#62 Bryan Nicol – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. So happy to have Bryan Nicol here in person, we are sitting in the conference facility for the FBI 2022 convention. And last night, Brian won the award as the top PCE student for 2022. Congratulations.

Bryan Nicol
Thanks very much.

Louis van der Merwe
I appreciate it. For people listening, they might not know what that means. And so today, we can unpack a little bit, your journey of becoming a certified financial planner, we can discuss why you chose to do that, you know, what path ways you considered what the journey was running a full time business and dealing with clients and life going on in between you’re studying. And let’s explore this wonderful, wonderful area.

Bryan Nicol
Awesome. I’m looking forward to it.

Louis van der Merwe
So congratulations. Let’s unpack the award. So top PCE. What does that mean?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, so thanks very much. I appreciate it. It’s sort of to get a CFP designation, you got to do professional competency exams. So for short, it’s PCE. And you can you get three opportunities a year to write these exams. So at the moment, it’s March, June, and September. So the exams consist of two different papers, two case studies back to back day after day. And you have to get a certain mark 60% or more aggregate for those both papers. Once you’ve got that, you are then competent to be a certified financial planner. There’s other things as well, like years of experience, you’ve got to have your post grad and so on. But the PCE itself is kind of in inverted commas, the boards, if you think of like chartered accounting firms,

Louis van der Merwe
brilliant. I know Leilani from the FBI always talks about the four pillars, right. So education, ethics experience, and the fourth one slipped my mind. But this this really is around the education piece or examination. That’s the fourth one, right, which, which is the PCE component. So to get to that board exam, what studying routes can you take, specifically in South Africa? Like what are the options of exploring and actually getting to being able to write their the PCA exam?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, so you’ve got to have a post grad diploma in financial planning. That’s just the minimum requirement in terms of education. So if you don’t have a post grad diploma in financial planning, you will then have to obviously study that at any sort of institution. But to qualify for that you generally need an undergraduate degree, a commerce degree LLB or something like that, you can’t necessarily come in with a BA for philosophies or something like that, and do it because you will just not be there numerically. You’re, I think your financial literacy won’t be there. So to study the post grad diploma, there’s several options in South Africa. I think they’re all great. They’re all top universities. And I chose I ended up studying at Moorpark. And it was kind of funny, so I didn’t have a plan to study necessarily, but I was going through some self exploration in about 2020 and COVID hits and I was contemplating advice and if I want to remain in the industry, so to speak, because it’s just very transactional, and I wasn’t really fulfilled. And so I already then had my be calm, and I have an incubator five or so through Mobarak, which was a nice like bridging course and it taught me what I needed to know, to help people connect people with products but it didn’t help Let me change lives in any sort of way. And so, in 2020, lockdown comes and I start calling financial planners who are see online and respect and so on. And I was starting to ask them about what they do, because I was trying to work out if I should commit to this profession of financial planning or not. And so long story short, I’ve interviewed some great people. And I decided for myself, okay, I know what I want to do financial planning, and a particular kind of financial planning. And I realized I want to be as good as I can be to be as academically, and technically I want to be a really sharp sword. So I can be a really useful tool in my clients toolbox. So now, there was no lockdown. So I started March, April, and then I had to start looking for universities, post grad, you know, you would start January, so I was impatient. And I thought, you know, I was naive, and I thought COVID will be done by the end of 2020. So if I can start studying somewhere now, put a time that, you know, after I was, again, maybe break the back of the post grad in 2020. And then just finish off when we back at work, and, and all that. So I started researching universities, like I said, there are several options, I won’t list them all. But what was unique about milpark is that they have a cycle system. So they have five cycles, I think it is a year that you can jump into and start your postgrad in financial planning. It’s not January to June, July to December semester setup. It’s a pretty intense course. But they do a module per per eight weeks. And so you can jump into your post grade, like in the middle of the year. And you start with your first module, which is induction. So I started I think it was about August 2020. It’s like the fourth cycle of the year or something like that. So that’s how I started so it was more park their business model the other way they accommodate people. That was that attracted me to the institution.

