Darren Jamieson: This week on The Engaging Marketeer, I’m speaking with Tristan Hartey from Hartey Wealth Management. Hartey Wealth Management is a financial advice company that helps people with their investments, their wealth, and their pensions. Now Tristan isn’t just a financial adviser. He is also a speaker that speaks on huge stages in front of thousands of people in as far away places as the United States and China.
Darren Jamieson: So, I’ll be speaking to Tristan about what got him into financial advice, what his attitudes to money are, what he thinks financial education in the UK is like, and what it’s like talking on such huge stages, and how he manages those talks.
Dieson: Your industry is particularly complicated and requires a lot of analytical thought and planning and delving into certain things. What made you want to do it in the first place?
Tristan Hartey: That’s a really good question.
Darren Jamieson: I know, I’ve kicked off with a cracker, haven’t I?
Tristan Hartey: Yeah. So, the way that we do our business is a little bit different to most other financial planners. I’ve always been much more a person who likes to spend time talking to people, getting to know people, understanding what makes them tick and helping. And actually pretty much the reason that I wanted to get into our profession was fundamentally to help people.
Tristan Hartey: And yes, you can do that with the analytical sides. You can do all that sort of stuff. If you can’t explain it, it doesn’t really mean anything. Fortunately for me, one of my skill sets—one of my what I’d call unique abilities—is explaining things and simplifying them.
Tristan Hartey: The true job of someone who’s a financial professional—financial adviser to be exact—is to take complex stuff and make it easy to understand. Anyone who can’t do that should probably be doing something different within the profession. But the advisers themselves shouldbe just making complex problems simple. And I really enjoy making a complex problem simple that also then helps people.
Tristan Hartey: When I left university, I’d done international relations at the University of Leeds in 2011. I was a little unsure what do you do with a politics/international relations degree. But what it had taught me was how to think differently and how to think from many people’s points of view.
Tristan Hartey: I ended up coming into this profession partly because we’re a family business—my father’s been in this profession for many, many years. But I didn’t join the family business. We actually set up a new business a couple of years later. It was something that I semi fell into, but I always knew that I wanted to do something that allowed me to spend time listening to people, talking to people, and taking complex problems and making them simple.
Darren Jamieson: So when you went to university to do that, was it politics and international relations?
Tristan Hartey: International relations, but it’s a form of politics.
Darren Jamieson: What did you have in mind you were going to be doing?
Tristan Hartey: So, I went to uni in 2008. Great time to be going into university and then three years later coming out into a not so booming jobs market—global recession.
Darren Jamieson: Yeah. Like the worst possible time.
Tristan Hartey: I went in originally thinking I was really, really interested in politics. I wanted to learn more about how it worked and I wanted to learn a little bit more about the psychology of people. The second and third years are where you delve into specialties of what you really enjoy. I really enjoyed the macro geopolitics stuff—US, China, Europe—which dovetails perfectly into what we do now.
Tristan Hartey: At the time I thought, well, maybe I’ll come out and maybe I’ll go work in the foreign office or do some sort of diplomatic style work. But as I came closer to finishing university, I realized that probably wouldn’t suit me because you have to be very rigid in what you do. I’m kind of like, once we make a decision and I make a choice on what I’m going to go do, I just go and do it.
Tristan Hartey: I don’t really want someone telling me the five different reasons I can’t do something or why it’s going to take 10 years to get to that point. Change for me can happen straight away. So therefore, perhaps going into government wasn’t really what I hoped it was.
Darren Jamieson: So was that your initial thought, that you might be going into politics and potentially going into government?
Tristan Hartey: Yeah, that’s what I thought as a career program. I like speaking. I like helping people, but I’m not necessarily sure that that’s actually away to help people these days. I think you can help people better by just doing smaller stuff in your local communities and making a difference there.
Tristan Hartey: But at the time I was very interested in going, “Yeah, maybe I’ll go down that route and see where it goes.”
Darren Jamieson: If we go back a little bit further, because I’m quite interested in this—when I’ve given money to my three kids to go out, maybe we’ve gone to an arcade or something, they treat it very differently. My eldest would never spend anything. He would keep it. Often he’d give it to his sister to look after because he knew he’d probably lose it and then get it when he came home.
Darren Jamieson: Whereas my youngest would try to get rid of the money as quickly as physically possible. If they could put it into the nearest slot, they would if it would fit.
Darren Jamieson: I remember when I was younger, I was told by my brother to always save money, stick it into a money box, and don’t spend it. And my dad always told me, never pay for anything that you can’t afford. Save up before you buy it. So, never have a credit card—which as it turns out is terrible advice because you don’t build up a credit rating.
