Predictable appointments for Tribeca - full funnel already built below.

First up, thank you for booking your get to know you call. It's a real step, and it usually means you've reached the point where you want a proper picture of what your retirement actually looks like, rather than a rough hope that it'll all work out.

So I'll tell you what the call actually is, because it's probably calmer than you're bracing for. It's a phone chat, no more than half an hour, and the whole point is for one of our advisers to get to know you. Where you're at, what you're carrying, and what you actually want the back end of your working life to look like. There's no plan thrown at you and nothing to sign. If we're a fit, the adviser will tell you what working together would look like. If we're not, they'll tell you that just as honestly, because we'd rather send you off in the right direction than talk you into something that isn't for you.

You should already have a confirmation with your time and the details to join, so keep an eye out for that. Over the next few days we'll also send you a couple of short emails. They cover the questions that come up on nearly every one of these calls, so nothing catches you off guard when you actually speak with us.

Before then, the most useful thing you can do is sitting right below this video. There are a few short clips on the questions people ask us most, things like whether the advice is genuinely worth the fees, whether any of this even applies if you're not wealthy, and what happens if your accountant already does some of it. Have a look through the ones that matter to you. That way we're not spending the call covering the basics, and your adviser can put the whole half hour into your situation instead.

Watch a few of those, and one of our advisers will take it from there. We're glad you're here.

People sometimes book one of these and then spend the week dreading it, because they're picturing a finance bloke in a suit running spreadsheets at them. That's genuinely not what this is.

The get to know you call is a conversation. One of our advisers spends the time understanding two things. To start with, where you're at right now, your super, what you've built, what's still on the mortgage, that sort of thing, at a level that's comfortable rather than a forensic audit. Then the part most advisers skip, which matters just as much. What do you actually want your money to be for? For one person that's stopping work five years earlier than they thought they could. Someone else wants to travel properly while they've still got the energy, or just to stop lying awake wondering whether they've left it too late. Your adviser wants to hear that part, because the numbers only mean something once they know what you're aiming at.

By the end of the call you'll have a clear sense of whether we're the right team for you, and a straight read on whether there's real work worth doing on your situation. If there is, the adviser will walk you through what the next step looks like and what it costs, with nothing hidden. If there isn't, they'll say so.

No plan gets built on this call and you won't be asked to commit to anything. It's a chat to see if we click and if we can genuinely help. Come as you are, talk it through, and you'll know a lot more at the end of it than you do now.

This is the question almost everyone is thinking and not many ask out loud, so I'll give you the honest version of it.

Good advice has to pay for itself, otherwise what's the point. So we put an actual target on that. Our Value Factor is the goal of returning four to six times our fees back to you in real value, through smarter strategy and tax, the way your money's structured, and the costly decisions you don't get wrong because someone who does this all day was in your corner. We don't promise a market return, nobody honest can. What we commit to is being worth multiples of what you pay us.

There's good independent backing for that too. Research from Russell Investments has consistently found that working with a financial adviser adds around 5.9% a year to a client's circumstances, once you account for better behaviour in tough markets, smarter structuring, and the costly mistakes that get avoided along the way. That's the part people underestimate. Most of the damage to a retirement isn't a bad investment, it's the years of drift, the panic decision in a downturn, the tax that didn't need to be paid.

And we don't make you guess at the cost either. Our fees are published right there on our website, which is rare in this industry. A discovery appointment runs between $660 and $990 including GST. If you go ahead from there, a full statement of advice starts from $6,600, and ongoing service starts from $550 a month. You'll know every number before you decide anything.

Whether it's worth it for you specifically is exactly what the call is for. Your adviser will be straight with you about whether the value is there in your situation, because we'd rather you walked away than paid us for advice that wouldn't have earned its keep.

This one we hear a lot, and it's worth pulling apart, because it stops a lot of people from getting help right when help would do the most good.

The idea that advice is only for the wealthy gets it backwards. If you've already got more money than you'll ever need, frankly you can afford to make a few mistakes with it. The people who get the most out of good advice are usually the ones for whom the decisions actually matter. You've worked hard, you've built something over a career, and there isn't an enormous buffer for getting the next decade wrong. In that situation, having the right structure and a proper plan changes how the rest of your life looks.

We don't have a published minimum, and we're not sizing you up by your balance. What we care about is whether we can genuinely add value for you, and whether you've reached a point where the decisions in front of you matter enough to be worth getting right. For most people thinking seriously about the next 10 or 20 years, they do.

