How Blueprint Finance Started: From Shoebox Office to a 15-Person Team

The Dream Behind Blueprint

Daniel: Hey, team, welcome back to the Next Blueprint Podcast episode. We're so happy to be here again. This is going to be an awesome podcast, Rory, because we're talking all about our business.

Rory: That's right. Sort of behind the scenes and the story to actually get to this point where we're at. I think it's important to give people a bit more context, because a lot of the time people see us online or interact with us or get referred and they don't really know the full story. So it's an awesome opportunity for us to just reflect on the last two and a half years. And, you know, regular viewers will notice that we're in a new office.

Daniel: Yeah, mate. We're not in Kansas anymore. We've sort of moved up in the world, so we're trying quite hard for this episode, aren't we? We've booked out Pod Labs, and it's pretty exciting to be here and, as you said, look under the hood of our own business and tell a story about our journey.

Rory: Yeah, which is a little bit of a growth story. From humble beginnings to where we are now.

Daniel: A hundred percent. I think it's awesome as well, just talking about the podcast, what we're trying to do, and educate people around our business, around the products we help people sort out, that the bosses are actually investing in us. They've put some money down to get us a nice space and, oh, it's about bloody time, mate. This is episode 16. It's a real rags-to-riches story, I feel. People don't realise the setup that goes into putting these episodes together. So it's quite nice to pull up here and it's ready to rumble.

Rory: Oh, we're loving it, mate.

Daniel: Now let's crack into it.

Rory: Yeah, mate. Well, I'm going to start things off by picking your brain a little bit. Blueprint's been around for about two and a half years, and I want to just go back to the beginning, so to speak, and let you tell us about where this idea was born.

Daniel: Yeah. Well, mate, it's such a journey, eh? The core group in Blueprint have all been in financial services for quite some time. I've been a mortgage adviser for 10 years and it was always a dream to start a business that offered a full suite of services, but had a bit more of a holistic planning approach to financial services. Rather than just helping people buy the house, getting real intentional about, "Okay, how is this purchase going to help us get to the end game—retirement?" And just make the whole process of your wealth building about reverse engineering your retirement. That comes into that, obviously, your insurance and your KiwiSaver—a massive part of that journey. So that was my dream. I shared that dream with a couple of colleagues at our previous firm, and we were always talking about doing that.

Rory: How long were the conversations?

Daniel: Oh mate, I'd been nudging Mad for two and a half years before we left.

Rory: You didn't just wake up and launch Blueprint?

Daniel: Nah, nah. Obviously, it's a tricky thing and, as an adviser, you have to do it yourself and get a lot of clients under your belt. So I was doing our apprenticeship essentially, for those seven years, really gathering that level of knowledge so you can confidently go out and run your own business. That was us for quite some time. I kept nudging him, kept nudging him, and then just, right—

Rory: We're talking about AV or was it Dave?

Daniel: Oh, I was trying anyone with a pulse who wanted to go in with me, just didn't want to do it by myself.

Rory: Yeah, you weren't going to be a solo Blueprint-er.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly. That's boring. So those were the key guys who shared the same values. They saw the advice process the same way that I did.

Rory: And you knew them well, right?

Daniel: Yeah, and in terms of mortgages specifically and advising people on property, there was this idea going on at the time at the company we were at where it was "get as many properties as you possibly can." That was just the agenda—leverage as hard as you can. But we took more of a holistic approach to say, "Okay, don't just do that for the sake of it. Understand where we're trying to get to for retirement, and then we can reverse engineer that through property investing, but maybe through some other avenues as well—your KiwiSaver and general investments, but more of a diversified approach."

Rory: Yeah, not just all on property.

Daniel: Yeah, because obviously, borrowing money comes with some risks. If you can't pay it back, you could be in a bit of trouble. So, we want to give people the right advice and not just say, "Borrow as much as you can to buy as many houses as you can." So that was the agenda. Those conversations kept happening, and then we got to that life stage where it's not now or never, but this is the right time.

Rory: What was the straw that broke the camel's back there? Two years of nudging is quite a long time. You weren't that convincing?

Daniel: I think they decided to move on from the firm, and they didn't know if they wanted to stay in financial advice because of maybe where things were going with their previous roles as advisers in that company. I had already made up my mind that's what I was going to do. I set up, if you will, the "blueprint" for the business.

Rory: So you put it on the nose there, but measure.

Daniel: Yeah, so set that up and then they saw it all looking there. So they said, "Look, we might as well have a crack at it and go for it." So went all in with those guys—me and Mad at first, and then David saw the action and he couldn't miss out, so he jumped in too.

Rory: He got severe FOMO.

Daniel: Yeah, so it started as the three of us and it was super exciting and the biggest challenge. Because we'd done the job for so many years, we knew exactly what we had to do to get our firm set up, but the biggest challenge was actually the name.

Rory: Yeah, well, it's one of the first things you do, right? You sit down, you nut out a name and you register it. You've got to name your child.

Daniel: We were chatting about this yesterday, and you guys had some pearlers.

