Ep782: Chris Ball – If They’re Not 100% Right, Don’t Hire Them

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello, fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning in our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks, but to win big, you have to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And I want to thank you for joining that mission today. Fellow risk takers, this is your worst podcast host, Andrew Stotz, from A Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest Chris Ball. Chris, are you ready to join the mission?

Chris Kendall 00:31
Yes, I am. Yes,

Andrew Stotz 00:34
I'm excited to get you on. In particular, I'm interested in you know what you're doing with your work. So I think I'm looking forward to hearing more about that. But Chris started his career in 2004 with KPMG as a tax advisor. After seven years with KPMG, Chris moved to the Middle East to join the De Vere group where he continued his work as an IFA starting in there Abu Dhabi offices and eventually headed up there Qatar, operations for the group dealing with high net worth and ultra high net worth individuals. For the listeners. That's you and me. Chris then transitioned and founded Hoxton Capital Management in 2018. And that group's sole emphasis is helping high net worth and ultra high net worth clients with borderless global financial advice. Chris's specialty is assisting individuals with their retirement planning needs. Chris has three children, and a lovely wife. And you can see a little picture for those that can see the video. For those that can't, there's a little picture there that says Daddy over his right shoulder, Chris, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Chris Kendall 01:39
So I'd like to think one of the unique values that I'm bringing at the moment is providing opportunity for others. Andrew, you know, I'm very fortunate, as you said, I'm a financial advisor. And I built a company from 30 million pounds of assets to about 1.6 billion in six years. And I've coached individuals on how to become better at managing their own finances but also coached a lot of individuals to help their clients manage their fine finances themselves. And we do that every single day. So hopefully, you know provide a lot of opportunities is one of the skills that I bring

Andrew Stotz 02:16
in how does a typical person find you.

Chris Kendall 02:20
So typical person finds us for multiple different ways. So they can find this, you know, by going to our website, www dot Hoxton, capital.com. And they can look me up on LinkedIn. Or, you know, sometimes we get people just coming into our office in Dubai, or UK or US or Australia, and, you know, looking for advice.

Andrew Stotz 02:42
And, you know, with so many, so much assets that you're working on with your clients, maybe you could tell us like, what, what are the biggest some of the biggest mistakes that you've seen some of your, you know, let's say a couple of general issues or problems that, you know, for our listeners, they may be able to sort out after listening to this, I've

Chris Kendall 03:03
made many bad investment mistakes myself, you know, personally, you know, I've I've made them from, when I was, when I, when I first started out my career, I was very young and fresh. I got caught in 2008 I was doing some spread betting at the time, didn't really go to plan. So, you know, personally, I lost, I lost to me what was a lot of money at the time I lost 10,000 pounds, I'll never forget that. And it made me think actually, surely, you know, there's, there's a better way to do things. And you know, and now I invest and try and hold things for the longer term. And you know, that's my philosophy and what I work on with my clients, you know, terms of business, I've made some really bad mistakes as well, for, you know, for going in for six years now. And, you know, we've wasted $750,000 on bad, highest hiring mistakes. And you know, that's one of the that's one of not a regret, because I think as long as you learn from these mistakes, they shouldn't happen. But, you know, not only is it the amount of money that you wasted on these things, but also the time. You know, I've invested into businesses that haven't been my core focus and got distracted, I've made plenty of mistakes along the way. I think, you know, I think if as long as you're learning from the mistakes, and they don't cripple and ruin you completely, then you know, it's good.

Andrew Stotz 04:31
So let's talk about some of the lessons that you've learned. I mean, like, I think about the, you know, spread betting is a great, great one to think about, you know, some pretty simple lessons when you get excited about doing that. Yeah, but maybe you could just go through some of the lessons that you've learned from the different ones that you've just described. Spread

Chris Kendall 04:48
Betting one was easy, it was don't go into markets that you don't understand, obviously, on the way up in 2008, you know, before 2008 It was a pretty good upward trajectory. And I think you get very cocky and confident in your own abilities. And when really, it was just pure luck, and I was riding off momentum. So I, you know, I learned the hard way there. But I'd rather have learnt then the now I suppose. And, you know, with hiring, you know, the lesson that I learned there is if they're not 100%, right, Andrew then don't hire him if they're 99%, right, they're probably not right. So mount a time, the amount of money that you invest into people, you know, we're, we operate in the people business, our business is service based, it's all around working with individuals who work with clients, if we don't employ the right individuals, then we have unhappy clients, which means we don't have a great business. So unless they're 100%, right, you know, we don't deal with them. And then on the, you know, the last one I mentioned, you know, investing into businesses that hadn't, you know, that weren't my focus I, I've learned, I've, I've got to be extremely confident in the management team, not just the idea of the business, but the people executing it, because that's what it comes down to, or asked to be a core focus of mine, and I'm in charge, and I'm doing it all day, every day. I think playing at things never gets you a good result. And you know, you've got to be 100% dedicated and focused in what you're doing.

