Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to the Finance Friends podcast. Whether you have followed us from the beginning or you're a new listener, we are excited to have you here. Finance Friends gives our listeners a seat at the table with successful finance industry leaders. Follow us on our socials at Finance Friends Podcast, linked in the description box of this episode, and stay tuned for weekly episode releases. On today's podcast we have James Wrigley, a social media phenomenon. He has over 220,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram and a lot of his videos on these platforms reach over a million people globally. Isn't that crazy? He talks about his role as a financial advisor and how he's been able to grow his social media following. Listen in. Welcome, james. Good to have you in the studio. How are you today? Thanks for having me. Fabian, very well, well, that's good. I don't normally do podcast recording on a Friday, so apologies if my voice is a little bit croaky today.

Speaker 2: 1:12

You made a special one for me.

Speaker 1: 1:14

Thank you, I did. I did Well. You're a special guy. You're very famous on the social media platforms.

Speaker 2: 1:21

So people tell me.

Speaker 1: 1:27

So how many? I'm not a big TikTok person, but we do have a TikTok account Finance Friends. How many followers do you have on TikTok TikTok's?

Speaker 2: 1:33

just over a hundred, about 101 or something. Instagram's taken over Instagram's 114.

Speaker 1: 1:40

So that's, thousands yeah 114,000.

Speaker 3: 1:44

Sorry, I didn't add that.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Yeah, so just over 100,000 on TikTok. Instagram's about 114,000 or something. Facebook last I checked was 67,000. Facebook's growing really quickly at the moment for some reason. Yeah, linkedin's a little behind now. Linkedin was well and truly in front, but well and truly behind these days.

Speaker 1: 2:02

So I'm the opposite. I'm big on LinkedIn. Haven't exploded on the other socials, maybe because of my Instagram accounts. I'm private. That might be part of the reason, but maybe, before we go deep into the socials, we're here to talk about your career and how you got to where you are today. So what's your title at the moment? What do you do? Yep.

Speaker 2: 2:26

So I'm a principal financial advisor. The firm that I work in, I own part of, is called First Financial. I'm, yeah, day-to-day a financial advisor, but a degree of responsibility for a team of people as well, and so there's various advisors, associate advisors, in my team and, in the way that we have our business structure set up, there's a power planning team and a client services team. They're kind of pool type structures, whereas the advisors and the associate advisors all sit together and I'm in charge, to a degree, of one of those teams in the business.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Yeah, and when you say you're a financial advisor, the people that might not have a financial advisor or might not work in financial advice. What does a financial advisor do?

Speaker 2: 3:10

It's a good question, so a lot of it is helping people first and foremost, trying to help them understand what is it they want to do when?

Speaker 3: 3:17

are they at?

Speaker 2: 3:18

What are the things that they want to do? What's holding them back? What are some of their challenges? It starts from a financial perspective, but you're often having conversations with people particularly in the beginning of when you're getting to know them. They start to open up about their life and they always jokingly say I bet you didn't expect to be doing this or that.

Speaker 2: 3:36

You know a bit like a psychologist. It's all funny. You say that More than half of the people we actually talk to make a joke of that kind of variety. So it starts off about money broadly. It moves into kind of life and other bigger aspirations that they've got, but then we ultimately get to a point where we're just trying to help them and guide them and coach them to one make better financial decisions. But then that often leads to a better life in some form or another. When you get into the detail it's things around superannuation and family and savings and paying off your mortgage and all of these kind of things. But it starts with the money but it branches out into other life things too.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Yeah because, ultimately, what you want to achieve on a personal level relates to what your financial circumstances.

Speaker 2: 4:23

That's it.

Speaker 2: 4:25

There's someone that comes to mind now going through a conversation with them and on paper they look like they're in an incredible position this really expensive house in Sydney and a whole lot of money in the bank and big incomes and all the rest of it but when you actually sit across the table from them, you can see there's a whole lot of tension around money. The numbers on a page look like they're earning a fortune and they should be really comfortable, but it's clearly not, and so there's other things going on there, and so as you start to get into conversations with them, you'll understand that certain choices that they've made around their financial setup at the moment are actually really holding them back from living the life that they really want to lead. They'd be much more comfortable and much more happy in a smaller house with no mortgage and more time around with the kids, rather than the big house with the big mortgage and the big corporate jobs that they need to be able to fund that lifestyle is that a bit of like keeping up with the joneses?

