Special: FPA Video SOA Soapbox Set to the Rescue with Ben Marshan (Episode 119)

Chris Schwager: Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication for marketers, entrepreneurs and clients. Watch and listen to the world's best video strategists, business leaders, and communication experts to supercharge the way you sell market and teach.

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[00:01:10] Hello, video marketing professionals. Welcome to the podcast that takes the mystery outta producing videos. I'm your host, Chris Schwager. And unfortunately, Brendan is not joining us today, boo. This is another special for the financial services industry. We're loving them at the moment today. Our guest is Ben Marshan from Sydney, Australia. He's the Head of policy Strategy and Innovation for Australia's leading professional association of Financial Planning Association or the FPA. And if you are a financial planner, this is a must listen episode because on the 4th of July, this was an important date for the FPA. The FPA launched the Statement of Advice Project or the Video Soap Box set to guide members in creating video SOAs for clients.

 [00:01:54] And Ben has graciously given us his time to explain why equipping yourself with tools to create SOA in video format is the future for financial planning. Here's our chat with Ben Marshan.

 [00:02:15] Ben Marshan: The Financial Planning Association is a professional association. So our members, sign up to adhere to higher ethical standards, higher education standards. And. The aim is to do the best thing by clients. And then we support them with code of ethics. We support them with education, both introductory education and ongoing education. And we support them with, with discipline and we provide tools and, and ways that they can provide better advice to their clients.

 [00:02:46] Chris Schwager: And what do you do for the FPA?

 [00:02:48] Ben Marshan: My main role is government relations. So I primarily do advocacy for our members. I speak to regulators, I speak to politicians and I try and make financial planning more effective for consumers through the way laws and, and regulations are written. That sees about as exciting as it sounds in this I read hundreds of pages of legislation and regulation and right long tones of how they can be improved. and I'm a geek at heart. I'm, I'm a nerd. I like technology. I like thinking about the future. And so a lot of the, a lot of the stuff I do to keep saying is thinking about how advice can be provided better to Australian consumers and how we can better support our members in, in providing those advice services. And that's kind of where this project's come in.

 [00:03:34] Chris Schwager: Well, how did the idea of creating a video SOA come about?

 [00:03:37] Ben Marshan: One of the first consultations I did when I started with the FPA sort of nearly seven years ago, ASIC were redoing a regulatory guide in relation to providing SOAs.

 [00:03:49] And in it, we, our statement of advice is required to be a document that you provide to a client when you make a recommendation, to them. And, we started to explore at that point, what document actually meant because the way statements of advice have traditionally been provided is on a four pieces of paper. It's static. It's point in time. Usually by the time you get it, it's late. It's not engaging. It's not interesting. And it's not really a great way for consumers to learn how to understand the advice they're being provided.

 [00:04:22] And so we started to look at adult education concepts. We started to look at the way people learn. As I said, we dug into what the word document means, and yes, it can mean paper, but a document can be virtually anything these days. And so we pushed ASIC to say, look, statements of advice don't have to be provided on paper anymore. You can document them in all sorts of ways and ASIC, to their credit, put that in the regulatory guide. And we thought, awesome. We're gonna start to see some real innovation in the way advice is documented.

 [00:04:52] But over the last five, six years, we haven't actually seen much change. Financial planners complain about having to create paper based documents. Consumers complain about having to read paper based documents. It's just not working. It's expensive, it's inefficient, it's unengaging. And so maybe two and a half years ago, just before COVID really, we created a future of the SOA tool for members, where we started to show them that they could use portals and digital engagement tools and include videos to explain difficult to understand concepts. But because COVID hit, there was a lot of regulatory change we hadn't actually seen much happen there. So we went, how extreme can we actually go with our document? And that's where we came up with this idea of a video SOA.

 [00:05:37] Chris Schwager: The video SOA project, or SOAP Box set. What's that all about? How does it help professionals and their clients in the industry?

