Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
121. Beyond Numbers: How Mindfulness Transforms Your Financial Journey
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What makes a truly great financial planner? While technical expertise is essential, our conversation with Roland from Aspiral Coaching and Leadership reveals that emotional intelligence might be the secret ingredient that separates good financial advice from transformative financial guidance.
Roland shares his experience helping financial planners develop coaching skills that enable them to connect more deeply with clients. Through better questioning, patience, and mindful presence, planners can uncover what really matters to clients beyond the numbers. This emotional intelligence becomes particularly valuable during market turbulence, when staying grounded helps both planners and clients avoid reactive decisions that could derail long-term financial plans.
Craig brings nearly 40 years of financial planning experience to the conversation, having navigated through five major market crashes. His perspective highlights how a seasoned planner's calm guidance during downturns—like the 40% market drop in 1998—can save clients from panic-selling and instead help them stay invested to capture the eventual recovery. This wisdom isn't just about market knowledge; it's about emotional self-management.
We explore practical mindfulness techniques, particularly the "body scan," which both planners and clients can use before meetings to gain clarity and perspective. By focusing on bodily sensations rather than racing thoughts, this practice creates space for more meaningful conversations about financial goals as they connect to life values. The Wheel of Life assessment emerges as another valuable tool that helps clients align their financial decisions with what truly matters across all life domains.
Whether you're a financial professional looking to elevate your practice or someone seeking a deeper relationship with your money, this episode offers insights into how mindfulness, emotional intelligence, and genuine care create the foundation for financial wellbeing. Subscribe, share your thoughts, and let us know which mindfulness practices you might incorporate into your financial journey.
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Introduction to Know Your Money
Speaker 1Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money. I'm Bronwyn Wehner.
Speaker 2And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast.
Speaker 1So today we have a guest which has caused a little bit of debate in our rooms, but we thought we could use this as an opportunity to talk through how the financial planning industry is changing and how the financial planner is having to change. Roland, do you want to introduce yourself, and you and Craig can have a chat.
Speaker 3Sure, thank you. My company is called A Spiral Coaching and Leadership, and I've been working with financial planners for at least 10 to 15 years now, and I guess what I do is I help financial planners develop coaching skills, be better human beings, have better EQ, ask better questions, better listening skills.
Speaker 2And do you have a website that we can?
Speaker 3Yeah, so my website is wwwaspiralcoza, thank you.
Roland's Work with Financial Planners
Speaker 1Awesome stuff. So I was lucky enough to be on the program that you and Rob McDonald hosted, where it was about being a behavioral coach, a behavioral financial planner, so learning how to ask coaching questions and I think the essence of your side of it was working on yourself and trying to be a bit calmer in who you are.
Speaker 1Be a bit calmer in who you are, and I think maybe Craig, your question is like why would a client want to know that a planner's working on themselves? Shouldn't they be working on the client, or how would?
Speaker 2you ask the question. I think it's a given that if you want to be a successful financial planner, that you do have other skills. That you're looking after your own wheel of life and we've spoken about that a lot over the years. That we're looking after your own wheel of life and we've spoken about that a lot over the over the years. We're doing the podcast and we've had discussions around the wheel of life how important that is, not just one aspect of finance, that's, that's the important side of it. So I do believe that us as financial planners are doing that anyway. Whether the client worries about that, I'm not sure. I'm just thinking the client worries about that, I'm not sure. I'm just thinking the client would probably assume that we are all upskilled enough to know the technical side of things and also the soft skill side of things and have empathy with them.
Speaker 1I think people focus on the planner having the technical skills. I don't think they necessarily think or worry about the emotional side. What do you think, Warren, as the clients?
Speaker 5I think you guys are overthinking it a bit. Yeah, I think that I at no point worry how your emotional intelligence factors into my future. Personally, I went down a rabbit hole recently where I was trying to figure out how much I would need to retire in 30 years and to be able to sustain life for another 30 years. After that Terrified me the figure. And that's what your end consumer is looking at. They're looking at.
