#29 Johan Vosloo – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today, I’m really excited to have my friend Johan Vosloo join us all the way from Berlin. Johan is the co founder of Commspace, which is one of the main products from headspace technologies. And they ran a revenue analytics provider for the last six years. And today, we’re just going to have a chat about how come space came alive, how it’s grown over the last six years from a one man show to a bigger team, what that journey has been like and what your husband sees going on in the financial services industry, the things that are working, the things that are not working, Johan, thanks so much for joining me.

Johan Vosloo
Hi Louis, great being here. Thanks for inviting me.

Louis van der Merwe
You’re one, you’re one of the guests that that has been, you know, it’s been on my list for a long time to talk to you specifically, because you have so much clarity around what it is that you tackle in your business, you know, running a business and a team of 25 people. There’s a lot of demands on your time. How do you go about finding those true north elements, the things that you know, you really want to be spending your time on?

Johan Vosloo
Oh, Louis, if I had if I had all the answers, I’d probably be sitting on a yacht somewhere sipping margaritas, right? I certainly don’t, I can tell you, I can talk a little bit about a few things that that works for us. And then you know, we’re learning and changing and improving all the time. So yeah, I mean, six years ago, it was literally me. And then shortly after Marta, my partner joined, and it was a two of us and, and now 25. So in, in growing a bootstrap business over six years, you kind of need to in self defense, figure out quickly, you know, what works, what doesn’t work out to attract the right type of people to kind of achieve what you want to achieve. Look, there’s lots of little things I could own on, but I let me focus on a few of the big things. First thing is, that worked for us. And we kind of, we didn’t realize initially how important this was, but we kind of quickly realized how important wasn’t, it’s now one of our core principles is, is incredible laser focus on on building and maintaining and a great company culture, you know, gone are the days of people being satisfied for for, you know, over the duration, to work in a at a workplace where they’re not being challenged, where they don’t feel respected, they didn’t feel that they actively contribute to the success of the company where they didn’t believe in what the company is trying to achieve. To begin with. Those things are more and more and more coming to the fore and more and more people are realizing the importance of that. And and salary is important always, but it’s it becoming more of a hygiene factor. And those other things have always been important, but people are just realizing the importance, a lot of importance a lot more. Now, both. I think Martin I were lucky that both of both of us are a product of Philly, long Korea in their in a corporate world, we I think the most valuable things we learned was, you know, how not to build a small business? What are the things to avoid, and one of the things to avoid is micromanagement and expecting people to only do a very small, very specific, very, very defined thing. We found the flip side of that treating people like intelligent, caring out the box, thinking individuals that they generally are treating them like that, sitting down with them jointly come up with with goals and targets and expectations, and then blaming them getting on with achieving that has been a absolute winning recipe for us,

Louis van der Merwe
you and the business that you run has a recurring income stream. And so in your industry, they talk about software as a service. And for me, that resonates quite closely. Because a lot of financial services business have a recurring income stream. How do you manage that type of business differently from one way, you know, you you’re starting your sales at zero every month?

Johan Vosloo
Look, it was very intentional when when I wanted to when I wanted to start a business and start something I’ve always liked the idea of building an a recurring or an annuity income stream. I used to be in in this space where we did project work and consulting for for for corporates, and it’s always like a project basis. And it’s it’s a big project and there’s a big you know, there’s a big payoff if the project is successful, but then you know that yes, the duration but longer but at the end of it you started you know at zero again and you need to find the next project and the next thing and that never appealed to me. I was always much more into trying to build something that sustainable, small incremental, recurring revenue gains that you work on increasing month over month over month. To me that’s that’s the definition of a Building a business that’s got longevity, that’s sustainable, that gives you the breathing room and the space to think and plan and operate, if every month, every day, every every thought, every new month, you start from scratch, you essentially in kind of, you know, hunt, hunt, you know, eat what you kill mode, you know, self defense survival mode, and you and you and you very reactionary, then and you’re very predatory, almost, if that makes sense. Whereas, if you work hard at it, then you can survive because it is tough to survive the first few years. But if you can survive, to get past the point where you’ve now built up a bit of a nice stable new income stream, that really opens the door for you to be much more intentional, intentional intention, operate with much more intent towards and think with much more clarity on what it is that you want to attain where you want to go, what direction you want to visit to move into. So so for those reasons, for me, it’s it’s an absolute no brainer to to bite the bullet because it is hard, it often is very hard when you’re starting from from nothing, but but to bite the bullet and work very intensely to building up that annuity based income stream business. To me, that’s, it’s the only type of business ever water bowl.