 [00:05:43] Ben Marshan: So the one thing that's really happened over the last two years, two and a half years with COVID is everybody switched to working from home. And everybody switched to having to do video meetings rather than doing in-person meetings. And so when advice is provided, usually there's a meeting that goes on where the plan will confirm with their client. These are your financial circumstances. These are your goals and objectives. What you wanna achieve with your life. And these are the recommendations that I'm making. I mean, why don't we just record that?

 [00:06:14] And as long as you meet the regulatory requirements, which are that the document is called a statement of advice, it lists out who is providing the advice. It includes the basis for the advice being provided. So what your financial position is and what you wanna achieve, it documents the recommendation. So I recommend you say, oh, sacrifice to superannuation. It covers off if you're replacing one product with another. So. You should replace this superannuation A with this superannuation B, and that's gonna be better for you. And it tells you what the fees are. I'm gonna gonna charge you $2,000 for this piece of advice. Then you've met all your regulatory obligations.

 [00:06:52] And financial planners do that when they're having the conversation with the client anyway. So why go to the effort of taking that information and putting it onto a piece of paper after you've already given it to the client? And so, as long as you made a few simple things, as I said, call it a statement of advice, then you've made all your regulatory obligations and you can just give this video file to your client. And that, that can be your advice.

 [00:07:15] And that saves the effort of creating something that's gonna cost two or $3,000 to create because they take 10 to 20 hours to create them. There's a whole compliance process that has to go around them. Whereas if you're just having the meeting, which goes for 30 minutes an hour, you record it, you just give a copy to the client of the recording, then you're done. There's nothing else to do, and you save a lot of, lot of money.

 [00:07:42] And the other thing that's really cool is clients can watch themselves back, listening to the advice, understanding the advice, asking the questions. They've got to clarify the advice and they become the star of their own statement of advice, which they love. They love to watch a video back of themselves going, oh yeah, I understand that. And then later on down the track, when they forget what the advice was, they can watch the video again and they can put themselves back in that exact time and place where they were getting that advice and, and go, yeah, I, I remember that.

 [00:08:15] I understand that again, and they can go happily with their lives. So just a much better way to engage and interact and actually explain really complicated strategies and products to a client in a nice, simple way that they understand.

 [00:08:27] Chris Schwager: I think it's amazing. I love it. Obviously I'm a huge video advocate already, but how are financial planners cataloging that type of content? Because I would imagine over lots of clients that they've got a content, you know, video content management system in some cases that they need to control so that grandma can, can go and revisit her video. Like how are they doing that? Or is it a bit, a little bit early for that deep level process of, of cataloging video content?

 [00:08:56] Ben Marshan: In the large part, everyone's just trying to get their head around the concept and figure it out. But what we've seen over the last couple of years is most planners have moved to an online portal for their clients in any case. So they will upload all the documents and all the financial information into something that the client can log into. And so it's generally, it's just a matter of putting the link to the video rather than the link to the PDF got into, into the client portal. Yep. How the video is managed on the other side is more or less up to them and their licensee to figure out.

[00:09:33] The only real issue they need to be conscious of is the rules around holding sensitive financial information?

 [00:09:42] Chris Schwager: Ah, yes.

 [00:09:42] Ben Marshan: In Australia or overseas. And so that's one of the things they just need to be a little bit conscious about when they're, when starting files.

 [00:09:49] Chris Schwager: Well, it is early days, right? I mean, how many planners are kind of adopting this already?

 [00:09:54] Ben Marshan: We knew that there were somewhere between five and 10 planners who were already doing this when we started building out the concept for our members. We've done a training program already, where we had 40 planners come through. So they're in, they're in a variety of, we've got some of them who are already doing the video SOAs, off the back of that training. And we've got others who are in the, having conversations with their licensees about letting them do it.

[00:10:21] So it's a very different concept. So licensees have to get their head around it. And then we've basically got state based training coming up over the next couple of months. So we're running, running a Sydney based event in, on, in mid August. And then we'll, we'll roll out to the country as the, as the year goes on.

 [00:10:38] So we're hopeful to have maybe a hundred plus planners doing it by the end of the year. And then we'll. We'll hopefully see it escalate off the back of that.

