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Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of adviser people can’t stop talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild, and on this week’s show, Steve and I speak with Brett Davidson.

Brett is based in London and is the founder of FP Advance, as well as the Uncover Your Business Potential Program. Through his work, he helps financial planning professionals advise better and live better, by growing more profitable businesses without losing their social purpose, or as he says, their soul. And for some perspective, Professional Adviser magazine rated him one of the top 50 most influential people in UK financial services three different times.

We talk to Brett about the business and what advisors need to do to build a business that can not only sustain growth but drive referrals. He talks about the specific tactics that you can put in place to achieve both. Now on a personal note, Brett has a great story. In 2015, he and his wife Debbie sold most of their possessions, rented out their home in London, and went traveling full-time, without their business skipping a beat. Love it! And with that, let’s get on with the show.

Brett, welcome to the podcast today. I’m so excited to talk to you. We’ve known each other for a lot of years, but I’m really excited to talk to you about the work that you’re doing with advisers, so welcome.

Brett Davidson:
Thank you very much. It’s a real pleasure to be here.

Julie Littlechild:
Look, maybe what we could do just to orient our listeners is give, if you could give us a quick overview of your business. The work that you’re actually doing with advisers and maybe a little bit of the path that got you here today.

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, sure. I’m the founder of a company called FP Advance and also a program called the Uncover your Business Potential program. We work with financial planning professionals who are trying to grow and become more profitable, but to do that without losing their social purpose or their soul in the process. I’m an Australian, you might hear that in the accent, but I moved to the UK about 12 years ago. I’ve been an adviser in Australia for 14 years and we’ve been through that transition if you like from an old school sales oriented insurance business and transformed into a modern financial planning practice and done a reasonably good job at that. Moved to the UK and sort of found that they were going through that transition and so I set up my company to work with advisers who were client centric and trying to do it right and I’ve really been doing that ever since and the business has really just evolved over that 12 years into what it is today.

Julie Littlechild:
That’s great. Now I noticed on your site, you have a motto and it says, “Advise better, live better.” Can you just tell me a bit about what that means and why you say that?

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, I’ll just give you the quick backstory because I think that explains it best.

Julie Littlechild:
Sure.

Brett Davidson:
I’d been doing consulting work and then coaching and stuff with advisers here, and really enjoying it because I like the business, I like the profession, but it just became clear to me that what the really good advisers are trying to do for their clients is deliver lifestyle outcomes. It’s about the meaning and the money, it’s what you do with your money and how you, I don’t know, live the fullest expression of yourself. That’s the magic in financial planning and I thought that’s great, but I looked at some of these businesses and thought, you’re paddling very, very hard to make some of that happen for your clients and it doesn’t seem right and I thought my focus is now going to be about helping you get your business and your life in that shape so that you can have more fun doing the things you do and perhaps more longevity in your career because you’re happy to stick around if you’re enjoying yourself, but also I think importantly, real credibility with your clients. It’s hard to talk to people about stuff that perhaps you’re not working on yourself.

We don’t need to be masters of everything we teach to others, but we certainly need to be trying to walk our own talk and so that became the focus of ‘advise better, live better’, get your business in shape and have more fun and live more life in the process.

Julie Littlechild:
You also follow your own advice right, because I think this is played out in your own life in a pretty big way as well.

Brett Davidson:
Yes, for sure, so about the time, I’m having that epiphany with, this is the new sharper version of what, who we are, what we do and I started working with a life coach, Kerri Richardson who is based in the US and I started to work on these issues in my own life and over a number of years, we made some quite dramatic changes and last year as you know, my wife and I traveled globally for 15 months, just returning to the UK once a quarter to deliver our face to face work. The rest of the time, we were based all over the world. We were in France, Spain, I did a skiing instructor course for seven weeks in Switzerland. We were in the US for a month skiing, Canada for a month, skiing. I’ve done the last three ski seasons in the Alps so we’ve made some big changes that have allowed us to walk that talk as well if you like.