Rory: Yeah, my gosh. The creative juices were flowing and we were working at a rate of knots to get this thing up and running. Mad and I, back in mid-2023, had our Messenger chat—where all great business ideas start on Facebook Messenger—and we're going back and forth, just firing names at each other. Mad, being the more creative of the two of us, had a few more names. I actually went back in the chat preparing for this episode because I thought it'd be funny to dig up.

Daniel: Yeah, gotta spit it out.

Rory: So, a couple of names that we had: Milestone Mortgages, which I thought was okay but a bit uninspiring.

Daniel: Yeah, it's a bit vanilla.

Rory: Loan 2 Own—sounds a bit loan sharky, eh? Loan 2 Own with the number two as well.

Daniel: Yeah, put the number 2 there, not just the letters.

Rory: And my personal favourite from Madhav: The Milk Group.

Daniel: Tell me more about the Milk Group.

Rory: Milk Group—so Mortgages, Insurance, Lending, KiwiSaver. It's a good acronym, but you're called Milk, mate.

Daniel: Yeah, Mother's Milk. You would've been a bit of a laughing stock of the industry, I think, with that. "Oh, I'm just going to go see the Milk Boys."

Rory: Yeah, Milk Financial Services.

Daniel: But it kind of actually, that name leans into the direction that the company wanted to head from the get-go. Insurance, KiwiSaver, Mortgages—within that milk acronym, you guys obviously, that's where really, I think, yeah.

Rory: And then we kept having these back and forths based on that, thinking, "How can we tie our name into the fact that we're going to be covering a full suite?" Obviously, we're mainly the home loans, but we want our clients to feel secure in their financial journey and know that their other products are covered too. So Blueprint Finance came up and it was one of those moments where you see it in the chat, and it's just a lightbulb moment, like, "Oh, that's brilliant," and you're just praying that there's no other business with the same name. You check on Companies Office, and it was just such a relief to see that we were on.

Daniel: Once you know, you know, right?

From Shoebox Office to Growth

Rory: Yeah, and so you got that lightbulb moment, and Blueprint was born. We're sitting in Pod Labs two and a half years after the launch. What was the first sort of six months like? Where did you start out? Where did you work from?

Daniel: Great question. So, straight away, Mad and I would be the first ones to put our hands up—we were probably the most underperforming salespeople during COVID because working from home just doesn't work for us.

Rory: Not a lot of working. Just a lot of from home.

Daniel: If your partner's home, your best mate, you want to have some banter and drinkies, and then what's going on in the fridge, you do a bit of a stocktake in the fridge. So it's tough straight away. Even though we just had our savings, we didn't have any revenue yet, so we had to get a small PA space. We sublet a really small room—it was three metres by three metres, tiny shoebox, three by five, sorry. Tiny, tiny room, shoebox. Just where we could squeeze two desks against the wall. We sublet from another finance company who were friends of ours for $250 a week.

Rory: It's a steal. It's like we were flatting.

Daniel: We were running the lean operation, eh?

Rory: Yeah, that was the main thing. What set the tone is, our first day in the office was on a Monday morning and Madhav came in with a 1.5 litre thing of instant coffee and a 1.5 litre packet of powdered milk.

Daniel: Powdered milk. So he did the Woolies shopping run.

Rory: Yeah, exactly. Well, that set the tone. We weren't going to buy coffees every day. We were going to have, just in case it took long for us to get our first revenue, milk that couldn't go off. We had the milk powder. We were buckling in for it.

Daniel: That's prudent and smart. It's obviously paid off.

Rory: Yeah, we were thrifty.

Daniel: How long before you guys settled your first loan?

Rory: That's a great question. I think to get set up and everything, it took us quite a bit of time to get your FAP licence. So for that first month, we were prospecting, working our network and letting people know what was getting started, but we had to do a lot of that regulatory setup, which for good reason takes some time. So our first loan settled about a month after the company was incorporated, because it took that long for us to get set up.

Daniel: That's not bad actually. I feel like it's a pretty good turnaround. Once we got set up, we submitted the application, got approved, checked it off with the customer and yeah, so that's how long it took.

Rory: Nice, mate. And then we moved to 8 Manukau.

Daniel: Yes. It must have felt like we are on the up.

Rory: Oh, it was awesome. That was, I think, nearing towards the time where you came onto the scene when we signed that lease in 8 Manukau Road. We had a couple of staff at that point. We were getting to that point where it wasn't going to be just the three of us. We had young Jack join.

Daniel: Jack was the first hire, right?

Rory: Yeah, he was the first hire. Really keen. He was perfect because he wanted to be a mortgage adviser, but also he was really good at the content stuff. He had a YouTube channel and he'd been doing his TikTok and massive success with his Uber Eats series.

Daniel: Very good. Still to this day, people come up to him on the street, talk about his Uber Eats runs on TikTok and how much money you can make as a driver and all that sort of stuff.

Rory: A hundred percent—our barber who cuts our hair, Brian, watched Jack Hammond's Uber Eats videos. That became his side hustle.

Daniel: Yeah, he got inspired, eh, that's right. And it just happened to be, he ended up being his barber.

