From humble beginnings servicing paramedics through educational seminars, Everest Wealth has grown into a national advice business generating more than 100 warm referrals per month through partnerships with leading financial media brands including She’s on the Money, My Millennial Money, Equity Mates, Rask Media and Ladies Finance Club.

Scott and Ashley share how they have built a culture of experimentation, leveraged AI tools such as Claude and Marloo, developed their own client data collection portal, automated cash flow analysis and dramatically reduced advice preparation times. They discuss the future of advice, the importance of curiosity, and why firms that embrace technology today will be best placed to serve the next generation of clients.

LISTEN

SHOW NOTES

Topics Discussed

• Building Everest Wealth from a standing start
• Acquiring the first 80 clients through paramedic education seminars
• Developing referral partnerships with financial podcasts and media brands
• Generating more than 100 warm referrals per month
• Using data analytics to improve adviser conversion rates
• Matching client segments to adviser experience levels
• Why younger Australians are increasingly seeking one-off advice
• The role of cash flow planning in financial decision making
• Transaction-level cash flow analysis and behavioural insights
• Creating a culture of experimentation and continuous improvement
• Introducing AI into advice businesses
• How Marloo transformed advice workflows
• AI-powered file notes and SOA generation
• Building custom client portals using Claude Code
• Reducing client friction in data collection
• Managing cybersecurity, privacy and compliance in AI-enabled businesses
• Using technology to support ongoing advice relationships
• The future of advice businesses in an AI-driven world
• Why curiosity may be the most important leadership skill today

Episode Highlights

(Timestamps are approximate)

• [00:00] – Introducing Scott Taylor and Ashley Pickett
• [02:30] – How a game of golf led to the creation of Everest Wealth
• [04:00] – Winning the firm’s first 80 clients through paramedic seminars
• [05:30] – Building a referral engine through podcast partnerships
• [08:45] – Managing 100+ warm referrals every month
• [10:30] – Using adviser-level conversion data to improve outcomes
• [15:00] – Why cash flow planning sits at the centre of advice
• [18:30] – Building an automated transaction categorisation tool
• [21:00] – Creating a culture where graduates improve business processes
• [23:30] – Discovering Marloo and the firm’s AI journey
• [25:00] – Training AI to generate Everest’s advice documents
• [30:00] – Building a custom client data collection portal with Claude Code
• [33:00] – Auditing privacy, security and compliance risks
• [35:30] – The future potential of advice technology
• [39:00] – Why Everest is growing its ongoing advice offering
• [44:00] – Everest Wealth’s vision for the next five years
• [48:00] – Ashley’s advice for firms beginning their AI journey
• [50:00] – Why curiosity is the ultimate competitive advantage

Quotes

 

• “We decided we didn’t want to go into debt. We started from scratch, ran four seminars and signed up 80 clients in our first year.” – Scott Taylor
• “We’re now receiving more than 100 warm referrals each month through our podcast partnerships.” – Scott Taylor
• “We were handing out referrals based on availability. The data showed us certain advisers converted better with particular client groups.” – Scott Taylor
• “Most clients tell you what they think they save each month. The transaction data tells you what’s actually happening.” – Scott Taylor
• “If someone comes in and sees a better way to do something, we give them the power to challenge the process.” – Ashley Pickett
• “That was the lightbulb moment. If the technology is good enough, people will adopt it naturally.” – Ashley Pickett
• “We’ve gone from taking almost a full day to prepare advice down to around half that time, with more improvement still to come.” – Ashley Pickett
• “We’ve scratched the surface. The possibilities are far greater than what we’re already doing.” – Ashley Pickett
• “Who are we to determine the value of ongoing advice? The client should make that decision.” – Scott Taylor
• “The greatest superpower a human being has is curiosity.” – Rob Pyne

Key Takeaways

• Strategic referral partnerships can create highly scalable client acquisition channels.
• Data-driven advice businesses can significantly improve conversion rates and client outcomes by understanding adviser strengths and client demographics.
• Transaction-level cash flow analysis provides far greater insight than relying on client estimates alone.
• AI is already delivering meaningful efficiency gains across file notes, fact finds, cash flow analysis and advice generation.
• Creating a culture of experimentation encourages innovation across all levels of a business.
• Custom-built technology can reduce client friction and improve data quality when implemented carefully.
• Privacy, cybersecurity and compliance must remain central considerations in any AI initiative.
• Advice firms are increasingly using technology to expand both new client capacity and ongoing service offerings.
• Curiosity, rather than technical expertise alone, may be the most important skill for advisers navigating AI-led change.
• Firms willing to embrace technology today will be better positioned to serve the next generation of advice clients.

Resources & Links

• The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au
• Everest Wealth: https://everestwealth.com.au
• Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
• Connect with Scott Taylor on LinkedIn
• Connect with Ashley Pickett on LinkedIn
• Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

 

Rob (00:01.801)

Welcome Scott Taylor and Ashley Pickett to the Trusted Adviser Podcast.

Scott Taylor (00:05.976)

Thanks for having us, Rob. Great to be here.

Ashley Pickett (00:07.768)

Thank you.

Rob (00:09.877)

Thanks for joining me, guys.

This came about at pretty short notice with you two because I was having a chat to you just a couple of weeks ago, Scott. We’re talking about our business, yours and ours, and we’re swapping notes. And you’re one of those firms that’s become very tech forward and jumped on the available technology to really advance the productivity of your team. So I got very interested very quickly about that and said I’d love to have a chat to you in more detail on it. And that’s what we’re going to do today.

So we’re going to share a lot of what you guys have been up to, which is really interesting on improving the way in which your business functions using the available tech in the market today. Before we get there though, Scott, I’d like to start with a bit of a backstory on Everest Wealth. You kind of kicked it off with a specific purpose of who you were going to serve. You and Alex Luck, your business partner, started it about eight years ago off the back of a game of golf. As you said to me, all good things happen on a golf course.

That’s not my case cause I’m not a very good golfer, but bit but business obviously can happen there. So, tell us how that came about, the kickoff with you and Alex kicking off the business off together eight years ago.

Scott Taylor (01:17.248)

Yeah. So, it’s actually eight years today we just had a had a cake in the in the boardroom, which was really nice.

Rob (01:23.593)

Well, there you go. We’re recording this on Monday, the tenth of August. Eight years to the day.

