In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, host Rob Pyne sits down with Andrew Dunbar, Director of Apt Wealth Partners, and Abbie Gellatly, Head of People and Culture, to explore how one of Australia’s most awarded advice firms is preparing for the future of financial planning.
From graduate pathways and mentoring models to flexible benefits and employee ownership, Apt Wealth has built a culture of growth, leadership, and alignment. Andrew and Abbie share practical insights into how they:
- Transition client relationships to next-gen advisers
- Create transparent remuneration and equity models
- Foster authentic leadership development across their team
Whether you’re looking to scale your advice business or build a team that stays and thrives, this conversation offers valuable takeaways on culture, talent, and the future of advice.
LISTEN
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SHOW NOTES
Topics discussed
- Why Apt Wealth sees talent development as a strategic priority, not just a HR initiative
- How their graduate and PY programs create long-term career pathways
- The mechanics behind their client transition model using primary and secondary advisers
- How transparency in bonuses, equity, and KPIs empowers high performance
- Why ‘advantages’ – like mental health days and fertility leave – boost engagement
- How their employee share ownership plan aligns team members with long-term business success
- The importance of teaching leaders to give effective feedback and own their development
- What scale brings to an advice firm – and why the ‘deadly middle’ is at risk
- Apt’s approach to driving change, avoiding change fatigue, and investing in technology
Quotes
- “You’ll regret the things you didn’t do, more than the things you did.” – Andrew Dunbar
- “The firms thriving tomorrow are investing in people, not just performance.” – Andrew Dunbar
- “If you want to scale with purpose, start by building your own talent pipeline.” – Rob Pyne
- “Attracting grads is easy. Developing them into future leaders is the hard part—and the part that matters.” – Abbie Gellatly
- “Culture isn’t a poster on the wall – it’s how you prepare your team for what’s next.” – Andrew Dunbar
- “Progress beats perfection. Take the next step now, even if it’s small.” – Abbie Gellatly
- “Leadership isn’t a title – it’s a behaviour. And it starts with how you show up every day.” – Rob Pyne
Key takeaways
- Graduate recruitment is only step one – success comes from structured pathways, mentoring, and a culture that turns juniors into future leaders.
- Career clarity drives retention – transparent progression, KPIs, and equity opportunities keep high performers engaged.
- Culture is the ultimate growth strategy – a supportive, ego-free environment accelerates both people and business performance.
- Leadership must be authentic – empower leaders to lead in their own style rather than fit a mould.
- Progress over perfection – even small steps towards better people systems compound over time.
- Scale demands investment – in people, technology, and leadership capability well before the growth arrives.
Resources
- Employment Hero for 360° feedback and HR systems
- Succession Plus for employee share plan administration
- Atomic Habits by James Clear (reference: “aggregation of marginal gains”)
TRANSCRIPT
Rob Pyne
Welcome to The Trusted Adviser podcast, where you get a deep dive into the world of financial planning with industry leaders who share their stories of winning and learning as they chart their path to success. This podcast is for the curious. Those of you who like to dig into the detail, and if that sounds like you, get ready to listen and learn. And if you’ve been here a while and you’re getting value from these conversations, I’d really appreciate you subscribing or leaving a review. It helps others discover the podcast and join the conversation. In today’s episode, I’m joined by Andrew Dunbar, a director at Apt Wealth Partners, and Abbie Gellatly, Apt Wealth’s head of people and culture, together, they’ve cultivated one of the most forward thinking advice firms in Australia, where talent development isn’t just a HR initiative, it is a strategic priority. We talk about the practical ways apt attracts and retains top talent through graduate programs, mentoring pathways, and a staff benefits model that actually delivers you’ll hear how they’re using employee ownership, career development frameworks and leadership succession to empower their next generation, and why? Preparing for massive change in the profession starts with building a culture of growth from the inside out. If you’re serious about scaling a financial planning business, readying your team for what’s next and investing in people to unlock long term success. This is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Let’s dive in. Well, I’m really looking forward to this conversation today. I’m speaking with Andrew Dunbar and Abbie Gellatly. They’re part of the leadership team at Apt Wealth Partners. It’s an advice business that has earned widespread recognition across the profession. They’ve been recognised as an FPA Professional Practice of the Year in 2021 and have since received multiple accolades for the workplace culture they have, including being named employer of choice in the Australian Business Awards. Today, we’ll be exploring how they’re attracting and developing talent through their graduate programs, mentoring, flexible workplace and even an employee share plan, and why they believe that preparing for the future of financial planning starts with culture and leadership. Andrew, Abbie, welcome to The Trusted Adviser.
Thanks, Rob. Thanks for having us. Great
Rob Pyne
to have you both here, guys, as I said there in the intro, you have picked up the FPA professional practice of the year in 2021 and it’s an award that we hold in high regard at our business, because it’s a peer based assessment. It’s people who know the business of financial planning, and they’re assessing you as against their own business and the businesses they’ve seen, and rated you as being among the very best in the profession, which is a great accolade to pick up. But it’s not the only thing you’ve done on your website before we had this chat and looks all these awards. I think guys are award winning everywhere. And very much the theme that’s coming through there is about workplace culture and about just that Best Place to Work type approach that you guys have obviously built there at Apt Wealth. So I really want to dig into that today, because it’s such a crucial part of building a great business. Clearly, you’re doing something great. So let’s have a chat about that. So can I begin by asking, what’s inspired Apt Wealth to invest so heavily in talent programs like internships, graduate pathways and the PY program? And what results have you guys seen so far?
Andrew Dunbar
Good question. So few things on this. Firstly, I think financial planning is one of the best professions. And with all respect to my friends, why would you be an accountant, lawyer, investment banker? I think the answer is you wouldn’t if you knew about financial advice. And I think short of being a doctor, saving lives. I mean, this is the next best thing. We make such a difference on people’s quality of life, help them live better lives, and that’s what gives you purpose, meaning, satisfaction over such a long career. So I was a bit lucky falling into financial planning out of Uni originally, but I don’t want to leave it to luck for others. And when you’ve been doing it for a long time, like me, it becomes about what you leave behind your legacy. And I want to encourage others to come into the profession and experience what I have.
