Meet Jo Leaper. Jo is the Head of Operations Consulting at JANA Investment Advisors.

The following is a transcript that has been created using AI technology. Please forgive any grammatical imperfections it may have.

[00:00:00.190] - Jo Leaper
End of the day, you have to have the right safeguards in place around the assets, insurances like you, you lock on the gate, but if you can't get that gate robust and secure, what's it really going to do for you?

[00:00:16.410] - Camilla Love
Welcome, everyone, back to another the episode of Shares Not Shoes an Insider's Guide to Careers in Finance. I'm your host, Camilla Love, founder of Future Females in finance. Shares or Shoes is a podcast whereby I interview some of my favourite people, all with one thing in common. They work in finance. We lift the lid on who they are, how they came into a career in finance, and arm you with some knowledge about why a career in finance could be a good fit for you. I will promise that all my guests will share some amazing personal stories, will be open and honest and will inspire you. So let's go.

[00:00:55.870] - Camilla Love
Hi, everybody, it's Camilla Love and we are together again for another episode of Shares Not Shoes. And I'm super looking forward to chatting with today's guest. So I believe that this guest has one of the most interesting roles in the industry because she gets to uncover and go into other organisations and pick things apart and put things back together again, which, as a jigsaw enthusiast, I love to do. So welcome to shares not shoes, Jo.

[00:01:27.930] - Jo Leaper
Thank you very much. jigsaw enthusiast myself.

[00:01:32.710] - Camilla Love
Oh, I love them. I love them. I gave my mum the Jackson Blue Poles one and I think she's still going.

[00:01:40.990] - Jo Leaper
We had horrible one for my father in law and it literally had no edges and no edges. Bonkers. No edges.

[00:01:48.330] - Speaker 3
Was it circular? What was it?

[00:01:49.680] - Jo Leaper
It's sort of an elongated globe shape and, yeah, he passed a few years ago and it was still incomplete. So we took it on and we moved into his place for a while while we're renovating. And we said, Too hard, can't do it.

[00:02:03.330] - Speaker 3
But don't you like just the one piece or the two pieces a day and then you go away and come back again?

[00:02:09.970] - Jo Leaper
I still got my coverage from Lockdown. It's on one of those felt roll up things and so I'm convinced I'm going to get it done, but I just haven't got there. Life got back on track and jigsaws have sort of fallen to the side a little bit. So I need a good quiet weekend of lockdown and brain working properly to actually sit down and get stuck into it.

[00:02:26.910] - Speaker 3
Yeah, clear brain hard to find. So, Jo is the head of Operations Consulting at Jana Investment Advisors, and Jana is an asset consultant and advisor to large ship reannuation and pension funds here in Australia. And I even read that you managed a domestic cycling team here.

[00:02:48.870] - Jo Leaper
Oh, my God, I did. It's definitely going back a long way now.

[00:02:53.520] - Camilla Love
I'm a cycling widow. Okay, that is no mean feat, really.

[00:02:59.550] - Jo Leaper
No, it was pretty full on. So I met my husband Tom at uni. After Uni, he started cycling full time and every weekend we were here and there around the country for various bike races. And he won the Australian National Road Series Championship, which was a year long series, which got him a spot with the national team in Italy. So at this point. I finished Uni. I'd start at NAB and I was doing about six weeks in Europe each year with Tom. And then he was home from October to February and this back and forth romance for a long time and then we got engaged and I took a five year career break and was a cycling widow in Italy and the US. And then came home. At that point, he lost a bike and at one stage, his domestic club wanted to start a team and they wanted to to lead the team, and he's like, well, you know how all this works. So that's how I fell into domestic cycling management. Wow. Reasonably short period, but a couple of the riders that we worked, we ended up riding overseas and we had a pretty good programme going there.

[00:04:05.300] - Jo Leaper
I think we had seven riders at one point. All the bikes were provided, all that sort of stuff. That was definitely a very different grounding to what most people have in the industry. But it was a fun life.

[00:04:16.620] - Camilla Love
Totally. Living in Italy, eating too much pasta and pizza. How great would that be?

[00:04:21.160] - Jo Leaper
Really good tomatoes. Really good tomatoes. That's like the clearest memory. It's just that flavour of a really fresh tomato in Italy.

[00:04:32.630] - Camilla Love
Funny. We could be in the Italian sun right now.

[00:04:35.510] - Jo Leaper
That would be nice, because it's really cold in Melbourne today.

[00:04:38.610] - Camilla Love
We're going to go through and chat with Jo about her career journey and really delve into what operations is, why it was for her and why it could be a career for you. So let's take a step forward and tell me a little bit about you and about what you do on a day to day basis.