Louis van der Merwe
Before we started this recording, you mentioned to me that you want to have a calm business and you want to return to that common one I’m hearing you say is that these are the elements that are contributing to a calm business. Why is having a calm company important?

Johan Vosloo
It’s again, something that, you know, a lesson that I’ve learned and that I forget that I really get the hard way. Just last year, we started, we had reached the place. What can I say, the place where we were we had built up a bit of momentum we had, you know, we had a nice team going a product that reached at night stable platform, we were working just gradually expect below taking more market share expanding the business. But then it so happened that two new opportunities came our way last year to partner with some other people and start building two brand new products into brand new businesses. It the timing was right, and we went at it in hindsight, we probably could have timed it a little bit better, and maybe not take her on both at approximately the same time. But I’m not regretting it, it’s going great so far, what it did what it did do though, because we didn’t think about it and plan as as well as we probably could have and should have is it led to us moving away from from a place where we were, we had time to think and we were deliberate about what we’re doing to becoming just very reactionary, and very kind of just putting out fires and trying to keep up and trying to deliver and, and things like that. And it got bad because by the end of last year, a whole bunch of us were just spending a whole lot of times in meetings and planning and, and trying to you know, keep all the balls in the air. And I spent the last few weeks over the over the holiday period, just reflecting and reorganizing and rethinking and re strategizing now it’s sort of January with my management team. And we’re going to do things all all differently this year, we’re gonna return to this principle of a calm company comm company for us is, you know, no more than 40 hours a week, no evenings and weekends as a rule, not always just pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, but taking breaks taking, taking time to to celebrate, you know, achievements and milestones, being more deliberate and careful about planning the next steps. And that’s definitely returning to that to that philosophy this year in a big way. We’ve already cut down on a whole bunch of meetings, meetings are just poison, right? It’s so tempting to just say, I’m going to discuss something with somebody, it’s I have a quick 30 minutes about it. But those add up, right. And they they they genuinely time sinks and time wasters. So cutting out a lot of that. Returning to we were pretty much a remote company anyway. But like, like most people, like a lot of people since the start of lockdown last year, or what? Last year, year before grief, it’s 2022 already. So so. So using using technology and using online tools allows us anyway, the flexibility to to leverage would be called asynchronous communication. That means we don’t have to pick up the phone or schedule a meeting or, or have that synchronous, direct real time communication about everything all the time. A lot of the things that we want to communicate internally, we can do asynchronously, which means using stuff like Slack, or other asynchronous tools where we have communication tools where we send each other messages, ask questions, share information, but the recipient doesn’t always have to immediately respond or immediately consume the information that’s being shared. Right. So we we we working hard on making sure that that doesn’t become a thing that people don’t feel the pressure always be on line always be around was being reactive instantly. Because that just breaks people’s flow and break their concentration and doesn’t allow them to get in the flow and be productive on the on the toss that they busy with at the time. Does that make sense?

Louis van der Merwe
Absolutely. Cal Newport talks about the deep work and carving out time. And what I’m hearing is with that intentionality of where to spend your time, you can actually work on the things that are important to you, but also then celebrated when you reach those elements. I’m wondering if the financial service industry, you know, specifically smaller, medium sized businesses are actually celebrating these milestones enough. I know that you deal with a lot of businesses, and you help them to look at the income streams. And you know, some might call it commission and some might call it revenue. Do you see that companies celebrate enough?

