#99 Juan Mirfin – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of ensemble advice South Africa. Today, I’m privileged to have with me Juan Mirfin. Juan has been a good friend and someone that I’ve seen evolve and move through different levels within the financial services industry. Juan, thank you so much for joining me.

Juan Mirfin
Thank you very much for having me. I remember having this conversation with you, I don’t know how many years ago say you’re influential person, you should maybe do something like us. And here we are episode 99.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s great fun. I think I’ve wanted to give up after every seven episodes, how am I gonna fit this into life? And and how am I going to juggle it yet? It’s now at a point where I think the conversations are starting to have an impact. And we start to, to see and feel the change within this profession. But I want to talk about your experience. So you finished your undergraduate at the University of Western Cape? Let’s start a like, how did you select finance, out of all the various options that you could pick?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, I don’t necessarily think I chose it. I started UW si as that whole leaving universe, or leaving high school as this ambitious person who loves sport. And I went to do sports science first. And I think I was about three, four months into sports science. And I realized, when you go to the gym, and fortunately, you know, my, what I was studying was what all the personal trainers had. And I was like, what I don’t necessarily want to work in a gym, not looking at the greater scheme of things. Dropped out without my family knowing continue to go to varsity for two months after that, to keep up appearances and make it look like I was leaving to go to varsity. And eventually just kind of came out as hits my Mom and Dad, listen, yeah, I’ve kind of dropped out. I said, I’ll go work for six months and go and pay back what I obviously wasted. And then applied for the following year and applied for become accounting, when to do it. Luckily enough, you know, as the stars aligned, I met my beautiful wife, but never liked accounting either. I absolutely dreaded going to accounting and doing, you know, tax and those type of things. And luckily, there was a subject in there called financial management, and in their head time value of money and those type of things. And I thoroughly enjoyed it, report me back to high school and of those, John goes to the shop and you know, three hours, he’s not there for eight apples, whatever, yeah, to work it out. And I could do that it was easy. And I was like, Well, you know what, let me just go down this switch majors the following year. So technically my third first year, and in fall in love with finance and investments, I was privileged enough to have my kind of professor that time actually had his own hedge fund in title $1 billion assets under management, exceptionally intelligent man, Dr. Warren Brown was also one of our lecturers, I think he’s one of our leading asset managers in industrial kind of a solution driven asset manager. So we had incredible people that kind of cultivated this passion for investments. And your went through the whole thing, did undergrad actually went into more honors at UW C as well, was amazing. And in, luckily enough, there was, you know, quite a large asset management, large platform in industry that did this career readiness programs. And I went for mock interview with him not really wanting to apply for them. And they liked what they saw somehow, and hired me literally within a week. So left last year and went there immediately.

Louis van der Merwe
There’s quite a few pivotal items that you mentioned the like, meeting your wife, I can that’s that’s a big one. And we’ll get into how some of those decisions might have impacted your career and the approaches that you’ve taken. And then looking up to these professors, these guys that are that have made it right. What when you look at them, what did you take away that you made your own from what they were doing, like, let’s talk about this professor that had the hedge fund or the investment background, we said, okay, very successful guys giving back to the industry, like how did that inspire you to go into this field?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, I think the one thing was they were humble, which was quite an amazing thing. You kind of we never knew that he had this massive hedge fund, he drove a journey. And this old school kind of not even a new shape. That was like the old shape. He had this Chrysler 300 C, you know, it wasn’t fancy cars. And he was incredibly intelligent, like seriously intelligent Ivan think he’s on one of the boards of the CFA institution, like really is no xinxing che was his name. We called him Andy. And it was a pleasure, but obviously silly with him. The one thing I did realize was, I loved the investment industry, but not necessarily sitting behind the computer screen and analyzing from hours upon hours upon hours, because that’s what he explained to us is the reality. You know, everyone sees these incredible trades and needs to you know, but it’s endless hours of research behind the to make that informed decision. And that was the one thing that I think all of us realized and kind of our class was split naturally in three, we had a group of guys that went into that kind of investment analysts, portfolio managers, and all of them are doing extremely well. And we have the group like myself where I think the more I don’t want to say charismatic, but the guys that never like to sit behind a stream like a screen and get boxed in, so we went into more to distribution kind of way. And then we had other guys that were quite technical, but never really liked the Investment Analyst side. And all of them have gone into kind of the IT project management side of the investment industry, which is quite nice. So it was a good spread of us. And I think we all learned from that manager kind of Andy was a lovely thing. And he kind of opened our eyes to the investment world in its entirety.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s wonderful that you can actually kind of pick one of these streams, maybe intentionally or unintentionally. And what I’m hearing you say is that, that love of people, right, getting your energy from other people where you don’t want to be hidden. And you don’t want to be sitting behind the screen with that someone that might put on an expert happens. Oh, cool. This is, this is where I get energy from. So now you’re stepping into your first job. How ready? Were you for that job leaving university?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, that’s an interesting one, because I look back then. And I think I dreaded the time there. But I also treasured the moments. Because we leave university that’s beautiful honours degree and in life humbles you very quickly, because now all of a sudden, you’re picking up the phone, and you’re saying, Hi, Jonathan, how can I help you, and you have this honours degree, you’ve written your thesis, I’ve done exceptionally well at university. And now I’m helping people unlock their online accounts. So that was a quite a humbling experience and kind of bringing me back down to earth. But it was the thing I needed to do. Because I think I learned a lot more about myself. During that time, I realized, I don’t want to be in front of a computer screen, I was privileged enough that we had conversations with guys in distribution when I was in that role. And I think I immediately kind of fell in love with distribution immediately. I think it’s a great base. I think if you kind of work with financial advisors, you end up working with the clients indirectly. And I wanted to be there. I wanted to kind of make an impact whichever way I could. So your if that makes any sense.