Darren Jamieson: As your dad was in the financial industry when you were clearly growing up, what was your attitude when you were smaller towards money, spending, investing, and saving? And how has that changed as you got older?
Tristan Hartey: So, myself and my sister—we weren’t really given pocket money. It was kind of a case of: if you want to make money, go and do something. So we’d do chores around the house, paint fences, whatever it might be to help out. You’re earning it in some way.
Darren Jamieson: So you had to work for it.
Tristan Hartey: Yeah, which gave me a value of the money. And then when I was at school as well, I did a couple of businesses.
Darren Jamieson: Of course you did.
Tristan Hartey: There’s a great one. One of my best friends, a guy called Jamie Graham. Myself and Jamie set up this thing called King Graham one lunchtime—basically like Burger King, but we did hot dogs and popcorn. We bought a microwave from home, bought a bunch of hot dogs and popcorn from the cheapest place we could find, and then made those for like three days until we got shut down by the authorities—also known as the school—because there was no health and safety.
Tristan Hartey: But in the first three days we’d made £200. So our view was like this is way more entertaining and more interesting than just saving the money. We saved enough to get us to start but then took that and multiplied it.
Tristan Hartey: That’s always been my view: you can leverage things, you can build things. But there is a point in time for saving. Like with all financial plans, one of the areas that we start is we go, “What’s your sleep at night number?” That is basically how much do you need in the bank so you’re not really bothered if things are going up and down or there’s turmoil in the world. That number’s different for everyone.
Tristan Hartey: It’s very different when you’re a kid—it might be five quid. It doesn’t really matter. But the point is having that.
Tristan Hartey: My view on money is: you build your nest egg, it sits wherever it sits, and then you get everything else to start working. That’s what I do with my own money. And it’s kind of what I’ve always done over the last 15 years since running a business. I’d say though the first five to ten years of running the business, it’s more you’re reinvesting everything back into the business to get it to grow. You’ve got to have that longer-term approach.
Darren Jamieson: I love stories like that. And obviously you had the advantage that your father was very good at this and taught you the right lessons from the start.
Darren Jamieson: I’ve seen a story a couple of years ago of a kid in bought a load of sweets from cheap places like Poundland, took them into school and started selling them and started making a lot of money doing it. But then the school suspended him. There was a big fur in the press that business leaders were coming out saying this kid should be applauded, not punished.
Darren Jamieson: I’ve always had this hangup with schools that they don’t teach business the way it should be done. They don’t teach financial education the way it should be done. Teachers don’t really know about running a business because they’ve never done it. And they’re not really in a position to teach financial education because they’re earning day by day, week by week, month by month, and they’re not paid a lot of money.
Darren Jamieson: So they’re not really in a position to teach people how to manage credit, how to manage investments. Do you think more could be done and what should be done to help kids in school to learn better knowledge of financial education?
Tristan Hartey: There certainly could be more done and there should be more done. I understand the challenges around it of how do you get people to go and do this. They should change things on the curriculum.
Tristan Hartey: For me, the things that they should really teach are: explain things like compound interest—how it works, what the actual power of that is. I don’t think they need to go into things like the stock market or even property because you might create a bias.
Tristan Hartey: But particularly if they’re 15 and they might leave school at 16, they need to learn about what a credit card is and how credit card debt works. They need to learn what a mortgage is and how you go and get one.
Tristan Hartey: Even simple stuff—when I was 18 and you leave school and I needed to student bank account. That’s not something that I was taught as a kid either—even by parents in the financial industry—because why would you think about that? Most people don’t even know how to open a bank account.
Tristan Hartey: What do you need to open a bank account? You need things like your national insurance number. If you don’t know that, you’ll turn up at the bank—back in the day—and then you’ll go, “Oh, I haven’t got my national insurance number. I don’t know how to do it.”
Tristan Hartey: For me it’s more: explain what is money, how it works, and how it grows. The power of inflation and what it means. Some of the simple stuff of what’s debt, how does it actually work if you don’t pay that debt—not to scare people, but to get them to understand it.
Darren Jamieson: I think you made an interesting comment before that your dad was always like, “Don’t have debt. Don’t have a credit card.” And that’s a very British way of looking at it.
Darren Jamieson: I spent a lot of time in the US and they love debt. They’re always saying go and get debt, leverage it.
Darren Jamieson: In the UK, we have clients who come in and say my big dream is to pay off my house. And I’ll have to ask them why. What’s your view on that?
Tristan Hartey: We see that a lot. We have clients who come in and say, “My big dream is to pay off my house,” and I’ll have to ask them why. Because your house doesn’t make you any money.