[00:04:57.890] - Jo Leaper
My day to day is incredibly varied and my background is very varied as you've worked out the cycling. But when I was overseas with Tom for that, I actually did my MBA very young and looking like I did it way too young, but because I couldn't get work visas while I was living in Italy and the US, and I didn't speak Italian, doing my MBA back then helped me sort of fill in my time, to be really blunt. Looking back historically. Well, I think the theory stuff that I learned was probably a little bit early in my career. The grounding and the time spent overseas really moulded who I am now. My background initially was actually HR.

[00:05:32.540] - Camilla Love
Yeah, right.

[00:05:33.240] - Jo Leaper
And so I did a HR management degree and I loved the strategy and the big thinking, and I hated hiring. Firing and training really wasn't me and I sort of dabbled in it for a very little bit and just went, oh, that's just not going to work. And so a friend's dad was working at a large bank and he was like, oh, they need someone in the mail room over summer. And I ended up at a custodian falling summer came around, really didn't like what I was doing in HR. Called and said, oh, I thought I didn't go on and leave again. Can I come back? And I was at Nas, including the career break, it was nearly ten years in the end.

[00:06:06.880] - Camilla Love
Yeah, right.

[00:06:07.500] - Jo Leaper
So that was I took a really long career break, but every time I came home with Tom, there was always casual work going, always contract work going. And so I fell into custody by accident and I loved it, but I realised how much kind of like a jigsaw. I like the EndToEnd process. I like seeing how things fit together and how one thing can impact another. And if I think back to what I used to love about HR and management, it was, how do you make the cogs fit better to get a better outcome? And that's what asset servicing was to me. And then I got into the client side of it, which I really love, because you make some lifelong friends, you meet some amazing people from there. I remember there being a tender consultant, come in and run a custody tender. And I went, oh, I really like what you do. And that was kind of the seed. It went from there.

[00:06:55.200] - Camilla Love
Great.

[00:06:55.660] - Jo Leaper
I worked at Access Capital with Jackie. You had Jackie Krausey on there.

[00:07:00.040] - Camilla Love
She is fab.

[00:07:01.090] - Jo Leaper
She's brilliant. I love that woman. We met there and then I ended up at Jana and started off with doing some custody tender advice. And now it's growing into this large team that doesn't just work with custodians, we work with asset managers, we work with our clients. And not just super funds, we work with charities and endowments and just help them make things work better.

[00:07:22.590] - Camilla Love
So talk to me about for those people who are out there who don't know, what is custody and what does operations entail in that segment?

[00:07:32.840] - Jo Leaper
Custody, by tradition, is holding someone's assets safe. And in the world that we live in, for a super fund or for a charity or an endowment, it's making sure that everything that's needed with those assets is done. Are they settled? Are they safe? Are they in the right location? Our cash flows manage properly and then there's tax and performance and other things on the back of it. So that's the real premise of operations in that sense. But what operations used to be, which was more of that bread and butter, is it all safe? Kind of space. Operations now? Within custody is, where are my assets held? Where is my data held? What risks am I exposed to? What are the challenges in China and Russia do to my assets and my books? What are my business continuity plans around those assets? How am I going to keep running my super fund or keeping my endowment and charity assets safe? Because there are real people beneficiaries behind all of those clients that need to get what they need out of those environments.

[00:08:24.790] - Camilla Love
And it's interesting because we talk a lot about cyber security, security within my organisation, and how that affects the safekeeping of assets. How do you view that segment? Because that's an area where I think financial services could do better per se, and it's a really important burgeoning segment of the sector.

[00:08:48.660] - Jo Leaper
It's growing so fast. It's one of those ones that we always look at is changing on a daily basis, not weekly or monthly. And you look at things like insurance around ourselves, is it even worth it for insurance? Because at the end of the day, you have to have the right safeguards in place around the assets. Insurance is like you lock on the gate at the end of it, but if you can't get that gate robust and secure, what's it really going to do for you? I think from a cyber perspective, our industry is an incredibly rich target, unfortunately, and we're very lucky that we do it as well as we do. But we have to get better and we have to get better faster at cyber. And so it's something that when we're looking at a custodian bank, they've got trillions of dollars to spend on this sort of stuff and that really is the benchmark for what we're looking for. Asset managers are doing the absolute best they can in that space, and so are our clients. But it's growing so quickly and evolving so quickly. You look at even things like spam calls that sort of went quiet during Covert.

[00:09:47.850] - Jo Leaper
And I don't know about you, but spam volumes or spam volumes are exploding post covet.

[00:09:53.470] - Camilla Love
Absolutely.

[00:09:54.470] - Jo Leaper
People are looking at different ways of easier money and so we have to be really conscious with cyber and really on top of our game.

[00:10:01.200] - Camilla Love
And you mentioned business continuity planning as well, and what does that mean in operations, particularly for your clients? Because we've seen business continuity planning as a really critical component of how we've worked throughout Covad. Have you advised your clients in that sector?