Johan Vosloo
Financial Services and financial advice practices is a very interesting breed of folks. And it’s and I say that with like, with great actually admiration, because I think it’s no secret that, that the industry is the industry, I don’t actually you’d like using it, but let’s call it the profession, it’s probably more apt. The financial, you know, financial services, financial advice profession is, is is relatively new, you know, it’s only been around 3040 years max, right, the whole notion of a financial advisor only started I think, in the 80s really, in the US something like that. So it’s not very, very old, and ad end initially, unfortunately, and it’s very true. And there’s a lot of that focus on selling, selling selling products, meeting targets, and that was the only thing that they was, unfortunately was that there’s nothing wrong and that in and of itself, obviously. But unfortunately, with that came came that this quite at least from from my perspective, as a as a as an outsider, it came this kind of snake oil salesman, Poulos most reputation, and some of it unfortunately was, you know, was was really earned by by some of the early practices and way of doing things, I think what’s happening now, it’s an interesting times for the for the, for their profession as a whole, there’s always going to be products, right, there’s always going to be financial insurance instruments being provided by big insurance companies, investment houses, and that and that will always be there. But I think the industry is really maturing, or that profession is really maturing to become more focused artistically on people’s needs. At working, really, we’re walking a path with with clients, you know, being aware of their whole life situation, not just focusing on solving a very specific part of their financial needs, but with particular products. I think that that that shift, that focus is really permeating the whole industry. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s an it’s an all the conferences, and although it’s a big talking point, but I think it’s really happening. And, and, and it’s a good thing, it’s a good thing, some in some, some environments, some industries or some territories rather. And I hate picking on my wife and my Australian friends, but I can only shake my head if I see what’s happening Australia for example, I think the the intentions there were really, you know, honest, and it was really aimed at curbing some of the bad practices and bad habits from the past. But my you know, again, as an outsider just opinion is that the regulator’s they just went too quick, too fast too far, and really kind of almost built Delta deathblow. To that to the financial advice profession in in Australia, those guys really had to dance on their toes and, and eventually it will probably settle again, it’ll be it’ll be better and the aftermath will It will be good, but I think it was a bit quick was a bit rough. In South Africa. i There’s a lot you can fingers, you can point that South Africa at the kind of structures and government structures and, and things that doesn’t always, you know, seemed to work so well. But But honestly, one of the things that seems to work be working, not not bad at all, is the pace and the involvement that is African regulators in the financial service industry are taking and then the standard that they keep saying, Look, we’re not going to unilaterally force down global sweeping changes on the profession. We involving people into discussion, it’s going to be a multi year transition to kind of phase out some of the some of the, you know, not so great things of our past and in phase in more sustainable, more healthy and holistic things. So So all in all, I think it’s financial advice practices, Africa, their biggest challenges, they got great opportunities, they biggest challenges they must they must not see the changes even the compliance which sometimes feels a bit onerous and And a bit laborious, they doesn’t see it as a, as a bad thing as a negative thing they missed it, they should embrace it and see it as an opportunity it weeds out chances and people that’s in it for it to make try and make a quick buck. And soon so it weeds out that all plus a lot better than it did in the past. And it allows them to focus on and and, and grow up and mature as a as a as a as a profession. And as a as a professional career. You can see it I never saw this before. But the last few years, it’s pretty sad the last two years, the amount of youngsters in entering the industry going to study a financial advice, focus degree at university even I mean, that’s so encouraging to me. I think it’s it’s fantastic. It’s just signs that this this this profession is finally coming out of its terrible, terrible deeds.

Is it starting to started to do operate? Like, like, like a young, responsible adult? I could use that analogy. Does that make sense?

Louis van der Merwe
I’m so excited to hear that, because I’m seeing the same thing. And the Certified Financial Planner designation has almost become the ticket to enter the game. You know, that is what you need to get before you start delivering advice. Were we so used to doing it the other way around, you know, you do this while you may be delivering products? Can you see any shift in the data? If you look at, you know, the revenue, and I’m sure you don’t look at specific companies, but maybe in aggregate? Are you seeing any shifts in the way advisors are charging for their advice? Maybe the types of solutions or products? Yeah, tell us what you seeing?

