The Trusted Adviser

Drew Burden is the co-founder and CEO of MBS Insurance, an insurance specialist advice firm celebrating its twentieth year in business. In that time, MBS has grown from $8 million in premium and 1,500 clients to $250 million in premium and 25,000 clients, without ever deviating from a single specialist discipline. In this conversation, Drew shares the three deliberate choices behind that growth: h...

Most advice firms know the under-40 client exists. Few have built their entire business around them. Rebecca Tai is the co-founder of Game Plan Wealth Advisers in Melbourne, a practice she built from scratch with her business partner Alicia specifically to serve the millennial client — a cohort that the traditional advice model has largely left behind. In this episode, Rob sits down with Rebecca t...

Rod Bertino has spent 26 years inside hundreds of Australian advice practices through Business Health, and his message is clear: the biggest threat to your firm right now isn't technology or client acquisition — it's the war for talent, and most practices aren't ready for it. In this episode, Rod and Rob cover the findings from Business Health's latest remuneration research, what independent pract...

Most financial planning principals are so focused on building their business that they never stop to ask a more important question: what happens to it if you're not there? Gabe Enslin is the CEO of Adapt, a business built specifically to help SME owners answer that question — before it becomes an urgent one. In this episode, Gabe traces how Adapt came to exist through a very personal crisis faced...

What does it actually take to attract your next best client — before they've been referred to you? Most advice firms are excellent at converting a warm referral. But in a world where affluent consumers increasingly search before they ask a friend, the ability to earn trust from scratch is an entirely different skill. In this episode, Rob is joined by David Newson, founder of XNW Atelier and a mark...

What happens when 13 of the most successful independent advice firms in Australia decide to put their egos aside and build something together? That's the modern origin story of Shadforth Financial Group — and it's the backdrop for one of the most compelling conversations we've had on this show. Terry Dillon has been with Shadforth for 34 years. He spent the first two decades as an adviser before s...

  What does it actually take to build a financial planning firm that wins Company of the Year? Jeff Thurecht is the co-founder and CEO of Evalesco Financial Services, a Sydney-based firm he built alongside business partner Marshall Brentnall nearly two decades ago. The name says it all: Evalesco is Latin for "to grow strong, prevail and add value." In 2025, the industry agreed, awarding Evalesco b...

  In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, I sit down with our Chief Operating Officer, Nick Bordi, to unpack one of the most talked-about topics in financial planning businesses: employee ownership. At HPH Solutions, what started as a simple idea to reward and retain great people has evolved into something far more powerful. Our Team Equity Trust now plays a central role in ownership transition, l...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob sits down with Corey Wastle, founder of Verse Wealth, to unpack how his firm has reimagined advice delivery,  replacing the traditional SOA model with a streamlined video-first approach that has dramatically reduced paraplanning time, and elevated client clarity. Corey shares: How recording advice meetings can meet SOA compliance requirements Why Verse r...

Alexander “Xan” Kitchin, Managing Director of Wealth Connexion and 2025 IFA Excellence Award – Individual winner, joins Rob Pyne to share how a corporate mindset, disciplined systems, and a strong team culture are reshaping modern financial advice. In this episode, Xan explains why “you can’t scale trust,” and what that means for adviser capacity, AI, and the future of professional advice business...

Many financial advice businesses are busy, growing, and delivering for clients — yet still fall short of their true commercial potential. In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne is joined by Dean Lombardo, Founder of Effortless Engagement, to explore the insights from Dean’s white paper The Profit Gap and why advice firms often leak profit without realising it. Dean outlines four core sou...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne is joined by Chris Hill (lawyer and financial adviser) and Rafael Cohen (fintech founder) from Inherit Australia to explore a smarter, adviser-led approach to estate planning. They unpack why advisers are uniquely positioned to drive estate planning conversations, how structured questioning can surface family dynamics and risks before they become di...

