Sep 23, 2026 · 44 min · 10 segments
What actually makes a gym a good business? It isn't necessarily the one with the most members or the biggest monthly turnover. In this episode, I'm joined again by Gareth from Coach Accounts to talk…
Jim O'NeillHost
what has to be in place for you when you're working with a client Gareth and you're like this person is ready to start maybe taking their investing a bit more serious
I've actually got this is going to sound like a sales pitch by the way this is not a sales pitch in any way shape or form right but I created this thing when I first started I called it the five pillars for security right that sounds really wanky but essentially it's it was by the time you got to stage five you then had the freedom to then either pay yourself more money start freely spending cash and etc and it was basically I went through this kind of basis of if I sit there with an individual and I look at the whole financial picture I want to assess like of where they are securely so like first things first essentially is the very basic one do you make enough money to survive and get by day to day because if you can't put food on the table been off investing in pensions and stuff like that somebody will tell you might need a pension but see if you can't have food on the table right no right come on then you go to stage two and it's like financial security essentially your family so that's things like like making sure you've got things like income protection insurance in place um in terms of your business so making sure that you're basically income is secure you're paying for a service that if your income was to drop you're going to be able to replace that income so for a self-employed individual or a limited company you would want something like an executive insurance income protection insurance policy because if you get really sick or ill and then or get really badly injured in a way that you cannot work you have an insurance policy you can use to supplement your income although businesses don't know that it's really important you do that especially if you're so
it exists it's not cheap but it's worth it because essentially especially just so it's different it's harder to obtain if you're a dual business like multiple employees but if you're a sole business owner that's generally what they call an executive insurance policy for their like you can get that in place and what that basically does is it's it can be upwards of 100 plus pound a month but basically if something happens to you You've got an insurance policy.
And there's no lose all your clients insurance policy.
It's like something has to physically happen to you that you cannot physically work.
There's a policy to get in place.
And after that, it's in family things like making sure you've got life insurance policies in place and things for you should you die, et cetera, for your family.
And then the fourth pillar for me is always short term debt should be prioritised and paid off.
Now, people have their own opinions on this, right? I'm quite a very conservative financial person in terms of the way I see things financially.
And what I mean by that is there's long term debt, which is obviously things like mortgages and that, you're never going to pay those things off before you start investing.
Things like credit card debt, store card debts, maybe not car loans that's maybe a bit different because they're a bit more kind of medium to longer term but any short-term debts you've got i really am a big fan of ensuring that you get all them paid off as aggressively as possible prior to any investment or even pensions and people go pensions you need to get a pension early but yeah but see once you've eventually got these debts paid off you can then start to throw all that extra money into investing in pensions, that front-loading it.
But what I find with a lot of people is it's all psychological.
Like if they've got a million moving parts, they've got debts here and pensions here, it gets overwhelming and confusing.
So when you sit down, it's like, right, cool, let's get the short-term debt paid off.
How much have we got? We've got a thousand pounds a month disposable income, right, cool.
Let's throw all that at debts, right? And then once that's done, we've then got all this disposable income that can go towards pension, it can go towards things like investing, etc., and once you're at that point that's where you can start to make those kind of free choices because you've got more enough money to survive today you've got no short-term debts you've pretty much covered yourself in the event of illness security or death and your family secure for there it's like right cool now let's go off some fun with money say fun you're going to put that in a market and kind of sit there and go up and down a daily basis on a graph but you know what i mean what what about like an emergency fund that would actually that would that's that's what would fall that would fall into kind of part one where years ago so emergency fund for me is now i i will not take credit for this i will not take care of this this is a complete dave ramsey thing if you stole if you see this online if you see dave ramsey but thousand pounds emergency fund is the very first thing you should build up essentially there a thousand pound emergency fund and once you've got that kind of thousand pounds emergency fund i would still be prioritizing once you've got the thousand pounds set in reserve i would then still be prioritizing paying off the short-term debt once that's done a good emergency fund is probably something like three months in reserve expenses but i'm also not going to sit here and say you need to have three months sitting in reserve all your short time that paid off when you start putting a pension and investing i'm not i don't think that's realistic either so i'm like right cool basic the thousand pounds doesn't get you that far these days but something like a thousand pounds on reserve should the car break you need a new tire should the boiler go or something and then for there we then just go up the ladder essentially and build up to there and then obviously over time we're trying to build up that pot and that emergency fund but I wouldn't like a lot of people go oh you need to have three months in reserve and stuff that's unrealistic that could take a year to get that and then all the lose you've lost out on all this potential compounded interest the only reason I say pay off short-term debt first before you go to the market is because you're paying interest you know I mean you're paying interest in those debts but
