Kim Payne: 00:00:00 What are these everyday things that are going on in someone’s life and bringing those to the forefront because if you can sit down and capture all of the things that go on in someone’s life, expected and unexpected, every single thing big or small, has a financial decision or implication attached to it. Ultimately, they’re the things that financial advisors or professional advisors help clients with when they become better at joining the dots between the things going on in someone’s life, and the value of their advice, I think that’s where the gold is.
Fraser Jack: 00:00:37 Hello, and welcome to The Goals Based Advice Podcast where I have conversations with pioneers of the new world of financial advice. I’m your host Fraser Jack, I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. I’d also like to thank our supporting partner Advice Intelligence for powering this podcast. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help me spread the word. I still find a lot of people in our profession don’t listen to the podcast, and I suppose it’s because they just don’t know how. Your good deed for the week is to help your friends and colleagues by showing them how you listen to podcast. Grab their device, open up their app and get them involved.
In this episode, I chat with business Coach Kim Payne from 9rok Consulting, a Maths and Science nerd that left her medical ambitions when she discovered financial advice. Kim works with advisors particularly in the area of understanding their value, helping them articulate their value and understand the problems they are solving. We cover a variety of topics including human understanding, advice relationship and understanding what you bring to the table. If you’re interested in articulating your value the focus on the benefits you provide more than just what you do, and this episode is for you. Stay tuned as I hit play on my chat with Kim. Welcome to the show Kim.
Kim Payne: 00:01:57 Thanks Fraser, I’m super excited to be here.
Fraser Jack: 00:01:59 It’s great to have you. Now tell us about... just give us a quick introduction to yourself.
Kim Payne: 00:02:06 I work with those who give financial advice, financial advisors, mortgage brokers, stockbrokers, risk specialists, as long as what they’re delivering is advice. Also, I do a fair bit of work with lawyers, so professional advisors. I really look at how can I help them grow their business but from the angle of better clarifying, explaining and demonstrating the value of what they do. I’m really spending all of my days helping them do that, and I find that even though what they do is slightly different because what they’re providing is similar it’s intangible advice, it works a treat across all those different types of professionals.
Fraser Jack: 00:02:50 Fantastic. Give us a background, how did you get into consulting?
Kim Payne: 00:02:54 Funny enough. I can go right back, Fraser. I was a bit of a math and science nerd at school and I always wanted to be a doctor. Funny story though my surname is Payne, and when I was in year 10 at school, I did my work experience in a hospital. We had to put a little name tag on it. It was like student doctor and your username, and they said to me at the time, “Can we call you student Dr. Kim, rather than student Dr. Payne for obvious reasons?” Anyway, I had to do another subject in year 11 to compliment all the Maths and science, and the only one that I could make fit was economics. I did economics, and I feel totally madly deeply in love with it and then went my medical dreams, and I ended up doing economics and pursuing a career in financial services.
If I look back as well, I grew up with a father, and a stepfather who both played a really important role in raising me. They were both in financial services, one worked for a big, large corporate, he was an employee. The other my father ran his own business, and I really was able to see the difference in who made the decisions for them, how much they could earn when they could go on holidays. Being the child where we were quite disrupted throughout my childhood by the decisions that my stepfather’s corporate employer made on our behalf. I compared that to my dad, who chose when he holidayed, where he holidayed and how much he earned, what life looked like what balance he could create, because he ran his own business.
Once I realized that financial services and economics and that was my space, I really decided that I wanted to one day run my own business to have that freedom. In saying that I also spent 20 years in the corporate world, I went straight from my degree into stockbroking and relationship management in stockbroking. This is back in the days Fraser, I don’t know if you’re even old enough to know where we actually had physical share certificates. Just dealing with the big Safeway, we’d have to take these word share certificates at the end of the day. I really started my career in that and eventually moved into a financial planning role in the early 2000s.
When I was in that role, the funny thing was that at the time I was 28, and female, I’m still female, not 28 anymore. The business that I worked for, we charged a flat dollar advice fee of $3,000. This is back in early 2000s. I knew nothing else but charging this flat dollar fee. The fee wasn’t as big an issue, but I used to get older couples sit opposite me and not so much the men but the woman would often question, “What gives you the right to give me advice? You’re young, and you’re female.” Almost from back then I started thinking, “Wow, that’s really interesting. Unless, I could get past that she wasn’t going to be open to advice.” I think that’s what really started my journey in getting into the, “You’ve really got to be able to explain and demonstrate your value, or else it doesn’t matter how good and how competent you are, you’re not going to be able to help enough people.”
From there, I also had a stint as a power planner. I did six months, although, after the first waking power planning, I realized it wasn’t for me. Again, the issue came up that I was having to sit down and write all these really heavy technical strategy and what they had to do with their money. I remember thinking, where’s the human being on the other side of these? I’m in this industry, and I understand what I’m writing, but how on earth would somebody not? Qualified in financial planning, understand? I very quickly got out I realized that power planning and advising wasn’t my thing. I ended up getting a job as a trainer and then a consultant with MLC where I stayed for 10 years.
That was great. I got exposed to looking at all aspects of an advice business and how we could help advisors grow looking at everything from their HR management, their processes, their clients, the offer the pricing, and then managing the financials. Then in 2009, I made a little baby and I left the corporate world knowing fully well I was never going back. I actually ended up going into partnership with another guy, we stayed together for a couple of years. Then I went off and created 9rok. Jeez, that’s about six, seven years ago now. That’s the segue into how I’ve got to where I am today.
Fraser Jack: 00:08:00 Yeah. Well, it’s one heck of a backstory, Dr. Payne. Again, this is a bit of interesting to see some of the how that backstory actually plays out with the idea of the corporate and small business upbringing. Also, the idea of the sitting with clients and justifying fees and having them come back to you, “What gives you the right to?” I think probably a lot of people have been through that conversation especially when you’re first starting out in your career, and you get to the point where you do feel like you’re doing a lot of justifying of your own ability.
Kim Payne: 00:08:40 Completely. Look, the one good thing I think was that we had these flat dollar fee $3,000 no matter what. Given that was my first experience as an advisor I knew no different, so I never questioned it and I never was sitting in front of a client and would think, “They don’t look like they’re going to pay G a better discounting.” I didn’t have the chance to do that, which was great. Because, it was what it was. Even now when I look at advisors, and they brace themselves before they had that the conversation. I often think about, having an investment committee or someone other than yourself that can help you set the price, and then you just have to explain it. What it does is it makes you much better at explaining and justifying the peripheral, which is all the value in what you’re bringing to the table, and the transformation that you’re going to be able to provide to the client because you can’t change the fee, the fee is the fee.