Johan Vosloo
Look, it’s a little bit hard, because we only obviously have the data that in aggregate that we can look at in our client database, you know, across across our client base. And we end like you say we never really focus on any particular client, but we do look at the aggregates. And, and it may be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy because we seem to tend to more easily and much more readily attract that type of advice practice, which is already intentional, intentional about providing a a more sustainable, professional, better, manageable, you know, service and build a more robust business anyway, so So maybe the data we have isn’t entirely representative representation of the entire country. But what I can talk about is what we see across our client base, or what I see or across our client base is this definitely a trend towards building more sustainable annuity based businesses. Now, of course, that helps a little bit with or move towards rd are people are proactively moving away from trying to sell products that that’s got big upfront payouts. And they opt in often cases voluntarily, to a more spread out, you know, as long as the client is on the books, and as long as the client keeps up with their product they’re earning with it, you know, as long as the client keeps utilizing that thing, they definitely seems to be a shift towards that. Which, which I think is you know, resonates personally, obviously, with me liking the whole idea of annuity based, steady, steady growth business that that resonates with me a lot, and we can definitely see a bit of a shift in a trend towards towards that. Yeah, like I said, there’s definitely pockets though, I think, where it’s just all about product and that always be there right and is always placed for people who focus who are product specialists, and they focus on providing products and not don’t focus too much on the advice which also I think is interesting to to see where this will pan out in 1020 years. Also looking at what is happening other countries I think that’s gonna be interesting but but generally speaking across our client base, definitely more of a focus towards sustainability, more of a holistic focus on clients, people use our software a lot for for doing what we call client segmentation or clan revenue base segmentation to to understand, you know, what’s the old coverage what’s all spread all we are there any gaps that we haven’t addressed to our clients and that they can very easily pick it up through so just looking at the information that comes from us. And we’re starting to see practices leveraging that type of capability more and more and more, which again, to me, it’s just a sign of a more of a professionals becoming gradually more sophisticated and more professional and more intentional about what they want to do

Louis van der Merwe
you and you kind of alluded de to their kind of product distribution role that some advisors for full and I’d love to talk around that comparing it to robo advisors or electronic solutions and someone with a heavy technology background and an engage of technology. What is your take on robo advisors? Are they working What needs to change for them to work? And so just tell me your experience? And yeah, what are you thinking about them?

Johan Vosloo
Louis, again, I can only really talk from, from my perspective, right? So, so so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I really love technology, all forms of technology, but particularly software, you know, to me, there’s something really magical about taking these virtual Lego blocks, you know, and putting them together to craft something that you know, that’s functional and adds value, and that makes people’s lives easier, give them some time back in their day, and do it in a more automated, repeatable way that somebody can do manually. I love that. I mean, that’s, that’s the crux of why I love technology and software in developing software in particular. That being said, I’m unfortunately not on the train where, like, some of my peers, we seem to be witches. Everything eventually will be, you know, robots, you know, AI will provide you with, you know, all the advice you need, eventually, we’ll get to a place where we’re an algorithm will tell you everything that you need in terms of financial advice, and the end the person will be, you know, the, the, the financial advisor, as we know, today, will, will become under on that train, I tell you why I’m not on that trade. We are people, people will be people and people aren’t predictable. A, you know, they that you’re there’s broad patterns, but people are individualistic, and people want to deal with another person. And more importantly, and more and more, I see it more and more people want to deal with people that they get on with, you know, years ago, it was, you know, it didn’t really matter who the insurance salesman was the products salesman or salesperson was it just somebody that you went to go to go buy life insurance, he didn’t have a relationship with this person, it didn’t really matter. It matters more and more and more, the world is getting more complicated, there’s a lot more options, there’s a lot more. It’s a broad, brave new world of NF T’s and web three and Bitcoin. But But even before you layer, all of that stuff on top of it, the world has gotten smaller people want to see the world they want to live different lives, they want to different careers, do different things have multiple streams of income, everything, everything about that is just more diversification. Computers are really good at taking a whole bunch of stuff. That’s, that’s very similar. And understanding that and coming up with a pattern for that. But we we people, we humans, we’re very good at mucking up those betters, right?