The get to know you call costs you nothing and there's no obligation at the end of it. If we're not the right fit, your adviser will tell you honestly. So forget whether you're wealthy enough, that's the wrong yardstick. The real question is whether the choices ahead of you have become worth a proper conversation. For most people sitting where you are, they have.

Plenty of people who book these calls are sharp with money already. They've run their own super, they read up, they've got a good accountant. So this is a fair thing to weigh up, and we'll give you the honest version.

You can absolutely do a lot of it yourself, and some people do it well. Where it tends to come unstuck is that retirement planning isn't one decision, it's dozens of them stitched together over years, and the interesting part is how they interact. When you should draw down and from which pot, how your super and investments and any property play together come tax time, what happens to your partner if something happens to you. Most people can handle any one of those on a good day. Holding the whole picture, and keeping it updated as the rules and your life change, is the hard part, and it's where the costly misses tend to hide.

Your accountant is a different thing again, and a good one is worth their weight. But an accountant generally looks backward, at the year that's been, the return that's due. They're not usually mandated or set up to look 20 years forward and build the plan that gets you there. The best outcomes happen when your accountant and your adviser work together, and we're very used to doing exactly that.

So you don't have to hand everything over. Bring what you're already doing well to the call. Your adviser will tell you honestly where you're in good shape and where a second set of eyes would actually be worth the fee. If you're already across it all, they'll say that too.

This is a healthy thing to be wary about, because a lot of the financial industry earned that wariness fair and square. So I'll be plain about how we work.

The thing we're against, genuinely, is product-first advice, where someone decides what to sell you before they've understood your life, because the product is where their money comes from. That's the old industry status quo, and the whole firm was built to be the opposite of it. We start with you, what you want your money to do, and the life you're trying to fund. Strategy comes from that, and any product is just a tool that serves the plan once the plan exists.

You can check that we mean it pretty easily, because it sits in plain view. Our fees are published on our website, every range of them. You're paying us for advice, not buying a product off us with a commission baked in that you never see. When the way someone gets paid is out in the open, the incentive to push you into something is gone.

And the get to know you call is the proof of it. Nobody is going to pitch you a product on that call. It's a conversation to understand your situation and see if we can help. If at some point a particular product genuinely fits your plan, your adviser will explain why, what it costs, and what the alternatives are, and the decision stays yours. Come a bit sceptical. We'd rather earn the trust than ask for it.

You don't need to prepare much for this one, so don't let gathering paperwork become the reason you put it off. It's a get to know you call, not an audit.

That said, a few things make the half hour more useful if they're easy to lay your hands on. The big one is a rough sense of your super. Whatever you've got, including those old accounts from previous jobs that most people have half forgotten about, and your partner's too if you're looking at this as a couple. You don't need exact figures down to the dollar, a ballpark is plenty for a first chat.

Beyond that, it just helps if you've had a think about the softer side before you get on. Roughly when you'd like to stop working, or at least slow down. Whether there's a mortgage still ticking along. Anything that's been nagging at you about retirement, the thing that actually made you book this call. That's the stuff your adviser most wants to hear, because the numbers only matter once they know what you're aiming for.

So bring a rough picture and an honest answer to what you want the next chapter to look like. That's genuinely enough for a great first conversation.

Subject: Your get to know you call is confirmed
Send: Day 0, 5 minutes after booking

Thanks for booking. The calendar invite should already be sitting in your inbox.

If it hasn't arrived, have a quick look in your spam folder. Still nothing? Reply to this and I'll send it through again.

A quick word on what the call actually involves, since I'd rather set the expectation now than have you wondering on the day.

It's a relaxed first conversation, not a pitch. We use it to understand where you're at, what's prompted you to think about advice now, and whether we're genuinely the right fit for each other. Some people we speak to walk away knowing we're a good match and we carry on from there. Others realise their situation is simpler than they feared and they don't need us yet, and we'll tell them so. Either way you'll finish with a clearer read than you started with, and there's no obligation attached to any of it.

Over the next few days I'll send you a handful of short notes on the things people tend to sit on between booking and the call. Whether advice is actually worth the fees, whether this is only for people with a lot already behind them, why we're not built to push products at you, and where your accountant stops and a planner starts. Read them or skip them, whatever's useful to you.

Speak soon,

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: Why people actually book this call
Send: Day 1, morning

Quick follow-up to your confirmation.

The people who book a get to know you call with us tend to look fairly similar. Often in their 50s or early 60s, super built up steadily over a working life, a mortgage that's nearly gone, and usually planning alongside a partner. Retirement has stopped being some far-off idea for them. It sits somewhere in the next few years now, close enough to feel real.

