#64 Rudolph Geldenhuys – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today I have a return guest my colleague Rudolph Geldenhuys, and we’ll be unpacking delivering advice as a team. Rudolph, thanks for joining me here in our boardroom today.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Thank you for having me. It’s good to be back.

Louis van der Merwe
Now, this is this is a concept that is maybe not that familiar to a lot of financial planners, you know, we we end up accumulating clients in our practice. Number one, we call it my clients, which is interesting should maybe chat about that a little bit. But then also servicing clients as a team. I think that’s taken a unique approach and something a little bit different, something that clients are often surprised by. So maybe Rudolph, give us give us your take on how delivering advice is different in a team format versus individual?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Yes, I need to remember the audience that I’m speaking to, but as everybody on the listenership would be financial planners, it’s actually I think the takeaway that I want for everybody else from this conversation is, how nice it is to deliver advice in a team, and how much pressure takes off as me as a certified financial planner, of being the be all and end all in that relationship. We I don’t have to be the one that feels all the questions, I don’t have to be the knowledge keeper of my client, I can involve other people. And in delivering advice. As a team, I honestly believe that our clients get better advice, because it’s not just my lens, but it’s now the lens and the experience and the angle that my colleagues have on a certain matter. And I believe our clients pick the fruit or enjoy the fruit of sort of multiple angles.

Louis van der Merwe
So let’s talk about the practicalities. I mean, we were giving advice in the same meeting, right? Where oftentimes we don’t plan out who’s going to speak and who’s not going to speak? How have you personally known when to step up, step up? And win? Have you known or how have you known to kind of step back a little bit?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
That is a wonderful question. And pre coaching. I was terrible at that, because I’m a massive extrovert, Enneagram, seven, silver linings. So I want to talk because I’m excited. And it’s, it’s fun, it’s cool to engage with people, and it fills my tank and I get energized. But through the coaching, it’s been it’s been very interesting. To get to a center, well, we always need to listen to yours, one mouth. And then I think as you get to know your people in your team, co advisors, you’ll you’ll know which areas you are stronger, more comfortable. There’s a bit of synergy. So you know, when somebody looks like they want to say something, so you give them the opportunity to say something, you also feel when there’s an opportunity to speak when it’s well done, and it’s going to add value. So it just takes not experience, it takes practice. And we get better at it as time goes on. And the more joint meetings we have with our clients in the office or in a virtual space, it does get better. But it also takes a bit of self awareness to know. Yes, this meeting, I’ve spoken so much, let me just shut my mouth a little bit.

Louis van der Merwe
So crisp, is a tool that you can install on your computer and help you remove some of the background noise if you’re having a virtual call. And a few weeks ago, I used it on a zoom call. And at the end of the call had said you spoke 70% of the time and I was horrified. Like what I felt like that must have at least been 10% of the time that I spoke. And it would be interesting to have that stat for meetings five years ago, six years ago,

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I don’t want that stat of 566 years ago because it was terrible.

Louis van der Merwe
So you’re increasing that amount that the client speaks, but there is an element of showing your expertise. And so I think we’ve in our conversations, we’ve been able to set each other up to almost say, hey, this part is important Mr. And Mrs. Client and guess what Rudolph has unique experience in this only he has unique experience in this and and give each other the the eighth time. Absolutely. But in the beginning is it wasn’t it wasn’t like that.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Right? So no, I mean, looking back over our sort of careers. And because we’ve always operated as a team, which has been wonderful. So I’ve never Luckily in my years as a financial planet evolved to be in the driving seat alone, which is one For build confidence, and it wasn’t too much pressure to start with. But I never grew up in an environment where I was the be all and end all. So that was wonderful. And we’ve just gotten so much better delivering advice as a team, because we want to give one another a time, luckily, gotten to a place where I know what I know. And I definitely know what I don’t know. And that is becoming more than what I do know, which is just on the one end, quite freeing. But setting each other up is such a wonderful way to view it. Because we want to keep our clients happy want to add value to their lives. So whether it comes from my mouth, or somebody else on our team, as long as the client benefits, it’s great. But looking back over the years, the first meetings were terrible, because all of us as financial planners, we want to share our knowledge because the clients will benefit. And we all wanted to speak but I think it was probably a 9010 split with us essentially lecturing our clients death by spoken word, which I don’t think is the best land experience