Speaker 1: 5:20

you know your two lawyers have to live in a affluent suburb in Sydney versus. Do you really need what's important to you as individuals rather than what's important to your mates up the road?

Speaker 2: 5:34

Exactly, I think that's where it kind of spirals from, I think, and spirals kind of, I think.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Maybe the way to look at it is they start off in a particular industry and you start to earn a particular amount of money and the bank's going to lend me this much, so surely I should borrow it and I should have a house here and I need to send my kids to this particular school.

Speaker 2: 5:52

But just because someone else is doing it doesn't mean that you need to do it. Worry about yourself and the life that you want to lead, and contrast that with a conversation with someone that I had yesterday that their household income is incredibly high but they live in one of the western suburbs of Melbourne with a really small mortgage, but they'll be able to knock that off in the next couple of years. They're not even 40 yet mortgage-free, earning north of $700,000 a year household income. They'll be able to retire by the time they're 50, provided they don't upgrade the house. And they're actually talking about no, we really don't want to upgrade the house, we want to retire early, and so these life choices that you make then lead into financial decisions that can be really good for you or really bad.

Speaker 1: 6:34

And is it your job? Helping people to understand what's really important to them, that's it.

Speaker 2: 6:42

You start with the numbers and people will blurt the numbers, and it's really strange. People often don't talk about how much money they earn or the debts that they're in and so forth, but when they sit down with me as the financial advisor and we start the online meeting or we close the office door or whatever, all this stuff just starts being blurted out. It's like they're desperate to talk to someone about it and I'm the financial advisor. So I'm the person they're desperate to talk to someone about it and I'm the financial advisors. I'm the person they're supposed to talk to about it. But then, yeah, you get into kind of this bigger life type stuff. What do you actually want to do with your life? Do you want to keep working until you're 65 or 70 years old? Good luck to you. Plenty of people want to do that and other people don't, and so you need to line up the life choices you make with with the financial choices.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Yeah, and have you noticed the difference in mindset based on the generation, or if they're baby boomers, versus gen net, particularly around work?

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, yeah, particularly around work. So the older generation that are now like a lot of my clients that worked with them around the time that they retired, but they might now be in their late 60s, early 70s, this kind of thing. In the beginning of us working with them, they were either working towards a day when they were just going to stop working completely, or they were made redundant yesterday or something and they're coming and saying we've finished up work, let's make the best use of what we've got. There's a lot of conversations I'm having with often 40-something-year-olds or maybe even younger.

Speaker 2: 8:08

Is this idea of making some decisions and building some assets and so forth to get to a point where they don't have to work anymore if they don't want to, the idea of 40-year-old, the idea of them not working? What else am I going to do with my time? I might not want to work full-time, but I want to have a purpose and I want to. I have a reason for getting out of bed. So we're often making plans around them, getting into a position where work becomes optional and by the time they're 50 or 60, they may very well continue to keep working or they go and do something else. They leave the high-flying corporate job behind and go and do something else. Maybe with that fills them with a little bit more purpose but also pays a whole lot less money too.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Yeah, so it's about finding that balance. If you have a self-funded retiree irrespective of whether that's 40 or 65, it's nice to have that and you have the stress of money or having to have the corporate job where you have to grind every day. It relieves that and you can, like you said, have a bit more purpose. That's exactly it, yeah, so so how did you get to where you are? What did you study at university?

Speaker 2: 9:16

I started a commerce degree at Melbourne University here in Melbourne that's where I live Straight out of high school went to uni, did my three-year degree, finished that, got a job, my first job out of uni. I worked at Mercer, one of the big corporate super funds. They do administration for a lot of big corporates for their super. I was there for nearly two years. The last job that I had there was training a whole lot of people that had come over from India on how to do the job. It was kind of a back office administration job that I was doing. I was being outsourced to India. That was when there was this big boom of outsourcing from a lot of big corporates at the time and so I kind of did myself out of a job through that exercise.

Speaker 2: 9:57

They I jokingly say they took my job with them on the plane and then, um, when they went back home again and then I just started looking around, I actually caught up with a recruitment agent at the time. I'd applied for a few jobs and I sat down for a coffee and I still remember the cafe because I think the conversation was so pivotal in my career. She'd said to me what studying have I done since I finished uni and at that point I didn't know that I needed to do any more studying. I'm like, I've got my commerce degree. Doesn't that mean that I get a job somewhere? Someone will give me a job. I've done all right at school and uni and the answer to that is no. There's this whole whole world of kind of post uni education, kaplan courses and and different things. And so she said to me look, you should just start to do some studying.