Louis van der Merwe
It does. It does. It sounds like you had a bigger impact or your intention was, hey, I can actually speak to clients, but I can also indirectly help these advisors. What were advisors struggling with at that point?

Juan Mirfin
So I think that it’s interesting, because back then I think the oil price had dropped drastically. All of a sudden, Sasol was not great. People are panicking, you know, you’ve got like a flip side. You know, we look back now, but will is not increased. And everyone’s had the feeling pumped every month, because now it’s constantly increasing. I don’t think as humans we ever happy. We always got to worry about something. And I think what we take out of that is don’t sweat the small stuff, you know, play into the long term investments or you know, playing to the plan, because something’s going to upset the applecart. But if you continue this journey, you know, you’ll do all right. But I think back then what does it 2014? I think it was oil was the massive one. I remember Sasol was like an all time low. We had a company I was working at at extreme X for quite a large exposure to Sasol. And I remember every phone call was, you know, your exposure to SAS holds terrible data to that. But two years before that everyone loved the exposure to SAS, almost probably now, everyone’s loving the exposure because their shares data, right. And so it’s just an interesting time that we find ourselves in. And it was a good learning curve, because all of a sudden, I was thrust into this world. And I’m talking about oil, and OPEC. And, you know, all this stuff that I had no idea about, because that’s not what I did my honors, but it was a good learning curve.

Louis van der Merwe
So things you didn’t expect to have conversations around. Tell me how difficult is it to defend someone else’s opinion? So now you you’re answering this phone call? You have to talk about something where maybe the company stands for that, or or maybe not. And you have to relay the message that has been fed to you? How much space do you have for interpreting what John fields about this position? Wow, how do you navigate those conversations? Particularly where it might be something where you disagree with

Juan Mirfin
the officer? Good, very good, question them. Luckily, the companies I’ve worked at are quite good, have really good ethical lines. So there hasn’t been any of these, you know, shady kind of things happening behind the scenes. So I don’t necessarily think I’ve had to do anything as against what my own morals are. But I think it’s tough. The worst conversations is chatting to those people in their retirement already. They’ve saved their whole life and now they’ve hit retirement and now they look at their quarterly statement and then, you know, returns are done. I think what we used to do You then really well was put ourselves in their shoes. And often we used to get ourselves very upset. Because now you’ve put yourselves in their shoes, you realized shame these people aren’t, you know, living how they were, yes, it doesn’t impact in month to month, but they know that they are you is coming or falling drastically. So come next revision, they must probably going to have 10% 20% less than what they had the previous year. You know, that’s without even inflation. So I think that was always the difficult one for us in the call center. But it was putting ourselves in the clients shoes, sympathizing with them, you know, kind of helping them stay the course, speaking about this funds that they in and saying, you know, good managers, you know, they do what they need to do. This is just unfortunately, like a blip in the ocean, you know, yes, it looks terrible now, but if you zoom out like anything, zoom out, you’ll kind of see it, the line is a little bit smoother. But it’s tough, I think at that point, if it’s your own money to kind of take yourself out of it.