Rory: That's very cool. So there's been a lot of evolution and change and growth in the team, which we'll talk about. But there's also been evolution in terms of the services that we provide. At Blueprint Finance, we all specialise in one area of financial services. You guys started out three mortgage advisers. First hire was an associate mortgage adviser. We now offer KiwiSaver and insurance. KiwiSaver came first, but the conversation with the insurance happened first. I reached out to you basically when you launched. You put a post on LinkedIn and I slid into your DMs, didn't I?

Daniel: You did. You slid in.

Rory: And you responded pretty fast.

Daniel: Yeah, you were pretty keen.

Rory: Quick question before we get into that story. Do you think you would've slid into my DMs if we were called the Milk Group?

Daniel: Gosh, no. No chance, mate.

Rory: Maybe just a milk, moved on.

Daniel: No, it was a professional looking company when you launched and I was quite excited to meet you, which we did.

Rory: A hundred percent. Well, going back to that story, this might make me sound a bit unorganised, but I'd actually bailed on you—not bailed, but completely missed our catch up.

Daniel: Yeah, I Ubered to the location where you had told me to meet you, and as I was pulling up you called me and said you weren't there. So I had to Uber back home and we met online. So what you're saying is I owe you about 30 bucks.

Rory: Yeah, about 30 bucks.

Daniel: But that was a process in itself, wasn't it? We sort of courted for about a year to see if it was the right fit. Met the guys and started a bit of a referral relationship in the first instance. Then about a year or so later, we ripped the bandaid on that and added insurance. But KiwiSaver was already a part of the business by that stage.

Rory: That's right. Each time I came into the office, there were new people. There were loan writers and there was a KiwiSaver adviser and it was like, okay, these guys are actually doing something very cool.

Daniel: Yeah, it was awesome to see that. And to be honest, it didn't really feel that forced as it was happening. We got really lucky in that it almost makes you think about things like fate and that you make your own luck, mate.

Rory: Well, things just sort of fell into place so well. When we needed someone, they sort of just appeared. We did do some job ads and interviews for some of our support staff that came along with you, the KiwiSaver adviser, at the same time. They sort of just appeared and it was a no-brainer.

Daniel: What about the insurance? Were you courting anyone else?

Rory: No, not at all.

Daniel: That's good.

Rory: Yeah, because we met early on and obviously the main thing was to push the mortgage business. Then I said to the guys, "This is the guy." We all met and they were like, "No, this is the guy." That's how it happened.

Daniel: I think we all had things to sort out, which is probably why it took so long for us to actually do the formal merger. But we got there.

Rory: No, we did, and it was interesting because I had a vision when we caught up. It was about working in a boutique. I wanted to be multi-service financial—like a milk company.

Daniel: You want to be the milkman.

Rory: Yeah, that's right.

Daniel: And you said, "That's exactly what we're doing." So the glove fit straight away.

Rory: I think the reason it worked so well—obviously KiwiSaver joined, then we had the full three services we want to offer—the reason it worked so well was because we knew from the start what we wanted to build. It wasn't this idea of, "We're going to get in, everyone's going to pile in and we're going to see how it turns out. If we want to grow, we'll hire more people." We know already today what kind of business we want to have. It's sort of like the end game stage once we're fully grown in terms of employees, and we're getting pretty close to that, which is awesome. The goal is to have that, like you said, boutique, and it's important for us not to lose that feeling of small business. When clients interact with our business, we want them to feel like, "Hey, these guys are staying small. They want to keep their clients first, rather than just trying to get as big as possible so the shareholders can make a ton of money, and I'm just another client."

Daniel: Absolutely. In financial advice, that's a lot of feedback we get from customers. Coming from a quite substantial business that kind of went that way, the boutique is really important for our business model.

Rory: A hundred percent. That kind of vision, having that direction from the start, allows you to be deliberate with your growth decision-making. It's almost like it ties into the client journey that you talk about, where we sort of ask the question, "What do you want? Where do you want to be in retirement?" and reverse engineer it. We did the same, or have done the same, in this business. Mortgage advisers need loan writers, for example. We know where we want to get volume-wise, but we hired early because we know that we're going to need that person when we get to that level of business.

Daniel: A hundred percent. It's the whole adage, "If you build it, they will come." We built it, got the structure right, got a really good team cohesion, and then when the clients came on, it didn't feel forced. The experience was ready for them to have a really good experience with our business, which is awesome. That's why we haven't had any sort of massive letdowns or let a client down.

Rory: No, that's right. Turnover is zero staff. We haven't lost any staff. Three of you guys started the company and we did a head count yesterday—we're at 15 now, so 5x the number of people in the business in two and a half years. It's not rapid growth, but we're not twiddling our thumbs either.

Daniel: Yeah, for sure. Twelve full-time, was it, and then three part-time.

Rory: Yeah, correct. So, tell us about the team. What's it made up of?

Daniel: We've got our mortgage advisers—four mortgage advisers, and one junior adviser in training, working towards five advisers. Then you've got your insurance mate, the man himself, and your teammate Jackie. Then we've got Johno—he's a KiwiSaver adviser, runs his own ship.

Rory: The nicest guy.

Daniel: Oh man, the nicest guy. Is he not the nicest guy in financial services?

Rory: Most trustworthy as well.