Rob Pyne
I love that answer. Andrew, in fact, I totally agree with you. It is an amazing profession to be in, and the direct feedback we get from the difference we make in people’s lives is just incredible to be a part of that profession that we’re in. But Abbie, from your perspective, as head of people and culture at Apt Wealth, you spend a lot of time thinking about this. You’ve done the work on graduate programs, mentoring. PY, tell me about your experience at helping to lead Apt Wealth in this space.
Abbie Gellatly
I think for us it’s really important, as well as going a bit beyond, yeah, we want the best thing for everyone that’s within our company. But equally, we also want the best thing for the profession. So we want to ensure the next generation coming through are having these opportunities, and even if Apt’s not having all the new candidates that are coming through, at least, other companies are also looking to us and going actually, what can we do to better help the profession as a whole? What can we do to get the next generation through? So it’s really simple for us. From our point of view, our employees need their next career development. They need to have it mapped out. They need to have really clear pathways, because for them, it’s going to give them a sense of purpose, but they’re going to be a lot happier in their work because they’re going to know what’s really clear for them on what they need to achieve to get to the next step. So from us making sure that we have that really clear, structured pathway, everyone’s clear on what they need to do, and the next generation are getting those really clear milestones and sense of achievements for themselves on what they can achieve and how they can do better, and from a cultural point of view as well, it really helps our leaders as well that are leading them, because they know, as leaders, what they need to do to help the next generation coming through. They don’t feel like they’re just kind of dangling something in front of someone and telling them, oh, at the next stage, you should probably get this. They know exactly what they can do as a leader to really help them, to support them, to keep helping them achieve. So I think for all of us, it’s all about a sense of purpose. Everyone knows that they’re helping give back, and we’re really able to do that through a really detailed pathway.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, you’ve got clarity there for the people that are coming through and learning how to build their career. And you’ve got clarity for your leaders as well to say, how do we help these people develop. But I love your approach there Abbie, you just really emphasise that abundance mindset you have about, how do we just make it better for the whole profession, as opposed to just better for us? Because you’re looking at investing in people, recognising that some will stay with you and develop into great talent within your team, but also some will move on to other career paths and maybe choose a different career path. I don’t know why they would, Andrew, because I mean, I like you think it’s the best it’s the best place to be, but you’re actually taking a really forward thinking and progressive approach to just building the talent that you do come across and supporting others. So can you tell us a bit about the very specific approach you apply to mentoring and transitioning those people through their career? And I want to talk a bit about just how you transition relationships as well as you do that. Because, I mean, we’ve got pathways like client services, paraplanning, associate level work and then ultimately advisers. People want to get to senior adviser status. And there’s a real important journey there for people to go through and learn the ropes, learn the back office, learn the support systems. All good ideas of advice aren’t great until they’re implemented. So there’s a real journey of learning there for people coming through the profession. But I’m really keen to know how you guys specifically approach that mentoring and transitioning people through their career path stages.
Andrew Dunbar
So I think a couple of things that maybe the listeners might identify with in their businesses as well that lead to putting these pathways together. We had some poor experiences hiring advisers externally. As our advisers reach capacity, and we needed them to come in and take on some of that excess capacity. It’s difficult to find culturally aligned people, and you pick up their bad habits as well. Now I’m sure a lot of other people have seen that, and then at the other end, we used to have a lot of career client service people helping our advisers, and they were good, but ultimately they lacked ambition, and they sort of reached a performance ceiling, and that actually became a bit of a negative to the culture of the place. So we did all this work to put in place internships, graduates, build the PY program and have them coming through. But your question is a great one, because it’s, it’s good to build these pathways, but then they’re going to get to the end, end of this, and they want clients. So how do you do this? How do you create that environment where they can successfully transition and take over client relationships? And the way that we’ve done that is a couple of things, we run a primary adviser and secondary adviser model, so the client always has the two people that they know. So you might have that associate, working really closely with the adviser, sitting in on all the meetings, running part of those meetings, engaging with the client, really getting to know the client, and the client becoming familiar with them, and then over time, that lead relationship is transitioned to that next up and coming adviser, as they’re ready and comfortable and as the client is ready and comfortable as well. So it’s quite a smooth process.
Rob Pyne
There are two people in the room all the time. Andrew, from the outset, with clients, so you’re always bringing that secondary adviser in there to build relationship. Yes,
Andrew Dunbar
but Rob, that doesn’t apply to every single client, but you’ll have a large chunk of clients for each of the advisers where that’s the case and there’s a clear transition plan. And the second thing is, then it’s all well and good to put that in place, but you need to incentivise your advisers to be on board with that program. And I suppose one thing that starts with culture. You know, we have a culture where where we want to support others. We want to bring along the next generation, and if you’re an adviser, that’s just all about you, and you don’t want to be part of that, well, then. You know, it’s probably not the right place for you, so that that’s really built into our culture. And mentoring and developing a junior staff is one of the key KPIs of our advisers. And then also what we do is financially reward our advisers based on their growth each year. And it’s much easier to grow your client book if you’re starting from a low base. So they’re actually incentivised to transition these clients over to another adviser each year.
Rob Pyne
Okay, tell me a bit more about if you’re happy to that mentoring and rewarding. So obviously, KPI is mentoring really strongly about the culture is, let’s help the next generation develop as well. And if you’re all about you, that’s okay, but not here, but you can do that. Okay somewhere else. So it’s about culture first, but rewarding people to build their portfolio of clients. How do you think about that without being too specific, but how do you think about that? Is it is it equity ownership? Is it revenue sharing? Is it profit sharing? How do you kind of think about that conceptually?
Andrew Dunbar
It’s both it’s formula based and it’s short term incentives and long term incentives that are built into their remuneration model to incentivise that growth.
Rob Pyne
Yep, and so short term incentive would be a quarterly or annual type bonus.
