PROpulsion LIVE

Preparing Your Financial Planning Business for 2025

• Francois du Toit • Season 5 • Episode 30

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In this episode of PROpulsion LIVE, we dive into a key topic: how financial planners can prepare their businesses for success in 2025. With the rapid pace of change in the industry, it’s essential to focus on the right areas—both personally and professionally.

We explore the critical skills financial planners need to develop, strategies for building a sustainable and differentiated business, how to strengthen your team, and how technology will play an even greater role moving forward.

Join us as we break down the key areas that will help you future-proof your financial planning business for 2025 and beyond.

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Speaker 1:

This is Propulsion, the podcast, where we dive deep into the nitty gritty of taking your business and your practice to the next level. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a franchisee or a financial planning pro, you are in the right place. We're talking the latest tech, best practices and expert insights, all while keeping it real and entertaining. So grab a coffee, sit back and let's get ready to blast off. I'm your host, franchot de Toey Righty, so let's talk about 2025. Why now now, I guess, is the first question. Why why now already? Franchise? Not even october. It is a like a couple of days, three days before we get into october. The thing is that I often find that you really need to think about and reflect on your business, and you can't do that in a day. You can, can't do that. You know when you're tired, you have to sort of start thinking about this, and many of you might feel like, but Frans, I'm tired already and that's perfectly fine. But if you start thinking about your business slowly, you know, little by little, and just be aware of certain aspects, that maybe you need to think about these specific things in your business. I think that's going to be incredibly valuable for you. You're going to be much more prepared when you do sit down with your planning for 2025. And the most important thing for me is to always complete the planning, and I've done this now for the last five, six years is that the planning is done before the end of December. Before the end of December, so, before I sort of try and leave I never leave, but you know, sort of by the 16th, 20th of December around about there, I always try and be done with it so that I know what's happening next year, because otherwise it consumes my mind anyway. Now, that's a personal problem I have, but, be that as it may, I think there's a lot of you that may go away and go on holiday and also, in the back of your mind, you're still thinking about your business. So hence why I start now already, because everything that's happened is very fresh in our minds. The things that we struggle with is obviously very real for us, and then we say, well, okay, so what are the things where I can really look at to change things for next year? Because the last thing I want to do is have another year like this year, and even if this year was fantastic, right? So some of you will be here and saying, francho, I'm just going to keep on going. You know, it's just, everything works. It's like just a machine that's ticking over and it's fantastic. Reality is that 90% of us are probably not there right. So there's a lot of effort still going in.

Speaker 1:

No-transcript personal development. So, personal development I want to talk about business strategy. I'm going to talk about team development, which is a big one for me this coming year, and technology, which is always a big thing for me. So those are the four things, but I'm going to talk about three very specific things within those four areas that we should be thinking about and focusing on for next year. Now, just as a caveat, it does depend very much on where you are in your journey. So let me just also say that just be cognizant of where you are. Maybe some of these things are like you're still here, but this thing is already here. So don't leapfrog the things and skip things and don't do things that will get you here. Just be very honest with where you are and what is your next step. So not everything I'm going to share with you today is something that should not all of them should be on your list for next year, but I can promise you it's definitely going to be a thing or three that you can take away from from today. So let's get into the conversation, right.

Speaker 1:

So, first off, personal development, why? First of all, last night, when I got back from job, work, people think I sleep, but I, I think, while I sleep, I think, and I've got this picture in my mind of that. How does this work? The relationship between me as the person or the business owner, and the business, what is this relationship like? Who and what? Where does the input come from and where does the output go like? Those kinds of things are really things I haven't thought about necessarily intentionally, and in my mind I'm seeing this little there's sort of me on this side and there's the business on this end, and the input is definitely coming from me as the business owner.

Speaker 1:

So I'm doing input into the business, input, input, input, and then the payoff that I get back is the output from the business, which then comes back to me. And that's the thing, right, because our businesses look after us. It looks after our families, it looks after our employees, it looks after our clients, it looks after the profession, it looks after the country, the society, the communities, all of those things, but the input comes from us. Now, why is that important? Because if I stay here, my input is going to stay here and we're not going to be able to do bigger, better things. We're not going to be able let me put that differently we're not going to be able to have a bigger impact, and that is the issue. So I want to have a as bigger impact as humanly possible and I only know one way to do that at the moment, but that's going to be my way, right? But that means that if I want to create different inputs and more valuable inputs into the business so that the business can create those outputs, I have to work on myself.