 [00:10:46] Chris Schwager: Are two of those five, the ones that have been on this show, Andrew Zbik and Lyle Greig?

 [00:10:51] Ben Marshan: Not to my knowledge, actually. I think they're doing something a little bit different, which is creating videos to explain superannuation and explain life insurance and explain investment.

 [00:11:02] I know Lyle does investment updates via video, for example. So he sends out a, a regular video to his clients. I think they're more doing that style of thing, which is awesome and cool. But this is taking the, the advice component to the, to the next level.

 [00:11:18] Chris Schwager: And I'll, I'll find out what those episodes are and I'll, let the audience know as we go. So let's talk about how planners can implement this efficiently.

[00:11:30] Ben Marshan: As I said before, there's been a real shift in the way planners engage with their clients. It used to be that you only provided advice face to face in a, in an office. And so, thinking about recording, that was not something that really, really came to mind, from a plan perspective, but with the whole COVID working from home, still needing to run a business, still needing to make money, everybody shifted to Zoom, shifted to Teams. And so the idea of recording those, those videos became an easy concept. They now understand how to share their screens. They understand how to share information. They know how to whiteboard with the client in videos. and so it's just a matter of recording that.

[00:12:18] Now, as planners have shifted back to the office, you have to maybe think about some sort of video set up to, to record the office and then record the meeting, live with the client. But I know planners are kind of 50-50 at the moment. Half of them. Half the time they're doing video meetings. Half, half the time they're doing in person meetings these days. And so it's just having a way to, to record both with, I mean, what we've demonstrated is, it's simple. We use three or four different video meeting technologies through the, the SOAP Box.

 [00:12:49] so we use Zoom, we use Teams, we use Google Meets. We used FaceTime. Just record those and, and that's, that's as complicated as it really needs to get. As a starting point, you might need microphones over time. You might need better cameras over time, but, but it doesn't have to be rocket science.

[00:13:05] Chris Schwager: Yeah. Well, it was one of our clients, Andrew Zbik and it is episode 103. If you want to go back and have a bit of a, a more detailed listen to that. Title of that is video SOAs, DIY videos save weeks for financial planners with Andrew Zbik episode 103. In that episode, I recall him saying, look, I charged thousands of dollars for my services. I do not feel comfortable doing that with a crappy webcam. And he, he really brought on, you know, the professional services, the DIY Video Program, Ridge Films, product to enhance the way that him and his team were presenting themselves through video. So is that a concern for a lot of the, planners out there at the moment, or is it just them fi trying to find some perspective on this new world of, of, conducting video calls, as opposed to a lot of face to face stuff that they traditionally used to do?

 [00:14:05] Ben Marshan: We've definitely seen a marked improvement, in the use of technology over the last two years. I think everybody was laptop, cameras and, and using the inbuilt microphones. most, most members I see at the moment have, you know, to have their, their microphones that they're using their, they've got good, good cans.

 [00:14:25] They're using much better quality, quality camera. So I think everybody's is certainly thinking about it. The reality is at the moment that it, it probably costs two to $3,000 to create the paper based document. And so if you can make an investment in technology and, and get your head around this concept of recording the meeting and having that be the statement of advice, and you can spend a couple of thousand dollars investing in the technology once or that you can upgrade technology over time. But the cost saving that you'll make over a long period of time is gonna be absolutely massive. And that's a cost saving that you can either pass on to the clients by reducing your fees, or that's more profit you can make as a business. Clients are willing to pay for professional financial advice, and they're willing to pay the sort of, sort of money that's being charged, but there's not much of a profit margin there at the moment for most financial planners. So, again, this is an area where you can make massive improvements to your business, through investing in some good technology on day one, and then, and then reaping the benefits of that over time.

 [00:15:25] Chris Schwager: I think it was the biggest thing that came out of the Andrew Zbik interview was the saving in time was like, he was claiming he was, he was getting back three weeks from a single client per year by going video.