Louis van der Merwe
So would these be direct clients? Or would these be advised clients, right? So they’re phoning in, they’re saying, This is what I’m struggling with? Please help me understand

Juan Mirfin
that you also, I think it was both. So when I started, it was a direct line. So not intermediate clients at all. And it’s always interesting, because intermediate clients don’t, I wouldn’t say I don’t know much. But they’re not as well informed. So it was often a more of an educational discussion, and you had to take them to the Fun Fact Sheets and speak about, you know, what is their investment philosophy and what type of growth investment or you know, what value investment you know, and often that was way above the, you know, level that they were used to, and in speaking to intermediate declines was completely different, they kind of had a plan, you just had to bring them back to the plan. And often, we would refer them back to the advisor. And so you clearly have a financial advisor, you’ve done a financial plan, contact your advisor, we can tell you the factual information, what’s going on about the fund, but Your advisor will obviously be able to kind of stop you from doing that silly decision. I think Carl Richards always says, One beautiful drawing of reasons, the difference between me and my advisors, their next silly mistake, we know that’s what he’s made to do. So we just used to get them to go back to their financial advisors.

Louis van der Merwe
And that can be tricky, right? Especially if the financial advisor might have done something questionable, where you don’t necessarily agree with it. And I would imagine that it must be a tricky space to sit in, because you have one opportunity, one phone call with one piece of information and you’re not seeing this person, what type of training went into, into getting that right? I mean, the business that you work for they, they have a great reputation around, not dropping the ball. So I’m curious around what the training looked like.

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, so that was also great. I eventually trained those guys in the course it’s I know exactly how it is firsthand. So it was intensive. It was three months of assessments on every single product. It was assessments on kind of general soft skills. And in before they even went live, we had scenarios planned out. So we had an aggressive client phoning in, you know, but the best thing about it was they knew that they were going to on that day, they were having these phone calls, but they wouldn’t know who they were speaking to in the company. So we used to get random people in the company to phone with a script. And he’d say to them, you are an aggressive client and go crazy. Like to the point, like people would like start crying on these mock phone calls, because you got intense, because we were trying to get them ready for when they on those phone calls. Because the problem is, once you’re on the phone call, we don’t know what’s been thrown at you, we can’t kind of curate this whole discussion. Someone could phone in and get on in a lock and lock in a secure site or someone could phone instead, they just lost their mother hope they wind up we’ll get the paperwork to enter the state. It’s very difficult. So we ran through all the scenarios for about three months. And in when they went on the phone they had on like a person shadowing them. So literally, there was someone sitting next to them with headphones on. And with a notepad and going a cackle, say this do this. So there was a lot of kind of, you know, holding hands, but it was holding hands not because we never trusted the most going. We don’t know what’s been thrown at us. So we tried our hardest to kind of help you.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s wonderful to hear that and so helpful. Thinking about running a small team, because I think very few financial advisors have the time and the resources and the energy to train the staff in that manner. And I want to know in your current role where you get to speak to a lot of advisors. What are the general sense around hiring people and training them? Do you see practices doing it really well? Or most people just throwing mud at a wall and saying, Hey, who’s gonna stick and those people figure it out their role, especially in the independent advice market?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, I think it’s an interesting one from support staff. I think a lot of guys, in my opinion are starting to go towards kind of support hubs, you know, businesses that do professional administration, because the guys don’t necessarily know if you know person may have helped on the investment side. But running a short term business or running a life business requires different set of skills. And I don’t think as you said, advisor has the capability not capability, but the capacity to vet those things. It’s you know, you’re not, you’re not a director has a massive HR team that can do all of these background checks, you’re most probably most of the time an individual. So most of the time from an Esports side guys, or hiring administration, really capable administration companies that have proven track records, on their advice, I think it’s, you know, it’s a bit of both, sometimes there’s a guy that comes straight out advice, and he has this beautiful three letter word behind his name CFP. And they immediately think he can become an advisor, because he’s a Certified Financial Planner, you know, you should know everything, you should know how to do it. But I think with the latest, you would see now with the latest kind of certification changes, I think people are realizing that just having a CFP behind your name doesn’t necessarily mean you can give advice, you know, you haven’t really done a financial plan properly in your kind of studies. But we assume this, you assume that because I’ve got this incredible qualifications, I can do the job, it just means that I’m competent, doesn’t necessarily mean I have the soft skills and hard skills to be able to sit in front of a client and give life changing decisions. And then you get those guys that, you know, have worked 1520 years. And you see it in my industry, where I’m currently in distribution, the guys who move out of distribution, so they’ve, you know, 15 years experience, as you know, they’ve leaving at 3540 years old, and then they shift to become an advisor. So they have 15 years of kind of talking with advisors, understanding what the day to day is. And then they’re going to work with a financial advisor. So as I said, there’s a bit of both. And you know, there’s no right or wrong.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s quite interesting to say that there’s these multiple avenues to becoming an advisor, and you took a stab at kind of spending some time in advice, and we’ll come back to that. But I want to know, these guys that are leaving distribution, you know, maybe they have 1520 years experience, how quickly do they get to build a sustainable business? Do you see that they have a faster runway than someone maybe that have that have? Maybe moved from another profession, right? So let’s say they were maybe a teacher, very successful. But now I’ve said, Okay, I want to change in Korea, and I want to I want to do something else, like, do you see a significant time frame for them to build up a sustainable business,