Scott Taylor (01:27.638)

August. There you go. Yeah. So, eight years ago we were both looking for our next kind of career move. Myself getting out of the kind of corporate BDM landscape and Alex looking for his next kind of move as an adviser and we were trading notes on some of the discussions we had around where we might go and who we were talking to and what kept coming back was there was nothing that was necessarily really resonating with us and on a golf course when we were playing pretty average, we both looked at each other, I think it was on the eighth or ninth hole, finishing up and we were like, why don’t we just give this a go? Alex said that to me and I just kind of laughed it off, went home, went to bed, woke up it in next morning and sent him a text and said, Let’s do it and yeah, we haven’t kind of looked back. So yeah, that’s how it kind of came about and from there it’s been a great journey, a lot of blood, sweat and a few tears, it’s been a great journey these last eight years.

Rob (02:35.903)

You set yourself to approach the type of client very intentionally that you well perhaps you didn’t in fact. I think you said you bootstrapped the business from scratch by running seminars for paramedics and picked up about eighty clients in the first twelve months. Walk us through that and how it came about.

Scott Taylor (02:48.002)

Yeah. Yep.

Scott Taylor (02:54.966)

Yeah, so we didn’t we made a conscious decision that we didn’t want to go into debt to start off with. So we didn’t buy a book of business or have a like I obviously didn’t have a book and and Alex didn’t have a book to bring across with him. So, we were kind of scrounging around what do we what do we do, how do we start this this thing off? so we did the typical mortgage brokers and accountants and try to ingratiate ourselves with some referral partners. but what kind of chance of luck or

right time, right place was one of Alex’s best mates was a paramedic. They were losing some of their employer-funded insurance and none of the paramedics really understood the impact that was going to have on them. So we decided to run these free seminars at the AMP office. So I called upon my my old employer to help us out and yeah we hosted four seminars across two weeks and to our surprise got yeah over a hundred

attendees and eighty of those signed up as clients of ours shortly after and that’s kind of what cash flowed the business for the first twelve months and really enabled us to yeah, just kind of not have to worry financially and that’s where Ashley came in as our first employee nine or ten months later and yeah which so yeah that’s that’s kind of how we kicked it off.

Rob (04:20.521)

Yeah, right. And I’ll come to you a second, Ashley, ’cause you’ve been doing some pretty cool stuff in the business, especially of late. Obviously, you’ve been there a long time now, but you’ve kind of picked up the mantle of being the tech champion inside the business. So, we’ll come to that in a second if I can, because I that’s the bit that obviously everyone wants to hear about and you’ve really jumped on jumped all over it. But just I want to spend a second longer with you, Scott, on this way in which you kind of that’s I mean it’s an amazing story that you went from zero to eighty clients quickly on the back of that opportunity with the paramedics and that was kind of you know fortuitous but also you know good luck happens to those who are sort of putting themselves out there and giving themselves chance. But you’re now getting and we’ve titled the episode 100 warm referrals a month you know you’re getting about 100 warm referrals a month now through podcast partnerships which I’ve heard of this happening and I kind of know a couple of businesses that have got have tapped into this market.

You’re working with She’s on the Money with Victoria Devine, My Millennial Money with Glenn James, Equity Mates, Rask Media and Ladies Finance Club amongst others. Tell us a bit more about how that got started as well after those first eighty clients through the paramedic connection and how the whole system works around those referrals from podcast influencers.

Scott Taylor (05:36.131)

Yep, great. So yeah, this has really for the last five years been the engine or the source of our kind of referrals as a as a business. it was about five to six years ago now. another adviser in Melbourne, Skye Wealth that we know really well through our days at Synchron introduced us to Glenn James. he was getting leads in Western Australia. and Phil couldn’t kinda keep up with the amount that he was getting so he’s like, do you guys want them?

Rob (06:07.977)

Yep. So just for specifics, Phil Thompson, yep, principal at Skye Wealth. shared a stage with him at the FAAA Congress here in Perth last year. He was talking about how he’s built his business very specialist in risk off the back of these introductions as well. So yep, shout out to Phil, he’s doing obviously great work there too.

Scott Taylor (06:26.392)

Certainly, is and a great guy too. So yeah, he put us in touch with Glenn. Glenn started sending us some referrals. We must have done a good job because he kept sending themand then he put us in touch with Victoria, and that’s really where the number numbers game changed because Victoria’s reach and podcasts under, she’s on the Money is huge, the biggest kind of podcast for finances to young

Scott Taylor (06:55.19)

Younger women. So, from there w we kind of were working really closely with them for a good year and our referrals were forty to fifty a month. And then we decided to go and approach Equity Mates, Rask Media, Ladies Finance Club around how the great work we’re doing with She’s on the Money and My Millennial Money and whether we could replicate that with them. And the benefit for them is

It’s another revenue stream. so we pay a revenue split or a fee per successful referral. They’re all the same, so there’s no one’s not getting a higher amount than the other. We did that very deliberately to ensure fairness and with that. but yeah, that’s kind of how it launched, and now on average, probably a bit more than a hundred, hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty are most months in terms of warm referrals, and then having thirty to forty.

Initial meetings a week as a result across our advice team.

Rob (07:58.013)

Yeah, that’s incredible. Those numbers are just for a lot of businesses they’d think, how do you deal with that? And I think the way you deal with it is grow your team quickly ’cause I’ve seen you guys start eight years ago to you got a big team now. How many people in the team roughly now?

Scott Taylor (08:10.86)

Yeah, so we got sixty-two, thirty-two in onshore and then thirty staff members in the Philippines.

Rob (08:18.515)

Yeah, that’s rapid, sixty odd staff over eight years. So yeah, that’s how you cope with that volume. I’m going to make people wait for the cash the conversation with you and I, Ash. So just everyone who’s waiting to hear what Ash has got to say on technology, you have to wait a bit longer. I’ve got more questions for Scott before we get to him. you track Scott, you track conversion rates by lead source and by adviser and you picked up the Equity Mates’ conversions improved. You found that they improved a lot once you matched

Rob (08:46.515)

The older clients that were coming through Equity Mates with the more senior advisers in your team. How what sort of how important has that data driven approach been to actually improving everything you do, tracking what’s coming through?