Because we change our minds, sometimes in a very short space of time, sometimes due to changes in technology, the work we think we earn, we live changes, and I don’t see technology ever is probably a very long time. But let’s say in the foreseeable future, 20 3050, probably 100 years from now I don’t see technology being able to replace the role of what I think a good financial advisor should be, which is that trusted partner almost that you walk a road with, you know, that knows your kids names and knows what’s important to you and knows what your goals are and what your desires or what you want them to be. I don’t see, I don’t see technology replacing that what I do see, which is incredibly exciting. And I can’t wait for more financial advisors to embrace this, I see beta and beta technology big becoming available coming online, to help advisors to eliminate the grunt work, you know, the the stupid, repetitive things which we used to employ an army of people in the past to do technology is really good at automating away that stuff. And that they should be leveraging technology for and all that, that the reason they should be deleted, leveraging technology for that stuff is in order to give them more time back to get to that thing which a computer cannot to do, which is that you know that relationship with the clients and understanding where the needs are and act as a mentor and act as an advisor and act as a that you call do. But technology is there for to leverage to take care of a lot of the other things give more time back, raise the bar in terms of consistency, accuracy, transparency of information, you know, just one example of what people use us for. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of things that people use our software for, but one big thing is, is just to make it very transparent to everybody in the business. What is all the all the money that comes into the business in terms of commission or or providing direct advice to clients or, or a fee on investment advice, all of those various sources of income, just to use technology to make it transparent and know and trust that software is dealing with that automated consistent, repetitive, trustworthy way, and is making transparency of what did you see this is this is what it looks like that’s coming in this is how we dividing it up this Are we allocating it. And before people used to spend two weeks, three weeks and some people still do have a month on spreadsheets trying to kind of wrangle those things. And that’s such a bad, bad waste of people’s time, you know, that type of stuff where technology is really making a difference, not, I don’t think it’s a threat to financial advisors at all, they’ll need financial financial advisors in quotes, I think it should be threatened by technology and advances in technology. And by robo advisors and Robo advice. His people are purely 100% Just product sales focused, they probably going to have to involve the quickest. And they’re going to have to pivot the hardest to find a role that allows him to leverage that and still add value. Because the think the the really commodity pots, you know, investment advice used to be a bit of a, you know, crystal ball gazing, people depended on you know, years of experience in that that’s computers are getting better at predicting those things, right, better than when people can even do it. So. So those people I think, will have to move and shift and move with the advanced technology a lot quicker and a lot harder. But I think it’s a, it’s I think there’s never been a better time to be a people oriented, whole life focused financial advisor, then then and right now then today,

Louis van der Merwe
that human first approach, I think, is what we hear so often what we experience with our clients. And some of the things that you’re talking about is leveraging technology in your practice. And you mentioned that you make use of asynchronous communication, I want us to maybe unpack that a little bit. Practice. Imagine a practice listening to this, were the one who say, Okay, we know that we need to focus on things we want to avoid this kind of busy work, the constant communication, we want to embrace technology. We do we start with asynchronous communication.

