#58 Gratitude Mahlangu – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today in the studio, I have with me Gratitude Mahlangu. Gratitude, it’s lovely to have you yet even though we had some technical difficulties, we could iron out the bugs, and we get to see each other. And you have a beautiful smile and such a great energy to have this conversation about financial planning in South Africa, how it’s evolving, and how we get to play that role of changing people’s lives. Give us a little bit of a background how you got into financial planning.

Gratitude Mahlangu
Hi, Louis, thank you for having me. I’m really excited. And when I met you at the portfolio matrix symposium, I was just like Thies, I need to come to your podcast. And now that it’s happening, I’m so excited. So how I got into financial planning is that so I was good in accounting at school in matric. So I was going to become a Chartered Accountants, you know, everybody does. And when I’ve got two bosses here, and I was choosing my subjects, I, in finance, finance caught my eye. And I’m like, oh, so I saw that you could be an investment banker, there was financial management. So I liked the variety of everything, right. So I ended up applying for become finance instead of become accounting. And then in my third year doing become finance, we did a module called financial planning. So not knowing what this module was, what it entailed. But we had a financial planner come in and give us an address as the third year students, and they started talking about things like retirement planning, estate planning, tax planning. I was like, this is such a need in my community, because I remember my grandfather, and when he retired, he just withdrew his entire Provident Fund, which he accumulated over 40 years of working. He did 100% cash withdrawal, and he paid that this is 6% tax. He will he went on to build this huge house. And now he doesn’t have any money. He’s depending on the government grants. So for a person who went from earning about 30,000 Rand a month to depending on almost like, what 2000 1800 grand a month, it’s, it was so disheartening, just seeing the lifestyle change and the impact on the family. Sounds like this is such a valuable thing for me to learn. And I could use this to go back home and empower people and enrich people with with the knowledge of financial literacy and financial planning. So that’s how I caught my eye. That’s how I got in. And just the more I studied it, the more I loved it, you know, over the varsity holidays, I’ll go back home and tell my mom what I’ve learned. And I’m like, do you have an emergency? You know, so every time every time my mom sees me coming back home now she always always just starts talking about know, if she went shopping, she’s like, I earned this. It’s part of my budget, because she knows I’ll just dish out unsolicited financial advice for her. But it’s just a passion of mine. And I just understood the value of me studying to become a financial planner, and I’ve never looked back since.

Louis van der Merwe
How difficult is it to have conversations about money with your family? You know, you’re a student, you’re going back home, you’re saying let’s talk about money. Can you tell me a little bit about how that was?

Gratitude Mahlangu
Uncovered? It will be uncomfortable at first also, because, you know, in the black community, it’s really rude for a child to dis speak, or try and reprimand or advise grown ups, you know, let alone talk to the appearance of money. Because in our, in our culture, children are taught to sit back and let the elders handle handle the finances handle running the household and things like that. And just also, finances are always a taboo topic, like people don’t want to talk about how much they earn, how they spend their money, when they don’t have the money, it’s difficult to say that they don’t, you know, because it seems like a status to have many. And I think people also associate many problems or many discussions with being vulnerable, you know, or burying yourself. So definitely, there was a lot of resistance, a lot of awkward moments, a lot of, you know, my mom was also scared, because she always said to me, never, ever take out debts, all debt is bad. I don’t ever want to have debt. So even having to teach her that that could be something as like good data that you could use to build your credit so that you can maybe finance things that could help you generate a stronger financial position in the future, just those kinds of very technical conversations, you know, which I had, it was very hard, but I always I plow on I’ve now I’m because I am very passionate about financial planning.

Louis van der Merwe
I can hear that passion shines through and so that that’s third year, second year student listening to a financial planner, can you remember where that financial planner was from? Was it was someone that worked for

Gratitude Mahlangu
Yes, I think this lady was from video Wealth Advisors. Yeah, yeah. Remember, we were sitting at the D labs, you know, the lighting wasn’t quite great. But, you know, as I say it, and I listened to her that, wow, the people do this for a living and they get paid for it. You know, it sounded so exciting because you started sounded like somebody who helps people achieve their goals. You know, there was a lot of centered around the client centered around giving holistic financial advice, marrying the different components of what makes a finance a person’s financial plan together. It was very exciting.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s this hidden gem of a career and often occupation. As soon as you know about, it’s like, wow, this is something I can do. Right.

