From Kangaroo herder to financial planner: Adviser profile on Ben Nash

One of the changes I think we'll see is that advice fees will need to be paid from people's bank accounts and it will need to be a proactive opt-in type approach. And what we've done to prepare and adapt for that is we charge everyone their fees from their bank account.

The main thing for us has been around really social life - social media is the wrong word - financial education delivered in a digital format has been the most effective. I have been doing a lot of stuff on live streams/webinars/partnerships/writing content partnerships, which are the things that have really delivered the most business impact for us.

Basically almost 50 per cent of our business over the last 12 months has come from online sources. It's exciting in that space that you can put the message out there and have people come to you based on what you put out there versus you pushing out to other people.

Our point of difference is twofold, but the first one is that we deliver results. And everything that we do is around delivering outcomes. And that sounds like a really basic thing, but it's something that can be, and has been, overlooked probably more than it should. We know that we're on the hook for delivering outcomes to our clients. And what that means is that we're necessarily required to be thorough and robust to the point that we know that we can stand by the things that we say.

And the second point is that we don't make people feel dumb. And I think that money is this area that a lot of people do feel really dumb, especially the people we work with that are really smart, switched on professionals. And they, like a lot of people, feel silly because they feel like they should know about money, but they don't. So, we try to keep it really approachable so that people can engage and be empowered to do things and ultimately get the confidence to get the results that they want.

It's really people in their late twenties, thirties, and forties and early fifties. Tech is a big thing, tech professionals, but basically professionals and executives that are making good money and wanting to create a great lifestyle.

Financial advice is important to me because I think that money is something that allows people to live an amazing lifestyle. And I think that if I go back to my deep down roots, it's that I think that if everyone had enough money to pursue the things that they were passionate about that the world would be a better place. It's quite philosophical. People don't want money, they want a lifestyle, and that's what we help people to achieve.

I've had at least 100 jobs before I became a financial advisor. I took about five years off between finishing high school and starting university and worked a crazy amount of different jobs, just trying to make some money. Then I realized that I could earn money doing a whole bunch of different things, but if I wanted to be fulfilled, then I would need to have a career that I could make decent money doing one thing in.

I did everything from kangaroo herding, building roads and civil contracting, to being a brickie's labourer, working in a scrap metal yard, building fences, and it wasn't until I was randomly given a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad by my Nan that I found a passion for personal finance, and have been pursuing it ever since.

Well, sadly or not sadly, my biggest hobby is marketing and I just am really intrigued by the psychology that sits around how people engage with digital marketing. The thing that drew me to financial advice was that a lot of what we do is like an experiment, like a test tube, where you can try a bunch of different things and see what works and see what resonates and pivot and tweak from there. And marketing, I think, is one of those things.

I think it's ease of doing business and compliance. Knowing that you've got support there when you have curly questions or issues and knowing that you have a partner that can support you in a way that makes it easy for you to do business is helpful as well.