Andrew Dunbar
That would be an annual cash bonus. Long term would be equity, which I know we’re going to talk a little bit about today.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, for sure, Abbie, you got anything to add
Abbie Gellatly
there? I think the way that we do it as well is we have a really transparent model, which really helps here at actors at every stage, no matter what your role is, because we try and make sure that our support employees as well. It’s not just the senior advisers. They definitely get kind of a part of it, and at every part in the process, they know exactly what they need to do to say, reach a certain remuneration, but then they also know what they need to do to get those high performance indicators. So what can they do to get their bonus to be able to be eligible for equity? And I think that’s what’s really key as well. We come back to kind of our earlier point in making sure that everyone knows what they need to do in their process to develop, but that’s the same when it comes to equity, salary, remuneration, bonuses, anything like that. I think we really pride ourselves on transparency, and for some people, that acts as an incentive, even knowing that, oh, okay, well, I’m a great adviser, but actually, the person to the right of means, you know, got a bonus. That’s probably double me, because it’s so transparent that they can, within themselves, know what they can do to get to the next stages. And it really does help. To be honest, our younger generation coming through, because when you’re at that early stage in your career as well, you are a lot more monetary incentivised. So I think them being able to see really helps.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, you’ve touched such a critical point there, I wanted to stop for a second and reiterate what you just said, because how crucially important that is to help people just know what it takes to get to the next level. If you give them clarity and certainty a pathway they can follow, they really understand what it takes to sort of improve their own financial position, terms of remuneration, equity ownership. And it takes work, doesn’t it? I mean real work here. There’s nothing easy about this part of the job, because if you’re building a great team, and as it grows, the most challenging conversations are them wanting to get more pay. How do I get equity? And if you don’t give them any clarity, if you give no pathway, and it’s avoid a vacuum, you set yourself up from really hard conversations, don’t you? So I’m laughing because I can relate to it so much and how it’s been the most difficult part of growing a great business is actually saying, give our people more certainty. I mean, clients come to us as advisers for one reason alone, which is, give me some confidence and certainty about what I can do financially over time, and will I be okay, and will I retire okay? And so we all, as human beings, want certainty. If you give people a clear pathway to follow, it’s just so powerful. I just wanted to reiterate the point that you’ve just made there. Abbie, it’s just there. Roby, it’s just a crucial thing people to take away and think you’ve got to invest time and effort into this, because it’s not easy. It is something you don’t want to get wrong, because if you get it wrong, you kind of set yourself up and think, Oh, we never promise something we can’t deliver. And so it’s really challenging. And I’m so glad you said that, because I think that it’s a huge takeaway for people to realise, just it’s not easy to get to a large business like you guys are without putting some real time into staff development and the talent development programs and career pathways that stuff that you’ve done. So you’ve also developed a staff benefits program and flex of working arrangements. What do these look like in practice? You do employee ownership you’ve just talked about through equity, and how have they influenced the team’s engagement and retention over time. Yeah,
Abbie Gellatly
so we’re really proud. We call our range of benefits our advantages. So it’s kind of a fun play on on all the extra things that we offer staff, and I won’t bore you with going through all of them, but you know, it can range from fertility leave, it can arrange from an extra five days a year for your mental health, do a lot on health and well being, benefit study, leave, exam, leave, all of those sorts of things. We’ve really spent a lot of time making sure that our benefits are aligned to exactly what our employees want. We’ve made sure that these benefits have been the ideas for the benefits and what we should implement. And you know, if we should take any away, it’s from direct feedback from our employees as well. So we know that the benefit. Benefits that we’ve actually got in front of them are things that they really want, and we’re also hyper aware that we’ve got a multi generational age range. So what benefits are really important to one person might be different to a different person at a different stage of their life. So we’ve been really good at getting feedback from it, and we also make sure that we do have flexibility in terms of allowing people, if they need to leave, you know, at 2pm to go to their daughter’s ballet recital, they get that because, again, it comes back to that point of what’s important to each of our individual employees. And so when it comes to kind of a staff retention and a staff engagement, from our point of view, we’ve made it really clear now to employees that we’re giving them these benefits. We’re giving them the flexibility, because we value them as people. They’re not just a salary. They’re not just a person that is valued by their performance. We’re trying to see what extra benefits we can give them on top of them, monetary salary for doing their primary duties, to really show how much we care about them as individuals. And I think that flows through every part of our journey within that and I think it really helps them ensure that they know that they are valued, and if you feel valued, you’re going to want to stay where your work. For me, it’s very simple in that approach. And I think our retention rates, our employee engagement, they’re all above industry average, and I think that is because of that direct correlation with our benefits, with our flexible working, and because people know that we care about them.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, Andrew, you’ve been in this profession a long time like I have, and I’m just listening to Abbie speak here, and I’m just very curious now as to when did Abbie join the team, and when did you guys, in this process of becoming a great business realise just how much you needed a talented person to come in and drive this people and culture piece? Give me a bit of background on it, because she’ll find a hard to talk about herself. But you herself, but you could talk about Andrew, and I can hear her just listening to her speak, just how integral she is to that development of the business and its
Andrew Dunbar
people she is. You can hear it in her voice, can’t you? She’s absolutely amazing. Abbie joined us a couple of years ago, but I mean, you question about, when did we realise we needed a dedicated people person? It was a long time ago, Rob because it was in my bucket to handle all of that for a long time, and it was something I was really passionate about and loved and wanted to put time and effort into. But as you know, you juggle a lot, and really I wasn’t doing it justice wearing many hats. So we wanted a dedicated person. The difficulty I find is, do you bring in a person who understands the financial advice business the world, the development paths that the staff are going to take, or do you bring in a person who understands HR and that side, legal side, regulation side? It’s very hard to find someone that is both, because, we’re a relatively small profession, still, there’s not dedicated HR professionals at large in our profession, and so we were extremely lucky to find Abbie a couple of years ago who had had that background coming up through a financial advice business as a client service person understanding what the advisers Did and the journey that you went to become an adviser, but also she had then moved into HR people management as well, in that business, and we just happened to find each other at the right time.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, lucky you, because I feel fortunate too. We’ve got another lady in our team who actually has come from a different background, but had HR training, came into us as a client service officer, and has now moved into our people and culture role too. So I’m going to introduce you to by the way, because I think Linda would learn a lot from chatting to you. So tell me a bit more about your employee share ownership plan. I spoke to James, another director at Apt Wealth a few years ago. Now we have an employee share plan, and you do too, and we were just talking a bit about how we went about it. And clearly, you guys have done that work and gone the same path. How has the employee share plan helped align team members with the long term success at Apt Wealth? Really keen to hear how that’s kind of built out for you and how it’s working so far.