Gratitude Mahlangu
I was like, How did I not know about this? Because I was fixated on investment banking, accounting. I’m like, How did I not know about this? But now that I do, I talk about it all the time. And it’s weird, because my friends also still don’t know what I do for a living, you know?

Louis van der Merwe
And so gratitude what happened next you you decided to pursue the studies around finance, what what happened after that.

Gratitude Mahlangu
So now I have graduated, I have my degree in finance. And my mom was like, okay, sorry. So I come from a home that didn’t have a steady income. So my mom was like, Okay, this is as far as I can take you. Alright, so now I need to find a job because I need to pay for my honors, because now the job markets is so competent, competitive, because almost everybody has a degree. You know, a lot of people now have like half degrees every day, most people entering the workforce have degrees. So I was told you need to get your honors. So now I need to pay for my honors. So they I am I go to the libraries at uj. I’m typing in financial planning jobs, entry level jobs, and I’m seeing such a see off just, you know, my Google search just sort of lit up I’m like, Okay, there’s a lot of jobs here. So I’m getting in and as I get into the descriptions, I look at the spec you need to have a laptop you need to have your own car you need to be able to sell you need unlike what is happening here. So now all that all that hope and all that excitement is starting to die down because I’m just like, but then how am I supposed to have a car I come from the dusty streets of a reasonable Township and Malanda this degree is my only hope. You know, I’m trying to make kids and now I’m searching for jobs and every second link i click on same requirements must be able to sell must have a laptop must have a car must I’m just like okay, what is happening? Yeah, you know, so more of that and I ended up not getting a job related to financial planning. Ended up going to work at Epcot got to edcon I worked as a I did some learnership and then that helped me pay for my honors. And then luckily, as soon as I started not on his level, I heard of videos wealth advisor program. They had an assistant contract assistant financial planner contracts, where you work for two years. as you do your articles, and then you can now get into, if you are keen, you can become an associate financial planner. And that’s how I got into the industry. So I started working at video in the Cape Town offices, but then I didn’t like it.

Louis van der Merwe
So gratitude, you lift financial planning off to your studies, and fortunately found your way back. You might know Ricardo, he was one of our our first guests talking about BDO. And the wonderful work they they do. And I’m so thankful that you found your way back. But looking at those ads, thinking about the sales aspect, what went through your head that you said, well, actually, I’m really gonna take another route.

Gratitude Mahlangu
I’m just firstly, for me it was. So this is not what I was taught. Financial Planning is about, I was taught that financial planning is very client centric. We help clients fulfill the aspirations and the goals, we plan for them. We we may we come up with financial plans or solutions that are tailored to the needs, you know, so I’ve spent about two years doing all these comprehensive estate planning calculations during this investment planning process where you ask the questions where you get to know the client first before you solution the clients. And now for me, I’m like, But why why is like this word of you have to sell products, this targets. And so that that, for me was disheartening, because it started scaring me off, because I’m like, Okay, should I maybe change careers, because now I was thinking, I’m gonna have to sit somewhere and cold call people, like, but I want to be a professional. I don’t want to sit and cold call people because that like, that’s not what I studied. And also, I couldn’t afford, you know, to be commissioned based, you know, because I have a family that’s sort of dependent on me, and I need to pay for my studies. And so also the commission structure was not going to work for me. And this having a car I couldn’t even drive I had never driven. So for me, it was like, Okay, this career is not rejecting me. That’s how I felt because I just so many things were so foreign to what I had dreamed up or what I had thought financial planning would be,

Louis van der Merwe
wow, that sounds like it could be, it could really kind of ruin your expectations of what you’re entering. So if you had the opportunity to build an FSP and hire young graduates, what would that look like? What What would you offer them to number one, trying to attract talent, but also maybe change this way. We’re bringing younger people into the business. I think,

