Ever wondered what makes a great event? If you’re anything like me, you can come away from an event thinking about it was a waste of time attending, or alternatively, you can come away wanting to tell everyone about it.

Turns out there are several parts that make an event memorable and in this episode, I get the secret recipe from James Goad, Founder or Owen James Events.

If you’re not been to an Owen James event, they are like no other. Feedback from delegates and sponsors alike is amazing and there’s a real buzz of openness and collaboration.

In this episode, James talks candidly about:

·       The changes he seeing in financial services

·       How AI is disrupting everything

·       The secret sauce to putting on a great event

·       How to get the most from sponsoring an event as a provider

·       Why hybrid events don’t work (yet)

·       Hiking in the Welsh mountains

·       Just saying “yes”

If you want to find out more about attending an Owen James event, or getting them in to run your event, visit their website https://www.owenjamesevents.com.

If, like most of the people who attend Owen James events,

Also now running negotiation and soft skills training for

Don’t forget to subscribe to the show. It means more than

Ben

Financial advice is becoming a service only available to the

In this episode, Ben talks to Bill Bottomley and Andy Wealthall of Lifetime, a financial advice firm who have made a very profitable business looking after clients other firms turn away.

They do things a little differently though!  

We cover:

·    Why Lifetime set their sights on the mass market

·    Making financial advice a “team sport”

·    The role of the non-qualified financial coach

·    The vital role of technology (including AI avatars)

·    How to deliver financial advice for £149!

If you want to find out more about lifetime, you can do so on

A huge thank you to Owen James for sponsoring the podcast!

There are some great Red Folder events coming up and it’s never

You can see all events on their website https://www.owenjamesevents.com/listing/events.

Money is a bit of a taboo subject. In fact, for us Brits, it’s just not the done thing to talk about it. But why is that and what problems does it cause?

In this Talk Money Week special episode, Ben talks to Jenny Wright, Money & Pensions Service Regional Manager for Yorkshire and Humber about the issues that over 20% of the UK are experiencing and why it’s important to #TalkMoney.

In the world of financial advice, we tend to only deal with people who have money and with this special, we wanted to give those in our profession a peek into issues that we don’t normally see and what you can do to help those less fortunate.

In this episode we talk about:

- What talk money week is  

- The danger of listening to “Dave down the pub”

- Why employers could be the key to widespread financial wellbeing

- How the financial advice community can help

And as always, we finish with our quick-fire questions.

Every November the Money & Pensions Service (also known as Money Helper) run Talk Money Week. This year it’s on 6th – 12th November and during the week everyone is encouraged to #TalkMoney. This week’s theme is “do one thing” with regard to your finances.

If you know someone who needs support with their money, direct them to Money Helper here https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en

You can report illegal money lending here https://www.stoploansharks.co.uk/

If you’d like to partner with the Money & Pension Service (MaPS) you can find more details here https://maps.org.uk/en

And finally if you'd like to give something back, the PFS run a Education Champions initiative to educate kids about money. You can find out more here https://www.thepfs.org/about-us/initiatives/my-personal-finance-skills/education-champions/

A huge thank you to Owen James Events for sponsoring this special episode!

There are some amazing Owen James events coming up which you can review and register to attend on their website, including the upcoming Meeting of Minds Wealth Management and Private Banking ⁠https://owenjamesevents.com⁠. You’ll probably see Ben there!

We hope you enjoy the episode!

Recruiting and retaining talent can be incredibly difficult at any time, however, the current shortage of candidates is making the situation even harder.

In this episode, Ben talks to James Walker of BWD-Search, a recruitment firm specialising in financial services. In this episode we cover:

- Flexible working is now an expectation and how employees have more power than ever before

And as always, we finish with our quick-fire questions.

If you have a job, want a job, employ people or need to, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss!

You can get in touch with BWD Search via their website https://www.bwd-search.co.uk/ or contact James directly https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-walker-4484413/

Thank you to Owen James Events for sponsoring this episode.

We hope you enjoy the episode!

In this episode, Ben Wright talks to Adam Geddes of Paul Geddes Wealth Management about the sudden death of his father, Paul.

The loss of a loved one can be hard at any time, but if that loved one is also your boss, mentor, and the principal of your firm it makes things even harder. Throw in the start of the pandemic and you’ve got a perfect storm.

Adam shares his experiences of dealing with the death of his dad and how he found the drive to continue and make Paul Geddes

This episode contains some graphic descriptions of death which some listeners may find distressing.