Andrew Dunbar
Yeah, fantastic. So before we had an employee share plan, we had a direct equity participation model. We’ve got about 25 or so of our senior staff who are direct equity owners now, but that’s only about a third or a quarter of our total staff, and we wanted a way to share that equity participation more broadly. But as you know, the administrative process of trying to get 70 shareholders on board and issue shares every year as a nightmare. So really, in a nutshell, the employee share ownership plan is just a single vehicle that allows us to issue shares to many in a relatively easy way, and it’s very flexible. So we can issue the $1,000 tax free shares. We can issue profit shares, which we do based on if and by how much we exceed our profit benchmark each year. We can issue bonus shares for performance staff. Can salary sacrifice shares. So it really gives you a lot of flexibility. And then I think what it does having that in place is. It opens the conversation and allows you to speak honestly about the financial performance of the business. Ordinarily, you can talk about growth, you can talk about costs, but doesn’t necessarily resonate with all of the staff. They don’t understand that, but now they understand how each of those decisions is directly impacting them, so it’s a very powerful alignment tool for us. Yeah,
Rob Pyne
and do all those shares rank equally? Are there different classes of shares? There the profit shares versus long term equity shares, or are they all ranked
Andrew Dunbar
equally? All voting shares, dividend paying shares. So yeah, they rank equally.
Rob Pyne
And how do you manage that? We’ve got a sense of it, because I’ve got my coo managing ours with our accountant doing spreadsheets and keeping that all in play. Is that done internally, or do you have a third party? Or have you built out a piece of software that helps you to kind of track it all? Because it does become a big thing. As you’ve grown your plan, you’ll be thinking, Oh, it’s becoming bigger to manage so crucially important to your business, though, is it so integral to what you’re doing that you do invest the time and effort to get it right, don’t you? Definitely
Andrew Dunbar
100% Yeah. Now we use a third-party Rob to manage that, Succession Plus, if any of the listeners know Succession Plus, yep, in helping us set that up and manage it on an ongoing basis as well. Yeah, yeah,
Rob Pyne
terrific. So let’s talk a bit more about the career development of your team and the conversations that you’re having with your team, and how you do that. So are you doing one on ones? How do you balance your structure of talking to your team? Are there one on ones monthly? Are you doing half yearly performance reviews? Because there’s varying opinions about how to deal with performance reviews in inverted commas. It’s a challenging area to do well, and I’ve seen some business talk about their performance review. It’s no longer relevant, because people just want to talk about progress and how they’re performing and what goals they’re setting for themselves, much like we do with our clients. Tell us how you guys are approaching that whole the one on ones and the chats with your
Abbie Gellatly
team. Yeah. So we do basically a multitude of things. So we do do our annual performance reviews like we were saying, it can be tough conversations, or some businesses are afraid of them. At apt, we go off the philosophy that, because of stuff we do that I’ll talk to in a minute, is that when you get to your annual performance salary review, you should know exactly what you’re going to get. You should be really clear on what you need to do to improve. You should be really clear on what you’ve done well. So you should be able to go into that and be able to celebrate yourself really clearly, because throughout the year, we’ve given you all the tools that you know what to expect or what to do. So what we do at apt is we do do those monthly one on ones, and it varies between. We try and have a mix of different people so that you can get different opinions, or you can have people that you might have people that you might talk to or come with different ideas. So one month you might catch up with me, another month you might catch up with you know, your supervising leader, another month you might catch up with Andrew. So we really try and rotate and kind of share and keep that communication open between us. But what we also really try and do, and I think this is potentially what other businesses could really learn from, is we really try and put the onus back on our employees to be able to own their career development and own the next stages of what they can do to keep progressing. And that doesn’t always have to mean a new title. Sometimes it can just mean, what can I do to be the best that I can possibly be, to be in my role, or what can I do to help mentor others? And we do that by giving people 360 feedback. So that really encourages that whole self reflection piece, which I think is vital growth or intrinsic motivation. But we also then get your peers around you and people within your business unit to also participate in 360 feedback. We then also do a skills assessment matrix as well. So against your position description, you’ve got some really clear primary duties. So you can, throughout the year, use a tracking measure to basically see, Oh, I thought I was maybe six out of 10 at this actually, it’s been about two months, and I’ve really spent time working on that. Now I feel like I’m progressing, and I’m getting further along, and that’ll be brought up in your monthly one on ones that you’ll have as well. How you feel. You’re tracking, but very much, again, all self directed as well, because we don’t want someone just to sit here and have a bit of a scary meeting, say, Oh, you’re not doing this well. We want you to actually say, Oh, this is what I can do a bit better. And again, it really comes from themselves. And then probably the other thing that we do, and I know Andrew spoke about it bit earlier, is the KPIs as well. So it’s really clear what you need to do to see yourself as a high performer, see yourself as top performer, but then also what you can do, maybe if you’re being a bit of an average performer, and how you can keep getting into those next stages. So we also do those KPIs, and probably going to keep saying it, but again, in each of those stages, in each of those talks that we provide people from the monthly 360 feedback KPIs, all of that stuff. The biggest element of that is self reflection, where employees at each stage also have to do an evaluation on themselves so that they know what they can do, and all of the idea in their direction for how they want to grow or what they want to move through is coming from them. Yeah, you talk about
Rob Pyne
something really important there, too, is about taking ownership of your own career development. And I’ve just recorded an episode with Philip Pallavi, who’s a business consultant out of the US. And I said, What advice would you give to a young person who wants to develop themselves into a future leader in the business? And he says, Put your hand up constantly, be pushing forward and asking to take on opportunities and take responsibility. And so it’s taking ownership, isn’t it? Really not waiting for people to come and tell you what you can and can’t do in terms of your career path, but actually putting yourself forward, taking opportunities and so yeah, that take ownership. It’s a core value of ours, one of our five core values, to take ownership. But it covers so much ground, but certainly in the career development space as well. The 360 feedback, are you using employment hero or some of the software to capture those records with your team.