Gratitude Mahlangu
just also from starting from my personal experience, right. Having went through programs with VO and chartered wealth, we I went through the extensive article planner program, where it also even the word article tells you that the industry or chartered wealth and companies like minded companies are on a on a transformation journey where we are trying to professionalize financial planning, you know, like, attorneys and accountants, you go in as the students you do your articles, it’s an environment where you can learn, it’s an environment where, you know, you don’t have to have the pressures of being commissioned based, you know, so it harness new and young talent, because, you know, it alleviates all these things that I had mentioned that were worrying. So having went through that, you know, I preach this to any young financial planner that I come across, or anybody that studying third year honors financial planning, I’m like, please look out for companies of this magnitude, because that’s how I got in. And that’s how I’m where I am in the industry, you know, being excited about the future during this lesson together. So if I were to start my own financial planning practice, right, it would be first one that provides holistic financial planning, it would be one that charges for advice, and not for transactions and products. Because I think that’s when you start, you can start D structuring or deconstructing this whole commission transaction, you need to be able to sell you need to build your own book, you need to have a car so that you can drive to places and stuff like that. So I think my my practice would say we would charge for advice. And I know that a lot of this is still new to the industry. So there’s still a lot of probes around how do you get it right? You know, if you’re a previous generation advisor, and you already have had these set structures and how do you share your commission with younger people in hiring them and pay them a fixed salary? You know, so I think if we charge for advice, then we also invest in financial literacy and And the reason why I think that’s important is because a financial literate community is one that will value our advice and understand what we bring to the table and why we are necessary. So yeah, I think it would be a practice like that, so that I can make way for younger advisors to come in. And we can pay them a fixed salary that can do holistic financial planning, like they learned. And it would be one that centered around relationships, because we are in the business of people, you know, the client is at the center of what we do. And for me, that’s what has kept me in financial planning. You know, I love listening to clients listening to these stories. And I think as a young financial adviser, you benefit from that. So yeah, it would be a practice sort of an idealistic practice. I don’t know that in practice how easy that is. And I understand that it’s very difficult from a business point of view to still, you know, maybe a compromise or some of the revenue that you get through your, you know, fees, your initial fees, and your commission and stuff like that. So I don’t know how I would execute. But that would be the vision.

Louis van der Merwe
You mentioned something very powerful, that financially literate community, do you find the clients you’re serving now? Are they financially literate and all those declines that you wish to have been serving?

Gratitude Mahlangu
I think the disposition is quite, there’s a different various kinds. And even the degree of financial literacy is also another thing because you find some clients are very financially astute or analytical in nature. So they are through probing questions, you find that some clients are, maybe come from intergenerational wealth. So they know a bit more they were involved in a family finances. But I’d say that the majority of our clients and just people in general, like they don’t and they can’t see advice, right? They can’t touch it, it’s intangible. So it’s very difficult to put value on something that you can attach to something as you, you have to understand that you need it. And there was an instance also, we had a client about us, who was a first generation millionaire and his family. And he had worked tirelessly. He said to me, he started working, I don’t know if it’s in the 60s or the 50s. And he was saving 50 Rand every month when he was still working. And they said there was a lot of money at the time. And he said, That’s how he just started, he started investing, investing in these unit trusts, investing, investing, and eventually he was retired now and he was going to give his grandchildren a million Rand each for the, for their birthdays, right. But for him, he was he had never received that kind of treatment, he didn’t come from money. Right? So for me, I was starting to see Oh, but then there comes my financial literacy thing. So one of the grandchildren wants to take this money and go buy, I don’t know if it was a boat, or a beach house, and the other one boy wants it to reinvest the money with us. You know, and when these people come from the same family, they have the same grandfather yet the financial values and, and the financial students, oh, alerts, alertness is very different, you know. So that’s why I say if the other boy valued advice, and he valued, you know, what, what this one we can could be in the future. So he understood, because he had spent some time coming with his his father and his grandfather to these advice meetings, you know, and the other boy was just doing his own thing. So that’s why I think that’s time for the financial elite literate, will value advice. But then I love being also part of the journey of teaching clients. You know, whether it’s a young clients, whether it’s even an older client, because as soon as I you know, as soon as I explain something to clients, I can see that the, the light, Ivan, as soon as they understand it a bit more, they appreciate me a bit more, you know, because they’re like, Oh, this is so invaluable. Yeah. So I think that’s where financial literacy helps us.