Johan Vosloo
Look, for me, the thing that that worked for us really well, is to say internally, we don’t email each other internally, and we don’t pick up the phone. And increasingly now, we don’t have meetings, if it’s not really, really necessary. Once you’ve sat down, and you formalized your goals, and if you if you do this on a regular failure, regular basis, and have you know, it’s all about relatively frequent. And I say relative, I mean, it’s going to be different from business to business and place to place, right, but let’s say relatively frequent every two weeks every month or so, good. Maybe some people will be once a quarter only depends but but get together review, that we that we achieve what we set out to achieve for the last cycle for the last period. And if we did great if we didn’t, let’s try and see what’s been wrong. And let’s try and fix to an improvement on what didn’t work. And then together plan for the next cycle, set out the goals, measurable goals, measurable outcomes, and then and then allow people to get on and achieve those goals. And then the communication then what we do like we use a tool called slack internally, I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times, on other platforms, it doesn’t have to be slack. But for us, Slack works great because it’s a text based chat to internally think WhatsApp groups, but But it allows us to to communicate with each other asynchronously, I can send a message to somebody they know everybody in our teams, no, you don’t have to respond to it right now. They they return they’ll get to it when when when when when they get to it and they’ll respond sometimes it’s just an FYI, sometimes it is I need somebody something from somebody, but nine times out of 10. I don’t need the answer. Right now. If I do need to answer right now, I’ll say so if I really do need your arms right now, then I will pick up the phone in air quotes. You know, we use tools like Slack bolting calling, or Zoom calls or whatever for what it really wanted to do to do calls but but for the most part, it’s once you’ve set the goals, and everybody knows what they’re working towards, for the next period, or the next cycle, the amount of communication that you need them to do to get to it actually starts to reduce. If you’ve clear about what you’re gonna need, anybody’s clear what they need to achieve, then the amount of back and forth that you need that high bandwidth level of communication that you need to get there, that that becomes less you know, that decreases. And for that then asynchronous communication really comes into its own because then it’s only really about, you know, the small small nuts and bolts things that you need, because there’s always obviously some level communication. But once you’ve got those employees and if you if it’s a if it’s a team that works in a particular area, for instance, our onboarding team, that onboard new clients, they use a cloud based CRM called pipe drive by Drive is a sales focus CRM, it’s great that that they’re the only team that really uses it in anger. But for them, it’s fun, they live in Pipedrive, it’s got activities that they arrays, and that they assign to each other, they can, they can set Pipedrive, to automatically create new activities as follow up actions when it’s when a particular task is completed. And they, they leverage that thing to the hilt, which means things don’t fall between the cracks, or much less often than that it would have been otherwise, there’s much less need for that synchronous communication for calling and talking and, and definitely not emailing. So So I think this is such exciting. And there’s lots of deals to write. That’s just a couple examples that we use, but it’s, it’s such, there’s such such a wide array of technologies available now, for financial advisors, and from info, financial advice, practice as well, for the internal process for the internal workings to leverage things like this to once they’ve done the goal setting. And once they’ve got that regular review process and improvement process, going to just use this, these forms of asynchronous communication and get away from, you know, spending so much time in direct, synchronous communication.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s wonderful to hear how your business engine operates, you know, and how this is a well oiled machine. And yes, there might be times where it needs servicing. And there might be, you know, might might require an engineer or someone with a hammer to come and fix something, but you’re improving this, you know, this vehicle. I’m curious, what are the sources that inspire you? Who are the people that you look up to you and where do you go to find that inspiration?

Johan Vosloo
You asked me quickly, but if I have to go to if I have to give you a stream of consciousness consciousness onset, I’d probably say off the top of my head, probably three different sets of people. The first and it’s been that my longest and most continuous and state force source of inspiration in my life is my as my dad, my father. He is 7677 now I think but fortunately, he is deathly scared of retirement so he says, you know, people die of that thing. So it doesn’t you just don’t get busy. So so used to still sharp as a as a whip right? And and he’s been my longest source of inspiration or and, and I go to the to move forward advice and just bounce things off of him a lot of the things that I bounce off of him, you know, he’s not really in the game anymore. He doesn’t really understand and that’s involved but it doesn’t matter he can still have the high level conversation asked to summarize that knack of asking, you know, just the right questions and just probing me and stimulating me to think in the right way so that’s a big source for me another and then another completely on a different scale. And this might come across as a bit of a cliche but I’m a I’m a huge Elon Musk fan. And and you know Musk isn’t perfect right I read is this lots of criticisms of you know, the way he he can be hard on the on on people in his team sometimes all that but some of the things that I admire about Elon and that that’s a source of inspiration for me is he never accepts the status quo. If he looks at the industry when it when he was you know, when early days of SpaceX for instance, everybody the conventional wisdom was you know, building your own rockets is you nobody does that you go to the big and the only there was like really wanted one or two sources of people that were building rockets. So so they got on a plane him and his team they flew to Russia, they wanted to go buy old secondhand Soviet rockets, right I don’t know if you know the story but they got there they had a discussion with the guys that the Soviets wanted x amount for the rockets you know and said no, that’s too much it doesn’t look gonna make economical sense for us. We want to pay less and it long story short they ended up not coming to agreement. So they got on the plane back without the deal MTN it on the plane back to the US and his whole team was despondent and down and what the hell are you gonna do now you know now we the data the water you’re sitting there scribbling on a on a on a on a bed making some an offer it across the Atlantic somewhere he looked up he said, Guys, we can build our own rockets. I think we can do it. And everybody laughed the short fair joke and he said no, no, I really think we can XYZ to flat out and nobody had the insight or the you know, even thought along those lines because it’s not it’s not it just wasn’t done. You know, and that was just such a great example of me of each doesn’t let conventional ways of was conventional wisdom conventional ways of doing things. stand in the way of of getting to he wants to wants to get I don’t know how he finds the time of time of the day to do all the things that he does. That’s a whole different story. But but that one trade Have the character trait of him about, if you want, you want to do something he gets on any any does it? That’s a tremendous source of inspiration for me it allows, you know, we I mean, I’m not comparing myself to Elon Musk or what we do at all, in no way shape or form. But, but that but that’s a mentality allows us really to punch above our weight. You know, we this small upstart hyper specialized software as a service business in a very specific industry financial services in a very specific geography South Africa at this stage only, we haven’t yet