Andrew Stotz 06:13
And it would be interesting to talk about the second mistake that you've talked about, about the hiring because I know that plenty of the listeners, you know, struggle with the same thing. And recently, I had a former guest come back on and talk about his book that he wrote called power failure. And it's the story of the collapse of General Electric, The Rise and Fall of General Electric, William Cohen. And Bill talked about, you know, we talked about Jack Welch a lot, who he interviewed for that book and all that. But also, he interviewed Jeff Immelt and what Jack Welch said, right from the beginning of that book, right from the kickoff, when he sat down with him to do his first interview with him. He said, he said, I screwed up by hiring this guy, Jack said that of his decision to hire Jeff Immelt and one of the things is that when you're in the hiring frenzy, in the excitement of the hiring, it's hard. It's hard, you know, and I can imagine if we went back in time to the times that you get said, This guy's the right guy, let's get him on. Yeah, that, that you would have been convinced. And I want to talk about what you learned from that. So that somebody who's in that process right now can get something like, what is it that you're gonna, that you, you know, that you can specifically do to not have that problem happen?

Chris Kendall 07:31
I think I think for me, you know, I suppose, like, the example you gave with General Electric is, you know, it's a really good one. And that's like, the ultra top level, you get those mistakes wrong, it really cascades down. And, you know, fortunately enough, I don't have to make those kinds of decisions for myself. And but, you know, we were just talking about the podcast, and we was talking about how you've been half German, you know, you're Ultra process driven. And I think for me, that was what we was lacking from our hiring process, it was actually just having a proper process in place because I can meet you think you're a nice guy, you know, we get on well, and then you know, maybe, you know, job offers put forward but actually having a rigorous process where we now test, we then have a first interview, we have a second interview, we compare notes. And most importantly, we get references of people that they've worked directly for, has completely streamlined and got rid of a you know, a lot of people that we maybe would have hired just by speaking to them normally. And you know, that's not a bad thing that we're taking on less people. It just means we're taking on you know, the right people we've employed over 500 people during our time and at over six years. And we've got just over 300 that are with us now. We got fat like you know, a lot of companies do and then we had to we had to we had to cut down and you know, we saw that did the other thing I'd say Andrew as well as hiring and firing fast. If they're not right, and you spot it, just trying to keep giving people a chance after chance or trying to fit a round peg into a square hole doesn't work. So if they're not right, it's better for you as a business but it's also better for them because they're wasting their time and their opportunity to grow as well. We're in something that is worth that

Andrew Stotz 09:14
you have one of the things I do for lower levels people is I hire students. So I teach at university number one and number two, I have online courses that I teach and I can end my online valuation masterclass boot camp is tough as hell. And I specifically designed it to be tough because it's my style number one, you know, like, I don't come and waste my time you want to learn valuation. You're gonna learn it all here in six weeks. And if you can't make it, we kick people out. It's a 30% kick out, you know, 70% survival rate, but the people that survived really have proven themselves and so I tried to you know, and I'm Looking at for one of my businesses, how do we create a contest, or a competition for younger people to compete in to do the thing that we know how to do we train them a bit, create the competition, get them going in, and then try to get, we put big prizes in the competition so that it's a real serious thing. And then, if I get a lot of people, the other thing I do is, of course, I then reference, you know, send those people to either my sponsors or friends that asked me for good people. But that would be one thing, maybe it's not so much the case in more senior positions. But for the junior positions, it's definitely been something that's worked for me. Yeah,

Chris Kendall 10:40
I can, I can definitely see how that works. And I really like that idea of the course and going for it. And you know, you really get chance to see who's really committed and who's, you know, just just thinking that they want to do it. Yeah. And in

Andrew Stotz 10:52
fact, I always say, for people that are like coaches and other things, I say, you really need to create a 30 minute, 60 minute, three hour, whatever that is course. And then say that the only way you can work with me is if you go through them. And all of a sudden you find out and you put 100 people in there, and 20 of them will make it through. Yeah, and those are the guys, the men and women that make it through that I want to talk to ya, simple. Maybe just I just wanted to hear a bit about your business, just because it's I thought it was kind of quite interesting. Tell, tell me, like the typical client that comes in and talks to you. And then you know, what is the strength that you guys have for helping them compared to, let's say, your competitors or others that they may, you know, do business with?