Louis van der Merwe
will tell you until you give up and say okay, I’m afraid to continue. It is a challenge. And it’s it’s maybe something that I’m not sure clients expect. I mean, what are the kind of feedback that you’ve had from clients? When these two advisors pitching up for a meeting? Has there been feedback? Or is it just okay, this is the way you guys do business.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I don’t think I’ve ever specifically asked how they felt about it. But it’s also because we prepared our clients that we work as a team. And then when it shows up in practice, I don’t think they’re caught off guard. So we I would introduce myself and our team and in the first welcome email, a welcome conversation or whatever that interaction looks like, so that they know what to expect. And I think it helps my credibility, because I’m not trying to show that I’m the be on the indoor, I’m a one man show that there’s more people that know a lot more than I do with more experience. So I think it buys credibility for me, which is wonderful. Because I am young, and I look young, which is sometimes even more of a hurdle. But I am 1.7 meters tall, I can guarantee you that. So does going to my doctor. But it’s I have found times when the clients were, I think a little bit stand offish, when they see two advisors in a meeting, I think, especially if it’s one person or not a couple, and they feel overwhelmed initially, but when they see that we are there to listen, and we there to let them talk, give them the space, then they relax very quickly. So I guess it’s about positioning.

Louis van der Merwe
As you were saying that I kind of I remember the side conversations, that’s happened a few times now where there would be two clients, and two advisors. And very often the conversation splits and you have like this side conversation with, with the other party, typically, maybe the wife or the or the husband that’s not normally attending all of the meetings. And sometimes that unlocks some, some valuable insights.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
That is probably the thing that I find is lacking in a virtual environment. If there is mult, if it’s more than two people on a zoom call, or any virtual platform for that matter, it’s it’s listen and learn to an extent, yes, you can still create space where clients can, can unpack and they can question and they can wander. But you can never have two conversations at the same time, where an in person meeting with a couple and two advisors, it really gives you such a wonderful dynamic, because when somebody disengages and they will always be somebody that disengages because it’s maybe not something they’re interested in or it’s maybe not a strong suit, or they’ve had a bad experience where there’s a bias involved, then you can pick up when somebody disengages and then you can engage them in a way that doesn’t distract from the bigger purpose of the meeting. But it re engages them. And you can bring it back to why it’s important. And you’re so right. The times when there’s been a side conversation, what’s come out of it has been so incredibly valuable, because it’s maybe something that I didn’t want to put out with all eyes on me. But I’m happy to mention it Hey, on the side, and it impacts advice. It impacts the planet impacts what we talk about. So, side conversations are fantastic. But you need two people to have a side conversation. If there’s two clients right, then you need four people in the meeting. So it’s it’s really been wonderful. And I mean, as I said earlier, I only know this, so I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be a solo advisor in the meeting. We everything falls on me. I mean, there’s been times where I had to run a meeting myself and I was the only one which is which is fine, but that’s never I’ve onboarded And so now it’s just another meeting or another conversation. So it’s not the same pressure. And it’s it’s it changed everything.