Julie Littlechild:
I mean it’s such a great story that you’ve done all that and managed to keep the business going. I mean how do you actually prepare for that kind of change so that it doesn’t, I mean obviously we’ve got, we need money. We’ve got financial responsibilities at the same time.

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, for sure and so our plan was not to take a pay cut while we did that. That wasn’t what we were thinking about, that’s now how, wait, don’t go and do all that stuff, but it wouldn’t be as much fun would it, so it started in baby steps and so when I started working with Kerri, the very first call and so this is the thing. When people tell you these stories, I’m telling you the end bit that’s all shiny and lovely, then there was some well, fun and games on the way, so that the very first call with Kerri, I’d just finished reading this book called Dying To Be Me by Anita Moorjani. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but she was like near death with cancer and had a bit of a spiritual awakening and survived and then wrote a lovely book, but the key question that this book asked was if you lived without fear, what would you do?

My wife and I had sort of journaled and noodled on this question and so I stupidly said that to the life coach on the very first call and Kerri said, “So Brett, what would you do if you lived without fear?” And I, “You know, what I’d done Kerri, I’d take the last week of every month off, so I’d work three on and have one off.” That was insane to me at the time because I was Mr. Workaholic at that point and she said, “Well, why don’t we start with that then?” That next month, I couldn’t quite bring myself to take a whole week off. I took two days off, which at the time was still messy for me.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah.

Brett Davidson:
My wife and I going away for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday in the Cotswolds, here in the UK to a spa retreat and on the train on the way there, I had just a dodgy train cup of coffee. I spilt it three times in two minutes. Spilt it, cleaned it. Spilt it again. Clean it up.

Julie Littlechild:
Surely, that’s impossible.

Brett Davidson:
Spilt it again, and my wife is looking at me going, “What is wrong with you?” The truth was I was just way outside my comfort zone, not working. I mean it sounds, it’s embarrassing to fess up, that’s where I was at and so that was the start. We tried with that, the week off once a month didn’t quite float our boat so we tried other methods. At the first big trip, we took, we took six weeks away skiing, that was one of my sort of dreams, was to spend most of the winter in the mountains if I could, so the first trip was six weeks which again that was massive when we booked it. In the lead up, so we booked it six months ahead, the time off. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. We get to about three months out and every day was like an emotional roller coaster. One day, I’m euphoric with the decision I’ve made to go skiing for six weeks.

The next day, I’m sort of crying in my hands, going, “Oh my God, I won’t be able to take the time off. If people find out, they’ll think I’m a slacker.” Like all these crazy emotions and then we just went and did it and we had an absolute ball. I think that was the bit that made us then start to think about what else could we do, and so the next crazy conversation like a year after that was do a whole season so I did three and a half months, the next winter and then the conversation after that with Kerri, and this is now we’re three years in, so it’s not all happening back to back, but we said, “Look, what if, absolute nirvana would be what if, we could batch all our face to face work in a few weeks a quarter and then the rest of the time, we could be based anywhere in the world.” We said, “Why don’t we work on that?”, and we sort of set a bit of a plan for a year.

We get about, I don’t know, nine months in so we’re in April a couple of years back and if you had have asked me on the first of April, where are you in relation to that goal? I would have said, “Well, I don’t know, probably nowhere.” By June, we were out of our house and all the way up to Amsterdam for our 15 months away.

Julie Littlechild:
Wow.

Brett Davidson:
Kerri just got us to do the first thing which was to, we were thinking, do we put our furniture in storage because we’re going to rent our apartment out. Do we put it in storage, and I thought, “Look, you know, every time I’ve put gear in storage, three years later, I then get it out and chuck it away or sell it so I’m going to do that upfront.”, so Deb got an auctioneer out to look at our furniture to see if it was sellable at an auction. He said it is, but I need it tomorrow because they have to photograph it and there’s a six week lead time to put it in the catalog, so we looked at each other and said, “Yeah, mate, take it.”, and that was the first domino, so once you’ve got no furniture, man, you got to start thinking about how do you get out of your house?

Julie Littlechild:
That’s awesome.

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, yeah.

