Episode 27: Brian Hill
Brian Hill, exIFA DipFA PTS
Head of Acquisitions at City&Capital
You can also listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts & Spotify.
In this episode:
Brian has a highly interesting conversation with Abraham on:
How he started out in financial planning
What led him to sell Jones Hill and how he knew he was ready
When to start considering an exit strategy
How an acquisition is structured and what people are looking for
The City & Capital Group is changing its name in the near future…?
Brian’s approach to retirement
Guest profile
Brian Hill sold and exited his financial planning firm Jones Hill in September 2020, having given advice for almost 15 years.
He has a Master's (MSc) in Communication, Credibility and Behaviour analysis, and is qualified as a non-verbal communications trainer. He also trains financial advisers and other professionals in the art of non-verbal communication through his business Kinesics Method, which he set up in 2017.
Brian has previously spoken at financial planning conferences Humans Under Management and Back2Y, and has worked with provider sales teams.
He lives in Lombardy, Italy and is also a ski instructor.
Where to find Brian:
LinkedIn - Brian Hill MSc DipFA CEPA
Twitter - @brianrhill
Transcript
Featuring Abraham Okusanya (Host) and Brian Hill (Guest).
Abraham:
Hello and welcome to Retirementals. I'm Abraham Okusanya and it's great to be here again today. I am really thrilled about my guest today. Brian Hill is, should we say former financial planner and managing director of Jones Hill, former managing director of the financial planning firm, which he exited just about two years ago today, is the head of acquisitions at City and Capital. Brian, welcome to Retirementals.
Brian:
Abraham, great to see you. Thanks for having me on.
Abraham:
Brian, there's a lot I want to talk to you about. You are one of the financial planners who've walked the journey, been there, done that. You've gone through a journey that many financial planners, you know, business owners are looking to go. And now you're using your experience and your expertise to help firms who are looking to sell or buy or scale their companies. So let's just, we're going to dive into all of that. But before we do that, let's kind of just go back a little bit. Tell us a little bit about your journey into the profession.
Brian:
Well, my journey into the profession was a slow and winding one. I know I look like I'm just 36. I'm a little bit older than that. 39 ish plus, plus a tip. And so, I worked originally from the army and then various different roles over the course of time and then eventually fell into financial advice. I started off as a mortgage adviser just prior to 2008, 2007 I think it was. And then our daughter, Madeline came along in 2007 and we quickly realized that actually my wife and I couldn't have her as a financial adviser because the little one was in the corner, you know, and trying to run a business with the little one was rather challenging. So I took my pre RDR qualifications in super quick time, became an IFA and then started to take a long, leisurely start at the career. You know, I don't think I really got going for about six or seven years. In fact, I have no idea what I was doing for six or seven years. It just seemed to just disappear. I was definitely cruising but learning the ropes as you go, you know, you can get the exams, get the qualifications, get all the badges. But actually it’s boots on the ground, selling new clients, learning about their lives, their financial situation and helping them through that actually counts. You know, the exams are just skin in the game, aren't they? They just get you to a particular point. After that, it's a wee bit more so. That's how I started in Jones Hill at that time and then became M.D. and then took it on from that, really.
Abraham:
Right. So you know, you took the business to about 45 million in terms of AUM. And tell us the circumstances that led to the exit. I mean, you're still, as you said, a very young man. You know, why sell?