Tristan Hartey: It grows as an asset, but if you live in it, is it really an asset?
Darren Jamieson: No.
Tristan Hartey: And that’s the sort of stuff—to get people to believe and think. Maybe even some simple books around financial services. Things like Rich Dad Poor Dad—great book that’s easy. There’s versions for kids. These should just be in the school libraries with the option for people to read. That would be a step in the right direction.
Tristan Hartey: I’ve done a couple of presentations in schools, but it’s really hard to go into schools and talk about this stuff because you get like half an hour. You can’t really explain it. They always think you’re trying to sell something, but you’re not. You’re just trying to go, “This is how this works.”
Tristan Hartey: For me, mortgages need to be explained. What a credit card is, how debt works, how student debt works. Teach that some of these things aren’t good or bad—they just are part of the world.
Tristan Hartey: Teachers sadly aren’t going to have experience of this. And that’s not their fault. They were never taught it either. So it’s hard to get someone who doesn’t know what they’re teaching to then teach something.
Tristan Hartey: At the moment the government relies on small businesses out of the kindness of their heart to come in and do this. They don’t have the time. And it’s damaging because now you get people on TikTok and Instagram giving a load of mumbo jumbo advice that isn’t really advice.
Tristan Hartey: You really need some straight down guide of: this is what you need to do when you are 16, 18, 21, and so on—these are the steps you need to be at. That would help a lot of people.
Darren Jamieson: I’m glad you mentioned Rich Dad Poor Dad. That book goes into what’s the difference between assets and liabilities. Most people think their home is an asset, but it’s not because an asset puts money into your pocket. A liability takes money out of your pocket.
Darren Jamieson: So when people come to you and they say, “My dream, my goal, my financial goal is to pay off my mortgage,” how do you get across the message that paying off the mortgage might not necessarily be the best thing for them?
Tristan Hartey: One of the things that we do and really focus on is the emotion of money. We try to work out what is someone’s emotional connection to money. That’s why I would always ask: “Why do you want to pay off your mortgage?”
Tristan Hartey: If someone says, “Because that’s what you do,” or “I want to save some interest,” then it’s a different conversation because I can go, “Okay, well, if you invest or you do this, you’ll actually make more than the interest. You’ll still be able to pay the mortgage off. You’ll just pay it off at the end of the term, but you’ll have made more than the cost.”
Tristan Hartey: It’s more when people are just going, “I really don’t like having debt.” That comes from a deeper seated place when it comes to emotion. My job isn’t to persuade people to do something that makes them uncomfortable. It’s to create a plan that hopefully makes them comfortable but is also best for them.
Tristan Hartey: So with someone like that it might be: you want to pay it off 10 years earlier—maybe we go somewhere in the middle. Put a little bit into investments so you’ve got something at the end, but also you can pay it off earlier or take bonuses and pay it off earlier rather than making it the sole aim.
Tristan Hartey: Until you sell that property it’s not making you any money. Realistically when you sell it, you have no idea howmuch it’s going to make you.
Tristan Hartey: When someone says, “I bought a house 30 years ago and I made X amount,” it’s like you didn’t make anything—you got lucky. You were able to buy a house 30 years ago when they were a fraction of the price and they’ve gone through the greatest housing boom in history. I can almost guarantee the next 30 years are not going to be like the previous 30.
Tristan Hartey: So if your store of wealth idea is to build it through holding on to an asset, people are probably going to be disappointed in 20 or 30 years’ time.
Tristan Hartey: If we had a housing boom the same way we’ve had now, the average house price is going to be about a million, 1.5 million pounds. It’s just not going to happen.
Tristan Hartey: It ultimately all comes down to the emotion and what that deep-seated emotion is.
Tristan Hartey: Rich Dad Poor Dad works really well. He did a board game many years ago that we used to play.
Darren Jamieson: I’ve got it. I’ve played it.
Tristan Hartey: Yeah. Cashflow 101. And then they did one called Cashflow for Kids.
Tristan Hartey: It taught you everything. They randomized what your job was going to be. The reason for making it randomized was to make sure that anyone can get out of the rat race.
Tristan Hartey: I don’t think there’s as much focus at the moment on that type of education and there probably should be more of it, but I don’t know where that’s going to come from. I’d like to say the government, but I don’t think they will. I think it’s down to individuals and small businesses.
Darren Jamieson: I did a podcast earlier this week talking to a lady that’s just been diagnosed with terminal cancer about the conspiracy theory that there’s a cure for cancer already and it’s been suppressed because there’s no money in curing.