expanded internationally, although we we all kind of eyeing it a little bit very specific, but in very specifically revenue management. I mean, it says it says niche on top of niche on top of niches that gates just about. In fact, we’re the only company in South Africa, as far as I’m aware, that that focuses exclusively or revenue management for financial advisors, nobody else does this very specific niche focus. And on paper, we’ve got zero business for achieving the things we’ll be achieving and, and having the type of attracting the type of customers that we attracting, including banks, and big, you know, even one of the largest insurance companies is its approach us now. It we’ve got no business on paper being able to do that. But we’ve embraces the this, this, this, this idea that, but why not? Why can’t we build a world class solution and a world class product? And why can’t we provide, you know, out of this world customer service that nobody else? Kind of offers? Because everybody says no, you can’t, you can’t offer that sustainably it’s not financially feasible. And we say, Well, why not? You know, and we just go for it. And we just do a whole bunch of things that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. And a whole bunch of that inspiration is from guys like Elon Musk, that I look to and say, well, if they can achieve those crazy things, then we can achieve in our space, you know, in a similar vein, we can we can we can try and go footfalls for the similar type of actions. And then lastly, believe it or not, the people in my own team is a huge source of inspiration for me, I’m learning so much from and this is not just the senior management team, even though I’ve got an amazing senior management team. It’s everybody in the company, this junior, the these people, the junior people that walked in the door that had matric had maybe maybe no job, or maybe one job before, at no relevant experience to us at all, in our industry. And but they came in the door with with the two things two, which to me matters absolutely the most, which is great attitude, and the right aptitude. And, and we said we think you got what it takes come we’ll we’ll teach you the mechanics that we can teach anybody but we can’t teach somebody to have a great attitude, and we can’t teach aptitude, you know, you come in the door with that, or you have no you don’t have it. And, and seeing how those people operate and how they grow and how they take ownership of, of, of the domain inside inside our company, what we do is even, and how they are, in a short space of time working themselves up, so to speak, not that we’ve got too much of a hierarchy, we’ve got a pretty flat hierarchy, but just the you know, the impact on the business is is such an incredible source of inspiration and pride for me personally. Yeah, I mean, it makes it is one of the things that really makes, you know, makes it worthwhile doing doing doing what I’m doing is to see how this company is being built, essentially by the people in it, you know, superseding anything that I could have possibly ever achieved on my own. Is that how other people operate and come to their own and grow and contribute? Yeah, that’s incredible sort of inspiration for me.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you for that. John. It’s wonderful to see your passion for your team. And, you know, that’s coming through this whole conversation. I’m wondering if knowing what you know, now, what would you say to the Johann of six years ago that was just starting out?

