Eclipse: Week 180 – Well. That happened.

Well. That happened. If you’re reading this, you probably have a computer and the internet. And if you have a computer and the internet, you’re very likely to have seen something about our Summit & Awards on socials over the last 48 hours. It has been phenomenal.

We literally couldn’t have asked for our inaugural event to have gone any better, and the feedback we have received from people has been amazing. The team have loads to share from it, so I won’t tread on their toes. The day was also about collaboration, with everyone in the room feeding back to us their thoughts on finance, and I’ll be digesting that over the next few weeks and sharing some insights.

I guess for now though, the main thing that I need to focus on was the grenade that Steven Bartlett (the podcasting, book-writing, multi-millionaire entrepreneur who has recently joined Dragons Den, and is just 28) threw into the room. During our discussion, I asked his opinion on financial advice and whether he has an adviser. And he said “look, there’s no way I’m going to go and seek out a financial adviser. I just wouldn’t want one”.

Initially, my instinct was to joke “oh, wrong room Steven”. But I caught myself just in time. As I realised it was exactly the right room. And that he was giving us this perspective that was so far outside of our financial services bubble; and we needed it. He went on:

“I’m not coming to you. I’m not actively seeking out a financial adviser. Now, if I was on my phone, on Twitter or TikTok, and something popped up, something grabbed my attention, in the right way, at the right time of day for me, I might be tempted to click on it and see where it goes. But you need to come into my world. I’m not coming into yours”.

Interesting right? We were still talking about it in the bar at 11pm (with decreasing coherence, it must be said).

But, to reiterate, he’s 28. He’s a self-made millionaire, but he’s sociologically representative of the people who will be recipients of the inter-generational wealth we talk about so much. He doesn’t care if we’re tinkering around on the inside, doing what we’ve always done, but a tiny bit shinier or slicker. He’s not coming to our world. We have to go into his.

We do have some time – but not a lot. Not if we want to be looking very different, and ready to actively engage and work with that generation. Just picture, in 10 or 20 years; your current clients are on the decline, and the next wave of clients want nothing to do with you. They are investing online themselves, potentially make a mess of it, but still feeling like they’re doing something, so have no need to search anyone out. Let that settle. And then have a think about what you and your firm might want to do to start to get in a better position, before that happens.

It was definitely a thinker. Which was, ultimately, the aim of the day. I also asked him whether or not a hot dog was a sandwich – and he found that far trickier to respond to. Understandably.

Breaking news: We have an app! A Verve app! Which is going to be filled with lovely finance peeps and chatter. If you’re on Apple, you can get it from the App Store, or have it on your browser. I’ve also linked Steven’s book, just because I panic downloaded it last week to read ahead of the event, and only got 9 chapters in, but really liked what I was reading. And because I haven’t shared a new wine for a while, I need to highlight the orange wine we were drinking at the after party on Wednesday… pretty special.