Darren Jamieson: There’s another theory: the government doesn’t want to educate people in how to handle debt and financial education because it needs people to be poor. It needs people to have overdrafts. It keeps the banks going. What’s your thought on that nonsense?
Tristan Hartey: I’m not sure any of that’s true. But I will say: if everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur, we’d all be wired the same and we’re not. We are wired differently, which is a good thing.
Tristan Hartey: Even if the education was there, there will be plenty of people who still wouldn’t want to take that risk. The majority of people don’t want the risk of: “Am I going to get paid at the end of the day or week or month?” Entrepreneurs have fluctuating income, especially early days.
Tristan Hartey: A percentage of people will just not want to learn. They don’t want to listen.
Tristan Hartey: Fundamentally, the government doesn’t have enough money to do certain things, so they’ve got to focus on whatever they want to focus on. Financial education sadly just isn’t being done properly.
Tristan Hartey: Our regulator, the FCA, are doing a bit more around this. Their biggest thing at the moment is financial influencers who are not qualified spouting nonsense. The regulator has started to crack down on them.
Tristan Hartey: If I did a video I have to put reams and reams of “this is not financial advice,” and it becomes too long. Whilst other people can go on a whiteboard, draw something, say it looks all right, and go, “If you do that, you’ll be fine.” They’re not regulated. They’re not qualified.
Tristan Hartey: But they do have a place because they’re at least making people go, “Okay, maybe I should do a bit more research.” Information is becoming freer, but it’s not going to come from the government. It’s going to be slowly pushed down.
Tristan Hartey: And I don’t think there’s any evidence they’re trying to keep everyone poor. I think they’d rather everyone be succeeding because then they’d take more tax.
Darren Jamieson: You mentioned finfluencers. What’s your thoughts on the biggest influencer out there, Martin Lewis?
Tristan Hartey: I think Martin Lewis has done a really good job on explaining how people can save money. He’s really good at saving money.
Tristan Hartey: His recent foray into investing—I think he’s walking a tight line because if you start recommending products or providers, that’s advice.
Tristan Hartey: If you buy cheap you’ll probably do fine when things are going well, but you won’t when they’re going badly. It’s all to do with timescales.
Tristan Hartey: I feel some of the more recent stuff Martin Lewis has been saying is useful, but it’s not clear enough and therefore leads to people making decisions badly when they do it themselves.
Tristan Hartey: There is a massive advice gap in the UK. Most people can’t afford a financial advisor. There needs to be something there to help people at the lower end. Martin Lewis does a really good job at explaining credit cards, mortgages, how to save money on your energy bill. He does a fantastic job.
Tristan Hartey: He did a good one explaining inheritance tax and the value of being married. Most people still think inheritance taxes only affect the ultra rich. It’s really not anymore. By the time we reach 2030, I read a stat recently that they think it’s going to affect just shy of 20% of the population.
Tristan Hartey: Many countries do not have inheritance tax, such as Australia and New Zealand. The US does, but only when you go past $13 million.
Tristan Hartey: Ours is low down. Whether you think it’s good or bad, there’s an argument it’s a bit too low. When you’ve got an inheritance tax limit set at a million pounds for a couple and property values have gone up, more people are getting caught out, it’s no surprise people are leaving.
Tristan Hartey: But as a whole, Martin Lewis does a good job. Yet again, he’s educating people, not the government.
Darren Jamieson: You mentioned earlier that a financial adviser should be able to explain something simply, and you touched on compound interest. Let’s put you to the test. Could you explain simply how compound interest works?
Tristan Hartey: I’ll try and word it in a 60-second style pitch.
Tristan Hartey: When it comes to the power of compound interest, the focus really has to be: what if you don’t do anything?
Tristan Hartey: Let’s say you put a pound into your money box. In a year’s time that will be worth £1. The problem is: will that one pound still buy you the same thing you wanted to buy last year? Probably no. Because what used to cost you a pound is now going to cost you £1.02.
Tristan Hartey: We therefore need to make it grow. So let’s say you were to put it in the bank to keep it really simple. It goes into a bank account and that bank account makes 5% a year. You’ve now got £1.05.
Tristan Hartey: The following year if that makes another 5%, it doesn’t make 5p, it makes 6p. So now you’re at £1.11.
Tristan Hartey: If we keep going and rolling on continuously, you end up increasing the money exponentially because it’s an exponential amount on top of each pound.
Tristan Hartey: The easiest way to look at that is a doubling effect. If you started with one pound and you doubled it for 30 days, the numbers are absolutely astronomical.
Tristan Hartey: Most things don’t double, which is why I gave the smaller example. But compound interest is like one of the wonders of the world that nobody pays attention to.