[00:10:22.190] - Jo Leaper
So, around COVID, we've been really lucky and fortunate that the groups that we work with, so the asset managers, the custodians, even our clients have been able to transition into covered really well. And BCP, or business continuity planning is meant to transfer in on a really quick and short term basis. And we often talk about transfer of work. So, for example, we have custodians who are in India and China, or they're in Poland or they're in Malaysia, and we want to see them turn that over really quickly. And fortunately, in those nations, or unfortunately, a positive hybrid of them being in those nations, is they're subject to a lot of natural disaster, things that we don't have to deal with. So you've got floods in Mumbai, type typhoons in Kuala Lumpur, that sort of thing. And so Covet was really hard on them from an economic perspective, but they were able to transfer work really, really well. I think for BCP now, we actually have to look at the bigger picture and look at the geopolitics of it. Costa RDS around the world that we all deal with are all located around the South China Sea.

[00:11:21.030] - Jo Leaper
There's challenges between Russia, Ukraine, India, up into the Ukraine Poland borders, and that's going to create a bigger challenge for BCP going forward. We have to start looking longer term at things like that, but also BCP. And the concept of remote work used to be really scary for a lot of businesses. And thankfully we're seeing a lot of businesses go, oh, we can do that. That's okay. And hopefully that is creating a concept of change around the globe that we haven't seen before because I think that will open our eyes to what else could be possible.

[00:11:51.790] - Camilla Love
Absolutely. And I thought the jigsaw analogy going back to that, and I know that in your role, you advise and assess your clients operations and where they can be better and where they can be helped or changed or whatever. So is there a one jigsaw piece that fits all or is there no? I think so.

[00:12:19.010] - Jo Leaper
That would be the drain, wouldn't it? This is your model. Off you go. Please play nicely. That would be lovely. We have a pillar foundation that we work with. So we look from an operational consulting, which is what we call the world that I work in. It's consulting on operations back to investors, as opposed to consulting to the investors themselves, being the asset managers, et cetera. So the bottom layer of that pillar is looking at the operations within Custodian banks because as I said before, these multi trillion dollar entities, they have a lot of cash, they should be able to do this well. And we take the learnings from them. And then we look at the asset management and go, well, you guys aren't that big, but you should be able to get to pretty good Practise and we try and roll that up. So we do take very similar components as that model, and then we try and right size it for the size and scale of the asset manager. So a boutique asset manager is going to be very different to some of the mega asset managers that are around the world. And you have different expectations on them, but you still want the best possible Practise they can do.

[00:13:15.670] - Jo Leaper
And then we roll it back into our clients who are smaller again. In a lot of cases. They might manage hundreds of billions of dollars. But they're small teams and they're usually run for member profit if they're in the industry superfund sector or we've got a diversified clients where we've got hospital foundations and charities and school endowments that are literally running on the smell of an oily rag because their beneficiaries really need the funds that are coming out of those groups. And so we try and give them the best possible Practise available. And so the foundations of what we do there is it has to be practical, you have to be able to implement it and you have to be able to assess it.

[00:13:51.980] - Camilla Love
And I think those three core premises are actually a really good sort of analogy and pretty much anything that you do in operations because it needs to be scalable, it needs to be applicable for the business and the culture that you're putting it into and also the funding, as you mentioned. Because really operations can be very expensive.

[00:14:17.660] - Jo Leaper
It can be really expensive, it can be really complex. When you've got those three foundational principles you can design it any way you like, provided you can keep to those principles. And all of a sudden Ops becomes an opportunity and it becomes a way of doing things a little bit different to try to think ahead of the curve. So we often talk about the investments guys at John. They're the why of investing. We want to invest with that manager because my team is the how of investing and how for manager A to Z is completely different the whole way through. But the same logic applies. And so when you say to someone well, how could you do it better? What would you do? Get that innovative thinking happening. All of a sudden Ops isn't just I'm ticking a box and going through my exercise, it's actually I'm designing the jigsaw, I'm trying to work out where the corners need to fit, I need some guardrails. But how I make that work within my culture to get better motivation, to get better outputs, these things actually kind of open up the world a little bit. And I think for people that are listening, who are looking at careers is that the operation side of finance isn't boring, it can be really dynamic.

[00:15:23.000] - Camilla Love
My way of putting it is essentially operations is extremely important to organisations within finance because they are your ticket to be in business. So you could have an absolute kickass investment team that's shooting the lights out. But if you don't have a strong, consistent and reliable operations team and framework to centre your business on, you don't get to play in the game at all, you're just not there.