 [00:15:40] Yeah.The other episode two to listen out for is the Lyle Greig episode is 115, which Greig, Lyle Greig talks about the technology stack tech and tools, financial planners need with Lyle Greig, really comprehensive look at not just video, but all the other, forms of technology that he is currently using in his business so definitely worth a, a listen to that.

 [00:16:03] One of the spinoff questions here for you. Ben, is, does video quality affect the credibility of financial planners?

 [00:16:11] Ben Marshan: Sure. The, the better quality your video is, the, the more somebody's going to be interested in watching, watching what they are. And, and again, you're providing a professional service and clients are paying good money to get that professional service from you.

[00:16:26] The video is not the ultimate value for the client. It's the, the strategy. It's the understanding. It's the sleeping piece for you at night, knowing that you've got a professional looking after you and a professional who's diagnosed, the right strategies for you and has, has put a plan together. But if you can provide them with a good quality document, a good quality mechanism for, going back and re-looking at re-understanding what that strategy is, then it'll be a much better experience from them.

 [00:16:57] And the one thing that, you know, I I've got a financial planner and he did a financial plan for me. And if I wanna go look at it, I've gotta walk to my bedroom. I've gotta go into my filing cabinet. I've gotta go to the very back of that filing cabinet and pull it out. It's 12 years old. It's just words on a page. I'm not gonna pull that out and show that to anyone. It's really unengaging. It it's to a certain extent, it's almost embarrassing, right? What would be really cool is if I can pull out my phone and show my friends and family, look, here's my financial plan.

 [00:17:30] Look how good this looks. That's going to be a good sales pitch for that financial planner and other people are going, I want a financial plan that's a video that I can pull out and show my friends. Quality is something that's gonna help the planner. It's certainly gonna help the client be engaged and wanna go back and have a look at at what their financial plan is, and, and be engaged with that financial plan. And I think everything becomes more successful with a, with a better quality product.

[00:17:55] Chris Schwager: Well, apart from humanizing the experience and having some facial recognition in the process, oh, I forgot what my financial planner looks like and go back to the video and actually remember who he is, which, which I, I gotta say is, is pretty easy for people to forget back in the old days, right? You go and have a meeting with someone you could literally pass each other on the street and you'd never even know afterwards.

[00:18:14] Ben Marshan: No, that's right. I, I mean, I, I. I had, I was a planner for a number of years and I had clients and I remember being in a meeting with a client and it took me 90 minutes before I went.

 [00:18:25] I remember you now and I hadn't, I'd only met her a couple of months before, but I spent 90 minutes being, you know, off step and, and not sure what was going on. Cause I was convinced this was the wrong client. This wasn't the person I'd talked to previously. If I could have watched a video back, that would've helped me as well as the planner, being able to go, oh yeah, that's the client.

 [00:18:45] And I, I know, I know we talked about the kids and I know we talked about their holidays and I knew, and it just becomes easy to put yourself back in the, the mindset. And would've been a much better meeting and a much better experience for both of us, if I hadn't spent 90 minutes going, you're not the right person. I'm sure you were somebody else. I'm sure this is not the person I'm meant to be meeting. And taking 90 minutes to remember. So absolutely it it's gonna help both sides.

[00:19:14] Chris Schwager: We'll be back in a short moment with Ben Marshan. Are your DIY videos holding you back? Nowadays, video is everything. And there's a more streamlined way to present your video SOAs professionally rather than a crappy quality webcam. And you can do it from the convenience of your desk. It's called the DIY Video Program. The DIY Video Program allows you to create course content, send personalised sales, video, and emails, record regular video updates for social media and look, and sound amazing in every video interaction with a single push of a button. Professional lights, sound, camera, teleprompter and all the skills you need to supercharge how you sell market and teach. Learn more and go to ridgefilms.com.au/diy.

 [00:20:00] Ben. You look like you're about to say something. I'll let you go.

 [00:20:03] Ben Marshan: I was gonna ask you question, Chris, given this is your, your field of expertise. What is the type of equipment that you know, if you are sitting there looking to record a meeting that you're having with the client, I guess both in person, but, but also using Zoom for what kind of equipment should you be looking at?