Louis van der Merwe
So Brian, is that still sequential? So someone starting in January, we do module 123? I mean, how many modules are there for?

Bryan Nicol
So no, so So yes, it is sequential. So you, you can play around with the order that you do it in. But milpark is a bit different. So personal financial planning. Okay, let me maybe take it back. So for anyone who doesn’t know, postgrad in financial planning is traditionally four modules. So you’ve got financial planning environment, which is the tax and the law. No one likes that one. And then you’ve got personal financial planning, which I think is the the giant, it’s the big one, you’ve got corporates, and then you’ve got the case study, which is always lost. And it sums everything up in a big nice case study. What like Moorpark did was, which I think is extremely, extremely clever is there to personal financial planning. And then they broke it up into three subjects. So it’s risk and estate planning, retirement planning, and investment planning. And they go really deep with with with each of their subjects. Now, you have to start also with an induction module. So how do I know if that other universities necessarily have that but the induction module helps you get up to speed in terms of, you know, the law texts, time value of money calculations, because you know what it’s like, we don’t necessarily sit with HP 10 V two, every day and do the amortization calculations and such. We’ve got software in that. So if you’ve maybe studied, like I did, 2016 2017 Did my highest certificate. Now. I’m 2020. There’s been four years, I’ve forgotten some of this gotten in the gresty. Yeah, so that module, it’s compulsory, but it brings you right up to speed. And within two months, you almost like you were studying before, and now you’re running and you have to be running to keep up the tempo that they have. Because you can then say, okay, fine, induction, maybe you do that in January cycles as Jan, Feb, then march you start with your next one, and it could be I think you have a bit of choice, risk and estate, corporate, you know, whatever the case may be. And then so you go through the rest of the modules, and you will always end off with a case study. So there is freedom to also stop and pause. So if you want to do a cycle, a break, a cycle, a break, especially I think if you have kids and stuff like that, you might need to do that unless it could become a bit of a divorce course if you if you try and do it all in one go. So it’s a very unique model, but it worked for me it was extremely high tempo, but they go extremely deeply as well. And I think that sets you up well for the PC.

Louis van der Merwe
It sounds really interesting the way they’ve structured it and kind of the cycles and so is this a remote course or is this in person would you attend lectures or is it kind of watching pre recorded videos of the lecturer telling you how this works?

Bryan Nicol
Okay, so it’s it’s fully online and more parks business model is an online institution. They do have per module, there’s something like two or three sessions where you all kind of go on a call a team’s call with the program lecturer and they would take you through concepts, maybe an old paper or the the journal, the general pitfalls for students. So they’ll take you through all of that regularly, like two or three times. But you, you know, it’s online. So you, you can contact the lecturers or the tutors, they call them directly on the portal that they give you a student portal. And then you’ve also got each other to lean on as well to kind of get get through it.

Louis van der Merwe
Okay, so it’s a little bit more structured, because I just went through studying University of freestate. And they send you your study guides and your textbooks that you have to buy. And there you go, it’s like see you at the exam?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, that’s, it’s, that’s interesting. I think that’s, that is going to be tough for a lot of people who maybe don’t have self discipline, you do have self discipline, I think this is your 25th qualification. So there’s not a problem for you. But if you look at, you know, you take the average person, I mean, you think back to when you were a full time student may be, you know, cramming was was all of ours, right? So your party, party party, and then you cram like stomach ulcers and migraines, and then you then you’re right, and then you free again, when you when you’re doing part time, when you’re working. And you can’t afford to cram at the end, you’re gonna fail, because at this level, and I’m not necessarily saying the whole time, at this level, but it’s such big concepts. And there’s a lot of detail within each large concept. You can’t cram that. So what milpark has done, which is quite unique, and I haven’t seen it anywhere else, but they will have weekly assignments and or online tests. And so every week, you will have an assignment or test based on the coursework for that week. So you can’t afford to build up a bottleneck, you really have to be on the wall, which, which kind of gave me a new way of studying as well. So you have to study consistently. And constantly. So what they do is they do the the weekly assignments and tests and so that that keeps you current, you have to consistently study and constantly study, you can’t afford to say, Well, I’m taking three weeks off, you know, for some me time, that’s just even you should not have enrolled in that cycle. So it keeps keeps you keeps you going. And it keeps the information very fresh in your mind, because you calling up the whole time every week for some form of test. So they do that like six weeks in a row. seventh week is no assignment because the eighth week you write your exam. And so if you do a back to back cycles, you’re at your exam, I think it was like a Monday or Tuesday. And then your next module starts the next morning. And so there’s no break. So you have to self regulate. There’s a lot of dependence on you be able to manage yourself when you think study part time. And I think that’s for any institution, that’s not necessarily a Moorpark thing. Like you said, they just gave you a ton of books and said, God be with you. So you got to fill in the blanks. And so I think, you know, if you’re an adult’s you got to decide for yourself, I’m investing in myself, and investment tax work. And that’s, that’s how I viewed it.