[00:15:59.450] - Jo Leaper
It is also such a driver of culture for exactly that reason. Because if you do have a kick assessment team, which we all really want, and they can't get what they want to achieve to happen, if it's not translating to the numbers, you get demotivation, you get culture issues. There's often pay parity questions between investment and non investment staff anyway. So I can reinforce that divide really dramatically and you start to get a really tired organisation, because when the numbers aren't working the right way, it's harder to get out of bed in the morning, it's harder to get up and really enjoy your job. And so the culture and the motivation of the staff that you've got, whether they're ops or investments or risk or HR, otherwise, these have to come together really well. And opposite is kind of the glue that should be able to help make that happen.

[00:16:43.520] - Camilla Love
And I've been on the opposite side of the fence where our clients come in with advisors like you who run through our operations and our capability, and they ask us 350,000 questions with policies that I actually enjoy the thoroughness that comes from that assessment process, because I know that our clients think that operations is a critical part of our business. That's really important to me. Full stop.

[00:17:19.790] - Jo Leaper
Yeah. And look, it's one of those things that I look at and go, we do take a lot of your time. I know that our question is huge. My hands up will absolutely say that.

[00:17:28.820] - Camilla Love
500 pages?

[00:17:30.750] - Jo Leaper
God, I hope not. I'm really trying to get the numbers down, but what I take from it is I have a paying client at the end of it. I need to give them the best possible outcome and I need to work with the manager to get the best possible outcome. But what makes me tick is that if I can help a manager make a better outcome, I haven't just helped my client who's paying for the review. They get the benefit of relying on what we're saying and relying on what we're doing. A manager that makes a change or a custodian who makes a change based on something that we've had a conversation about becomes better for every single client in the market, for every single investor and every single beneficiary. And that's what makes us tick. That's how we get the depths that we're looking for. I mean, John is not always depth with difference. To me, that's where the depth of difference really comes from.

[00:18:14.810] - Camilla Love
So tell me, did you always know you wanted to come into finance? You said you fell into it.

[00:18:19.750] - Jo Leaper
No, that's not necessarily a line. No, finance is definitely a happy accident. So, no, finance wasn't what I wanted to do. And I actually deliberately chose an MBA majoring in finance and international business because I didn't want to do a CFA. I love the strategy in the bigger picture, I'm one of those people who actually likes to get up and go to work in the morning. It doesn't bother me at all. And it's one of those things where my job is so different every single day. Now, if I'm working on the one job for a long time, I get bogged down, really frustrated. I need variety. That's what makes me tick. And so if I'm close enough to be able to implement change. I'm a happy camper.

[00:19:02.780] - Camilla Love
Yeah. So I was going to ask, you have been at Jana for a long time now. Obviously, you love it and you love the environment and you love the people that you work with. So is that what's kept you there? Is the strategy piece what's kept you there? Or is it the people that you actually work with?

[00:19:20.210] - Jo Leaper
It's the people, it's the autonomy and it's the trust. They're the really big things for me. I've had some amazing mentors through January, inside and outside, and the analogy that I've used that isn't the most eloquent. So I apologise in advance is that you get enough rope, but no one will ever let you hang. You've always got a safety net. You've got an amazing support system that you can talk to and work with. The fact that John is willing to really look at the world a little bit differently, both internally and externally, makes me happy and they let me do what I want to do. How cool is that?

[00:19:53.530] - Camilla Love
Totally cool. And so knowing that that coolness is sort of disposed on you, do you dispose that coolness onto your team as well?

[00:20:02.270] - Jo Leaper
I have to. I can't do this on my own. I was on my own for this sort of stuff for quite a while. And I love the team that we've built, got some really smart people and they're so, so different, and that's the beautiful part of it. And we actually had a day and I called this morning, like, well, yeah, we're ticking some boxes. Race diversity, all that sort of stuff, neural diversity. But the fact that my team comes from completely different backgrounds is just amazing and that's what makes us work. We did a YouTube for someone who hopefully will take the job a little while ago and he's like, but what are you looking for? I'm looking for curiosity. I'm looking for someone who wants to go back to the jigsaw, who wants to work out the jigsaw. I don't want someone who's going to be ticking the box. And that's one of the things I love about Jana, is if you want to get involved in something, you can have that conversation and you can get involved in something.

[00:20:51.850] - Camilla Love
For all those people who are at uni or in mid career and looking for something new, how do you engage that curiosity? How do you even look for that curiosity when you're interviewing people?

[00:21:05.180] - Jo Leaper
It's really hard. And even talking to recruiters, how do you interview for curiosity? There's not a clear answer on that one. And I think particularly the interview process in general, it's very formal. It's really hard to get people to online and show their personality. So I think I'm getting a bit of reputation for going left to centre. I will often ask people what the weirdest ingredient is in their fridge that they used recently, what they're watching on netflix. People have got kids. What did you used to do pre kids? What do you miss doing? What are you doing next weekend? These sort of things just to try and find people's naturally curious trait. If it's in there, some people are naturally curious. That's okay. But I've really found more and more with interviewing. I have to go off topic to try and get a sense of the person. Because I can teach skills, I can't create personality. But if someone wants to just like to think a little bit freely, I think our industry can do with a lot more free thinkers. We're so governed by regulation to have some scope to genuinely change and innovate.