Speaker 2: 10:44

I did some studying, was part way through a commerce program Kaplan course rather, ended up with an entry-level job in financial advice and client services team. So then we're down the financial advice stream of that, that course that I was doing up. Fortunately, up until that point I'd only done the a couple of basic intro subjects. You had to pick a specialization later on, and so I picked the financial advice specialization, continued down that path and, like, once I got into financial advice my mind was just blown.

Speaker 2: 11:14

I couldn't believe the stuff that the advisor that I was working for, the things that we could do and how we're helping people and the money people had and how they were living in retirement and so forth. It was just a whole new world to me. I had no exposure to that whatsoever before getting into financial advice, and that's 17, 18 odd years ago now. I did client services for a few years. Then I went into paraplaning for a few not paraplaning associate advisor for a few years. Then I was advisor for a few years, senior advisor and now I've got the title principal. I've been advising for a while now.

Speaker 1: 11:49

What do you most enjoy about your job?

Speaker 2: 11:52

It's changed over the years. So in the early part of being an advisor it was this kind of sponge of just learning what was going on and the technicality side of things how to talk to clients and just learning and learning and learning as much as I could. Then it came a period of time where I got a whole lot of satisfaction about kind of training and developing the younger people that were coming through. And now, because of the social media stuff it's more about, I've kind of gotten to this point where I realize that there's a limit to how many people you can help in one way show, perform on a one-on-one basis, where financial advice tends to sit. But because of the platforms like Instagram and TikTok and so forth, I can then help so many more people.

Speaker 2: 12:39

And so it's at a stage now where a particular video can get tens of thousands of views and it kind of makes me feel good that people are learning, they're educating. Hopefully, as a result of that, they're making better financial decisions themselves without actually engaging in financial advice. And sure those that feel they need a little bit more specialist help, a bit more nuanced, well then they kind of reach out for financial advice. But I appreciate the population at large isn't going to be a client of a financial advisor, but through the social media stuff we can help more and more people and educate them and hopefully they have better lives and better finances and so forth as a result of all of it.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Was there a lightbulb moment when you thought I want to share my knowledge on social media?

Speaker 2: 13:26

So it started, the sharing on social media started as like a business development type tool. So most financial advisors they need to find a new client from somewhere, otherwise that financial advice business isn't going to be in existence. If there's no clients, there's no, there's no business. So early on in my career, and like every other financial advisor, you need to try and find some clients and I, at a particular stage, I thought oh, there's this thing called the internet and wouldn't it be amazing if, if, instead of an accountant referring someone to me because I knew an accountant, wouldn't it be great if someone came to me because they just liked me, for whatever reason?

Speaker 2: 14:04

and then I was thinking it wouldn't even be more amazing if someone like could learn about me whilst I was sleeping and and I was following Gary Vee a lot, either at that time or not long after a big kind of personality online. So I started posting on LinkedIn is where it started written stuff on LinkedIn and then it became video and it went from there. So it started off as like a business development type tool. Nothing happened for years and years and years and years and years and years and and then in the last like three years it's just shot off and so we get a lot of client inquiries, there's lots of views on the videos and, as I said, kind of helping lots and lots of people.

Speaker 1: 14:45

And can you share with our audience some of the videos you might put up, because I find your videos quite hilarious, actually, but also a great way to learn about finances. There was one that I thought was quite funny, that you went to the supermarket and I think you peeled a mandarin and said, well, I don't need the skin, I'll just take the mandarin, which I thought was hilarious, right, but I think you've obviously evolved since then, yeah, so there's a bit of.

Speaker 2: 15:18

It took a while for me to realise but through just consuming others and people that were big on publishing content online that the sooner you share more of the real you, the better.

Speaker 2: 15:29

So rather than me, james, wearing a suit and a tie and sitting in an office and talking about stuff and so certainly my first videos were like that, but more often than not now they're ones that actually record on the weekend when I'm like I might be walking to the gym and I'll record something whilst I'm walking to the gym or I'm doing something in the backyard, and so I've got a lot of videos around like my, my grass and the hedge and stuff and maintaining the garden at home, as well as then kind of interacting with with the financial advice stuff.