I remember this is so cute. I had one client come to me they were shopping around a bit. They’d gone to see a bank advisor, I won’t say, which bank and when I said a fee to put all the advice together and get it all set up and established was $3,000. The woman said to me, “That’s interesting because the bank, they’re only going to charge me 2%.” Of course, two being a lower number than three, and I was aware of their financials and what 2% was. I said to her, “Well, I’m just letting me know that 2% on the balance that you’ve got, that’s going to be about $10,000. As I said, our fee is 3000.” I remember her face, she was just mortified, and of course, couldn’t sign the engagement contract with us soon enough. It’s just really interesting having gone through that, and advisors now when you do get a chance in the meeting to potentially change your face. It’s of course, where some of the danger is. I didn’t have that chance. It worked in my favor back then many years ago.
Fraser Jack: 00:10:46 Yeah. I actually quite like the fee is the fee conversation. Actually, everybody gets the lowest possible price.
Kim Payne: 00:10:53 Yeah, I love that. Absolutely, that’s good.
Fraser Jack: 00:10:56 Now, you started up your own business in 9rok, as you said, you left a corporate position and had to then start up your own business. How did you go through that? That must have been really daunting at the time.
Kim Payne: 00:11:10 It was daunting, but it just felt right. I always knew when I was growing up, and even though I did spend nearly 20 years in the corporate world, I always knew one day I was going to run my own business, excuse me. As I said, after I had a baby, I knew I was never going back. One of the lucky things is I did go into partnership with another guy. Steve Crawford, many in the industry do know him. We established a business where he ran the financial planning side, and I ran the consulting side, it did make the transition a bit easier. In the sense that I had a partner in crime, I had someone to bounce ideas off. I remember the second day when we were working together, we went out and did a bit of a planning session, and I said to him, It was one o’clock or two o’clock, and I said, “We better get back to the office.” He looked at me, and he said, “Why? You’re the boss.”
I remember being mortified. It’s like, “Yeah, I don’t have his corporate boss, watching the clock thinking, where is she?” I did that. For three years, that worked to trade, and then we decided very, very amicably to go separate ways. Yes, starting a business can be quite daunting, but he always just felt right. For me, it was always something I felt was in my blood. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned through doing that is the personal development side of it and learning about failure. Learning that everything isn’t always perfect. It doesn’t always go to plan. You’re not the straight A student, you’ve got to give things a risk, and some of them work out. Some of them don’t, but you learn along the way. Being stepped, but one that’s always felt very natural, and to this day, I always say I learned a lot from the corporate world, but I would never ever go back. I actually always say to my husband, if this didn’t work out and I wasn’t running my own business and being able to survive, I’d probably try and sell my body before I’d go back to the corporate world, and I’d be very broke. Yeah, I got to make this work, right?
Fraser Jack: 00:13:20 Fair enough. Now tell us about making it work as in, you’ve opened the doors, you started a consulting business, how then do you go out and find your first client?
Kim Payne: 00:13:29 I guess I was lucky in the sense that because I’d come from a consulting role in the corporate world. When I went out on my own, I worked at NAB/MLC, a lot of the work that I had been doing with them, and they just re engaged me as a consultant. I got some work pretty quickly, which I know is not a luxury everyone has. From there, funny enough, when you do work in the corporate world, a lot of the staff leave and go to other places. When I went out on my own, I had kept the relationships going. I got a lot of opportunity just from doing that. What I even find today because it’s been nearly 10 years since I did leave the corporate world, most of the work I get now is through word of mouth, referrals, or I do quite a lot of speaking gigs. When someone gets to come and see you in action or hear you or get to feel the message, and the language that you use, and it resonates I get most of my work through that today.
Fraser Jack: 00:14:32 That’s really interesting, because you started in an industry, you built a hell of a relationship to maintain those relationships outside of the corporate, position that you’re in. Then when you decided to go out on your own those relationships came back to look after you in a way. The next thing is that, like you said, now it’s all about the idea of getting in front of audiences and crowds and doing some speaking, and a lot of advisors are doing that, I guess in wiser they’re putting on sessions where they’re educating people and doing those and that speaking then creates the credibility for people to come and talk to you from a business sense.
Kim Payne: 00:15:13 Absolutely. A big part of it is whether it’s podcast, whether it’s videos, whether it’s live speaking events, workshops, seminars, whatever it might be. When someone can actually get a sense of what it would be like to be working with you or what your views are, what your beliefs are, what your message is, it just is so much more compelling, and you’re right, that credibility side is massive. Whatever the sweet spot and getting advisors to do that, I know it means putting yourself out there. I know there’s a lot that are reluctant to do it, but when you do, do it. It’s also not an overnight fix, people might want to see you, they might want to hear you a couple of times on a podcast. I’ve had some people that have been coming to events where I’ve spoken at and finally they’ll say, “I’m ready now, I feel like I know you.” Almost like that, when you’re walking down the street and you see a celebrity and you must go up, you want to give him a hug? Then you realize, “Actually, it’s because you’re famous and I see you on TV. I don’t actually know you.”
I find that that familiarity comes out when you are, not in their face that you’re around enough that they feel like they know who you are already. I think it’s absolutely golden, and particularly today, where you can do that. Like I said, whichever your sweet spot is, whether it is a podcast or send me, let me feel you let me hear you. Let me see you as much as possible, because I’m then going to have a greater chance of familiarity liking you and wanting to work with you.
Fraser Jack: 00:16:49 Yeah, I agree. I think that a lot of it is about consistency too, you’re showing up in regularly and different. Whether it’s a webinar that you do or how it is if you just keep showing up that’ll continue to grow. Now I wanted to ask you about your 9rok where did that come from?
Kim Payne: 00:17:07 I get this question a lot, I’ve always use the word rock like, “Fraser you rock.” Or “George you rock.” A lot of my clients over the years would say to me, “Kim, you’re my rock. Whenever, I’ve got a question I come to you. Whether I’m heavy I tell you if I’m sad I share with you.” Rock was always a word that I just always used. When I was going out completely on my own when Steve and I went separate ways, I thought I’ve got to use the word rock. I didn’t want to sound like any other consulting business or whatever. I’m born on the 9th of October, the number nine. That’s literally how hard it was. I just became 9rok.
I was also had been following a business over in America that was called Red 11. I don’t know where that name came from, but it always resonated with me. I always thought if I was going to come up with another name I’d like a number with a word. It was actually one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make. There’s pretty much harder decisions than that.
Fraser Jack: 00:18:12 Other than the number had stuck because you’ve got other businesses that have got numbers and words as well, haven’t you?
Kim Payne: 00:18:14 Yeah. Well, I’ve done a lot of work over the years with Daniel Cornelissen and when she was setting up her outsourcing business, and it was ELK. She couldn’t get ELK, so it made sense we’ll go for 5. Then Danielle and I together have an animated video business, and we wanted to call it Genie. You rub a magic bottle and out pops the Genie and you get three wishes. We couldn’t get Genie or any spilling will through to Genie. Given we both had done this number thing we made 3Genies. The three being when you rub a magic bottle you get three wishes, so a lot of science behind it, Fraser, but it’s working for us.