Louis van der Merwe
I can maybe share with you a little bit of the valuable one on one conversation. I mean, oftentimes it’s a lot more emotional, someone maybe not ready to share things with two parties. Good. I’m wondering, like, Does the fact that these two advisors hinder emotional conversations? Have you been in a conversation where that’s actually helped someone to open up a little bit,

Rudolph Geldenhuys
a couple of conversations come to mind that I was glad I wasn’t the only one in that meeting, from an advice perspective, because it was overwhelming in terms of what was shared, it was hard to work through. And it was nice knowing that I’ve got somebody on my team who also as experienced in this area who could help navigate through this difficult conversation. So definitely, there will be some clients that wouldn’t share. But I think there’s also some clients that have shared very difficult things with both of us in the meeting. And going to the second meeting, we were both involved, again, to hear feedback from a client to say, hey, this was so incredibly helpful that I was able to impact and the fact that you listen, and you care about your clients, I sleep differently, post meeting versus pre meeting. So will it hinder some people from sharing? Yeah, maybe. As it entered all of them? Absolutely not. We’ve had incredible conversations deep, meaningful, very difficult conversations with clients. We were both in the in the boardroom or wherever we were situated. So yes, no, I guess,

Louis van der Merwe
you know, when a client OS This is confidential, right. Hey, we were getting set up for, for them to open up. What about the actual location you just mentioned in boardroom? Sorry, Karen, you’re left to edit out that. The doorbell the doorbell is waiting for that gate to open. That’s the challenge that we have guys building? Yeah. Okay, so let’s chat about the actual physical location, you know, you just mentioned in the boardroom or elsewhere, what does that contribute or detract from in terms of the nature of the conversations with two people? Have you found that, you know, being at a restaurant or a coffee shop? Do we have to select the location based on the type of conversation? Or is it the other way around? Is it hey, we’re in this conversation, and now we will have this type of conversation.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I believe just as much as words matter, I think your intention for a meeting matters. So where you choose to have that meeting will have an absolute impact on how comfortable people are to share, because it’s already difficult sharing your most intimate details of your financial life, because normally, there’s shame attached to it. Because we all feel that we don’t have enough, we aren’t enough, we haven’t done enough. So not to do that in a environment that’s not conducive will mean that they will probably be hesitant in terms of what lunches or how much they show how deep they share. So virtual has been fantastic if clients are in their own personal space, in our boardroom has been fantastic way, we’ve tried to create as much as possible, a comfortable environment, where it’s free of distraction. It’s not like artwork against the wall with graphs of the market or seen in playing in the background with red flashing lights, and showing the second to second movements of the stock market because I don’t know what value that adds. And then we’ve also had meetings in restaurants or coffee shops, and also in the home of some of our clients. And all of them have got pros and cons. Sometimes in a neutral environment, like a coffee shop, people are comfortable to meet for the first time, and they might see some things. But other times we’ve also had planned to not share personal things in the boardroom. And you would think that this would be a space that they would on Zoom or in the comfort of their home where they didn’t share. And it’s also sometimes I think, okay, because if they’re not yet ready to share, they’re not but we’ve got to do whatever we can do as much as we can do it to make sure that we’ve created a space where there’s no distractions, it’s comfortable, it’s quiet, it’s calming, it smells nice. Never discount. What sensors are affected during the course of somebody coming to your meeting. Sorry, Karen, there’s a lot of grinding happening outside. I just thought we should never discount the senses that people not returning again. We should never discount the area that we create because your senses are engaged, when you’re going somewhere new, when you know you’re going to talk about something, you are hyper focused around yourself and your awareness, it gets heightened when you go into that fight or flight response, and whether we like to believe it or not, if clients are about to share something difficult, it immediately puts them on alert. So to consider what your Office environment or your meeting space looks like, it’s important, and for maybe some people didn’t even realize it, but it does play an absolute role. So how easy was it for somebody to find your office? How easy was it for them to find parking? Did that stress them out or not? When they were greeted by somebody from your office, whether a receptionist or a team member? Did they feel welcomed? Did they smile? When they offered a drink of their choice? Did the office smell good or bad? So did somebody just warm up the tuna in the office microwave? Or was it actually a comfortable environment? Are they flowers in the like? Does the place actually seem alive? Or is it a very dead dreary space? Does it seem like boardroom me and it’s like a hot environment like I’m seeing my accountant and having to get told that a I need to pay some more taxes. So I think it’s something that we are trying to put a focus on, because it absolutely matters. And if clients are comfortable and at ease, and they can see me get them out of that fight or flight response. I think the nature of our conversations and what time she would just be so much deeper, more meaningful, more impactful.