Juan Mirfin
you’re, the one thing you do notice quite quickly is that if you’re 20 year old, and as a sad reality, you could be the most intelligent person on planet Earth. But if you go to their 50 year old, or 60 year old, and you want to do a financial plan, they look at you and they go, you know, you’re not wet behind the ears, you know, you haven’t really loved life, you haven’t gone through those things, which is fair enough, you know, is a bit of that life skills and stuff that you have to go through, I think the guys that have got 10 years, 15 years, or whatever experience teaching and stuff, they’ve got time, they’ve seen things they’ve, you know, been through different cycles, they’ve seen different market conditions, whether it is in their own kind of financial services sector, but they’ve also seen it from how it impacts people. The one benefit you do get, if you’ve been the professionals, you know, whatever professional field for 15 years, your networks are generally quite large. So you’ve already built up a good network. So when you go back to their professional network, that you are part of the guys who are most probably a little easier and will kind of come to you. Because think about it, you kind of finished university 20 to 15 years experience you leaving a 37. So 37 years old, you know, you go into a client, that’s only 50, it’s 13 years older than you they’re not looking at you as yet you that kid, yeah, you that guy that can help them make a decision that they have to make in five years time when they potentially retire.

Louis van der Merwe
You’re in the inner circle, you have people and you know, we often hear that from people joining insurance where they get this list of 100 people and when you just leave university, those other 100 people also don’t have money. So how do you find clients starting out? Like, I want to talk a little bit about your move into advice and of what worked and what didn’t work. So tell us a little bit about that transition away from kind of a let’s call it a cushy job into actually the cold face. I’ve seen clients directly.