Huge thanks to TOMD, our sponsor for this episode. TOMD are the preferred marketing partner of hundreds of financial services firms looking to change the way they promote their business. From the upcoming Autumn Statement to end of tax year planning, from Pension Awareness Week to festive greetings, they can provide effective and relevant content tailored to your audience. Change up your marketing with TOMD.

Visit www.tomd.co.uk/change to find out more.

If you need to create change in your business, but don’t know how. Get in touch at https://changesquared.com.

We hope you enjoy the show!

In this episode, Ben Wright discusses important things to

There has been a lot of change in the national and network

As you’ll hear in this episode, making a move isn’t easy so we

Whether a move is something you’re considering, or it’s

If you need some support finding the right new home for your

For all of our latest ideas or to get in touch you with us,

We hope you enjoy the show!

In this episode, Ben Wright talks to Stephen Baxter, Founder and now Managing Director or Robertson Baxter, an IFA firm based in Huddersfield (not Wakefield as we said in the intro - sorry Robertson Baxter!)

Steve has successfully made the transition from financial adviser to business owner; something which many advisers talk about but most struggle to do. Steve shares his story “warts and all” as we discuss everything from handing over clients, losing and then re-finding purpose and dealing with Imposter Syndrome.

You may have noticed this episode is much longer than normal. After reviewing the audio from our interview, we really couldn’t work out which bits to cut, so for the first time you’ve got the entire conversation!

What do you think of this format? Let us know in the comments or by emailing [email protected].

Oh, and don’t forget to subscribe as we’ve got some more awesome content coming up over the next few months.

Here are some key moments in the show, which should be available to select on your podcast player (hopefully!)

3:10 How Steve became a financial adviser

8:50 Going self-employed

12:00 Taking on the first adviser

20:25 Introducing the new adviserwhilst stepping back

30:12 The decision to step backfrom giving advice

35:53 Time to think

40:51 Bringing clients into yourinner circle

43:36 Adding value without proving advice

56:40 A typical day for a Managing Director

1:04:00 Becoming an business owner v’s selling up

1:09:15 The benefits of having a coach or mentor

1:14:05 Dealing with Imposter Syndrome

1:21:20 Quick fire round

Get in touch with Change Squared here: https://www.changesquared.com/

You can find our more about 9 Dots Coaching here: https://ninedotscoaching.co.uk/

This is Robertson Baxter’s website: https://robertsonbaxter.com/

You can find out more about VouchedFor here:

This episode has been a while in the making but it's finally here!

I've talked about Conquest Planning several times on the podcast and today I'm finally joined by Rob Tedder, Conquest's UK Account Manager.

In this episode:

If you want to find out more about Conquest Planning (and I strongly recommend you do), you can find them here: - https://conquestplanning.com/en-gb/home.

This is Rob's LinkedIn profile if you would like a chat: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtedder/

And if you want to learn how to use technology to improve your business, get in touch with us via ⁠⁠www.changesquared.com⁠⁠.

We hope you enjoy the show!

We’re back, and for Change Squared’s 1 year anniversary, we’ve got a special treat for you! In this episode, I interview AI powered language model and internet sensation, ChatGPT.

We talk about what ChatGPT is, what it can do, how it can make financial advisers more effective and its predictions for the future.

As ChatGPT has access to pretty much all information from human history, I also take the opportunity at the end of the show to ask it what is the greatest lessons humans can learn and how humans can be happy. You might be surprised at the answer it gives!

I’ve shortened some of ChatGPT’s answers (editors’ prerogative) but the answers ChatGPT gives in the show are all its own.

After listening to this podcast, you’ll understand what all the fuss is about!

If you want to talk about how to use AI tools like ChatGPT to improve your business, get in touch via ⁠www.changesquared.com⁠.

If you’ve not seen ChatGPT yet, you can find it here -https://chat.openai.com/chat.

To give ChatGPT a voice, I used the free text to speech tool from TextMagic which you can find here https://freetools.textmagic.com/text-to-speech.

We hope you enjoy the show!

In this episode I caught up with Jane Hodges, founder of MoneyHoney, a completely online financial advice business. Jane shares how she can effectively work from anywhere in the world, why an office is an outdated concept, the benefits to customers a dealing with a digital business and the coolest place she's ever given advice from.

Any adviser who wants to be in business 5 years from now will need to embrace technology. If after listening to this episode, you want a bit of help with your digital strategy, get in touch via www.changesquared.com.

You can find out more about conquest planning here : https://www.conquestplanning.com/en-ca/home Please take a second to mention the show if you do speak to them.