Louis van der Merwe
Rudolph that spot on? I’m so glad it’s not my tuna that’s been warmed up. And yeah, like clients coming in and saying, Actually, I feel calm, I feel collected, like is it worthwhile to structure your meeting to that format? And to have a check in and just say, you know, how are you feeling being here?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
How can that possibly it? If you were to start a meeting with how not how you showing up, I think finding a better way to frame it. Because as I said earlier words matter. But how you engage the client in the meeting to start with? How is your headspace today? Like? How are you showing up? Like, are you in a good mood? Obviously, we can see some stuff. But like, are you actually in the right frame of mind to have this kind of a conversation? And if you can pick up that the answer’s no, please don’t do it like Park, whatever you want it to discuss. For next time, there’s always another meeting, you can always shift something on. But to try and get a client to a place with no one a being is going to be known as a fruitless or wasted everybody’s time. But you might make it worse rather than making it better. So checking in with the client. Hey, like, how are you doing today? And actually not just listening to respond, but listening to actually listen and take that in? And then assess what you should be sharing? Because ultimately, we prepare for meetings as all financial planners, should? We’ve got a agenda normally. But then we need to remember is it my agenda today? It was the clients agenda. So why did I invite them here? And if I can see something’s bothering them, then maybe I should pack away my agenda, even though I prepared and did a lot of effort. It might not be the most conducive meeting then. And you’re asking the question around, like, Hey, how you doing today is definitely not not a bad way to start a meeting.

Louis van der Merwe
As part of the coach training. The first is in this text model is about setup. And it’s about taking what might interrupt us in this meeting, and actually saying, Mister, mister client, Mrs. Client, are we okay to have a chat for the next 4550 minutes? Because sometimes they expect this to be 10 minutes. Sometimes they expect it to be three hours. And I find creating those bookings, you know, what do you expect out of today’s meeting? Are you ready for this? What might interrupt or sometimes they say, Oh, I really need to take an urgent call. Because my daughter is in hospital. Oh, wow, hold on. That’s valuable information. It’s pieces that we that we need to discuss. And at the other end of the bookend is reflecting back on the meeting. And I think sometimes it just becomes a question I repeat saying, is this what you expected out of today’s conversation? And very few times people say yes, they’ll almost always say no. With the caveat. It was so much more than one I expected.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
That’s amazing. And I think one thing you left out is yes, you ended meeting with was this what you expected. But you also start the meeting with what is your expectation from today’s session? I know that we discussed we want to get together to discuss X. But is there something else that’s top of mind or if it’s a new client? What would be a good outcome for you from today’s meeting? And then to match up the client’s response to what they would deem a good outcome to what I want out of this meeting. Well, how I thought It would be good. Normally there’s a mismatch. And now I’ve got the opportunity to pivot to say, Okay, well, if the clients expecting X, how can I deliver the content in a way that will meet the expectation and hopefully exceed it? And then to end the meeting with well, did did reality match up to expectations? It’s very rewarding to then get Yes, it was even more. And if we didn’t ask the question, we would miss out on a wonderful response to see, hey, we actually doing work that matters.

Louis van der Merwe
Rudolph, I mean, it sounds like you need to be quite flexible, right, if a claim throws a curveball, and so I actually want to talk about this. Does that mean that you have to expand in terms of your agenda of what you plan? Should you be ready for any question? Or is there a way to cultivate flexibility around the planning and the agenda?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I think we always need to be flexible. Set another doorbell. Is sorry, Garen. Sorry, man. I think it came off to your question. I hope hopefully you can get that out. Do you wanna ask the question again?