  Is your advice tech stack quietly helping your business grow, or quietly driving everyone mad? In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne sits down with Peter Worn, co-founder of Finura Group, to unpack what it really takes to bring tech sanity to a modern advice firm. Drawing on years of experience working with licensees and advice businesses across Australia, Peter lifts the lid on the p...

As we wrap up the year, this short solo episode is part reflection and part recommended reading list. In this episode, Rob steps back to reflect on some of the key ideas that have shaped his thinking as a business owner, drawing on a selection of books that have had a lasting influence on how HPH Solutions has been built. What’s been especially striking is how consistently these same ideas have sh...

Most advice firms in Australia run on Xplan, but very few truly understand what’s happening under the hood, how to optimise it, where it breaks, and what it takes to integrate it into a modern tech stack. In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne sits down with Matt McGuinty (FinTech Strategic Partners), one of the rare people who has worked inside Xplan with the developers themselves, and...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne sits down with Michael Goodman, founder of Wealthstream Advisors and now President of Greenspring Advisors, for an honest and thoughtful conversation about what it really takes to build an advice firm that outlives its founders. At a time when private equity is reshaping the advice profession, Michael chose a very different path. In 2025, he led Wea...

This special reflection episode isn’t part of our numbered series. While Rob attends the FAAA Congress in Perth along with over a thousand advisers from across Australia, we’re taking a moment to look back. Rob narrates a guided recap of the first 30 conversations from The Trusted Adviser — highlighting the ideas, strategies, and insights that have shaped the profession, and this podcast. Whether...

Former AZ NGA CFO Dan Heckendorf, now founder of Astilla, joins Rob Pyne to discuss what it really takes to scale a professional services firm with strong financial discipline and intent. Dan shares lessons from overseeing 30+ advisory firms during a period of rapid growth and reveals the one mistake business owners make that can cost hundreds of thousands to fix later.

In this episode, Rob Pyne sits down with Zac Leeson, Senior Financial Adviser and HPH Solutions Next-Generation Leader, to explore how the client experience has evolved from being investment-centric to truly life-centred. Zac shares the practical tools, processes, and conversations that help clients connect their financial decisions to what really matters, and reflects on what makes great advice b...

In this special roundtable episode of The Trusted Adviser Podcast, Rob Pyne is joined by four technologists who are transforming the way advice firms approach technology and AI: Pat Gardner (Collins SBA / Rubica) – on avoiding the “Salesforce plus-plus fallacy” and how Whisper Flow is changing the way advisers interact with AI. Nick Downey (Direct Wealth / Halosoft) – on building Meeting Ally and...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser podcast, Rob Pyne speaks with Rob Jones, co-founder of Peloton Partners and a leading authority on pricing and profitability in financial advice. Rob shares why many firms leave money on the table, the limitations of traditional benchmarking surveys, and what his unique data reveals about capacity, adviser pay, and the real drivers of profitability. If you wa...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne speaks with Ben Calder, Managing Director of Calder Wealth Management, about the recent merger with Coastal Advice Group. Ben shares the backstory of how years of collaboration and cultural alignment with Dan Brown led to one of Australia’s fastest-growing financial advice businesses. They discuss the role Merchant Investment Management played in br...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne speaks with Glenn Elliott, co-founder of Practifi and founder of Meldus, about how AI and automation are reshaping the advice profession. Glenn shares insights from his journey building Practifi, the importance of open platforms and APIs, and the practical ways agentic AI is already transforming CRM data, compliance, and client engagement. A must-li...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne sits down with Nick Perrett, CEO at Yarra Lane Group, to explore how his firm is leveraging AI agents and robotic process automation (RPA) to transform operations across financial planning, tax, and professional services. Nick shares how bots like “Henry” and “Grace” are automating everything from review prep to data entry, running 24/7 inside their...

In this episode of The Trusted Adviser, Rob Pyne speaks with Andrew Dunbar and Abbie Gellatly from Apt Wealth Partners—an award-winning advice firm known for its strong culture and focus on talent development. They unpack how Apt is preparing for the future of financial advice through structured graduate pathways, transparent career progression, leadership development, employee ownership, and a fl...