#31 Rudolph Geldenhuys – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Financial Planners, South Africa. Today I have my good friend Rudolph Geldenhuys, certified financial planner on the call Rudolph’s not only a friend, but a colleague, we get to work together every day. And I thought this would be a great conversation to give some insight in terms of how things are going at wealth up and Rudolph journey in financial planning. Rudolph, thank you so much for joining me today.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Louis van der Merwe
So we get to work together every day. But most of the time, it’s virtual. Now, you know, COVID has been quite an interesting what’s thrown an interesting curveball in terms of financial planning. And you’ve been in this game, you know, for for about seven plus years. But let’s start your journey in financial planning right at university level, tell our case kind of how you stumbled upon financial planning?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Absolutely. So I was planning on going overseas after school and started the journey to study in Australia. And pretty much in the month or two before the plan was to depart South Africa, for Sydney, Australia. There were complications with the visa. And there was simply no way around it and eventually had to make the call that Australia was no longer on the cards. Then the question became, well, what now? What am I going to do with my life, I don’t want to do nothing. I’m not sure if I want to journey into a gap year was never on the cards for me. And luckily my dad is very similar to myself. He knows a lot of people, he loves people, always around people, which obviously tends to give you quite a wide network. So he phoned up a couple of people during the December holidays from Stellenbosch University, and got me into the beacom general course at Stellenbosch for that next year. So that was 2010. Now, I sort of knew what I wanted to study. But that was never the plan. And yeah, first year started at university at all the normal commerce subjects, economics, accounting, business management, but nothing that really drew my attention. But I thought to myself, well, at least having the bachelor’s and commerce background, which sort of opened up quite a large scope for some type of Korea, maybe accounting may be economics, who knows. And at the end of my first year, he was a gentleman by the name of Professor Neil Krieger, who came and lectured in one of our business management classes. And right at the end of the class pretty much towards the end of our first year. He mentioned the industry called financial planning and spoke to us about the type of industry spoke to us about the need for financial planners due to change in legislation and regulation that would potentially over time, exit a lot of financial planners from the industry. And up until that point, I was interested in what he had to say just due to the Work Opportunity that sort of came through in the presentation. But I think that caught my attention was the type of personality or the type of work you would be doing that that really sort of pulled pulled at my imagination. He mentioned things like, well, you work with people, you can help people, you can make a difference in their lives. And all of those things resonated with me pretty well. And at the end of that class, I changed my course from a general be calm to be confidential planning. And in my second year, subjects changed. And my entire trajectory in life essentially changed. And what’s interesting is, towards the end of my final year, I realized, well, it’s probably time to start looking for a job. And the question in my mind was, well wave who how, what sort of way to from here, and started phoning up a couple of friends of my dad and colleagues that he could recommend. And there was actually a moment in the end of my final year where I was potentially going to change my career. Now, my fake imaginative career at that point in time for a second time. Because a lot of people that I spoke to really sort of shone a light on the old part of our industry, where it’s all about sales, it’s all about commission, it’s all about cold calling. If you want to become successful as a financial planner, or a broker on Afrikaans, they refer to it as a macula. Then you just got active phone, people, and it’s a sales thing. And at that point, I thought, Well, I mean, I’m in the final year of my be confidential planning degree. We didn’t cover anything about sales, everything was about financial planning and advice. It’s all about helping people, it’s about getting clients to see a better future for themselves, and to put steps in place to reach that future. And now all of a sudden, I hear but the practical implementation, as in the life of a financial planner, is all about sales, and all about policies and all about like cold calling, and I said, nanana. If that is the case, then I will go do something else, do an honors in teaching and use my academic skills from an accounting or economics perspective, and rather become a teacher and get paid a salary, then having to go out into the wide world and flog a product, because that was no way in any of the academic literature around financial planning.