Juan Mirfin
You also it’s interesting when because everyone asked me that question because they can see it. You know, you go look on any of my professional profiles. You can see I’ve moved from a cushy job to this scary world of advice. The reason I moved wasn’t to become a you know, I want to become a financial planner and be an incredible thing it was when I was starting out I think I was maybe 2627 You know, I’m having to look after guys who have a books excess of a billion, you know, it’s very difficult to say to 27 year old, go in and do practice management, what is practice management? I have no idea what’s compliance, no idea. I just go in and tell them this is the fun and we have great administration or, you know, do this or do that. That’s what I thought, you know. And then you start realizing, you know, that kind of distribution models moving away from purely being this, you know, admins, jockey, to being so much greater you therefore, practice management do therefore, HR discussions, you that you kind of, are the one stop shop, and at 27, I must be honest, I sat there going, I don’t really know, I can’t really, maybe tell a guy who has 100,000 Rand book, maybe. But there’s big advisors out there with a billion rand plus book. No. And luckily, at that time, you know, LinkedIn is incredible. And he was, you know, got chatted a couple of people on my network and moved into tight space. And I was like, Well, let me give this a shot. You know, it was very difficult for me because, you know, moving as only work you independence, and I’m going to become a tight advisor, and they will set taboo on me. You know, there was this whole thing in industry when I was moving, I was tied advice, you know, it’s scary. But I had a great stable of products. And when I started it was, they asked me that 100 people list. And like, anyone, when I put my 100 list, I looked down at the thing, and I went 40 of these people, my family, like, I don’t necessarily want to do business with my family. Like, I love them to birds. But you know, I don’t want to do I don’t want to see this stuff. Because you got a family, Brian, all of a sudden, it’s not a family, Brian in water. Shawn, can you help me with this? We’ll do this. Exactly. I mean, like you said, my other 60 All the guys, I was a school with, you know, like, I knew they never had money. You know, there were all kinds of most probably some of them staying at home, some of them overseas, enjoying their life, some of them on a yacht, they don’t want to invest. So my strategy there was, well look at my immediate circle, where can I find a gap? And I think that’s maybe before you’re alluding to my wife, my wife became a teacher. And there was an opportunity there that, you know, looking at my wife and seeing the advice she got, or lack, they have, you know, whatever you want, and are maybe rude in saying that, but we would often have discussions, she should ask me, like, how’s your pension fund going? Or how’s this? And I was like, but you have a pension fund, like, surely someone’s coming to you on a yearly basis, at least, and just giving you an update, and turn out no one was, so my strategy was, Well, hey, you know, teachers are incredible human beings, I do incredible work. Most of them have a pension fund as a governing body through a school. So let’s go and talk to them. Let’s go and see if I can make appointments. But what I found that really quickly is doing anything in employee benefits is not like a weekend, you’re going to get a yes, that’s going through governing bodies, and you have to wait for when they sit because they don’t just sit every other week. So I learned a lot. And it was enjoyable. So that’s how I kind of I looked at my immediate circle and say, Well, where can I make the most change and the quickest change and the most effective change? So y’all were targeted schools,

Louis van der Merwe
well done for taking that leap. Because I think even though it was super scary, that’s probably what you needed to do to grow, to say, these are the areas where I don’t feel I can add so much value walking into someone’s business and say, are you doing this now? Are you doing that? And yet, when you take that jump, like there is no guarantee, right? There’s no guarantee that this will be a successful career. Can we talk about the space where you had to make a decision around? Hey, do I stick this out? Or do I go and look for an alternative? You shared with me a story beforehand? And and I was wondering if you’d be able to repeat that?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah. So it was an interesting time. I think it was November, December. My wife came to me and said, I’m an advisor. So Bear this in mind, like, you know, anyone that’s listening to this. You’re earning commission. Yes, I had a basic, but I didn’t even think my basic at that time covered my bond. It was not even to know. So it was like that may cover one medical aid. And what if I did after that kind of covered the bond and gave us food and stuff like that? So my wife and myself had made the decision that, you know, should we have baked beans on toast, we will do that, you know, that’s our decision, we will kind of sacrifice together to hopefully, you know, progress along this career. And my wife came to me November, December and said, you know, glove, good news, bad news, whichever way you want to take it. And I think we were married for about three years at a time and she’s like, I’m pregnant. And immediately you kind of get super happy and you kind of hug and kiss and love everything. And like a typical man. The wife goes to sleep and you sit up, awake and go Well, I’m gonna pay for this, you know, I’ve got this other human being coming in baby mind, I think that month I must have earned a commission of like 100 grand or 200 grand. And I think I’ve got that the month before. So you kind of sit there going, you know, is it selfish of me bringing a human into this world, my wife and myself made the decision to sacrifice. But my son never made that decision, we you know. So I looked at us, I still had a couple of months, most, probably 15 months, 16 months, in my contract that I got a little bit of a basic, so it was a good deal. And I just said, You know what, as it sat there, I became extremely risk averse, I became, you know, I was always this risk taker, you know, jumping from a cushy job into thing, I would have done that in a heartbeat. Now, that’s beautiful little boy coming in, I got to provide them. So it was a scary thing I think I’ve missed probably jumped a bit too soon. Looking back at it now, it was definitely too soon. But I’m extremely happy, you know, to look at the decision I’ve made, you know, five years later, I don’t necessarily think I would have changed anything. Maybe if I stay a little longer, maybe my journey would have gone somewhere else. But I don’t, you know, not upset about anything.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s so beautiful. How that parallels the way clients typically approach advisors, right? Something’s happening in their life. It’s impacting their finances, and they have to make a decision. Who could you bounce that idea of? Like, was that something you internalize and said, Okay, this is something for John and his family to figure out? Or did you get some external information? Like how did you validate that decision? In hindsight?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, I don’t know, I actually think I must probably had a conversation with you. I don’t know if you remember that. We must have had a coffee, we bounced must probably of you. And my wife’s uncle, he’s also really prominent in the financial services sector. And I bounced around with him, because I know that he’s more risk averse, or what I am. And he kind of say to me, you know, what, you’ve made the decision, you know, your primary job now is as a man, look after your children. So whether that is go back into corporate, or make it a success as an advisor, that was the decision. And you know, like humans, we generally take the road of least resistance. So I went with corporates, you know, it was safer for me, as I said, I became highly risk averse. You know, all of a sudden, I’m not this person that not worrying about medical aid and GAP cover and all these things that was never on my mind, when I read in the terms and conditions and making sure that my son’s covered and all those type of things, it was things I never worried about.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s such a nice way to just make sure that when you go into advice that you set yourself up for success, right? So you’ve said, Go, I have a two year runway, there’s enough time, but then life happens. And it’s okay. Right? It’s okay to explore something else and then say, well, maybe some roads lead back to advice, or it leads to a different area. I think we still see this assumption that everyone wants to become an advisor. Yet, when you said earlier, there’s three tracks that you can take, right? You can go into the ops, the IT side, you can go into kind of the analyst side, are you seeing more career avenues for people in financial services, then, you know, just becoming an advisor?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, I think it is, I think financial services is pretty much exploding at the moment, people may not think it. But if you look back 15 years ago, versus where we are today, there’s how many more Unit Trust managers out there, you know, that means there’s how many more jobs available, because every single one of those collective investment schemes, they don’t just run solo, there’s a HR there, there’s an ops team there, there’s this guy, there’s that guy, that’s job creation. So you know, there’s those guys send in advice in our game, I want to become this. This problem is we often limit ourselves because we watch a movie or we know this one person. And we only think that’s the place to go. And I often say to guys is, you know, in your final year or something, contacted multiple people in the financial services, look at your LinkedIn type in the company you want to go to and all of a sudden you realize there’s like 100 different, you know, job descriptions or job names, and then you start realizing very quickly that I’m aware that it’s not just limited to this investment analysts, you know, there’s a whole bunch of different jobs out

