AdviceTech Podcast #7 – ProductRex – Transcript

Peita Diamantidis
Hello, and welcome to the X Y advice tech Podcast. I’m Peita Diamantidis. And joining me here today to deep dive into the product wreck software is former paraplanner a work from Homer. Well before the rest of us got in on the act, a software development survivor and a tech award winner. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Nick Topham.

Nick Topham
Welcome. Like to having me I don’t think I’ve ever had a an introduction like that before, but I appreciate it.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, it seems highly appropriate. You are an award winner after all right? That’s it. That’s it. Now I’m really keen to you know, pick your brain about ProductRex. But first, let’s just get to know you a little better as a tech user. So what’s your most used emoji? Do you use emojis? Oh, yeah.

Nick Topham
Everything I use every every inappropriate situation possible. But I think I’ll get to for the tide most use. The first is the one which is smiling and with a sweating thing on it. I think that’s quality. That’s how I am most of the time. And the other one is the teeth grit, which I feel is just usable in basically every situation. So I kind of got a tie tied result. They’re

Peita Diamantidis
fantastic. And two we haven’t had before on the show. It’s so well done. Yes. The Thumbs up. That’s the easy thing. Thumbs up, you know, so you’ve done. Well. Now on to the second part, if you had to delete all but three apps from your smartphone, what would you keep?

Nick Topham
So this is tricky, because I think I could delete a lot of them. I like pretty much all of them. Google Pay is going to have to stay Yeah, because they don’t have a wallet. So Google Pay, I think Spotify, which I use a lot. And I would also keep YouTube kids because otherwise they would be I that would be it. You

Peita Diamantidis
know. Fantastic. So that’s for entertainment while on the road with chitterlings. Hey, yeah, so that’s

Nick Topham
entertainment full stop. So don’t go crazy.

Peita Diamantidis
Perfect. All righty. Well, let’s dive into ProductRex. And I always approach these sort of conversations with the view that on both an advisor and a practice owner, so this is sort of, you know, me getting to just grill all of these wonderful advice tech providers for my own purpose, and people happen to be listening, which is awesome. So let’s go a bit high level initially, give me a sense of where ProductRex sort of sits in the advice, tech space? What category does it sort of fit into in that world? For sure.

Nick Topham
So I mean, I always classes as investment research, or investment product research. So when I talk about investment products, I’m talking about platforms and underlying investments, whether we manage funds or equities or whatever and SMEs I guess some fall somewhere in between. Yep. And want to talk about research you know, we’re not a research house per se, we don’t do like qual research, but you know, things like fees and asset allocation and understanding the products your clients have and you know all things about investment product recommendations product for x, which is where the obviously the name came from, I guess that’s where we fall in.

Peita Diamantidis
So it’s not about a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’m so disappointed.

Nick Topham
Well, so far. Any story, that was actually one of the initial themes of the logo, it’s actually got teeth if you have a look at it, but it was discarded. I just kept the teeth. So

Peita Diamantidis
as a Jurassic Park fan, you know, that’s that actually caught my eye? Not at all, it is an

Nick Topham
option. Maybe it’ll come back in the future.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So in terms of then what it gets sort of, you know, if an advisor is looking at things when it gets compared against, I guess that’s the usual sort of big call systems that people use. Right. So that’s your ex plans and others that do that sort of thing? Is that what people generally compare it against? Yeah, yeah.

Nick Topham
I mean, if you were to consider our original contemporaries, I guess what, what, what when it launched, I felt I was going up against looking things like well, solver or chat West, you know, those probably the big the bigger two. We’ve kind of moved on a little since then. But I guess those are contemporaries if you like,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah. Okay, perfect. So then what made you build the app? What was the trigger?

Nick Topham
Look, I had an outsourced power planning agency for many years. And literally just about every single person that came to us said, Can you do our product research? And every single person I said, No, I’m not interested. Because it was a very, very defined scope for that business. We didn’t do research. It’s just about writing, SOPs and Docs. And it came to a point where I felt like I wanted to do something else. And I thought, what can I do? And I realized everyone was asking me the same thing. Look, what was in the market realize that there was a opportunity there to provide something better? And basically, yeah, got got stuck in develop product tracks over the course of about a about a year. And that was about it just had a crack really sad, actually,

Peita Diamantidis
I mean, from thought to, to actual usable tool was quite quick, in that sense. Right? That sounds like a fairly short

