You can’t help yourself, can you. Big pink elephant in your noggin right now. Look, she’s dancing now. A big ol’ elephant dancing away and you. Just. Can’t Stop. Thinking. About. Her.  Behold the intoxicating power of Update writing. 

Known as Ironic Process Theory (IPT), this is a pretty simple paradox whereby the mere notion of suggesting that one *doesn’t* think about something, actually has the opposite – and often more intense – effect. In simple terms, it’s all to do with there being no such thing as a psychological negative, you can’t just go around ordering people not to think about something. You must provide an alternative.  

Two reasons why I’m thinking about this kind of pseudo-intellectual flim-flam:  

1. Been a terrible sleeper for years and I’m all out of financial services legislation to read. Instead, I’ve turned to a very niche cul-de-sac of late-night internet video (Dear reader: please be very wary of other late-night internet cul-de-sacs) on paradoxes and the like. Who’d have thought there’s a whole sub-genre of videos aimed at confusing people to sleep. I’m talking 3-hour long videos while yer narrator talks big metaphysical scientific puzzles. Like, what even is emptiness? What are the implications of quantum entanglement? And when will Dunfermline Athletic score more than one goal?   

2. That led me into the mindset to create my own paradox. Are you ready? Nelson’s 27^th law of Metaphysics: “If enough professionals on LinkedIn tell me not to do something, mankind will reach an irreversible event horizon whereby he will do the equal and opposite thing”. Or in Layman’s Terms, scores of financial planners coaching me to not think about market volatility, will immediately send me to obtain a pension valuation.  

If, like me, you spent any amount of time on LinkedIn last week you won’t have missed the volume of posts responding to the wee orange man playing tariff poker. Many different flavours along the same line of…look away…it’ll be fine…the market will do what it always does…the market doesn’t listen to your politics…ride it out…remember all of our coaching etc.  

Each one as agreeable as the other. But the aggregate effect of *so* many of them? It left me powerless to do anything but scratch the insatiable itch. To my lang cat pension valuation I traversed. Many times.   

The inquisitive reader of this Update will have reached the central flaw to this argument. LinkedIn isn’t representative of the advice/client relationship, is it? Fine for me to flounce around on social media with my curated list of content and contributors, no doubt algorithmically influenced by all the research we do with the profession.  

Still unable to shake the sense of unease I turned to a few of my trusted pals in advice to get their opinion. What did they, actual professionals doing the actual advice, think of all the sector noise? Two quotes have stuck with me since which I Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v here with their permission: 

• “It creates unnecessary noise, unnecessary panic. The markets go up and down every day. Trump is always going to be doing something stupid and if you have your planning in place then short term volatility doesn’t matter” 

• “A lot of it reads to me like they’re reassuring themselves” 

That second one in particular has been earworm ever since. What an… interesting perspective. Is there merit in it? Maybe. I reckon there’s a few dynamics at play.   

1. The profession has been battered by legislation for yonks. Disclose better. No, not like that. Like this. Or like this. Remember 10% drop letters? That was a hoot, right? 

2. Moreover to that, if we’re talking straight, the profession has had to listen to critique of it not being professional enough for decades.  

3. However accurate or otherwise that ever was, the truth is that intangible, subjective things like value for money and trust are phenomenally difficult to prove. It might even belong on one of those 3-hour videos.  

4. News cycles focus on the negative more than the positive cos that’s how news works.  

5. The advice profession is fractured into a handful of huge firms and thousands of small ones. No wonder it seeks a bit of peer review and reassurance (we’ve got some interesting stats on that on platform due diligence by the way)  

Let’s press pause for a second, put the industry aside for a minute, and get to what’s important. What do clients think? If you’ve seen me on stage, you might have heard me wang on about the notion that against other sectors, I’d bet my mortgage that satisfaction levels (knowing what I know from our Advice Gap and Fair Value work) with advice would be the envy of other professions. 

I swear I’m going to address a proper comparison properly one day but in writing this I did a quick skoosh around the net for comparative data and found a few interesting bits. Research within the legal profession in 2024 showed that 70% of consumers rated their transaction as value for money. Well below our findings with advised customers. 

IPSOS research conducted in 2022 took a global look at trust levels towards certain professions. In one of the clearest cases of “least worst” on record, doctors topped this list with only 59% of the public rating them as trustworthy, scientists and teachers following narrowly behind. Financial Advice, so often an overlooked career (something we’re gonna poke at later this year), wasn’t on the list.  

When you shake all that out can you blame folk for turning to social media to restate the good they do and offer a bit of reassurance? Hard to argue with.  

But listen, what do I know, right? I’m a guy that can’t even sleep and I’m too cowardly, cowardly custard to ever be in charge of client money. You lot in advice keep doing what you’re doing and I’ll do whatever it is I do.  

But for the love of God will you PLEASE stop thinking about that Elephant.  

Your music choice for today has to be Elephant by the imperious Tame Impala. The Wiggles cover is genuinely excellent too and you should listen to that after and compare notes.