Brian:
Well, you know, it was probably that I realized around about five years before we actually sold that actually, I needed to get the business in a position where it is ready to sell. So I started getting things in line, started recruiting staff. So, because there's a phrase that I use all the time, which is only do what only you can do in your business. Everything else needs someone else to do it. Outsourcing, insourcing, but don't do it. Otherwise, you're just a glorified administrator. You're a glorified paraplanner you're a glorified secretary or whatever you are only do, only you can do. And so what that meant was that I was then in a position where I decided early 2018 to move back into 2017/18 that actually that an opportunity had come up. And so I emigrated with my young family to Italy, and something must have happened on the grapevine because I kid you, not the day I got on that plane. My foot, my feet were on the floor. On that plane, I started getting calls from firms to say, You're leaving. The door wasn't even shut. The door hasn't even shut. What are you doing? And I got spammed by brokers like, there's no tomorrow it's just ridiculous, really. And I started talking to a few people, started turning up my knowledge on the process. What I would say that if I knew then, what I know now, things might have gone a little bit differently. And my knowledge now is vastly, vastly superior to what it was at that point in time. But I didn't know any better, you know? And so we had initial chats with local firms But you tend to find the more local a firm is, the less money they've got to spend, they start nitpicking and doing what we call a chocolate box approach where they think actually the chocolate box is like this bit and I don't like that bit. So I'm just going to pay for that bit and not that bit and actually know it's a whole lot, you know, might be a trade, my business asset somewhat vicious, but it is the whole lot. So I kissed a lot of frogs, some of them were very unattractive some of them were not bad, but some, you know, some of them were deeply unattractive when you popped the bonnet on what they were, what they were offering. And so we then moved eventually to doing a deal with prospective financial group and that that that whole process took. And bearing in mind, I was absolutely ready to say I was absolutely ready to sell. You know, I have my data room, I had all my staff ready to go. All we really needed to do was due diligence and that process took six months, even though I was ready to go. And the one thing here is people underestimate how long it takes to do it to you to get these things through due diligence and through the FCA. And so we did all that and eventually we sold September 4th 2020. Now that seems like about a decade ago, lockdown, coronavirus quarantine. You know, people say, what day is it? I don't know what year it is, sometimes you know. So it was it was an experience like no other. And it’s really given me a real insight into being able to speak with other owners of advice businesses to say. And they tell us this all the time. You know, the credibility is off the scale because we're the only brokerage who have actually done it ourselves.
Abraham:
So this is fascinating, we're going to get into all that. The thing that I'm always interested to know is how are these deals structured? So you've gone through the experience now you're helping others. Generally, you know how hard this deal is structured in terms of the valuation. You know typically the people who talk about three times, you know, revenue of four or five times revenue or, you know, multiple something like that. And then this idea of upfront cash versus some sort of an out of a period of time give us the real practical experience of how that's structured?
Brian:
So brilliant, brilliant questions. Too many people get focused in on the multiple and I got drawn into that as well. They think the multiple is the be all and end all and it's absolutely not. There’s a third thing you need to, we need to think about. The first thing is culture. Is there a cultural fit between me or my team or my company and the acquiring firm? You know, if you're dead, if you've sold the fact you're an IFA to your clients for the last 20 years, then they aren’t best pleased if you then say we're going to go with true potential or we're going to go in with SJP or, you know, because you're not keeping your promises, you know, and the acquiring firm can't quite keep your promises for you, either. So the culture of the deal is important. How you look after your clients, you're charging structure, what's the harmonization going to be? Not culture is number one and if you want 80% aligned. Then you going to lose out on the following bit, which is the structure of the deal and no one deal, we see as the same. So you'll have some deals whereby or that's called business transfers or business exits, where people will advise, owner advisers will sell and exit, but just hang around for a little bit to help out with some stuff. But they'll exit. That's what I did. It's called a cliff-edge exit. It's not a brilliant idea for most people to be fair. The better, you know, some people will stay on. So essentially, we've got the sell an exit. That's number one. Number two is sell, stay exit. She might stay on for two years and the role as a financial adviser, maybe in the role of an ambassador, whatever that means. But you're going to stick around for a couple of years, and that is a bit of a risky thing because I tell you what, if you haven't sorted out the culture to start off with, you're then employed by a firm you don't want to be with, and that two years will feel like 20. And not only that, you'll be under restrictive covenant, which means then that you can't go and work for somebody else for a period of at least three or four years. So that's why culture is really, really important. That alignment is super important. So we have to sell and accept or sell, stay and exit
or sell, grow and exit. So these are for the younger guys or girls who have their own firm or who have an appetite they want to stay on, but they need, if you like investment from another firm, they will take some capital off the table, but they want investment for another firm to take it to the next level. And sometimes we can. We call these hub firms so they'll come in and they'll sit in, you know, a PE firm private equity firm. Buy them 80%, don't buy it. Then they'll come, this firm will then by satellite funds or spoke firms. Actually, we call them so you have the hub and spoke method. So they bought 80%. Then you come to sell your remaining 20%. And if everything's going according to plan, hopefully your 20% is worth more than the 80% that you partnered with initially. Now that's not available for everyone by any stretch. You know, if you've got like a two-man firm chance of them becoming a hub, it's a pretty slim to be honest. You need to have, there needs to be more going on. You know, we've got a number of firms who, their valuation is between 10 and 20 million. Those are going to be hub firms. Absolutely, because they're going to stick around. They're going to buy other firms up who, who are local to them. So, it's the 3 things all they sell and exit. Sell, stay and exit or sell, growth and exit. To be honest, most acquirers actually don't want you around for too long. There's the door. You could just make your way over in that direction, that would be great.