Tristan Hartey: It leads back to things like in athletics or cycling or football teams where they say we want to improve by 1%. If they’ve improved by 1% for every training session, it compounds. They get better and better.
Darren Jamieson: In our industry, we use compound interest as an example when describing SEO to clients. If you’re improving your website and adding content, it adds and adds and adds and the SEO will build.
Darren Jamieson: If you look at a traffic graph for a website that has pay-per-click, it will be constant until you stop and then it’ll stop. But if you do SEO it’ll be gradual and it’ll build and build and then keep going up and it will pass pay-per-click by huge numbers at a certain point. It’s similar to the way compound interest works.
Darren Jamieson: Let’s look at what you do in your business. You mentioned that you like speaking. Clearly you’re a very good public speaker. I know you go around the world and deliver talks. What sort of training have you had in doing that, or have you just naturally got up and been able to do that?
Tristan Hartey: I’ve any real formal training. I’ve watched a lot of people, watched a lot of videos, but I’ve never had formal training other than when I was at school.
Tristan Hartey: I did a couple of English speaking board exams—more learning how to do monologues. I did a little bit of acting at school—plays—and I think that helps with cadence.
Tristan Hartey: I used to watch videos of myself doing speeches 10 or 15 years ago to see where am I going wrong.
Tristan Hartey: As a business, one of the ways we get business—we use SEO, we use word of mouth, but we also do in-person events. On average we do 12 a year, but at one point we were doing 24 a year. I’m speaking for an hour each time. You get a lot of practice.
Tristan Hartey: When I started, I used to shift around on my feet a lot. One of the key things I tried to focus on was get rid of that. Slow down. Be comfortable with silence. Don’t shuffle.
Tristan Hartey: I’ve learned recently I’m more of a walk and talk speaker. I’ll move up and down a bit. That’s my style.
Tristan Hartey: I never like to have a handheld microphone. I use my hands a lot when I’m talking.
Tristan Hartey: It’s about cadence and speed. Try to cut out all those “ums,” “ahs,” and so on.
Tristan Hartey: Another thing I was told was don’t appear too polished. Sometimes it’s better to have a little bit back.
Tristan Hartey: I’ve done a lot of talks that are teleprompted and ones that aren’t. In some ways I prefer the telepromptered; in others I don’t. With a teleprompter it’s hard to go off course and feel natural because it looks like you’re reading.
Tristan Hartey: With a natural talk you can go off on tangents, but as long as you land back on the timing it’s okay.
Tristan Hartey: I’ve suggested people go to things like Toastmasters if they want to learn.
Tristan Hartey: People get more worried about standing up in front of a they do death. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? As long as you don’t stand up and start swearing, you should be okay. Everyone understands you’re nervous.
Darren Jamieson: Unless that’syour brand.
Tristan Hartey: Which can be for some speakers.
Tristan Hartey: If you freeze and you just speak, most people are going to be understanding that you’re nervous.
Tristan Hartey: And if you’re not nervous at all, it probably means you don’t care, which means you shouldn’t be doing it. For me, whenever I go out and do any form of talk or presentation, I always have a couple of minutes before where I get a little nervous, a little bit sweaty, and I’m like, “This is the right thing,” because it means I care.
Tristan Hartey: I’ve done one where I had a terrible performance and I wasn’t nervous. I went in thinking it’ll be fine and I just didn’t really care. That said to me, when I’m choosing what I want to talk about, I have to make sure I’m passionate on the topic, not just taking it because someone wants to speak.
Darren Jamieson: I’ve done some bad talks before, and for me it’s never because I’ve not cared, it’s because I’ve not prepared enough. I absolutely hate being crap during a talk and it’s always because I’ve not prepared or I’ve been overconfident.
Darren Jamieson: The most prepared I’ve ever been was when I did a TEDx talk. I was word for word exactly what I wanted to do and it went perfectly. Preparation is key.
Darren Jamieson: When you’re doing the talks that don’t have the teleprompter, what sort of style do you go for? Do you learn it word for word or do you deliver based on topics you know?
Tristan Hartey: I build it into acts, as if it was a play. The first act is the bit I call the James Bond moment. Think about the start of every James Bond film—you don’t see the title credits at the very start. You see an action scene.
Tristan Hartey: So I always start with a story. It doesn’t matter what the story is about, but it’ll be something linked to my own personal experience within what I’m talking about.
Tristan Hartey: A story captures the audience straight away. It brings them in. So the first act isn’t me going, “This is what I’m going to talk to you about.” It’s a story until we get to a point, then I start going: “Now here’s what I’m going to talk about. Here’s what we’re going to go through.” Then it gets broken down into the meat and bones.