Scott Taylor (08:59.628)

Yeah, huge, huge. Because we’ve we’ve had five advisers go through their PY with us. So on the earlier end of their career journey in their mid to late twenties, and then we’ve got some advisers that have been doing it for ten plus years. myself now eight years, so wouldn’t wouldn’t say we’re senior, but we’re we’re more experienced. and what we were finding was we were just

Handing out the referrals based on who was available. so and evenly spreading them without any real method around Ashley works better with this type of client or Scott works better with this type of client. It’s just who’s available, we get our ten, fifteen each, and then off we go. What we found though when we started looking into the data was the conversion rates for Equity Mates was a lot lower than the referrals that Glenn sends us. And we couldn’t kind of understand why on the surface. So, let’s look a bit deeper. And we had our data, which Ashley had built out, puts it in a nice report that could easily see conversion by adviser per referral source. And then that told a story because the conversion for Equity Mates from the newer advisers was very low, but to the ones that are a bit more experienced was actually

quite high or or normal compared to the other referral partners. So then what we did moving forward was when Equity Mates refers someone in, they get kind of one of the four more senior or experienced advisers and that improved I guess our overall conversion but and then also the client client journey. So it’s super important to us given the volume that we work with to have data that’s accurate but also timely and we’re not waiting one or two months for that data.

And then trying to make a decision. It’s kind of there in front of us and is kind of active day in, day out.

Rob (11:01.043)

And because you are very data driven, I know you know the specifics of your average client type, your avatar. When I asked you the question, you said yes, it’s a thirty-three 33-year-old female, and 65% of your client base are in fact women. Obviously, it speaks to Victoria’s influence on the She’s on the Money podcast. Your team is also 68% female, so you’ve got a good symbiosis there between the client type and your advice team.

How deliberately did you design for that or did the referral sources kind of shape it for you?

Scott Taylor (11:32.075)

Referral sources shaped it for us. I guess the first year or so, two years were definitely I think we didn’t have any females that worked for us who a typical boys’ club were, I guess. But it wasn’t necessarily by design. It was yeah, working with Victoria then led us to getting more referrals that were females, which is which has been fantastic for us. Then from there what we what we found was by working with Victoria and She’s on the Money; there was a lot of advisers or support staff that listened to her podcasts around Australia that actively reached out to us looking to see if we had any opportunities. So yeah, four or five of our staff members over the last couple of years have reached out saying, Yeah, I want to work with you guys because I want to work closely with the team that are helping her kind of listeners and that demographic. So that’s kind of how it’s kind of I guess been centred around Victoria. but it hasn’t necessarily been, yep, we need to only hire females or we’re only working with females. It’s just been through the referral source.

Rob (12:41.877)

What an unexpected benefit. You would have probably thought you’re out there talking to a client audience trying to attract them, but you actually attracted the adviser type as well that you wanted to wanted to serve that audience. So you did some recruiting as well as on the adviser side, not just on the client side. Well done. you also made a conscious decision to offer predominantly one-off advice, and that’s probably speaks to more the client type you’re dealing with, the younger client, but and you’re not mandating ongoing relationships with those clients. What was the thinking behind that?

Scott Taylor (12:48.92)

Yeah.

Rob (13:10.855)

At the time, I had an interview with Rebecca Ty from Game Plan Wealth Advisors recently and Rebecca approaches this audience as well, directly the younger audience. How does it connect to your vision of or your mission, if you like, of helping as many young Australians as possible create wealth that they never imagined? That’s that is your mission statement, is it not?

Scott Taylor (13:30.134)

Yeah, it is, yeah. And so what we felt was if each of our advisers have 150 ongoing clients, they’re going to be pretty tapped out and won’t be able to see too many new clients unless you’ve got significant productivity through the business or efficiencies. so we made that conscious decision of only offering it or kind of having clients as ongoing clients that really needed it.

therefore we could have an intense relationship for three or four months, get someone set up, provide them great advice, and then hand the reins back to them, review their insurances once a year, hear if they need us in the future. But what that then enables the advisers is to see more new clients week in, week out, rather than being kind of tied down by ongoing review clients. It was also what we found was the demographic we were working with.

People in their 20s, 30s, early 40s, there wasn’t necessarily a need for ongoing advice. a lot of these people coming through the podcast are relatively switched on. They know a bit already, sometimes enough to be dangerous, sometimes a bit to be to know what they’re doing and just getting a bit of a check on a sense check. But a lot of the time we educate upskill the clients so they know what the plan is for the next two, three, four years and they’re quite comfortable taking the reins. And now we’ve been going eight years, is quite often every couple of weeks, we’ll get a few clients come back to us and go, I saw you four years ago. we did this and I’ve achieved it. And it and it’s a great feeling as as I know it is working with a client on an ongoing basis, but it’s also a great feeling cause they put that plan into place and they stuck to it. and two, they saw immense value four years ago, so they’ve come back to you. so yeah, that’s where it kind of stemmed from early days.

Rob (15:32.149)

Yeah, now this is a question for either of you. I know Ashley hasn’t spoken yet, but I’ve got a whole bunch of questions for him lined up. So I’ll let either of you take this one. You place cash flow planning at the center of your advice. And I say this could be either of you because I know Ashley’s been instrumental in how to actually help manage this. But you’ve talked about clients who save thousands of dollars a month, but it turns out they come in, they say, I save X dollars per month, but you found out that they say that on a good month or you know three months out of twelve, they might save that amount, but what you actually went down to transaction level visibility to see what clients are actually spending versus what they think they’re spending. Why has that been Scott’s saying, give me that one? Why has it been so critical for your client group to get to that level of transaction visibility and how do you how do you go about doing it?

Scott Taylor (16:18.732)

Yeah, so I’ll I will hand over to Ash. I went to all the limelight yeah, essentially. what what we’re finding was most of our clients they have pretty large lifestyle cash flow goals, whether it’s upgrading their home, purchasing their first home, doing significant renovations, starting a family, growing their family, retiring early. Like it all involves money, of course, but then also we with all those situations, we need to have a really good understanding of

Rob (16:23.235)

Ha ha.

Scott Taylor (16:48.29)

Their outgoings and most people will tell you what they believe they can save per month and they’re not necessarily lying on purpose but sometimes they probably are but it’s it’s usually very inaccurate is what we were finding. So, we don’t, we didn’t want to go you can save two thousand dollars a month Rob great well yep, you can you can easily afford to see out 12 months of mat leave you can upgrade your home to a $1.5 million dollar place.