Abbie Gellatly
Yeah, we’re using employment hero for that, but what we’ve done is, when we roll it out, we’ve actually come to realise as well that people are a lot better at receiving feedback than what you think is actually sometimes leaders that aren’t that great at giving feedback. And so we’ve found that probably our biggest challenge when we do this 360 feedback isn’t people getting upset or taking stuff personally. People actually love feedback. They’re desperate for it. We’ve had to do a whole piece before we do do it through employment hero, but actually one of the biggest things for us is we’ve had to spend quite a lot of time training leaders on how they can give effective feedback as well to get the most out of that 360 feedback. But yeah, we use a tool. We use employment hero as our HR management system. But even if anyone listening, you don’t have those resources, because obviously employment here across money can actually really easily do it in Microsoft forms. You can create your own surveys that are anonymous, so there’s plenty of ways to do it, no matter what your business size
Rob Pyne
- Yeah, Andrea, you were nodding along there when Abbie was saying that leaders had to be taught how to give feedback. Can you relate your own experience about being someone that’s mentor. You were in this space before you step into it for your firm, so and you were trying to be multiple hat wearer, like all of us wear it on the way. And now you’ve got dedicated person doing it. Clearly, you know, it’s a great leg up for your business. How have you worked with your team in terms of developing and mentoring them, in terms of that feedback process? What’s been your experience of it?
Andrew Dunbar
Think the first thing is it’s a culture that has to run through your business a succession leadership training. It’s got to go right from the top. And for example, I’ve worked with our Managing Director on a transition over a number of years. Then I’ve had three heads of advice, working under me, leading different divisions, being mentored to take over from me and so forth. Yeah, it’s a real culture that flows right through from the top. And I think if you’re a business that wants to have 300 500 1000 employees, one day, you’re gonna have to have a lot of leaders in that business. So it is something that we’ve invested a lot of time and energy into. But, but number one, I think really creating a culture where leadership development is important to people, and people know that being part of APT that’s going to be part of their journey. Rob, Abbie is really the one that’s then taken that and formalised it and, you know, rolled out all these fantastic plans
Rob Pyne
I can tell. I mean literally, we have met before, Abbie, and I just listening to you speak, I’m thinking, like, clearly, there’s a real dedication to this work. You’ve got such a grip on what’s going on inside the business and all the elements that you’re actually talking about. As we chat here, I can see there’s an enormous amount of time and effort attention you’re putting on this space, which is a it’s, I guess it’s a reflection of why the business is going so well, because everyone in business would recognise that success only comes from actually having and keeping good people. I mean, that’s the you can’t build a great business without it. When people say, Oh, you’ve built a great business that I haven’t built it. It’s actually been built by the people here. And all the people here actually are part of building something great together, and you’ve got employee share ownership, which means that people are helping to build it, are getting equity in it. So it’s a wonderful thing to witness, and I’m just pleased to be chatting to you both about it. But tell me about this leadership development and how you very consciously approach leadership development. Something clearly is something very important to you, because everyone can be a leader. And again, there’s so many stories I’ve heard of people saying Leadership isn’t a title. Management is a title, but leadership is actually a behaviour. It’s how you conduct yourself when the opportunity presents to step into a space, take ownership over something, to help the whole team. That’s what leadership looks like. How do you guys intentionally develop next generation leaders inside your business?
Abbie Gellatly
So I think this is actually the same in any profession, not just financial planning. Often people go into leadership or more senior roles, because they’re really good at their job, and they’re great at it, and they progress to the next stages. Doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a great leader, or you even have the confidence in yourself to be a leader. And I think the first thing we’ve done, and look, I’ve had to do this personally, I Andrew will say that he’s had to it personally as well, is to look and reflect upon yourself as well. To say, what do I need to do to be the best leader. We’ve got to have those feedback opportunities, and we’ve really got to see what is maybe holding us back. That means we can’t resonate with people, or we’re not as influential as we want to do, or we don’t love doing this part of our job, but this is a big part that we need to motivate others to be seen as a good leader. So we’ve done a lot of work recognising that in ourselves and saying. Okay, well, that’s probably exactly what our next generation of leaders are feeling. So what should we do? And we’ve done it by a few things. So again, using those 360 feedback tools and things that we’ve done, it’s really helped people to be able to look within themselves. We’ve also made it really clear within act that your professional development isn’t just about building on your skill set technically, it’s also about building on your soft skills. So to everybody, not just you know, our immediate future leaders, we’ve rolled out a monthly personal development session where we might look at a few things that are a bit different than, say, your average soft skills session. We really go and say, you know, What might your inner critic be? And that can be quite confronting to have to sit there and do some work, but we really go about learning about the psychology behind what makes us nervous, what affects our confidence, why my internal voice might be stopping me from taking the next step, or why maybe perhaps, when I give feedback, someone might say I’m too blunt or I’m too direct, and really doing some of that internal reflection to be able to work out what you need to do in the next stages of a leader. So we’ve done that to the whole business. So again, that’s building on, actually, even our next generation of leaders, but to our immediate, immediate future leaders we’ve also then ran out. Sometimes it’s monthly, sometimes it’s fortnightly. It’s really depending what’s going on. But what we do is we get all of our senior leaders in the business into room together. We might be introducing some concepts into a bit deeper than what we’ve gone through in our personal development sessions, but we also then get them to openly share what they’re struggling with, like right now Life, what’s going on? What are you struggling with in your team? Or why do you feel like you’re not being a good leader? Or what do you think maybe you might have seen in the person next to you in their business unit that’s better than yours? And why are you holding back? So we’re really trying to make these leadership areas so that, again, people are working on themselves to be a better leader, and then using the amazing group of people that we’ve got to learn from each other and to develop those skills.