Fraser Jack: 00:18:56 Fair enough. Now tell us, you’re working with a lot of advisors and as you mentioned, and understanding the value. Having them to be able to understand their own and articulate their own value is a really big part of it. Do you want to take us through some of the pain points around that and then also some of the solutions?
Kim Payne: 00:19:15 Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the years is if clients don’t understand the value of working with you, it doesn’t matter how good you are, how technically competent, how much shattering mind blowing difference you’re going to make in their lives, they’re not going to sign up and engage with you or they’re not going to stay working with you. Most advisors know the difference they make, but just being able to explain it, that’s where a lot of them can come across as quite boring. I mean that respectfully, but they come across quite boring. It’s quite confusing, because they’re not clearly articulating their clients sit on the other end, quite bamboozled, and it’s really inconsistent. Even across one business, one person might nail it and be very, very competent in explaining it. The rest of them are still left muddling their way through.
One of the things that I’ve really, really spent the last probably two years really honing in on is how can you get really clear and clarify what the value is that you bring to the table? That is not just telling clients what you do, because at the end of the day, I don’t actually want a financial advisor, I don’t want a stockbroker, I don’t want a risk advisor. I don’t want an accountant or a lawyer. I certainly do not get out of bed saying, “I want investments. I want insurance. I want a mortgage.” I don’t do that, yet we still as an industry lead with that and position what we do as opposed to the benefits that the client gets. My work now is to try and say, “Hey, that’s just what you do. From the client’s perspective, what is it really all about?” A lot of the work I do when say, we can clarify the value is what is actually going on in the client’s life? What are the problems that they have that they don’t want? Or the results that they want that they don’t have, that you can help them fix.
This is the everyday decisions they need to make, like, I’ve got primary school age kids, where am I going to send them to school? I want private education, but I don’t think I can afford it. Or we really want to go on a family holiday, but we’re thinking we can probably only afford to go to Phillip Island, but we’d love to go to Bali. We’d love to upgrade the car, but does that mean that we then shouldn’t be renovating the laundry, maybe we’ll put that off. What are these everyday things that are going on in someone’s life and bringing those to the forefront because if you can sit down and capture all of the things that go on in someone’s live, expected and unexpected. Every single thing big or small has a financial decision or implication attached to it. Ultimately, they the things that financial advisors or professional advisors help clients with.
When they become better at joining the dots between the things going on in someone’s life, and the value of their advice, I think that’s where the gold is. I’ve got this really funky little chart that anyone who’s heard me speak will have seen it, but it’s just like, a little windy road. Then all of the life events get married or have a baby or buy a new car or a tragedy happens buy a beautiful pair of shoes, whatever it might be. Just by putting all these life events on the page and helping the client understand that, even if these things happen, the ones you want to happen and the ones that might take you by surprise, that’s where we can help when you lead with that.
It also helps clients see the breadth of what you do, because so many advisors I know have a client that they’ll go off and leave their life and come back and catch up for, say, an annual meeting. In that annual meeting, the client will say, “Yeah, by the way, Fraser, I forgot to tell you, I bought a house a couple of months ago.” All you can think is fruitcake, you should have told us about that, we could have helped you. By focusing on all of the events that are going on in their life, one, it’s easier for the client to remember. Two, they understand the breadth of what you do. Rather than going off on their merry way, and finding another advisor, they more likely to come to you. Thirdly, they understand why it’s important to keep you abreast of the things that are going on in their life. Really why they need to have some relationship with you. Big or small, whatever that might look like on an ongoing basis.
Fraser Jack: 00:23:57 Yeah, I sorry to interrupt. I’ve had this conversation a lot around the idea of, we should be completely understand the consumers live. All these little goals and aspirations and dreams and hopes and wishes and things like upgrading a car or whatever it might be, may seem like as a small thing. I think sometimes we’ve been guilty of just going, the main goal is retirement after that they might be another property, there’s a few big decisions and there are only a few goals. I really feel like clients would have 15, 20 goals at a time and they made this seem like normal life events, but they are things that motivate them and drive them to actually make better decisions and form habits and all these sorts of things because they are these small goals. I think we really need to address them, as you said, not just on an annual review, but understand them throughout the client’s journey.
Kim Payne: 00:24:55 Absolutely. I liken it to the difference between snorkeling and scuba diving, when you’re just limiting... Again, I said it very respectfully, but when you just having the conversation with clients around money, and you know their investments or how they’re performing, or you know how much money they made in retirement. It’s like snorkeling you’re very much surface level, where the real gold is, is when you can dig deep, dive down into what’s really driving them what’s really going on. How are they behaving with money? How do they react to it? How are they making decisions around it? Because when an advisor can help a client at that level, that’s where I believe they can make a bigger difference and that’s where you can have a bigger impact and help them longer and for longer into the longer term and that means retirement will be an easier journey for them or a more pleasant one or a more comfortable one then would have otherwise been.
You’re right. I had an advisor reach out to me just recently, because I do a regular video, TH fortnight and she said, “Kim, I’d really like to know. I’ve got primary school age kids, and we’re all a member of the Facebook community, and I want them to understand how I can help them but couple of things. Firstly, I don’t want to be all salesy and slimy, and abuse the privilege of this Facebook community by preaching what I do. Secondly, I want to demystify what financial planning is because most of them think financial planning is only for those that are really rich and got lots of money.” She said, “What do I do?” I said to her, “You’re in a beautiful position, because most of the people you want to work with are in a similar boat to you. They’ve got school age, primary school age kids even, but what are their everyday decisions that they’re facing? Because every one of those decisions has a financial, like I said, decision or impact or consequence.” Being in primary school, it’s like when how am I going to make a decision of where I can say my school can I afford private education? Should we go and take the kids to Disneyland or should we take them to a Movie World on the Gold Coast? Our fruit this year, our hope was water service blew up, they goes out holiday fun. Now we can have a break.
All of these everyday decisions that go on, I said, “Create posts around those.” In that you can have a call to action to say, this is a decision that is similar to what you’re trying to make or you’d like a hand with. That’s what I do. You’re demystifying what financial planning is and that’s a big issue around value as well. We in this industry understand what it is. Most other people still think financial planning is just about money, and you’ve got to have money in order to need a financial advisor, which as you know and everybody else here knows is so far from the truth, but we need more people to understand that.