And then you get to doing it and it’s like, I can’t afford it, I’ve got no money left. And what we were finding was people go on a holiday and they spend 10 or 20 grand. And for the 11 months of the year, they can save a couple grand a month, but they don’t take into account that one or two months of the year where they go way over that. And if you average it out, it’s normally far less. So what we used to do was utilize my prosperity to review their transactions.

but then Ash and the team here have built a cash flow modelling tool which effectively takes their transactions and within within minutes categorizes them accurately over the last 12 months into where they have actually spent money. And it’s a huge value add for our demographic clients we deal with, for them to go, this is where I feel I’m at, this is where I actually am at, and this is where I need to be at to achieve the goals.

And it really helps us with having trade-off discussions of maybe not all those goals are achievable or we push the time frame out. Maybe we need to earn more money, easier said than done. or do we look at cutting back in some areas? And we usually find when you’re having those conversations because there’s a reason or a motivation for it, people then tend to stick to it because again of that motivating factor of children upgrading the home or whatever it may be that they’re striving for. I’m not sure, Ash, if you just want to touch on the

the cash flow kind of tool that would that you built.

Ashley Pickett (18:46.54)

Yeah, I think like this can partly be my segue to your question here, Rob, in the sense that we’ve had a few of our staff that have really started to excel in ways to streamline certain processes and that cashflow one is a great point to talk upon. You mentioned earlier around the importance of data as well and what one of our grads who had just been with us for about three months did was change the whole system in which we analyse the transactions to get a proper understanding for where the clients are living, what’s their address.

Rob (18:46.549)

That’d be great.

Ashley Pickett (19:14.574)

And then comparing all of their relevant transactions based on their bank data feed per se, comparing that with their location, the distance between their address and that location to then start to determine and put some reasoning behind, has this person been on holiday for these transactions? Are they overseas to therefore justify that level of expense as well? And really start to build in certain parameters when doing that analysis too.

Rob (19:36.957)

Yeah. And you gave your team essentially licence to do this, Ash. I know you’ve been kind of championing the technology development inside Everest Wealth, but you’ve kind of encouraged people as they come in to explore ways to improve the productivity of the business. And this was one of those. You said I think this grad had been with you for three months and they kind of saw that they could improve the way in which you took that transaction data from your clients who downloaded it from their internet banking I gather and then sent you through an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV file.

Ashley Pickett (20:05.899)

Mm. Yeah, I think…

Rob (20:06.106)

that’s one example, but

Ashley Pickett (20:13.326)

Sorry, you keep freezing there, Rob. Yeah, and I think it really does highlight the culture of change, right? And we’ve tried really hard to really emphasise that to our team, that if someone comes in, sees a process and thinks, why is it done that way? And if it’s not done in the most effective way, 100%, we give them the full power to stand up and go, okay, this is a better solution to do so. We kind of challenged that old approach of, it’s been done this way in the past, this is why it has to be done this way now. And that really has…pay dividends within the business as well. It’s really encouraged everyone to start to be creative with their own type of work they’re doing, create certain procedures and things that allow them to do things in a more accurate or effective way.

Rob (20:53.609)

Yeah. And tell me about how you started on the path working with Marloo because that’s been that was a critical starting position for you to go and explore what options you could use to fast track the way advice was being produced. and this was more of a, conference type arrangement. You met with someone and started having a conversation. Tell us how it came about and how the whole team sort of after they saw what you were doing with it when you first were testing it.

Ashley Pickett (21:15.534)

Hmm.

Rob (21:23.359)

How they quickly adopted it after after they saw what it could do.

Ashley Pickett (21:26.452)

Yeah, I quite like telling this story in the sense that when we initially started out with the whole automation space or streamlining the business we were doing as a lot of practices were doing to begin with was automating the file note process of going through businesses where you have to record your meeting, you then get a file note sent to you 15 to 30 minutes after said meeting was done. Yes, it worked in some way, shape or form, right? But what we really struggled with was that the team weren’t adopting that change.

And I think that really ingrained in me specifically that the change is so hard to encourage in people. And as I’ll touch on in a minute, that isn’t actually the case. So, yeah, so we started out with that file-noting tool. I bumped into one of the owners, Shaq of Marloo, at a conference at one of the Australian Wealth Management Conferences, a little over a year now, bumped into him and I saw him at this conference and he was explaining what their product did at the time, which was Marlou, and it was very much centralised around the whole file-noting piece.

I went into it with a bit of scepticism to begin with. I was like, look, we’re already pretty comfortable with our file-noting approach, thanks. He then said, look, give me a little bit of time. So he demonstrated to me their product and I immediately tried to trip it up by saying certain things. So for example, like a client would say they earned 120k, for example, the old file-note systems would just pull that out, which makes no sense really. And then Marloo immediately turned around and was like, Ashley stated he earns $120,000 a year. Did not specify if he…gets super on top of that right which was amazing.

Rob (22:57.663)

Yeah, I think this maybe your internet is a bit s yeah, jump in with Scott. Scott’s is still Scots yeah, Scott’s coming through loud and clear and you’re also hearing you, Ash, but your video has stopped, yeah.

Scott Taylor (23:01.676)

Yeah, do you want to come sit sit in with me, Ash? Cause you’ve you’ve frozen.

Scott Taylor (23:12.524)

Yeah. Full in a good faith as well.

Rob (23:14.569)

No worries.

Get comfortable together there guys and the beauty of it is no one listening will actually know, because Pete will clean that up for us. It’ll be seamless.

Scott Taylor (23:21.751)

Yeah.

Scott Taylor (23:27.372)

Yeah. you froze quite a while ago. really? Yeah. Rocket freezing commanders. I’ll just free behind the lines.

Rob (23:31.539)

that whole section, you your video froze but the audio was still clear. I could hear you but I just couldn’t see you moving. So we’ll we’ll just use that bit will be audio only. The only bit we use a video will actually use a bit of a promo piece, or we’ll pick a piece that’s actually nice and clean.

