The UK's leading podcast for financial planners
Financial Planner Life is one of the most recognised names in UK financial planning. Founded by Sam Oakes, the podcast has grown to over 130,000 listeners a year, achieved Apple Top 10 status, and built a following of 60,000 across social media.
Sam's mission is to attract, develop, and connect financial planning talent — helping firms recruit advisers and helping advisers build their personal brand. It's a business that runs on relationships, and those relationships needed a system worthy of them.
Behind the scenes, however, contact data was scattered across LinkedIn, email inboxes, Calendly, and spreadsheets. There was no central record. No automation. No way to know — at a glance — where any relationship stood.
Contacts everywhere. Intelligence scattered.
Fragmented contact data
LinkedIn connections, email threads, Calendly bookings, and manual spreadsheets — all holding different pieces of information about the same people. No single view existed.
No lead intelligence
Sam had no way to score or prioritise contacts based on how well they fit his ideal client profile. Every follow-up relied on memory rather than data.
Manual everything
Logging conversations, scheduling follow-ups, tracking deal stage — all done by hand. Time that should have gone on networking and pitching was lost to admin.
No scalable nurture system
Without a connected platform, building and running sophisticated email campaigns was impossible. There was no infrastructure to support growth.
A single source of truth — and the automation to keep it that way
Custom Airtable CRM with a bespoke interface
A purpose-built CRM tailored to how Sam's team works. Every contact, deal, and conversation in one place.
Email marketing integration
The CRM feeds directly into Sam's email platform. The right people get the right messages based on where they sit in the pipeline.
Strategic ops advisory
Beyond the build, I worked with Sam on the broader vision — what to automate next and how to use the data.
I engaged Phil to build a robust, custom CRM solution so we could centralise our contact data (from different silos), enrich it and streamline our marketing ops. The final product was a really powerful system built on Airtable — with a custom interface and automated by n8n. It works with my Calendly and links up nicely with my email marketing system.
Beyond the technical execution, Phil was excellent to work with. He was highly communicative, a great listener and offered valuable strategic advice on how this CRM fits into our long-term marketing and operations vision.
If you need a technical partner who also brings strategic foresight, look no further.
Need a marketing system that actually works?
Whether you need a custom CRM, marketing automation, or a full content engine — I build the infrastructure that makes growth possible. Let's start with a conversation.