Chris Kendall 11:39
Yeah, so we are, you know, a financial advice, business, holistic financial advice, or financial planning. And you know, why people might want to work with us, or the types of clients that we typically work with are people that are broadly internationally focused. So, you know, typical client for us could have originally been from the UK moved to the US work there built up a 401 K Ira brokerage account, now left the US maybe working in the Middle East. So they've got assets dotted all over the place, and trying to find one business that can work with them, to give, you know, work with them, with all of their assets is, is a real struggle for them, you know, you'll always be able to find someone who can help you with your UK or your US assets separately, but trying to combine the two and see what you can do and what assets you should draw from and when and mapping out a financial journey, taking into account those assets is really difficult, not to mention the tax aspect and everything else like that. So, you know, our clients tend to be senior managers, you know, board level directors, these kinds of things, you know, large businesses that move around a fair bit, you know, have have assets that they need looking after, because they don't have the time, you know, and they want someone to really help them manage it in the most efficient way. So,

Andrew Stotz 13:04
within your firm, you have like expertise in global taxation and expertise in asset allocation and expertise and foreign exchange, or I don't know, how does that work? Exactly.

Chris Kendall 13:15
So, you know, I think that there's two streams, normally to finance devices, there's one set of there's one set of guys who are really good at the investments. And there's normally another set of guys who are really good at the planning, and then you've probably got other sub streams of that tax, like you said, so we're really good at the financial planning piece, we deal you know, we deal with that we, we outsource our investment management to a business called Addison that, you know, typically run institutional funds. And then we, we also have a tax section to our business, trusts wills legal section to our business. And we're able to combine all of them together to give the client one package rather than me trying to be a jack of all trades, master of none. You know, our advisors specialize in one aspect, and then can you know, help their clients.

Andrew Stotz 14:05
I do an asset allocation strategy here with a FinTech platform for Thai people in Thailand that want to get exposure outside of Thailand. So it's really stocks, bonds, commodities, gold, and within the stocks, and it's all basically ETFs. Although we executed through funds here in Thailand, but what I do is I provide that to an institution that FinTech platform that's regulated, and then they vet it, and then they offer it to their client base, depending on suitability. And then once a month, I go live talking to their client base and talking about the strategy and the changes I've made or not, which I find is, you know, great comfort for them when I talk about it. But oftentimes, I have people say to me, so what would be your advice about this? And I always say, Well, I'm not your advisor. And I always differentiate that and one of the Things I, I never particularly enjoyed myself was the financial planning aspect. I love the stock selection, the ETF selection, the asset allocation part, but I can see. And so in a sense, what I'm doing is outsourcing the rest of it to this FinTech platform. And I also work with a local bank here. So they're doing a lot of that same type of stuff. So I know I understand your business pretty well.

Chris Kendall 15:23
Yeah, sounds like sounds like you know, yes,

Andrew Stotz 15:26
I understand it. And so let me ask you, is there what's a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners, either of your company or any others that you'd like to recommend? Yes,

Chris Kendall 15:37
a lot. A resource that I'd recommend is we've recently launched our Hoxton wealth app. So it's available on the iTunes iTunes or I store apps on the Apple App Store, Google Store. And also for our website, it's completely free. But what it enables people to do is if you're in, let's say, you're in Thailand, but you've got accounts in the US, you've got maybe got accounts elsewhere, it enables you to live link those accounts and pull them back. You can see him in Thai baht, you can see you can put everything in US dollar, whatever you like. And then we've also got cashflow, modeling on there as well, which enables people to see, have I got enough retirement? Have I got enough to send my kids to uni, you know, run all these different simulations to see whether or not you know, they have enough or happy if they do have enough if they've got how much they've got left to pass their loved ones. Later on. We've developed out to completely free love, you know, you want listeners to use it and you know, would encourage anyone to feedback on anything. They think we could do better, because we've just launched it

Andrew Stotz 16:38
as well. Right? Okay. And it's called, What's the name of it?

Chris Kendall 16:41
The Hoxton wealth app. If you just go to type Hoxton wealth, it's,

Andrew Stotz 16:46
I see it now. And I'll have a link to that in the show notes. So ladies and gentlemen, go there and check it out and see what you can learn from it. All right, last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Chris Kendall 16:58
My number one goal for the next 12 months is to launch our wealth app and try and get 100,000 users over the next year. That's our goal. Pretty big goal. But I think we've, you know, we've we've some help we can get there. And yeah, that's my goal.

Andrew Stotz 17:16
That's exciting. I'm looking forward to hearing your progress. And for sure, in a year from now, I think it's going to be more than 100,000. So push, push, push. All right, listeners. There you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, Chris, I want to thank you again for joining the mission and on behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Chris Kendall 17:47
Thank you very much for having me on really enjoyed I really enjoyed it and wish you all the best. And

Andrew Stotz 17:54
that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth fellow risk takers, let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.