Speaker 2: 15:57

So the the what I've found works really well for me is I'll have a meeting or some type of conversation with a client and there'll be something that I'll explain to them. I'm like actually that's other people might be interested in, whatever that thing is that I was just explaining to them, and so then I'll get my phone out and just record me explaining whatever it was that I explained to that person. I'll explain it to my phone and then post the video online. But the less polished, the more real, the more ums and ahs and stumbles and if I need to say something over again, I just post that video and it becomes more real, a whole lot less salesy and people interact with it and it goes up a whole lot better.

Speaker 1: 16:39

I think it's like I post a lot of content as well. I think it is good to be raw and authentic because it's genuine Mm-hmm, although it's hard, when you post something that you might not feel is perfect, to let it out to the social platforms, because you want to critique yourself and you want to get better and you want to make sure it's perfect. But perfect isn't always great.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Gary Vee talks about this idea of perfect in the eyes of the person watching it. So something that's perfect to you may not be perfect to someone else and vice versa. Like, who are you or who am I to judge if something's perfect, just record it and put it out there and let the world decide. And you can kind of see, like some of the videos where I've literally just rolled out of bed and walked to the gym and I'll get like a million views on things versus me when I've had a shower and I've put on my clean clothes and I've done all of this stuff, and then it gets like a couple hundred views. It's like, oh, I'll put all of this extra kind of effort of sorts into it?

Speaker 1: 17:47

What advice would you give to someone that is studying commerce at Melbourne University, that maybe doesn't know exactly what they want to do studying commerce at Melbourne University, that maybe doesn't know exactly what they want to do, what advice would you give them if they want to become a financial advisor?

Speaker 2: 18:03

So I get messages like that a lot and there's someone who's been messaging me a bit on LinkedIn more recently around that. So my first tip for them is to just get a job in financial advice Any job that you can possibly get. You're not going to get the associate advisor type job. You need to just get into entry-level administration anywhere. Even if it's a day a week whilst you're still studying, even if it's a day a week whilst you're finished studying. The hardest job in financial advice to get is that first one.

Speaker 2: 18:30

Once you've got that first one, then the next one becomes easier, the next one becomes easier and the next one becomes easier because everyone wants some level of experience, and so you need to find the person that will give you a shot when you don't have any experience. Whatever that might be and maybe it's in something else that's not necessarily in a financial advice firm Like I worked for a super fund in administration.

Speaker 2: 18:53

I had no intention of getting into financial advice at that stage I didn't even know what financial advice was, but being in that administration team in the super fund has some parallels with working in financial advice, so I wouldn't be too caught up on what that first job is for people that are in university or just finishing, rather than just getting a job, and then the next job will come. And the next job will come If you're in your early 20s or whatever you've got plenty of years ahead of you to sort out where you're at.

Speaker 1: 19:22

Yeah, that's quite a common theme. We hear a lot from professionals just get your first opportunity, get your foot in the door, start learning corporate culture, transition it doesn't mean you have to do that job forever and you might have three or four careers in your professional transition, you know doesn't mean you have to do that job forever and you might have three or four careers, you know, in your professional journey. But that's okay and I find that you know people are just willing to get out there and knock on doors and get an opportunity and just start working and improve themselves and have a mindset of learning and development.

Speaker 3: 19:53

tend to do the best and progress the quickest.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Something that's worked for me well over the years in a whole lot of different facets of my career is just saying yes, like someone will give you an opportunity, and I just say yes, and I'll have a little freak out later on about whatever it is like being a guest on a podcast or in different levels in my career.

Speaker 2: 20:17

At one stage, the person that I was working for the advisor I was working for said to me and we had a bit of a restructure in the business in the tip the typical pathway would have been to go into paraplaning for a period of time. He's like we can go into paraplaning and then come back to being an associate advisor, or you can just be my associate advisor. What do you want to do? I said oh yes, I'll just be your associate advisor. I've got to work out what I need to do, but but I said yes and so just keep saying yes to opportunities. Might sound daunting, but you know you, you get used to it and you'll work out what you need to do and just keep moving forward by saying yes, yeah and with the yes attitude obviously in your position.