Daniel: Yeah, and you need to be in that space. He's just such a sweetheart. Some clients just say, "I just want a hug from him, mate." Sometimes I want a hug from him, you know?

Rory: Yeah, exactly. Speaking from experience, he's the greatest guy to receive a hug from. You feel like you're in one of those Torpedo7 sleeping bags.

Daniel: Yeah, we digress. Anyway, then we've got our loan writers, which is the engine room of the mortgage business. They help us with the applications, they're in the trenches with the clients—really, really important part of the business. And they're all great. Then we've got our overseas team, which help us just keep in touch with our clients when our existing clients come up for their fixed rate reviews and that sort of thing. They help book the appointment for the advisers to get in touch, because that's quite a comms-heavy task.

Rory: Interesting. So, four mortgage advisers and one of them being the Jack Hammond YouTube sensation—Uber Eats, you know, came on as an associate. He's now a qualified mortgage adviser and he's training the next mortgage adviser.

Daniel: Yeah, what a transition from him, mate.

Rory: Very cool. There's still obviously that oversight of the most senior experience for the junior, but they're sort of running together as part of one. If you think about an Obi-Wan sort of setup.

Daniel: Okay, come on mate, that's not my jam, I'm not following the analogy. Anyway, we'll cut it. We'll add a clip in there.

Rory: Yeah, so that's the sort of setup they're running, and it's working really well and it's really good for the culture, right? Because you want to breed this idea in any workspace, not just in our business, of constantly learning, constantly teaching and constantly learning. The best way I learn something is to explain it to someone else, in my opinion, to relearn things. It's just such a good system, eh?

Daniel: No, a hundred percent. Couldn't agree with you more.

Why Independent Advice Matters

Rory: I want to lead into a bit about our industry and our business, because this is something you and I are super passionate about—the reason that people use advisers. The reason that we exist and the reason that we're able to make a living doing what we do is because independent advice matters. Help me unpack why it's so important, rather than going direct to a product provider, why would you go through an adviser? Why is it so important to get the independent advice?

Daniel: Yeah, I mean, this is the crux of everything, right? So if we're talking about insurance—let's use my field for an example—and you go direct to an insurance company, you're going to get access to the full suite of that provider's products, which may be okay. But there could be situations, and there are situations, where it's not okay. In the insurance space, it could be not the right product mix, the company may not offer medical insurance, for example. What happens a lot is, to get set up with a policy, policies get underwritten, which is an assessment of health and occupation and pastimes—your whole history as a person, basically. Different insurers will assess people's health differently, and it can be radically different. From full cover, standard rates, no amendments, to no cover at all—you're uninsurable. So if you knock on the door of the wrong company and they say, "No, you're uninsurable," you walk away from that encounter thinking you're uninsurable, feeling rejected.

Rory: Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel: I'm talking to you all the time, and you had a recent case study where a client, that exact thing happened. The client went to a provider and they were uninsurable, but down the road, another provider that you facilitated—full cover, standard rates.

Rory: 100%. That's the extreme level of it, right? And that absolutely has happened. It does happen. But then there are various iterations of that where sometimes people will have a pre-existing condition and the assessment might be a premium loading. So it's like, "We'll accept you as a client, but because we perceive extra risk on your health history, we'll charge you double the amount to someone without your health condition." And another company might not see that risk in the same way—they might see it as half as risky or not as risky at all. So that can have a big impact on the cost of a policy as well.

Daniel: A hundred percent. It's so important and I think tying into it, obviously, is our role in the piece and how we get paid, because that effectively is the whole story of independent advice and why it works together so well. For example, you get that result for a customer and they're really happy with the outcome. They now understand all their options because you work with all the providers and they can make the decision themselves with the facts that you're required to put out. The FMA requires you to break it down and just be completely transparent about it. They pick the solution they're most happy with, and so they're happy, they proceed, they get the policy in place or the mortgage, and then we get paid by the lender or the insurer. So our income is actually tied to customer satisfaction.

Rory: Yeah, correct.

Daniel: We only get a result and an outcome for our business if we get a good outcome for our clients. Otherwise, they wouldn't proceed.

Rory: That's absolutely right. We don't have the trust umbrella of the big corporation, right? So if I'm going to ANZ, that's New Zealand's largest bank, there's an element of built-in trust that the banker has my best interest at heart. Whereas in the intermediary space, we've got to earn trust and build it through knowing what we're talking about and education, which we talk about a lot, and making sure our clients understand the advice that we're giving them, the options that they have, and empowering them to make the informed decision themselves.

Daniel: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head. It's such a good industry to work in when you get to that level where you know your stuff, and obviously when you can get clients to help. So it's a really fulfilling process and we're just stoked to do it, eh.

Rory: Yeah, and tell me about the banking side of things. Say I'm just Joe Bloggs and, you know, interest rates look the same. When are the situations where your role is particularly critical—whether it be structuring of loans, investment property, or niche situations where Bank A is a better option than Bank B?

