A reminder from lower league football (and my six year old) about the under-rated power of relatable human connection

Saturday was – genuinely – one of the best days of my life. A real #proud dad day.

My eldest, Miles, is absolutely obsessed with #football. All he wants to do is play football. When everyone else is too tired to play, he only wants to watch football or look at his football cards. He’ll only wear football kit (much to Philly Middleton ). Living relatively locally, we’ve become pretty regular attendees at Oxford United Football Club #Kassam Stadium. And the #Yellows are having a pretty decent season – so much so that Miles thinks Oxford are pretty much unbeatable.

So for Christmas we bought him a mascot experience at Oxford United. He was originally due to take it earlier in the season but he got chicken pox that week so we had to postpone to Saturday. That turned out pretty well given that Saturday was pretty much the first sight of sunshine we’ve had this year, not to mention a 5-0 victory against high-flying Peterborough United Football Club .

And what a day Miles (and his proud Dad) had. I couldn’t recommend the mascot package at Oxford United more highly. It’s brilliant #valueformoney. Miles (and I) spent 2.5hrs pre-game with unbelievable pitch-side access and brilliant engagement from the players. Then to see Miles run out with (the eventual Man of the Match) Josh Murphy and shake hands with the referee and opposition brought tears to my eyes.

But having spent time reflecting on the success of the day, I can’t help but focus on a small – but really important – element of how Oxford United ran the experience. Whilst Miles is obsessed with football, he’s also pretty shy and gets really nervous about situations that are new to him. So running onto the middle of a pitch with 10,000 spectators watching was a pretty big deal! Yet Oxford United in the Community approach really helped settle his nerves – the staff they had hosting the experience was made up of a mix of 2 adults, and 3 kids that host the experience every week. So they’ve got “someone like Miles” helping run the experience, help settle his nerves. They could relate to Miles and Miles took confidence from their ease and confidence.

?As I’ve reflected on how powerful that small feature of the mascot experience was for Miles, I’ve also been reflecting on how critical it is that if I’m to help achieve my ambition of demystifying the #wealthmanagement category, then I need to place relatable human connection at the heart of everything we do. At Evelyn Partners our USP is our people. The #relationships our people have developed with our clients are deeply personal and rightly are sacrosanct. We need to do more to celebrate that. We need to do more to demonstrate to our potential clients that dealing with Evelyn Partners is dealing with “someone like me”.

As a category we’ve definitely got more work to do to ensure that our advisor base truly reflects the #diversity of our clients – but frankly, show me a category where there’s not work to do. As an aside on this topic, I was delighted to have been asked this week to Exec Sponsor our LGBTQI+? Network “PROUD” supporting the great work that Adam Stephens and Jess Green have been doing as Network Chairs.

The lesson about demonstrating relatable connection has obvious application within how we show up in our #marketing activity. But it’s just as critical throughout all of our business activity. Are we thinking about which advisor might best relate to the client when assigning relationship managers? Are we communicating with our clients in a way that they properly understand and can relate to? Are we putting ourselves in our client’s shoes when thinking about their experience with us as a brand?

For a topic as personal and as important as wealth creation and preservation, it’s so critical we demonstrate we can relate with our clients.