Steve Wershing:
Brett, how do we translate that into an adviser’s life? How could an adviser do something like you did and take that much time off and still have that connection with the clients and have that connection with the business?

Brett Davidson:
Yes, so I mean I believe a lot of advisers could do it should they want to, and except also, perhaps not everyone wants to do what we did, but batching when you see clients, I mean I know some advisers who do that already just to allow their firm to be organized. They know when all the reviews are going to happen, they know the prep work that’s involved and so if you’re a smaller lifestyle financial planning business, why couldn’t you batch all your reviews around four months a year or even six months a year or something like that, or even batching if you want to work more than that or you’ve got a more dynamic business then batch them around eight months a year and have four months where you can be living somewhere else and while we were away, we weren’t on holidays, we were just working in the places that we were living. We worked in coffee shops in Seville, in Spain and the south of France in the summertime and the countryside, and I was still contactable with modern technology.

I can be talking to clients as if I was in London. My clients are dotted all over the UK anyway, so they don’t, well, then, to talk we don’t need to necessarily be face to face and that’s true for most advisers as well, so why couldn’t you do something like that should you wish to?

Julie Littlechild:
If, as you say, that wouldn’t be the vision for a lot of people. When you’re talking to advisers and as part of your program, I assume part of what you do is talk to them about what that vision might look like. What kind of things do you hear back in terms of what they actually want to do?

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, I think everyone that we talk to and I think this is just true of all small business owners to some extent. Everyone’s just looking for that right balance of time and money. One without the other is just no good to you, is it? Most, and I can identify and I share this in the course work I do. I love the work I do, but at times when I’ve been a bit out of control or a bit disorganized or taking on too much, all the fun leaves the building of something that I actually love to do and what came about from getting organized enough to be able to take all that time out or travel or whatever, what came out of that was a re-ignition if you like of remembering that I really love doing this when I’m organized and so I think the central theme of what we’re doing and now work with advisers is just helping them get structured, organized, planning ahead on top of their business so that they run it, it doesn’t run them.

All the things that I think business people and business gurus have been talking about forever, but we’re just trying to turn that into some practical lifestyle options whether it’s just having eight weeks off a year of holiday with your kids when they’re on school break or whatever you want to do. I think it’s highly personal, but I just don’t accept that you can’t make positive changes to your own situation. You’re in charge but it does mean, confronting some difficult issues and fronting up to some stuff that, to be fair, I think a lot of people are just not prepared to do, stand up and face.

Julie Littlechild:
Right.

Steve Wershing:
Brett, the podcast is oriented toward helping advisers grow their practice specifically through referrals, so what are some of the implications of being better organized and doing some of the things that you’re recommending in terms of perpetuating or accelerating growth or increasing referrals?

Brett Davidson:
Yes, so I think this is, I think this would be a powerful way to accelerate referrals and the firms that I’ve worked with, I think they’ve certainly seen this as an outcome and I think it’s happening for two reasons. One, to be better organized and to have your business running more effectively means that you then consistently deliver on the promises you’re making to clients, running around like a crazy person, delivering at the last minute, working till 10 o’clock at night to get a report done. That’s not going to lead to consistently great outcomes for the client. Mistakes are going to be made whenever one’s under that kind of pressure, so just getting organized I think sends a very positive and referable message to people. If people come in, everything that you said you would do has been done, because you’re organized, you’ve also put in a few extras they weren’t expecting. Your mind seems clear and focused on those people because you’re not under the cosh. I think that’s highly referable so that’s one aspect.

The second is I think clients want to be working with someone who’s walking the talk and if you’re, in your client newsletters, you’re saying, “Look, here’s a picture of me and my family taking four weeks off in the school holidays to go to Disneyland or go skiing”, or whatever it is that your thing, I think people find that credible and I think that’s also referable.

Julie Littlechild:
Right. I noticed in your, I was looking at the outline for your program and you talk obviously about the process and what not that’s required, but you start with nailing your target market and your propositions, so what are you finding advisers are struggling with and what are you recommending to them on that?