[00:22:11.250] - Jo Leaper
If we can find a way to capture that, that would be an amazing thing.

[00:22:14.890] - Camilla Love
Yeah, you're right. The industry has such a compliance mindset that you need to always be between two guardrails, which is fine, but to ask the questions on when you can step out of those guardrails and to actually explore that within an environment that's comfortable, it can be hard to do because it can be career limiting.

[00:22:41.130] - Jo Leaper
Right.

[00:22:42.190] - Camilla Love
Being able to ask hard questions and step outside that box, a lot of people don't want to take that risk.

[00:22:51.430] - Jo Leaper
I suffer from impostor syndrome badly. There are times I'm in the room going, oh my God, what am I doing here? I feel uncomfortable and I know I just have to do it. And one of the things with the team is trying to create an environment where they can ask questions and they can ask the dumb questions. Colleague and I had the same conversation yesterday. Those questions that we think are silly questions are actually usually the smartest questions in the room.

[00:23:16.830] - Camilla Love
Totally.

[00:23:17.550] - Jo Leaper
And to have the mountains to ask those questions or to be enabled to ask those questions, that's a really powerful tool. A really powerful tool. Because often in finance and investments and in Ops, we assume there's a level of knowledge around the table and sometimes there's not. And we have to make sure that those who don't understand can ask their questions because they'll go, that was actually a really good question and we didn't think of that. So sometimes going back to basics and that's how people learn as well. And we have to reeducate ourselves to make sure that we are listening to those people.

[00:23:56.040] - Camilla Love
Yeah, it's such a deep segment.

[00:23:59.890] - Jo Leaper
We're supposed to be lighthearted and fun.

[00:24:04.090] - Camilla Love
Let's go back to two stores. So maybe sort of slightly in the same area. But how do you find the right culture to work in for a workplace? And why is that important to someone who's looking for a new role out there?

[00:24:22.720] - Jo Leaper
For someone who's looking for a new role? I would try and turn the interview concept around a little bit. They are interviewing you, but likewise you need to be interviewing them. And that means asking insightful questions. And sometimes that's really hard some of us don't process information at the same pace. Those questions come to us later. There's no harm in reaching out. I have some follow up questions. Is that okay? Or if you get to the next round of the interview, make sure that you've noted down those questions that came to you at 03:00 in the morning. We use the concept of interview, interview and then coffee catch up. And the way I premise the coffee catch up with anyone who's interviewing, is that's really a chance to get to know the rest of Jana? Because I'll deliberately pair them up with someone who doesn't work in my team. He has an idea of what we do in some interaction with us, but they're really their sounding board of what's the rest of Jana life? And that's really important because if you don't feel safe and comfortable and accepted in an environment, you're not going to thrive.

[00:25:17.410] - Jo Leaper
And sometimes I think when you're first starting out in your career, you don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you're looking for, and you have to try it and see a few times. And if you're really fortunate, you find someone like I found at Jana, where you just fit and you feel like it's working and your voice is heard and you're given opportunities, and better yet, you get the chance to give others opportunities. So I'm a classic for saying I don't like doing people leadership, but I will happily sit down and coach and mentor till cows come home.

[00:25:48.610] - Speaker 3
I think that's how we started. I didn't like the HR piece in my degree, but now I love leading teams because I allow people to be authentic and to rise up to their own skill level and exceed it.

[00:26:02.600] - Jo Leaper
Yeah, and look, it's one of those things you look at corporate psychology and you go, oh, my God, that's such a dry topic because there's so much theory. But if I look at my HR degree, that's the element that I use all the time. What makes people tick? How do you motivate them? How do you get the best out of them? How do you make it fit in with their life, with their brain? Some people's brains are on at night, some people's brains are on in the morning. If you force them all into working in the same time frame, it's not going to work. How do you make sure they get their voice heard in a meeting? These things are so incredibly crucial, and sometimes we have to step back and work out how to make that work. We have to give it a little bit more airtime.

[00:26:38.590] - Camilla Love
Now, you mentioned Imposter syndrome, and we mentioned it a few times in our podcast before, but you come across as really confident, has Impostor syndrome. Tell me.

[00:26:54.370] - Jo Leaper
So if someone said to me once, everybody puts their pants on one leg at a time, and that's true, literally, unless you're sitting. On a chair, you can't sit there and put your pants on both legs at once. But I think I want to say it's a more female trait than male, but I know males that suffer from it just as much. It's that element of humbleness that I think comes with a really good culture that makes you go, oh, am I doing the right thing? Am I in the right place? Am I not going to mess this up? And Am I going to make it okay for everybody else? And I think imposter syndrome and humbleness is probably a bit more linked than what we think. And as a core value. To be able to respect the fact that the other person in the room that you're talking to has worked incredibly hard. In this case for all of her career and built this amazing thing. And now she's going back and talking to all these amazing students at Uni and how to get them to grow and get into an industry. You go.