Which obviously, was was quite a desponding moment, that realization of well, wow, studied for two years, my second and third year towards the Korean financial planning. But it seems like there aren’t any jobs in financial planning, thinking back to my first year meeting, Professor Neil Crooker. And what he explained versus now sort of this real world implication of selling products to people, I didn’t really know where to turn until another friend of my dad, I mean, you can see he’s got a wide network, he actually said, Well, there’s actually another side of the industry. It’s called, like, sort of distribution. So where there’s financial planners who, in the course of giving advice need to market products to the clients to help solve the problem or provide a solution. That means that there’s a network of people in distribution actually marketing this product, or helping financial planners understand this product, or get it to the end client. Which obviously lead me to another conversation. And one of the first real jobs in financial planning was in distribution for one of the large insurers in South Africa. And I’m not going to name any names. Unless you give me the nod, Louis, then I’ll name the names. So yeah, I think distribution was an interesting, an interesting time. Sort of starting out in my career, but it opened up quite a big door, which I’ll probably allude to in a little bit more. I don’t know if there was a good enough start doing.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, that was brilliant. And what I’m hearing is that your expectation of what this industry is the day you chose to change, you know, your your main steady path to financial planning was very different when you actually had to pick your first job. I’m curious, like, how are things changed since when you had to make the decision? What are the options available today to students that are wrapping up their studies as a change? Or is it still very similar?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
It’s a good question. And I really want to tell you that it’s changed. But I don’t think that will be completely truthful. And I think it’s, it’s it’s twofold. Number one, they’re still a large insurance industry, where there’s a big need for insurance agents or don’t want to say insurance salesman. I don’t think that’s In accurate term, but sort of people offering intermediary services. And I think to the second thing is, it’s very tough to actually connect a fresh student to a potential employer. Because I remember when a couple of years ago, we were looking to add somebody to our team to actually find a graduate was was very tough. So I think it’s, it probably is very similar to in our as a university where the people that came to speak to us in my final year of financial planning was the logical Brett’s, we had a lot of presentations from the bigger corporates offering you training and sort of opportunity with them. But obviously, with the caveat of being a sales position, and you had to sort of market yourself and start earning commission by the selling of products. So to, to have found something that I have now was not really something that I had the exposure to at university, to finding an independent financial planning practice where the goal is not to sell a product. But the goal is to help people was was very tough. So although I would have hoped by now it’s changed, I think it is changing, I think that is rapidly changing. I think students graduating today would still find it very difficult to find an independent practice, where there’s not sales pressure or sales targets, where you would have an easy in into the industry where you would earn a salary while you go through your training. Because when I started my first job as a planner, if I was let loose on the world, it would have been very dangerous. Because book knowledge versus application in real life is very different. It’s very different.

Louis van der Merwe
What do you think was your biggest asset or trait at that point when you were applying for prospective jobs?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Um, wow. It’s a very difficult question at 10 to nine in the evening. I think the passion that I had for helping people was probably the biggest thing that I could contribute to a practice. Because no experience at that point in time. At the book knowledge side, the relevant paper backing Bachelor’s in commerce, postgraduate diploma in financial planning, but haven’t started my route towards the Certified Financial Planner designation. But I think the internal driver and purpose around wanting to see clients succeed wanting to help people. I think that was probably the biggest thing that I could add to the life of a client in the life of a practice. And then I think just personality is what I probably deem a very good quality in terms of being fun. And being light hearted, I think life is already pretty stressful, said to be a very stressed very serious person, for me would be tough.

Louis van der Merwe
I think it shines a light on the fact that as a young financial planner or graduate, you don’t only have to bring in sales, you know, there’s other elements that you can contribute to a team be a technical knowledge, or be just the willingness to be able to help people.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I think so I think the academic knowledge is important. Having the paper is important is helpful. I think if you don’t have the opportunity to study at a formal university to have a bachelor’s degree, I don’t think that disqualifies you from being a financial planner, I think experience and willingness will make up for it. And you can learn a lot of the stuff along the way if you are keen to learn. But I think yours as you mentioned, probably the biggest downfall about being young, and being new in the industry is your lack of experience, and potentially your lack of, of network. But if that’s not a requirement to actually leverage your network of friends and family and and having to rely on them for a sale, obviously to earn that income and commission that will justify your salary or profit share in the business or wherever you end up. I think the the fact that you have got the right personality, a view of the industry, and I think in probably the most important thing for me is wanting to help people. If if you didn’t have a passion to see people succeed or to help people to move them forward or to get them closer to the goals or to celebrate the wins with them and you just see this as a job but not a calling. And I don’t want to use that lightly. But I honestly believe a large part of what we do is way more calling thing, just occupation. Because it’s not a black and white thing that we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with people it’s not for example, Shawn, I don’t want to be rude to accountants who might be listening but it’s not Like accountancy with just about the numbers. Or it’s, for example, from a tax perspective where you’re a tax practitioner and you need to file a return, where it’s just this is what happened this what we do, like we get involved in people’s lives, we get intricately involved, people share deep things with us. And if you don’t care about the people sharing that thing, I think it’ll be a very, it’ll be very tough to truly make a difference in a client’s life, if the means for leveraging that intimate relationship, the chair is to just sell another product. So I think as an as a young person, if you feel that there’s a calling on your life to be a financial planner, to make a difference, this you can get around all of the other obstacles very easily.