Rob Pyne
Are you bringing any outside consultants or any specific frameworks to help you do this? Because I’m aware of a few different people in this space that are doing great work. Heart styles, for example, is a framework that’s being used by the team at Allman partners up in Queensland, and they’ve really invested heavily in that. That’s a feedback process, really understanding yourself better, that inner critic, what’s getting in the way and helping people to kind of really self develop, because really leadership is about self development first, isn’t it? So have you brought in outside people that have helped you get to this point in your own development, as far as leadership development and people development,
Abbie Gellatly
yeah, we definitely have. So we’ve been quite lucky as well that some of our leaders ourselves, we’ve actually had further coaching before. We’ve actually rolled it out to the further group. So we’ve really used a lot of the stuff that we’ve done from one on one, coaching and business coaching, but you also attend like personally, I attend so much, from an HR point of view, of different areas that we can upskill or focus on and what other businesses are doing. I go to plenty of conferences with different leaderships. I know Andrew does the same, and mark all of our others to see what they’re doing and what they’re focusing on. And we do a lot of research. So yeah, we have had some other coaches in but we’ve not had anyone directly, actually come into the team. We’ve been fortunate enough that we’ve been able to use the resources that we’ve had, maybe at our different leadership level, and be able to bring it to others. But we do have lots of business coaches consultants as well, and we just take their advice and are able to share a bigger level so that we can adapt it a bit as well. We know how apt works, and we know what our employees need, maybe because sometimes you do a one size fits all approach when you go to these courses, or you serve people, and it’s not always directly transferable. Yeah, that’s
Rob Pyne
great advice, isn’t it? And if each leader is going like the two of you are to different conferences, you’re picking up great ideas, and you’re able to bring them back and integrate them into the way apt runs its business, because, you know, it better than a third party would. So yeah, I love that. When we had a pre episode chat a couple of weeks back, we spoke about this profession and how it’s changing, and clearly there is very much an emphasis here in our conversation today about people, and people are critical to the success of your business. And some people are thinking about, well, actually, will artificial intelligence change that? And what sort of changes will we see in the profession? Do we need as many people in the future that we’re hiring now and that next generation talent we’re training from graduate programs, PY, how do you guys see that? Andrew, you mentioned you think the profession is on the brink of more change than ever before. We’ve both been around a long, long time in this profession. So what are the big shifts that you’re preparing at well, for that you can see possibly coming down the pipe?
Andrew Dunbar
What an exciting time to be an advice. This is just a critical juncture we’re at, I think. And you know, as you said, I’ve been doing this over 20 years. I haven’t seen a lot change in that time, to be honest. You know, technology, there hasn’t been any change. We still do things the way we did it 20 years ago, pretty much, you know, other than maybe using some video based technology and so forth. But you can really see we are on the cusp now of some big technology changes that are going to help our business, help the client experience, and help our people. So. Yeah, that’s definitely something that I’m seeing and trying to keep apt at the forefront of that change. I think that, coupled with the talent shortage, is very interesting, the exit of advisers, the limited number of grads that are coming through into the profession, which hopefully we can fix after today’s chat, Rob, but yeah, I think that’s important, then for firms to be able to build their own onboarding training programs for young people to start building their own talent because of that limited pool. So that’s something I see changing it, and I think that is going to favor the scaled players in the profession. And then I think the other thing that’s changing is this scale the advice profession, it is still a relatively young profession, and it’s still a bit of a cottage industry, but I think that’s really changing at the moment. You know, almost every day in the press, you’re seeing news about mergers and new players coming, and we’re seeing the first real scaled players in financial advice, with hundreds of staff, and dozens of those staff alone in technology, for example, real recognised brands, destinations for uni graduates to go to, rather than trying to go to, the Big Four consulting firms. So I think this next few years is really interesting, because there is a chance to compete and be one of those players. But if we leave it too long, the Head Start that we give them will be too big, is my feeling.
Rob Pyne
What do you think scale provides in terms of I’ve got a sense of it myself as well, and I think about this a lot as well, so I’m really keen to get your perspective. What do you think we need to be preparing for, in sense of having scale to be able to adapt, and be able to have our firm and our people adapt to change? What does scale bring that perhaps a smaller business might struggle to keep up with?
Andrew Dunbar
It’s good question, and it’s interesting when you use that term of a smaller business, because I think there’s a few different tiers here. And scale, I think is probably critical, crucial right now, but it’s going to be absolutely in the next few years, in my view. And I think what will happen is the middle tier of firms are going to really struggle and be left behind. And what is that middle tier in your mind? Well, I would say in that maybe 5 million revenue to, you know, 15, 20 million revenue. And you know, we’re on the upper end of that right now, but very soon, if we don’t keep moving forward, we’ll be in that middle tier. The G keeps moving. Yeah, that’s right, exactly it does. It does keep moving. I think, you know, at that smaller end, those smaller niche businesses, you know, they can still operate, and there’s only a few people to manage, so it’s a bit easier, but once you start to get scale, it does get more challenging. And I think, to answer your question, some of the things I think, with the way technology is moving, I can see that we’re going to need possibly dozens of people in the technology department to keep us at the forefront of that development, to keep investing in the client experience and keep developing that and having a leading client experience. I think our focus of today’s conversation around people and development, the scaled players are going to be able to attract graduates, attract young, aspiring financial advisers, develop more advanced remuneration schemes, have equity ownership as part of that offering, and have the proper development plans to make them great advisers, not just you know, be able to give them a certificate of authorisation, but make them great advisers.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, I’ll share your view there. Is it fair to say that as you get bigger, you can invest in some advanced capabilities already, you’ve got someone who’s leading and figuring people and culture inside your business, and can really drive that part of performance of your business is really linked to that. So it’s really being able to, if you developed advanced technology and capability, you are an attractive destination firm, aren’t you, because people are saying, well, if I start my own thing, I can’t have that tool or that. I mean, you mentioned employment here or there earlier, a you know, it’s expensive to have, you know, so, or it can be depending on the size. It’s all relative, I guess. But if you don’t have it, you’re kind of using a spreadsheet. We’re using Microsoft forms. And so there’s elements of building great capability that does make you a destination firm, or an attractive firm to be a part of, because those firms, and I’ve seen some graphics on this, it talks about the long tail, but, you know, there’s something, and I can’t quote it to be exact, but there’s something about the top tier firms gather something like 80% of the market, you know. So the top few kind of get the bulk of the work, and then there’s that long tail. And perhaps the long tail is there for very dedicated niche players working in a specific market that knows that occupation or that particular technical area better than anyone else, and they will continue to operate. And Mark gets us out of the US causes the deadly middle. It’s kind of that point you’re making Andrew about, if you’re kind of stuck between the two, and you’re kind of more a general advice practice, looking at holistic wealth planning, but you kind of in the small and mid end, you’re going to find it harder to invest in the technology and the development improvements that you really want to make sure your business keeps growing to support is that kind of where you see it, the way that you know you’re attracting better talent, because they are saying, well, I can start over there, but I’m not going to get exposure to the same opportunities if I don’t go to someone like Apt Wealth
Andrew Dunbar
Exactly. Yeah, all these things we’ve talked about, it all comes back to people, because what you said at the start is, right, you’re only going to be as successful as the team that you’ve got under you. So yes, technology, client experience, all those things, they’re fantastic, but you know, they’re ultimately what is going to attract people into your business, coupled with, of course, good remuneration schemes, development opportunities, equity ownership, all of
Rob Pyne
that. But yeah, what does it take to actually be prepared to scale your business? You’ve been there and you are still there and still growing quickly. What’s the focus initially, when people are saying, Okay, I’m in that sort of awkward spot, possibly, what sort of mindset shift do they have to have around, how do I really grow this business and scale? Because it takes investment. It takes a decision around, I’ve got to pour money back into this thing to be able to scale. Tell me about the process you guys went through in terms of thinking that, do we actually invest for scale, or do we just kind of just maximize profits and just steady state type this business? How do you go about that? Andrew,
Andrew Dunbar
I think you’ve got to start with your vision and what you are truly trying to create, and get everyone aligned on that. And we know we’re trying to build 100 year business, an enduring business that outlives us, that’s here for generations after us, that looks after clients, their kids, their grandkids, etc. And when you take that real long term view, you start to make decisions differently. And you’re right. It does require investment, and you do sacrifice some short term profitability, but we’ve always taken the approach. We’ve got to build that infrastructure first, and that’ll allow us to grow into it. If you try and do it the opposite way, which there’s a lot of examples out there that you could go to, where they go too big, too early, and they don’t have the infrastructure to back it up, and they end up blowing up their culture, blowing up their business, ultimately. So it’s not an easy decision to make, but I think you’ve got to back yourself sometimes, and it will cost money, but it’s going to pay off in the long run.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, Abbie, can you talk a bit more about that? So the technology, the systems and processes that have been really important in giving Apt Wealth the opportunity to scale to the operational foundation for growth?