Louis van der Merwe
What would a conversation with that that grandchild that’s wanting to buy the boat to the boathouse? Like, what would the conversation if you were in a room with that grandchild? What would that look like? Can you can you expand a little bit on that?

Gratitude Mahlangu
So he was very excited. And I think also because he hadn’t been he hadn’t been in these advice, meetings with his grandfather. For him a million is a lot of money. You know, that’s what the conversation was. And you know, we were trying to explain listen, you know, you like if you buy a boat with 720,000 Do you have we already eroded about three quarters of the As many, you know, and we were, we were trying and just for him, it was just about the excitement and he had dreams of owning a boat. And we tried this delayed gratification, like we you can buy it maybe in the next 510 years, you know, just trying to get him to, to help him to get us to help him with a financial plan. And but just he was so excited. And chaya’s we may have, he just ended up going the booth. I don’t know if we’re not good salespeople at that time. But the conversation was just that he was he just thought he has so much money, he thought he this million will never run out, he can buy his boots, he’ll still have changed left, you know, and then he’ll start thinking about perhaps investing the money. You know, and we even tried that compound interest calculation where you show that if you invest early enough, this is how much you would have, because then you’re in your 40s you’ll start wanting to say 50,000 random and, you know, trying to play catch up, but that boy was just so fixated on on that, on that boat,

Louis van der Merwe
gratitude as a as a young financial planner in the US conversations, how do we keep that balance between Hey, this is what you’re supposed to be doing with your money. And this is how you actually enjoy your life and, and find the benefit that money brings? How have you found that as a young financial planner to keep that balance.

Gratitude Mahlangu
So okay, now I’m, you know, I’m also a former financial planner. I also, you know, spend money on Good Times a bit, sometimes I have to renew my own sovereign. But when I when I talk to younger clients, I always say that there is a even with, with my friends, I always say there is a happy medium, with everything that you do, you know, there is we always I want to drive a Porsche Cayenne, you know, just yesterday already, back, then I understand. I understand that, in order for me to get to that point, you know, because if I do it, now, it’s going to be a premature decision, I always have to find the happy middle. So I also don’t deny myself you know, pleasures, I have a budget allocated specifically for going out for going to dinners, music, concerts, you know, drinking nice wine, I have that. But then at the other end of the spectrum, I also have David orders going towards my investments, my tax free savings. So I always try to even position you know, my advice like that, because you you can’t forego living life to save money, because then that money is going to be meaningless, you know. So, yeah, always try to strike a happy middle. So so you can still go out, you can still buy yourself a nice pair of shoes, if you you don’t have to wear the same boot until it has holes on it, it’s because you’re trying to stick to your financial plan. That’s why our financial plans need to, to incorporate the client’s leisure and the livelihood and what we call in the industry return on life, you know, because it’s nice to have return on investment. But what what good is the money if you’re not happy, if you’re not healthy, if you don’t spend time with your family. So I think we all even with work, you know, I’m known to work very long hours, but my floss will often come to me and say it’s time to go home. Now, I don’t want you to start hating your work. Because you will take it has taken so much away from you. So you always have to just plan with that in mind, you know, always constantly reminding yourself when you go overboard with one thing to try to rein yourself in and remind yourself that, you know, and then you’ve got you don’t have to spend 100,000 on stuff. You know, there’s always a balance. I think it’s wonderful

Louis van der Merwe
how you’ve get that balance and say, well, it’s about the whole person well being, how, what’s the COVID experience for you? And have you found any additional stressors come through in recent client conversation around, you know, the kind of post COVID impact and even with the market declines? Like how have you held that as a as an individual and as an advisor in terms of your well being?