Louis van der Merwe
I completely agree with that. Because this seems to be targeted towards people that are ready in the industry or profession, have built up a bit of experience and are saying, I need to sharpen the sword and get a little bit better in these areas. What was your expectation in terms of the amount of time and energy and effort that this will take? And I’m going to tell you why I asked that. Because when when apparently, when you study for your CFA exams, they send you the textbooks but with that, you get a few postcards. And those postcards would have a dog, a very sad looking dog with a leash, saying, Well, you’re not going to have time to walk your dog. Your friends won’t understand this. I think they show like a picture of a fridge just with some morbid. Yeah. So it’s saying you’re going to have to commit a lot of hours and hours. So what was your expectation before jumping into this? And now looking back and did those line?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, so I got a bit of a shock. When I registered. I know that they’d kind of in the literature that the institution had they talked about its high tempo, and you need to commit. But you didn’t, I didn’t know if they can really sell that you’ve got to actually start and then work out for yourself how this is all going to pan out. So when I registered and I was admitted, they sent me all the schedule, and I got the schedule and I thought oh my gosh So this is going to be intense. So, so what I did was, I think the first night, my first study night was actually, let’s just wrap my head around how I’m gonna do this because I work a small, a small advisory firm. So, you know, I do everything almost myself. And so I need to work, I’ve got a wife, I’ve got life commitments, friends, family church. And I just thought, I don’t know how I’m gonna do this. Because every week, there’s a test every week, there’s an assignment. And there’s there will say chapters one to five, due this week, and then at the end of the week, there’s an assignment. So I realized that I needed to be very disciplined. So I came up with what I call a rules based approach to life, which I’ve actually started using in my life in general. And I got it from investing. So you get rules based investments, where that you stick to a checklist, you stick to your process, you don’t let outside noise distract you from the mission. So what I came up with is I decided, let me set an agenda in place a schedule in place on myself, and stick to that and create that rule. And so what I looked at was Monday evenings, Tuesday evenings, and Thursday evenings are well studied. Saturday days, and Sunday days, I will study. And that is I will work until 5pm every day. And I won’t work that often. And I cannot work on the weekends. So and that was those were my rules. And what I mean by rules is that you kind of have to decide that their time for work, for instance, 6pm deadline meetings, and today’s time, their time doesn’t exist. 6pm doesn’t exist, it’s up to 5pm. So if you can’t do it between maybe eight or seven, and five, then you postpone those meetings, you manage it, your clients or your colleagues expectations. Similarly, for social engagements, if I say I’m studying on a Saturday, it would always be like from 10 until about five with breaks in between a Sunday would always be after lunch and church. So until until the by five, and never on a Friday. And they’ve been on a weekend night to two in my life. I’ve never studied on a Saturday or Sunday night. But the Fridays I did study when I was in study leave, which makes sense. Now, it’s a bit weird, because you know, you get the invite from the Friends, we go to the wind farm on the Sunday at 10am or something and you

