly valuable in framing your profile in something like advisor ratings. So I’d really encourage you to check it out. There’s a cost for the test. But look, I think it’s about 50 or $60. It’s not crazy, but it’s one of those times where it’s weirdly accurate. You know, it’s slightly disturbing how accurate it is. But it also helps enunciate things you might have trouble actually describing about how you do things and how you interact with people. So I’d, I’d really encourage you to check it out. And if you are curious if it prompts you to do the test, and you’re really curious to discuss your results. Once you’ve done it then please reach out on the ensemble platform as I’d be happy to compare and debate our live profiles and really think about how we can utilize those insights. So please don’t be shy. do reach out. Welp, that’s all we’ve got for this week. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you’ll get your advice tech fix automatically sent to you each Friday. And if you’d like a speaker to run your audience through client portals, these are the next big thing and advice tech is what everybody’s talking about. But not just about portals but a step by step process to work out how you know advisors need one and how to implement them in the practice then I have both a webinar version and a full blown in person masterclass to sort that out for advisors. So if this is of interest then please reach out to me on LinkedIn on forward slash Peita MD PEITAMD. Otherwise, I look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explores Stay curious