Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
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 podcasts we will be presenting a variety of financial topics in an easy-to-understand way which, we hope, will assist you with managing your money.Please subscribe to our podcast or have a look at our website www.growthfp.co.za
StrengthsFinder 2.0 | EN - Gallup Discover how understanding your strengths can transform your financial journey with insights from our special guest, Johan, a strategic business coach. Johan joins Craig Finch, Bronwyn Waner, and Warren Grimsley to shed light on the powerful connection between self-awareness and financial success. We promise you'll walk away with knowledge on how the Gallup CliftonStrengths assessment can illuminate your true talents, helping you align your career with your passions—it's not just about chasing money, but finding fulfillment in what you do. Johan shares his experiences guiding young individuals, especially those in grade 10, to pursue paths that truly resonate with them, challenging societal and parental expectations.
A striking statistic reveals that only 7% of people feel genuinely fulfilled and happy, prompting a closer look at the role financial awareness plays in enhancing life satisfaction. This episode navigates the profound impact of financial management on personal fulfillment and invites you to join our mission to elevate more people into that 7% of contentment. As we explore these themes, we set the stage for future episodes that promise to deepen your understanding of achieving happiness through financial knowledge. Get ready to rethink your approach to money and life satisfaction with insights that could change your perspective.
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. Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money. Today we have Johan again with us, johan how are you?
Speaker 4:
I'm doing well, thank you. Thank you for the invitation to join you today.
Speaker 4:
Well, it was exceptional speaking to you last time, and we just want to find out a bit more about exactly what you do. Well, I've been in the financial services industry myself for 27 years, but I left the industry to pay back to the industry, so I'm a business coach. I'm a strategic business coach, helping financial planners to add some more value to their clients by introducing some other stuff and not just the financial side of everything, because that's a big thing nowadays in the industry to look at everything and not just the finances of a client. So that's what I'm trying to help them with Understanding themselves better, maybe understand their clients better and add some extra value.
Speaker 2:
So, johan, last week we spoke off-air a little bit as well about it's not just the financial plan and the budgeting tool and future projections and how your retirement is going to look and do you have enough cover to look after yourself and your family. There's another aspect to your life and financial planning and that's what you bring to. You've got a great program to do that, to help the client look at and help us look at the other side of life actually.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, we're talking about the human side of money. You want to find out what's the human side of money. I mean everyone going through transitions in their lives and there's a lot of emotions attached to that and knowing yourself and knowing your strength, you start to understand why you react the way you react when you go through all these transitions.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
And for a financial planner and the client knowing that information, it makes it so much easier to go through those transitions.
Speaker 2:
And it's spending time on things you love doing and you're good at doing, not the things that you're not good at doing, and maybe your career could make a change. You could make a change in your career if you concentrate on the things that you're good at. Is that what you're trying to get to?
Speaker 4:
that two out of 10 people are sitting in a job today and if they're honest with themselves, they'll say they love it. So eight out of 10 people are sitting in the occupation and they don't really like it and they don't know what to do. So getting this information helps them to make an informed decision at the end of the day, and I find that people who enjoy what they do doesn't matter what it is.
Speaker 2:
The money will follow. I agree with you 100% the other way around. You try and chase the money and you don't enjoy what you do. You really it's going to catch up with you somewhere along the line.
Speaker 4:
And even if it's tough times, you'll go through those tough times. If you are busy doing what you love to do, yeah, so is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1:
why us, as financial planners, should be doing the Gallup Clifton strengths with our clients? Because we can help them look at all aspects of their lives. Like exactly what Craig's saying. We can be able to shine light on a client if they're actually in a career that they're not happy with and then potentially, they can make more money and then fill all of those other parts of them that they're also stressing with. Is that right? Is that why we would use it as financial planners?
Speaker 4:
Career is just one thing.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 4:
If you think about relationships, how many people are sitting in the relationships and they struggle and don't know what's going on there. So just becoming more aware of who you really are. From my experience, if you talk to people, very few people know who they really are and this is a light that shines on them and point out to them this is who you really are, there's nothing wrong with you, but you don't really understand who you are. And find that out give you some tools to work with moving forward in life.
Speaker 1:
Can you give us an example of a client who you know, didn't know who they are and how they do know now, after doing the CliftonStrengths and what changes you've seen? Or any person?
Speaker 4:
Well, I see it. Nowadays, this time of the year all the parents are phoning me and say, johan, it's grade number 10 for my child. We don't know what they want to study, and can you help us? So we let them do the assessment, and that points out to them you know what? And the assessment is not to tell you to become an engineer or lawyer, that's not what it points out. But it will point out to you what do you love to do? You love to talk to people, or you're very strategic, or you've got an analytical mindset, and then at least you can start focusing on different careers that will expose you to that type of task. Okay, and then you start loving to do that.
Speaker 2:
Well, that's brilliant, because normally what happens, your parents will tell you this is what you should do, because I didn't do it, or whatever they came up with the society, says the society says this and that, and you're often in a very narrow band of careers or futures, and then your child goes to Vasti, or doesn't go to Vasti, to study something that they absolutely never use in life. So it would be really useful to know beforehand what your strengths are.
Speaker 4:
That really makes sense, but can you think about the value that you, as a financial advisor, can add to your clients if you can do that?
Speaker 1:
Yes, and also not waste their money letting their child go study something.