Louis van der Merwe
come on right? Break your rules. Yeah,

Bryan Nicol
I mean, birthdays and stuff. You know, I hate to say you’re lucky, I know you guys are meeting at two o’clock to watch the 3pm kickoff, and then you have an A Bri, I’ll come for the bright, you know, there’s a game on. But I made a rule. And so I’ve stuck to those rules. And it’s very difficult in the beginning. But if you string you know, two or three or four weeks together like that, you’ve formed a habit. And if a string a month or two together like that, you actually just got a new lifestyle. And so for me, my lifestyle became living in boxes, if you want to put it that way. I was in the workbooks. I was in the booth, spend time with my wife bucks. And I’d study boxes. And I would live jump from each box to each box Unschedule. And I think that is how I was able to, I think stick to the coursework and never, never really feel like I was behind the curve. I always felt like I was generally in touch with where I wanted to be in terms of the workload that we were doing.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s that’s such a great concept. And, you know, for me that prefer more flexibility. That sounds very rigid. And I think people listening to this might say, well, I’m going to try it and see if it works. Do you think this is something that worked for everyone or you work backwards and say, Hey, this, this is my strength? I don’t operate in the evenings when I need to study. I have these boxes.

Bryan Nicol
I think I think it works for me, because I don’t you know, I don’t have children. Firstly, so I didn’t have to be at 9pm You know, helping to change nappies or anything like that. There are students who I studied with, you know, with all these forums together, and they said, I’ve children, my husband isn’t necessarily that active in the family life. So I’m doing everything and I only study on a Saturday and Sunday. So it’s like, I think it’s horses for courses. However, I would, I would, I would argue on paper. This will work perfectly for anyone. But we don’t live on paper, you know. So at the end of the day, I think you’ve got to understand yourself what your schedule is. Like, for instance, I didn’t say a Wednesday evening study. The reason why is because in our church on Wednesday evening and church activities, I’m not going to compromise that so I just but someone else might have something else. They might have a book club or they might have a dinner club. That’s a nice thing to keep, because it gives you a break. I had a rule. Never study on a weekend night. If I’m 6pm on a Saturday or Sunday, and I can’t and I don’t have the information in my head. I I’m not going to get it at 8pm, I can tell you that now, because I’ve probably missed that thing for five hours. So you need to call it. So what anyone can probably do is look in their life and say, it’s like a budget, what are the the essentials, the must haves, the like to have, and the just the complete cherry on top, you know, the luxury items, and you can pretty much break your social life and your work life down into those categories. And once you start rearranging those and putting them into those kinds of boxes, you can say, Well, again, it really would be cool every Saturday to still go out to those wind farms or to an AMCAP. Turning on some using wind farms. I don’t know what they do in Joburg, but, you know, to do all these activities. But unfortunately, you only have so many hours in the day and so many days in a week. And you’ve got to divide those those up accordingly. And so there will be something in your life will suffer. But it doesn’t need to suffer for a long time, you can go back to that once you’re done. But if if you commit the time, I’m pretty confident you will come out successful and you’ll be back to normal in no time.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s very similar to like a training schedule, right? We have a race coming up, this is what we what we need to put in. And then these are the blocks. And that’s where you train. So now that you have these rules for life, and you’re not studying anymore, kind of what what’s fold that? Do you have other rules in place now for for these gaps, or?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, so initially, when I wrote in when I was in March of this year, so after March, I did not know how people live with so much time, I could not understand. So for the first month, I just I just didn’t want to do anything. And you must realize that I did my post grad and I finished it at the end of 2021 then immediately got into the PCE studies. And I wrote that in March. And for the PCE studies, by the way, just to go back quickly, academic you have there’s assignments and stuff PCE is kind of like you know, here’s the stuff, here’s the work, here’s all papers, see on the day type of thing. So you really do need to manage yourself there. But I had the same schedule, I kept the same rules. So I kept that in place regardless, afterwards, it was weird, life had to change, my lifestyle was no different. But I’ve started filling up, I gave myself three or so months of relaxing, maybe catching up on some series or whatever. But I’m reading a lot in those times now. And also working a lot on your plans for the business in the future, my career, because there are things that I want to accomplish. And I was so used to using a lot of their time for studying. I don’t I would hate to use that time for Netflix. I’m using it for reading and I’m using it to try and develop myself further.