Daniel: That's a great question and I think the whole advice piece ties actually into things like what just happened yesterday—the OCR review, the official cash rate—which we were actually supposed to cover at the start of the episode. But this is actually a great intermediary to answer. That all comes into advice, right? When a client's trying to figure out how long to fix for, their bank directly—generally the product providers at the bank can't give that type of financial advice. So they would just give the rates and say, "Pick one." Whereas our job, we are literally required to give a tailored recommendation for each customer and recommend a certain structure in terms of how long to fix for—the number one thing, right? We're up to date with all that sort of information, and the information, for example, like the OCR review, is something that we'd tack on and say, "Okay, look, yesterday we had a 0.25% drop. This is probably going to mean rates are going to drop in the next two to three weeks—your fixed terms." Some clients are choosing to float now because they're projecting further cuts or they think there's going to be a lower rate in a wee while, and it's a pretty good decision because you can get a 5.09% floating rate right now, which is lower than what most people are on because some people were coming off fixed rates and floating at a lower rate. So they're not too fussed to keep floating because they think rates are really plummeting down, which has been the story for the last six months. So we'll see what happens on that as well.

Rory: I haven't checked Slack—Slack is our company chat—but the banks haven't moved on this OCR rate yet, have they?

Daniel: No, they've dropped their floating rate, but they haven't dropped their fixed terms.

Rory: Have they priced it in already or are they going to drop their rates?

Daniel: Well, that's a good question because there hasn't really been a one-year or a six-month rate drop in the last month or so, so it'll be a bit late. It's unlikely they've priced it in. So I'm expecting some further cuts on those terms, but sometimes it can take up to three weeks for that to be reflected. So, we'll see. But that's the conversations we're having with clients right now. Some of them are keen to keep floating a bit longer because they're coming off the higher rate. These are the sorts of conversations that we have with our customers and really tie that back to their long-term financial goals. Some people just love the conservative approach—knowing what their payment's going to be—and they might want to factor in some longer term, some two-year or three-year fixed.

Rory: You know, we're all really big on helping people pay off their mortgage faster as well.

Daniel: Yeah, and I feel like the bank's not actually incentivised to do that.

Rory: Yeah, yeah. I think that costs the bank money if a client pays off their mortgage faster.

Daniel: Yeah, I honestly think, I don't think the bank's out here to make people take as long as they possibly can.

Rory: No, but I just think it's an advice thing. No one is there confidently stepping up and giving the advice and saying, "Hey, the whole point of getting you in here is to help you pay your mortgage off faster." The bank's job is to provide the quality products and compete on price, but then in the next step of trying to figure out, "Okay, what can I actually do to pay the bastard off?"—that's our job.

Daniel: That's our job, yeah. So that's the difference and the proposition for the mortgage side. It gets a bit technical as well. There are instances where Bank A can lend you this much and Bank B can lend you this much—more or less. That's a super common one that we get clients coming to us and say, "Hey, I'm trying to get this property," and it might be that their income's totally fine, but it's just their income's a bit different. Maybe they're self-employed and banks actually look at self-employed borrowers, in some cases, completely differently. So those are big things where if you've got a bit of an interesting situation, then advisers are a non-negotiable, because you really need to understand what your options are across the lenders. And there are different products that all the providers have, just like with insurance.

Rory: So that's a massive one as well.

Daniel: A hundred percent. Lending into what we're doing here with the holistic advice and the insurance and the KiwiSaver—those lenses that we have on the market and being able to offer clients protection, access to the market, lending access to the market, and KiwiSaver, which we haven't talked about much, but access to the market. It just makes things so much easier. You're not having to double-share your information. It's sort of ring-fenced nicely and tidy, isn't it?

Rory: Keep it tight, like a tight scrum.

Daniel: What the banks try to do, right? But banks have Kiwi portfolios as well and insurance portfolios, but banks do finance really well, and the insurance and the KiwiSaver can be lacking—not perfect, can be lacking compared to what else is available in the market.

Rory: The truth of the matter is it's very, very unlikely that one financial provider is going to be able to provide you mortgage, insurance and KiwiSaver to the highest level and also to the level that you require. So that's why all of our clients that we do have all three products with, we refer to them as Blueprint clients, because they've got the full suite. Go to episode one to learn more about that, but those clients, they're not all at one provider. They've got their mortgage here, their insurance and their KiwiSaver here. But when it comes to the advice and reviewing that, it's with Blueprint.

Daniel: That's right. And the service just goes up. We love "blueprinted".

Rory: Oh mate, for those that don't know, "blueprinted" is our code word for when we offer all three services to a client.

Daniel: We absolutely love it. We do. And hollering in the office when we announce someone's been blueprinted.

Rory: Every time, mate. It's very cool.

Culture, Myths, and Looking Ahead

Daniel: Let's move the conversation onto something different now, Daniel—well, kind of actually going back to our business, to be honest. We've talked generally about our industry and then about us as well, but the culture at Blueprint Finance—what is it and how would you sum it up?

Rory: Well, have you ever seen the HBO series The Office with Steve Carell?

Daniel: Yes.

Rory: Who's Steve Carell? The, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're listening. You're Steve Carell. He will be listening too.