Abraham:
So this is brilliant, and I like the way you broke it down very simply into those three categories, but you creatively avoided my question, which is what's the going rate and how is it structured in terms of cash?
Brian:
You can't ask me that, you can't ask me that question. OK, let me let me say this. How long is a piece of string?
Abraham:
All right, so give me a ballpark. You know, what do you see in the market out there?
Brian:
OK, so there are three ways of valuing a business, usually in financial services. Number one is a multiple of normalized or adjusted EBITDA or profit. Number two is a multiple of recurring revenue. Or number three as a percentage of your assets under management. Very few people do that. The assets under management. Usually it's people who are just going to operate it, going to get shot of everything, shoehorn your clients into one size fits all and do that remotely. So they pay big money because it's highly profitable. But once most IFAs look at it, they kind of say, well many IFAs look at this differently and say no thanks. So we're then left with either multiple EBITDA, normalized EBITDA or multiple of our recurring revenue. Smaller firms like mine are done on the basis of multiple of recurring revenue. So I had ran about 45 million of revenue, helping us 45 million of assets under management and which was very nice and they gave me a multiple of recurring revenue. My model was a little bit different because it was a fixed fee model, which creates its own issues, to be honest. And that would be anything between two and a half up to one, four and a half. So if we look at how does that vary? So if we break it down into four different levels of advice firm A,B,C and D. A is best in class or most attractive? And they're going to achieve over four. B is above average. C is below average, D is what the hell are you doing? Or distressed?
Abraham:
All right.
Brian:
So, for instance, the firm we're helping at the minute, they approached us because that was it. It's a distressed business from a point of view of the health of the adviser. They've unfortunately been diagnosed with terminal illness. They don't have, you know, five years to direct exit gradually acquirers were aware of this, and they offered them one and a half times recurring revenue. We've got them up to three and a half times recurring revenue with, with acquirers. But some acquirers were saying, “Yeah, you're level D” in not so many words. So you have to sell. You know, so A,B,C or D. What you'll notice is that there is no average, you're either above average or below average. What I would encourage people to do is to look at it objectively, to look at it from the point of view. As somebody else you transfer your business to is just not going to look at it the same way you did. We all like to think our business is different, our business is best. We have the best investment portfolio. We have the best staff. We have the best relationship with your clients. That might well be the case. But acquirers often won't think that. All right. So we need to get off a little ego stool and look at it as objectively as we can. So we have to sometimes tell people the God's honest truth on things. You know, one of the things which can really it's a real stumbling block is self-employed advisors. All right. So if you have a business? With young self-employed advisers, you know, in the thirties and forties, bringing in most of your revenue, most acquirers will not pay for it. At all, because these advisers would just walk unless you can convert them into an employed model and the next five to ten years, it will go virtually all employed, I'm sure. But unless you can convert your self-employed advisers to employed contracts, their revenue means nothing. Now that's a big unless you're the, you know, the owner adviser. Obviously, that's kind of self-employed. But apart from then, if you got staff, the value is it's D, you know, even though you might have the best of everything, they're self-employed. It has a real, real negative impact on the value of the business, so we've got the A,B,C and D's that we things like we're doing a webinar with 360 because one of the things we found is that if advisers haven't got all the compliance ducks in a row. You know, they haven't done an annual audit of their CIP or prod if we can't evidence annual suitability go right across the board, if we can't see how they've selected the investments. You know, and if it isn't. If it isn't written down. It didn't happen, right. And we can't evidence that we are then transferring more risk to a potential acquirer, which means they'll pay you less. So it's absolutely key to have our processes and systems very well documented and objectively and independently reviewed. And acquirers love it and don't pay extra for it.