Nick Topham
timeframe. Really quick. Yeah, I had to I spent probably six months brushing up my my development skills. And just taking some time on that, throwing some ideas around. But really hardcore development. Yeah, around around 12 months.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And so the gap you were seeing there was about the, you know, was it the quality of the analysis, or the data or the combination? What was the gap that you saw that you felt needed to be filled? It was

Nick Topham
pretty much everything, to be honest. I’m not gonna pull any punches, the data was wrong. The systems were difficult to use. That, you know, aside from things like UI, they were just not, you know, when we talk about things like pricing and doing research and investment products, it’s not phenomenally complex. It’s really not. But they were phenomenally complex. So there was an opportunity there. Cost, obviously is an issue, and which we’ll probably touch on later, I imagine. You know, you’re playing well up with absolute bottom bargain prices. 100 bucks a month for these systems. So for system, it’s just prices out platforms. That seems crazy. So it’s pretty much everything to be honest. But yes, certainly data quality, ease of use, and cost are the big three.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah. Okay. And so the primary user initially paraplanners, slash advisors, I’m assuming. So that’s the first,

Nick Topham
you know, finally, and I thought it would be very heavily oriented around paraplanners. The system, I thought most of the power plant is using the system. But 65% of our users, our advisors are authorized representatives, switches, I did not expect, I take that as a bit of a compliment. Because, you know, it is absolutely not a disparagement of advisors, they don’t want to use software generally, yeah. They don’t want to be in there doing this kind of stuff. But I feel perhaps because it made it easier for them, they’re more encouraged to do so. percent of our users are actually authorized reps with the rest being, you know, paraplanners, admin practice managers and so on.

Peita Diamantidis
Absolutely. And are you seeing more people, you know, giving the admin access, like actually letting other people I mean, that’s so to be clear, I should, I should face up a listeners. We are in my practice, we are a user of product RX. And there are other hands that touch it well, before I get anywhere near it, so and so admin do a whole lot of setting things up and putting information and and getting it ready before I go in and do any comparisons. Are you finding many people doing that? Or is it still just primarily sort of more technical based people using the tool?

Nick Topham
I find I find that’s pretty common. I mean, the actual data entry side of it is relatively limited. We’ve got a whole bunch of input options. You’re not like sitting there for an hour typing in fund by fund like, that’s absolutely, there’s no reason to do that. So there’s not a huge amount of admin work to be done. But yes, it’s pretty common for someone’s administrative or power planning staff to go in prep a scenario and the advisor to come in and say, Oh, what if we do this? What if we do this you know? Perfect, do the more Yeah, the other stuff

Peita Diamantidis
awesome, and how you have you and you may not have this lens based on the way you get people sort of looking, you know, you’re becoming members, how a licensees responding to the tool, you know, how are they? How are you finding their response?

Nick Topham
Look, again, I’m full transparency, I generally don’t approach licensees. They’ve got a lot on their plates, and they get hit up from a lot of software people, and I’m a software person. And look, I completely understand that, you know, sometimes it gets a bit much, I don’t really don’t approach licensees, where I do talk to them, it is positive. They usually are referred to us by their own advisors who have said, Hey, you guys should look at this product RX. I’m using it and it’s great. And they just have a chat to us. And by that time, there’s not a there’s not much for them to do. You know, we don’t, you know, all the things around the AFSL are very easy to set up. And they’re already usually set up by the time I talked to

Peita Diamantidis
them. Yes. Perfect. All right. So have you noticed any practice or use it this works really well for versus ones that it doesn’t, you know, is there an is there standout type or, or business size or anything like that, that it works well, for?

Nick Topham
It’s a difficult one, it’s a, I try to talk to as many users as I can, but the you guys is very big, so I can’t talk to them all, you know, I feel that it’s well suited to practices who have a defined process that their clients go down, you know, whether it be reviews, whether it be new clients, you know, if you bring on a new client, and they’re in some industry fund, and before even making a decision, you know, Hey, we should price them out. And just check out how much this has costs and what it could potentially cost, you know, and you can use that functionality around model portfolios, you can use our new auto wrecks functionality, that kind of stuff saves you an enormous amount of time, and you’re gonna get a better result. You know, you can straightaway price out multiple platforms, multiple portfolios takes like, I don’t know, less than a minute. Yeah. So I feel it really helps them more than most those practices that, that really have a process they take with each with each piece of advice.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, and I guess, because part of the reason for that would be because you are filling a specific need and step. So you need to have your process outline, because you, you know, product wrecks pops in for a moment, like that’s when it’s it’s utilized, it’s utilized? Well, you get the output, and then you move on, you know, it’s not something that’s sitting open throughout a whole a whole process. In that sense. It’s not designed to be that type of tool, right?