Fraser Jack: 00:28:04 Yeah, I absolutely agree. I love this idea of making everyday decisions, and I had this bit of a theory that the best financial decisions are made with the nerd brain in our frontal cortex or lower or whatever you want to call it. Going back to your Dr. Payne days, and obviously you love that side of it. Then we tend to make a lot of these decisions with our emotional brain, which aren’t always the best outcomes. Just having somebody there, like you said, in the Financial Planning Center, and to lend a hand and to help out with those everyday decisions would be a great value to consumers.
Kim Payne: 00:28:39 It’s interesting too, I’ve had a financial planner before I got married, and if I look back... I had been in the industry myself, from a technical point of view, I was probably reasonably equipped to look after my own financial affairs. However, where I was completely ill equipped is that I was making decisions about my own life and my own money, which means it was emotional. I was actually the worst person, even though I had the technical training, and a couple of things that really stood out with my advisor. Like I said, back pre marriage and kids is I had a fetish for shoes. I’m sure, I’m not the only person out there or female out there. What he did is he set up a guilt free shoe account. We even in my nickname in my banking coded the guilt free shoe account.
Even though it wasn’t necessarily a problem, maybe it was a problem, but a problem I was trying to solve. It meant every 12 months, there was up to a certain amount of money that I could spend in a shoe shop guilt free, like how good do you think that made me feel? At the same time, I also had a holiday fund, and we would... I get my bonus at the end of the year, and this was back when I was in the corporate world. We would put a certain amount of money into a holiday fund, and the aim was that it had to be zero balance by the 31st of December.
Now, the good thing was that my financial advisor used to keep me accountable, and if it got to October, and I hadn’t been on a holiday yet, I am a bit of a workaholic. That used to happen all the time. He’d be on the phone saying, “Kim, literally, you need to go and get yourself onto a holiday. Otherwise, that balance goes to zero at the end of the year, which means it will go into your retirement fund, and it’s gone forever. Well, it’s gone until I retire.” It was the best thing. These are some of the additional benefits that my advisor brought to the table that you like I said, it’s not about solving, can I retire or can I educate my kids? That was about making me feel good, and making me really get the enjoyment out of my money, but I also knew that my future was being catered for at the same time. It was just priceless to be honest.
Fraser Jack: 00:30:58 Yeah. They had the whole accountability peace and just being able to be proactive, not just have that once a year review, which really just as a review of your actual financial situation. It’s not actually a review of your life decisions and all these little behaviors that you want to change over time, which is what a lot of it is about, right? It’s about making sure that you’re focusing, staying focused on the outcomes that you want, and making the right decisions on the way through and not just only focusing on it once a year.
Kim Payne: 00:31:31 Absolutely. The other thing too, there’s a brilliant book that I think anyone who provides financial advice, if they haven’t read should read, it’s called Advice that Sticks, and it’s by a woman called Dr. Moira Somers, which is M-O-I-R-A and Somers is S-O-M-E-R-S. She’s actually funny enough this is probably Fraser, why I resonate with her but she was a behavioral psychologist within the medical industry and all of her learnings from dealing with patients and the medical fraternity, she now translates a lot of those learnings into the financial advice space.
One of the things research base that she’s come up with other 10 reasons why people seek financial advice. This is not the financial decision side of it, this is things like being able to save me time, save me hustle, save me the worry and the burden of admin. I’m having someone else to blame if something goes wrong, adjudicating decision making between siblings or spouses. It’s brilliant, because the amount of times advisors when I’ve been having this conversation, they go, “My goodness, the other day I did X, Y & Z and that’s exactly what happened.” Just on that I got a kitschen in January this year for my youngest son, and when we got this kitschen, took it to the vet to get it vaccinations, and the vet said, Kim, it’s still registered to the breeder, you need to change the registration.” I said, “Okay, cool. How do I do that?”
She went off, and I thought she went off to do it for me. She came back with this form and said, “Okay, you’ve got to fill in this form, you’ve got to go back to the breeder and get this information, then you’ve got to go and submit this, then you’ve got to go and do it, then you’ve got to go.” I just said to her, “Can’t you do that for me?” She said, “No, no, we don’t do that.” I said, “I’ll pay you $100. Can you just take this off me?” She said, “No, no, we don’t do that.” It was such a good example of what are all of the things that as a financial advisor you can do over and above helping me make smart decisions with my money, that is going to keep me engaged. Because every year if I’ve got to go and do all that myself, or do all the admin or sit down and do it. The chances of me doing it are highly unlikely, which means I’m not going to get the benefits of the advice.
Looking beyond just those tangible benefits of the financial advice, and extending into all of the other areas where you help make someone’s life easier. We live in a convenience revolution and people are prepared to pay for things that realistically they could do themselves. They don’t have the time, nor the desire to do it. We can bring those in and that becomes very much a part of the value conversation to help clients understand why they should work with you, stay with you paid and importantly refer you.
Fraser Jack: 00:34:41 There must be still be thousands of stories like that in the way that the motivation is just not high enough to go and do that three hours of something that you needed to do and really understanding that, they will just going to go, “No. Well, I don’t see the point and registering the cat and in my name at the end of the day. I’ve still got the cat, and I’m going to take it back.”
Kim Payne: 00:35:05 We’re in October now Fraser, and the cat is still not in my name and it’s now time up. I helped a lot of advisors survey their clients and one advisor in particular, one of the questions she wanted to ask her clients and get the input in is would you like to have shorter meetings more frequently rather than longer meetings, once or twice a year? The responses unanimously came back saying no, but in the comment section underneath, most people wrote back and said, “I only said no, because I don’t want any more homework.” I said to the advisor, “What are you talking about?” She said, “Well, after each meeting, they’ve got homework, they’ve got things they’ve got to go out and do or get or collect or execute. That’s what she meant by homework.” I said to her, “This is crazy.” Because on one hand they’re saying they want shorter meetings, and more of them. In other hand, they’re saying I don’t want because you’re going to load me up with more homework.
How can you take some of that homework away for them? I did say, “What homework are you talking about?” It might be, what was the income your issue from your rental property? Or what’s the interest rate on your bank account? Or what are the dividends you earn on your shares? I said to her, “You need to look at how you can potentially access that information, obviously, with their approval and sign off or whatever that might look like take that thorn out of this side, and then they won’t go anywhere.” She’s just trialing an offer, which is like her normal offer and how she helps her clients but with the VIP add on, where she does all these extra admin on their behalf and charges for it. So far, the client she’s got that she’s trialing it with are like, “My goodness. Yes, just take it off my plate.” Because otherwise what happens is every time the advisor rings the client for this information, guess what happens? The client doesn’t answer the phone. She doesn’t respond to the emails, she literally avoid the advisor at all costs, which means what needs to get action is not getting action. Nobody is winning. That’s interesting.
Fraser Jack: 00:37:24 Yeah. I can see that happening a lot, even in my own world, what people say you can do this and his all his work or we can take it off your hands it’s just as a human behavioral type thing. We’re just going that way as humans.