Speaker 1:

Businesses stop growing and what I'm also let me also clarify this that when I talk about input into your business, I'm not talking about that. You need to do the work. That's not what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1:

As we evolve and as we grow and as we get more experienced and we gather wisdom, you know, through all our mistakes that's when we start doing things differently and we see things that we haven't seen before and we see things that we haven't seen before and we can connect dots that we haven't connected before and we can find more of the right people to come and help us do what we want to do. That's the thing. So it's not about working harder or working with smarter and more wealthy clients. It's not about none of that stuff. It is about you as a person growing, and there are three particular things that I think we really need to be focusing on right now. We always should have probably focused on these, but never more so than this moment in time where we find ourselves at the end of 2024.

Speaker 1:

So the very first one is emotional intelligence. Now, yesterday I was in a meeting and I did not display the emotional intelligence I know I have, just because I got so emotional about a very specific thing and it just just came out and I just said, please, can we stop do this, please can we like and I could have done it in such a such a better way, but because it's so close to me and because I'm so passionate about it, it just came out. So that wasn't the display of emotional intelligence, but emotional intelligence is really, really important. In today's day and age. People are going through a lot and people have certain habits that they just do what they do without thinking about it and nobody challenges them. But it's not necessarily the fact that we challenge people or that we're there for people, or that we understand people, or that we support people or any of those things. It's the way in which we do it, it's the way in which we frame it, it's the meanings and things that we assign to them, and that's important, right?

Speaker 1:

So emotional intelligence is an incredibly important aspect, and there are many books that you can read about it, there are videos you can go and watch about it, there are courses you can do about it. But what are you doing to really build your emotional intelligence? And I think some people are probably born with that, but it's definitely something you learn, because the more you work on yourself, the more you have more self-awareness, and for me, self-awareness is nothing other than really really knowing yourself and really really being in control of how you act and react to things. Right? That's really thing that's going to help you build relationships in a world where most people don't know how to do that. So it is one of the best, most valuable skills that you can have, or traits that you can have, and you can develop it. So what are you doing and what are you doing with your team around that, which is not just you, right? So very, very important.

Speaker 1:

Second thing is, if you haven't realized yet and this isn't only ChatGPT's fault, right? So it's not AI or anything, but things just keep on happening faster and faster and faster and faster. And I see there's a lot of people at the moment saying, yeah, but like we just wait and see. And some people want to wait and see what happens with technology, and some people say it'll never happen, so I'm not doing anything about it. So you have these two, two, two things to contend with. But adaptability and agility is so important. We've got to question the things we've been doing, whether they are still relevant.

Speaker 1:

Now go back to the, the professional practice 10.0 that we just discussed a little bit earlier. The only way for us to really know is to ask, like, are we still doing the right things? So there are certain things that we need to know about. That's happening. We need to be talking to our clients and then we need to bring these two things together in order to decide well, what should we do? Should we change, should we not change? But you can't do that today and then for the next 10 years, you're fine. There's too much happening at the moment. Now also, just be careful that we don't change for the sake of changing and that we don't change so much that nobody knows what's going on. Just as you've gone through one change, you want to make another change and another change, so that's also not good. Everything is about balance, so very important.

Speaker 1:

The third one for personal development is and this is more critical, not I mean, obviously we want to talk about, like client communication and client engagement. Those two things are extremely important. This is what I'm talking about at the moment, but those things now also go into the technologies that we use. If you want to get the most out of technology, you've got to be able to communicate well and engage well with that technology. And if you can do it well with people, I guarantee you you can do it well with technology. It makes that so much easier. So that's very important.

Speaker 1:

So, for personal development, the three things to focus on right. Let me recap them quickly Emotional intelligence, so what are you doing? And all of these things don't just apply to you, remember, I'm talking about your business or your practice as a whole, so whoever works in your business or with your business in that sense, what are you doing from an emotional intelligence development point of view? How do you ensure that you and everybody in the business has a mindset to adapt and the agility to adapt? We can make decisions. We we've got things in place that we can use to make those decisions and to track our progress, those kinds of things. And then, thirdly, you know client communication and engagement very, very important, right, there's lots of that that we do in propulsion. There's lots of programs and things that we've got in there that really helps a lot with us. So, but these are the three top things for me from a personal development point of view. If you want to do yourself a massive favor and you want to grow personally, focus on these three things Also, just maybe a last note on this is that it is called personal development, so the beautiful thing about it is that it will spill over into your personal life.