 [00:20:20] Chris Schwager: Yeah. Well, let let's divide those two, I guess I've never been asked questions on my own show before. So this is, this is exciting.

 [00:20:26] so look, look, if it was in person to get that recording, it obviously needs to be video, right? Yeah, is that, that's the idea. So that's a good question. I mean, look, the, the most basic way to do an in person recording would be from your laptop, wherever you are, at that particular moment, it could be in your meeting room or boardroom or whatever, that would be the quickest way to get something recorded on your laptop, just spinning it around, getting it two shot or whatever, and making sure it's audible. And you've got the, the video there as well, which, which is good. from a virtual sense with regards to, doing, video conference recordings, it's really whatever application you're comfortable with. So, Zoom is been for most of, our existence so far, pretty default piece of software to use for, for recording and for, for video calls.

 [00:21:26] And it's in our history, stable in terms of those recordings work out. There's no tech hassles. We've not had a single, problem with, with the recordings. It's not the best quality, recordings, but then again, clients probably don't need the best quality recording. I think it's kind of like a, probably a web, a web sort of style, version of a recording. So a little bit blocky or whatever, but I don't think anybody really is gonna care too much about that.

[00:21:54] With regards to the, you know, image quality and, and presenting yourself in a manner that is professional looking at professional background, professional lighting, good clear sound, as you can hear right now, these are things that really need to be upgraded for your tech stack, if you like.

 [00:22:15] And in our experience, no matter whether you're a financial planner or not, people have traditionally invested in pieces of technology, like it's gonna be the answer to them improving video. And unfortunately, those types of people are our clients and they come to us and go, oh, but I bought a ring light and I bought a camera and a DSLR lens in this, that, and the other.

 [00:22:36] but I just still can't get it working together. I can't.

 [00:22:40] Ben Marshan: Yeah.

[00:22:40] Chris Schwager: You know, I've gotta set it up. I've gotta, you know, all these limitations to them investing in equipment, like it was gonna be the answer to everything, you know, and the, the point about video, is it's about a process and it's about simplifying the creative and tech variables that are gonna stop you from getting the way of doing what you do on a daily basis.

[00:23:04] Your goal, your job is financial planning, right? It's not video production. yeah. So you've got to implement a way to do it easily. One button, switch it on, ready to go. Like I was here moments ago before we switched on and did this recording, right? I haven't had to set anything up. I haven't had to test, you know, mics and frame the camera and get the lighting organised. It's ready here every time you want to use it. Now, this is kind of sounding overly sell-y, but no matter whether you're in a DIY Video Program or not, you need to get yourself into a position where you have that same ease and speed, because then you can scale your time thereafter. Because you know that you you've, you've made an easy environment for yourself to do these recordings and you take all of that brain space that's required, and get rid of it.

 [00:24:00] Ben Marshan: And I think that's, and I think that's the biggest fear for everybody as well, thinking about this, this switch to doing video SOA and recording meetings is how do I make sure it works every time? How do I make sure it's, it's simple. I don't wanna be sitting there fiddling around with making sure that the video's on and the sound sounds good. And, you know, as you said, thinking about that setup becomes important so that you can just hit go and know it know it all works.

[00:24:27] Chris Schwager: I mean, the, the, the, the only thing our clients need to do is go okay, is the webcam and the microphone connected? That's virtually what they've gotta do anyway, right? And that's it, you know?

 [00:24:40] Okay. We, we, we instruct our, our clients to, to, to draw the blinds, turn the phone off, close the door, those basics. Right. Sometimes people can get so frustrated because they forget they've got a dog barking in the background or the kids come in the, the doorway. We've all seen that viral video go out there, you know, like, but these are the things like we teach our, our students. Get these things organised. They should be by a default practice that you go through every time you wanna do something. Close that, switch that off. Bang, ready to go. You know, make sure your webcam and your mic are tested correctly.