[00:27:48.950] - Jo Leaper
Wow. I really respect that person. And I think there's a linkage there with imposter syndrome as well, because you have a natural recognition of what it takes to get where you've gotten to. And sometimes you'll just sit back and go, oh, my God, I've done all of that. If someone said to me, at 18, you're going to live around the world and be a cycling widow, and I wouldn't have believed it. And so much of life is just putting 1ft in front of the other. But I think with imposter syndrome, it's every now and then you catch yourself and look back and go, wow, I've done that. And that's pretty cool. And there's nothing more than, in my case, my kids and my dog, to humble me and make me realise what I've done in that place.

[00:28:28.270] - Speaker 3
It is cool to reflect, it really is. And to then bring up the next generation upon that reflection.

[00:28:36.640] - Jo Leaper
Yeah, that's the thing. It's something I still want to do more of in my career, is from the next generation forward, and I do a lot in terms of taking calls from people who are looking for staff and that sort of thing, and just, oh, that person could be good for that job, or that person. And I enjoy that side of it. It's definitely not HR, it's definitely not Hurry, but it's just that people connection. But I look at the new generations coming through and I think back to when we were sort of growing up in the industry and you had to be a jack of all trades, you had to get to know so much of everything, and yet people are being brought through University of you. This is step one, this is step two, this is step three. And I'd love for people, if they're interested, to reach out or just opening up their mind to a much broader subset of finance, because there is so much beyond. This is why I invest. There is so much that makes this industry tick that is not pure numbers.

[00:29:29.410] - Speaker 3
And that's what we're here to do at Fstre. And she is not. She is because whilst the numbers are great, there are so many other segments in finance that you can go into, whether you want to be a lawyer or whether you want to do MMA or whether you want to put up do debt funding and property or operations or whatever. It is a broad church. We accept all comers.

[00:29:53.310] - Jo Leaper
Yeah, absolutely.

[00:29:54.260] - Camilla Love
You just need to believe in yourself and just get amongst it, really, is my view.

[00:29:58.280] - Jo Leaper
Yes. At some point, you've just got to try and you're going to succeed and you're going to not succeed. And some days I'll feel like I'm succeeding and some days I will feel like I am floundering big time. Yes, exactly. And that's so much of what we do and how we learn, but I think we're raising our younger generations to have really high expectations and so we need to be that safety net. I talked about the hanging but not dropping. If we collectively can be that safety net and help them learn, help them grow, help them explore something different, they'll do amazing things.

[00:30:33.190] - Camilla Love
So true. And you mentioned a little while ago about how the workplace has changed over your time of your career. And I look back on my career and how the workplace has changed. What advice would you give the newest generation coming in to understand that over your career, you might have five or six different careers and the workplace will change dramatically over that period of time?

[00:31:01.870] - Jo Leaper
It definitely will. Personal connections is everything. I was really guilty for a really long time of keeping my work and personal life quite separate. I felt more comfortable that way and I think I'm enjoying this part of my career more because I feel like I'm in a workplace that is so much more encompassing, so much more holistic and connected will probably be the way to go. And I think for people coming in, that's really daunting, because I've got my workplace, I've got my home face. I might want to mix that social life, I might not. But along the way, you'll find some really trusted parties that will become friends for life, essentially. And they're the group that you go with. They're the ones that I still have any stuck. I'll email going, I need a hand. It's kind of like my trusted network, I guess, would be the way to put it. And I know that if I'm getting a staff member recommendation through one of those people, I'm almost certainly going to hire out of that group. Trust you got when you're talking to people, try to get built into the organisation so that you can learn from them and they can learn from you.

[00:32:16.820] - Jo Leaper
Because at the end of the day, trust and value breeds trust and value. That loyalty soft compound, and that includes having trust in yourself. And we've talked about imposter syndrome and sometimes I have to just force myself to drop it and try and do hard, try and do a little bit of it is, but we gotta try baby steps.

[00:32:33.670] - Speaker 3
I think sometimes.

[00:32:36.550] - Jo Leaper
It is true, but yeah, really good friends and a glass of wine after work sometimes, oh my.

[00:32:42.320] - Camilla Love
God, they're the bomb.

[00:32:43.890] - Jo Leaper
These things work.

[00:32:45.180] - Camilla Love
So I ask a question every time to my guests about the most valuable piece of advice that you've been given along your career and why. Maybe it was the time that it was delivered or maybe it's upon reflection, it actually is so meaningful. What was it and why?