Louis van der Merwe
Brian, I work with a Gallup certified strengths coach, his name is Johan, and I’m sure you’re listening to this. And he always says that the most successful people in life dedicated least five hours a week to self improvement. And it sounds like you have now structured those pillars to say how do I make myself better? How do I show up better? How do I show up for my clients. But we don’t live in isolation. So kind of what was the support around you. I mean, in terms of family and friends and businesses were were they’re saying you’re going off on a tangent here. And this is unnecessary and kind of almost like grabs in a box, trying to pull you down or with or without quite supportive.

Bryan Nicol
Everyone was supportive. Everyone was very happy that I was studying further. My wife, she doesn’t understand how I could just like after dinner in the evening 730 I would always start studying almost mid conversation, I would just like go row by just get up and say I must go and then his turn around and walk to the office and close the door. So she was sometimes saying Are you sure you want to study and you know, but she’s extremely supportive. So she helped me a lot. Like I said, we didn’t have children. So it was easier on me in that respect. Yeah, family otherwise supportive friends that care that the invites came and they came and I was turning quite a few things down. Then the invites, you know, dried up a little bit because people like he’s just gonna say no. So I made a joke with my friends after I graduated or after I finished my PCs. I say to them, Okay, hi, my name is Brian. And I just had to kind of reacquaint myself a bit because a lot of a lot of people like to do social things on a weeknight, and it was just not available. So there was a lot of support. No one tried to pull me away from studying. But I think some people thought I was a little bit extra and how I was just keeping my head down. But I was I was determined. I want to I want to do the best I can do for my clients and I want to be super successful. I want to have I know what life I want to live. I know how many clients I need to have to pay me to live the life I want to live and I know that I need to be really good at what I do. And so the rest of my life kind of dependent on it. So there was It was enough motivation for me to, to give it my all,

Louis van der Merwe
like living that life of excellence, not just mediocrity.

Bryan Nicol
We’ve only got one shot.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah. And that’s so true. I mean, sometimes we can blame external things. And yes, life does happen, right, you have to juggle. But if you put your head down, and you have the support, and you have the resources, I think it’s, it’s phenomenal what happens and the award that you receive this testimony to that? What is the reaction from your clients? When do they know that you’ve been on this journey, and

Bryan Nicol
some of my clients noted that my email signature changed to a calmer CFP, are superscript. Yeah, I had to work out how to do that. So a couple of guys asked about that. But, you know, during the journey, there was times when it was out of office, on my email, you know, I’m studying leave or whatever, and there were inquiries about that, but I haven’t necessarily publicized it per se, I haven’t. We haven’t sent out circulars to clients to say, look, you know, Brian has now upskilled himself or whatever. But, um, I do know for a fact that they can see the difference. You know, when I was studying a postgraduate, you know, you finish a module, and you just say, well, there was a thought I knew a bit, I didn’t really know much. Now I know a bit more. And you start using that in your, in your life with your clients, and it adds immediate value. So even if you don’t have the paperwork, yet, you haven’t gotten you haven’t finished the case study module or whatever, you know what, you know, already, no one can take that from you. And then you can start giving that to your clients. So if my clients weren’t necessarily informed by me in like a circular, they would have seen it because I reinvented our financial planning process based on it.