Louis van der Merwe
there. They might have common skill sets on might require common skill set, but being an internal compliance officer versus being a consultant, two very different people that tend to do that. So you spoke a little bit about the employee benefit side and how that would have been a great opportunity to potentially unlock clients. What was the challenges other than the time of decision like do you think the market is catering in the right way? For these groups for people to deliver or receive quality advice at scale,

Juan Mirfin
you’re too interested in one. I don’t necessarily think the market, I think legislation makes it more difficult legislations becoming, there’s a better fit for it. We try to protect clients where we make it extremely difficult to do business and it becomes more expensive to do business. So all of a sudden, if I now hire this, John F, and in the business, I need him to write so much business because I need to cover all of those costs. Where as a minority back in the day, yes, it was Cowboy Season, but there wasn’t anything out there. You can go and sign a person for 500 grand every other day. Today, I don’t think this really people want to do that. Because how am I going to make money or 500? Debit order make five grand a month? You know, that’s not going to cover anything. So I think it’s a catch 22 You trying to? You know, I think financial services and kind of agency forces and advice companies are trying to do good. But guys starting out brand new, you know, they have to have some sort of leads, yes. Work for a bear that yeah, fair enough. Give him six months to see what they can do. And and you give it to the better guys, because you still need to convert those leads, but there is still hope that’s needed. You know, whether it’s joining as a succession to financial advisory practice, I don’t necessarily think that’s been done enough. You know, is there a way that young advisors hitting the industry registered with one of the, you know, many kind of boards that are out there? Surely there could be speaking to succession networks and stuff like that and kind of match and play matchmaker? Often we find that these independents sit in isolation, and they have to go and figure it out themselves and their compliance office banging down the door and saying, where’s your succession? You know, surely there’s guys out there that can play matchmaking. We know where the young stairs, we know where the older aging practices are, let’s start putting people together. And I think that’s how you help this industry.