Louis van der Merwe
I think I think it should be fine. Okay. About flexibility?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Oh, yeah. Yes, we absolutely need to be flexible. Because it’s not our meeting. It’s the clients meeting. It’s not our money. It’s the clients money. It’s not our plan. It’s the clients plan. So if we want to have a meeting about X, and something else, more important or central to that plans, life comes up or something that’s taking up headspace or worry or time, then we absolutely need to put our agenda aside, work on our flexibility if we’re not flexible, and deal with the issue at hand. And if that means we don’t get back to our agenda, sin the thing to the client, as a as I’m glad reading, enjoy, whatever we were going to discuss today, or let’s have another meeting. But you can only do that if you are dealing with the right amount of clients. If you’re sitting with 300 former clients, that’s going to be very difficult to do. And then it’s going to be a thing of well, I’ve got this meeting because legislation says I need to have it right one annual review meeting a year or two or whatever you discuss with the client. And you just want to get to your list of stuff. Now, which isn’t a bad thing, if that’s what the clients expect. But if you want to do work that’s impactful, meaningful and life changing, you need to be flexible to deal with those kinds of things. And they don’t come up when we want it to come up. And if we look out for those cues, I think we can flip and change people’s lives, like in a way that we’ve we’ve never been able to do before.

Louis van der Merwe
So let’s talk about that, you know, you’re saying these life events that don’t come up when we plan. Yet, there’s a lot of financial planners saying we need to take more holidays, we need to be very structured, we need to batch our meetings, we need to see all of our clients one or two months in the year. And then the rest we need to be on holiday. Do you need to be on call as a financial planner, just like a doctor would be in to say, hey, the baby’s coming, you need to come and deliver? And number two, how do you deliver advice if it’s not in a meeting? Or how do you deliver value? If it’s not in a meeting?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
That is a very, very difficult question to answer. So I’m going to try my best. The reason why I say it’s difficult to answer is because it depends on the nature of your relationship with your clients. So if my clients see me as an expert in a field, so I build myself out as a wealth manager, or I build myself out as a life insurance expert, or I’m an estate analysis guru, whatever, then I will be offering value in that area, because that’s what they expect. And that’s what I want to do. And then those things never really come up in the form of an emergency. Right. And this may be client panics because I’m a wealth manager and I was promising X amount of returns and other market reacted differently to what I prepped the clients for. So then I might have to feel the couple of goals. But if you want to be life planners, if we want to do proper financial planning that impacts every area of a client’s life, their extended family, we are going to get calls emails, we’re going to be engaged by the client when those things come up, and it won’t be in our batching calendar. But if we batch our normal run of the mill meetings throughout the year, in batches, that creates margin. So either to take holiday, to work on your business, or to be ready to deal with those things when they come up. Because normally it takes up a lot of space. Client phones say listen, I’ve been diagnosed with a life limiting illness. You can’t tell the client cook and I penciled in for next week. Right? Because how would you how would you even frame that? Or we’re getting a divorce. You would need to be able to leave everything and go be with that client to take him through that massive life changing transition period and And for that you need time. So I think it’ll probably be a combination of working smartly, efficiently batching meetings of easy taking leave appropriately Leave, leave longer than seven days consecutively otherwise, you actually don’t shut off. So sorry for those who are workaholics. But a long weekend does not count as a break, we will need to be flexible back to the previous point. flexibility is key not just in our planning for clients, but also in how we set up our practices, our businesses, client meetings, and our calendars and our rhythms of work and life. So that we have time for family, headspace, for family and headspace and time for clients over and above the statutory minimum requirements of I don’t even know what that is, but the bar is pretty low. So probably don’t worry about that.