Louis van der Merwe
Yeah, that perseverance, just knowing there’s something bigger that you’re working towards. Rudolph, you mentioned the fact that you are an extrovert, yet a lot of the work that you do has to be technical, it has to be financial planning. How do you balance those two? And secondly, where does it fit into the financial planning process?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
So I’m not an extrovert Ottoline, I’m kidding. I’m an absolute extrovert. The tension between the people element and the technical element is, it’s tough to manage. Because it can get very frustrating very quickly, if you are constantly just crunching numbers, if the thing that fills you up is the people element. But I think the way to overcome that is to just, I think better schedule your day. So to in every day to day sort of calendar, you have got multiple elements. So these elements way, your My extroverted pneus can be satisfied, if I can put it that way, whether internally with colleagues or externally with clients phone calls, a quick WhatsApp conversation just to catch up over an email. Because it does two things. Number one, it’s good for me as an extrovert to connect with people. And number two, it shows the clients that you actually care because you’re interested in their lives, and you reach out to them and there’s an outbound contact. That’s not just work related. And then on the other hand, I have to do the technical because that’s, that’s part of the job, I can only be effective as a financial planner, if we actually get clients closer to their goals, and that requires some technical knowledge. But luckily, this sort of the book, smarts part of me, the academic side of me that also enjoys doing that. So it’s luckily not 95% of my day that’s caught up in that which I think would have driven me up the walls. So I think that’s sort of how I get around the extroverted pneus versus doing stuff behind a computer. I don’t know if if that that helps. But your second question, as, as past me, because I can’t listen and talk. It’s tough through the tough.

Louis van der Merwe
That’ll teach me for asking two questions in one, what I want to get to is, you know, there’s a third element, having two little kids at home. That also requires some balance, whatever things that you’ve figured out, that might be beneficial for other people to hear that are thinking about having kids, or trying to juggle a career and kids,

Rudolph Geldenhuys
it’s probably easier than it sounds, and at times, also probably the most impossible task. But I think if you find yourself in a practice or a business that values family, it’s easy, because in this understanding for the times when you need to check out for a while to attend to family matters. I think time management is probably one of the most important things because you need to plan your day around dropping kids off at school, picking them up in the afternoons making sure that they’re okay, getting to clients, doing your admin doing marketing, all of these elements that are required. So it’s again, it’s not the most difficult thing in the world, but it’s also not the easiest thing. But I think figuring out what your drive is, is it actually money? Or is it more purpose related? Or is it family because I think if you’re if you understand your drive where you want to get to in life, you will be able to work your diary and your calendar in such a way that it reflects where you want to get to. So with for me not being driven by money not being driven by just building more assets getting more clients so that I can drive a a top down coupe Porsche. I probably wrecked the entire thing for any car listening. Sorry. Because that’s not the thing that drives me, I actually have gotten to a place where it’s gotten easier to say, this is the time of the day, when I check out of work, to spend time with family, this is the part of my day where I put the computer off. And if there’s something pressing, then I can do that tonight, when the kids are in bed. And I think it’s gonna be different for everybody, because it’s all about the thing that drives you. And I think that, that will sort of determine what you say yes to and what you say no, to how much of your day is consumed by by work and how much of your day is consumed by family or other things that that you find enjoyable. And Lu right at the onset, you mentioned the COVID environment, how that’s changed, obviously, for a period, we were all working from home or working remotely. And then it was it was very tough to draw those boundaries, because you’re not constantly either only at home, or you’re only at the office. So having to, at that point in time had to also make clear distinction on what will be my productive office hours. And what is going to be family only time. And it probably sounds like I’ve got it all figured out. But I don’t because Sunday’s you get home or use work at the office. So you switch off your computer. And even though I’m now out of the office or checked out, my mind is still preoccupied by the stuff of the day the things coming up, things that are in to do with stuff that’s going on in the lives of clients. And then it’s sometimes tough to be present. Even though I’m home even with the kids even I’m spending time with, with my family with my wife. It’s the install and there but I’m I’m not the and that’s I think probably the toughest thing. I 2.1 thing is that being present, and I think it can get to is are you present when you with clients? Or is your head still at home? Or are you present at home? When you could be thinking about work stuff or client stuff?