Nick Topham
That’s, that’s right. I mean, you might, you might hit ProductRex actually did a good flowchart once. Or you might hit ProductRex, that three points of the advice process, you know, discovery, advice, prep, and then when you’re actually doing your documents, you might hit it at each of those three points. But you know, we’re talking about jumping in there and spending maybe 1015 minutes on each of those points. Maximum not got it open for hours and hours a day, you know,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, exactly. Exactly. Right. So if somebody’s sort of, you know, interested in starting up clearly, I mean, the tools free, folks, so I’ll just let you absorb that for a minute. While you’re sitting there going really? Yes, really free. And, you know, Nick, you’ve got all sorts of posts on LinkedIn, and things that explain how that’s possible Prasanna sort of feel like we need to cover that here. But if somebody wants to, you know, dive in, is there, you know, something they should do beforehand, or anything they could like, prep themselves really well before taking on the tool and start using it?

Nick Topham
It’s a good question. I’m not not really not really. So when you actually, I mean, the thing that I historically found annoying about other software is if you just want to go and have a crack, and you got to go through this whole process, and do all these print out buddy documents, and this and that. I mean, you know, just go to our website, it takes like 30 seconds to create an account in read all the stuff you got to read and, and do that, when you you know, we got like a 12 minute video for a new users. After that 12 minutes, you can basically use 90% of our functionality comfortably. So we’re talking about a 12 and a half minute investment, to actually go from zero to being able to use the system. It’s not like multi day training and all that sort of stuff.

Peita Diamantidis
Well, and to that point, you know, we’ve got offshore solution people that we use that are part of our team and I, I just handed her you know, I just gave it here are the videos, here’s a look in count and see what you can like she was and she doesn’t have any any finance background. She is very numerous, but but no finance background and picked it up, you know, in a heartbeat. So I think and that is probably a significant difference. To your point earlier, you’re talking about how these things are complicated, but actually aren’t. aren’t that complicated. Really. We make them harder than they need to be there. Is there a lot of numbers in this sort of analysis. Yes, but doesn’t need to be hard. No, you know, and it’s really repetitive. You know, that’s the point like this stuff is so repetitive. You know, as per your new, like auto wrecks. I think we should run through that because, you know, that’s a repetitive task that you’ve just automated for people. That’s just I mean, I’m super

Nick Topham
easy. I love.

Peita Diamantidis
So yeah. Talk us through how that works.

Nick Topham
Yeah, look, I mean, I’ll give you a bit of a story. This is not a new concept. So the first time this was raised was actually, about a year ago, what was mentioned to me and I said, I love it. We just can’t get there right now, because one of the things you need to do, anyway, someone else mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, I said, Yep. All right, let’s give this a crack. But basically, the whole idea around auto wrecks is, let’s imagine a scenario where you’ve got a perhaps a new client or review client come into your practice, and you just want to see how well the product is priced yet. Let’s talk about price here. Obviously, there’s a lot of factors, but I’m talking about this scenario, talking about price. So you can go in, you can put their details in, you can say, yes, it costs this much, you know, and maybe you want to test it against a few different wrap platforms, let’s say and use your model portfolios. So basically, this user said, like, Why do I have to go in and it’s not it doesn’t take long and product track. So you just duplicate it, use a dupe and swap function, but you know, why don’t have to go in and add the platforms and swap them and then check that the model portfolios are right, like why can’t this be automated? Alright, let’s give that a shot. So basically, what auto wrecks is, is it’s it automates the addition of your options. If you’ve got a client come in, they’ve got half a million dollars there a balanced profile, you can automatically add as many platforms as you like, average is about five I’ve seen, so let’s say five platforms, with five model portfolios, and you can immediately see what their options are. And this takes, once you set this up, this takes what like 10 seconds to add an order to Rex or something like that? Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
Fantastic. So and the thing, what I love about that is twofold. One, you’re automating a very repetitive task, and that’s what clearly the person brought up was, I entered the same thing over and over again, you know, these are the ones that I generally compare against, and I’m doing it over and over again. So I love that. But secondly, it’s making us automatically more thorough, yeah, like, if you’ve got something that easy that can just every time, I mean, you could just do it all the time. You know, you put somebody in, I’m just going to run it again. You know, like, why not? That’s fantastic