Kim Payne: 00:37:38 Totally. There’s a whole book region called The Convenience Revolution, where today we will pay a lot of money to do things that we’re otherwise capable of doing. I mean, you can go to the supermarket, you can buy your own food, you can cut it up, prepare it cook it and eat it, but yet we pay a bucket load of money on Uber Eats. Someone to go and buy it all deliver it to us and just give us the instructions to cook it, because everyone has got full lives a lot on their plate. Where I can eliminate or outsource people are prepared to pay to do that. Yeah, it’s interesting.
Fraser Jack: 00:38:15 You go into a lot of businesses then and sit down and look at their systems and processes and work out what the pains are for their clients, and then try and help them fix that up, is it?
Kim Payne: 00:38:23 Yeah. Over the years, I’ve really hone the work I do to be specifically around the value. We look at, okay, if your problem is that you need more clients, or you need more ideal client, you don’t just want more numbers, you want better quality numbers. We go in and we have a look at okay, well firstly, who are the type of clients that you want? What do they look like? What are the problems they’ve got that you can solve? How do we get that message really, really clear? That then extends into what does your website look like? What does your marketing collateral look like? Then we look at what the whole engagement pace looks like. If you are getting very clear that you want to talk to clients about the things that are going on in their life, the decisions they’re making, their life events, but yet all of your marketing or communications is still around investments and superannuation.
We almost do an audit of everything that you need to do that’s client facing, and then review it. What I find is, for instance, if we say upgrade the copy or the words on the website, then they capture the message on the website, then they say, “Wow, I look at my welcome letter. And I think that sounds like a corporate entity is not a human.” Then they change that, then they look at the email that they sent after the meeting, and they say, “Wow, different language, different communication style, different message.” We look at the entire process from the view or from the perspective of the client, how does it make the client feel? How do you want the client to feel? Biggest, biggest part of it is remembering that client is a human being. How will you communicate? What words do you speak, so that a human sitting on the other end would understand what you’re trying to say?
I know that’s almost tongue in shape, because of course, we’re humans dealing with humans, but the amount of advisors that forget that it is a human on the other side, and they don’t write in a way or they don’t communicate in a way that someone would understand. I love the term the drink test, and that could be the beer test, the wine test, the green smoothie test, the coffee test, whatever you drink have choices. Fraser, if you and I were out having a beer, and you were my advisor, and you asked me, “What’s going on in your life, Kim?” How would I explain it? I might say, “Fraser, my eldest is three is of private school and I’m freaking out about private school fees and I just don’t know how we’re going to make ends meet plus afford private school.” Excuse me, that’s how I would speak, that’s the language I would use. That’s what you need to capture and that’s what you need to replicate.
Now, that’s going to be different depending on your ideal type of client is. Some clients have far more casual language, some it is a bit more formal or technical. Some have words they use by virtue of what they do for a living. When you can capture that, so that if I’m either reading something about you on your website, I’m listening to you on a podcast if I can hear you speak in a language that I speak. I’m going to think, “Wow, he gets me. He’s on my page. I feel like he’s someone that could actually help me.” That’s the goal because people today want to feel like they’re heard and they’re understood. There’s no better way to do that than the words that you’re using. So, go and have more drinks, have more coffee, have more beer whatever it might be. You can really use the language that clients speak in everything that you do as well.
Fraser Jack: 00:42:15 It certainly sounds like Dr. Payne that you’re suggesting we get drunk and then write our websites. Is that what you’re saying?
Kim Payne: 00:42:21 It depends on who your clients are. Absolutely.
Fraser Jack: 00:42:26 That’s a pretty important thing, right? Because you look at most websites that advisors have and they’re very corporate, they’ve been through the compliance tests, and they don’t give away anything. They do say we do investment management and risk insurance and things like that, which, of course, is all jargon. They don’t talk in the terms of the clients, are clients actually searching for these things, or are they searching for their problems? Ways to solve their problems?
Kim Payne: 00:42:52 Beautiful. They’re searching for how to solve a problem. I’m certainly not out there searching for an advisor that’s been established since 1997 and collaboratively between them have 40 years financial planning experience and they believe a holistic financial planning advice. I’m not searching for that, I’m looking at best way to save for my child’s education or best way to start planning for my retirement. It’s the every day speak, that’s also the stuff that they’re speaking for. One of my favorite websites, again, it marries in with me and who I am and the language I use. I’ve got a very casual way that I speak. There’s an advisor over in the states called Jeff Rose. Excuse me, when you go to his website, I feel like firstly he’s talking to me, he uses first person, “Hey, it’s Jeff here. Great to see you over here. I’ve been blah, blah, blah.” He writes in a way that’s very much high energy, “You get really frustrated when you sit down to plan out your holiday, then the hot water sink blows up and think, “Fruit, that goes my holiday fund. What am I going to do with my kids for the school holidays?”” He writes like that.
I read it and literally I don’t want to get off his website because I want to keep going and do more. Now he’s over in America, I’m not going to engage him. If he was here in Australia, and I was he’s type of client, which I am, I’d want to engage in tomorrow. There’s also an accounting business in Brisbane called Inspire, I think it’s Inspired co or something anyway, again, the owners of the business actually wrote the copy. I feel like they talking to me as a small business owner, “Do you get frustrated that you go into all these great work, get paid, and then you look in your bank account, and there’s nothing there? Because you haven’t put any money aside for tech. You haven’t remembered that you’ve got to pay that GstBus at the end of the day.” That’s where they got it. Now, in doing that, you potentially could repel some people or push them away. That’s a good thing because you can’t help everyone. The ones that you do resonate with you resonate on a different level. That’s the gold.
Fraser Jack: 00:45:14 Yeah. The communication piece of it, like email copy, whether it be website or other copy that we put out there, the emails we send can really just numb people coming.
Kim Payne: 00:45:28 Absolutely. This is a story of my husband is a risk advisor and he looks after all of the risk of my brother and his wife. It a came time for my brother got the renewal notices in the mail and his premiums have increased as things happen every single year. He got quite grumpy about it and my husband rang him and said, “Remember, this is the reason why we’re doing it. Blah, blah, blah. I’ll send you an email just to remind you.” I can share this story because it is about my husband, but he showed me the email he sent. I said to him, “How on earth do you expect anyone to understand what you’ve written? I get it, I’m in the industry.” It was full of, you benefit period of this, and you’re waiting periods that and blah, blah, blah. I said, “This is not how the average person who’s not a risk advisor would speak and nor is it how they understand.” Plus, I had to read through the entire ward of text before I got to the end, and even then I still didn’t really know what he said.