Speaker 1:

You might be doing this because you want to be better at building your practice, you want to be better at working with clients, so you need to be better, but ultimately this goes into all your other relationships as well, so your life will benefit tremendously from this. Okay, so that's personal development. Then the second one is business strategy, and this is very much. If you think about strategy, it's probably I mean, some people would think that strategy is a plan, maybe, but for me, strategy is more about directions and options. When you think about this, it's also about your philosophy, it's also about your vision and those kinds of things. But what is it that's important? What is your guiding light? That's the very first thing that you need to know.

Speaker 1:

So, for me, if I think about business strategy, right, and it doesn't matter if you're in any kind of service business, right, we're talking financial planners, advisors and and so forth today, but my business is a service business. A doctor has a service business, an engineer also, a lawyer, a doctor, whoever like all of that is our service-based businesses. So having a client-centric approach is non-negotiable today. Not say that you do, but the only thing you can ever talk about is product. Okay, not the same thing. Nothing wrong with only talking about product, but be open and honest about your value proposition as being the product specialist and knowing that this is my. If you're looking for the best product out there, come and talk to me because I know them back to front, front to back. Okay, that's your value proposition.

Speaker 1:

Don't say that you're client-centric because you feel like I'm doing the best for my client, getting them the best product okay, that's not your product centric, that's it. On the other hand, on the other extreme, you have, if you, if you really get client centricity, it's really about the client first. You know, I mean, we get this a lot when we do sales, training and things as well. It's simply a matter of where's the focus. Is the focus squarely and sincerely and honestly on the person across from you and it's about them and you're really interested in them, not faking it. You're really interested, you explore, you understand, you connect with them. Then giving them the right product becomes anyway so much easier. But ultimately, if we really think about what we do and this is the big message I want to get out there and probably the people who should hear this is not here but what you definitely want to do is help people fulfill their life dreams and money plays a big part in that but we think it's all about the life cover and we think it's all about the retirement fund and the retirement annuity and the investment and those kinds of things.

Speaker 1:

I attended a session. Yes, this was interesting, so I attended a uh the efficient groups event here in um. I don't know where we were I still don't know the area quite well but anyway, we were on a wine farm and, uh, they were talking and sharing a lot of uh ideas and it just blew my mind about the fact that, you know, this is about definitely about helping people be able to do what they really want to do, and money is just one of the aspects. It's just one of the things that we should help them with and that we can help them with, but it's about so much more that we need to do so. If you say that you're client-centric, you know, is it about helping them achieve the things that they want to with their life or not? Is it about saying we need a life cover policy because I can, I can. I want to challenge you with this.

Speaker 1:

If you ask any of your clients in your next upcoming annual meeting planning meetings okay, aka your review meeting, like we're not talking about reviews anymore. So if you do that, ask them what do you remember from our last conversation and just sit back chances of them reciting back to you exactly what you've spoken about the last time and what they were supposed to do. And what you were supposed to do is virtually zero. I don't say zero because some people may have notes and they might have been very diligent and gone through it before the time, but for most people, life continued. So it's about their life. It's not about their products and their investments and all of those kinds of things. There are people who are very focused on that, but mostly it's about life, so that's important. Then. Sustainability and longevity is the other thing.

Speaker 1:

You know you as much as you want to personally develop and personal development encompasses a lot of different aspects in this profession if you don't, then use that to also grow your business in a very specific way, then you might find yourself stuck in a particular phase of your journey. What am I talking about? So I'm talking about in today's day and age, like even in our business, in other businesses that we work with, you want to look at how much of that can you make recurring revenue based, so how much of your business can be recurring and how quickly can you start building that and when you knew it's very, very hard, right, but you can have a strategy to say every fourth thing I do, I'm going to do on a recurring basis instead of an upfront basis, for example? Um, but you've got to have a plan of how do we build more recurring based income, and that's going to be very important, right? So? So think about how can you do that, because that is what brings not only sustainability and longevity, but it also brings predictability, and the more you can build that, the less pressure there's going to be, and it might take you five or 10 years to get there. If you start today, and that's perfectly fine. Some people do it in two, three years. It's incredible what some people can do, but for the normal person, probably five to 10 years to start building a significant income stream that is recurring, and there's lots to think about that, so I'm not going to get into that.

Speaker 1:

There's also other ways. It's not only how do you build recurring through product, it's also is there not something I can do from a subscription basis? Is there not something that I can do? You know something like that. So there's definitely a lot of options and there's clients for both worlds. So think about how do you do that in your business. So just think about your business model.

