Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
100. Understand the Gallup Clifton Strengths assessment.
Unlock the secrets of financial success by embracing your natural talents! Join us for an enlightening conversation with Johan Oosthuizen from Gallup CliftonStrengths, as we explore how understanding your innate abilities can revolutionize your financial planning. We promise you won't look at money the same way again after discovering how the CliftonStrengths assessment can pinpoint and leverage your strengths for better financial decisions. Together with Craig Finch and Bronwyn Waner from Growth Financial Planning, and by Warren Grimsley of Rogue Media, we unravel the links between psychology and finance that can lead to greater returns on your investments.
In our latest episode of "Know Your Money," Johan shares his 22 years of expertise in coaching to reveal how focusing on what you're naturally good at can transform your financial outcomes. Say goodbye to the conventional focus on weaknesses; it's time to shift your mindset and harness your strengths for effective financial strategies. With engaging examples and practical insights, Johan guides us through understanding the importance of recognizing and nurturing your true capabilities. Whether you're handling your own finances or guiding clients, this discussion offers actionable advice and inspiration to grow both yourself and your wealth. Join us and start maximizing the power of your strengths today!
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www.growthfp.co.za
Welcome to Know your Money, where we will explore our relationship with money and how the psychology of it impacts our financial decisions, as everyone thinks about money differently. In our podcast, we'll be presenting a variety of financial topics in an easy to understand way, which we hope will assist you with managing your money.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Craig Finch, co-owner of Growth Financial Planning, an independent financial planning practice, and I've been a financial planner since 1986.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody. I'm Bronwyn Wehner, co-owner of Growth Financial Planning. I'm a certified financial planner and our philosophy at our company is to grow yourself to grow your wealth.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. My name is Warren Grimsley. I'm a director at Rogue Media and help facilitate this wonderful podcast. My main goal here is to try and understand what these two lovely people are saying, so that we can all understand.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money. Today we have our guest, johan Oosterhuyzen, who works for Gallup CliftonStrengths. Am I saying it correctly, and how long have you been a coach, johan, and do you want to introduce yourself and give everybody just a little bit of an intro?
Speaker 4:Thank you, Bron. A full-time coach for the last 13 years, but I've been involved with all the Gallup stuff and all the assessments for the last 22 years.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and what is?
Speaker 4:Gallup, johan. Gallup is an organization in the States and they do research for the last 85 years on client behavior. In fact, they're the largest organization in the world doing that and they've got clients all over the world. They're operating in 155 countries all over the world. Not many people are aware of the Gallup organization in South Africa, but for the rest of the world everyone knows what Gallup has been doing. They're more known for the Gallup polls in the States, but they do all the other research and work as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how would you say in a financial practice or as a client, so someone that's handling their money and dealing with their money how would the CliftonStrengths benefit them or help them as a person?
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, we have to think about what. There are many facets. We all know about your talents, that we have your knowledge and your skills and your experience, but very few people do an assessment to find out what are their talents at the end of the day. And you use all of that to execute on your financial plan. So you use a financial plan and you sit with your client and you build a plan for your client and you say, okay, we're going to execute on this now and you take into account your client's experience and knowledge and things like that, but taking into account the natural capabilities their talents will enhance the process for you and your client if you do that.
Speaker 1:So can you go a little bit more into the client and what they would experience from doing that? Because we are trying to use it in our practice and we want to use the platform today to kind of explain to them the importance of knowing what your strengths are, how you can lean into them. Warren, I don't know if you have any questions on what you're thinking.
Speaker 3:Well, when you say your first comment about what Gallup did was that they look at client behavior, how do they measure that and what in particular are they looking?
Speaker 4:at. Well, they're looking at your natural capabilities, your talents, and it's innate in you. You are born with that, but, from my experience over the last 22 years, very few people. If you ask them what are your strengths, they can't really give you an answer. Okay, yeah, because that's not the way that we are brought up. The way that we are brought up is mainly and from when you are little, everyone is focusing on the things that you can't do. You're not good in maths, you're not good in talking, so everyone is focusing on that. Yes, where Gallup made the decision, no, why don't we start focusing on what's good in people?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So it's a mind shit for many people. When you start talking about this, you start focusing on your strength, the things that comes naturally for you. I know, bron, that you like to talk to people. You can communicate easily, so why don't you rather focus on that than focusing on something that you struggle with so much easier and the return on the investment at the end of the day is so much more?
Speaker 3:A virtuous cycle. If you can focus on your positives and reinforce them, it's a virtuous cycle. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:I, rather I very often say to people think about sport, what do we do in the sport environment? Win Anyway, world Cups, world Cup, anything. Yeah, about sport, what do we do in the sport environment? Win anyway world cups, world cup, anything. We take our players and we focus on their strength. Yes, we put them in the right position according to what their strength are the plan for the team is built around the players strength exactly and if you know that you are a sprinter, usain Bolt, from when he, and taking him from there, he becomes the world's fastest man in the world.
Speaker 2:It was probably his mother trying to catch him for his supper yes exactly.
Speaker 4:But if I take Usain Bolt and say, okay, usain, from now on you're going to do shot put, yeah, what's going to happen Because you're not going to shot put.