Louis van der Merwe
So there’s been this shift away from the technical side, right? I had was on a panel yesterday around the psychology of money, and everyone’s talking about coaching, everyone’s talking about the softer side of things. But the eight, we’re saying the technical elements are important, and we’re going through these examinations. How do those to balance out?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, it’s, it’s extremely tough. And it’s extremely tough to balance them out. Because you might think you get something like the CFP, and you, you think technically I’m there now, and I can switch my brain off and never have to study again, listening to your talk yesterday. And I must admit, prior to that, I’ve been reading about this a lot. And I just realized, you know, the work has begun because the coursework we do is very technically orientated. And I think that’s fine. You need to know what you need to know, to do what you do, and to do it to make the impact in the lives of the clients. We are first and foremost technicians. And like you rightfully said yesterday in the panel, we are not therapists. However, we to get the best if you’re a technician, you really super interested in getting the best quality information from a client. Now, you can’t say fill out a form, come back to me, I’ll use this and put it into my machine and spit out a plan for you. When you know that the reason why someone maybe wants to invest aggressively, or the reason why they they just in a hell bent on getting 30 million rounds last cover. Why not? You might say, okay, I can easily do that, you know, do a bit of a focused single need financial plan, but you’re not really using your skills. And you’re not doing good financial planning, because you don’t have the proper data. The data isn’t unfortunately not going to come on black and white, it’s going to come in words, and you’re going to have to work out to yourself what that means. So when I will often do with clients, is I’ll ask them, okay, well, why do you believe you need 20 million Rand off cover? Or why do you believe you need to invest everything in an offshore fund or something. And so you get to the bottom of it, you know, several questions later, and you realize it’s just fear, they had a life experience, maybe a family member died, their parents died, and they had no life cover, and now they’re paying bills, you know, that type of thing. And so you realize that it comes from generally places of vulnerability or fear. Now, that is brilliant data to work with as a technician. But you can’t get that artist trying to apply ratios and calculations, you need to have other skills. And so that is why I said, it’s only just begun, I think the work because you’re a Certified Financial Planner, professional, you’ve got technical skills that are all of the best in the industry, potentially. But now you need to know how to use those skills and you’re working with people you’re not working with case studies. And a case study tells you everything you need to know. And a person sometimes sits opposite you. And while they’re talking, you know there’s break down in tears, and you realize that you need to maybe consider a bit more, even if it’s not formal qualifications, pick up some books and read about this because I’m doing You know, now my journey into that is just starting, and eye opening. And it’s extremely humbling as well.

Louis van der Merwe
For someone that’s curious of this journey, what book would you recommend for them to start? Or?

Bryan Nicol
Sure, I would. You know, like I said, it’s just just starting for me right now. But I think that I’ve just got a book that’s. So I’m trying to firstly understand why people make decisions the way they do. So people sometimes come to you very confidently and say, You must do this for me. And the first I wanted to understand where is this coming from? So I spoke to a mentor of mine, he’s an investment professional, and he gave me a book that is opening my eyes and busy reading it. Now. It’s by any Duke, it’s called Thinking in bits. And I know you’ve read it before. And it just, it gives you an idea as to why some people make the bits they do. And the every decision is a bit you’re betting against an outcome, or foreign outcome. And so I decided that would be my first journey into it, is just trying to understand people from it’s also kind of very anecdotal. It’s not necessarily a research based book. Over and above that, I’ve read a lot of articles and listened to a lot of podcasts. From, you know, you’ve you’ve interviewed quite a few of the guys is really Dr. Clients and the, the various professionals who, who talk about many behaviors, why we do the things we do. And it’s not just behavioral economics, you know, biases, but it goes a bit deeper than that. And so I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts, my math coursework, or my study work in that field has not began yet. But I would just first and foremost, the easiest way is listen to a podcast about it, and realize that financial planners aren’t there as a super experienced and successful as they are. They’re having serious doubts about their ability to service their clients well into the future. And you’ve I think you’ve experienced that too. And so that is why you’ve got in touch with that human side of money. And I believe it’s essential for me to go down that route as well.

Louis van der Merwe
You have such a nice way of positioning these things, and I can hear that you’ve thought about it, you’ve thought it through, you clearly can communicate and several people listening to this, and also add Dan Riley’s books to this like predictably irrational, and for me that that was so entertaining, thinking about how we all not just clients, we all suffer from irrational decision making, right? We think we have these rational humans that’s gonna invest for the long term, but yet we derail our own financial plans. Part of our discussion ended up around you having a financial plan. And it’s it’s not often that we speak to financial planners that have their own financial planner. She’s been a guest on the on the podcast. Would you be keen to share some of your own experiences or just a vulnerability around a financial planner going to another financial planner? Like what? What sparked the need for that?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, this is quite an interesting story. So Mary was the first person I ever called when I started interviewing planning. The reason is because I started reading about books survive lifestyle, financial planning. And that started because I was in the journey of what else can I do accepting help people find products? And so I googled lifestyle, financial planner, caked on. And Mary, you know, if you’re listening you you feature highly on the Google ranking,

Louis van der Merwe
your SEO is on fire.