Louis van der Merwe
Absolutely, completely agree with you. I do I ever hear a lot people saying how do I? How do I keep this person? Right? I can get them in my business? I’ve tried it once or twice or three times? They stay for a year, two years, maybe three years? And then what are the banks pick them up? Or one of the insurers pay them an amount that I cannot afford to pay them? Given that you have had some of these discussions? What do you think are the things that are missing in those roles? Where maybe an A an aging practice can compete with like, if it’s not on the on the monetary side? Like what is it that we could give people to say, hey, this, this is something that you can can work for, that will make sure that you actually stay within their business? Yeah, I

Juan Mirfin
think it’s tough. You know, I don’t necessarily think I have the silver bullet. But often, the discussions that I’ve had with guys, is to try find like minded individuals, so that’s often tough as well. So often, when the guy leaves, they come in and they they get told they get sold the dream, you know, this youngster comes in and he’s 28, maybe in 30, odd, right? He gets sold the dream by the, by the more experienced KPI, who’s now got all the clients and he’s got the 500 clients, whatever it is, and his book is doing extremely well. He sells the dream to young advisor, like any company is going to do when you want good talent, your soul dream, you know, it’s for us that’s starting in the business to kind of look through the smoke and mirrors and see if it will hopefully what does is, you know, I think what you do then is you got to have some sort of a binding agreement or you know, any new client or whether to fix salary, you know, I think that’s a great one, it kind of removes that barrier. If I get a proper decent ish fixed salary. Yes, can advisors afford it? Most? Probably not. But that’s what I’ll say there must be someone out there like a regulatory body or something that it has a vested interest in us. And I think we know who we talking about it, there’s many companies out there that have vested interest in financial advisors do well. So there must be some sort of a funding thing that can help these aging books fund these guys for five years or 10 years, or whatever it is, so that they can get through that initial hump, then they can, you know, hire them. And in the set proper handover policy, you know, and that can take five years, but it’s a proper handover, you know, I’ve gained with you to every single one of your clients, and we eventually, you know, exit the industry,

Louis van der Merwe
a sustainable succession. I think what’s missing still in South Africa, is that the funding mechanism, like you rightly said, at a reasonable price, you see people willing to give you money, but you know, they’re gonna charge you 25 26% And then it doesn’t make sense, right? So at a reasonable price. There’s a lot that you have learned over the last, how many years how many years is this not been that you

Juan Mirfin
almost 10 years?

Unknown Speaker
So the last decade,

Juan Mirfin
I’ve not just got past that, like, you know, I’m not just as newbie in the industry. I’ve now got here almost a decade you say

Louis van der Merwe
so you Looking back, you’re taught you’re kind of connecting these pieces. But what happens when we look forward? Like where do you see John 10 years from now? Is that back in the advisor seat, and I won’t hold you to this, we might listen to this episode 10 years from now, but is it back in their advisors seat? Is it making a massive difference in practices isn’t running a multinational business?

Juan Mirfin
Your I don’t, I think I’ve stopped thinking 10 years plus, because life changes very quickly. The one thing I’ve realized is that I most probably am still going to stay in corporate. I think I got strain, say you realize a lot about yourself and you become an advisor. But I enjoy the corporate side of it. I think there’s a lot of change you can make there. And hey, maybe one day I’ll be running a big successful company, or distribution force. But I definitely still want to work with financial advisors. Sometimes, you know, people say, like you said in the beginning, you know, every seventh episode, I think it’s like me, you know, every seven phone call, I get about the same question. I want to kind of exit the industry, but it’s still rewarding. At the end of the day, youth social relationships are ever evolving and becoming better and stronger. And I think it’s, you know, one of the in this industry, I think, personally, that’s that and business wise is interested in, I think, five to 10 years time. We had the whole debate for the last five years of active versus passive and it was this whole it was every article every roadshow, you went to an enforce forward like now to present time, it’s no longer vers discussion. It’s a and, you know, I’m including passives into my solutions. And I think the next five years is the interesting one is AI, you know, is it a verse discussion? Are we should we be against as a financial services company? Or should we embrace it as an industry, and that’s going to be the interest want to play it? I’m telling guys that embrace it, learn about it, enjoy it, because can most probably make your life easier. But you know, it’s I don’t think we should be thinking about versus any, any scenario that comes up, we always put it up against me say it’s either or, you know, we know in the advice space, it’s not either or it’s and it’s inclusive, it’s, you know, see, I think that’s gonna be an interesting one, it’s gonna be a couple of themes playing out in the next five to 10 years. And I know we’ve got to be, we’ve got to look forward to enjoying it.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s definitely a more nuanced question to say, how much of each way? How do we do this, as opposed to, you know, those binary outcomes? Do we include it? Or don’t we, I know that you run quite a few successful social events. Talk us through a little bit of the things that have been beneficial in your career, what is what has worked is golf events, one of them that that has converted into business, he also