Gratitude Mahlangu
And let’s say especially with with us because we work with retired clients, you know, we have a lot of older clients as well, I must say that COVID was quite a we lost a few clients to it. You know, we also the technology because we had to review clients now online, especially during hard lockdown. We had no other even your back that there were a lot of technical challenges a lot of phone calls A lot of you see that camera you see that icon off. So, but also in that same breath, the technology has allowed us to, I don’t know, with this immigration, you know, with everybody moving down to Cape Town, we’ve been able to sort of keep some of the clients you know, in review them virtually even when they’re in Cape Town and riaan Joburg and also a cave in on the on the soft side of things on the mental part of it, I must say, at first I struggled to connect, you know, and especially because as an associate planner, I was still now getting introduced to the clients, you know, some clients, it was my first time meeting them. And I just felt like the connection wasn’t as great as when we used to see each other face to face. But then that also gave me the scope to join in more client meetings, because, you know, when, when there’s a bit of a distance between you and a person, the nerves also don’t get too loud. So, you know, I could muster up the courage to sort of get in a few words in the in the meetings, and I think it helped me grow in that sense, you know, it provided a space. And I think also because it was a human experience, not just the clients experiencing its, we were experiencing it, our families were experiencing it. So the conversations with the clients were on a more of a human level, you know, we could then start, it broke down a bit of the barrier for me, because you’re young, you’re black, the clients is all that a white, but COVID just literally made us human. You know, so the connection became better for me. And, and funnily enough, you know, clients have lived through a lot of financial markets crashes with the 2008. And that this and that, that, and they just understood, it was I don’t know, it was I was, I was shocked. I’m like, oh, but when I’m, when I’m doing the meeting, I’m like, Oh, this person’s investments is done by, like, almost a million they can, they can freak out. But they never did, I think they just understood that we are all trying to do the best with what we have. And even now with with whatever is happening in Ukraine, and Russia is the client conversations with inflation and this and that. But I think clients have come up more resilient. I certainly also have come up more resilient as a financial advisor, as a young advisor, you know, I’ve sort of understood my value and and being able to just show the client, even that graph to say you’ve been invested since the 2008, subprime lending crisis, you rode that wave nicely. You know, COVID is also something similar, you know, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but there has been not an absent there’s been market downs. And luckily for us, we use asset managers. So we always tell them, we have the best people handling this and looking at it, you know, it might not be soon it might not be the way that we expecting it. But the recovery after a massive market crash is always there. So I think, yeah, it just brought on a lot of a lot more resilience from my side. And I’ve seen the clients also even in this time now, this reviews, clients are very resilient, and the connections are more on a human scale.

Louis van der Merwe
You touched on something that’s so true, I mean, our own expectations of how our clients are going to react to the quarterly statement where they’ve lost a million read, or kind of blowing it up in our minds. As a younger financial planner that starts out how do we find that balance between our own personal stories, you know, where we’ve come from, versus like, what we’ve been told, you know, you we need to listen to the client and it’s not about us, it’s about the client. Have you had any, any positive responses to actually sharing some personal stories in meetings? Or have you more lean towards hey, let’s keep this very, very professional. Um,