Speaker 5Okay, are these people going to be able to carry me through retirement if I put my trust into them now? Are they going to help me put the right plans in place in case something happens to me? And do they genuinely care about me? That's probably as far as I'd go with it. Now one could argue that the genuinely care about me. That speaks a lot to their EQ and to who they are, rather than their capability at financial planning. You know I choose you guys not only because we've become friends over time and everything, because I know you genuinely care about what you do. You care about your customers, you care about the people you work with, and that's very important to me. So I think it isn't really a question too much of how much are you working on yourself. It's a question of how much do you care about the people who you're providing for? That's for me, yeah.
Clients' Perspective on Planner Skills
Speaker 3Yeah. So I would say you're reminding me now of one of the best pieces of feedback we get on the Alan Gray program is patience. People have learned patience and they would have come in much sooner. In an hour conversation they would have come in within 10 minutes. I think I've got it. Let me tell you what my advice is, and I think if you have the patience to wait to ask good questions um and that you know, patience is quite a key mindfulness skill you get a better understanding of the clients, setup their relationship to their money. So that would be one key skill I think that we as coaches can transfer to financial planners Also the technical application. I think if you've got good EQ and you've learned some of these skills, no matter how technically strong you are, the timing of that technical skill and the application of that technical skill is improved through these softer skills, as we call them.
Speaker 5What do you mean by softer skills?
Speaker 3So just the emotional skills, I guess, as opposed to the cognitive skills. Okay, so yeah, like timing could be, could be key. Staying, you know, staying grounded, I think for a financial planner could also be key. Not interrupting, which is a function of patience, or, um, yeah, just general self-management skills. I guess they call them in EQ language.
Speaker 5Which is very important, I think, for anyone really and has become increasingly more important as time has gone by. I mean, it wasn't even a term I learned at school EQ.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, I mean on one of our first programs. I remember listening to a financial planner in Bloemfontein and he was quite panicked the morning of a client coming in and needing to get the paper early to find out what was going on at Eskom so that he could answer his client's questions. And in talking to him we realized that what's going on at Eskom isn't really going to affect your client's plan. What is probably more important is you redirecting your client's attention from the Eskom issue back to his plan and the longevity of his plan, and that would have taken some anxiety control from the planner. Otherwise you get sucked into the client's agenda and it's not always that relevant.
Speaker 2So I agree with you because I think it's important that often there's a lot of noise in the marketplace, like that chap from Eskom, and then you hear all the news and often it's fake news and it's for us to make sure that the client you know the long picture for the client is still on track and often we get all of us get caught up in politics and world politics and we can talk about what's happened recently in the world and the markets are affected by what people say, but these are little blimps on the screen in the long picture.
Speaker 2So if you are planning to retire in 10, 15, 20 years' time, it doesn't matter really what happens now. It's that you stay on course and your financial planner keeps, hold your hand and just make sure that you get through these phases without worrying about things, because you can make some really rash decisions around. Even you say Eskom, even now Eskom might be switching power off again and who knows the future. But if you've got a long-term plan you sat with your financial planner, you know what the plan is between the two of you, you understand it. Then the outside noise is irrelevant.
Speaker 2But it's very difficult to do that.
Speaker 5At what point, though, do you think? Maybe not you two personally, but you're both people, so at some point, without a level enough head, you will panic without a level enough head, you will panic.
Managing Market Anxiety and Experience
Speaker 2I think, warren, if you've been in the industry a while like I'm nearly 40 years now and we were saying earlier off air I've had five major stock market crashes, from 1987 all the way through September 11th, et cetera, and COVID is another one and 98 was a big crash as well. So 98 was a big panic because we didn't have the online press that we had. You waited for the Americans to close their market. The South African press printed the story and then you panicked. Then our market panicked and our market dropped. So I think in the two weeks we dropped 40%. Now that's massive.
Speaker 2So you're trying to retire. You've got 40% less money to retire on. If you panicked and if you sold, if you stayed the course and realized that this will pass, then within the next 18 months you were way back past where you were. But you had to have a plan in place that you could withstand that kind of dip in the market. So I think the lucky for you. I'm talking about myself now that I've had experience through these times and I will not always smile, but I will say it will pass. I know it's going to pass. Hopefully my clients will realize that with me, and not panic, because if you panic and go to cash you you've lost, you're gonna but that might speak to you and your experience, or you as a person, I think.