Juan Mirfin
actually has, we run a very Ponce successful golfing network, but it’s a golfing network, we try to get together once a month, like minded individuals, individuals in the industry, whether it’s other asset managers, advisors, we have guys from, you know, other financial services companies in the greatest games, they come and play along with us. But it’s, I think it’s from an advisor space, they seem to enjoy it, the younger guys, as well. We’ve seen a lot of the older advisors and always have older in their age, but experienced the guys that have been through everything. And some ex financial planners of the year that play with us. And it’s so nice watching those more experienced advisors, willing to share with the youngsters, like it’s not competition. And that’s the thing I enjoy the most about is getting these people into play golf, you would think they’re competent competitors. But financial advisors are great, you know, they’re always willing to chat and have a conversation. And it’s bringing some fun back into the financial services sector. I don’t think I started, when I started, you know, the fun financial services was done. Back in the day, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, you hear but all the crazy things that used to happen and the trips and those type of things. But it was fun. I think there’s so much compliance and so much legislative update, and so many business updates, that guys just get stuck in the day to day, and you got to have a little bit of fun, you know, whether it’s golf or lunch, or you know, a wind farm, whatever it is, but they gotta bring that fun element into it makes more memorable at the end of the day, and it opens people up to have a conversation because it’s not just business business, business builders, I need to get to know the individual because like yourselves as financial advisors, you’re not going to walk up to a client immediately on the first meeting and say, give me 10 million invest. Yes, maybe it will happen because they’ve researched you over the last year. But you also have to get know that like you don’t you have 234 meetings where you’re building up the trust with the client and eventually the client gives you their money. It’s exact same as outside with a financial advisors we play. We want to partner alongside them. So we’ve got to get to know them on a personal level as well as you know, professional level.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you for bringing back the fun into financial services. It’s something that I think a lot of people Think this, this is the most boring topic in the world. And I never want to talk about it, they will want to think about it. And then the other element is it’s lonely as an individual advisor, someone sitting by themselves. I remember those first couple of years, like literally, myself and a roundtable, it’s lonely, you have no one to bounce ideas off of and and just being in the presence of someone else, maybe get you through that week, so that you can continue in advice, or it may be opened your eyes and you say, well, actually, there’s a different career path. And thank you, John, this, this has been wonderful to hear about the alternative routes that someone can take. So hopefully someone listening to this today says, well, actually, I don’t only have to be an advisor on these many different routes. And I’m also allowed to change my mind, as things happen. Is there any parting wisdom that you want to leave with younger advisors that might be listening to this that would be beneficial to them?

Juan Mirfin
Yeah, I think as a younger advisors is keep your eyes open for an opportunity. Often we close ourselves up to that 500 grand or 1000 Rand or 10,000 Rand because we want that 10 million, but some people have to start somewhere. And that 5000 or 500, debit order, they may have a significant other where parent or someone that is doing well, they may open a door for you to go see there, there shouldn’t be your, you know, your ulterior motive to go there. But if you’re doing good, solid advice, and you’re kind of helping people where you can, you know, they will open doors for you, because they always say, you know, word of mouth is the best form of marketing. So if you do a good job with this client in front of you, they will open that door and be patient, it’s a long game. They always say 24 months, so get past 24 months. And genuinely, it’s a lot better. But you’ve got to get to that 24 months. It’s tough, but do it. It’s fantastic. It really is fantastic. I see it with advisors all the time. It’s an incredibly rewarding career path. You get to see proper significant change and advice as a dream protectors at the end of the day. You know, you’re helping secure legacy for years to come, which was amazing.

Louis van der Merwe
What a lovely way to end. Thank you so much on all the best for your future career. And I’ll definitely have you back 10 years from now we could reflect on the next decade.

Juan Mirfin
Thanks so much Louis. Have a lovely one.