Abraham:
Now a word from our sponsor.
Nicki Hinton-Jones is the managing director and chief investment officer at Betafolio, the high tech, low-cost discretionary model portfolio manager.
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Nicki:
Typically a model portfolio service costs about 36 basis points. That's in addition to the funds. The platform, you know, they advise fees. Tell us a bit about Betafolio view and approach on fees.
Well, I don't think anyone that knows us already Abraham, would be surprised to hear me say that. In a nutshell, MPS fees are too high. And if you include the fund charges and the platform fee that you already talked about, we got close to 1%, I think on average for a lot of retail clients, and that's before they start paying for the financial plan, which is the part of the service that will ultimately have the most value for them in their advisor relationship and experience. So I mean, my view on fees & Betafolio’s view on fees is that they have a real impact on current outcomes that needs attention. And that's why we're building a scalable solution with technology that would allow us to keep costs low. And I think we also should consider the impacts of these fees on advisers businesses to, advisers need to, to make a profit from their work, they need to have a viable business and their cost bases have been rising because of regulation and the more costs they have to pass through to their clients. The over-complicated services, in turn, puts pressure on the advisor's own space and ultimately makes it not possible for them to run a good business so, fees are really crucial, and I'm really happy that we're in a position to be having a positive influence on the trends in the market. Good stuff.
Abraham:
Thank you, Nicki.
-
This is brilliant. Brian, thank you. Thank you. This is, you know, all the things in my head are going in a different direction because you're delivering such a massive value right now, my friend.
So you talked about those three things. So you talked about those say, four different levels, right? And a number of things that would affect that will put you in one of those layers. So culture, I assume, will be one of them that you talked about. You talked about this idea of how the employment contract or the employment status of the adviser and compliance, you know, having a tight investment proposition and all that stuff. What else? What else are they looking for as potential, you know, that could have an impact on that one? On where you see it on the level?
Brian:
Yeah. So one of most important things is you as the owner. What are your plans? What do you want to do? You know what, I have a four-year restrictive covenant on mine. Usually it's three years. But they looked at that because I was so, so young that they wanted to protect themselves because they thought, actually, you know what, if Brian came back into the market, the chance of all these clients swimming back to him is high. And actually, they went one step further and they said I’m not permitted to advise anywhere in the UK remotely at all. So that was a real risk for them. If I came back into the market and I would, I would never have done that. But they wanted the contractors to say that. And what they want to know is what are you going to do? So sometimes with some acquirers, they'll say to you, Abraham actually, you’ve done a great job here…why don't you stay on and then come and work for us and do some other stuff? Maybe help other parts of the business, you know? So we see some really interesting deals where acquirers don't want us or advisers, they don't want to advise clients anymore. They've had enough of retail if you like. They've had enough of getting the FCA and FSCS random checks in the post. They've had enough of the PI insurance just going up and up and up and up. They've had enough of the FCA, something ridiculous COVID surveys FCA is you're listening stop sending them, please. No one wants to do them, but they want to know what you want, what you're going to do. And that may impact the value as well. The most important thing there Abraham is they want a motivated seller. And the reason for that is there is a fixed cost to acquiring a firm. And if partway through the seller thinks, you know what? It's not for me, I'll look at it again. In three years time, they wasted everybody's time, including their own. So we want motivated sellers we want educated sellers and want the sellers who know what they want out of a deal, and they have realistic expectations. You know, sometimes we talk to people and they say, Yeah, I know the market says a three and a half to four times recurring. I want six. Say, OK, yeah, great. What’s special about your business? And they go, oh I don't know really? So, OK, well, you know, that's never going to happen. So we need to do you know, we need to look at different things. Other things that will impact the value might be if you are delivering a holistic financial planning service, you're really looking after your clients. They are getting the maximum service out of you, but the average value is 100 grand and you're charging half a per cent. You might be doing a great job, you might be compliant up to the hilt, but you know, there's just no meat in that, for an acquirer at all. So there's a whole bunch of things that they will look at as the whole picture. It's not just down to your assets under management, it's not just down to your current revenue. It's the whole picture of the business. So I spend a lot of my time getting underneath upon financial advice firms understanding what they look like and representing them to acquirers. So I might just say we're as a sell-side brokerage, so we represent the vendor, whereas I think all other brokers are by side, they represent the acquirers. So that's the key thing to bear in mind. And I suppose really the seller needs to understand what they're actually selling, we're actually a better word is transferring what is it you're transferring to somebody else that you're going to get paid for and the better you understand that the easier the whole process is, if that makes sense.