Speaker 1:

Uh, as well then specialization and niche marketing very important here, right? So we say specialization, so it means that you could be an investment advisor or planner, whatever, or you could be a lifestyle financial planner, or you could be a risk advisor or whatever, right? That's the specialization. So I specialize in retirement planning, um, but then the niche marketing doesn't mean so. So when you, when you specialize in a specific service, it doesn't mean that you only have one group of people that you service. You can still have different niche markets.

Speaker 1:

And have you sat down and thought about which markets are we? So let me give you an idea from from our business perspective. I've basically got two, maybe three, but two very distinct niche markets. They relate it. We all work in the same industry, they all benefit from what we do, right? But on the one hand, there's the financial advisor, financial planner, their support staff and other people, and then, on the other hand, there's call it, the corporates or the big businesses, right? So two very distinct offerings, two very distinct things that we do in a very different way from that perspective. But we, at the end of the day, still do the same stuff, but the offering for the one is very different from the offering for the other one, but it's still one thing that we specialize in.

Speaker 1:

So what are you doing from that point of view? Have you got that clarity around that? So, if not, you need to work on which markets am I serving? Because when it comes to niche marketing, it's about speaking to one niche group at a time. You can't be speaking in general, you've got to speak to one. Whenever you see my stuff on social media, it's always about the financial advisor and financial planner. It's never about the corporate, right? Because corporates don't hang out on social media and talk to us there. They they busy with other stuff. So we need to go to other places where they are.

Speaker 1:

So very different approach, different mechanism, all of that kind of stuff. So that's three things for your business strategy. So the first one is client centric approach really interrogate what you're doing and decide whether you are. Am I really truly can I stand hand on heart that I'm client-centric and I'm not just saying that? I am saying that I'm advice-led saying all of these things, but when you look at my behavior, it still aligns with how we did things in the 90s, right? So very important.

Speaker 1:

Sustainability and longevity is the other thing you want to build. So that means recurring income streams. You want to build a solid business, you want to build a healthy business. You want to have systems and processes all those kinds of things in place at the level of where your business are at right. So I can talk for days about that as well. And then the specialization what is the thing you want to be known for and who are the different markers that you can serve with that thing that you are very well known for?

Speaker 1:

Then, thirdly, the team Very important. So this is my big focus, so I've got to appoint somebody. So if you know about good people, send them my way so I can sort of start a conversation and see who's the next person to come and join Propulsion. But it is very important that the people you have and we've been spending a lot of time on this this year, specifically this last part of the year on developing talent right. So we want to develop the people that are working with you. And when last did you allow your assistant to attend a training session or to go to an event, or when last did you take them with you to an event? How much do you involve them in the training that you do? Have you asked them? What specific areas are they struggling with that they need training in and then try and find that training. You know, the more, the more we can help them grow, the more they will help our businesses grow. It's, again, the person giving the input into the business that creates the output. So, very important.

Speaker 1:

Also, diversity and inclusion is a very important part. Uh, you know specifically, if you start thinking about this really really intricately, whatever, like very in detail, right, for me, diversity, inclusion means a lot of things and it means different things to different people, but for me, it is about getting a diverse group of people around the table. And whether it's about getting a diverse group of people around the table, and whether it's people that you employ in your business or whether it's people that you work with outside your business that can give you input and can help you do certain things, that's that's as useful, right, it's not just that you have to employ people. You can work with people that bring different views to the table, different experiences, different understandings of particular types of clients, because I realized in a conversation I had this week when I went to get my haircut, that I just chatted and then in the moment I realized like oh you are, you have no idea actually, um, which is quite a mind-blowing realization to that. You think you know, but you actually have no idea. And only people who's lived things can share with you, only people who really live that world can understand, and only those people can bring different thinking to the table. So very important to to also consider that. And then the third one, in terms of a team, and this I mean the jury for me is out. So when faced with a choice, take both is sort of my thing.

Speaker 1:

But if you think about hybrid work or remote work, let's first talk about remote work. There are definitely pros to remote work, but I also think there's a lot of cons to that. I did write a long post a while back about this as well. You want to think about what usually happens when we are together. So think about energy, think about training through observing. That's probably the biggest thing that we've lost in the hybrid, remote world. I can't see what you do anymore. I can't hear what you're talking about. I can't observe how you behave and learn from that, because I've learned more from people by watching them and to say, oh, I should do that. Oh, look at what they're doing people by watching them and just say, oh, I should do that, oh, look at what they're doing than ever having a conversation with somebody directly, because when you talk about things as an exchange of information doesn't mean something, but when you see it happening, you know it's a very different thing. So that, for me, is this whole thing about that right, but if you've got a mature team and you know each other very well and you gel very well, etc. Then having a hybrid working environment is fantastic.