Louis van der Merwe
I think it was you that mentioned to me, there’s a doctor that blocks out a space in her diary for emergencies. Because it’s almost like, yes, it’s an emergency, but we can plan for it. You know, there’s a meeting space. And so if we start doing that, for clients, like, Hey, this is my emergency slot. Great, I have an opening tomorrow morning. I want to talk about the the negative side of their clients feeling guilty for taking up too much of our time, or too much of our resources. Has that come up for you in client conversations where you’ve noticed the feeling of guilt from clients, even though there might be fee paying clients, hopefully, there are a few bank lines that are feeling guilty about the amount of resources taken up.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Yes, and that’s probably been more recent. Because of the nature of how our practice has evolved and the type of work we want to do with clients. And for clients going through massive life transitions, we obviously give up more of our time. And there has been conversations in our office in our boardroom with clients saying, I’m so sorry for sending this on to you. Again, I’m so sorry for booking another meeting. And it’s such a privilege for us in that moment to tell them at this point in time, you are our most important client, because all of our clients don’t go through major life transitions all at the same time. And thank heavens for that. But when a client is going through something significant, the fact that we got, we do have the time to take him through it because of our resource allocation. It’s important to instill in them listen, it’s okay. Next year, this time, you are through this transition hopefully. So then you will be taking place over time so that we can give that to somebody else. And there’s like a massive feeling of appreciation and thankfulness that we actually do care about them. And that’s the thing that stood out to me a specific clients words were it is nice to experience that you actually care about your clients. Because it’s easy to say we care about our clients. And everybody says that even Apple says all we care about our clients. But if a client can experience your K, you’re doing you’re doing the right things.

Louis van der Merwe
For someone that’s very religious, what does that came in to you?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I’ve spoken about it so often to our team to friends, people in my life that honestly believe that financial planning, to an extent is a bit of a calling more than more than just a career or a job. Because it aligns with personal values of helping people, whatever that looks like. And financial planning is, I think one of the careers that touches such so many areas of a client’s life. And if we can make a difference in that it’s it’s fulfilling. It’s honestly fulfilling at the end of the day to know that wow, I helped somebody with a very difficult decision, guiding them through it not just giving them the answer and think that I did it but led them to that realization of Oh, ah, no, no need to do or getting feedback. As I mentioned earlier, I can I sleep better at night because of our conversation. That’s it’s an it’s a massive fulfilling thing. And this doing what I do every day, is a physic absolute calling. It’s not a job, it’s on a career, because if it was a career or a job, I don’t think I would have been able to sustain it for this long. Because there are parts of the job that I don’t like admin. I mean, anybody on this podcast who listens who are predominantly I guess financial planners, we you know, that you don’t like admin. That’s what we’ve got.

Louis van der Merwe
Some of us admitted and some of us granted minutes.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Yeah. And so there’s this parts of the job that is, is just not nice, but because some parts of it is so fulfilling it, it makes that go by in a breeze select some of the stuff that we’ve read from the Gallup Institute. Like if you can just in a work day, use like 20% of your time operating in your strengths. You will get energized by the job even if you do stuff that that takes in GE and you’ll actually be more replenished than when you started. So it’s, yeah, it’s maybe that ingrained thing or it’s just like, part of like, my religious upbringing. And my belief that, like, we’re also called to help people. And the fact that we can help people as a career that’s also financially viable is a big deal, because we’ve got people in our world that are social workers, for example, right? By nature, they also want to help people. But that is a very different environment from a financial perspective, right? Because they are massively under resourced. Same with psychiatrists, psychologists, maybe on the psychiatry side, you can make a little bit more money, but people by nature who need to help people. Normally, you aren’t financially resourced enough, where I think we’re in a bit of a happy medium where we can be financially okay. And we can help people, which is, which is a privileged position to be in

