Being a financial planner is one of the best jobs in the world.

One of the reasons Martin is so successful is that he’s not afraid to try something new - sometimes something so unique that nobody’s heard of it. As his tale of how his podcast started shows.

“I remember I was on a ferry coming back from a weekend on the Isle of Wight. I was reading a newspaper with a feature from the BBC talking about podcasting. I looked it at and naively thought, well, if they can do that, I can do that, and it was just a process of discovery. But after the first batch of 11 or 12 episodes, I just thought, firstly, this is really hard work and secondly, no one’s listening to it because no one knows what a podcast is yet. So I came back to it probably a decade later, which is the current iteration of our podcast and the one that’s been substantially more successful.”

So what does it feel like to start recording your own podcast?

“The first hundred podcast episodes I recorded, I hated it. I was nervous, my heartbeat was racing, and I hated listening back to it. I cringe now when I listen to some of my earlier episodes. Despite spending loads of money on kit to get the audio as good as possible, I just sounded like a bit of a moron. It's hard, but you can only get better by practising and doing your first episode, video or blog.  And until you do the first one, you can't do the second one, and you can’t do the 100th or the 1000th. The more you do it, the easier it gets. I can quite happily now turn out a podcast episode, video or blog without getting nervous or thinking too much about it. But to get to here, I had to start.” 

Despite having a hit podcast, it’s not something Martin would recommend to financial advisers and planners just starting on social media.

“I think video is the best way to start because it's such a good, engaging medium. It allows people to see the whites of your eyes - to get a feel for who you are as a person. Hopefully get to know, like and trust you. And it's much easier these days to make video content. You can literally have a Zoom conversation, record it, and edit those clips together to make a video. You don't need lots of fancy kit. You can record it with your smartphone and go from there.” 

And there’s one final thing Martin wants financial advisers and planners to work on.

“You can be the best financial planner on Tik Tok, and you can resonate with Gen Z, but it’s not going to work if you still got paper-based systems or if you're only available to have face-to-face meetings between 9 to 5 Monday to Friday. You have to look at the bigger picture. It's not just about your communication method and style via a social media channel; it's about what you're offering. So make sure you've got the right technology in place, make sure that your new clients can have meetings while in their pyjamas and make sure that you appeal to the way they want to engage with you. (I’m not in pyjamas now, by the way.)