Louis van der Merwe
That’s such an interesting comment. Because I think for both of us in the early days of our careers, and still often you tend to think about who did I remember to finalize that transaction that I complete that task? Will their clients investment portfolio turn out? Okay. How have you trained yourself to let go of those? It’s called it worries specifically around the things for clients that we maybe have very little control over as financial planners, has it gotten easier? Or have you just gotten used to the fact that they they and you are able to park them?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I want to say the former that it’s gotten easier? I think I’ve just gotten better at dealing with the constant worry. Or the second guessing. No, I’m kidding. It has become easier because I think you realize as experienced bolds that there’s not a lot of things in life. That’s that’s undoable if that’s even a word. Because it’s late in the day and the English is running out. There’s some trust that you need to put in your systems, there’s some trust you need to put in yourself, there’s some trust you need to put in your team. So at some point in time worrying about something that you probably can’t do anything about is not helpful. And I think starting a day well and ending a day will helps with that worry to see well, what was the stuff that was on my list today? Did I take it off? And if I didn’t take it off, can it? Can it stay for tomorrow? Is there is there time for for this task to run over into tomorrow? Is it time sensitive? But honestly, if we are very transparent here tonight, on this podcast, I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, and remember something that I didn’t add to my list I just forgot about and then I do one of two things either get up and do it then which is a terrible thing to do. Or I make a note on my phone first thing in the morning. But I think that stress around Oh my word. This is hectic. What if this doesn’t work? I think that fades over time. As you get to know like, it’s probably not a lot of stuff. That is the end of the world. And if you communicate well with your clients, if you own up to the stuff ups, that also goes a long way to say this and Louis, I was supposed to do this today. Time ran away with me apologies. I’ll do it first thing in the morning. And it’s very helpful if you find the client before they phone you. I think if the client phones you to ask you’re already on the backfoot but it gets easier because I think when you’re new into the game, everything is urgent. Everything is serious. Everything feels like the end of the world you struggled to prioritize. But I think as you get to know your clients as you get to know what are the important things in the financial planning process for existing or new clients. It gets easier to tell The very big important non negotiable things first, and then the little sort of pieces of twine left over, you can easily wrap that up as time goes on.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you. I think that’s a very valuable framework for thinking about experience. And I want to expand a little bit on that. Because this idea that you need to get an experience, I think there’s a problem if you’re always doing the same thing, you’re not necessarily growing in your learning. Has there been things that really accelerated your experience or the kind of growth in financial planning?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Yes, the constant striving around education. And that’s just a personal thing. It’s never been a I have to get these qualifications. It’s always been a I want to expand my knowledge. And I want to expand my experience, because ultimately, that will bring value to the relationship that we have with clients and the service that we offer. So I think the thing that’s accelerated my journey or my experience, or my sort of career in financial planning, has been postgraduate and financial planning. The advanced postgraduate that the university freestate offers the Ellen gray behavioral coaching course, these are these were all academic related training, not client related, but ultimately benefiting the client relationship. That stretched my thinking. It gave me some new insights into the future of financial planning. It made me rethink how I approach clients and Client Servicing, it changed my engagement around with engagement in a client meeting. So for example, the behavioral coaching course was probably the biggest stretch. In the, I think, almost 10 years I’ve been in the industry now. And the thing about the behavioral coaching course, and not to Pentecost, not at all, although it was incredible, but there’s a lot of places offering it was it forced me to rethink how I engage with clients. It taught me incredible listening skills, and how to actually listen with the two years that I have and speak with one mouth that I have, so that the two to one ratio is a wonderful thing to get under, under the ordinary cunneen, as they say in Afrikaans. It’s that solely the softer skills, if I can put it in air quotes, the softer skills in terms of how to properly listen and engage in a conversation has been the single single biggest thing that’s impacted my day to day relationship and client related things. Because from halfway through the course, as I started applying all of this material, all of this foreign difficult stuff, because it was all about self work, it was all about becoming a better me a better friend, a better husband, a better father, a better financial planner, better all of these things, because it caused me to stretch myself more than just my academic knowledge from sort of the stuff, more formal studies. It changed the way that I engage with clients, just the depth that was built in that relationship, which made my financial planning more effective and efficient. Yeah, I think that’s probably the single biggest thing I can attribute to the current. I’m gonna call it success because it’s flipping journey that we’re on, but just becoming a better financial planner, that thing, working on myself to listen better, ask better questions, actually, listening to the nonverbal cues, seeing when these elements are a client struggling to formulate what’s going on in their mind what’s going on in their thoughts and in their heart. And leaving them in a space where they can share that in a safe environment has been incredible. And to see just the things that have come up in those conversations, which probably in the past, I never would have gotten the opportunity to do because I got lost in the technical detail. I got lost in the job. And I got lost in the in the things that I find interesting. And what I realized now looking back is I don’t think half of the clients cared as much about the stuff that I spoke to them about, as I cared about it.