Abbie Gellatly
Yeah, I think we’re really lucky as well. We make sure that our employees that we have, and anyone that we’re hiring, that they’re really big. We talk about change, but we kind of prefer the terms. They’re really into transformation, so they know that we want to be seen as a leader in the innovation space. We want to keep basically improving each of our processes. So yes, something might be great, but it can always probably be a bit better. So we always make sure that we want to have employees that are on board, because we talk a lot and it’s it’s a word I hear constantly about this whole process of change fatigue, and so we don’t want change to ever be seen as a negative. So we make sure that when we are introducing a new product or a new system, we talk about technology. Now in the HR space, you’ve been able to introduce employment hero co pilot. We’ve been able to do all of our 360 feedback review, all those tools, everything like that. It’s actually been a lot of change for our employees. So I think it’s amazing. But equally, I have to know that they’re having five emails about change from me. They’re going to have five emails about change from operations. They’re going to have five emails about change from Andrew in the advice phase. So we’ve really got to make sure that, yes, we are equally as excited, you know, from a more senior point of view of having all these changes and how much money it’s going to save us, or how efficient we’re going to be, but we’ve got to make sure that we actually have employees that buy and offer the transformation, and they understand the why behind why we’re doing it, and they’re just as excited as we are, because otherwise, people are going to get so fed up of all these new systems, all these new roll outs, if they don’t really understand the why, or they’re not people that like change. Because I do think in this day and age, you do have to have people that like change as well part of your culture.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, I love that. In fact, I’m reminded of a quote I’m not going to remember who actually gave it. It’s one of the titans of us industries. Is something like, If change on the outside exceeds the pace of change on the inside, the end is near, which is to say the change on the outside. We are still seeing rapid change, not just in the profession, but in technology generally, in the way in which businesses are adapting. So if you’re not changing on the inside as quickly, at least, at least keeping pace with change on the outside, you are ultimately going backwards, aren’t you? It’s inflation, really. It’s almost like are you getting a real return on your time and attention, or are you actually seeing yourself go backwards in a negative sense. So given that you guys have developed to a very substantial scale already and obviously still growing quickly, what’s one mistake or lesson from the leadership journey? Both been on that you think about the more principals or business owners needed to hear. What one thing could you say? Look, we did this. It kind of didn’t work out better for the experience. What sort of lessons have you learned that you think you could share with others that perhaps are going down the same path?
Andrew Dunbar
I think we said this earlier. What you can achieve is a function of the team that you’ve got and around the theme of today’s conversation. I think sometimes leaders are afraid of having an ambitious team under them asking for more opportunities, asking for more pay, etc, you know. But even though you have to have some honest conversations sometimes with those people and set clear expectations, you’d much prefer a team of those really high ambitious achievers, rather than a team of content plotters, if you like. So I think really trying to cultivate that growth mindset, that passion for why we do what we do in the business, would be my advice. Do
you see people change? And
Rob Pyne
I’ll come to you a second. Maybe I want you to answer that one too. But do you see people change? Andrew, from being content initially. Can you actually change people’s perspective and their ambition because of the opportunity they’re now getting and they start to wise up to it? Or is it really more in your experience, people are kind of driven initially, and you can’t really motivate people. There’s some other comment that’s been made about this. You can’t motivate people. They’re self motivated. You just have to get out of their way, give them an opportunity. But it’s really comes from the personality of that person that drives them. And you can’t really try and use carrots and sticks to get the best results out of people if they’re just not wired that way. Is
Andrew Dunbar
that your view? I think there’s a bit of both there. Rob, you know, the self motivated people, they’re fantastic, as you say, you just get out of their way. But I think you can work with people, and it is a personality trait. Yes, that’s true, but you still can work with people to motivate them to want to achieve more. And I think especially in this profession, the more that they see and learn about the profession. That does genuinely happen, but it is harder with some of those people, you know, if that’s just not ingrained in them, sometimes there’s only a point you can get them to.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, for sure. Abbie, any lessons along the way that you kind of think we kind of learn a bit out of that one that you’d be able to share with other people?
Abbie Gellatly
Yeah, I think it’s actually back to making sure our leaders feel empowered. So like I say, we’ve done a lot on those leadership courses and that self reflection and that self within but I think from a business perspective, what we’ve really needed, and what we’ve learned over the past six months to a year, is that we really need to know that leaders are okay to lead how they want to do they need to be empowered to lead. They don’t need to fit a certain mold. You don’t have to be a certain type of person. You don’t need to be exactly the same as our managing director. You don’t need to be exactly the same running head of advice as Andrew did, but as a leader yourself, you’ve got to feel empowered and confident enough in yourself to be able to take on those steps. And I think that’s the only thing that’s actually going to help these people grow, or have that self motivation, or that intrinsically if they’re getting to become the exact person they want to be, because it’s unattainable otherwise, if you’re trying so hard desperately to be someone else, you’re never going to be an authentic leader. You’re never actually going to be that great, or you’re never going to be able to never going to be able to motivate someone else, because it’s not authentically you. So I think, from a business perspective, and I think this is something that all businesses can do, really, is just saying, Okay, we’ve got this great, diverse set of people. How can we get each of their amazing skill set to make them in the leaders that they’re going to shine and be the best possible versions of themselves.