Speaker 5Uh, you know what? What? Um, what you're offering with your, your coaching, is helping those financial planners, let's say, who don't have the same level of experience as craig.
Speaker 3Yeah, I was thinking that.
Speaker 1I also think what your idea is is that you went down a rabbit hole and planned what you want for retirement and how much you have to put away now for that, but then there's a version of you that could get sick and then there's a version of you that has to look after your children. And if we as planners go into the meeting and you say I need to save for retirement, I'm putting this much away, and we don't get curious and ask you more questions about what's going on and how have you planned for things? In the other way, we are not serving you. And when that storm does come and the markets do tank, you're not going to have emergency fund to fall back on, so you're going to have to do those things. So I think coming from a coaching perspective as a planner is a key skill. But I think maybe the question for you, roland, is how should a client prepare for that or what should they be doing or asking?
Speaker 3So before I answer the question, I just want to speak to Warren's point, because I think experience does give you that ability to take. You know to be to take in action when you are, when you are tending to take action, and I think a lot of financial planners act out and it doesn't benefit the client. So I guess these skills are really valuable for younger financial planners and we hope to answer your question, we hope that over time that these skills will be transferred to the client as well. So if you have two people coming in with an understanding of what it means to be grounded, get your anxiety out the way, really be able to question your constructs, what money means to you, I think it benefits the client quite directly. But it'll be up to the financial planner to pass those skills on and you also, I imagine, want a financial planner that's relatively well-matched to you as a client.
Speaker 3I think to Craig's point about, I think, a lot of clients, my understanding. I get this sort of anecdotally from financial planners If your clients you know worth a hundred million, he's going to put more pressure on you or you're going to feel more pressure as a financial planner. I guess it shouldn't be that way, but I see financial planners rattled by dominating clients, domineering clients, and I'm hoping that these skills can keep all of that in check and you can be equally skillful with all your clients.
Speaker 1So if a client had to go into a meeting with a planner, what advice would you or what skill would you say that the client should try just before their meeting Like? Would it be body scan or would it be writing down the 10 things that are actually making you anxious? What do you think would be a good piece of advice for our clients the next time they go in?
Mindfulness in Financial Planning
Speaker 3Yeah, I think you're on the right track there with mindfulness, because whatever's coming out of your mouth is really an indication of your thinking and your feeling and your constructs, if you can take any space, whether that's a 10-minute break before or writing down the main things you want to say to your financial planner, or doing any of the mindfulness practices. And you mentioned body scan, which I'm a big fan of because I think it's a very focused form of mindfulness and it kind of unwinds all the formative stuff that we've been through, you know, from as children all the way up to adults. We we go through experiences, we construct them linguistically and we have a set of constructs and we believe the way you know. We believe that as describes the way the world works, and often, by the time we're in our mid-30s or even later, there are some shadows and some glitches in that construction of reality. So what is a body scan?
Speaker 3So the body scan is a form of mindfulness.
Speaker 3It's specifically focused on the body and I think it's quite a quick and direct way of getting out of your head to use the cliche and get yourself some distance from your way of seeing the world.
Speaker 3So the body scan is taking some time out to sit in meditation but specifically direct your attention at your body and bring your sensations into the foreground. So you quite ensure, you know you assure. Ensure, then, that you're putting your sensations in the foreground means you, you kind of dialing down the volume of your thinking, and that is a way of getting distance between your thinking and your feelings and your sensations. So you know, in classic mindfulness they talk about those three domains your thinking, your feeling and your sensations and bringing them into alignment. And I do that with a lot of my clients, and I know financial planners now who've taken on the mindfulness approach. And you've got more progressive clients, I guess, are doing a body scan with their clients at the beginning of the meeting or any form of mindfulness and I even think something as small as the wheel of life is a form of mindfulness.
Speaker 1You know, I did that with a client the other day and he is well off, everything's okay, and we went through all of the areas and then the one area was environments and he's not really happy where he is, and now we're making certain choices and adjusting things in certain ways. And another client we actually she did the Wheel of Life, and then what I do further to that is on each of those areas, how do you think you spend your time? So how much of your time do you spend worrying about money or are you spending with your family and friends? How much of your money are you spending on each of those areas? And I don't know what the third thing is, but basically, when she first did the Wheel of Life, she placed all these things in a certain place and when she actually went and said, okay, how much time do I actually spend on it? How much money?