Louis van der Merwe
Don’t you mentioned this thing about the future of financial planning and how your delivery of advice has evolved and that point where clients are more susceptible to implementing advice. What do you think financial planning will look like 15 years from now, imagine a blank slate and you get to create a new version of financial planning. Let’s call it financial planning. 4.0 But I think because I think 3.0 We’re kind of already in that in that phase. What does that look like? What does the world look like, according to Rudolph?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
That is a wonderful question. And I think, these large elements of what we know from a financial planning perspective today, that will probably still be around, but I think a large part of it will will not be around, I think the elements that will still be around will be us as financial planners, as the humans. And I think the expectation on financial planners 1015 20 years from now, will not be around the technical stuff. Probably not even around portfolio construction, or very technical stuff, because I think the computers will do that a lot more efficiently, then we’ll be able to, but I think we will be critically involved is in the, I don’t want to call it people management or emotional management, but around the softer touch human skills, I think people are gonna look for financial planners who they know, know what they’re talking about, because it’s on the paper, it’s easy to verify that CFP, bachelor’s in something, I just assume that they can do the technical stuff. But I think they’re going to look for financial planners who care, who are there to listen, who are there to help them achieve their goals, and ultimately be in a proactive partnership with their clients that will give advice around more things than just a product that will give advice around the future life, the life planning, not just financial planning. But I think life planning is going to be the thing that is going to come to the forefront way more. And I think people want to be able to pick up the phone, phone, their financial plan and talk about this. I’ve got this life decision to make. What about this in my business? What about my family, I’ve got kids that I’m worried about. And if you as a financial planner, at that point in time, haven’t equipped yourself to help a client navigate this difficult emotional things. There’s life transitions they go through, whether it’s changing jobs, whether it’s moving house, whether it’s losing a spouse, whether it’s retiring, these massive things that happen in a client’s life, if you didn’t Equip yourself at that point in time to help clients deal with that to be a sounding board, to listen well and give advice. Or to maybe not necessarily give advice, but provide them with options for them to realize they do have options, I think you’re going to be dead in the water, if you’re if the value that you bring to the party is technical knowledge, or picking stocks or finding the best insurance products. Or if it’s all around helping clients save money by rebooking stuff, because I think 1015 20 years from now, you’re gonna outsource all of that. Because I don’t want to do that 20 years from now, I want to help the clients figure out what the lab should look like. And then I want to log on to an online portal of some sorts, type in all the parameters and have the computer kick out what that plan looks like, what platform what funds, what exposure, what insurance, because that’s yes, it’s gonna sound probably so terrible to say this. But I think that’s the easy part. And that’s the boring part, spending time with clients and help them figuring out what the next steps are irrelevant of the product, you relevant of the investment structures, irrelevant of all of the stuff that I used to hold in such high regard. That’s my value offering. It’s all about saving costs. And and I’m not saying that’s not important, please, don’t you and I’m not saying I’m not saying that the day to day stuff that we get involved in is not important isn’t it is important, but it’s absolutely secondary to the client’s life, and what’s the purpose for their life?

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you. That was a wonderful explanation. And those words, you said, you know, the things I thought were important, actually wasn’t important. It triggered with me, this journey that you went on in terms of where budgeting fits into financial planning. And I know it’s maybe a little bit of a personal journey. But is that something that you’re willing to share with us?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Absolutely happy to have a degree in my experience? Is there anything specific you want to ask?