what has to be in place for you when you're working with a client Gareth and you're like this person is ready to start maybe taking their investing a bit more serious
I've actually got this is going to sound like a sales pitch by the way this is not a sales pitch in any way shape or form right but I created this thing when I first started I called it the five pillars for security right that sounds really wanky but essentially it's it was by the time you got to stage five you then had the freedom to then either pay yourself more money start freely spending cash and etc and it was basically I went through this kind of basis of if I sit there with an individual and I look at the whole financial picture I want to assess like of where they are securely so like first things first essentially is the very basic one do you make enough money to survive and get by day to day because if you can't put food on the table been off investing in pensions and stuff like that somebody will tell you might need a pension but see if you can't have food on the table right no right come on then you go to stage two and it's like financial security essentially your family so that's things like like making sure you've got things like income protection insurance in place um in terms of your business so making sure that you're basically income is secure you're paying for a service that if your income was to drop you're going to be able to replace that income so for a self-employed individual or a limited company you would want something like an executive insurance income protection insurance policy because if you get really sick or ill and then or get really badly injured in a way that you cannot work you have an insurance policy you can use to supplement your income although businesses don't know that it's really important you do that especially if you're so
it exists it's not cheap but it's worth it because essentially especially just so it's different it's harder to obtain if you're a dual business like multiple employees but if you're a sole business owner that's generally what they call an executive insurance policy for their like you can get that in place and what that basically does is it's it can be upwards of 100 plus pound a month but basically if something happens to you You've got an insurance policy.
And there's no lose all your clients insurance policy.
It's like something has to physically happen to you that you cannot physically work.
There's a policy to get in place.
And after that, it's in family things like making sure you've got life insurance policies in place and things for you should you die, et cetera, for your family.
And then the fourth pillar for me is always short term debt should be prioritised and paid off.
Now, people have their own opinions on this, right? I'm quite a very conservative financial person in terms of the way I see things financially.
And what I mean by that is there's long term debt, which is obviously things like mortgages and that, you're never going to pay those things off before you start investing.
Things like credit card debt, store card debts, maybe not car loans that's maybe a bit different because they're a bit more kind of medium to longer term but any short-term debts you've got i really am a big fan of ensuring that you get all them paid off as aggressively as possible prior to any investment or even pensions and people go pensions you need to get a pension early but yeah but see once you've eventually got these debts paid off you can then start to throw all that extra money into investing in pensions, that front-loading it.
But what I find with a lot of people is it's all psychological.
Like if they've got a million moving parts, they've got debts here and pensions here, it gets overwhelming and confusing.
So when you sit down, it's like, right, cool, let's get the short-term debt paid off.
How much have we got? We've got a thousand pounds a month disposable income, right, cool.
Let's throw all that at debts, right? And then once that's done, we've then got all this disposable income that can go towards pension, it can go towards things like investing, etc., and once you're at that point that's where you can start to make those kind of free choices because you've got more enough money to survive today you've got no short-term debts you've pretty much covered yourself in the event of illness security or death and your family secure for there it's like right cool now let's go off some fun with money say fun you're going to put that in a market and kind of sit there and go up and down a daily basis on a graph but you know what i mean what what about like an emergency fund that would actually that would that's that's what would fall that would fall into kind of part one where years ago so emergency fund for me is now i i will not take credit for this i will not take care of this this is a complete dave ramsey thing if you stole if you see this online if you see dave ramsey but thousand pounds emergency fund is the very first thing you should build up essentially there a thousand pound emergency fund and once you've got that kind of thousand pounds emergency fund i would still be prioritizing once you've got the thousand pounds set in reserve i would then still be prioritizing paying off the short-term debt once that's done a good emergency fund is probably something like three months in reserve expenses but i'm also not going to sit here and say you need to have three months sitting in reserve all your short time that paid off when you start putting a pension and investing i'm not i don't think that's realistic either so i'm like right cool basic the thousand pounds doesn't get you that far these days but something like a thousand pounds on reserve should the car break you need a new tire should the boiler go or something and then for there we then just go up the ladder essentially and build up to there and then obviously over time we're trying to build up that pot and that emergency fund but I wouldn't like a lot of people go oh you need to have three months in reserve and stuff that's unrealistic that could take a year to get that and then all the lose you've lost out on all this potential compounded interest the only reason I say pay off short-term debt first before you go to the market is because you're paying interest you know I mean you're paying interest in those debts but
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