Tristan Hartey: At the end I line it up that somehow I loop it back to the original story at the start. If I can do that it becomes full circle.
Tristan Hartey: People remember the beginning and the end.They might get notes out of the middle, but they remember how they feel when they leave. They remember how they feel when they arrived and how they feel when they leave. The middle bit is important, but in all great films there’s always a little bit of a drag.
Darren Jamieson: I’m a massive Lord of the Rings fan. In the second film when Merry and Pippin are messing around in the forest, you’re like, can we get back to the other bit.
Tristan Hartey: Exactly. In a will always be bits that don’t resonate.
Tristan Hartey: I had feedback recently on a talk I gave around recruitment in financial services. Ninety-odd percent was really good feedback. One person wrote down, “Tristan openly admits he doesn’t know how to do recruitment. Why is he talking about recruitment?”
Tristan Hartey: And I was like, no—you’ve missed the entire point. I opened with a story that said, “This is my experience with us doing recruitment ourselves and how it went wrong. So here’s how we fixed it.” And then I went through our process.
Tristan Hartey: But for some people they’re never going to get it. Not everyone’s going to like when you speak. Feedback is useful.
Tristan Hartey: For me, build it like a film. Start with that James Bond moment. The first five or ten minutes, make it something that captures the audience and makes them go, “Okay, I’m glad I’m here. At least I’ve heard an interesting story.”
Darren Jamieson: I completely agree. The opening line is the most important part because it makes the audience decide whether or not they’re going to listen.
Tristan Hartey: And never ever ever finish with “thank you.” Never do that. Just end and finish. Don’t verbalize “thank you” because it kills the ending. If you’re trying to make a powerful point, you end on the point. Bow, do whatever you want—just don’t say “thank you.”
Darren Jamieson: I think worse than ending with “thank you” is “any questions.” Never take questions.
Tristan Hartey: If you build your talk into acts or chapters, you can have break points for those questions.
Tristan Hartey: I love speaking. I love going out and doing that.
Tristan Hartey: There’s no real difference to me if I’m talking to two people or five. My biggest audience has been seven and a half thousand.
Tristan Hartey: There is a little bit more nervousness around a lot more people, but you can only see the first four rows. It never feels like you’re going past three or four hundred.
Darren Jamieson: What about that audience of seven and a half thousand—where was that and what was that event?
Tristan Hartey: I did that for the Million Dollar Round Table at their global conference in Macau in China. I did one earlier in the year in Miami to 6,000.
Tristan Hartey: You have to combat translation. I was being translated into eight different languages. Everything has to be slower because the translators are translating you in real time. If you tell a joke you get this odd wave of laughter. It starts where the English speakers are and then it’s like a weird Mexican wave throughout the crowd because Japanese takes longer to translate than Mandarin or Thai.
Tristan Hartey: You just have to slow it right down.
Tristan Hartey: For that, it’s all about preparation. I was up at 3:00 in the morning on the day going over and over the talk because you don’t want to mess it up.
Tristan Hartey: Although, when you’re stood backstage on a production of that size, the thing you worry most about is: don’t trip over walking onto the stage. The stage is huge. Half the length of a football field with massive screens.
Tristan Hartey: They have a mark they want you to stand on because that’s where the camera is pointing.
Darren Jamieson: For something like that, are you using slides as well?
Tristan Hartey: Yep. I have slides. They have confidence monitors.
Tristan Hartey: If I’m doing a 10-minute talk, I’ll probably only want two or three slides because with larger audience events the camera is focused on you so people at the back can see you. Slides are a distraction.
Tristan Hartey: With translation issues, the slides can only be in one language. You can translate them through AI and stuff like that, but how much use are the slides?
Darren Jamieson: When you’re doing talks like that, what’s the commercial purpose or goal behind you doing them?
Tristan Hartey: Two parts. One: the organization MDRT that I’m volunteering for. It’s a volunteer thing. I’m not being paid for those ones. It’s a way to give back to the profession—to share ideas with people around the world that hopefully inspire people to make a change in a positive way.
Tristan Hartey: From a commercial side, there is a benefit: we come back to our sleepy little shire in Cheshire and Shropshire where we’re based, and we can do a press release or put it in our newsletter and say you spoke at this conference in China to seven and a half thousand people. Has your financial adviser done that? The answer is probably no.
Tristan Hartey: But I like giving back. And within our profession—which is worldwide—it’s nice to educate other people and maybe inspire the next generation.
Tristan Hartey: The average age of advisers in Asia is around 31, much younger. In the UK I think the average age is about 62 now.