Louis van der Merwe
No, really just your thinking around budgeting in terms of dealing with clients? What you stumbled on how that changed, and you know how that changed your life?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Absolutely. So range and I my wife, Rachel, we weren’t really ever into budgeting. Because I think we were in a fortunate position where we could sort of make ends meet on a regular even though we overspent on certain stuff. I think we never find ourselves in a precarious financial position. when or where we were under financial pressure. But that also led to us not being very good with money and not saying we are poor with money, because to hear that your financial planners poor with money is probably not something that you want to advertise, right. But because we weren’t into budgeting, I also didn’t really pay attention from a client perspective around budgeting. So when it came to my financial planning approach to clients, that was probably an element that we that I ignored. Because I don’t think it was also the target market that I was going off to helping clients figuring out they spend, so that there is excess for us to invest or to provide solutions or products to implement. So it wasn’t a need in my financial planning process. But as we sort of stumbled upon budgeting, and it was a course that was presented in our community that that we joined up with it, it really opened my eyes to the power of budgeting, because essentially, what the budgeting journey got us into was stewardship. And I know that’s obviously a big thing from from PSG, they mentioned it all the time in the process. It’s all about being good stewards. And I never really fully grasp that context. But what I got to understand as I went on this journey is that if I don’t tell my money, where to go, it’ll find feet. As we all know, you, we’ve all probably been in a position where it’s end of the month, and you look back and you go, Where did all my money go? Because I didn’t tell me to go. So obviously, getting into the sort of rhythms of budgeting was very tough initially. But as time went on Ranger, I really became good at budgeting, it became so easy and so helpful that we were able to speed up the attainment of our personal financial goals. But I mean, it probably went at half the speed, or double the speed is what we anticipated. So a goal that was two years became one year. And what I realized in that moment was, if the clients that I’m serving, don’t necessarily pay attention to the budget, because they don’t need to, in which areas of the life of their financial life specifically, are they spending money on things that doesn’t really bring them joy? And where are the potential inefficiencies in the own money management, because without a spending plan, you are, you’re dead in the water to a large extent, because I think there’s very few people who just have got access, where they don’t need to worry about the budget, because it’s just more money.

But it’s not just about that. I think the thing that really sort of hit hard, from a budgeting perspective is how it’s actually about your habits. And if you don’t change your habit, which obviously is hard thing to do, and there’s not going to be any improvement in your future. Because if you do the same thing over and over again, but you expect a different result. I think it was Einstein that said that that’s the definition of insanity. And how this really hit home was conversations with clients who leave an employer and who have now got the option of accessing the pension or provident funds from the corporate benefits. And from a legislation perspective, you’re allowed to do that? Yes, there’s some taxes payable, but you could still get your hands on cash and a large part of the conversations in the early years of my career centered around Okay, well, you’ve got this asset, long term growth of that ASIC is x, but you’ve got debt, and the long term, snowballing of that debt is obviously at a higher interest rate. So over time, you’re going to pay more in interest repayments if you don’t settle this debt, because an investment will probably never be able to provide you with a return in that way. So mathematically, it makes more sense to take your investment. post-tax settled it start on a clean slate and in my mind that solved the problem. But what I came to realize, as I’ve had multiple conversations with the same clients of the employer of the employer of the employer is at every single time they found himself in exactly the same position. They found them, they find themselves sitting with data again, after they paid it all off, apparently cut up the credit cards, but they somehow found more credit cards or personal loans or whatever they did. And now they’ve got this cash cow again in the form of the pension fund, and they will keep Don’t cash it out, pay taxes, penalties, whatever you want to call it, settle the date, clean slate, new beginnings. And at the third employer, we reach the same inevitable end. And it boggled my mind. And what I realized, after getting into budgeting, and having this realization about being a good steward of your finances and taking proactive control of it, is that budgeting changed. My wife and I, it changed our behavior. It changed our decision making around money. And it’s at that point in time that I realized, but even though mathematically, my advice was sound around cashing out this pension or Provident Fund, because the long term return on that asset is going to be way less in the 20% debt repayment on a credit card. Why did my client get in a position where they had credit card debt? How did they end up with a personal loan, because they spent more than they earned. So if we don’t fix that problem, first, the spinning the behavior, then they will never ever get to a point where they will actually not sit with credit card debt. And that will lead to ultimately job after job after job cashing out and cashing out pension and provident funds, and getting to retirement and saying, Well, we romanika How How’s it possible, or it’s everybody else’s fault other than my own behavior. And that’s obviously changed my conversation around clients, not from a I want to see your budget, and you need to have a budget. But actually giving people the skills around assessing the own behavior, and asking them if this journey that they’re on this trajectory that they’re on with this spending pattern, if this is the future they want to end up with. And then obviously, the goal isn’t they could say, No, I actually have a different future in mind. But I don’t know how to get there. And it’s at that point in time, that I think I can clearly demonstrate the value around budgeting and how it will, and I don’t say this lightly, change your life.