Bryan Nicol
So So yeah, so I found her and I just called her one day, I think it was like March or April 2020. It was literally locked down. herself. And another great financial planner, I’ll mention him, I hope he doesn’t mind Greg Snelling. Top notch guy. And so I interviewed them both. And I really liked Mary’s approach. And she focuses a lot on the person. And the money is important, but you know, it follows it always follows the person, you know, many doesn’t lead the person. So, so I thought to myself, Okay, fine. I’ll always remember the conversation I had with her was very enlightening. And I read over the notes that I took in the interview that I had with her about what were

Louis van der Merwe
the questions you’re asking, sorry to interrupt you, but when you were analyzing your subjects here, like What questions did you ask Could you can you remember any?

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, like, what do you do? Why do you do it that way? Where did you come from, you know, where do you want to get to? Why do you you know, you’ve and then that would normally lead to questions. I used to work at this company. Why don’t you work like the way that way anymore? I had these problems and our, and then I realized they were they did what I did years ago, they had the same questions, the same itches that needed to be scratched. And I realized that I wasn’t alone. So it was just, I was just super curious. I was curious, because I realized if I was thinking that this thing, they were like how many billion people in the world there must be other people that have thought this too. I don’t know if anyone ever has a truly unique, unique thoughts. So I was looking for people with other thoughts already, and aware of the fact that I’m not 2122, I am now 40 years old. So I thought, I need to speed up my progress. So hence, go to people who can maybe be mentors for me, and tell them, give me everything. I just wanted everything I just say, give me what you have, are left to learn. And the people that are true professionals, they give the people that are not that close off the cards or close the chest, and I picked it up my secrets. I’ve spoken to several people and some people not open about what they do other people say, Look, this is how my plan looks like this is my process. And to me, that is amazing, because that’s the only way you will advance the profession. And so, to come back to your question, a few months go by and I told my wife about Mary and how she works, very keen, very interested in hearing more about it just as a general fascination with the industry. And then my wife went through some issues. She got retrenched during COVID, as did I think officer Africa. And there were some massive financial decisions to make. And I was helping my wife, but I was helping my wife after hours when I had a little bit of time. And remember, I’m studying as well. And then one night over dinner, my wife says to me, do you treat all your clients like you treat us financially? And I said, What do you mean, she says, Well, we got big decisions to make, and you don’t really give us the time of day you’ve, you know, helping everyone else. And it’s that whole, you know, Cobblers shoes always broken and plumbers, taps always leaking. And I realized that I was so busy trying to help other people and and do my work and just keep my head above water. But I was ignoring our own financial situation. And my wife had just experienced the massive trauma. And she actually wasn’t getting the help she needed to get through retrenchment from a, you know, a job that she was super passionate about. And us and she said, Can we speak to Mary? And I was like, you firing me? And she says, Well, you’re not doing anything anyway. And I thought, that’s actually super true. And I said, you know, I want someone to hold the mirror up to me and to hold me accountable. Going through the experience of Mary was transformational. For me. It’s, it’s always going to be important for me in my life and my career. I learned a lot from that heavily inspired by her in many respects. I’m not a coach, though. I do like coaching conversations. But I’m not a coach. And once again, not a therapist, but what she you know, the way she works, and many other planners also work like that, globally. It’s to tap into the reason behind everything. What is your purpose? You know, what is this journey that you’re on? Where you’re going to? Why do you need the money at all? And so it was very enlightening for me to go through that experience. That’s also further for me reaffirmed a couple of things. The journey I’m I was on to study further and that it made him more important for me, because I realized I need to do this kind of stuff. But I want to be as technically astute as possible. But further more than that, she showed me the value of planning, because I experienced it. And I think that is why I have no qualms at all. talking to clients about how valuable financial planning is. Because for me, there’s I don’t need confidence to speak to clients now about what we do as financial planners. I know what we do. I know it’s just as as factual as the fact is, I’m sitting on a chair right now, the planning I’ll do for you will add value. And I know that because I went through it. I don’t think many financial planners have been through a financial planning process themselves. And I now know I’m sorry to say I don’t think you can create a truly immersive, engaging client planning process. If you haven’t gone through it yourself. You are just going to become almost, I think, slightly hypocritical. And so we need to submit ourselves to a planner and say please, plan for me, someone who you feel comfortable with, and so that you can understand what it’s like to be on the other side of the desk, so to speak.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you for sharing that story. I mean, it’s Is it? What strikes me is that you didn’t respond to say no, but it’s fine. I was voted out, or, Hey, I’m not charging you for this. I’m taking control of the finances. Was that your initial reaction? Or was it just a wow, like, she has a point, my wife hasn’t pointed to someone.