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, I think this is a central issue. The question we’re always asking from the outset in the course is who do you serve? The who do you serve question for me is about who would you like to serve? Who do you enjoy serving? If you’ve been in business for a long time usually, the people you like to serve are renewal client, banked in there, somewhere near the top and they’re really enjoyable to work with, but I think getting clear on that and then narrowing your focus, it’s this thing that’s again being talked about for years of having a real niche. Most advisers really struggle with this. They perceive that they work with anyone who’s keen and got money and I just don’t believe that’s true. When we look at the data and we usually get them to go through their own client list, I think usually your top five or 10 clients tell you everything you need to know about your target market. I’ll give you a quick example.

When we do that, we find a lot of advisers tend to work with business owners or executives who are in that, approaching retirement, at retirement market. There’ll be someone in there who’s a wealthy widow and they say, “Well, look, clearly we work with them as well.”, and I’ll say, well, if you specialize in widows, you’ve written a book about it and that’s your target market, that’s what it says on your website, fair enough, but I’m thinking your target market is business owners and execs, and the widow’s just an exception. Like sometimes people die and we end up with a widow as a client and there’s no reason to turn them away, but it’s not your target market. I’m not going to say on my website, “I work with business owners, executives and widows.” I’m just going to be marketing to what is my real market, the people that I’ve, I’ve obviously got loads of people already and I enjoy working with.

Julie Littlechild:
Then so once you’ve defined that and I think you’re right. I know I find a lot of advisers still struggle with this. Steve, I know you talk to a lot of folks about this as well.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah.

Julie Littlechild:
They’re still very broad in the definition. Fearful of staking a claim and Steve, you’ve been interviewing some people on this so I’d assume you’d agree with Brett and his perspective there.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, and I think that they’re, well, there are two fears and they relate to two different aspects of this. One is the fear of over focusing on too small a target market, but then there’s also the fear of dedicating yourself to a niche which does not come with the same kind of restrictions but you know, Brett, what are some of your observations of both of those, of focusing on a particular portion of the population and also specializing in a particular kind of an experience that you deliver?

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, I think the first one comes up a lot as a fear. I mean I’ve heard the words that if we were to only focus on that market, what would happen if that market dried up or that became a bad idea or whatever, so I’m going to stay more generalist, but why not think it’s probably not a well-founded fear unless you’re in something very esoteric, but secondly, being a generalist today, for a consumer is super scary. I only have to go on to Google, I can find a specialist for absolutely anything. When I go on to a website looking for a tradesman and there’s some free websites here in London where you could find someone, like some of the people that are obviously desperate for work. Say that they can do building, painting, gardening, clearing your trash, handyman, electrical, plumbing, carpentry. I’m not going to hire someone like that.

Julie Littlechild:
Massage, you know.

Steve Wershing:
Right.

Brett Davidson:
I think the same for advisers. If you say you do everything, I’d be looking at as a consumer going, now actually, I’ve got a pension problem. I need to find a pension specialist or something like that, or I’m a business owner. I don’t want to go and talk to someone who looks like a run of the mill person and maybe I will find those firms and people do find those firms, but if I can Google and I find three options and one of them says they work with consultants or they work with small business owners. I’m going to, I’m likely to be attracted to that group much more strongly than the generalist.

Julie Littlechild:
Once you’ve nailed that down, then we, I assume, I’m getting to what you were talking about earlier, how do we organize, how do we tailor that, so what are some of the things or the processes that you look at with advisers that say, “Okay, this is what needs to change in order to support that target?”

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, so I think the beautiful thing that comes from narrowing down and owning your target is it often gets rid of at least some of the complexity that might exist in your business. When you only deal with a very narrow type of market, you tend to be doing the same jobs over and over even if they’re quite complex. That’s the bit that allows you to get slicker and clearer about the business processes, how work’s going to flow through, what’s the client experience you’re trying to create. If you work with government employees and entrepreneurs, I haven’t got a clue how you would ever make the client experience or the values or whatever, feel right for both groups. Just knowing who you serve simplifies a lot of stuff, but then the big one for me, it comes down to your ability to identify and solve problems in your business on a weekly basis and I’m thinking, a lot of the skills we’re teaching advisers in our course, I’ll call it Business Management 101, a lot of this stuff, it’s very, very simple but no one’s ever been taught this stuff.