Daniel: No, I think the culture's the most important thing, and I think it's a point to reflect that we haven't had anyone—obviously we're a young business, two and a half years—but we haven't had anyone leave the company or the team, because we make that the number one thing. We're investing in our team constantly. In terms of who we are to the world, it's a client-first approach. In terms of how we deal with customers and our message we send to our clients, it's a "customer's always right" approach, which is one of our key ethoses.

Rory: That sounds like it's quite cliche.

Daniel: Yeah, mate, thanks for calling me out on that. It is super cliche, but the reason we like to say that is because it doesn't mean the customer's always right—maybe they're wrong—but if something's important to them, they really want to get the most cashback or they really wanted that tiny bit off their interest rate or they really wanted to be structured this way, even if in the big scheme of things we know it's not a big impact or a big deal, it is a big deal. Because that's the feel. When you're a service-based business, it's all about how you make people feel. If they feel like, "Oh, they didn't really fight for me on that," even though it was a super, super small outcome, that's their impression of you. So what we mean by "customers are always right" is those are the small engines that we fight for, because that's how we've grown our business—by making people feel special. They've picked us out of a big group of financial advisers in the country and we're grateful. If it's important to you that you want that structure that's not, in the big scheme of things, massive, we're going to do whatever we can to suss it.

Rory: A hundred percent. And if we can't, we're going to try and make it right.

Daniel: Absolutely. When it's time to fight for our clients, we put the gloves on, don't we?

Rory: A hundred percent. We're serious about it. Other than that, in the office, people are in the office. We don't do as much work from home and it's a pretty good culture. We try and do a team event once a quarter. We've got the Christmas party tomorrow.

Daniel: Are we making the appearance as Santa?

Rory: Well, they won't know it's me. They'll just think it's Santa.

Daniel: So disappointed that you're not there, right?

Rory: Yeah, exactly. It's Dan. "Santa didn't even get to see Santa."

Daniel: No, it's good. I think it has a big impact. Because it's easy to talk about, "the customer comes first" and "client outcomes" and all that sort of stuff, but in reality, who you are internally as a business is going to be reflected outward. So it's really important to us, and that sort of growth and adding more people is something that we're really conscious about—not losing our identity and not losing the culture, because it's something that's hard to get back once you lose your culture.

Rory: A hundred percent. I think when you're working super hard, it's easy to feel fatigued with your team. There can be friction, and because we've been doing it for such a long time, we sort of know when we're at that level, when our team's at that point. So we do the one-on-one check-ins with everyone every quarter to make sure that we're not actually pushing ourselves too hard or we're not redlining this machine and everyone's actually feeling good about showing up to work. That's going to keep being something that we focus on as we grow as a company. I think it's super important as well for yourself to check in, because you're going to get burnt out. No one's really free from burnout. It comes as a hidden surprise, it comes hidden as something else, and then you just realise, "I've just been working on stuff for six months, I need to actually just chill out."

Daniel: Yeah, to have a breather, eh?

Rory: Yeah, for sure. Like you with your Raro trip.

Daniel: I just got back from Raro. With my one-year-old daughter—it's not really a holiday, mate.

Rory: That's been a huge part of the journey, right? When we first met you were childless, you probably just found out that you guys were having Mia, right?

Daniel: Yeah, well, when we launched, officially started trading the insurance business, October 1st last year, Mia was born on the 4th of November. So I was all in on Blueprint Finance and there was no plan B.

Rory: And so was Mia, obviously.

Daniel: She is. She loves it, mate.

Rory: Let's touch on that point I just brought up, which is we're in a big pool of other finance companies who offer our services. We talk about it all the time, but for the folks at home, what actually makes it a different service? What actually makes it a special and unique service? What are those things that we talk about?

Daniel: Good question. I think, all things considered equal, if you're looking at the top companies in the country, service has got to be on point, processes need to be sharp, your product knowledge needs to be good, you're giving good advice. But I think our key point of difference is the education side of things.

Rory: Because those first three things you mentioned, that's the bare minimum to succeed, right?

Daniel: Absolutely. You can keep squeezing the juice out of that. But yeah, I think we're, like this podcast, we're learning the ropes, but we're trying to create content for our clients and for anyone else who may be interested, just about how to make smarter decisions and give people access to different material and information that's not necessarily readily available—or we're trying to make it available.

Rory: A hundred percent.

Daniel: I think the most exciting thing about it is, none of us started off with a small loan of a million dollars or anything like that. We're all on that journey together. We've got our mortgages, we're trying to grow our wealth, and the whole idea of creating a place for people to come and meet financial advisers who are doing this every day, but are also on that journey themselves—buying real estate, buying investments, and just trying to grow in a safe way. Because the unfortunate thing about this life is that you've got to take risks—it's non-negotiable. What we always talk about with our KiwiSaver adviser, Jono, his favourite quote is, "Investing is expensive, but wait until you get the bill for not investing."

Rory: Yeah, absolutely.

Daniel: If you're not investing, if you're not taking those risks, unfortunately you might—you're going to have to do it in some way, and for some people it's starting that business, for some people it's buying that house, for some people it's just upping the contributions to the KiwiSaver.