Bryan Nicol
Yeah, it’s my initial reaction was almost like shock, like, You’re accusing me of not. But then as I was saying that I’m like, you know, you’re right. I don’t understand what you need to hear. I don’t know what you need to hear now, financially, I mean, you’re getting a severance package, you’ve been at the company for over a decade. So that’s a windfall. That is a conversation on its own, you’ve lost employment, you’re going to have to become self employed. You know, thank the Lord, it’s all been super successful, my wife is very happy where she is, and she’s doing what she loves now working for herself. But at the time, I mean, it’s it’s traumatic, you’re losing a limb, kind of. And so I just realized, I’m not equipped to help you. But I’m seeing clients who are going through the same thing. I did retrenchment counseling sessions during recovery. And I learned a lot from what we did with with my planner with Mary. And I got my own notes from that, in my experiences, what I felt I took, and I started speaking to clients, bringing that into my meetings

Louis van der Merwe
was that a counselor that you saw to train your mind to

Bryan Nicol
know, but, you know, if you take someone like Mary, and I know you’re studying coaching, the coaching conversation is very empowering. It’s not a therapy session, man, it’s not grieving session, or whatever the case may be. But it’s kind of gives you the tools to make decisions that you need to make at this point in time. And I think your conversation will be different for every circumstance and every person, financial planners, we will probably have this similar conversation with everyone. And we will try and put them through the same six steps of a process. And if they’re not really to get the ring and get them through the door and saying it’s their fault. But the bottom line is that I didn’t feel I was equipped to deal with that level of trauma. And my wife, I mean, it wasn’t grieving, per se, not, you know, no one died. But it’s, it’s just a case of there’s something be happening. And that happened to 600 or so of her colleagues. So there, you know, there were a lot of her colleagues who came to me and I had to help them decide what to do with, you know, 20 years worth of retirement savings in a company fund, or whatever the case may be. And so, I was having those discussions with other people, but I wasn’t having them with my wife. But the same time, um, I think I was just too close to it, you know, my wife is super strong. So if I say, yeah, we’ll get off, you’ll be good. This is that, you know, she didn’t need to hear that. And she didn’t from our planner, she didn’t get counseling. But what what, what we did get was the tools to assess the situation. And to make some, some really good dist, high quality decisions based on where we were, that wasn’t in my coursework. And that is why, once again, the work for me, it just began, because everyone goes through a lot of stuff in life. And Mitch Anthony talks about up to 50 or 60 major life events. And you know, so you plan in your plan, but life happens, and I think it’s super valuable. I’ve seen being on the receiving end of that advice. I know, I know, 100% factually, that it’s valuable to have that as a planner in your armory that you can, you can call on when you need to.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s such a beautiful way to end. Brian, thank you so much for being here. All the best, the future. I know this foundation that you’ve laid is going to be immensely strong and make a difference in hundreds and 1000s of clients lives of your career. And I look forward to building our friendship.

Bryan Nicol
Awesome. Thanks very much. I appreciate it.