Gratitude Mahlangu
I think firstly, for me what when really worked wonders was the coaching work that we do a charted the work on myself as a person and my own, you know, clutter of stairs, and how to recognize that or a as a feeling and to understand what it is, you know, when I was young, okay, I’m still young, coming into the industry, I was scared. I was always scared about what the clients will think of me what the clients have. I was always like, what the client was going to say, what does this young black girl know about my lifetime savings and my retirement planning, you know, but I had to realize that it was clutter that I built up in my head it’s my own preconceived ideas about myself. So once I learned how to things like self leadership, how to be a leader in your own life and your own personal space, how to be in control of your own thoughts. And I know it’s always soft stuff. And people are like, Ah, don’t tell me about vulnerabilities. Why are we talking about feelings. But for me, that was a game changer. Honestly, just as soon as I learned to recognize my, my, my own emotions and my own biases and my own person, that I, it made it a bit easier for me to walk into a client meeting completely neutral. You know, and, and I always, if I get the opportunity to go into a client meeting, by myself, I always say to the title, I’m feeling a bit nervous to just be addressing you, you know, and I’ll say, I’ll say it, my credential then does that and the other but I would just say, like, from, I’m still young, I’m still learning, you know, and Clyde have been so received to well received above that, and so encouraging about it. And I thought, as a trick of mine, I like to ask them about the grandchildren and this and that. And then they start seeing me, I’m like how old is your grandchildren, your grandchild, second grandchild is 25, and 27. And you started, they just start looking at you, as, as a fellow human beings, they start thinking, looking at you from the perspective of, of a grandchild, or, you know, and I always say that, I always also say, if I had, if my grandparents had like money to invest, I would be comfortable for them to invest with us at childhood, just to also give them that, you know, it’s just, you know, when you relate with a person and talk a talk to them in a personal way, I’ve found that those are the most expert client experiences I’ve enjoyed the most. And certainly the next time I meet them, it’s easier, you know, to even talk about the difficulties. And you know, even sometimes when clients are starting to run out of money, and stuff like that, but if they know this, you’re human, and you understand what they’re going through, and you can empathize, and you can meet them where they are. And this is all soft skills. You know, the technical stuff is easy. We learned that at school, you know, we learn what a living annuity is, what the what the legislation surrounding it is, but the soft stuff, like if I when I talk to young advisors, also, because I’m very passionate about talking about young, to young advisors about getting into the industry, I always tell them, the soft stuff, the coaching, sorry, the the stuff with personalities and emotions, that’s the staff that sort of makes makes this journey easier and builds long, lifelong relationships with clients.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s so funny that you mentioned that, because I used to think we need to do this for the client, you know, we need to do this to deliver better advice. But the more and more I’m going down this coaching route and the transitions, I realized that actually, you know, most of it’s for us to, to make our job easier. And then the clients also

Gratitude Mahlangu
benefit from an empty cup, you know, you need to sell you need to start you know you to enrich yourself, you know, fill yourself, and then you’ll be the best planet to the client, because you’re working on you constantly working on yourself to work on the plans or the

Louis van der Merwe
stuff. So now gratitude, if you if you think back to those ads, where they spoke about, hey, there’s a sales element, you can go out, you can meet people, you can influence them, you can make a difference in their lives. Does that resonate with you more so in the phase of your life that you are now in in your career? Or would you still look back and say, hey, that’s, that’s not for me.

Gratitude Mahlangu
Still not for me. But I wouldn’t say sales is not a bad word, you know, sales, we’re constantly trying to sell ourselves. Whether you on a first date, you know, whether it’s your Tinder profile, you’re trying to sell not really, you know, in a bad way, but you’re trying to get somebody to like you, you know, whether you’re in a job interview, you trying to sell yourself to get them to believe you the best. And still, especially, like I said, with with influencing people and getting clients to stay invested, even if markets are tough. That’s that’s all like, it’s still a sale, but we can’t call it that, but it’s still something of influence. It’s still something to get people to do what is right for them that they don’t think it is, you know, it’s still something that you you, you you use your influence to try and make them understand that and, and go with what is necessary for the for the financial planning. So I wouldn’t say you know, sales is a bad word, but I wouldn’t want to be specifically like a broker that pushes products and more and more like the relationship based financial planning.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you. I know that was a trick question and you handled it beautifully. So we’re saying from the one side you know, we need to know Jacqueline I and and kind of give them advice, that’s the best for them. But on the other hand, what what are people buying? Like? What are they coming in? And you know, how would they selecting financial planners?