Rory: Absolutely. Everyone's on their own journey, and that's actually the best thing about this, and that's why we get so pumped about the education, because we can tailor it to people at different stages. It starts from, "How can we actually build up that deposit for the first home?"—which is our next episode—and then it goes into, "Now you've got some equity, you've had your home for five years and you want to look to buy a rental. How do you do that?" So it's like going through those different life stages with our clients, and it's just such a pleasure to do it.

Daniel: A hundred percent, man. So I think that's how we like to—obviously, like you said, the service, the product knowledge, all that sort of stuff, and running a tight ship is the bare minimum. But the way we're trying to take things to the next level is with the education, with the advice.

Rory: Absolutely. That's sort of content and material orientated, but then the other side of it is actually how we give the advice.

Daniel: Yeah, our strategy sessions.

Rory: We spoke about this, because we've all put a lot of effort into those. That's educational in terms of how we run our processes, to make things as crystal clear as they can be for our clients.

Daniel: A hundred percent. I think we all sort of had to do a second degree in a little thing called Microsoft Excel.

Rory: I feel like I've done more study on that green mistress than my university degree.

Daniel: We spent so much time in that to build processes where we can share advice and tailor it quite easily in front of a customer. Most of our meetings are done over Google Meets for the convenience of the client—nine out of ten of them are. But we always offer in-person meetings, and it's really nice when you have an in-person one because you have it in the office and get up on the TV, the spreadsheet.

Rory: That's right. When it's on the TV, you're really looking at that spreadsheet.

Daniel: Not only with that do you get the TV, but when a client comes into the office, everybody gets up and shakes their hand.

Rory: Yeah, it's like, "Oh, someone's in the office." It's a bit confronting. It must mean it happens—well, it happens. You get a client in the office probably once a day, on average, for that meeting room. Whoever sees that client gets up and says hello. That's another small business point—we want to keep it boutique, keep it lean, so that when people come in, they actually know all the faces, which is quite cool.

Daniel: A hundred percent. We don't want to get too big, because if we are thirty people, that's a lot of hands to shake if you've got to the whole office.

Rory: There's a cutoff where it gets awkward, eh, almost. Especially for me because I have a sweaty hand. Your hand's going to be about to fall off when you're finished with that.

Daniel: Too right, too right. I'll tell you something else we do a little bit different—these buses.

Rory: Oh, you heard about the buses? You talking about the Blueprint Express?

Daniel: Is it a double decker?

Rory: No, no, no. We're lucky enough to have the opportunity to advertise on some buses, which is new for us in the way that we spend our marketing dollars. We usually just go hard on Facebook and Instagram. This was a new one for us, a bit of a traditional four Ps approach. We loved it. We had such a fun time at the start because you just don't know with that sort of stuff how much traction you're going to get, but a lot of people have been talking about the buses. We're yet to have the call to say, "Hey mate, I'm driving behind your bus, just want to let you know, now I want a mortgage." We're yet to have, "Can we have a strategy session in traffic?" It'll come. So I think it's more so, you know, we're on the bus, we're out there on the streets, we're in the trenches, we're in the community, and AT Hop has given us the blue tick. It's a vote of confidence from those guys. So we're loving the buses, mate. The buses are awesome.

Daniel: Very cool, mate. Just trying to engage and, like you said, the overall goal—we're not trying to become this massive company, but we're trying to become a well-known boutique firm that's just recognised for quality. That's something that we want to build that's going to last for 30 years, 40 years, or until the original founders retire.

Rory: Kids, kids, yeah. They can take it over—children's children.

Daniel: Exactly.

Rory: Nice. Very cool, mate.

Daniel: Cool, man. Very exciting. Let's lighten things up a little bit—not that things aren't light. Some myth busters, because there's a lot of myths out there about our industry.

Rory: Are we doing rapid fire or are we doing—

Daniel: Well, I've prepared something earlier.

Rory: Rolling.

Daniel: So, you must go to your bank first for a mortgage, like directly?

Rory: As a client, the minute you decide you want to borrow some money, the world's your oyster. Your own bank is going to help you, probably, if you can get approved, and they'll probably give you a pretty good offer. But we always want to go for a multi-bank approach, because we want to give our clients as many options as possible.

A key thing of that is, especially for the pre-approval, certain banks like certain properties, certain banks will lend a certain amount. So if it's crunch time and you're pre-approved and you found a property and you need to buy it this week, it takes a bit of time to get pre-approved. If the property you want to buy isn't suitable for that bank, well, then you've got a backup.

So, should you go to your own bank? I think we always want to give our clients' existing lender or existing main bank where they credit their income the opportunity to have them as a client, but in the best interest of the client, we want to offer them the market—give them options.

Daniel: A hundred percent.

Rory: I'm sure you're the same.

Daniel: A hundred percent. Alright, you throw one at me. Quick fire, mate.

Rory: So, for the folks at home, we're going between mortgage and insurance now. Just keep that in mind. "I'm covered through my work, I'm sorted, mate. I'm covered."