Louis van der Merwe
Rudolph, I’m not sure if this kind of led to this conversation, but I’ve been thinking about the need for social workers within financial planning. What people do you bring into your business to help service your clients and serve them, especially with difficult times? And you know, Melissa, if you’re listening to this, my sister in law, she’s a social worker, and she does miracle work, right? So she’s always really resourceful. When people are going through very tough times, be it an addiction, be it mental health problems, be it illness, right, it seems like what you just say it is that they don’t necessarily have the financial resources. But what if we could combine financial resources with social work now? Like, what, what does that lead to?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
It will give our clients better access to services, they might not have known that they needed, but will be massively beneficial. So one of the terms that’s out there that a lot of the listeners would know about is like a brain trust, where your clients would come in, and you would be the conductor of an orchestra of professionals, which normally in our space, would be your accountant, your tax guy, sometimes at the same your attorney, and then your wealth manager or financial advisor or plan or professional. But that is that is the financial braintrust that your financial team. What about your medical team? What about your mental health team? People looking at your entire life, so that you are well in all areas? Because well being is more than just being financially okay. It’s it’s being in a good space in multiple areas, which includes like, what is your community look like? So one of the practices that I really love is a big practice in Johannesburg, and the logos a boat. So for the people that chartered you know, I’m referring to, one of the things that they’ve done exceptionally well is they’ve realized that the client space that they operate in that their clients lack community, because as they move into a different phase of their life, as they sometimes are forced to move out of the community because it was a standalone freestanding house, wherever it was. And now they are too frail to live there. They move into a frail care facility or retirement village, and now they no longer have community. So Georgia said, Well, there’s an easy way to fix it, they should have community events. So they’ve done except they’ve been very intentional, which is I think one of the most important things that practices can add to the financial planning viewpoint to make the practice Excel exceptionally quickly. It’s being intentional. So we’ve had clients without a community, let’s lump all our clients with our community into a community because now all of a sudden, it’s another area of their life that they are doing better in. Same with social same with financial obviously, we touch the financial part, we touch career part when we give advice and what people can do in their businesses. And it is a such a value that you can add to your business, if you just get to the point where we know, we don’t know enough in this area. So let’s get specialists involved, who are likable, like minded who also want to do it and expand your brain trust for your clients to include not just the financial people or the very smart lawyer people, but people who know how to deal with the sucky parts of life because honestly, that’s when that’s when things can go very wrong during the sucky parts like when life gets hard when life gets real. Divorce death in the family death of a kid it flippin imagine going through that. Now, your financial plan would probably not be of much use you would know about it. But then you need to involve people. So having a panel of experts that you can call on to say Listen, Mr. Client, you chatting to this person will probably be the thing that will change your life or that will get you through this. And doing it in a software that’s not judgmental. So menarik Lyndoch is to hang on, because we sometimes joke about these things to make light of it. But again, Words matter. So how you frame it to tell a client, listen, I think in this area, you’re stuck. Yeah, I can’t do anything for you. Like we need to involve someone else. And it can, it can transform not just our business, but the lives of our clients.

Louis van der Merwe
So those areas that you refer to their clients are stuck in. I mean, we’ve used the wheel of life within a handful of client meetings. And so for those of you not familiar with it, it’s essentially a coaching tool that groups your your life in probably 12, maybe nine areas that’s important to you, and you rake, you rank them all, essentially you give them a score from one to 10, and then say, how happy how far do I feel in that area. And what’s surprising for me is that finances often quite high, it’s like maybe in line, maybe a 10. I mean, these aren’t financial problems that we’re dealing with, share share a bit of the experience that that you found, when using the wheel of life with clients.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
That was probably one of the single biggest elements that we’ve added to our financial planning process over the last couple of months. And it’s been the one that I was the not the most skeptical, the most concerned bringing into a client meeting because it would be an unknown. But it’s also been the thing that transformed the one specific client meeting I’m thinking about, but that transformed that engagement. And the reason was very simple. We know that the client is financially Okay, ticked all the boxes, there’s a good plan in place the clients on not just on track to do have the plan work, but they’ve exceeded the plan, or they the plan works in an accelerated timeframe. But so we were hoping and knowing that in the area of money finance, that it will be a high school. But interestingly, it wasn’t a high school or as high as we thought it would be. So unpacking what we thought it was versus why the client rated it lower, was very interesting, because it was, again, a bias at the client ads. So we had the opportunity to hold up the mirror and guide them through what they thought versus what reality is and how to marry the two. But that was one element of the meeting. The second component was they rated the health very low. And to figure out that oh, well, the health in low score also is attached to the money and the work. So to say, well, listen, how do we balance this because if you were to look at and Google wheel of life, you’ll see that it almost looks like a bit of a spider web, where it’s a circle on the outside and then closest to the bullseye of the circle, you would have one and then you would take it out. And if you score 18, you’re on the outside of the circle. So imagine you writing your life in those different elements, whether social community, family, work, finance, health, and you would score a majority of the ones at a five and maybe you want a Ruby thing, the whole principle behind the wheel of life is if you were to put that wheel on a bicycle. Now, how comfortable with that ride be, if you consider there’s a there’s something pushing or sticking out of your wheel or one of the spokes came through the wheel. And now you need to drive over that spoke, it’s going to make it a very bumpy ride. So to unpack that with, with that specific client to say, You know what, all of your areas are quite, quite balanced. But this one area, tell us more. And getting the client to unpack that area and the impact and what the spouse thought about it and how they would rate each other differently. Figuring out who the blind spots are, how they complement each other. It took it from a financial planning forward looking conversation, which was the intention what the client wanted to a conversation around non work around, like, what are my hopes and dreams? And what is the life that I could have. But it’s actually not the life that I wanted, or I thought it would be different. And it now has subsequently changed the plan. So it wasn’t the conversation on money that changed the plan, which we think well the money would impact the plan, right? Because the plan is about the money. But no, the plan is about the life. And doing that we live life experiment with this client couple was massively beneficial. And that was the only thing that the clients took home with them. When they walked out of a boardroom. I could see the husband and the wife both folding up these little wheel of life results are answers that we printed out and that they put them in the handbag and they took them home. And that was interesting because it was a lot of other stuff that they could take with him but they didn’t because it was such a valuable part of the conversation.