Gratitude Mahlangu
I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know. But if I was to select a financial planner, definitely I would want somebody that knows what they’re doing. And I would want somebody that engages me, you know, I wouldn’t want somebody that phones me once a year for the review. And then they forget about me. Certainly, and I’ve seen when we do the birthday wish, when you do the gift, the housewarming gift for a client who recently moved into a retirement units or young couple who recently bought a house, that is the email you get, you know, even I recently, I received one recently, where clients was just like, Thank you for listening to me, you know, and asking me about my children and, and taking the time because they feel so grateful, you know, to an end, for me, that’s, that’s all the people like I always say, the people make this worth it. For me, it’s. So if I was looking for a financial plan, and I think a client’s more and more at getting to that point where they are looking for the human elements in financial planning, they are looking for somebody that sees them hears them, remembers they birthday phones, and from time to time, especially even with COVID, you know, our planners would phone clients just to have a conversation. Because if clients are stuck in a retirement village, they can’t go out internally, they would say that the loneliness is driving them crazy. And you know, they would have you’re on that phone for good five minutes, just talking away. And I think that’s just that it makes the difference, you know, and it becomes easier also for the to the relationship, it becomes easier to plan with them, becomes easier for them to trust you. For them to trust what you have to see. And yeah, I think spending time on those relationships. And I know it sounds corny when other people are listening to us talk like this. But that’s where the differentiator is and and with all this fourth industrial revolution, everything is virtual people are looking for for the human again, I think

Louis van der Merwe
you don’t, you don’t have to have decades of experience to do this. Because when I started, they’ll say, hey, you need a bit more experience. Thanks. For that experience,

Gratitude Mahlangu
exactly.

Louis van der Merwe
What role does language play in these conversations,

Gratitude Mahlangu
your language plays a very big role in financial planning. Like we live, like, I think, the buildup, even in this conversation, where you say that a person’s money is very personal to them. I mean, finances are what the second type is so close with divorce, you know, and they always say, never borrow your friends money. So money is a very personal thing, you know, and, and we need people to understand the financial plans. And in order for you to understand something, it it’s so much more better if it’s in the language, your home language. And I remember in one instance, like I was with a client, and we were just talking about the financial planning to black clients. And I was just explaining my financial plan in Zulu, right, because I was just like, off, it’s just, like, it’s a black person. I’m like, let me see, you know, because I could see that they were struggling when I was talking English. And when I started talking to them in Zulu, this, this man was like, Oh, my God, I had no idea. You know, I had no idea that this is my financial plan and what the role of this is, and what this and this is what this means, and he was like, you’ve really opened my eyes to this because even though I can communicate to English, but it’s not my first language. So even the Lehman term financial plan or financial concepts didn’t really resonate, because if a client’s was in the 50s, as a black client, they did been to education in school. They even I struggled to understand some of the concepts you know, but when you get somebody who can speak in your mother language, whether it’s Afrikaans whether it’s sooner whether it’s Soto and they can explain your money to you in in in your language it from it change the client’s life, you know, so, language is very important and I think another barrier to to financial literacy and why our numbers in this country so so just poor is because firstly, there’s a Have illiterate people, never mind financial literacy. You know, there’s a lot of people who do not have comprehension skills, communication skills. So then that then begins how how do you how does a person like that understand that they need financial plan or what the pension benefits are? Or what the negative impacts of you know, So language is such a huge thing, especially in a country with 11 official languages, you know. So I think the time also is now to start looking at how do we provide financial plans that are super in languages that people can understand, you know, how do we deliver a financial plan that people can be comfortable with and say, This is what what’s happening with my money, this is where it is. And I’m completely comfortable, because I understand it better,

Louis van der Merwe
you know, gratitude for that client that you explained his financial planning to you and the financial terminology, how did that impact his decision making

Gratitude Mahlangu
tremendously, tremendously, that he was willing to immediately invest more money here, because he even said to me, you know, I have, I have more money that I wanted to invest in now that I know this, and now that you’ve explained this to me, I was just going to keep this in the bank. But now I’m looking to invest more, because I understand and I understand that I put he thought he has to ask permission from from from us to get his money. And I was like, you have flexible, you have liquid investments, it’s your money. If you need money, you have an emergency or you want to go away, or you want to do it, you can have but he just thought he was giving us some money for us to invest for him for his future goals that he didn’t really even understand. And he couldn’t access the money. You know, so he said he was just going to keep some of his money for himself in the bank. But now that he understood, he was more than happy to give additional money. So

Louis van der Merwe
this is good for the client. But it’s also good from a business perspective. Because if your clients understand what they are, and it will probably mean that you have fewer unpaid claims. And that means that you you generate more business, which for any financial service provider is a good thing, the ability to we do we change this? Is it through the people that we hire, is it through the client base? Is it through education? Like what is your what is your best stab at this?