Abraham:
So you alluded to this challenge earlier. Of, you know, financial planner looking at these potential buyers and saying, for whatever reason, you know, they're not aligned with us, especially around the investment proposition. So you see this, which is very rampant in the sector right now of, you know, this acquirer coming in buying, you know, a financial planning firm where the firm might be used to low-cost investment proposition, low-cost platforms and getting a good quality financial plan, which is where the value is. And then these clients are going to go into a proposition where evidently the objective of the buyer is to move them into a more expensive investment proposition and to diminish the value of advice, or maybe not even deliver up planning. How do you address this challenge? And especially how did you communicate this to to your client, the idea that now you're selling, you know, they're going, they're going to be clients of, you know, some other company, how did you address that?
Brian:
So just dealing with that last part first, as part of what the exit process, I insisted on a split exchange in completion between exchange completion. Then we organized the client information pack, if you like. And so what we did was I sent out a letter with perspective at the same time which arrived was sent out on Friday to arrive on people's doorsteps or doormats on the Saturday morning on the Friday evening. I also sent an email to our entire client list saying exactly the same thing. I also sent a video personal video from me explaining things. So we had three goes at it, which meant that out of the 160, 150, 160 households we had, one person didn't get it. That was it. And so we had put in there, in that letter, like a frequently asked questions answered. You know, you cannot ask this. This is the answer. So it meant that, although it was a shock to a lot of people, we already pre-empted a lot of those questions, if it makes sense.
Now, as far as the first question, which is about alignment of investment, then this is absolutely key. And this is something people when they look at the money on offer, they kind of seem to forget this. But we have it when we're assessing someone's business for sale and someone's motivation. I want to know three things. I want to know, number one, what are your red lines? Number two, I want to know what your restrictions are. And number three, I want to know what your requirements are. All right. So red lines are things which you will not agree to for any amount of money, any amount of money. And it's interesting how people move if they think it's a red line, but actually when they're offered that money, they'll maybe that's a requirement. So I'm saying to people, right, you're going to get 1 million quid for your business or if you're going to be if you're going to go down the IFA route, if you go down the restricted, it'll be 2 million. What you want to do?
Abraham:
Hmm.