Nick Topham
light review, why not price amount? Why not? Exactly. We’re talking about something which is literally takes 10 seconds, to immediately price them out against a whole bunch of other platforms. I know a guy that does 10 platforms every time when he’s auto wrecks. Wow. So he’s basically takes all the major raps plus a couple of others, and prices them out and test. Alright, this is how much they’re gonna cost. And it’s, it’s, that would never exist in the past, because you’d get to two and you’d think, yeah, that’s enough. Yeah, I can’t be bothered doing anymore.

Peita Diamantidis
Exactly, exactly. And just to be clear, then for the listener, then, you know, this isn’t just comparing against the platform against something generic, it’s against the very underlying funds, you would have chosen for that profile on that platform. So you don’t even have to have your model portfolios perfectly working. If you then comparing it against another retailer, and even an industry fund as an automatic comparison, you just pick what you would have chosen for that profile. Right. So when it’s all set up, that to me, it just it’s so empowering, in terms of then directing your attention as an advisor. Okay, where should we

Nick Topham
focus? One less thing to think about it really? Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
you know, and it’s the perfect thing that this stuff is built for?

Nick Topham
Yeah. And like you said, I mean, I use the example of 10 wraps, and there’s nothing to stop you doing, you know, to wrap accounts with some nice, I don’t know, manage funds or whatever, and industry fund with a couple of their options, maybe another industry fund with some direct equities or something, you know,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah. And I just always had that, you know, and just run it each time. It’s, it’s great. I love it. Yeah, it’s so this is fine. But I still like it. Well, I’d hope so. I hope so. But it’s that type of stuff that, to me is particularly appealing, because there is a clunkiness to analysis in our industry. And when I say analysis, I don’t mean modeling. But that’s clunky to about. But in this type of analysis, that that it simply shouldn’t be because it is quite narrow, like it’s it’s repetitive, it’s narrow, we know exactly where it’s going from where it’s going to, it’s just that there’s a lot of inputs, right? That’s the trick. And so you’ve solved that problem for us, you take care of that. And then we just look at the outputs No. So it’s yeah, it’s sort of changing the way I think we focus some of our energies.

Nick Topham
I mean, I think it’s the term that they use in software development is is abstractions. So with all the new development languages, you very rarely get to the bare bones of code. Everything’s abstracted into higher level functions or high level abilities. And it should be the same with client or consumer facing software as well, these these concepts should be abstracted, which is kind of what I try and think about. Yeah, absolutely.

Peita Diamantidis
Which brings up actually, you do have the ability to have sort of a client. So a client version of the graphs and the output. What was that a request as well? Was that somebody saying, Hey, I’d love to show somebody but I want to take some stuff off.

Nick Topham
Yes, it was. Again, that was good client mode. So basically, you know, you click a button and it disappears. skins ProductRex put your colors and logos and you know, we take away things like the word recommended and we hide the product names and make it compliance focused essentially. Yeah, that was just, I had a training session with with a user, I think it was ended last year. And he said, Hey, can we do this? And I was like, Alright, and then you know, a week later it was live. So it’s, it’s great was a great, great suggestion and far more widely used I ever expected, like 70% of our users use that fantastic, very widely used a

Peita Diamantidis
fantastic and look, I think it’s probably something we downplay, isn’t it, how the sausage is made a bit in advice, like there is a lot of layers of work. In all the work we do for something even as simple as a review, there’s a whole lot of stuff that goes into that, and I think there can use the right way. There can be some great examples of them almost peering in behind the curtain, right? Oh, see, this is what sort of thing we’re doing. And you’re right, once you sort of strip away the names and lots of stuff, then it can be really powerful. I so

Nick Topham
product advice can be can be looked to be frank, quiet, it can be dried, depending on how you present it, you know, and, you know, I think a lot of consumers just start to glaze over when you start to get in the nitty gritty. But if you you know, flash them something up on the screen with some nice, pretty charts and numbers. And it’s just enhances that whole experience. I feel so yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
absolutely well used. And look, I think I’m getting really focused on and I’m actually considering going into doing some sort, of course on infographics and really thinking about the way we represent data and data visualization, because I think we’ve, well, really, we’ve all been using the same graphs for about 100 years. In fact,