Gratitude Mahlangu
If you look at our industry, right? If you look at when I go to financial planning events, there’s always one of like, five people of color. You know, and if you look at the disposition of the community, or the clients at large, far more diversified, you know, so I think, yes, you we need to start firstly, by being ambassadors for our industry, as the people are inside because I also didn’t know about financial planning, no speaking about it being loud about what we do as a profession. And then that’s going to attract a lot of diversified talents, Indian black colored, whites younger, you know, it’s gonna, because people don’t know about this, people just stumbled, a lot of people are live, like somebody is farther ahead of practice. A lot of my colleagues it’s which is full on to financial planning by pure luck. So I think it starts it starts with us who are in the industry advocating for it, and then having a diverse pool of financial advisors. And then obviously, then you have a suitable advisor that can speak so to they can speak to a suit to speaking clients, and, and so forth and so on. And I think, yeah, definitely, we need to look at diversifying our practices, we need to look at diversifying the industry and promoting just awareness around the industry where we can, you know, being loud and proud.

Louis van der Merwe
So that’s saying of let’s meet the client where they’re at. It’s not just the mental space, it’s also their language, it’s their, their life phase, it’s what’s important to them, like you were talking about your clients about their grandchildren as soon as you can pinpoint what’s important to that client. I find the conversations just change like that.

Gratitude Mahlangu
Yeah, and I think language has been overlooked T language is one that has been like a bit overlooked and fully and I think in the transformation of the industry in terms of moving away more from the Life Assurance broker, you know, focusing now on okay, we need to do holistic financial planning, we need to do look at where the client is at mentally this person, the other and we’ve sort of forgotten about language and I think, I think it’s high time we shine some light on it because it makes a lot difference in a lot of people’s lives.

Louis van der Merwe
Absolutely. Gratitude. What’s the next chapter for you, you know, what is the what does the future hold that you may be able to share with us, the future for

Gratitude Mahlangu
me holds exciting things. I’m moving in from independent financial advice, my heart breaks, but more into a banking role, and just purely for the diverse, diverse client base. Because, you know, when you’re everybody banks, a lot of fuel bank. So I think it’s an opportunity to educate, it’s an opportunity to be an ambassador for financial planning. And especially if somebody has a bank account, they already transacting in the financial services. So I think it’s an exciting opportunity to do what I love, and that is working with people every day teaching people about financial literacy, helping clients live fulfilled lives. And I’m very excited. And I don’t know, I think that as a young financial advisor, I come with so much energy. And I’m glad, and I’m so so glad that I got the soft skills that I was taught at chartered, because that has changed my life. And that has changed the way I think. And I think it’s not even limited to financial planning. And I think any professional, you know, if you learn these sorts of skills, then you approach your work, you approach your life a bit more better, because you’re more aware of things you’re more aware of yourself. So for me, it’s being loud and proud about my industry, changing lives, probably writing financial plans in the zoo, you know, watch the space, you know, there’s a lot a lot of exciting things on the horizon. And I think I’d love really to to take the industry with me, you know, as we try to journey, this language thing, getting more young people in this space, because it’s an amazing space to be in, you know, we certainly do need young, old black, white male, female, to compliments and look like our client bases.

Louis van der Merwe
Gratitude, I want to say thank you for your leadership. And for a beautiful conversation today, all the base with this next chapter. I think the future is going to be so exciting. And I really hope that we can build it together because I’m on the same page. This the show is all about the positive evolution of advice. And I think you embody that. Oh,

Gratitude Mahlangu
thank you so much for having me. I’m a fan of the the podcast of what you do with wealth app. And because we care about the same things, definitely we will meet in very similar spaces, you know, and I’m sure we might collaborate on a lot of things and shining lights and being ambassadors so definitely looking forward to see what’s what’s happening with the wealth apps space.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you.