What's interesting is why they get in touch, because it's almost never "I want a financial plan."

It usually sounds more like this. They've worked hard for a long time, they've got money in a few different places, and they don't actually have a clear picture of what retirement will look like or what it'll cost. Their super statement tells them a balance and not much else. They half-suspect they should have sorted this out years ago, so they keep putting it off, which only makes the feeling worse.

If that's roughly where you're sitting, you're in exactly the right place for this call.

We built Tribeca around financial wellbeing, which to us means the money serving the life you actually want rather than the other way round. The dollars only matter because of what they let you do, the security and freedom and the choices that come with them. That's the lens we'll bring to your situation when we speak.

Tomorrow I'll send a note on the question nearly everyone turns over before they talk to us, which is whether advice is genuinely worth what it costs.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: Is advice actually worth what it costs
Send: Day 1, evening

Following on from this morning's note.

The thing most people weigh up before they speak to us is simple. Is paying for advice actually worth it, or is it money that could stay in my own pocket. It's a fair question, and you deserve a straight answer rather than a sales one.

The honest version goes like this. Independent research from Russell Investments puts the value a good adviser adds at around 5.9% a year on a client's circumstances. Not as a market-beating promise, but across the whole picture, taking in your behaviour and your structure and your tax and the decisions you don't get a second go at. That number is the benchmark we hold ourselves to.

We take it a step further than most. Our stated commitment is what we call the Value Factor, which is to return four to six times our fees in value back to you. If we can't see a path to that for your situation, we'd genuinely rather tell you on the call than take you on.

And because the fees themselves are usually the part people can't get a clear answer on anywhere, we publish ours. A discovery appointment runs between $660 and $990 including GST. There's no mystery to it and nothing you have to drag out of us.

So the real question is less about fees in the abstract and more about your situation. Given everything you've built and where you want to end up, does paying for this advice pay for itself many times over. That's exactly what we work through when we speak.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: A straight answer on who advice is really for
Send: Day 2, morning

This is the one a lot of people are too polite to say out loud, so I'll say it for you. "Isn't financial advice really just for wealthy people?"

I understand where it comes from. For a long time the industry did itself no favours here, and the impression stuck. We've written about it openly, because it's probably the single biggest reason people who'd benefit from advice never pick up the phone.

The truth is that the people who get the most from good advice are very often the ones in the middle. You've built something solid over a career, you've got a few moving parts, and there's real money at stake in getting the next decade right. That's not "too small to bother." That's precisely the situation where a clear plan changes the outcome.

What actually matters has little to do with the size of the number you start with. It comes down to whether there's enough going on that a better-structured approach earns its keep. A couple a few years out from retirement, juggling super and a bit of mortgage and a question about helping the kids, has plenty going on. That's most of the people we sit down with.

If your situation turns out to be simple enough that you're fine carrying on as you are, we'll say so on the call. We've no interest in talking you into something you don't need.

Tomorrow, the "I'll just do it myself, or my accountant handles it" question, because that's usually the next thing people raise.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: Where your accountant stops and a planner starts
Send: Day 2, evening

A common one, and a sensible one. "Can't I just sort this out myself, or let my accountant handle it?"

For some people the honest answer is yes. If your situation is straightforward and you enjoy staying across it, you might not need much from us, and we'll happily tell you that on the call.

For most people who book with us, though, there's a gap they hadn't quite noticed.

A good accountant is worth their weight, and nearly all our clients keep theirs. What an accountant usually does is look backwards and keep you compliant. They handle your tax and your returns and your reporting, and they do it well. Plenty of them will tell you straight that the forward planning is a separate job from theirs.

The planning is the part that decides what your money should actually be doing. How your super is invested and whether it's working as hard as you did, how to draw an income across a retirement that might run 20 or 30 years, when to pay down debt versus invest, how much you can genuinely afford to help the kids without putting your own future at risk. That's a different discipline, and it's the one we're built around. We've got a team of nearly 30 across Melbourne and Sydney doing exactly this work every day.

Doing the lot yourself is possible too. It's just worth being honest that the rules shift, the decisions compound over decades, and the expensive mistakes tend to hide in the moves you only make once or twice in a lifetime.

We'll talk through where you genuinely need a hand and where you don't when we speak. No interest in selling you help you don't need.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: The 20-year holiday nobody plans for
Send: Day 3, morning

One more thought before we speak, and it's the one that tends to stick with people most.

Think about how much effort goes into planning a four-week holiday. You sort the flights and the bookings, you build an itinerary, you keep a running tally of who's doing what on which day. Weeks of care for one month away.