Most advisers at least in Australia and the UK, I’m guessing it’s similar in North America, have come through some sort of sales organization in the early days and so they were taught a bunch of sales stuff but I never got training once on how to run an effective meeting, how to write a business plan, how to set quarterly objectives and then actually hit them. Some of these fundamentals which are key if you’re going to execute on whatever your vision is in your business.

Julie Littlechild:
Right, right, right and so can you walk me through in any more detail when you talk about client experience, and I assume, I’m making an assumption that part of creating this client experience is to make yourself more referable. What are some of those really specific things that an adviser needs to assess in their business today to know if it’s right given their target or given their goal of engaging clients?

Brett Davidson:
I think with client experience, I’m thinking of sort of the, I don’t know, the Google terminology of key moments of truth and I don’t mean literally in the way Google put it across in that paper years ago, but just every time especially in the first contact. When the client emails you or connects with you on Twitter or phones your office or requests a chat over the phone, every single touch point there, from the way that the phone is answered, the enthusiasm and energy of the person, sort of probably taking a message because I’m assuming you’re not sitting there just waiting for the phone to ring as an adviser.

So everything that the information that then gets sent out in a timely manner. Is it clear? Is it understandable? Probably the number one skill for advisers is that very first meeting they have with a brand new client, is that something that knocks people’s socks off? Does it blow their mind because it’s something that they weren’t expecting. If it’s not doing that, it doesn’t mean you never pick up clients or you’re going out of business, but certainly not referable if you’re just much the same as what I expected I was going to get or you’re much the same as the two other advisers I went to see, how is that referable?

Julie Littlechild:
Right.

Steve Wershing:
Well, let me add, let me ask you a little bit more about that because what I’m hearing sort of in the background is what Julie wrote about in her book, what do you think about the effect on referability of how engaged the adviser is in their business? If they’ve reorganized things so they get, they’re accomplishing what they want to accomplish and they’re really excited about doing it again, how does that affect referability?

Brett Davidson:
I mean it’s just got to come through, doesn’t it? If you’ve made changes, had some wins and got your own life in order, you can sit there then with, and I don’t mean any sort of arrogance or expert syndrome but you can really sit there. One, you probably empathize strongly with your clients, you’re talking to who and not in that place and I know I can certainly empathize with the people I’m talking to because I was them five or six years ago, and in the past so there’s an empathy issue, but certainly then being able to describe some strategies that you may have used or implemented to walk things forward and make change. I just think this gives you absolute credibility with people and surely it must also come across as just a quiet confidence and a knowing that perhaps the others who are still faking it a bit on that front, they’re not going to possess so I think all of that’s got to be referable.

Julie Littlechild:
I think Steve, you mentioned this in the past, this notion of just having your, telling your own story and telling it authentically and how that alone kind of sets you apart from other people. Is there anything else, I’d love to, also I just want to kind of go back to the work that you did with your coach because I know I hear a lot of advisers who are thinking about working with coaches, obviously you invested time and money and effort in that in a big way. What actually caused you to think, “It’s time for me to work with a coach and examine my business?”, because I think it’s relevant for advisers as well.

Brett Davidson:
Yes, so I think two things. I think the one that was most obvious to me was my wife started working with this particular coach and after a year of observing what was changing in her life, I thought, “Man, I’d like a bit of that, thanks. What’s her name again?” Well, I’ve got given her name and started the work so I’ve seen, seeing someone else’s example if you like, if the change is showing up in their life, that was very powerful. It’s a motivator for me to give it a go, but I think also, by that stage, I was absolutely ready and I think change, change is hard even when you want to do it so you’ve sort of got to be in that place where you’re thinking, “You know what, I can’t quite take it anymore with what I’m doing.” I think that’s the best place often to make change from. I mean I wish I could do it sooner than that, but in my experience, I can’t.