Speaker 1:

I also sometimes question, though if you are in a in the financial planning profession, are you, are we? Is it very professional to be working from home if you've got a proper setup? Yes, I've seen somebody's office the other day that is oh, it is kitted, kitted out, it's fantastic, it's separate from the house, it's not at the dining room table, it's like an office at their house, like not a study room, like an office separate to the house, brilliant stuff like that. So I think those things are really really great. But we should maybe just think about that specifically. If you want clients to come and see you, or are we still driving off the clients because we don't want them to come to our houses, etc. So just think about the hybrid working environment. Is it really benefiting your business? And if it's really something that is going to be useful and and and is important to your staff and it really works, then do that, offer that hybrid working environment. But but think about how you can do that. I know there's some practices here that everybody works from the office and it works fantastically well for them. There's people who work remote only works fantastically well for them. Anything can work if you have a plan and you work that plan Right. So developing talent, diversity and inclusion and then hybrid working environment.

Speaker 1:

So the last thing I want to talk about is obviously then technology and technology. I think we've come a long way in two years. There's lots of things that are top of mind, but obviously still for me, number one, still figuring out some of these things. We use it a lot in our business. We build things, we play with things, we do all sorts of cool things. But ai and automation and people sometimes think it's the same thing. It's not the same thing but ai and automation can really play a big part in your business. But unfortunately, this takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, a lot of input to get it to work and you only get the exponential returns on that much later. It's not always some of these things are immediate. It's always immediate but but the learning process can be a bit long, but the sooner you start the better.

Speaker 1:

So think about where are opportunities to use technology. Are you really clear on what technologies you're using and the role they play and the benefit that they bring you? Are they making you money, are they costing you money or are they just a necessary evil? And then decide which of these things you want to move forward. Also, see where you can maybe use. Just take Microsoft as an example. Can you use Microsoft's environment to do a lot of the things and stop paying for things over and above that, because you already have it as part of your license and you can do that with all the other software? Like, isn't there something that a particular software can do that another software using is also doing, and then maybe combine those two into one rather than paying for two things?

Speaker 1:

Then also client experience technology and this is again a very, very interesting conversation because again, so Efficient is launching an app and I don't know. I made notes. I want to go think about it. I've seen so many times, you know, client portals and client apps and all of these things. Have we asked clients whether they want that or not? You know, and if we asked three clients and they said yes, then we don't go build an app. We need to ask them all. And then also, more importantly, is like okay, so now you have an app, what are you going to use it for? Or what do we want them to do with that? What's the next step? Because there's a lot of time and effort going into these kinds of things, but is it what clients want? So we need to start with what clients need and what they want, very importantly, but we've got to think about these client experience technologies before we sort of move on right. Part of client experience technology, I guess, for me, is also personalizing communication, like on a real personal level, not just a high front, but even the content is relevant to their situation. We're getting there slowly but surely, but that's going to be a very important part.

Speaker 1:

Then, the last thing which I want to touch on on technology is cybersecurity. It's something that we have to train ourselves on, it's something that we need to train our staff on, but, more importantly, we need to train our clients on. So do you have a plan for next year to educate your clients on cybersecurity so that they don't fall victim to any kind of scam or whatever it may be? So, from a technology point of view, you've got to be thinking about AI and automation, you have to be thinking about client experience technology and you definitely have to be thinking about cyber security.

Speaker 1:

But on that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope that you found a lot of value from today and we will see you back next week, same time, same place. Until then, stay safe, be blessed and prosper. A lot of value from today and we will see you back next week, same time, same place. Until then, stay safe, be blessed and prosper and love you lots. All right, folks. That's a wrap for this episode of propulsion. I hope you got as much out of this as I did. Remember to tune in every fr Friday at 8 am South African time for our live show called Propulsion Live. You can find it at wwwpropulsioncoza forward slash live and, trust me, you don't want to miss it. If you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, hit that subscribe button or the follow button and share it with your friends, colleagues and anyone else you think would get something out of it. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next one.

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Francois Du Toit

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