Tristan Hartey: I learn a lot out of these conferences myself. I watch other speakers, take notes, bring that back to our business, apply it, improve processes or marketing ideas.
Darren Jamieson: In terms of your business, let’s talk a little bit about that. It’s only fair if we talk about Hartey Wealth Management. What sort of clients do you work with and what sort of things do you do to help them?
Tristan Hartey: We mostly look after clients age sort of 50ish up to age 90. That’s a wide gap. People in or approaching retirement.
Tristan Hartey: A common one: someone comes in and they’re like 50 and they’ve got £20,000 in my pension—can I retire in five years? The answer is obviously no. But it’s: let’s create a plan around that. We’re helping people go from there to where they need to get to.
Tristan Hartey: Most of our clients are retiring or retired. Generally people who were high earning professionals, non-public sector mostly because they have very good pensions anyway. We’ve got a lot of business owners, and quite a lot of multigenerational families.
Tristan Hartey: We’ll try to look after the whole family all the way down. We’ve got one where they’ve got five generations now—great grandparents, grandparents, parents, their children, and their grandchildren.
Tristan Hartey: We’re making sure we’re protecting their assets and investing with a family mentality rather than an individual mentality.
Tristan Hartey: We’re doing general investments. We are a little different in that we also have our own discretionary fund management company. That means that side chooses the funds.
Tristan Hartey: Most advisers will do the plan and then pass the investment side to someone else. Because we have that in house, it makes us different. We’ve got the extra qualification level to do that.
Tristan Hartey: It also means everyone knows who’s making the decisions. If you give your money to someone and they use a DFM, you’ve never met that DFM. You don’t know their investment philosophy.
Tristan Hartey: It doesn’t mean it’s wrong. The adviser’s job is to make the plan and enact it, not necessarily build all of it. But we decided as a firm about seven years ago we wanted to do it all ourselves. Because if it goes wrong, the person who gets blamed is us. I don’t mind that, but I want to make sure if it goes wrong it was our fault, not someone else’s fault and then I get blamed.
Darren Jamies Are you involved with the funds yourself?
Tristan Hartey: Yep. I’m involved on the investment committee. I sit with our portfolio managers and we’re choosing different funds.
Tristan Hartey: One benefit of our DFM is because we’re buying in bulk and other firms use us too, we can get reductions in costs from the funds themselves. We can get institutional rates rather than individual rates, which makes a big difference.
Tristan Hartey: We can offer that back to a normal investor who wants to put £5,000 in that fund, but they’ll get it at the institutional rate.
Darren Jamieson: So presumably you’re profiling your clients to work out their attitude to risk. How do you divvy up what investment goes where? What sort of split are you doing on portfolios?
Tristan Hartey: We have five types of portfolios: defensive, cautious, balanced, adventurous, and our high-risk one we call dynamic.
Tristan Hartey: Most sit between cautious, balanced, and adventurous.
Tristan Hartey: We do that based on a split between equities and other assets. A balanced fund would be 50% in the market and 50% out.
Tristan Hartey: Because they’re in what’s called an MPS—a model portfolio service—anyone who’s in the balanced is in the same funds as someone who’s in adventurous or dynamic, it’s just different weightings.
Tristan Hartey: The analogy I use is like when you go for a curry. You’re trying to decide how spicy you want it. If you want a korma, order a korma. If you want something really spicy, you go with a vindaloo.
Tristan Hartey: It’s the same with investing. How spicy do you want it to be?
Tristan Hartey: You will make more in the higher risk over a longer term, but if you’ve only got five years to go, you don’t want the risk there’ll be a stock market crash.
Tristan Hartey: You protect it more by utilising bonds, absolute return funds, gold, silver—although we just got out of gold and silver about five weeks ago before it all went down quite dramatically. But you need counterweights.
Tristan Hartey: Our job is to manage that for the client, see them once a year so we can adjust the plan according to their life circumstances.
Darren: So, by that, I understand if someone has a much longer time before they need to retire—maybe they’re in their 30s—would you guide them toward a higher risk profile because they have time to cope with any potential downturn?
Tristan: Yes, providing they have the relevant cash assets behind them that they’re comfortable with. It’s also about what makes them comfortable. If they’re at peace with their investments, then yes, higher risk is advisable. But, let’s say they want to buy a house in five years—that’s a different conversation. That money shouldn’t be in the same place. We often have clients with different risk profiles based on their goals. Sometimes, cash is the right option, especially if it’s a short-term goal.
Darren: So, for example, if someone is planning for something like a house purchase in the next few years, they should keep it in cash?
Tristan: Yes, exactly. We’ve had clients who’ve sold businesses and have a tax bill coming up in 11 months. We’ll put that in a money market fund, which is like a cash-tracking fund, to keep it safe and ensure it makes enough to keep up with inflation.