Speaker 1: 20:55

we've got such a big following across I'd say globally your following would be and you get lots of engagement from your followers. How do you manage your time with such a big following? Young family, family walking to the gym, keeping the garden looking good, also being a principal financial advisor?

Speaker 2: 21:19

Yeah, that's the tough part. So everything's just all mashed into one. I'm not a big believer of this kind of idea of work and life being separate. I view it as it's just all one life, and so whether I'm doing some work on a Saturday or I'm going to pick up the kids on a Thursday afternoon from school or whatever, it's just I have a job to do from an employment perspective and I just do the things that I need to do whenever that fits in with the other things that are going on in my life.

Speaker 2: 21:52

So I'm often working late of a night, but like today, I didn't get into work until nearly 9 30. I dropped off my son at school. My wife started work early. I'll do some work over the weekend. You know, I finished up a little bit earlier yesterday. Not so much finished up a little bit earlier yesterday, but one of my sons has tennis training and so I just kind of take the laptop, take him to tennis training and I take the laptop and I just sit in the club rooms of the tennis courts and a little bit of work for 45 minutes.

Speaker 2: 22:18

So you just kind of everything just overlaps each other. I'm, I'm, and I never have been one, uh, that you know five o'clock, okay, that's it. I go home and I don't think about work until the next day. I don't, I don't think I could operate at the level that I'm operating without, without this, this kind of overlap. But then you know, around the social media and so forth, again, that's all just intertwined throughout the day.

Speaker 2: 22:42

So I'll often run a run, a meeting with a client and you're kind of on a bit of a high it's. It takes a bit of, takes a bit out of you. I'll finish that meeting and I'll always have a bit of downtime. I'll just kind of sit there, whether I'm at home or whether I'm in one of the meeting rooms and in the office, and, like a lot of people, I'll just kind of sit there, whether I'm at home or whether I'm in one of the meeting rooms in the office, and, like a lot of people, I'll kind of reach, I'll grab my phone for just a bit of a chill out.

Speaker 2: 23:02

But rather than just looking at other stuff that people have posted online, I'm often responding back to comments and things that people have posted on my own content. So you've got to interact with that community online. That kind of fosters the engagement and builds the following and so forth. You can't post a video and then walk away from it. You have to interact with it. But it just all overlaps all day long, every day, seven days a week. It all interacts with each other and I just try and make the best of it.

Speaker 1: 23:32

Yeah, I find personally, when I've got something on at home that's playing on my mind that I have to do it might be something, a personal item, personal banking or whatever I find that if I can get that done, then I can focus better at work. So, instead of going to work nine to five, say the grind, and then coming home and that being on my mind, or going to work and that being on my mind, going to work and that being on my mind, if I'm able to get that off my mind, I'm able to concentrate a lot more. Yeah, when I'm in the office or when I'm meeting people, yeah, and a big thing for me is exercise.

Speaker 2: 24:06

like you know we're talking about, you know running, and bumped into you on the on the train a few weeks back, you'd just been for a run like that in terms of like controlling your day, because I have no idea where the day is going to take me.

Speaker 2: 24:18

I know there's certain meetings that I need to do, but in, in and around those meetings I've got no idea what else is going to happen throughout the day. But trying to get some exercise in in the morning is is near enough to a non-negotiable to me, whether it's a swim, whether it's a go for a bike ride, whether I go to the gym or whatnot. Particularly on the weekend, I get really grumpy if I don't get that exercise in early in the morning, and so I'll often get up at 5.30 or something and go to the gym or whatever. If I'm at home, I tend to go for a swim. If I'm coming into the city, I'll go to the gym and come into the city, but that helps me set up the day, and then by the time I get home, if I'm ruined and I just want to sit on the couch, well then that's okay. I've done my exercise for the day.

Speaker 1: 25:05

That's good. Well, thank you for coming in to the studio and thank you for being on the Finance Friends podcast. Enjoyed following you on your social media platforms and also getting to know you on a personal level. So thank you, James. And for anyone who wants to follow James on the socials, we'll share them in the link. Thanks, Sienna. Thank you for coming on. James, Appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 25:28

Thanks for having me here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3: 25:34

Disclaimer this podcast exists for informational and entertainment purposes only. The personal opinions of the speaker and guests do not represent the view of any other party. If this recording contains reference to financial products, that reference does not constitute advice nor recommendations and may not be relied upon.