Nick Topham
you say that, but you actually sent me that risk profile that asset allocation chart a couple of months ago, which is outstanding. So you’re moving in the right direction there. But

Peita Diamantidis
I think it’s something we all were used to because we get indoctrinated. And therefore I think we all think therefore everybody else is used to it as well. And I think that’s the challenge isn’t it is taking your head out of all of your experience to date, and really thinking about, does the consumer understand that at all? You know, I say that a lot with super statements, we get calls, and there was literally one yesterday and the clients like, Peter, I’ve sent it through to you because I need you to explain to me that table and that table and that graph. And this was somebody, you know, this is a provider trying to be really clear. You know, it’s just that we’ve made assumptions about what is clear to people? Yeah, so yeah, it’ll take some work we’ll get there. You know, it’s just iterations, isn’t it? So talk to me about integrations. I imagine that’s quite a involved process. Where are you guys at with that?

Nick Topham
Oh, look, it’s as involved as you want it to be I always find so integrations. Look, we’ve got various level integrations with all the major app providers now, which is great. So basically, that means that if a user uses ABC rep, I’m not going to drop any names, then they can basically bring clients data in two product tracks, it creates a platform that creates all the underlying investments, you have to sit there like typing out balances, because that sucks. So that was a big focus, that first stage of that is pretty well completed. Now, like I said, we’ve got all the major apps in there, which is nice. And the next stage of that is kind of adding that direct level API connection. Which basically means that instead of bringing data in from the system, you just get like a name of a list of clients, and you select it from a drop down. We currently have that with premium because they’ve got an open API. Yep, I will drop a name there. Yes. Good on him. Yeah. But I’d like to get that going with everyone too. So that’s, that’s platforms that the reason we work with platforms first is because, you know, historically, everyone deals with data feeds bringing data in from platforms to their CRMs, which it doesn’t work. Just going to call a spade a spade, it doesn’t work. So I was really hesitant to then try and bring data from CRM to product tracks. I thought we’ll go direct to the providers first, because then I know it’s right. Yeah, saying there’s anything wrong with CRMs. It’s just this seemed like a more direct route. Yeah. But that’s how I went that way. Software integrations. And now a big focus for me, there are two big ones in process. I can’t tell you who they are, unfortunately, until they’re live, but they are both well known solutions. And we currently got on with the Sandia which is live as well. That’s all live and going.

Peita Diamantidis
Okay, exciting. And look,

Nick Topham
I think we’ve gone on Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
I think the thing, there’s a lot of focus in our industry, when people talk about integrations, they sort of always focus on that truly embedded, you’ve sort of side by side arms link to sort of integration, whereas Yes, to be frank, often you don’t need that much. So you know, often you could just like just a trigger integration, something that goes from one place with three pieces of information. So if we’ve already got the platform data coming into product works, well what do we need client name, maybe their risk profile, like there’s so little you would need from elsewhere? It’s just triggering something, and then hitting in you know, so I think, you know, it’s week Get, we can make it harder than it needs to be, you know, especially with

Nick Topham
a software like product wrecks where it’s quite, I guess you would call it not transactional, per se, but it’s very scenario based, you’re not going in there to find out where your clients balance is, now you’re doing this for a specific potential piece of advice. So you don’t need that constant connection, which makes things a little bit easier, for sure.

Peita Diamantidis
Awesome. Are there any features in the tool that you find in current users don’t use as much like or maybe aren’t as aware of, then you thought they would be, you know, something that’s sitting there unused, that could be used more?

Nick Topham
Not not, that they’re not aware of, but I still consistently find people that don’t know about client mode and the import functionality, which we just spoke about, then it’s probably means I should make them more prominent, or maybe add them to the tutorial video. But those two are big things, if you don’t know what they are and your current ProductRex user, absolutely check them out. Look, I still find model portfolios are under use, not necessarily in product wrecks, but across the whole industry. There are still a lot of practices which put it off and put it off and put it off there just such as you mean, you know, like model portfolios is a huge time saver. It’s you need to get them sorted out. So that would be my my one. Auto wrecks is a brand new function. We’ve already been through that. That’s that’s a massive time saver as well. It’s once you set it up, it just does itself. It’s just it’s just us itself.