Louis van der Merwe
I mean, we assume that people just have these conversations yet, we don’t normally have that. I mean, I didn’t talk to my wife of a dinner table about what does your wheel of life look like. And maybe we can have those conversations yet, with financial planners, we can make it a little bit more structured, we can say today, we are tackling this. And so part of it feels like we can be a bit more creative, right? It doesn’t have to be, Mr. Mrs. Klein, use your balance sheet and scare them out of the out of the meeting, it can be cool, let’s let’s go for a walk. So I’m actually taking a client on Monday, we’re gonna go for a walk to walking meeting, we’re going to be out in nature, there is no paperwork that we need to do. And we’re just going to have a chat about where she’s at, at the moment, what’s coming up for her what we need to tackle what we need to prepare for. And I’ll let you know how that meeting goes afterwards. But it’s a concept that I’ve wanted to do for a while. And I think actually just saying cool that this is a walking meeting. And the next one can be a seated meeting again, and

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I think using our creativity can add so much value. And this is back to the start of the episode, right? It started with what is the benefit? Or why do we operate as a team? Or how can a team add value to a client? Number one, as a financial planner, it takes pressure off because I’m not the beyond the norm, these multiple brains that I can pick, but all the other people have wonderfully creative ideas that could benefit all of our clients. So team can add so much. And these are some of the things that we’ve spoken about with resources that we find online. And I think if we think out of the box, and we don’t just stick to the numbers, and the pages and our education and our and how we would train to be financial planners. And we just keep the client top of mind, what would be beneficial to my client in this area, or in this meeting? What would be the most conducive way? Maybe for this client, it’s not another meeting about a balance sheet or about the mass amounts of decisions that they’ve had to make over the last couple of months, they’re actually so fatigued in that area, that we think that they’re excited to come because that’s what they say, but they might be dreading it because there’s just more decisions to be made where a walking meeting in that area or upfront saying, I’m going to take you out for coffee or breakfast or lunch, or we’re going to go for a walk and we’re not going to talk business. That could be very freeing, and we need to explore these things because yes, otherwise life could become very boring.

Louis van der Merwe
Rudolph that’s such a nice way to end it. Thanks for taking this walk around our advice approach today with me and round engaging clients and how advice is changing. Maybe for the better. Maybe for the worse. Time will tell Definitely for the better. Cheers.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Bye.