Ashley Pickett (23:44.215)

Yeah, cool. Yeah, sounds good. But as I was saying, so we bumped to one of the owners of Marloo at this conference and he showed me the product and I was really impressed with it, so we decided to give it a go. originally with purely the file-noting intention. So we could sit in our meetings, it sits there as a buddy tool and generates a file note that’s effective afterwards. And this was then really where I started to realise that change isn’t that hard to endorse within the business. So I started using Marloo by myself, for example, while just testing it within my associate at that day really liked the idea of Marloo, so they were like, look, can I have access to this as well? I gave it to them. By the end of the week, about 70 to 80% of the entire business were purely using it, not out of being required to use it, but out of necessity, because it was simply a more superior product in that case. And that I think for us was really that light bulb moment to go, okay, if a product is good enough, people are going to adopt it and use it properly as well. And that really was that launch pad to then start to go into the SOA generation and start to build that further.

Rob (24:42.869)

Yeah, well tell us about that, because that’s the one a lot of people are trying to solve for, and clearly you guys have jumped in headfirst. You spent about three to four months, you said Ash, building the SOA generation template inside Marloo. And a lot of people are still, hearing of Claris and Paradino and Marloo and others that are doing work in this space. When you’ve gone you’ve gone full bore with Marloo, walk me through what you actually had to do to make Marloo deliver advice the way you wanted to do it.

Scott Taylor (24:50.807)

Hmm.

Rob (25:10.025)

What were you training it to understand about how Everest writes advice?

Ashley Pickett (25:14.914)

Yeah, for sure. And I mean, the first thing to note probably is it was very early days within the Marloo product as well, right? This was I was helping them develop their document generation tool itself. It didn’t necessarily exist as of that point. So it was a lot more manual than I suppose what it would be today. But what we what I was really trying to do was spending the first three to four months building this template to understand the tone of the document we’re trying to convey. So it’s a consistent tool every single time we’re generating something.

As well as also other catch points as well. So if we are recommending this, then make sure you show this. And then the next level was then making sure it understood the supporting documents being provided. So that the team could consistently give it certain tools, certain file notes, certain modeling pieces. It can interpret all of that information, then produce it into a consistent Statement of Advice document every single time without slipping up or missing certain areas as well, which is why it took a little bit of time to build that.

But I really feel that we did get it to a consistent point where as we’ve talked about earlier, prior Rob, we’ve started about taking the full day to make a document, now it’s down to about half that, with our goal of really ideally getting it then closer to that two hour mark as well.

Rob (26:24.103)

and that’s really as you say, giving it well it’s you’ve built a template but giving it the context it needs to be able to write the document, advice document the way you would want it written. So tell me just let’s dig into this a bit further because people are going to want to know specifically. So you’ll give it a product comparison, you’ll give it some modelling perhaps, you’ll give it maybe PDSs or or a or a an Excel spreadsheet showing one product versus another. What are you feeding it to actually be able to generate that advice document?

Scott Taylor (26:36.952)

Hmm.

Ashley Pickett (26:52.77)

So first the first piece of information that it would have would be the meeting itself, from whether it be the initial meeting with that client, the strategy meetings being had with that client as well. It’s got all of that stored in the background. You can select those to form part of the advice itself, which I think really come in handy to pre-fill and pre-build the alternative section of a Statement of Advice, right? It says, okay, we considered doing this, however, discounted it because of A, B, and C. That’s not just some made up alternative in that case.

It really is backed with the conversations that have been had. So, we decided on an emergency fund of XYZ because of the actual reasonings that have happened in that meeting as well, which I think then really conveys into the SOA to be a far more of a bespoke document, too. But I suppose back to your question around what we are actually feeding it and providing it, is all of those things. It’s the recommended insurance quote, for example. It is the omnium comparison of the differing insurers so that it’s got all of that background information and that’s were building out the template to your bespoke temp your bespoke version really works the best because it’s then saying, okay, look for this type of document to understand or pull out of this piece of information. So whether it be the insurance commission that’s been stated, for example, or the stamp duty portion of the insurance premium, it’s looking specifically for those, with then the ability to customize that. So it is showing exactly what your client needs to see in that document.

Rob (28:12.885)

Okay, you were a very early adopter and Marloo hasn’t ha wasn’t as developed as it is today. If someone approached Marloo today, what sort of experience would they get? Would they need to go through a similar template building process or has it come a fair way even to the extent that they wouldn’t need to necessarily take long at all to get up and running with Marloo?

Ashley Pickett (28:30.794)

Yeah, it’s it’s vastly different now for how far they’ve come in the last twelve months. and not even just saying that either from pure personal experience. So for example, Scott asked me to create a fact-find template the other day in Marloo. he walked past me later on that afternoon and I was like, here you go. And he was quite surprised that I’d immediately turned it into something that we could actively use because now they really do have the ability to upload all of your existing documents, for example. So I gave it seven fact-finds and said, generate me a fact-find template, in which it did. So it interpreted all of those seven documents, understood the potential differing areas. So some might have been single clients, some might have been couples, some might have been retirees. It understood all the differing varying areas and then built it into that template. So something to look out for when then providing it. And they’ve also now built in the ability to really edit it easily using the AI tools off to the site as well. So back when I was originally doing it, I was just having to write the relevant instructions in their instruction section.

But now you can simply write in the chat corner in the bottom of it saying create this or make this change in the document, it will then go and find that and do it for the person.

Rob (29:37.589)

Let’s dig into that data collection that you’ve developed in a day, when Scott mentioned it in the morning, you had it in the afternoon. Is that the custom client data collection portal that you built using Claude Code? Is that different?

Ashley Pickett (29:49.353)

No, so that one that one specifically there that I was just saying was purely the fact-find summary for a client that they are then signing off on saying, Yes, this is our financial position that we were previously generating out of, say, a Midwinter. We then wanted to bring that more on to Marlo, so I gave it all of those examples to do that.

Rob (29:57.715)

Okay.

Rob (30:06.823)

Okay, but you then went about building this client data collection portal using Claude Code. So not not satisfied purely that Marloo could do everything for you, you actually obviously are building out tools that are supporting your ability to generate advice through Marloo. You’re hosting that on Amazon Web Services based in Sydney, I understand. You’re collecting data from clients. Tell us how you came to that decision to build your own and what you’d already tried that wasn’t quite cutting it. I think Scott mentioned my prosperity a little earlier.

Is that where you were? Or even before that, perhaps, before you decided, no, we’ve got to build our own version of this to make it work?