Brian:
People will go on really independent, but that's actually quite a lot of money, you know? And it's so, so that's no longer a red line. That's a required. That's a requirement. A restriction sorry, you know, to say, OK, I don't want to go down the route of a vertically integrated fund, but I'm quite happy with the kind of whole of market. Right? And then the requirements are, again you've got to be realistic. But there's someone who says, I want 100% of the money upfront. It's like you're not being realistic this never happens, ever, ever, ever happens now it just doesn't. Why would they pay you with the money upfront and take that risk that you're just going to go after, you know, to Thailand for the next 20 years and they can't get the money back? Let's be realistic. So it's a transfer of risk, including the money they're going to pay you because they're banking on those clients staying with them, not just for the period of the deferred consideration, but for the next five to ten years. They want ten years worth of income. So for instance, if just referring back to when you were earlier questions if your client bank is average age of 70 and you can't evidence
inter-generational planning, household planning, the value of your, your client bank is diluted, is diminished. Because those clients are going to be out of that, they just are, you know. Whereas if you can say, well, my average client age is 60, one was 60.4 and those plans were over the age of 80. We have intergenerational planning. The aquirer will look at that, should look at that and go right. You are above average or even the great as far as your client bank is concerned, if that makes sense. So it's so part of our role really with this, Abraham is just making sure the vendors go through things very, very thoroughly and they understand the red lines, the restrictions and their requirements. And they also understand how challenging this can be. So, for instance, we had a request for a final due diligence request for information from as part of due diligence from an acquirer. It had 500 points on it. 500 points of which 250 were compliance. Some of them you didn't need to answer and all the rest of it, but I looked to that was, oh my gosh, jeepers, where do we start with this? So we're involved very early on. We get we get all that we do. We get the data room organized real early on based on what people need because we've been through that mill. We've been through that process. And I can tell you if you're not ready. Makes you look amateur. Really makes you look amateur.
Abraham:
So I mean, I speak to a lot of financial planners, you know, many in their forties, maybe even fifties, and there's they're thinking to them. So they say, you know, I'm not planning, you know, I'm not planning to sell in the next couple of years. I'm still young. Why should I be thinking and worrying about this stuff?
Brian:
Yeah.
Abraham:
When would you say is the ideal time for a planner to start, you know, lining their ducks in a row as the they were?
Brian:
There are two dates. One was the day they started their business. And if they haven't done that pretty much guarantee they haven't, I didn't. If they haven't done that, the second best date is today. And the reason for that is it's a long timeline to get done. So, for instance, if you say we do a transaction today, we transfer our business to an acquirer. Today you'll have the deferred consideration period, which is usually at least two years, maybe three years. So you get 50% or 60% day 1, 25% year one 25% the end of year two, it takes between six and twelve months to actually go go through the whole process from start through to completion. So we're actually talking about at least a three year period. So someone says, I' looking at exiting in three years time. Well, you started already, right? And if you're right, if you have right now, you need to kind of push it. You need to push it. And we have, you know, if you cut me down the middle. I'm a financial planner and we always tell clients, your better putting the money in earlier than you are putting more money in late. All right. And it's exactly the same with this get started, get your ducks in a row, get and find out, you know, if this business you can deliver your number or not, because if it's not, you're going to need to change, you know, so you need to understand the process. Get educated and look at what the ideal time is. Now, the really important thing with this the way Abraham, is the I'm a firm believer in you need to be ready for that forced or not forced sell, right?
Abraham:
You know, because health, whatever.
Brian:
Exactly right. So because of health or the latest FCA somatic review suddenly comes out and how many businesses have been screwed who are very good, but they just can't do any business can't get any PI for their business or an opportunity. If I had to quit for everyone who said, you know, well, I'd sell if I had the right, if the right offer came along. Well mate, if you ain't ready, the offer will never come along that line. So I'm going to, you know, one day I could win the lottery. Well, if you don't buy the lottery ticket, you ain't going to win. So the key thing with this is to start getting the business ready now. Then that gives you the opportunity. So I always used to say in financial planning, clients, you know, forget retirement is about financial independence, financial independence when you reach that date and this is what we use for FinalytiQ for a huge amount was when you get to that particular date, you don't have the choice. To retire, be financially independent or go and play golf, whatever doesn't mean you will just mean to have the choice. So what that means is if people are ready and if they want some of our checklists, I'll be happy to wing them across to the people listening. And if they if they do that, then they will be able to have a business which is ready and take advantage. What I would say is that there's a lot of money awash in in the acquisition space at the minute, there's a lot of money. But I think in the next five years, if the average age of a financial adviser is 55 or 53 or something like that at the minute, they're all saying, I'm going to sell in the next five years. We're going to move from a seller's market to a buyer's market, and we're going to see these multiples drop and acquirers be a highly, highly selective as to who they are taking on board. So whereas you know, you know, better than most, Abraham, we shouldn't time the market, but we do need to be aware of it.
