Longo is a partner with Relevant Financial, a retirement planning firm for private individuals with a fee for service model. He spoke at the recent Million Dollar Round Table roadshow about how three years ago he stood on the verge of losing everything due to a health and wealth crisis.

What got him into MDRT is its values and whole person concept, he said. What got him to stay was the concept of the balcony person – a person who raises others to a higher standard. A balcony person can be someone you know personally or someone that inspires you. For Longo, it was Dr John Tickell - a health and wellbeing researcher, speaker and author.

Being sent home to work when Covid broke out, was a shock to the system. In Australia, the Royal Commission also began its inquiry into the financial services industry. Ten page fact finds became 40 pagers, statements of advice went from 20 pages to 70, says Longo.

There were no extended time frames. Life insurance business halved.

“In the space of six months my business dropped by 60%.”

The Royal Commission scrutiny was also retrospective but based on the new standards which meant Longo’s company had to pay money back. There was also a mandatory audit of everything from cybersecurity to protection of information to document management. Longo’s financial planning business was soon on the verge of collapse.

“I thought things couldn't possibly get any worse. And then one night I put my hand on my throat and there was a nodule.” A scan revealed a three centimetre growth on Longo’s thyroid. He would need a biopsy and was told to prepare for ongoing treatment as it was possibly cancer.

At this point Longo’s life fell to its lowest ebb.

“For those of us who come from a broken home, who have lived with multiple families over the years and in multiple countries, stability is so important. And then one incredible time you meet somebody, you marry and are blessed with kids of your own. What broke me in the end, physically and mentally, was the possibility of not being there for my family.”

He had the surgery and while waiting for the result, began suffering from anxiety and depression.

“I thought there's no way out of this. What's going to happen? On Saturday night, I'm with my family watching a show. They’re sitting in front of me and I have tears in my eyes, wondering what’s going to happen and then my mobile phone goes. And this is one of those miracles in my life, one of those moments. I pick up the phone and say hello.”

Miracle call

It was Dr John Tickell who had inspired Longo since his early twenties. In the past Longo had ordered Tickell’s books to give to clients and Tickell was using lockdown to go through the list and thank purchasers.

“I’d never met the guy. One of the balcony people in my life, randomly out of nowhere, phones me at 8pm on a Saturday and asks that question. I said we’ve got a bit to talk about doc.”

It turned out Tickell had faced his own health and wealth crisis, having been diagnosed with stage four brain cancer 15 years before and bankrupted twice.

Tickell told Longo we can respond to stress negatively or positively. The positive stress response is to turn to your purpose in life.

“He said to me, ‘That's what we need to set right now. What are you most concerned about?’ I said dying, who’s going to look after my kids? He said, ‘Don't worry about that. Statistically it's proven that a stepdad will do a far better job than you will ever do, so get that out of your head.’ And for the first time in about six months I actually laughed.”

Longo talked about how he loves helping people transition and getting their retirement in place. “And that’s when we defined my purpose in life. My purpose in life is to redefine retirement in Australia.”

The biopsy results came in and the growth was benign but Longo’s thyroid still had to be removed and he had to start hormone replacement therapy. The following day he met Tickell at a Melbourne park for a coffee and they’ve been meeting ever since.

Transforming the business

Longo decided not to leave the industry but he knew he would have to transform the business.

“The first thing I had to adopt was ‘the top five people philosophy’. The top five people you spend the most time with will determine if you fail or succeed.”

These are the builders who are willing to work together and share, he says, as opposed to consumers, the ones who take but never give back. On sorting his top five people, he set up an “accountability call”.

“I wanted people who understood what it was like to go through hardship, we had goals and we wanted to succeed.

“We started with a system that every Sunday we would email each other with one thing we were going to do the following week. Then we began catching up on Thursdays for an hour on Zoom to talk about what we’ve done. That ranged from things like waking up at a certain hour to building a virtual experience for our clients. Learning how to use things such as Otter, Zoom, Loom.

Power in one word

The next step was learning to say no to things in his business that weren’t serving his purpose, including providing mortgage advice and the much harder choice to get out of personal and business insurance.

“However, I made it my goal to coach and mentor those who wanted to provide that service because it is a critical point with retirement planning that we have these measures in place. I’m proud to say that in three years I've coached four to my standard of providing personal insurance advice. So we've got that consistency. They charge $2,200 per person to deliver a comprehensive personal insurance plan and take their commissions of 60% up front and that is the maximum commission that we can accept in Australia. Being able to outsource that provided me with a great sense of security.”

Projects with purpose

Through coaching and mentoring Longo began thinking of planning and goals in terms of projects with timeframes, systems.

“I did not months or years, I had weeks to turn this around. The approach is, if you have a project, you might have a list of 10, 20 or 30 items. But where the discipline comes in is that you must narrow that down to 10 or 12 in the first year. You do no more than three per month because you need to make things achievable.”

Longo made his projects visual. As someone who enjoys and admires Disney content, he wanted to create a ‘Disney’ experience in his business.

“I want to take the stress and anxiety away from retirement and make it fun and exciting. I want people to see the future in a positive way and change their emotions. So we adopted the Disney philosophy of retirement planning. It's a very different approach.”

When a project is visual the team gets on board, he says. You can set projects on anything -  compliance, more revenue.

For quality control, consistency and processes he looked to McDonald’s for inspiration, a place where he would go to think things through. 

“We adopted the McDonald’s way for everything we do to find efficiencies. If we got stuck we challenged and broke things down. Those 70 page statements of advice and 50 page back files are still there but we’re so much better at them now.”

Sometimes a piece of paper and a pen is all you need, says Longo. “What is not going to work and what is going to work? You define it. But it has to be about what you’re passionate about, your unique ability and what is profitable for your business.

“So, challenge the things you need to say no to, to help you reach your purpose in life. I'm sure there’s a lot there. I listed 20, it was pretty significant from administration compliance (what can we outsource to allow me to be the most targeted, the most effective and helping).”

This included clientele, the upshot being Relevant Financial no longer does comprehensive advice to people with balances under $500,000.

“That is now for people who have complexity and can afford the service – $500,000 in assets with the capacity to get to $1 million.

He also looked to the MDRT ‘whole person’ concept to define his clients as people who share his values.

“What was hard was what happens when somebody comes to $300,000 and also has the same value system again. It comes back to the at word - no. It's not a negative word. It's a positive word. This is a discipline to define your ideal clients.”

People and centres of influence

The McDonald’s think sessions turned out to be an opportunity of a different kind. As a regular customer he eventually got chatting to the manager and eventually took them on as a client and opened the door to other franchise owners wanting to do retirement planning. Another vertical market he has built, thanks to an introduction from one person, is teaching staff at high-cost private grammar schools. He calls these centres of influence, similar to people of influence. At an MDRT meeting in Adelaide, he heard of another adviser whose walking group turned out to be a centre of influence.

“Are you able to articulate to centres of influence what you’re known for? Can you go from a 30 second presentation to a 30 minute presentation? I transition individuals and businesses into retirement. I want to be the number one person they think of when they sell their business or that inheritance comes through.”