That’s wonderful
Rob Pyne
advice, isn’t it? Be you don’t try and be something you think you’re supposed to be, because then it’s not authentic and it’s hard to fake it. You just want to be you. In fact, I’ve got one person that comes to my mind in our business that kind of sometimes has this sort of very complex about how good he can be. And I said, Just be you. People love you like don’t think you have to be looking like someone else. Just be who you are, because you’re actually someone that everyone I mean, we do 360 feedback too, and the 360 feedback on this guy is amazing. You know, it’s like, stop trying to think you have to be something different. You are just great the way you are. So don’t think that people don’t like you, yeah. So really being you and really embracing your own personality, because then you are genuinely able to lead people authentically. And I love that. So have each of you got sort of one piece of advice that you wanted to give yourself? If you could roll the clock back and say, What? What bit of advice would I give myself? And at first I lead in the business that I probably would like to tell my younger self anything that comes to mind there?
Andrew Dunbar
Well, Rob, my favorite quote is you’ll regret the things you didn’t do instead of the things that you did. And I think, you know, whether it’s personal life or professional life, I like to try and live by that, and we talked a little bit about that today, you know, just make that big decision back yourself. You know, it’ll work out. You’ll make it. We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve learned from them, and the success is far outweigh the failures.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, I love that quote. As you say, there’s a talk about people, when they get to their end of their days, what they regret, and it’s often just not basically giving it a go and being fearful of what might happen, and not doing it because they’re worried about what might happen. Abbie, any piece of advice you’d give your younger
Abbie Gellatly
self? Yeah, it’s actually this comes from one of our directors, Mark here. He always says to me, and we’ve spent a long time helping me. Work on this is progress is so much better than not having everything perfect. So I’ve got in my head that I won’t ever start anything because I need it to be perfect. And he said, Abbie, progress is better than nothing. That’s the exact quote that he says on there, because otherwise you never end up rolling something out, especially when you are a smaller business. You don’t always to anyone listening. You’re not actually going to be able to afford all these systems. You’re these systems. You’re not going to be able to have, maybe have a people and culture person. You’re not going to have to have someone directly in what role. But even if you can do a little something, it’s way better than what you would have had before. So before we had employment hero, we would do our 360 feedback or we would do those surveys using three systems like Microsoft forms that still meant that we were tracking towards that progress when we could get to the big goal, we could actually get there. Otherwise we’d be a business that actually never rolled anything out. If it was me doing it two years ago, nothing would have got rolled out, because I would have said it’s not perfect, or we can’t do this, or employees aren’t going to 100% love this. But actually, we’ve stepped so much further than I could have even imagined, because we just took a little step forward.
Rob Pyne
Absolute gold. Abbie, progress, not perfection. I love that saying as well. It’s just one of those things that you have to burn into your brain. Don’t wait till it’s perfect, because you’ll never be perfect. So progress always about progress incremental gains. I call it the aggregation of marginal gains, which James Clear wrote about in his book Atomic Habits. He talks about the aggregation of marginal gains in there, and that’s so much the way we think as well as we wrap up, guys, I’ve got one more question for you, and I’ve loved our conversation today. You’ve got so much there to share with people that are gonna tune in listen to this. One more question I want you to both answer. What’s the one thing you’re most proud of when you think about the culture and the team you’ve built at Apt Wealth Partners?
Speaker 3
Abbie, you want to go? I can probably go on for too long. For
Abbie Gellatly
me, it’s the support. So we’re across states, and that doesn’t hold anyone back. So I often hold back out the office now. And you know, one of our junior advisers might bring one of our more senior adviser and say, Oh, can you help me with this? Or I know you’ve done it before. I know we’ve actually not spoken too much, but can you jump in? And there’s no egos. Everyone just wants the best for each other. I always joke to Andrew, I feel like a bit of a mum, like I’m so happy all my kids are getting on because they do have that supportness, like everyone just wants the best for each other. And I think to have a culture like that is actually really rare to know that any moment you could call anyone in the business and they would actually drop everything, and they wouldn’t feel threatened. There’s no egos. They just want to help you be the best you can be.
Rob Pyne
Fantastic. Amy, love that. I absolutely love it.
Andrew Dunbar
I just love our team. And when people ask me about what I do, I don’t talk about being a financial adviser. I just talk about our incredible team. That’s what I’m most proud of, and I love that we’re building a genuine legacy. We’ve got an environment that Abbie’s talked about, that nurtures and develops the next generation and that makes a real difference in clients lives, and that’s going to outlive us.
Rob Pyne
Yeah, such a brilliant conversation, guys, I get a real buzz talking to people like you. Both You remind me of others I’ve spoken to so far in the podcast. And there’s always a common theme here, when I’m talking to great business owners, it’s always they’re just so progressive, they’re so forward thinking, they’re so optimistic about the future, and they’re so people oriented about how to build great relationships with their people, but also with their clients, with their professional partners, you know, with people they engage with, if they’re vendors, the software provider and so on. They’re always looking to build positive relationships with people. So it’s an absolute pleasure to have spoken to you both today. I really appreciate taking the time to speak to me. Congratulations on what you’re building at Apt Wealth Partners, clearly an impressive firm, and from what you’ve just described, it’s got many, many years ahead of it 100 year plan that you’ve got there, Andrew, as you shared terrific stuff, guys, so appreciate you joining me today on The Trusted Adviser podcast. Thank you.
Thanks, Rob. It’s great to talk about the profession we all love.
Rob Pyne
Thanks for tuning in to The Trusted Adviser. I hope today’s conversation brought you new insights and inspiration for growing your business. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, leave a review and share it with others in the industry, and don’t forget to connect with us on LinkedIn for updates on future episodes until next time, keep building trust, embracing innovation and driving success in your practice, you.