Speaker 3:you need to practice shot put.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he can do shot put, but he will never be the best in the world. So why do you want to take all your time and energy, and sometimes a lot of money, into doing that, where you can flip it around and say, okay, I'd rather focus on being a sprinter and I become the fastest man in the world? It's so much easier. And what do you get by doing that? You get energized, you love what you are doing, yes, but what do we do in the corporate environment or in a work environment? We just do the opposite. Yeah, true.
Speaker 3:It's the same with schooling you always have to make up for where you're not good, and so you need to spend a lot more time if you're not good at history, where you need to do well in history. You know interesting. I was watching a video yesterday and it was about this Russian man who had three daughters and I think he was a psychologist and he wanted to show that if you got your children at a young age I think he started at he was either two or four years old, probably four years old with them If you got them to concentrate on one passion and focus on that throughout their whole lives having a balanced life but really focus on that, that they can become genius or excel. All three of his daughters love chess. All three of them became grandmasters and all three of them won the world whatever chess championships.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 3:Because he just said well, that's what you love, we're going to do that as much as you want to do it and focus on that.
Speaker 1:And then, when it comes back to financial planning, I think what happens is we tend to, as financial advisors, focus on a client's weakness. Or they come to us like I just can't seem to get myself out of debt, I just can't seem to save, so that's not their strength. So how can we try to show them what their strengths are around finances and focus more on that? So maybe their strength is actually earning the money. So let's start focusing on that, so you feel those good feelings, you get all of that kind of thing, and once you start earning more of that money, then we can do other things or some of them can't spend. You know and I know with the CliftonStrengths I don't know if you want to just explain to us a little bit there's those four different kind of areas the executing, influencing, relationship and strategic. If you can go into that and explain how that breaks up a person to be able to highlight things for them.
Speaker 4:So when you do the Gallup assessment, you get a full report and there's 34 talent themes and what they did. Dave put it in different categories there's an executing category, influencing, relationship and strategic. So what you see then is where do you operate from? What's your dominant side?
Speaker 4:If I look at myself, I'm very strategic. So that's the way that I think about stuff, but I struggle to execute things. So if I work in a team environment, I can come up with all the brilliant ideas, I can come up with all the plans, but don't ask me to execute this stuff. I can do it, but it comes with effort and I really struggle to do that. Then I would rather team up with a mate where I know, okay, they love to execute stuff, they can't come up with brilliant plans and ideas, they're just sucking that type of thing. So the two of us can work very nice together and I think, as a financial planner, you can also look at it that way. You can be the one, the financial planner, who likes to execute stuff, and your client can be the one with strong relationships, and how can the two of you team together to execute on what you want to do?
Speaker 3:That makes a lot of sense, yeah.
Speaker 4:Always try and see how can other people help you, because we tend to try and do everything. Why do you want to do that Again? The mind shift is focus on your strength. I can't ignore my weaknesses, the fact that I can't execute. I can't ignore it, but why don't? I should rather manage around it. And one of the strategies to manage around it to get a buddy to say come and work together with me.
Speaker 2:But you feel so much happier in your work day, day-to-day work life. If you could just focus on your strengths, that would be so much easier, right?
Speaker 4:Correct, Greg. I want to go to my work every day and I've got a tinkle in my voice and I've got a. I just want to be there. I know I'm going to do strategic stuff all the time, so I'm energized. I'm looking forward to a Monday. But most of the people don't look forward to a Monday because they know they're going to do with all the stuff that they don't really like doing.
Speaker 2:I heard an analogy with Barbara Streisand. She's obviously an incredible singer and she's been for many decades, but she doesn't book the um concert hall. She doesn't see if it's clean, she doesn't see the ticket sales. All she does is not all she does, but please get to the concert on on the day and do her best and do what she loves. I'm sure, warren, you know more than that then yeah yeah, your experience in the absolutely.
Speaker 3:I mean the amount of people involved who specialize in very small areas. My speciality was purely doing sound, but that doesn't mean that I was the one booking all the equipment and it doesn't mean I was the one organizing the logistics and the artist doesn't want to do all that.
Speaker 2:No, they're not interested.
Speaker 3:They want to turn up and sing.
Speaker 2:That's it, but that's the whole cooperative thing, isn't it?
Speaker 3:I mean again, when you have a functioning society, everyone or their strengths or not their strengths, but what they can add in value to society must complement each other for it to be cohesive and for there to be growth in society. And I think if you bring it back to your financial planning again, if you can focus on your strengths once you've identified them, then ultimately the gaps can be filled in with your advisor and over time.
Speaker 4:Or your partner, or your partner has to be there with you. Yes, correct.
Speaker 1:And I think maybe that's what we can talk about in the next episode is how the client can realize what their strengths or weaknesses are and how we, as financial planners, can help them with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely Very interesting.
Speaker 2:Johan. Thank you so much, johan. Well, johan, thanks for coming to the studio. Yeah, thank you, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3:Until the next one, Bye everybody.
Speaker 2:Bye. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast or would like to subscribe, please visit our website, wwwgrowthfpcoza. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.