Smart people know what they don’t know. It’s partly because of the very simple fact that no one can know everything; but it’s also a characteristic of people who are very good at what they do that they recognise their own limitations.
After 30 years in the business, it might be tempting to think they there isn’t much left to learn. But when two established financial planning businesses formally merged in August last year – one with a decade-long history, one with a story going back more than three times that far – the principals of the firms recognised there would be things they’d need help with.
From naming the new business and creating a brand, to articulating a value proposition and designing and laying out new office space, John Hollyman, Gareth Colgan and Robbie Reid called in the experts. From this a new firm, Eqeus, was born.
“What we saw in the industry, what we saw ourselves and what we think is one of our differences, is that the EQ is where it starts, the emotional intelligence side,” says Hollyman (pictured), managing director of Eqeus.
“We work with people on setting their goals and setting their values. It starts with ‘why’.
“Every financial planning practice you go to, if you don’t get the IQ, it just should be a given. It’s that simple. So what we focus on more is the EQ.”
The firm took the first two letters of its name from this philosophy.
“We know in everything we do, it’s a partnership – and that’s the ‘us’,” Hollyman says.
“So the back part [of the name] is the ‘us’. Working with clients, it’s a partnership; working with our providers, it’s a partnership; working with our dealer, it’s a partnership.
“We did use branding experts in this, and phonetically they thought it was quite interesting to put the ‘e’ in the middle, because still a lot of people spell our company E-Q-U-E-S. That’s where the [word] formation comes from.
“Working in creative spaces, and that’s what we’ve done a lot of with branding experts, and marketing consultants and a PR agency and different types of things, they work in a different way. Financial planners work in an IQ world and we want to work in an EQ world, and we believe that clients in the ‘flirting with 40’ market space, that’s how they work.”
Speaking with an authentic voice
Hollyman says the “voice” that a financial planning firm uses to speak to clients, and potential clients, has to be authentic.
“We’ve got three advisers in here: Gareth, Robbie and myself,” Hollyman says.
“We’re all in that age bracket where we know the challenges that need to be faced.”
Eqeus’s ideal demographic is in fact 34 to 40-year-olds, but it also serves a secondary market outside this age range. Hollyman says the firm has crafted a value proposition that addresses the main issues people this age tend to face, but approaches it using language that is not confronting or veiled in the typical industry jargon. And it eschews asset-based fees and all commission – including risk – in favour of a straight fee-for-service approach, with a fee matrix that covers six service areas, and three levels of complexity in each area.
“When we were going through the marketing consultants, and with the branding, the question that got asked of me, because I was the leader in those discussions, was: What do your clients want? What are they after? What value do you provide?” Hollyman says.
“I sat there and went, well, I think I know the answer but I don’t know it well enough to give you a good answer. And I should. And our business should. That’s part of the research – we had our marketing consultants do a deep-dive into Generation X and Generation Y. We originally were also going to target Generation Y. We made a business decision not to.
“The reason for us not to was that Generation Y talks in a voice, and the voice they talk in alienates most of the other generations. Robbie is Generation Y! Across the industry I think Wealth Enhancers – Sarah Riegelhuth and Finn Kelly – is looking after that space quite well, and I’m not saying we wouldn’t take them on if we didn’t want to take them on.
“But at the same time our marketing consultants said if we want to target the ‘flirting with 40’ market, that’s the voice we need to talk in. If we were to talk in the Gen Y voice, it alienates everyone else.”
Getting the house in order
Hollyman says the demographic is looking for our first concept: getting your financial house in order”.
“That’s what we finally realised,” he says.
“It took a while. But why do you see a financial planner? You see a financial planer to get your house in order. What does that mean? That’s the question that’s different for everyone. We see six areas where we believe we add value.”
Those areas are goal setting; cash flow management, using terms like “spending plans” and “permission to spend” in preference to “budgeting”; structuring; investments; insurance; and estate planning.
“In none of these will you hear ‘strategic thinking’; in none of these will you hear ‘superannuation’, because that is a given,” he says. “If you’re not getting that from a financial planner, why are they financial planners?”
Eqeus defined its target market after undertaking detailed market research.
“It was 1003 participants across Australia, done by Galaxy Research,” Hollyman says.
“It was across all demographics, but we can drill down into [our] demographic, but we just didn’t want to have purely that demographic. Because if you’re going to know what value you offer, if you’re going to know what you can do, you need to have information. Information is power.
“I sat there with my marketing consultant and my branding experts and they said, what do your clients want?”
“They went through with us for our branding, our website and then our corporate stationery. They kept saying to us, everything you’re saying is different. Have you ever considered working with marketing consultants?
“Most people don’t; it’s a brave new world. They’re not cheap. Did we get true value? Time will tell. What we do believe is we’re doing things that are different.”
