Well it’s me again and no pink elephants, nor bunnies dispensing chocolate eggs in the night. Speaking of which, I am reduced to stealing chocolate from my children; I must have been extremely Bad over the last year as I received no chocolate eggs At All. Not even the manky, punishment-beating Caramac ones which everyone knows are coming down to 99p at 12.01am on Easter Monday.  It’s a frankly suboptimal state of affairs.  

I was sad last week to not have the chance to go see Ghost in Glasgow; I’m a sucker for a big stage show and they’re the best in the world right now I reckon. Sadly the Ticketbast*** curse got me and it wasn’t to be unless I fancied paying eleventy bajillion pounds for some made-up VIP experience. (Don’t worry, those of you affected by the news at the weekend, even I wouldn’t give you Ghost for the music choice this week). 

Anyone who likes Ghost knows there’s a whole ongoing story (which fans call ‘lore’) with the band; Tobias Forge, the singer, has had a range of, er, identities over time and the rest of the band are known as Nameless Ghouls – to be honest Ghost is a solo project and the band rotates over time. Forge always appears masked onstage and until a few years ago his identity was secret; that stopped and now, for this new tour, his mask isn’t full face any more to the horror of die-hard fans. Incredibly – or maybe not in the Age of Stupid in which we live – he’s had some people genuinely angry that he’s not keeping going with the full-face, proper scary mask stuff like I suppose Slipknot and others do. 

This is a kind of long story but there’s a purpose behind it, hang on… 

The reason he’s stopped doing what he was doing is that he’s been getting claustrophobic when wearing the mask – you can see him talking about it here. It had got so bad that it was either ditch the fun masks or stop appearing onstage altogether, and that wouldn’t do the pension fund any good at all, now would it?  

This is to do with toe-stubbing. Forge is a smart guy, has a franchise to protect and has been gradually stripping away layers of the artifice he’s built around himself so that he can be himself a bit more (still hugely theatrical mind) and just…relax a bit. He’s made it. No point in thrashing yourself trying to be something you’re not or pretending you’re not bothered about something that genuinely is affecting you. And as long as you do it in the right way your crowd will come with you. 

Here comes the pivot.  

I’ve been reading about firms having doubts about who they’re selling to, whether consolidator models are good for clients and so on. That’s an easy one: far too many aren’t great. Some are horrible. Some are alright. A few are excellent. 

We all know of firm owners who’ve experienced what I’m calling “seller’s regret” – the sort of feeling you get when you have to look clients in the eye and either hand them over to someone you don’t think has their best interests at heart or who will be moving them to a much more expensive proposition any moment now. That feeling transcends the slightly higher sale multiple you might have got here rather than there, and it has to do with…toe-stubbing and not being true to what almost all advisers I’ve met really are, which is fierce advocates for your clients. 

We did some client research with Quilter Cheviot a wee while back and found that about three-quarters of advised clients have not a scooby about what their adviser’s plans are for succession, sale or anything else. One view of course is they don’t have a right to. Another view – like this guy’s – is that you absolutely need to bring the crowd with you and if you don’t then toes will get stubbed, the mask will slip anyway and that’s when problems start. And those problems often include client attrition which hurts the multiple you thought you were going to get anyway.  

If you go to a Ghost show you know what you’re going to get, even if the Ghouls are a whole new set, and the mask has slipped. That consistency keeps the crowd coming back, and it’s that consistency that is so often missing when a firm decides to sell up. Not in terms of platforms, or MPS’s or whatever, but in terms of the approach; in terms of what it feels like to be there. Feels like bringing folk along with you might not be a daft move.  

And your music choice is a lovely thing from the equally lovely Kate Rusby who has a new record out on Friday. Kate is stripped back and folky sometimes and at other times is dreamy and drifty and under that blanket of reverb I may have talked about before. I’m very fond of the latter in particular, and this is a great example of that and with a distressingly uplifting and soppy sentiment (for me at least) too. Please enjoy deeply of Today Again. You’re back to metal next week.