Ashley Pickett (30:41.878)

Yeah, and I think that really was born out of necessity, right? In terms of the client friction, especially in such a high volume business like we are. We want to make it as frictionless as possible. And yes, as you mentioned, we were previously using a tool like myprosperity to gather that client information. We were then sending the client a link for them to be able to sign in, log in, fill out the relevant questions as well. And we were finding there was so much friction involved.

They might not be able to log in. They would email us. We would have to email myprosperity. We’d have to wait a while for them to respond. Or the client would say, This question’s not very clear or not mandatory, for example. And we would then send a list of saying we would like to make all of these changes. We might get an email a week later saying we’re not sure what specific ones you want changed here or whether we have interpreted it correctly. And don’t get me wrong, it was a great, it was a good product for what we were using for, but we then really decided to take the matters into our own hands and decide to have all about data ourselves as well and be able to customise the questionnaires for the clients, which has really repaid itself in droves by giving the most seamless experience as possible in that the tool that we built.

Rob (31:50.069)

Tell about the process you went through to audit the nature of its the robust nature of w that tool having been built by Claude Code and check that how you manage the privacy question that comes out of that. You’ve been through a pretty thorough exercise here to sort of test it and try to see that it, passes all the tests around privacy and cybersecurity.

Ashley Pickett (32:11.008)

Yeah, and I’ll I’ll get Scott to jump in here as well. But we were extremely conscious around making sure we were doing it properly the first time around that we were doing it. So yes, we built the majority of the platform through Claude Code by designing it in Claude Design and things as well to then make it to a point where it could potentially then go live. But that is where we then started consulting third-party developers to do a full audit of the platform as well, make sure the level of encryption is up to scratch, make sure the data is stored in certain areas too.

Because that really is at the forefront of why we were doing it to make sure that data is secure as well. Yeah, and then we also so Ash did that side and then on my side from kind of being a Responsible Manager of the licence, you plugged into our licensee services team, kind of showed them what we were doing to get their feedback. We use an external auditor and compliance team, so we plugged into them to see

Rob (32:46.462)

Sure.

Scott Taylor (33:07.618)

Get their feedback and then also checked in with our cyber insurance team to kind of get their feedback and so we collated that all and then decided that it was it was okay to keep pushing forward and we felt really secure and safe with the levels of encryption and privacy that we had for our clients moving forward because like with most financial advisers we hold so much detail and information and they’re able now through the portal that that Ash has created as a one-stop shop. So, they’re the questions are kind of seamless from your financial position to your kids to your insurance health history. There’s a full kind of almost insurance application in there. You can upload all your pay slips, your IDs. So, everything’s in one place now. whereas before it was my prosperity, before that it was Jotform. So, we’re sending people four or five questionnaires. Before that it was handwritten fact-finds. So, we’ve come a long way.

But with that comes risk as well. So that’s been, yeah, very much the forefront of whenever we put something like this in place.

Rob (34:16.489)

Yeah. episode forty eight, the last one, with Ivan Gower and Andrew Gardner from RetireMap. Andrew said to me, so you guys are episode forty nine, this so the episode forty eight, the one just before this, very tech focused sort of conversations I’m having, because it’s interesting to me as well as everyone else listening, I’m sure. Andrew said there’s three choke points in a advice business. The data-gathering piece, the plan production, which you’ve had a had a crack at as well, and the middle piece, which is the modeling piece, and that’s what RetireMap was achieving or working to achieve for businesses as well to make that a more seamless and straightforward process. But you’ve had a crack at the other two in a really serious way. So that Marloo is really your plan production engine now, and your portal yourself built using Claude Design, Claude Code, is the data collection piece. So you’ve cracked potentially cracked two of the big nuts here that people are trying to solve for to make the business run.

Because you are such a high volume business, you’ve had to kind of by necessity, as you put Ash, by necessity we had to build something to make us be able to absorb the volume of work we’re getting. So do you feel like you’ve kind of how close do you feel like saying we’ve really nailed these two front and back end pieces? And is it kind of at eighty percent of where you’d like it to be? Can you imagine what it needs to do to get to the point where you think it’s kind of solved all the issues there?

Ashley Pickett (35:33.561)

Yeah, I personally think we’ve scratched the surface. Right. It’s really shown me where all of the possibilities now do lie. And I think the best indicator of that is the ability to access data that we wouldn’t necessarily have otherwise seen, for example, right? So in the past when we were sending out questionnaires, we would just only hear negative complaints from people that were eventually disgruntled enough to say that hey, this isn’t great or this should be fixed.

But now we have the full visibility to look at our portal that we’ve sent out and see, okay, what is the average time a certain user is spending on a section? Are they spending more than the average? Okay, if they are, maybe they now need a phone call to simply help them through the process a little bit faster, for example. Or also just understanding, hey, the insurance section takes on average 32 minutes of the entire questionnaire. Therefore, maybe let’s now focus on training the advisers when they’re having initial meetings with clients to really emphasize why we spend so much time on that initial data gathering as well.

It really allows us now to get at the forefront and be upfront with clients as well in having these conversations. And that data is just going to continue to flow throughout the remainder of the business as well. So, we can then understand maybe how long it would take an associate to create the relevant work and so forth.

Rob (36:44.853)

Yeah, getting that level of data or that intelligence of what’s happening is so powerful, isn’t it, to be able to act on those insights that it’s giving you. So yeah, that’s I can see, as you say, you’re at you’re at the front edge of it, but you’re also only just, as you put it, Ash at the scratching the surface of what’s still possible. So it’s an exciting time to be in an advice business that can improve productivity in such dramatic ways. Scott, you mentioned how you have this young team and you’ve encouraged a real level of experimentation amongst the team to improve productivity.

You told me you’ve got a the graduate, about the three month graduate who built the transaction categorization tool in Claude Code. How do you foster that kind of experimentation across the team within guardrails that you need to think about as an RM?