Retirement is a 20-year holiday, sometimes longer. And almost nobody plans it with anything like that care. Most people arrive at it with a rough balance, a vague hope, and a quiet worry they've left their run too late.

That's really what this call is about. Not products, not a sales pitch, but starting to put proper thought into the longest break you'll ever take. What it looks like, what it costs, whether your money is set up to fund it, and where the gaps are while there's still time to do something about them.

A client of ours, Fiona, put it better than I can. After we worked through what mattered to her and got the structure right, she was able to resign from a very stressful full-time job, knowing she and her partner would manage financially in both the short and the long term. That's the whole point of it. The money simply buys you the choice, and when we speak that's the conversation we'll start. Where you want the next 20 years to go, and whether what you've built will get you there.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: A note on how we actually get paid
Send: Day 3, midday

One more bit of context before the call, because it sits underneath everything else.

A few of the people I speak to have been burnt before by an adviser who turned out to be selling whatever sat on their employer's shelf. If that's part of your wariness, it's completely understandable, and it's worth me being clear about how we're built rather than just reassuring you.

The conversation with us starts with you, not with a product. We work out what actually matters to you first, then build the strategy around that. Sometimes the right answer involves changing very little, and we're set up so that's a perfectly fine outcome for us.

It's also why we publish our fees in the open. A discovery appointment is $660 to $990 including GST, advice is priced from there, and you'll never have to wonder what something costs or where a hidden commission might be steering the advice. When the fee is plain and on the table, no product needs to be sold to make up the difference.

I raise all this because an advice relationship lives or dies on trust. If you can't trust that the advice is genuinely in your corner, the strategy barely matters. We've built the firm around exactly that, and the call is where you get to test whether it rings true.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: A few practical notes for our call
Send: Day 3, evening (or 3 hours before the call)

Looking forward to speaking with you soon.

A few practical notes so we make the time count.

If you can, have a rough idea of your current super balance in your head, and your partner's too if they'd be part of the picture. Old accounts from previous jobs count, so worth a quick think about whether there are any of those floating around. If there's a mortgage or other debt, a ballpark figure is plenty. And if there's a specific thing driving this for you, a retirement date you've got in mind, a property, an inheritance on the horizon, just have it in mind. No documents needed, a rough sense of where things sit is enough.

On the call itself, we'll talk through where you're at, what's prompted you to look at this now, and whether we're the right fit to help. You'll come away with a clearer view of your options either way, and if we're not the right people for you, you'll know that too.

If something comes up and you need to move the time, just reply to this and we'll find another slot.

Talk soon,

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: The holiday almost nobody plans
Send: Broadcast, Tuesday

Most people will happily spend weeks planning a four-week holiday. You sort the flights and the bookings, you build an itinerary, you keep a running list of who's doing what on which day. All that care for one month away.

Retirement is a 20-year holiday, sometimes a good deal longer than that, and it's the one almost nobody plans with anything like the same attention.

We see it constantly. People arrive at the edge of retirement with a super balance, a rough hope, and a quiet worry they've left their run a bit late. The balance tells them a number. It doesn't tell them what kind of life that number actually buys, or for how long, or what happens if they want to stop work a couple of years sooner.

The fix isn't complicated, but it does take sitting down and looking properly. What do you want these next two decades to look like, and what will that cost you year on year. Is what you've built actually set up to fund it. Where are the gaps while there's still time to do something about them.

That's the whole of it. No product and no magic number, simply the same care you'd give a month in Italy, pointed at the longest break you'll ever take.

If you've been meaning to give it that thought and keep not getting to it, that's worth noticing. The planning is easier and far less daunting than the putting-it-off.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: The most expensive words in retirement planning
Send: Broadcast, Friday

"I'll sort it out closer to retirement." It's one of the most common things we hear, and one of the most expensive.

I understand the logic. Retirement still feels a way off, life is busy, and there's always something more pressing than sitting down with your super. So it waits. And waits.

The trouble is that the years right before you stop work are the ones doing the most behind the scenes. How your super is invested, how contributions are timed, what you do with a mortgage in the final stretch, how you structure the move from earning a wage to drawing an income. These are the decisions that shape what your retirement actually looks like, and most of them work far better with runway than in a rush.

Leave it all to the last minute and you don't get to use the very levers that mattered most. You just inherit whatever position you happen to have drifted into.

None of this means you've missed the boat if you're reading it late. Plenty of the people we work with started later than they'd have liked and still ended up in a strong spot. It just means the best version of "sorting it out" almost always starts earlier than feels necessary.