Even a couple of things like put a couple of key benefits at the very top, “Brother-in-law, the reason why you need this is if you or your wife didn’t come home, your three year old son is going to be fine. Two, if you lost your job or from an accident illness, it means that you can still do all the things that you’d planned for, whatever it might be.” Bring those three key benefits or outcomes to the front the email, then if you need to put the more heavy technical stuff, put it but don’t muddle it all together, so that I’ve literally got to find a needle in the haystack to try and work out what you’re trying to say. Or really all he wanted to know is, why should he paid these increased premiums across the board? That’s all he wanted to know. Your region would end your spoken word, have such an impact when it comes to the person on the other end understanding, why they should do something, the benefit of it and why they need to keep engaging you year on year.
Fraser Jack: 00:47:38 I think the key word there is understanding, right? The client or consumer understanding what you’re saying, and I think we’ve put for many years with disclosure and compliance has taken place, taking that precedent over understanding and we need to turn that dial back to the understanding and say consumers need to understand it’s less about disclosure more about them understanding because if they do understand It’s probably going to be safer from a compliance point than having everything in a long email that’s disclosed to them.
Kim Payne: 00:48:06 That’s right. Many times I’m talking to groups, and I’m talking about putting the human, the understandable summary at the front. They’ll say, “Yeah, but compliance won’t like it.” My view is, don’t do anything that’s not compliant. Firstly, keep the compliance pace of it preserved and make sure it ticks all the compliance boxes, make these in addition to. If it is a statement of advice, which is a compliance document. Put an executive summary at the front in client spake, that they understand, “In order for you to spend more time with the family, getting a swimming pool is important, and we’ve been able to help you make that happen. In order to make sure that if you or your partner didn’t come home tomorrow night, the wishes for you kids are still going to be okay.” You can still put that at the front, the client reads it and goes, “I get it, it’s about me it’s about my life. I understand.” It doesn’t mean that you tampering with the compliance side because that would just be crazy. It’s to complement compliance, not replace it, but when you can complement it in a way that the client genuinely understands changes the whole bowl game completely.
Fraser Jack: 00:49:25 Yeah. I also believe that a lot of that the fact that we’ve got this compliance great conversation coming in is around the idea that it’s that you keep leading with legal instead of leading with that understanding. The whole thing about holding the advice docs that we’re providing, it’s all about understanding if they understand it, then it’s more compliant than not. Anyway, that’s another topic tell us some, the human understanding I think, and the human compensation part is big. I really love the authenticity piece to rather than being a corporate brand, so much actually, really being authentic in yourself. As you said, we’re all different people, and if you come across as yourself, you’re more likely to attract people like you.
Kim Payne: 00:50:13 Absolutely. I’ve always said that the best businesses are those that treat every relationship, with their clients, with their staff, with their business partners, like they would any other normal, healthy human relationship. Most of us have got some healthy human relationships in our life. Most of us have also had experience way one hasn’t necessarily gone to plan and it certainly didn’t turn into happily ever after and you know the things that work. If you don’t communicate with your partner, good luck keeping them around. If you don’t follow up with something that you’ve promised or stick to something that you’ve said you do. If you don’t check in and see how they going on a regular basis, there’s a chance it won’t be happily ever after. Where you can look at every relationship and say, how would I treat a normal, healthy human relationship? How can I treat my business relationships exactly the same? Obviously, suit with the arm’s length professionalism. How can I do that?
Another example I use is just say, we’d recently met and it was going good, we’re in the courting phase. I said to you, “By the way, I’d already booked a trip to go overseas for 12 months, I’m going to do it, but let’s keep this relationship going.” Normally, what would happen is we’d keep in touch with Skype with FaceTime, we text, we DM, PM, we’d keep in touch, right? I’d ask you questions the whole time. I wouldn’t just get an email from you at the end saying, “Hey Kim, it’s been 12 months since we caught up, looking forward to when you come home and let’s pick things up from where we left off.” Expect that it would. You wouldn’t just send me a couple of newsletters throughout the year and expect that in 12 months time I get home and where my relationship back to how it was and yet we do the same business. That is not how a normal healthy human relationship works.
Where you can put that filter on top, and make decisions about what do I need to do? How much contact do I need to have? What things do I need to be sharing? What things I need to be keeping on top? That’s where you can make such a difference to the whole relationship, which is also really good for your business.
Fraser Jack: 00:52:25 Yeah, I like that relationship filter, it’s once a year, it’s not exactly a strong relationship is it? Just showing that you care anyway, throughout the whole relationship. Whether that’s a 12 month relationship, or whether it’s a longer than 12 month relationship, there’s a lot going on around now to the idea of transactional type of advice. I really feel that that doesn’t have the emotional understanding of the client and again, if you take the codes, long term objectives of making sure you consider the long term point of view I just don’t feel that that is going to be good enough with the code and then that those relationships are really important. I don’t know if we can make it affordable for everyone to have a relationship I guess that’s one of the big challenges.
Kim Payne: 00:53:16 It’s a big challenge and I think too as well the traditional financial planning model doesn’t necessarily case of it to have a long term relationship with you year, on year, on year. Sometimes it can be cost prohibitive old clients starting to think, “I don’t need all of you all the time, so I’m going to jump out.” However, I’m seeing a lot of movement now where advisors almost have like, “This is the offer for me to help you and make the decisions and be on your side and guide you direct you and what have you.” I’ve also got these maintenance offer, which is lower touch, but also lower costs, but it keeps you in my world, so that when something does happen. Well firstly, I can be alerting you to this type of things that could be going on in your life that you didn’t need advice for. Secondly, when they do, you can come back in much more quickly than if it’s been three or four years and then I’ve got to almost go back to the beginning and find out what’s happened in your life over those three or four years.”
I’m finding that, that is becoming something a lot of advisors are starting to do, like I said, to have that lower touch life vision, so that I can come in and out a little bit more easily, but I’m still being advised in some way shape or form.
Fraser Jack: 00:54:37 Yeah. That’s a really interesting one. I just know that down as you were saying the new relationship type or form over the first couple of years where you’re really, seeing or speaking to each other a lot. There’s a lot of change going on with regards to setting up new habits and forming and obviously, setting up new structures and then reviewing all the existing stuff. Then moving to more of an old friend version of the, we’re good friends we see each other a bit less regular basis but we’re still really good friends.
Kim Payne: 00:55:10 Yeah. Even nurturing that relationship it’s still really important. Like I said any normal healthy human relationship you tend to nurture them, but you can look at nurturing them and keeping them in the loop on more on scale. One of my favorite businesses that does these and this is in America. I do appreciate that, there’s some American this to it, but it’s called the Retirement Answer Man, and I know a number of advisors here in Australia are very familiar with this guy. He has what he calls these Rock Retirement Club and you can be a member of that for $50 a month. In there, once a week or once a month he gets on and does a live call where you can just ring in and ask general questions, no specific questions. Then he puts out, he does a podcast, he does videos, he does all these things.