 [00:25:13] I mean the internet speed, the reliability of computers, that type of stuff is getting so much better now. And we, we inside the DIY Video Program, we actually have a video portal to teach people how to make sure that all those things are working as well. So, the, the application, the connection with the application, you know, using a teleprompter as well as a guide. I mean, the, these are all things that, are very useful for, for people to, make sure that what they're doing is beneficial.

 [00:25:52] Ben Marshan: And are you, I mean, I know we're talking about financial planning here and you mentioned Andrew is, is doing video SOAs and Lyles recording content. Are you seeing many other professions shift to this idea of recording the meeting and then providing that back to the back to the client as something useful for them?

 [00:26:11] Chris Schwager: In other industries you say?

 [00:26:12] Ben Marshan: Yeah.

 [00:26:13] Chris Schwager: Oh, okay. No, no. Not in other industries, there's nobody that, that is, that's brought it to our attention. Our clients vary from consultants who just do live video all the time to the fin services side, who are looking to obviously, you know, improve their, their image with their audience. And those that are, that are selling and marketing. And they're pro they want to record a lot of content for course content and things like that.But nobody has said, oh yeah, we need to record the meeting to provide evidence of the meeting and things like that. We do work anything, close, to, to what you're talking about is in the pharmaceuticals, industry mm-hmm , but it's not exactly the same, but they are recording their like equivalent of a statement advice, but basically they get experts to talk about a specific drug or a specific, you know, program for, for 10 minutes, they get their, those experts on and they record those and submit those as part of a submission.

 [00:27:15] I'm not sure the tech talk around it. That's a new innovation, which is kind of interesting for, for that particular industry. But yeah, I mean,

 [00:27:22] we see so much, potential here in the world of video with the current economic climate that's just mind blowing that people aren't considering right now. You know, like video selling, video in email, like just video in email is such a beautiful thing. Right? Because when you think about how lost in translation, text based communication is, so SMS and, and email in particular. I I'm getting sick of it.

 [00:27:50] I'm just getting sick of write, writing content. I, I would fire off a five minute video knowing that I can just unload my thoughts and that those were probably going to be pretty clear because I'm gonna make sure that I explain myself clearly and that unfortunately, in a written tense is, is time consuming and it's hard and still, still things can get lost in translation. And if you are opening up more questions, you know, in, in emails, that's, that's inefficient, right? Oh, you know, somebody replying to you go, what do you mean by point A and point C? You know, it's like, oh my God, I might as well have just picked up the phone.

 [00:28:32] Ben Marshan: And this is something that I do in that I found myself in exactly that situation, because as I said, I, I do government relations and, and I'm usually at the cutting edge of legal, law changes and regulatory changes and members ask questions all the time. How's this gonna work? How do I need to implement that?

 [00:28:49] So I started recording Loom videos. I've started to use video ask because it's just easier to have that conversation, where I explain things to them and they go, oh, that makes so much sense.

 [00:28:59] Chris Schwager: Yep.

 [00:29:00] Ben Marshan: Whereas if I write it, it's me writing in my head the way I understand it. Yes. And they don't necessarily understand what's going in my head. I mean, I've got ADD and dyslexia and all sorts of things are going on in my head. So being able to do it by video is just easier for me to get it out. It's easier for them to understand and engage with it. And it, I don't get, you know, what took me 10 minutes to write? I can record in two minutes and I don't get all the follow up email. So.

 [00:29:29] Chris Schwager: That's right.

 [00:29:29] Ben Marshan: It's a, it's much better.

 [00:29:31] Chris Schwager: I mean, my, my.

 [00:29:32] My advice for any business, is that anything that's taken you, and you're finding yourself getting bogged down and FAQs are probably the most classic example of it because we get a lot of FAQs with regards to, to our onboarding DIY Video Program.

 [00:29:46] I, as an example, last week, I had a call my one of the one hour coaching sessions with our clients, and we spent 15 minutes talking about copying text into a teleprompter. And the best practice and why she was having problems with it. And I was like this, I knew this was gonna be a video, but now there's even more urgency for this to be a video.