Louis van der Merwe
Thank you, Rudolph, that is a very powerful story. And I even recall one of your clients committing to shaving her eyebrows if she doesn’t manage to pay off her debt. So these are, these are serious conversations. And, you know, like you’re saying, it’s going back to your habits and showing me, what are you doing? And can you take ownership of this problem? What are people’s responses when you ask that question? And then what’s the follow up? No, because I think this is such a valuable piece of insight in terms of dealing with clients, it’s that kind of building up experience, but through very practical examples that we can share. So I’d like you to delve just a little bit deeper in that, please,

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I think clients will be willing to share virtually anything with us as a financial planning, industry or body. If we create a safe and comfortable environment, free of judgment free of I think judgment is probably the best explanation of that. So language is very important. I found over the last couple of years that the language that I use in client meetings convey quite a lot. Because I think a lot of people have got bad connotations to certain elements or certain things. So not using the word budgeting, but speaking to a client about a spending plan, asking clients permission to talk about certain things, right at the onset of the financial planning process, actually asking a client to see the spending plan. I think all of these things almost proactively and subconsciously prepare a client to have that conversation around. This is where I currently find myself and then forcing myself over, obviously, months and years of client conversations, not to question a client’s decision when looking at the spending plan, but actually asking him to explain it. Because getting that context from a client around why they why they say but jar thing they can’t make ends meet but then looking at the budget and they spend 10,000 Rand a month on ready made meal from ghoulies with the answers obvious cook your own food, man, you’ve got a stove in our house, but asking them to explain the budget or the spending plan to you like, like, why do they do the things that they do? It’s in those moments we number one, you build great deep relationships because you actually actively listen to your client. But what I found, which is probably 99% of the cases, there’s always a story linked to someone’s money. You can’t get around that People don’t just spend money on things. There’s a reason there’s a conviction behind it. There’s a history around something. And I think one of the things that came to mind as we’re talking as a joint client, Louis that we that we look after one day, having a chat to the client or on the spending plan, obviously delving into quite a sensitive topic. And it came out the reason for this in my mind, exorbitant spend in inverted commas. The reason for it was she gets pleasure and joy and fulfillment and purpose from giving to her kids, which she never had as a kid, all of a sudden, spending excessive, and it wasn’t really that excessive, but excessive amounts of money, from my perspective, from my bias on eating out on building memories, makes absolute sense. Because what the client in at that point in time did was their sacrifice. Now in other areas, they were willing to sacrifice on other things, because they knew that this part of the budget, they weren’t going to sacrifice on because they got so much joy from it. And all of a sudden, just being vated Listen, means that that’s a part of the budget that I would never touch and minimize. But I’m looking for areas where I can help the client maximize that part of the budget, because it’s tied to like, not a self worth, but to a purpose for her life that she wants to create with her kids. And the memories that she wants to build. When she’s no longer the in the future that her kids always look back fondly on Wow, my mom never speed, any expense around our growing up around our experiences around around just us building good memories together. So I think asking the questions and giving clients proper time to respond and actually share what’s driving their behavior. And that unfortunately takes time. So I’ve had to get to a place where a client meeting has got less to do with my agenda and the things that I want to achieve in a meeting, and just putting time aside to be there for the client, and to listen. And if at the end of the meeting, I accomplished nothing of my little financial planning, list of stuff is added due and stuff is I wanted to discuss. That’s cool, because I can do that tomorrow.

Louis van der Merwe
Someone recently said an agenda is just something for you to prepay. If you then actually discuss that in the meeting, completely different story, follow what’s on the client’s mind. And what you’re saying is, is that practice of listening, what other tips or tricks if there’s any of cultivating that deep listening that you would give to other financial planners listening today?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I think starting from a place of actually caring about your client. And I think if you’re listening to this podcast, you really take that block or tick that box. I think you wouldn’t listen to a resource like this, if you didn’t want to become a better financial planner. And that’s automatically tied to caring about your clients. I think going into a conversation with a client with a blank canvas, so not having an agenda, putting time aside to actually just listen. Even though that’s part of the question, how do you listen better? Well, making yourself available to listen? Deep Listening is actually something that takes practice. I still suck at that pretty badly. I’ve gotten a lot better. But I mean, we I want to be is not close to where I am now. So I think never putting myself in a position where I think I already know the answer. I almost get myself to place where I want to be surprised. I want to learn more. There’s probably a lot of stuff that I don’t know. And I have the opportunity to find out. I think one of the podcasts sort of short videos was a TED talk from Celeste Headley. I think it was entitled 10 ways to be a better conversationalist. She gave 10 Really helpful tips and tricks to listen better. So if you have some time, please jump onto it. It’s a great day talk. And I think one of the things she mentioned was, it’s it’s not very difficult to listen and engage in a conversation with somebody if you actually care. And if you don’t have an agenda, and practice, I think is probably the single biggest thing that I can recommend. Practice, practice, practice, practice on friends, practice on family, practice on clients, practice on colleagues. And yes, this is gonna sound probably to read for the podcast, but Shut up. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. And if you want to say something Before you say it, take a deep breath, take a sip of water, hold pause for another second or two, because it’s in that moment of, I call it awkwardness, because I get very old keys. And then I want to fill it because I don’t like science as an extra silence because as an extrovert, they should never be silenced, ever. But it’s in that moments of forcing myself to stay quiet a little bit longer. To see face more, more often than not, there is a lot more that a client wants to say. And getting to that place just takes a bit of practice. But it does get better because I sucked at it when we started with the journey of listening, because I’ve got flipping interesting things to say, Louis, in my mind.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s why we have you as a guest. That’s how you get to say it today.