Julie Littlechild:
Right, right, so I know we’re coming up on time and I’ve, I mean we’ve been asking you different questions about what advisers are doing, but if someone was listening today and thinking, “Yeah, I either need to make changes or I feel like my business could be growing faster. I could be more referable.” Where do you think they should start? What are those first few steps they need to take?

Brett Davidson:
I think if people haven’t read this, it’s a fantastic book out there called Traction by Gino Wickman, which is just a great book of, if you like, small business basics of how you get your business to be highly functioning and it just covers off some things that I absolutely love. It’s not saying anything particularly new, but wow, it’s put across really simply and powerfully, and so a lot of those tools are things that you could use in your business to start, to get yourself executing more effectively. Just a quick example, one of the issues he talks about is a weekly leadership team meeting that what we do in that is we create a list of issues and every week, we just spend an hour resolving those issues. He’s got a process for how you can do that very, very powerfully and simply, and businesses that resolve issues on a weekly basis and walk ideas forward, over three months, six months, 12 months, five years, they’re the ones that get the compound interest return if you like on those execution skills.

I think one of the biggest challenges that I see in small firms is they’re full of ideas but they’re not always full of the skill to execute on those ideas and that’s what sees them stay stuck at a particular level of turnover or success.

Julie Littlechild:
One thing I didn’t ask you about, but I know, I’ve heard you write and speak on this issue is the role of the team in all of this and really getting your house in order, so what are you seeing or what do you recommend advisers think about when, as it relates to structuring their team effectively?

Brett Davidson:
Yeah, it’s just, you’re not going to do this on your own even if you’re a one man band working from home, you’re going to have outsource team I would have thought because you just don’t want to sit there doing all the stuff yourself, but if you’re trying to build any sort of a business, small and lovely and lifestyle or empire, the team is absolutely key and so getting the right people supporting you is just absolutely vital and I remember the story I often use, but it’s a story I heard from a guy a long time ago and talked about parents who sent off their three kids to the city to get a job with a friend of theirs who ran a business, and six months later they ring out and say, “Hey, how are our three children going?”, and they find they’re all on different levels of pay and they want to inquire why that is and so their friend says, “Well, come and have a look for yourself.”

The short version of the story is the first child doesn’t do what they’re told. The second child only does what they’re told and the third child doesn’t need to be told and that’s the one with the highest amount of money and that’s what I’m thinking is the test for your team. Too many advisers I know put up with average staff members who to be honest, they just can’t do the job and it’s not necessarily a criticism of the individuals because they were hired at their level of skill, but I think aiming higher, if you want a paraplanner to support you or a PA or an administrator, man, they need to be a killer in their job and they need to hit the ground running. Small firms, pay lip service to training, but to be honest, they don’t really do any training and development at all, so don’t hire people that need to be developed. Get people that can do the job.

Julie Littlechild:
Right, that’s awesome, so what are you working on now? What can we look forward to from Brett Davidson?

Brett Davidson:
Well, look out. Our next Uncover Your Business Potential course kicks off in June, so we just started putting the word out about that so that’s our main focus over the next few months. We’ve launched an online course called The Ultimate Guide To Managing Your Financial Planning Business, and that’s been going really well. We’ll probably do some more online material later in the year, but that’s our main focus at the moment, and I’ve got a bunch of clients I work with, sort of as a non-exec, that keeps me pretty busy.

Julie Littlechild:
Wonderful. Well, thank you, so we’ll put all these links and things in the show notes, but thank you so much for taking the time it’s, I love the work that you do because it gets so deep into the businesses of these advisers and often, we talk about things in theory but you’re in there, really fixing some of these problems alongside with them so, so love that, but thank you again for coming out and sharing your story with us.

Brett Davidson:
Yes, it’s been a pleasure and thanks so much for inviting me along.

Julie Littlechild:
Hi, it’s Julie again. It was great to have you with us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please, do us a favor and rate us on iTunes, it really helps. You can get all the links, show notes and other tidbits from these episodes at BecomingReferable.com. You can also get our free report: Three Referral Myths that Limit Your Growth, and connect with our blogs and other resources. Thanks so much for joining us.