Scott Taylor (37:26.252)

Hm. Yeah. So I guess we’re we are a relatively young team. Most of the team are in their mid to late twenties to early thirties. so I think naturally there’s that level of tech adoption and curiosity. but what we’ve kind of set out as a as a business is if you can find a better way to do something, then that’s let’s look into it and investigate it. It’s not hey Ash, I think this is this sucks. Can you fix it? It’s I’ll get my hands dirty I’ll see if there’s a better way, and then I’ll present it to Ash or to Scott, and then they’ll go do the relevant checks before it’s actually implemented. So, and I guess what we’ve said to the team and the graduate who has been with us for three months that’s been with us was if you can make it more efficient, then you’ll have more time and we’ll give you that time for learning and training. So he’s now kind of significantly reduced the time it takes to do his work in a day. We haven’t then just lumped on more work to him. It’s now, okay, that time can be now used for your growth. Go sit in on adviser meetings and see how they do things and or or go get a BDM to come in to teach you about X, Y, and Z. Like so it’s so then the I guess the fostering is well if we can kind of make our jobs more productive and more efficient, people aren’t going to lose their jobs. It’s going to mean that you can grow quicker through our business and kind of learn more quicker rather than being scared of you’re going to be putting yourself out of a job.

Rob (39:09.769)

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, there’s so many if you think there’s nothing else left for us to do, then you’re not trying very hard, are you? So once you’ve solved one problem, there’s always a new problem. So, you just move them up the scale to higher level tasks and activities that you really want to solve for. So as you say, accelerates their development, accelerates their learning opportunities. So there’s so much more capability that comes with that time that’s getting freed up by being more productive. and speaking of time, being productive, y you said that, in the past, ongoing clients you were

Scott Taylor (39:16.342)

Mm-hmm.

Rob (39:38.835)

A little reluctant to service them you because you felt as though we couldn’t see as many people if we had a book of clients to service. But in the last six months, you’ve added around fifty ongoing clients in the business, taking you from under about two hundred to about two fifty, a twenty percent increase in a very short period of time, after eight years of positioning yourself as a one-off advice firm. What triggered that shift for you, Scott? And what role has technology played now in maybe changing your thinking?

Scott Taylor (40:05.368)

Hm, yeah, absolutely. So I guess in the past we were putting our own judgment on a lot of the conversations we were having with clients. they don’t need ongoing advice, so I’m not going to really present it to them. and then we decided to shift our focus because I’m not sure where the epiphany came from, but it was like who who are we to say whether it’s valuable to the client or not? The client should be making that decision.

Not me as the adviser. I’m I’m somewhat biased because I’ve got a lot more knowledge than them. so yes, I should give my opinion, but I shouldn’t be kind of making that decision for them. and what we found was we present we’ve started presenting our ongoing service to every client that we see and just going, Here’s here’s what we offer, here’s what we charge, here’s what I feel you should do. and then what we found is a huge lift in people taking that on as you mentioned with those numbers. So that’s that’s been a yeah a conscious change in our mindset to I guess do the clients more justice in our opinion. but what technology has allowed is that we can now service more clients so each adviser can have a decent ongoing book and grow an ongoing book but also still see new clients as well.

Through the efficiencies and technology changes that we’ve already implemented and that we’ve got planned for the next six to twelve months too.

Rob (41:40.149)

Yeah, I love the way you put that and I want to spend a second recapping it because you said that who are we to judge the value that people are seeing in what we potentially offer and you’ve been really not oriented around trying to find the ongoing client, you’ve been oriented around looking after them why not. So you’re not trying to commit them to anything they don’t want to commit to. In fact, if anything, you’re going the opposite way. And yet just by literally giving them the choice by saying it’s you to decide what value you see in what we’re doing. And so who are we as advisers or who are

Scott Taylor (41:59.725)

Yeah, absolutely.

Rob (42:10.121)

Who is even the regulator who looks at Scott, can I judge you as a regulator whether you’re giving value to that client or not? Well, who’s the best judge of that other than the client? No one could possibly be. And I know that there’s a subjective view for the client to make, but I think people look at that and say, well, they’ve got X amount of money, therefore we relate the fee to the money they have, and therefore that’s how they should be determining the value of what they’re getting. But what we do is so much more than just about the money they have. And so as practitioners, giving them freedom to choose, knowing you’re oriented to not worry whether they choose one or the other, you’re happy to take either scenario. what a powerful place to get to and really give them that ultimate choice. I just wanted to spend a second on that cause I think it’s such an important point to make because I think some observers who aren’t us giving client advice would think, you’re just trying to sell them an ongoing service because that’s in your interests. But in fact, you’ve been the opposite. So, it really I really wanted to make a

Scott Taylor (43:04.344)

Hmm, yeah.

Yeah, it was a change in mindset for us as kind of business owners, business leaders. and then that’s filtered down and now the the advisers are taking that on and they’re they’re even surprised. They’re like, this client came on, I wouldn’t have ever offered this type of client ongoing previously, and they said they said yes. so it’s it’s just kind of goes to show to us it’s like we’re not being pushy with it, we’re just putting

Rob (43:07.817)

Really emphasise that point.

Scott Taylor (43:36.78)

The options on the table, and some people see value in it even if we don’t necessarily do ourselves.

Rob (43:45.535)

Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s right. As you say, you’ve got the benefits of knowledge and years of experience. So how are you to determine what’s best for them when really they have a sense of what value it is for them? So yeah, no, thanks for sharing that. I’ve got one more question for each of you if that’s okay. I know you’ve got a bit of a schedule to hit. So, Scott, you’re thirty eight, you love what you do, you’re not thinking about an exit any time soon, you’re way too young for that. Your clients are going to age with you based on the demographic you’ve already got as a client group. What does Everest wealth look like in five years from today, do you think?

Scott Taylor (43:59.117)

Yeah, of course.

Scott Taylor (44:16.248)

If had asked me this question five years ago, it wouldn’t have been where we are today. So in five years time, so I guess what we’re we’re aiming for, we’re a national business already, so we’ve got an office in Melbourne. most likely would look to get an office in Adelaide. So from a geography point of view, we’ll have a few satellite offices with our head office being here in Perth. So but our goal remains the same of helping as many young Australians as possible.

Rob (44:20.821)

Yeah.

Scott Taylor (44:46.336)

And to that we need more referrals. So that’s where we’ve we’re building out our own YouTube channel, our own TikTok channel, to try and diversify our leads. So I envisage that, yeah, in five years’ time we’ll have even more referrals on a monthly basis coming into us. We’ll have probably double the number of staff that we have, and we’ll be way more efficient and productive as a team as well, which I’m really excited about. And five years in like you said, our clients start growing with us and we’re just going to see that as a perfect opportunity to reconnect with our existing database of clients. That if for whatever reason we do get a bit quiet in the future, well we’ve got thousands of clients that have been through us through advice with us and we can just go back to them and go, hey, has anything changed? Do you want to catch up? but we’re not doing that at the moment because there’s not a need to right now. So yeah.

