We were lucky enough to receive some pearls of wisdom from experienced planners recently.

‘Understand marketing. Most people forget about it,’ said Craig Palfrey, managing partner of Cardiff IFA Penguin Wealth Planners.

‘If you can’t get people to sit in front of you, there is no point being in the game.’

In this episode of the Advice Show podcast, reporter Laura Purkess tries to do just that.

In conversation with Dan Graham, head of community experience and marketing at NextGen Planners, Laura asks Dan what kinds of content you should make to grow your audience, and, crucially, how often you should post it.

Dan also reveals the very first things you should do to start marketing your business, three key things every financial planning firm needs on its website (yes, you need a website!) and what you can do to appear at the top of Google’s search results without paying for adverts.

Finding a solution for clients is not just about picking an investment strategy based on the assets they have.

More and more advisers are looking to segment client bases differently to ensure they have the best solution for each client.

Gillian Hepburn, UK intermediary solutions director at Schroders, joins us to discuss how advisers can serve divorced and widowed women.

In this edition of The Advice Show, NMA reporter James Fitzgerald speaks with Foster Denovo’s head of investment research, Declan McAndrew, about why advisers need to broach ESG considerations with clients first before being pushed into action.

In recent weeks, some IFAs have taken to social media to say that as their clients have never asked them about sustainable investing or ESG considerations, then there is no need for them to bring it up.

Indeed, there is no regulatory framework forcing IFAs to ask clients about their sustainable goals, but McAndrew tells Fitzgerald that if advisers just ask the right questions, then they can open up a whole new stream of investment options, and indeed revenue, for themselves and their clients.

He adds that older clients often aren’t fussed about ESG investing, but as their grandchildren and children become more concerned about the environment, then the older demographic will be keener to speak with their IFA about sustainable investing options.

Citywire Americas editor Atholl Simpson dialed in from the other side of the pond to talk through the region’s success stories with New Model Adviser editor Will Robins. Latin America’s financial sector might be a well-trodden area for global investors, but a tech start-up scene is making waves in a region so reliant on exports. Whether fintech or e-commerce, from Brazil to Colombia, investors looking for the next Amazon (not the forest) could do worse than look at Latin America.

When Olympic rower Alex Partridge left the sport he had spent nearly a decade and a half devoted to, he soon became unstuck.

A breakdown beckoned, and he realised he needed to change something to get his life back on track.

That change turned out to be people. Partridge realised he missed being part of a team, missed helping others, and missed the thrill of achieving something as a unit.

A couple of roles in consulting and fund management later, and he has now found a niche in a technology company backed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Big Society Capital: Wagestream.

Wagestream’s mission is simple: give staff power over their pay by giving them access to what they earn, as they earn it. No more loan sharks. No more credit card debt. No more living paypacket to paypacket.

In this first episode of Nice City, a new Citywire New Model Adviser podcast series hosted by Ollie Smith and Amelia Garland, they ask Partridge about his mental health journey, his new team, and why it is that people struggle with money.

In this edition of The Advice Show podcast, NMA reporter James Fitzgerald speaks with director of content at NextGen planners and former Personal Finance Society (PFS) president Adam Owen about exam problems and student success stories during the pandemic.

Owen tells Fitzgerald the CII was ‘brave’ to bring in remote exams so quickly after lockdown, but after continual issues over the last 14 months, the body needs to listen to student feedback instead of pretending the technical problems they have faced are just a flash in the pan.

He adds that members should expect their professional body to run exams properly, and that if the CII doesn’t fix its issues, students may be dissuaded from sitting them in the future.

Octopus Group bought financial coaching business Hatch last month, rebranding it to Octopus Moneycoach with a pledge to invest £10m to help it achieve scale.

The coaching service partners with employers to offer financial coaching to staff for £250 per year, but newly-appointed CEO Adam Price - formerly chair and founder of advice directory Vouchedfor - says this can be paid through salary sacrifice, taking the real cost to roughly £144.

Staff can also choose to upgrade to a full financial planning service, which Hatch provides through partnerships with established advice firms.

Octopus’s investment in the business will, he says, help scale the business and increase the number of financial coaches from 30 to 200 over the next two years.

He also explains to Laura Purkess Price that the business aspires to ‘transform a million lives’, amid FCA estimates that 18 million people in the UK would benefit from affordable financial advice.

When Beth Yates was 13, she was taken to hospital with extreme tiredness and a ‘paralysing’ pain in her arms and legs.

She was diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis, which is also known as chronic fatigue syndrome.

In this episode of The Balance, reporter Laura Purkess speaks to Yates, who now works in the personal wealth support team at Schroders Personal Wealth, about how she manages to work in financial planning with a debilitating condition.

Yates has a had a successful career in financial services, working at Lloyds Banking Group before joining SPW, but her life has involved constant comrpomise.

She had always wanted to study at Oxford University, but with her diagnosis came the knowledge that there neither a cure or treatment for her condition. Her future looked very uncertain.

After spending several years bed- and wheelchair-bound with limited independence, Yates says she eventually got ‘fed up’ and, through a lot of determination and ‘fighting constantly’, started to learn how to get on with life while managing the illness.

She is now studying for her diploma in financial planning alongside her work, an endeavour SPW is supporting.

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In this edition of The Advice Podcast, NMA reporter James Fitzgerald speaks with the managing director of Manchester-based advice firm Wetherall’s Financial Planning, James Wetherall.

Wetherall talks about his new guide which provides tips to help advice firm principles fine, hire and train graduate financial planners.

The guide, which contains articles and contributions from Zero Support’s Phil Young, and Sandringham CEO Tim Sargisson, among others, details why hiring young people is key to helping narrow the advice gap, and how principals can benefit from injecting young blood into their firms.

For this edition of Advice Around the World, we discuss the importance of financial literacy in India, and how planners can use their online presence to make a difference to a mass audience.

Preeti Zende is one of India’s leading financial planners. For starters, she offers a fee-based and client centric advice service in a market that is largely propped up by advisers earning commission through investment sales. Besides this, she has developed an impressive following on the popular question and answer website Quora, amassing over 5.5 million page views in the process. This is a staggering achievement, so we ask the founder of Apana Dhan Financial Services how she has built this online presence, and why she was inspired to do it. Zende explains that with no social security or safety net for individuals in India, the need for proper financial assistance is paramount. Bad decisions within such an environment can be catastrophic. Zende gives us insights into how she is breaking this barrier down and communicating financial themes and information in terms that people can actually understand.