Speaker 1Oh, and energy positive or negative, how much energy is your children giving you or taking? It actually helped her to see the broader picture and one of the things was that she wants to spend more time on holiday. But then another thing was that she needs to see more of parents. Okay, so how can you incorporate that together? So, yes, we were talking about money, but becoming more mindful of who you are as a person helps you be clearer about what to do with your money, so you don't have regrets, I think.
The Body Scan Technique Explained
Speaker 3Exactly, and I think what you're doing there is you're bringing perspective. A lot of mindfulness is just about shifting attention shifting the client's attention and bringing perspective and slowing down. I think slowing down is a key piece these days because we're all moving at speed, we're all kind of sucked into our social media or any media for that matter and slowing down is incredibly powerful and underrated because it automatically gives you perspective and even this episode.
Speaker 1I think it's just giving clients that perspective of that's what we should be doing in the meeting. We shouldn't necessarily be talking about ESCOM and all of these kind of things. It should be focusing on you and what it is that you want.
Speaker 5Yeah, I have this thing I do at nighttime now, so we'll put the boy to bed and then my wife and I will watch a program on TV, and then we're exhausted because he's not a great sleeper. So she'll go to bed around 8 o'clock and she asked me the other night she goes, why do you come to bed 15 minutes after me? Every night? She says it's really weird and I said to her I just need some time to be quiet and instead of sitting there on my phone, I literally sit there for 10 minutes in the dark and just relax nothing. Sit there for 10 minutes in the dark and just relax nothing. No, no sensory perception. It's dark and it's, it's. It's quite nice. Yeah, it's quite nice and it probably has improved your sleep. I think it's improved my sleep, but I think it's also allowed me to um, relax my mind because it's just go, go, go from five in the morning when he wakes up, to that point when he goes to bed at night and we then go and watch TV. It's just constant all day.
Speaker 3Yeah, and you reminded me of another point, about how many financial planners have told me and I've met quite a few clients that have got a lot of money but just still feel the niggle and the dissatisfaction. And I think a lot of the conversations about money are about meaning making and your feelings, and if you're overthinking it, you're not going to get to understand the meaning making which is a feelings component. Any meaning is around how I feel about something. So in a conversation with a client, you have to get to the feelings and often they're moving too fast or they're too busy, yeah or they've just constructed something that is unrealistic in terms of their financial plan.
Speaker 1Do you honestly think that that's achievable with some clients to get to their feelings?
Speaker 2Yeah, with every client feelings.
Speaker 1Oh, with every client.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, definitely.
Applying Wheel of Life Assessment
Speaker 3Yeah, and I guess you know sort of the thumb rule that stress is the silent killer. I think we're all more in our thoughts than we realize, and so it takes a little bit of skill and a little bit of pace to bring the emotive language back into the conversation. And I think that's where mindfulness comes in. And yeah, and I just love the body scan because it feels like a kind of a hack for mindfulness, it's quick, it instantly gives you perspective. Mindfulness, it's quick, it instantly gives you perspective, and it's something you can also apply not only when you're with your financial planner, but if you practice it when you're physically fatigued, like after a paddle game or after a big run, you can access something very quickly that experientially will be significant for you. And I think that's quite interesting to play with. Is, you know, do some mindfulness straight after your paddle game and see what a difference it makes to you, because then you're anchoring yourself in something that's probably quite foreign to you by now.
Speaker 1Awesome, I think if you're open to it, maybe we can just do a quick body scan episode in our next thing so it can just be there for all our clients. If ever they want to meet with us, they can go through that on our podcast and just listen that'll be especially good for the skeptics.
Speaker 3If there are any in the room, there might be one, there might be one awesome.
Speaker 1Thank you so much thank you guys likewise thanks, warren. Thanks, great thanks. You are Awesome.
Speaker 3Thank you so much, Roland. Thank you guys Likewise. Thanks Lauren, Thanks Greg, Thanks Bye.
Speaker 2Thank 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. No-transcript.