Johan Vosloo
You ask tough questions, Louis. I’ll tell you let me while I while I mull this over, let me say the first thing that comes to mind, I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do if I had a time travel machine. And I could jump in it now and go back six years and try and go good, you know, give myself a pep talk and, and and kind of convey a whole bunch of wisdom about you should do this. And you should do that. And I wouldn’t do it. I would not do it. We’ve done a whole bunch of things, right. But we’ve also made a whole bunch of mistakes, but I’m not. I’m not really sad or disheartened or really bummed about any Those mistakes, because every one of them was it was a big learning opportunity for us and every one of them. It’s not, not everybody, but most of the things that, you know, that didn’t go great, then go turn out as great as we had hoped. There’s no way that we would have been able to learn that if it wasn’t through that actual experience, if somebody were to come tell me that, in fact, lots of people tells me lots of things. But you know, it is it, you know, hearing something, theoretically, is not the same thing as going through it yourself and learning for yourself first day. So, so I can’t really think of something obvious that I would, that I would tell the only thing I guess that if not that I needed to focus clearly. Because I’m still around and I’m still going at it. I’m I’m in it’s going great guys, I’m having a blast. But there was times early on, when, you know, it was tough. We were two or three people, we had one anchor client. And pretty early on in the in the in the game, the anchor client, you know, they built their own solution internally. So they they cancel the account with us, which had a big financial impact on us. And just we struggled to pay salary for a month or two. And that’s probably the closest I came to, you know, that point of due to thinking, what am I doing? Is this all we ever got to pull this thing through? Fortunately, I had other people in my life at that point, which which told me, man, you’ll get through this, put your head down, keep keep going at it, you’ll pull through it’ll, it’ll be fine. So so if there’s anything that I could tell myself back, then it’s probably you know, you’re on the right path, keep doing what you’re doing, it’ll be fine. That’s probably the best advice that I would give myself I would not have, I would not, I don’t think I would do myself a disservice to try and spoil the surprise of the journey ahead, you know, good and bad. There’s one

Louis van der Merwe
year how important this journey is, and how that’s sometimes that’s more fun than the actual end destination. Right? Oh, absolutely. Having a ton of fun with people that you like, serving customers, improving the financial services industry, and helping businesses like ours, deliver a better service to our clients, Johan for the people listening that might be based in South Africa that’s curious to see what it is that you’re doing with income space, and what’s the best place to reach you. Or to learn more about your product,

Johan Vosloo
the simplest thing to do is to just go to our website, it’s calm space, ce o WM, SP, AC e dot 00. There’s a hope we just spent a bunch of money and time and effort to kind of rebuild Olbrich brand new website. So it hopefully does a pretty good job now of of conveying what it is we do and what’s the value add and answering the question what’s in it for me as a financial advice, practice owner or advisor or a practice manager or anybody like that. But there’s a big, big old book a demo button. And we’ve and none other than my fantastic partner, Marta will give a live demo, and have a great discussion. She’s incredibly, you know, a well, she’s incredibly enthusiastic, passionate, really, really knowledgeable, she’s got a great knack for in that half an hour 45 minute discussion, to understand the needs of the business, you know, really get a good sense of what people are struggling with, and telling them straight out the gate, whether we’re going to be a good fit and and be able to add value or not. And the best way to just get all of us to just go to a website, click on the book a demo button, and it gives you a automated calendar thing, you pick a time that suits you and pick a time to do to have a chat with us. We don’t do the free trial thing we don’t do. Because we think that you know, this is this is specialized, this specialized software in a specialized service that we offer. And people don’t really it’s not like commodity type software, like an email client or like a CRM system. We people kind of know what these things are, because there’s lots of them in the market. So the best thing is just to go book a demo, have a chat with us. Let us show you what’s possible what’s capable ninth, chances are we’re going to blow your mind and because you know, often remarked to us, we never thought something like this existed, or that the software that that possible to handle our spatial way of of working internally and finding our revenue. So that I would say would be the best thing to do. Sign up for a demo. Ever chat. I promise you, nobody’s going to do a hard sell on you. You may just walk away with having learned a few things about your own business. Even if you don’t become a client of ours. You’re on

Louis van der Merwe
your boat, the rocket that you didn’t think was possible. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your excitement and your passion for your team and what it is that you do. I wish you all the best for your future. And thank you once again,

Johan Vosloo
Louis, thank you very much for having me. It’s always a pleasure. And I just want to say on a different note. I really love what you’re doing and and I’m really proud to know you and watching with keen interest your journey.

I think it’s safe to say you arrived as South Africans resident Rockstar financial advisor, right? It’s so well done for everything that you do for the profession. Everything you do in the FBI, this podcast, the tech conferences that you organize, well done. Big, big fan and a big supporter of everything you doing.

Louis van der Merwe
Thanks, Johan. Bye for now.

Johan Vosloo
Alright, bye bye