Darren: That makes sense. And if someone is thinking about investing, what’s the minimum they’d need to start their investment journey?
Tristan: Ultimately, I’d say start with anything. Even £50 a month is a good starting point. Whether it’s in a pension, an ISA, or a general account doesn’t matter too much—that’s for the advice side of things. The key is to just start. The biggest mistake people make is not starting at all. Compounding only works over time.
Darren: So, you’re saying that the hardest amount to reach in investing is the first £100,000?
Tristan: Yes, that’s the hardest number to reach. It takes time. For example, if you put £500 away every month, at 7% compounding, it’ll take about 10 years to reach £100,000. After that, it gets easier. From £100,000 to £200,000 takes about five years, and from £200,000 to £300,000 takes just three years. Compounding builds up quickly after the first hurdle.
Darren: That’s a long road to £100,000. I made a mistake when I was 24 and turned down a company pension. It was a 50% match, back when that wasn’t a requirement. At the time, I just wanted the money then, but now I see that was a big mistake. I didn’t actually start my pension until 2009 when we started Engage Web.
Tristan: You’re not alone. The earlier you start, the better. Your son, for example, is in a better position because he’s started at 21. That’s the power of starting early. You can even contribute to a child’s pension from birth, just £10 a month, and while it won’t be huge by the time they’re 20, it gives them a head start.
Darren: I’ve heard of a case where contributing just £20 a month from birth to a child’s pension could result in over a million by the time they turn 65. It’s the power of compounding.
Tristan: Exactly. It’s all about time and compound interest. Starting early can make a massive difference, and it’s much more effective than trying to play catch-up later in life.
Darren: I think many people give up too soon. They invest for a few years and think it’s not doing anything, but it’s the long-term growth that matters. A 10% return on £600 is only £60, and people often don’t see the benefit right away. The expectation for instant success is damaging.
Tristan: That’s true. People expect results too quickly, especially with the rise of quick-hit investments like cryptocurrency. But investing is more about steady growth over time. It’s the same with property; it’s only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
Darren: Speaking of investing, where do you personally invest your money?
Tristan: I use our own portfolios. We have three buckets: some cash, some medium-risk investments like ISAs, and then higher-risk investments for long-term growth, like pensions. I also have a property investment. It’s all about diversification. My pension is high-risk because I can’t access it for years, but I try to maximize contributions and let it grow over time.
Darren: That’s interesting. It’s a good approach—long-term, steady investing.
Tristan: Exactly. And the key is not checking your investments too often. With pensions or ISAs, it’s like your house: you don’t check the value every day. There’s no need to obsess over the value.
Darren: Yeah, I’ve seen the property value estimates on Zoopla, and it’s often a wide range. The value is whatever someone is willing to pay for it.
Tristan: That’s right. It’s the same with investments. Long-term, consistent growth is what matters, not checking the value all the time.
Darren: Tristan, if someone is interested in learning more about you or Hearty Wealth Management, what’s the best way for them to get in touch?
Tristan: They can visit our website and contact us through there, or they can pick up the phone and give us a call. We still love doing face-to-face meetings. We also have a number of books available on Amazon that cover topics like inheritance tax or retirement planning. If anyone contacts us, we can send them a book, or they can purchase it, with all proceeds going to charity.
Darren: I’ll include links to your website, contact details, and your LinkedIn profile below. I’ll also link to the Amazon books. Thanks so much for being a guest on the podcast today, Tristan. I’ve learned a lot.
Tristan: Thanks, Darren. It’s been a pleasure.
More about Tristan:
Tristan Hartey is a UK-based financial adviser and co-founder of Hartey Wealth Management, a firm focused on helping individuals and families build, protect, and manage their wealth. Known for his ability to simplify complex financial concepts, Tristan works closely with clients to create clear, practical plans around investments, pensions, and long-term financial security. His approach combines technical expertise with a strong emphasis on understanding each client’s personal goals and their emotional relationship with money.
Alongside his advisory work, Tristan is an accomplished public speaker who has delivered talks to audiences of thousands across the UK and internationally, including events in the United States and China. He is passionate about improving financial education, particularly in the UK, and regularly speaks on topics such as compound interest, financial mindset, and long-term wealth building, with a focus on making financial advice more accessible and easier to understand.
You can connect with Tristan here:
Website: https://www.harteywm.co.uk/about/tristan-hartey/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tristan-hartey-71238752/
Business Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/HarteyWealthManagement
Business Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harteywealthmanagement/
Business X: https://x.com/HarteyWM
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