Peita Diamantidis
And how many practices are using or users are using the branding of the output? has many people gone to that trouble to actually, you know, for the customizer, yeah, to customize the output?

Nick Topham
Ah, that’s a good question. I don’t actually have stats on that anecdotally, small or self license groups, I would say almost, almost 100% of them would customize their output. I don’t really know why there’s a difference between them and others. But that’s very heavily used the whole idea just to backtrack. So I guess as someone who doesn’t know what pProductRex is, the whole idea about our outputs is basically we customize them to match people’s SOPs as you as you would know. So the idea is that when people print their documents out of product racks, they can grab our tables, drop them in and don’t touch them. I would say that’s probably more widely taken up with these smaller licensees, because they have more control over their SOA templates is my guess. Yeah, but it’s very widely used. It’s free to charge people for it. So I always encourage people to do it. Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
yeah, definitely. And I think I do encourage your listeners to really reflect on how much time you spend formatting advice documents, because I’m telling you it there’s a good chance, it’s longer than the actual advice, process. Everything you can do to stop that, please. You know, it’s ludicrous. It truly is ludicrous. And it is a waste of our time. We’ve got to we’ve got to minimize that as much as possible. So this sort of customization can make a big difference.

Nick Topham
Big difference, and it’s literally cost you nothing. And then you don’t have to change the, you know, like you said, you grab our output, drop it in your document. Yep, that’s it. Yeah. I mean, you guys have got your setup really nicely. You just don’t have to touch these things once you get them set up. Exactly right. Probably one of you. You want to view your ninja functions. You mentioned actually getting your theme customized, if you haven’t been Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Peita Diamantidis
So let’s talk about what’s on the radar into the future is there is I mean, there’s clearly some things so it sounds like the integration. Is you doing some more work there. Is there anything else on the short term? And is there anything else further out on the sort of wish list? You know, that you’d love to get to? Oh, sure.

Nick Topham
Don’t ask me this guy that that makes me commit to things. You know, I want to I might want to defer, you know, this

Peita Diamantidis
is in my self interest here.

Nick Topham
Yes, I won’t be held accountable if I defer any of these things. No, look, I’m Yeah, integrations are they just take away we’re getting them done. I want to do some more work around percentage based recommendations. I feel people’s standards are quite low. And there is quite a that’s kind of bad. People don’t expect much. But I think there’s a lot that can be done to make advice a lot easier. So things like, you know, you just fiddle around with percentages, and it sets them all. There’s a lot of work to be done there.

Peita Diamantidis
Yeah, for sure.

Nick Topham
I just, I guess I’m I’m having at the moment, I’m having difficulty making the step from this is sufficient to this is great. And I don’t really do anything unless it’s great. So fair enough. Fair enough. The other thing is client facing tools. Like I said, client mode, very, very widely used. There’s a lot that can be done there. And I’m really excited about that. Because it’s it’s a big area. So making some really nice presentation tools. And actually being able to talk through the advice and talk through products with a client and having something exciting to put on screen. So I’m working on that. So those are kind of the big two at the moment. But yeah, and some other slightly less exciting stuff when I talk about it about how clients are structured together and family groups and that

Peita Diamantidis
sort of stuff. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Nick Topham
It’s um, client client client facing stuff is is, is a big focus. But it’s very challenging, but it’s exciting.

Peita Diamantidis
It’s very challenging. Is there anything else we’ve missed? And we sort of covered the highlights?

Nick Topham
I think it’s been very, very comprehensive. Yeah,

Peita Diamantidis
we’ve covered most I think, I think we’ve got got the big stuff done. Well, all right, advice, explorers. If you’d like to find out more about product RX, then the website link is going to be in the show notes along with Nick’s LinkedIn profile, that’s in the show notes, too. So he does a whole lot of videos on the latest features and that sort of thing. So if you really want to be watching it, once you start out, I’d recommend you follow me because you’ll hear about those as soon as they are released. Thank you so much for joining us, Nick. I’m really looking forward to seeing the next level of sort of efficiency and effectiveness you can deliver to my business as well as everybody else’s. Keep up the good work, would you please?

Nick Topham
I will, I’ll do my best.

Thank you. Thank you.