What it does is it allows those when they need more of the heavy lifting and the bigger picture stuff to come in and engage him over a 12 month period. Then when they don’t need it, they still being kept up to date, they’re still in the loop of things that they need to know about. Or another client might jump on and ask a question, and they think, “I haven’t thought about that, maybe I do need to see more of him.” It keeps them in this space. It’s keeping some of their problems answered, or some of their results enabled. From a referral point of view, and it goes out saying this guy doesn’t have to do... I don’t think he does, he does very little specific advertising or marketing because most of it its done just by nurturing these people and word of mouth. Plus, to dispel the myth, probably the biggest way that he’s built the business to where it is today is through podcasting.
I am often talking about either podcasting or videos and I get a lot of advisors say, “My clients are older, they don’t use those technologies.” It’s like, “Well, if you know that for a fact because you’ve asked them cool, but otherwise, then don’t be so quick to jump in and make that assumption.” You wouldn’t know and you’re doing a podcast I’m sure you’ve got all age groups that listen very, very closely to what you’ve got to say and those of your guests.
Fraser Jack: 00:57:34 I agree, and I like this, it’s such a great thing. If you just take podcasting, for example, but if you were to do like you do a regular video every couple of weeks or whatever it might be, whatever it is, just do it and then keep it going. Because it’s great for new people coming on, but it’s also great like you said that that nurturing aspect and just keeping in touch or they’ve heard your voice a few times in the last few months, rather than just ignoring them. I think it’s really great for that nurture piece, like you said, that nurture piece actually then can turn and then come full circle and turn into a new client because they’ve introduced to it.
Now I always get this comment a lot around the idea of, “Older clients don’t like new technology, et cetera.” It astonishes me because, yes, it’s not age it says people who use or listen to podcasts. Retired people have time to listen to podcasts, if they don’t, it might just be a case of showing them how they can. The fear is not necessarily in listening to podcast, the fear is just doing it for the first time or the second time and not understanding or getting lost. Once you get over that phase, of course, it can become a new thing that they do.
Kim Payne: 00:58:57 That’s right. There was something I heard the other day that podcasting now is overtaking the number of people that listen to the radio, which I’m not surprised about. Even you look at, say, the older demographic and how good they are with things like Skype and FaceTime. It’s hilarious, my mom is a really good example, my mom is 71. She says she’s not very into technology, and not very proficient in it. Yet, she’s got an Instagram page, which has nearly 50,000 followers. She’s 71, and she’ll jump on and face time with my kids all the time. Yet, she’s very bad at sending an email, she still says to me, “How do I reply to your email?”
When they find their sweet spot, or they get shown how to do something, where am I? Don’t underestimate the power of someone who’s got the time to do something that interests them or is important to them.
Fraser Jack: 00:59:54 I like the idea too, that you just said about the finding their sweet spot there because it’ll be different for different people. Some people want to do regular videos, some people might want to do podcast, other people might want to write blogs. I used to write a lot of blogs but never publish them because I wasn’t happy with them. Whereas, this is a medium for me that I can just talk crap and people listen to it for some reason, I don’t know why. It must be the guest I’m hosting. It’s definitely the guest.
Kim Payne: 01:00:19 Yes, that’s why. That’s why I got into video for the same reason that I could sit there and agonizingly try and come up with the blog post, yet let me speak it was so much easier and I’ve just stuck with it. It works for me. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I get it. Likewise, podcasting wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Find what your cup of tea is and consistently do it, because you’ll be surprised and of course, even at the beginning, even if there’s only like five or six people following. You’d be surprised down the track at one how many people are following but you don’t know about them because they’re not liking or commenting or what have you.
Also, how many people will go back they hear something that you’ve done like, “I’ve just come across your podcast, I liked it. I might now go back and binge all of the earlier episodes.” At least, they’re there, if you’re doing it just for the immediate tie couple, even social media got a lot of people say, “Yeah, but nobody is liking it or nobody is commenting. I feel like I’m just doing it to my immediate family and friends.” You don’t know who is still watching you, just because they’re not commenting or liking doesn’t mean that they’re not taking it in. It’s a weird world that we live in today.
Fraser Jack: 01:01:37 It is. Understanding some of the stats around the idea of how many people or what percentage of people actually engage in posts. It’s very small, you get 90% of people that are just passive, and read and watch and don’t do anything. That means 9% or so, actually start to engage or like, and you’ll only get my maybe 1% of people that actually start commenting and becoming active in that. For every one person that’s commenting, you’ve got 100 people that are sitting back and just reading and watching. Understanding the stats around that gives you a better outlook on it, I guess.
Kim Payne: 01:02:16 On that note too a lot of the pushback I get from advisors is, what would I talk about? Or if I did a video, what would I share? This goes back to what I said earlier is think about all the things that are going on in the life of a typical client or the problems that they’ve got big and small that they want solved, or the results that they want that they don’t have today. All the questions that they commonly asking, like I often say, in all the last meetings over the last month, what are some of the common questions that clients are asking or the common concerns that they’re bringing to the table? That’s actually content. It’s not about all I’ve got to do a thing today on the benefits of self managed super fund or the benefits now of a certain strategy.
It’s just the stuff that’s going on in their every day or another really good example was last week, I had the Today Show run in the background. Effie Zahos was talking about the fact that, a lot of people are getting a bit sick of paying for the private health insurance and getting no value for it and of course, the premiums are expensive. What she was saying is, rather than cancel it, assuming all other ducks line up, if you want to get some value out of it by cheap movie tickets, could you get cheap movie tickets through some of your funds?
It was quite interesting because I was having a coaching call with a client after that, who saw the same article on the TV or the same section on the TV, and I said there’s a blog post to say, yes, the premiums are going up, but what if something did happen down the track and you need let your health insurance lapse? You had to have these extra cost? In the meantime, where can you get some benefit even if it is just cheap movie ticket? That in itself could have been a reasonably topical blog post or video or podcast. It’s happening all around us, it’s being a way that these are the things that my clients would like to know, should like to know or would be of interest in value and that’s where your content comes from.
Fraser Jack: 01:04:31 Yeah. It’s also taking the professional head off isn’t it? Putting yourself in that, excuse me putting yourself out there as a consumer as a client one of the thing that I notice, and therefore I can then replicate that.
Kim Payne: 01:04:45 That’s right. Absolutely. By the way, I didn’t know that you could buy movie tickets through your private health insurance. I guess it’s where I’m buying my next movie tickets for very Jake, the family.
Fraser Jack: 01:04:54 I’m just not that organized.
Kim Payne: 01:04:56 No, it’s the same. Fraser, it’s the same faces.