 [00:30:07] And I recorded it, you know, not long after a day or two after. Two minutes is what it ended up doing as an explanation now that that client or any future client will automatically get that two minute video in advance so that we're not wasting 15 minutes talking about something that should just be really quick and easy.

 [00:30:28] Ben Marshan: Absolutely. And if I can shift back to the video SOA project,

 [00:30:33] We did some research with consumers and what, what consumers told us was that they will read a hundred page statement advice three or four times because they're trying to reduce the, their level of understanding and the gap they've got to the financial planner because they don't want to feel like they don't understand it.

 [00:30:53] They've spent a lot of money and time. They wanna feel like they're an expert in their own financial position. Whereas, if they go want to video back of their financial plan, their financial position, they understand it really quickly. You reduce that knowledge gap and that misunderstanding by being able to visually demonstrate something.

 [00:31:13] Yeah. And, and it's a much better, learning method for adults to, to see how it works and do it. I know every time I get a warning on my car, I know nothing about cars, but if I need to clear a warning on my car, I go to YouTube and I look at a video and yeah, they press the accelerator and the break at the same time and press the press power.

 [00:31:33] If I had to read how to do that, I'd have no idea how to make it work before much of video. I go, ah, that's easy enough. I can do that.

 [00:31:39] Chris Schwager: And I think when it comes to communication, with regards to the financial planners, I, we by default, tell anybody in professional video marketing in the DIY Video Program to always think about what you're saying as if you were to describe it as the lowest common denominator or, or a kid, if you like, right. Don't assume that the language that you are using as a fin planner is, is going to be interpreted and clear to your audience. And now if that means that you put analogies in there, you tell some stories, you get some concepts going, so that there is good clarity, like you use the analogy of your car, right? I could use analogy of SEO or some other things to, to, to connect with people, to make sure that there's real clarity. And when you'd start doing that, it opens up a part of the brain that is otherwise never activated reading a bloody text based doc.

 [00:32:34] I mean, I am the wrong guy to read any documentation. Absolutely. A hundred percent. You know, if you, if you. Give it to me in a video, give it to my, my we've got, an estate within my family, for instance. And my sister has just realized that explaining the financial status of the family in a five to 10 minute video is far more effective than, than trying to write out an email or waste any time.

 [00:32:58] And I love it. So every time she does it, I'm going back to her going great video, SIS. That's perfect. You know, because I understand it. And she's talking my language, which is awesome.

 [00:33:07] Ben Marshan: Yeah, that's right. And so I. I think it's probably a lesson in there for all professions, but in financial planning where it is such a big and broad set of data and information that you're working with and all the financial products just have so much jargon and, and language that doesn't make sense to a normal human beings, involved with it.

 [00:33:34] You can't, you almost can't dumb it down enough, in reality. And if you can make it really clear and easy to understand, and you go, oh, my mother, who, who, you know, understands basic banking products needs to understand how this works. And if I try and explain it to my mother as the audience, then that's probably the right kind of level that you need for most of your clients.

 [00:33:57] There will be some who are very sophisticated, but it's not the majority.

 [00:34:00] Chris Schwager: Well, Ben, I just wanna say man, thank you so much for giving us, gracing us if you like with your time. This is not only good information for me, for Ridge Films, of course, but I'm sure gonna be very useful to the financial planning community.

 [00:34:15] Ben, tell us how your audience can, get more information about this, about video SOAs.

 [00:34:20] Ben Marshan: No worries, Chris. And thanks, thanks for having me. And if anybody wants more information. If they go to, the FPA websites and then go into community, we've got all the links to the video SOA project and community and in the member resource center. And if you're not an FPA member, just reach out to me directly and I'll point you in the right direction.

 [00:34:38] Chris Schwager: And you can see those links as well in the show notes of this podcast.

 [00:34:46] Your business will be on the right track when you simplify processes, give relevant information and build confidence that you're a professional that clients can trust. Thanks for tuning in that's all for this episode of the Video Made Simple podcast special edition and see you next week.

[00:29:53] Thanks for tuning in that's all for this episode of Video Made Simple podcast, the special edition and see you next week.