Speaker 4:
I mean, how many people study something and eventually end up doing that for the rest of their lives. My experience very few, very few, exactly. Yeah, and I mean, if you look at entrepreneurship nowadays, I think that's the route to go.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
And you even have an entrepreneurial assessment from the Gallup organization that can point out those things to you. Are you a natural entrepreneur? I've got one parent that phoned me last week and their son is in matric now and they didn't know what to do. And we did the entrepreneurial assessment and it points out that this guy is a natural entrepreneur. So they made the decision they're not going to send him to university, they're going to expose him to short courses and that's what they're going to do. And, funny enough, this young man is happy not going to the university because that's his mindset. So again, as a financial planner, you expose your clients to some other information, not just the financial side of it.
Speaker 2:
But back to that young child trying to look at what he wants to do. If you say to somebody you're not going to go to university, or you just think it through, everybody at the moment says you have to have a university degree. That's the only way to get ahead in life. But there are many other ways of enjoying your life, as you say, entrepreneurial. Some of the most famous entrepreneurs in the world didn't go to university.
Speaker 3:
Exactly, I didn't go to university, yes, and it was out of choice. I had a free ticket to some of the really good ones. Royal College of London was one of them, where it was regardless of the grades I got. I was in, but it wasn't for me, fought with my mom and dad many years about that For sure, but it wasn't for me, and this test would have probably been able to affirm my decision and made it easier for my parents to understand and also put their minds at rest that they're not sending you down a path that is not going to be a good one.
Speaker 2:
It just wasn't.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, you know, not everyone's built the same way, yeah, and so how can you expect to do the Excel spreadsheet and to apply it to everyone? Yeah, correct, you can't.
Speaker 1:
And that's also how do you show the Excel spreadsheet. Some people it's not about that. They need to see something else.
Speaker 2:
Yes.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I went to university and I studied marketing. I university and I studied marketing. I hated it, I fell out of it and I went and started my own business, like, if you actually look at my CliftonStrengths, that is what I should have been doing. And then I've found my way into financial planning which meets all those relationship building criterias. And now studying was an absolute breeze for me because it was aligned with. Exactly what?
Speaker 4:
I want to do.
Speaker 1:
So I think, from a parenting perspective you know any of our clients that are parents and have their children this is one of the most powerful tools that we can give to them and help them and assist them, like we said, from a financial planning and a life planning perspective, because we are holistic.
Speaker 3:
We are given talents, more often than not unbeknownst to us, and being able to identify that talent and exercise that talent is surely the way you're supposed to live.
Speaker 2:
So, johan, if I do this with you, the Gallup complete questionnaire and it says you should be a doctor, it's a bit late now.
Speaker 4:
Greg. I think that's what the assessment is going to tell you. The assessment is not going to point out to you that you should go into a specific career. It tells you strengths. It's a strength assessment Brilliant. And if I can use an example of my own son, his mother was one of those people. You have to go to university, you have to get a degree. So we sent him to university to study marketing and the first year was chaos. So he came back to me and he begged me. He said Dad, can I just do it over? I said, okay, I'm going to give you a second chance. So the second year of his first year was even worse. Then I said stop, let's do the assessment. And the lowest talent on his list of 34 was learner. And I said son, you're not a typical student, I'm going to take you out of the university. And I did that, yeah, and I started to coach him, starting to understand himself, and today he's got an unbelievable successful in the social media space. But that's his talent.
Speaker 1:
Sure.
Speaker 4:
And yeah, find out really who you are, identify it. Yeah, identify it. And, funny enough, when people do their assessment, they will all say to me Jan, but I know this, your gut feeling is telling you this.
Speaker 1:
Yes, but you don't lean into it.
Speaker 4:
But you don't lean into it because you haven't got a description for that, you haven't got a name for that, and that's what the assessment is doing it's giving you a description.
Speaker 3:
I think, johan, you know growing up and going to school and then everyone being expected to follow a similar path or, if not, the same path in education. Going to university, we're not really taught to lean into the one thing we're really good at. We're just taught okay, guys, you need to get good grades in everything and then you're going to go and choose what you want to do at university. But here are the options.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, do what society expects you to do. So if you come and say to somebody I'm going to be a plumber, they go oh, my word, what do you mean? Aren't you going to become an accountant? No, no, that's a fantastic career. You know, people don't realize. I'm just trying to say these A hundred percent.
Speaker 3:
The plumber charged me here. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:
He got us pretty well yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
And he'd be happier all around. We've done that series on the Wheel of Life and all those different areas, and that's what we are trying to do as Financial.
Speaker 3:
Planner. There's another metric for success, isn't it? How happy are you, how much do you enjoy your life? Exactly?
Speaker 4:
That's very important, what you're pointing out now, and the Gallup did 85 years research on happiness and fulfillment in the world.
Speaker 1:
Sure that sounds. Can we do a whole episode on that, Because I think that would be great.
Speaker 4:
And if you just look at what the research is pointing out and it's very sad 7% of the people in the world can honestly say they're having a fulfilled and happy life. 7%, Just think about it Me too. So 93% of the people out there are unhappy and not fulfilled.
Speaker 2:
We need to chat about that in our next episode. Exactly that's why we have Know your Money so we can have 93% of our clients.
Speaker 4:
I've got the goosebumps guys Open up something for them that they can become one of those 7% brilliant absolutely and bump that number up.
Speaker 3:
Thank you, thanks, johan. We'll see you on the next episode absolutely pleasure man bye bye everybody.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, 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.