[00:33:04.900] - Jo Leaper
So when I was at Nas, I was in a client service environment, client relationship person, and it was always outwardly servicing and coming to a consultant. It was a change of tone in what we were doing. And our now CEO Jim Lamborn gave me the advice of you are always better off to say when you're at the end of your knowledge base. It's part of that being humble. But whether it's a board or a trustee, whether it's my kids to be able to say to them, I'm not sure, let's find out, I'll prove that none of us are perfect and in reality none of us are perfect. We can't be perfect. And I think for me, I've met with some incredibly important people in the industry. I've been really privileged to have that time. And I've met with people who are just out of uni. And in either case, being able to just be honest in that sense builds that trusted relationship so much faster. And clients respect it as well. So not just staff, clients, friends, it really matters. So I think it's that humbleness and self recognition of I'm at the end of my length now, I need to go back and find out.

[00:34:16.410] - Camilla Love
Because also, and I think on the flip side also it's the ego that pushes you on to say I can do this or I actually can fake this and pretend that I know it, that actually gets you in trouble.

[00:34:30.730] - Jo Leaper
Sometimes it needs a little bit of ego, but it's where you balance that. And I think that's a little bit of a struggle from time to time. But yeah, I think holding back is not bad.

[00:34:42.950] - Camilla Love
Yes, I'm the first to say, I.

[00:34:44.730] - Jo Leaper
Don'T know, I think that's actually a really good quality because I don't know if I need to go and learn something new. You asked before why I'm still here after twelve years. Because every day I'm learning something new. That's really the guts of the answer to that question. If I'm not learning, why am I at Jonah? Because I'm not going to be able to teach anyone else. I'm not going to be able to help make my clients better either.

[00:35:10.060] - Camilla Love
Totally such a good oh, my God. It feels my calm. I'm so warm and finally inside. Okay, so, Joe, at the end of our podcast, do you know what we do? Have you listened to are you ready? Are you ready to do a quick question? Are you ready? So, what was the question that you asked? What was your interview question again? It was things do you have in your fridge?

[00:35:36.610] - Jo Leaper
So, mine is pomegranate molasses, which make an amazing beef short ribs, slow cook.

[00:35:43.150] - Camilla Love
Serious?

[00:35:44.010] - Jo Leaper
Yeah, it's brilliant. I've just seen the recipe. Daniel dark chocolate in this one. I'm last night for dinner. I love it.

[00:35:52.260] - Camilla Love
I didn't make my own sauce from pomegranate molasses.

[00:35:57.670] - Jo Leaper
Yes, pomegranate molasses. It's a little bit tart, but quite a syrupy sweet. And when you combine it with the short ribs over a long period of time, really yummy.

[00:36:07.450] - Camilla Love
Delicious. So then, can I ask, just as a sidebar, what is the weirdest answer that you've had to that question in an interview?

[00:36:16.450] - Jo Leaper
It was someone who really enjoyed Swedish and Western European foods. It was some kind of sauerkraut spice thing. I actually can't remember the name of it, but I get some really interesting ones. During lockdown. I was saying what are you doing? Part of the time? And we had people who were painting little iron action men figures and lots of really bizarre things. So, yeah, let's just answer questions really work. I'm quite a fan of them.

[00:36:46.900] - Camilla Love
So my friends would describe me as.

[00:36:49.230] - Jo Leaper
Trusting and loyal, but to a fault. I guess I get a little bit invested. It's that ride or die kind of concept.

[00:36:57.910] - Camilla Love
If you're a superhero, what would your name be?

[00:37:00.980] - Jo Leaper
Goodness, I'm stumped on that one.

[00:37:06.770] - Camilla Love
Wouldn't it be like, Joe's go getter or I don't know.

[00:37:16.250] - Jo Leaper
I'm really not sure.

[00:37:18.290] - Camilla Love
What's your superpower, then?

[00:37:20.300] - Jo Leaper
I'd love to be able to read mine. That would be really, really good. Yeah. Harry Potter fan. The whole legitimacy concept is pretty cool. I'd go for that. Or operating before on the Harry Potter topic appraisal would be awesome because I'm one of those people who loves to be early, but he's honestly not quite as early as I think I should be. Anything that saves you a bit of time, I'd be all for great.

[00:37:43.890] - Camilla Love
Yeah. I'll have the jewel. If I could doppelgang myself and have another person living my life so I can get it all done at the same time, that would be my and.

[00:37:52.220] - Jo Leaper
So I could really enjoy the good parts because they're so busy.

[00:37:55.170] - Camilla Love
I know. So shares or shoes?

[00:37:59.140] - Jo Leaper
I'm a shoes person. Sorry.

[00:38:01.960] - Camilla Love
Shoes.

[00:38:05.410] - Jo Leaper
Yeah. Shares have a really rightful place. But shoes are my love.

