Corey Wastle CFP® is among a new generation of financial planners who are doing things differently to deliver truly life-changing advice to clients.

The usual path to a career in financial advice is not generally via marketing. But for Corey Wastle, a financial adviser with Verse Wealth, a degree in PR and marketing at Monash University was the perfect platform from which to build a practice.

“I started investing in my teens and borrowing money to invest through a margin loan. It didn’t work out so well in the short-term when I lost the equivalent of my first house deposit during the GFC, but it was also a great learning curve. It wasn’t until my now brother-in-law, who was an adviser, suggested I consider becoming one myself that I gave it thought. That was really the trigger.”

Wastle started his career as a servicing financial planner at the Commonwealth Bank in 2011, before moving into a financial planner role within the branch network a year later.

“I was really relentless about improving as a professional in as many areas as I could, as quickly as I could. This included plenty of informal study as well as formal study, which led to receiving my CFP^® designation in 2014.”

A new world of advice

What struck Wastle early in his career was the scepticism clients have when it comes to advice.

“I also recognised that the approach I was being exposed to wasn’t the one that delivered the sought of life changing help that I knew advice was capable of, the sought of help that I truly believe many people are desperate for and would truly value. This set off a chain of events that has me where I am today.”

So, Wastle became obsessive about preparing himself for his future.

“I read business books and articles in every spare moment I could find. At the same time I became obsessive about educating myself on people, decision-making, communication and leadership.”

He also made a decision to form a business partnership with a CBA colleague, James O’Reilly.

“From the time we first met, we were on the same page both personally and professionally. We decided to go into a partnership together. We’re both intent on helping create a new world of advice. We made a good decision at the time to partner with Synchron as our licensee because they’ve given us the flexibility to do things differently.”

Creating a unique and scalable approach

Fast forward to today and Wastle says Verse is a pretty exciting place to be right now.

But he says it’s hasn’t just been a race for revenue. This has meant the team has put in an enormous amount of time and energy into thinking about, crafting and refining a unique client experience, a scalable and personalised advice process, company culture and brand message.

“We’ve sought to take a blank canvas approach to designing and building Verse. James and I keep asking ourselves, ‘what would advice look like if we started with a blank canvas?’ This is why we didn’t go and buy someone else’s book of business; we didn’t want to inherit the old traditions of advice. We want to create new ones,” says Wastle.

Verse’s clients come from a number of sources and it is being increasingly well supported by referral partners, including accountants, mortgage brokers and lawyers.

The business is also getting many referrals from current clients. Wastle says client referrals is one of the business’s most important KPIs. They’re also able to generate referrals from social media, especially Facebook.

Cultural connection

At Verse, company culture is the number one priority. In fact, one of Wastle’s first tasks when Verse was established was to determine Verse’s company values.

He says the Verse values have become a framework for everything. They guide how the team interacts with each other, its clients and business partners.

“We consider them to be the house rules. They also guide our strategic decisions as a business as well as recruitment, recognition and remuneration. We want absolute alignment.”

The values also drive a relentless pursuit of improvement and innovation but also make for a fun, positive and often unpredictable environment. Wastle says the team seeks to bring the values to life every day.

“For instance, we have a ‘Wow’ file on every client. It’s full of things they’re passionate about, things they’ve mentioned in meetings and ideas to surprise them now or in the future. It could be as simple as a record of their favourite restaurant.

For instance, the Verse team recently surprised a prospect at his initial meeting, in the name of Verse value ‘Deliver remarkable’.

“He had mentioned that he indulged in donuts on the odd occasion he came to the city. We thought we’d give him a little ‘wow’ to kick off our relationship by having a few of Melbourne’s best donuts waiting for him on arrival. He will tell 10 people about his meeting with us because of the donuts. Don’t underestimate the power of delivering an experience that delights and surprises. People talk about this sort of stuff far more than salary sacrifice arrangements,” Wastle says.

And in the name of pursuing growth and learning, Wastle has also implemented an office library with books to assist the team learn, improve and stretch themselves to be better as professionals and individuals.

Goals-based advice

“Great advice is not about products or strategies,” says Wastle. “It’s about helping people do all the things they want to do in life and overcome the obstacles that might get in the way.

“The most valuable role financial advice can play in the life of a consumer is to be the thing that joins all the dots between their financial decisions and their goals. This is what we do. These are real outcomes and the ones we should, as a profession, aspire to deliver.”

So at Verse, discovery meetings don’t include a discussion about advice, strategies or fees.

“We just want to ask great questions and as many of them as we can. We say to ‘clients to be’ that we want to walk out of that meeting with absolute clarity on where they are at right now, what they are hoping to achieve and most importantly, why they want to achieve it.

“Only once we have this information can we begin to think about what advice we might need to provide.”

As a result, Verse’s clients choose to work with them because they recognise the business is going to give them the best chance of filling their life with all the experiences and achievements that mean something to them.

Says Wastle: “They’re committing to the process of planning rather than simply a plan. We have clients who want to open a wine bar, write a cook book, buy their forever home, live overseas for an extended period, write a book and play on the US seniors golf tour.

“Our ‘new world’ approach is exciting, valuable and it’s meaningful work. I believe that there’s countless advisers out there still operating in the old world who once they get a taste of the new world, will want to be involved.”

New world marketing

In the same way the business’s values drive the rest of its operations, it’s also critical in Verse’s marketing initiatives.

“Marketing is about your values. It’s about creating an emotional connection to something; people have and will always buy with their hearts,” says Wastle.

“Marketing has never been tougher, yet opportunities have never been greater. What I mean by that is that it’s harder than ever before to cut through the noise and capture people’s attention. Yet there’s never been more capacity to reach consumers in a highly personalised way at tremendous scale,” he explains.

Wastle explains that once a business is able to reach the people in its target market, it’s important to recognise they are themselves a media company.

“Clients might have 200 friends on Facebook that value their opinion and a few thousand followers on Instagram that would like to be just like them. That’s leverage right there, if you can tap into it.”

As a result, he’s perpetually thinking about ways to tap into this.

“We’re thinking of how we can cut through the noise and tell a story or deliver an experience that is worth sharing. So much of our marketing principles have been inspired by the amazing work of Seth Godin.”

An ‘always-on’ approach to marketing

The business has engaged in a range of marketing initiatives, including podcasts, live streamed video, as well as continuous engagement on social platforms including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

In February, Verse launched the myverse campaign on Facebook. Each myverse post provides an insight into clients’ values, achievements and hardships. Stories are told in clients’ own words and through a selection of photographs that they provide.

“We believe it is stories from advice seekers that will get people thinking about and inspired to seek financial advice. The aim of the myverse campaign is to get the story of great advice spreading as far and wide as possible without ever making one reference to advice. It’s counter intuitive but it’s right. People want things that are real, things that are authentic,” says Wastle.

As the business is still in its early days, marketing is largely about brand awareness to create resonance, trust, likability and credibility.

Future fee models

As a new business, it’s important Verse get pricing right and Wastle says the approach to pricing is simple.

“Provide the simplest and clearest link between what’s being charged, the service provided and the complexity of the work required. Our second value, ‘total transparency’ really does drive our approach to pricing. This means we don’t take commissions, don’t charge asset based fees and aren’t linked to any financial product providers whatsoever,” he explains.

This approach has delivered several benefits. “We’ve been able to remove client scepticism, build trust quicker, strengthen relationships and become more referable, which increases the lifetime value of a client.”