Rob (45:44.819)

Maybe not have a capacity issue right now either but you know as you say you’ve got this great experience of working with clients who’ve come through, got one-off advice that had a good experience with you but didn’t need the ongoing support services. But just being able to be a very data driven business and capture that record, make sure that those people are connected still to you in one or another. When things do change for them, obviously a great opportunity to reconnect when the when the time comes for them. It is a good time. I mean, you say it’s exciting and I think everyone who’s in the space that we’re in now that’s actually adopting some of the technology that we’re talking about here today would feel the same. Is it such a great opportunity to become more productive and serve more people and that’s what we’re in this game to do. We actually get the value out of and the purpose from helping me as many people as possible and seeing how we can change the direction of their financial life and their life more broadly. So, I love that vision and

Scott Taylor (46:35.392)

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess, yeah, twelve months ago we weren’t doing hardly anything of what we’re doing today. So, we were just doing I think file notes, correct me if I’m wrong, Ash, like which is what most businesses are now doing, that’s the norm. I think the norm will be kind of what we’re doing in twelve months’ time. So, it’s just going to be this exponential growth I feel in efficiencies, productivity.

And it’s just going to mean there’s just going to be more time for each of us to be client facing, which if you ask most of our team, that’s what we love doing, is being in front of clients, speaking to clients, helping clients. So, it’s just going to be a better client experience at the end of the day.

Rob (47:20.669)

Absolutely Five years is a long time, isn’t it? When you think of what you’ve done in a year. So you think, well, five years at this rate will be it’ll be hard to imagine what you’ll be doing in five years. So Ash, I’ve got one final question, it’s for you. You have been with really great support from Scott and Alex driving the business forward. You’ve been one to really grab the baton on the technology and see what’s possible. For a firm listening to this thinking about they need to start somewhere with AI and you’ve just jumped in Claude Code and you’ve built tools. What’s the one thing you’d tell them to do right now, this week, to move them forward in the same way you guys have developed your business?

Ashley Pickett (48:01.717)

I think it would probably really really relate to be interested in it. You know what I mean, rather than the sense that get started, give it a go, have a start to poke around and look what it can potentially do. Try something new. And the change then inadvertently comes from that. Only once you’ve started doing do you then start to really take that higher level look and go, well that doesn’t make sense that we’re actually doing this that way, if I could have done this one that way, the other way instead, for example. So it really is taking the smallest step and not being afraid that other people aren’t going to adopt the change. Cause as we’ve found, that change naturally comes if it’s good enough anyway. It doesn’t it’s not just being averse to change for the sake of it. It’s because it is slightly harder than what it is to begin with. Yeah.

Rob (48:44.533)

Yeah, everyone worries about change management in business and Scott and Alex would no doubt think about that, but you just went about saying, Well, let’s just test it. I’ll just explore it, see what’s possible. you’d build something and it works and you go, This is working and people look and go like, can I get that? So you don’t have to try and change people by force or by persuasion. They simply quickly adopt something they see as far better than what they’ve been doing. And I guess that’s the that’s the lesson you’ve learned along the way too.

Scott Taylor (49:08.842)

Exactly. And y if they’re not adopting it, that’s fine. It’s one idea, you’ve tried something and now you know that way potentially doesn’t work. Explore then the next avenue and carry on that way. And I and I think as well, like I’m yeah, I’m thirty eight and you said I’m quite young, which is thanks thanks Rob, but I d I don’t feel it But I I definitely w working with the team here, I feel like a bit of a dinosaur. but even like I had this

Rob (49:27.049)

Well, comparatively.

Scott Taylor (49:38.999)

Wrong kind of idea on AI that it was too difficult, it was something for the young kids to kind of worry about and yeah, I can barely kind of change over my iPhone to a new iPhone that I was struggling with on the weekend. So, but what I’ve found is like with Claude or Marlou, it actually once you get started isn’t that hard. It’s scary. I found it quite I wouldn’t say scary but found it challenging to get my head around it. But once I

Rob (49:52.349)
Yeah.

Scott Taylor (50:08.738)

Jumped in and that wasn’t even with the help of Ash or anyone. It was just, all right, I’ll everyone’s using Claude, I’ll see what this is about and just started playing around. And before you know it, you’re a semi pro at it. and that and yeah, I don’t feel like I’ve got any real expertise there. My team obviously do, which I’m really grateful for. But even if you’re a one-man band out there and kind of head in the sand with this, I’d encourage you to get your head out of the sand and yeah, just start talking to people. Get

Marloo Paradino out to see you and just see what the possibilities are ’cause they’re going to be it will transform your business.

Rob (50:46.581)

You’ve reminded me, I listened to a number of podcasts and a lot of the people who are very forward thinking in technology are saying the greatest superpower a human being has is curiosity, the ability to actually not accept the status quo and be curious of what’s possible. And what you’ve both just described is exactly that, just to say, I’m going to remain curious and keep exploring because the way we’re doing things is changing rapidly and it can be a bit intimidating, you’re thinking it’s changing so fast I can’t keep up. But as you say, if you’re curious enough just to at least experiment, explore, you actually can find what’s possible because you can ask these LLMs exactly what it is you want to understand. It’ll tells you what you can do and what you can’t do anyway. So, you’ve got you’ve got a teacher there in your pocket now which is quite incredible. I applaud you both and Alex obviously as your other business partner, you’ve obviously grown the business very rapidly and it’s pivoting now to serve clients in the way they want to be served as well for ongoing services where in the past you thought that maybe wasn’t a thing they would want.

It’s exciting to see a business that is young relatively. Scott, you’re you say you’re a dinosaur that makes me. But great trajectory for you guys. f in full disclosure, when we have a client type that isn’t suitable to us, this younger client type looking for one-off advice, we obviously do send our work to you guys for that and we really appreciate that you take those clients and look after them. we’re comfortable with that arrangement because we know the great work that you guys do. So

Scott Taylor, Ashley Pickett, thank you both for joining me today on the Trusted Advisor podcast.

Scott Taylor (52:20.674)

Been been great fun. Thanks, Rob, for having us. Thank you very much, Rob. It’s been a pleasure.

Rob (52:24.745)

Thanks guys.