Peita Diamantidis
So I, you are a current user of ProductRex? Do you agree or maybe disagree with our discussion on the app, please, please, please share any insights you have on the x y community platform, as everybody there would love to hear your take the advice tech, or the tech section is one of the most popular and has so many questions from people looking for assistance. And I’m sure they would love to hear any tips or suggestions you have on using ProductRex. And as for sort of my thoughts on this, look, when a tool like this comes up and is free. And let’s be frank, there aren’t that many, understandably, you know, people have got different models of how they develop their apps. But when it’s free, this really is no excuse for at least giving it a try. That was actually my approach. When I when it came when product rose came across my radar, like, well, it’s free PT, you’ve gotta give it a whirl, let’s just see what it does, we can just get so caught up on whether the you know, things are integrated in all one system. So I’m not going to even look at that, because I’ve got this whole system that does it, you know, but I just want to sort of run you through two scenarios for you to consider to just point out how you can think a bit differently, you know, scenario one, maybe use the one core system, it’s got all your clients details in it, it’s, you know, doing maybe the product comparisons, and any rebalances, you might do it reviews, but perhaps you find it’s quite clunky, it takes a while to do, and it doesn’t quite suit your purposes, you’ve got to sort of push it a little to get it where it needs to be. And you actually have to do a fair bit of the tweaking of the output. You know, whether it’s the Word document or the document of producers to get it right. You know, the the SOA, something like that tool might generate still needs a whole lot of formatting before, you know, it goes to the final, final version for the client. And that’s scenario one, scenario two, while your client data and all of that is still in that core system. But a support team member enters or even draws down the clients platform information, and underlying investments into product risks. And then you the adviser dive in and spend what is probably about five to 10 minutes maximum, doing some product comparisons, even tweaking some of the investments potentially, depending on how you approach that sort of thing. You run the product RX report, which is an output into Word, and you’d literally grab the tables you want and drop them straight into your SOA. Now, the thing is about those two scenarios, in both cases, there’s still some formatting you’re going to do in the SOA right, you’re either going to be reforming the whole thing, or at least, you know, copy paste and drop a table in. But by using a specialist comparison tool as an example, like product reps, with a formatted output, you’ve taken the time to customize the output. So it matches the look of your ISOs you may find your team save hours over all the clients they do in a week. And that even includes the admin time to sort of drag the data in and get it set up ready for you to use it. You know, remember human API, right? When a person enters data from one place into another, you know, this isn’t something to discount just because it’s not automatic and it’s not integrated, you know, it can still be really valuable. Particularly if the combination of human API and a really specialist effective, you know, streamline tool means the outcome is easier, clearer and just far more effective. Please don’t hold back on improvement because it may not all be in one place or in one system. Because I guarantee that down the track. They probably are going to all talk to each other The right that’s, that’s the wave. That’s the way ever that’s where everything is going with technology. So why not get using these tools now take advantage of the the time and effort savings and frustration savings now and then even more will come down the track as they get more and more integrated. Now, for those of you who’ve listened to the pod before, you know, we, there’s only one skill that we sort of really need to become true bionic advisors. And that’s avid curiosity. And to help you build that habit, today, we’re going to venture into something a little more fun. But like product RX, an app that does a specific thing very well. Today’s curiosity Kona app that really caught my eye is Bricket. Now you can find it at Bricket dot app, B R IC K I T dot app. And this, their tagline is, we build new things from your old bricks. So basically, you just scatter your Lego bricks on a table, or that big pile that makes a mess, you scatter on a table and you take a photo and brick, it will come up with hundreds of ideas of what can be built with your specific bricks, and show you the exact location of each piece you need for the thing you’ve decided you’re going to build. It then offers step by step instructions on how to put the design you pick together. Now, anyone who has ever looked at the pile of Lego and wondered what they could possibly come up with, this is the app for you. Now, if you do end up using the app, please either post on social media or DM me what you come up with, as I would love to see your new Lego creations. You know, I think we really have so much to learn from these tools outside of our industry. You know, how can we how can we relate that to the sort of thing we do? How can we solve a specific problem really creatively? And cleverly? Let’s use that innovation to really evolve financial advice and see, you know who else we can reach? Who else we can impact and add value to? Whoop, 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, your next event to brief your audience on the seven habits of bionic advisors, and the secrets to tech powered human centric advice, then please reach out to me on LinkedIn forward slash Peter M D. That’s PITAM de otherwise, I’ll look forward to turning up in your earbuds next week. And remember advice explores Stay curious