[00:38:10.750] - Camilla Love
I might have to come down and have a look at your shoe covered. My biggest investment mistake was investing without patience. Oh, that's a good one. Tell.

[00:38:20.140] - Jo Leaper
Yeah. So early days started at Nas. Tom and I had some money to invest, and I just sort of went this splatter gun approach across a range of unlisted trusts. And, of course, when you don't have enough within each one, the fees erode, particularly from a retail perspective. And so we pulled the pin and pulled it out and lost money at the time. On the flip side, working at NAB in the past, I've been able to have staff shares, allocated, that sort of thing, through the old bonus structures that they used to do, and I've never sold them. And so it's just this nest egg that keeps growing on the side and that was a really good reminder that just patience and that long term horizon when it comes to investing is really critical.

[00:39:06.950] - Camilla Love
Yeah, lots of good advice there. One piece of advice I tell my 20 year old self is trust yourself.

[00:39:14.770] - Jo Leaper
Definitely trust yourself.

[00:39:16.690] - Camilla Love
So my biggest hairiest personal goal is.

[00:39:21.090] - Jo Leaper
It was to be running the business unit I'm running now, so not done and dusted. John didn't have that sort of operational capability and I could see a real need. So from a work perspective, that was definitely to get this going. And I'm proud of what I've been able to achieve and what John has been able to achieve, but I still sit back and go, what next? And I'm still working on that.

[00:39:48.590] - Camilla Love
Good. So what about non work?

[00:39:54.570] - Jo Leaper
People often ask, what do you want to do in five years? And my usual answer is, I don't know, I'm not sure, because, like I said before, I'm still learning every day at Jana and so that works for me. We have some family members who have health challenges and I've learned a huge amount working with them over the years and helping there. And so I actually wonder whether or not a side career in patient advocacy or something like that might be something that I do going forward.

[00:40:23.490] - Camilla Love
So if I wasn't doing this job, I'd be a patient advocate.

[00:40:29.910] - Jo Leaper
Okay, good.

[00:40:33.390] - Camilla Love
So my take on what weird thing do you have in your fridge is what weird thing do you have in your handbag right now?

[00:40:39.720] - Jo Leaper
About six or so bandaids at the moment.

[00:40:43.050] - Camilla Love
From the kids?

[00:40:44.260] - Jo Leaper
Yeah, from the kids. One of my sons is alleged to sugarcoatase and so we've got a whole range of different ones for different things. And it's like this walking medical kit, so probably their age, I'd have to say a fair variety of them.

[00:40:57.870] - Camilla Love
Normally. I've just got the scrunch shop bandaid papers left, so on my bucket list.

[00:41:05.930] - Jo Leaper
Is, yeah, Fiji Travel is definitely on the bucket list. The kids are back at sports and basketball, so that's always really good. So, yeah, probably the next thing is to find some more time to get back in the kitchen. I enjoy baking and sort of 3D cakes and all that sort of stuff, so I think that's probably the next thing to be looking forward to.

[00:41:25.130] - Camilla Love
I like to bake, except I bake to eat, so that's my problem. Yeah. My go to brownie recipe.

[00:41:34.930] - Jo Leaper
Yeah. And you just need neighbours that you.

[00:41:36.500] - Camilla Love
Pass it off to do that. So the last question is always a career in finance is so much more.

[00:41:44.960] - Jo Leaper
Than you ever thought it could be.

[00:41:46.060] - Camilla Love
I love that. I love that because that just leaves.

[00:41:49.270] - Jo Leaper
A little reach out and find out what it could be. Try something different. Don't be afraid to give something new a try because what is finance now is not what it will be in 10, 15, 20 years and not what it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. It's just so dynamic and changing and be part of the change.

[00:42:14.230] - Camilla Love
So Jo, I think that is a fabulous place to live and thank you so much for your time. I loved finding out about you managing the cycling team and your time in Italy and I love your deep dive in understanding culture and this complexity between investments and operations and the jigsaw puzzle because I think it's a fabulous analogy that we got to and I really loved your openness and transparency about how to juggle that the confident nature. But also the imposter syndrome because it is a big challenge because not everyone you think is confident is really confident.

[00:42:55.420] - Jo Leaper
Yeah, very true. Thank you so much. It's been really good to chat to you. Tamila.

[00:42:59.300] - Camilla Love
Thanks Jo. I'll see you next time.

[00:43:01.350] - Jo Leaper
Sounds good.

[00:43:02.440] - Camilla Love
Bye.

[00:43:08.030] - Camilla Love
You know the information that is in this podcast, we always talk about finance in this podcast, but it's not financial advice, it's actually really careers advice. If you really want financial advice, I recommend that you speak to a financial planner or a broker and work out your own personal circumstances of that. But this is all about careers advice and how finance will be a fabulous career for you.

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