If "closer to retirement" has been your plan for a while now, it might be worth bringing that forward.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: Who financial advice is actually for
Send: Broadcast, Tuesday

"Financial advice is really just for wealthy people."

It's one of the most common things people believe about our industry, and it's worth pulling apart, because it stops a lot of people who'd genuinely benefit from ever picking up the phone.

I'll be straight. For a long time the industry earned that reputation. But the idea that advice only pays off once you've already got a fortune gets the whole thing backwards.

The people who tend to get the most from good advice are very often the ones in the middle. You've built something solid over a working life, with a few moving parts to it: super in a couple of places, maybe a bit of mortgage left, a question about helping the kids without hurting your own future. There's real money at stake in getting the next decade right, and hardly any of the calls are obvious ones. A clear plan changes the result in exactly that situation.

Independent research from Russell Investments puts the value a good adviser adds at around 5.9% a year across a client's circumstances. That figure doesn't only apply once you're rich. If anything it matters more when every decision counts.

So the real question was never "am I wealthy enough for advice." The better one is whether there's enough going on in your situation that getting it right is worth doing properly. For most people a few years out from retirement, the honest answer is yes.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: She didn't want more money, she wanted out
Send: Broadcast, Tuesday

I want to tell you about a client of ours, Fiona, because what she came to us for wasn't really about money at all.

On paper Fiona and her partner were doing fine. The thing wearing her down was a full-time job that had become genuinely stressful, and the fear that walking away from it would put everything at risk. So she stayed, year after year, because nobody had ever shown her whether leaving was actually safe.

Rather than starting with her portfolio, we started with what she wanted her life to look like, then worked out what that took and whether the numbers supported it. Once the structure was right and the picture was clear, she could see something she hadn't been able to see on her own. She could resign from that job and still manage financially, in the short term and the long term both.

The way she put it afterwards was simple. She finally knew they were going to be okay.

That's the part people miss about good planning. What it really delivers is permission, far more than a cleverer investment ever could. Permission to stop the stressful job, to take the trip, to help the kids, to retire a couple of years earlier than you assumed. The money was always just the means. What it buys you is the choice.

Most people never get to make those choices with any confidence, because they've never had the picture laid out in front of them. That's the bit worth fixing.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: The super question almost everyone avoids asking
Send: Broadcast, Friday

A member asked me recently, a little embarrassed, "should I already know exactly what my super is invested in?"

The honest answer is no, most people don't, including plenty who are very good at their jobs and very on top of the rest of their lives. So if that's you, you're in good and large company.

Your super statement is built to tell you a balance, not a story. It rarely makes plain what you're actually holding, whether it's working as hard as it could be, what it's costing you, or whether the way it's set up still suits the stage you've reached. You can do everything right at work for 30 years and still arrive near retirement with only a vague sense of what your biggest asset is even doing.

That's not a failing on your part. It's just how the system tends to present itself. But it does mean a lot of people are carrying a quiet unease about the very thing that's meant to fund their future.

The good news is that the gap between "I've no real idea" and "I understand exactly what this is and whether it's right" is usually one decent conversation wide. Not a lecture, not jargon. Someone walking you through what you've got, in plain English, and what it means for the life you're aiming at.

If that unease has been sitting with you for a while, you don't have to keep carrying it. A relaxed get to know you call is a perfectly good place to start, and it costs you nothing but the time.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial

Subject: The three words we hear most
Send: Broadcast, Tuesday

There's a phrase we hear more than almost any other when people first sit down with us. It usually comes out softly, often a bit apologetically. "I think I'm behind."

If you've said that to yourself, you're far from alone. It's probably the most common feeling people bring through our door, whatever their balance, whatever their age.

Worth reframing, though, because "behind" assumes there's a single fixed line everyone is meant to be at by now. There isn't. Your situation is yours. The right question was never "am I behind the imaginary average." It's "given exactly where I am, what's the best possible path from here."

And the best path from where you actually stand is almost always better than the feeling of dread suggests. We've sat across from people convinced they'd left it too late who turned out to have far more room to move than they realised, once someone laid the whole picture out and showed them which levers still worked.

The dread does one genuinely harmful thing, though. It keeps people from starting. They feel so behind that looking properly feels frightening, so they don't look, which guarantees they stay stuck.

So the only three words worth holding onto are these. Start from here. Not from the place you think you should have reached by now, but from where you genuinely stand today.

Ryan Watson
Founder & CEO, Tribeca Financial