Daniel: That's a really common one. Employers that offer insurance to their people is such a good perk, because obviously it can be expensive. Some people aren't proactive about covering themselves. But often there'll be gaps in that cover. Whether it's a life insurance policy or income protection, often income protection will have two-year payment terms through employer packages. So we can top those up, fill gaps, get them two-year wait periods to age 65 payment terms. Basically, if you have any existing insurance, part of our process is to review it all and understand where you're covered and where you are not. Then we can put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Rory: That was such a good answer. I don't know if it was rapid, but it was so good.

Daniel: We need to rebrand this—not rapid fire, just fire.

Rory: Is the interest rate the only thing that matters when I'm borrowing?

Daniel: I think that's a bit of a rage-bait question for me, because if you've even listened up to this—53 minutes now—you'll know that there's so much more to your borrowing than your interest rate. It's super important because it dictates the cost, but more important is the structure—how you plan to pay the loan off, how long you're going to take to pay the loan off, if you need to use any other products, like revolving credit, offset loans, that sort of thing. Because if your loan's not set up properly, you could be on a percent lower interest rate, but if you haven't set it up properly to your goals, you'll end up paying more interest in the long run. So, it's not the only thing, but it's in the top one or two things.

Rory: Yeah, obviously it can't be the only thing, right? Different fixed terms have different rates, so structure's really important.

Daniel: This is a really good one for young people for insurance: "ACC covers everything."

Rory: That's really common, right? Accident Compensation Corporation—the clue's in the name, they cover accidents.

Daniel: So if you fall off your Lime scooter, you get a bit of coin.

Rory: Yeah, you get a bit of ACC, a bit of physio. It's income replacement as well. ACC is awesome, it's compulsory, everybody pays into it. But yeah, that's false. Private insurance is about covering illnesses, for example. So ACC is really great and we're lucky to have it in New Zealand, but it doesn't do anything if you get sick.

Daniel: If you get cancer, ACC's nothing—you'll be on a sickness benefit, and the roof over your head will be in jeopardy. My space is a little bit doom and gloom, but I try to make it a bit sexy in terms of protection.

Rory: A hundred percent. We make it a bit more exciting, but we look at dreadful scenarios—what ifs—and then we can just...

Daniel: Not to interrupt, but just like you were mentioning now, the doom and gloom thing—the thing that's so exciting about insurance and why we love it being a part of our business is that you can actually lock in your retirement. With insurance you can say, "Okay, if something goes wrong, I'm still going to have X when I retire, based on this plan, or I'm still going to leave my legacy when I retire." So you start from today, you pay the fee, but then, "My legacy's locked in," and there's nothing quite like it.

Rory: No, a hundred percent. Give me one.

Daniel: Alrighty, this will be the last one, Daniel, but I'm actually going to give you a KiwiSaver one. "All KiwiSaver providers are the same, or like, yeah, well, that's pretty general."

Rory: Well, it's false, because there are so many—I think there are 60 different providers. I'll fact-check myself, but there are quite a few different options you can go with for your KiwiSaver, and some of them are very similar, but then there are some that are completely different. What's very trendy right now is the ones that are investing in different asset classes, for example, cryptocurrency—the banks haven't really gotten into that yet, those alternative asset classes. Then the types of products that you have. The providers aren't the same, and your adviser's a really good place to start to compare them. A really quick and simple way to just notice how different they are is to jump on sorted.org.nz. They've got a really good KiwiSaver comparison tool and it pretty much lists out all the KiwiSavers, says their last five-year returns, ten-year returns, their fees and compares them. That's not the tool that we use—we use something a bit more accurate and live to present to our customers—but it just gives you an insight to say, "Oh my gosh, it's such a big world out there." It's such an exciting time for KiwiSaver as well, especially if you are a young person and you're under 35 or 40 even, because what's happening now, the government's actually looking at increasing the KiwiSaver contributions. National's brought it up, but Labour mentioned KiwiSaver as well—hopefully they'll match that idea, because I think it's a great idea. 6% mandatory contributions—it's going to mean that people are actually sorted for their retirement, or just really set up, and it's just so crucial. The amount of people that I've met who don't have any personal savings, want to purchase their first home, but they've had the KiwiSaver for ten years and they've got that deposit just sitting there. What were they going to do without it? I'm so proud that we've got that, and excited about the future for that.

Daniel: A hundred percent. KiwiSaver is sort of like the ultimate set-and-forget product, and people often just default to a conservative fund. They got a job, they signed up for KiwiSaver and they've never looked at it again. If you don't look at it and you leave it for too long, you could be leaving massive amounts of money on the table.

Rory: A hundred percent worth having a chat.

Daniel: Hey, mate, this has been such an awesome conversation. I've really enjoyed it. It's been so good to reflect on two and a half years of Blueprint. Mate, we'll do another reflection episode when we hit the hundred, eh? Or is it 50 maybe?

Rory: I don't know, 50 mate.

Daniel: Yeah, 50. But it's been great, it's been so good. We've got the Christmas party tomorrow. Hopefully we're still employed by Blueprint tomorrow.

Rory: Well, the edit won't come out until next week.

Daniel: Yeah, so this can all be, "We're no longer working at Blueprint." No, absolutely joking. It's going to be awesome, and here's to a great 2026.

Rory: A hundred percent, mate. Big things are ahead and I'm very excited.

Daniel: Awesome.