Abraham:
No fascinating stuff, so. So obviously, you've had a great exit. Right? You know, you got a lot of money in the bank. So talk to me about, you know, A how you decided what's next and what's the attractiveness of, you know, City&Capital. Why, why you joined? And you know, some of the thought process going on in your mind before you made that decision?
Brian:
Yeah, I'm probably going to upset a few people with this. Hopefully I don’t get sued. But the, the thing is with this is, I went through the process and was kicking around wondering what I might do next. And you know what? I'd become so disillusioned with the broker market, so disillusioned with it. They didn't understand financial advice firms in detail or in depth at all. It's not their fault. They've never run one, they never sat where you sat, never saw where I've sat. They're going to understand the intricate nuances mechanics of a financial advice business. They just don't. It's not their fault. But they didn't know that I'd exchange, they didn't even know I'd completed. They had no input at all. It was and a lot of brokers that I see actually just go round and just take your details and fling out to their entire acquisition list. And I was determined that I wanted to do things differently because I've got a lot of friends in financial planning and I respect my colleagues a huge amount. People underestimate how good the financial planners do that, you know, and I know how good, you know, the results that they get from people not least of all peace of mind, you know that they bring, but they're going to be extinct. So I wanted people to exit as good as, if not better than I had. So I looked around and (avoided some brokers) talked to a few, met with a couple and then I came across City&Capital and Vicki Hicks and I knew as soon as I lighted upon the website, this is the one for me. And the reason for that is that Vicki is a chartered financial planner, and she also started, built and exited her own financial planning business. And suddenly, we are now the only practitioner led sell-side broker in the whole of the UK with the only firm that's actually done it, and I've got the scars to prove it.
And this means then other than that, financial advisers who you know and I know, have said to me, Brian, we don't want to go through brokers, but we do want to use you. Because you've been seen it done it got the T-shirt. And we need your expertise with this. And so, I joined City & Capital now If people are looking at this later on, we're actually changing the name of city and capital because it's a, it's a no name means nothing, basically. So we're changing the name, I think we might change it working on this with Phil Bray from the yardstick marketing who, you'll know as well. And we've decided to, at this moment in time, change the name of the business to ‘The Exit Partnership’. Because that's what it is about, it is a partnership between us and the vendors to help them exit well, if that makes sense.
Abraham:
Brilliant, brilliant stuff, so I want to start to wrap this up, so I'm assuming that, you know, this is the gig for you for the next couple of years. Of course, you know, this is a podcast where we talk about retirement. You said financial freedom. But if we were to look at, you know, the Hill Family Financial Freedom Plan, what does that look like? What does the next couple of years look like for you?
Brian:
Well, I'm really enjoying this at the minute. I hope Vicki, back in Leeds, is enjoying me enjoying it too. It gives me the freedom to work as I want to work. It gives me the ability to stay within the financial planning profession, which I love, and it gives me the ability to be a master of my destiny. You know, as well as I do that when you've been self-employed for so long, you're completely unemployable, completely unemployable. And so what that means for me is that I found something that I really, really like, and I don't plan on changing anything soon. What I do plan on doing is skiing a little bit more. There's been no skiing this year. There's been no skiing last year. I'm sick to the back teeth of it. I think if Boris can go and have his cheese and wine work parties, I'm sure I can have a ski ‘work’ party as well. For goodness sake, what's all that about?!
Abraham:
Brilliant stuff. Brian Hill, thank you very much for your time. Thank you for your wisdom. And where can financial planners find you? You know, social media, website, assuming the website name is going to change?
Brian:
Yeah, yeah so LinkedIn is probably the best thing. So, Brian Hill MSC. Just hook up with me there. I'll be at all the conferences I'm speaking at, a few of them are as well. Or just Google ‘Brian Hill IFA’ and you'll see a few pages on there. You'll probably know this sounds terrible. You probably know someone who knows me. If you don't know me already, that's not famous. That's infamous.
Abraham:
Brian, thank you very much.
Brian:
Pleasure, thank you, Abraham. You're doing a great job, thank you.