Fraser Jack: 01:05:00 There’s a lot of change going on how do you see this all panning out in the future with all of the changes that are going on? I guess I wonder sometimes is it hard as a business coach to get be able to go in a consultant to go in at a time when there’s so many other things going on the advisor’s life and when it comes to standards and an education and spending money elsewhere?
Kim Payne: 01:05:24 Massive impact. I’ll be honest, I’m pretty lucky because those advisors that engage my support are usually those that have said, “Yeah, this change is happening. I want to jump on the bandwagon. I want to look at how I can leverage it, how I can take these opportunities and turn it into something that I’ve always wanted to do or realized I had to do.” They’re using this to invest time and money back into the growth of their business. Which like I said, it makes it lucky for me because I know respectfully that, that is not where everyone in the industry is at. It really is such a great time to get really clear on what it is that you’re bringing to the table, what really am i doing to my clients? What is that value pays? How can I explain it better? How can I dig deeper into their lives? Going from snorkeling to scuba diving? What do I need to do?
That goes back to what I said before about what business model do I need? The one size fits all or the all in every is not necessarily going to fit for everyone in the future. What other alternatives can I bring to the table? What do I need to do now to make that happen? Looking at how we’re getting paid and how we’re explaining the phase that are attached to the value that we bring to the table. It’s a really great opportunity to do that. All be, it’s hard and most advisors at capacity now with all of the extra compliance and study that they need to do. You know what, probably starting your own business one day was hard. If DS’s one day were hard, opt ins were hard. Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. Because if you don’t do it, it’s going to be harder in the future. Another saying I’ve got is, as bigger risk of a compliance, breach or something is the risk of not having any clients to help or to work with.
For those that really are embracing this change, looking at the type of clients they want to work with, what business model do they need? What offer do they need to be able to bring to the table to deliver their value? What value is it that they’re delivering? How do they then charge for it? That’s where I see a massive opportunity, is it different to what it’s been? Yeah, it is. It’s about thinking differently. For some getting out of their comfort zone, like doing a podcast or creating some scalable nurturing campaign that you can create once and can continue on yet it is about doing things like that. That for me is where the real opportunity lies today.
Fraser Jack: 01:08:11 Yeah. There’s definitely some different things coming along and some doing differently. I really liked the idea to think differently. You got to start by thinking differently before you start doing it differently.
Kim Payne: 01:08:21 Yeah. I mean, anyone who started their own business knows that it’s not easy, but can you do it? Yeah, you can, if you want to. This is going back to I know, this is used over and over again, but understanding why you’re doing it. When you know why you’re doing it. Like I said, for me, if I wasn’t running my business, and I couldn’t make a success of it, I would never go back to the corporate world, and I’d have to sell my body, and I would be broke. As times change, I’ve got to also think differently and move with what opportunities that are out there may be doing things that put me out of my comfort zone and keep doing it. Then you know, if I can do it, you can do it. We can all do it.
Fraser Jack: 01:09:05 Sounds like a political campaign. Yes we can.
Kim Payne: 01:09:09 Yes we can.
Fraser Jack: 01:09:09 Make it great again. Tell me you chatted a lot about the human relationship and human side of it. I’ll ask you these last few questions, what tips would you give to a human, a consumer, a client thinking about giving financial advice? What tips would you give to them?
Kim Payne: 01:09:29 The tip I would give to any consumer is, any decisions that you need to make in your life begin small, have financial consequence or implication attached to it. Because they’re decisions about you and your own life, you’re going to make them with an emotional filter, like it or not, that’s just how it is. If you want to make those decisions in the best possible way, so that you can get more bang for your buck not only with your money, but also with how you’re spending your time and what you do with your life. Then getting advice from someone who does these every day who can give you that guidance, who can give you the direction, who can adjudicate an indecision within a family or give them some certainty at a time when they don’t know what to do. That is invaluable. Yeah, you’ve got to pay for it, but you have to pay for it so that you take it seriously and you take action.
Okay, nothing of value comes free. You pay to get a cleaner to clean your house, you’ll pay for a mechanic to fix your car, you do all these. If your happiness and enjoying the fruits of all the hard work that you put in every single day is important, then getting financial advice to me is an absolute no brainer. That comes from someone who is in the industry and I still to the same value the relationship with my financial planner, pretty much above a lot of other relationships with other specialists that I’ve got. Because he’s the go to person, all the decisions that I need to make in my life big and small. I literally say to my husband, if he comes up with the crazy idea, it will be better run that past my advisor Andrew first and if he gives the go ahead, then we’ll do it. It’s invaluable. It’s priceless.
Fraser Jack: 01:11:24 Fantastic. Final question, what tips would you give yourself if you would go back in time and have a do over? Would you make any changes?
Kim Payne: 01:11:32 Yeah. I’d say, “Get over of yourself.” I’d say going through school I did reasonably well. When I left school, I didn’t want to do anything that somebody could actually see through that I might be human, and I might make mistakes, or I might fail. I’d say, “Get over it Kim, and go with it. If you fail, pick yourself up and keep going. Don’t be so scared of what people think and about not getting it right every time.” That’s what I would say to myself, “Get out there and give it a go. Just get over yourself really.”
Fraser Jack: 01:12:07 Fantastic. Thank you for coming on the show today and having a chat with us. Tell us where people can get more information about you, more information about the video tips that you do fortnightly.
Kim Payne: 01:12:17 Probably, the best place is my website, which is 9rok, which is 9rok.com.au. Everybody laughs, I talk about having you. I love the business side because it means something to me, but it’s not the easiest one to search. That would be probably the best way I’m on LinkedIn, Campaign and they’re probably the best ways. I’m at the moment doing a bit with some of the on the speaking gigs a lot with the IFA at the moment at a lot of the events that are going on. If you do come to one of the events come and say hey to me. There’s so many people that say, “I saw you.” It’s like, “Why didn’t he come and say hey, I’m not scary.” If you got a question, get onto my website, send me an email, come and ask me because I’m human too. If I can help out I’d love to.
Fraser Jack: 01:13:09 Fantastic. Thanks so much, I’ve really appreciate your time today, Kim and all your generous insights into what’s going on within the industry. I appreciate it.
Kim Payne: 01:13:19 Thank you Fraser, your podcast is golden. Thanks for the chance and keep going. It’s invaluable.
Fraser Jack: 01:13:25 Fantastic. Thanks, Kim.
Kim Payne: 01:13:26 Cheers, bye.
Fraser Jack: 01:13:28 If you haven’t already, I’d love you to subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. To continue the conversation head over to our social media channels, we’ll catch you next time.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription obtained through a third party. There is no claim to accuracy on the content provided in this document, and divergence from the audio file are to be expected. As a transcription, this is not a legal document in itself, and should not be considered binding to advice intelligence, but merely a convenience for reference.