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Exactly. And I think a lot of the stuff that I used to want to say to clients, it’s not that I don’t think the client scared to it, or that they didn’t think it was interesting. It was just interesting for me. And when they asked me that question, point blank, like if I reminisce now, probably a conversation with a client in the very first year at the business sitting down at a coffee shop, and I probably spent the better off of 30 minutes of an hour conversation, talking about the asset allocation allowances of a retirement annuity, when it comes to regulation 28. And looking back on that conversation, or playing it around in my mind, how I didn’t see it at that point that this client checked out, when I said regulation 28. And then I proceeded to tell a story around how to maximize regulation 28. And I was like, So what a missed opportunity to actually just listen for 30 minutes around what this client wants, what’s on their mind, it’s safe to say that that client didn’t come back. There was, it wasn’t a second opportunity for another coffee. This client just checked out. Because I think in their mind, they probably went, this guy doesn’t care about me at all. And it’s probably not going to be a good fit. So could this lead them?

Louis van der Merwe
So true. So true. People don’t remember what you said, they remember the way you made them feel. And I think in you know our line of business. It’s not often that someone would come back and say, you know, Rudolph, that was a terrible meeting. They just don’t come back. Right. And as you progress as you build these habits, and it feels to me today, as if this is a story of building habits and cultivating the right thing in terms of becoming a better financial advisor and that it isn’t an end goal. It is this journey that I think we’re all on in terms of just every day, sharpening the pencil getting a little bit better at things that like you said, we sucked at yesterday. But hopefully tomorrow it can be a little bit better. are we practicing the awkward silence?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
I’m waiting for a gym of thought to come through giving you that extra moment.

Louis van der Merwe
This has been so much fun. Is there anything that you want to leave for our guests as a as a parting thought? as we as we wrap up, maybe where they can get hold of you if they want to have a chat or just you know some inspiration for people joining the industry?

Rudolph Geldenhuys
Absolutely. I am always game for a coffee or a conversation being an extrovert. So if anybody wants to have a mingle, absolutely, always say yes, you can find my details on our website wealth app dot 00. For young, up and coming and new to the industry zero experience financial planners, I just want to say keep going. At the start it is quite a daunting task. But it gets easier and it gets more fun and it gets better. Surround yourself with people that pull the best out of you. Don’t surround yourself with peers please don’t surround yourself with with people your own age. Please get into relationship with older and wiser financial planners. They’ve got so much to offer and they are willing to give it away for free. They just want to help you become a better financial planner. So and keep learning keeping interested in your clients. Keep pushing yourself, help other people as other people help you. I think that’s a pretty big thing that is driving me building a community of financial planners of like minded people who want to push the industry forward. Because they are a very they are a valuable resource. I found so many industry colleagues in the past around client questions around implementation or application or systems or processes and they are always willing to And then for the older, more established financial planners, there’s still so much that you can offer. And if you are willing to keep adapting to change, because it’s honestly easier than you think, even though it seems daunting from a tech perspective, there’s young people like myself and Louis and other people in the industry, who are willing to help you because you’ve still got so much to offer. Please don’t leave the industry because you’re not listening more. Because your years of experience makes a massive difference in the lives of clients and other financial planners. So keep up with us. And we’re not that fast, I promise. Because we get our heads along the way a lot more. So eventually you catch up. And we need you like we need young and old in practices but in in the broader community. And just keep caring about your clients keep picking up the phone, don’t ever discount, how much a simple WhatsApp message or a quick phone call or a quick chicken email does and yes, have your financial planning meetings, but flap have some social hangouts with your clients as well. We don’t have to be weekend buddies with our clients. But actually just spending time with the client in the absence of papers or a financial planning file or folder or an investment return statement or policy schedule. Just being in the presence of a client letting them talk will do wonders for your practice. Give it a shot.