Guiding Clients Through the Midlife Transition with Kim Potgieter

So grab a coffee , sit back and let's get ready to blast off . I'm your host , francois Dutouet . Morning Kim , welcome to the show .

We call it the client connection master class a brilliant , brilliant series , uh , which is available if you , if you , if you're in the platform , because we we did record that series with that we presented live . But one of the topics was this whole thing on midlife and it has absolutely blown my mind .

Um , I mean , I had like there was a couple of them that asked him . I was almost in tears talking to her afterwards with two of them , but it was really amazing , kim uh , to to have you do that . So thank you very much for for doing that .

Um , I do want to just maybe you know just a brief uh , you know who's kim , you know what is , what are kim's passions and and what drives kim to do what Kim does , and just maybe a little bit of background before we get started Well , franco , I thought you were going to do that , not today .

I absolutely love everything to do with financial planning and the reason that I love everything to do with financial planning is because I get to help people and I think , with all the people that I've met through that time , whether it's clients , whether it's fellow financial planners the fact that we get to make a difference in the world and the fact that we get

to touch our clients' lives talking about a topic like money , which is such a taboo topic , and that is what I've I've . Really why I came into the industry was to help people with their relationships with money and kind of thought .

I would be a psychologist , I have the background to be a psychologist , I have the training , but then I realized that I , first of all , couldn't give advice to anybody being a psychologist and I love giving advice and secondly , I also realized that people don't go to a psychologist to talk about money .

They go to a financial planner , and that's why I had a midlife re-study and join this industry and , as I said before , it's something I not only love but I'm very passionate about . I've written two books on the topic , one on retirement and one on midlife money makeover .

And the way and the reason I mean , francois , was talking about getting your message out there through social media I did see that getting my message out through books was a way that I could reach a much broader audience than just the clients that were coming in to see me . So , francois , I think that's enough about me . Let's get into this topic .

So it's much better than Google in many respects , and I was asking it certain questions and then coming up with certain ideas , and then I said , okay , so who would be the thought leaders that are based in South Africa that I could consider talking to about this ? And Kim's name came up , which I sent to you .

Kim , like I did tell you , like this is incredible that AI is finding you and that's testament to if you look at what Kim has done from a marketing perspective and from a building a brand and the website , the content and things that she creates . That's why and I think there's many opportunities in that .

So I'm going to leave that at that , but I just wanted to say , like Kim , well done on the work that you've been doing on building your brand , putting the business out there , putting yourself out there and sort of the results of this is paying . You know , it's definitely going to pay big dividends in the future as well .

And the one thing that I just wanted to add was you always have to make sure well , this is something that's been important for me that whatever I was putting out there , whatever I wanted to put out there , I could deliver , deliver on , because I think so many times we see what people are posting and we think we should be doing it too , but make sure that

it's , first of all , in alignment with your values and then , secondly , that you can deliver on it , because I think the biggest mistake we make is putting out stuff that we can't deliver on , and that's why , for me , it's more important that you spend time working out what your message is before you start putting it all out there , so that you've got that

clarity , so that you're coming across not only with meaningful content , but also with authentic content .

Now , usually what I've seen in the past is that when somebody has such a very clear and strong mission and purpose , there's usually a story behind it . Do you have a story like that that made you sort of say , well , this is why I'm going down this path and this is why I want to help people transform their relationship with money .

And then , while I was on that journey , healing myself and working out a whole lot of things , obviously I felt this calling , if you could call it that , to share what I was experiencing , what I'd found .

And also , I mean , as I've gone on through the years as you can hear , I've been doing this now for a long time I've met so many people with a similar relationship with money to me and , if not the same as mine . It was in a different form . So , yes , it has been personal and it really stemmed from my childhood . I mean , I often share that .

Our relationship with money comes from our childhoods . Most of the time it's formed by the age of seven that we've got it . But most of us are unconscious that , first of all , we have a relationship with money and , secondly , we're not conscious of the biases and the beliefs we've picked up .

But mine as a little girl , you know , I lived in a dysfunctional home around money . My father earned all the money . My mother was a stay-at-home mom . My father controlled us with money .

You know , I mean , it's my late dad now , but you know , often when I look back and I think of things that I thought as a child that were normal and they absolutely aren't normal . We had our telephone locked . We had those old-fashioned phones where you could put locks on it . My father had the meat in a deep freeze in the garage .

He used to give it out to us and he always controlled my mom with a kind of you know , he has some money for you . He has some money and not when she was needing it , but when he felt it was time to give her . And for me I made little packs with myself as a young teenager that no person was ever going to control me with money .

No person was ever going to have this kind of power on . And at times I thought my mom was weak because she was allowing this to happen and when you're young you can't work it all out . And then , as I started my journey of healing , just realizing that for my father money was control and it was his insecurities , and that we were caught up in it .

Yeah , it became very much for me to put it . What was a belief ? What was my reality ? I mean , even in my own marriage , sometimes years later , I'll have moments where I feel like my husband's trying to control me with money , and most times it's not . It's like triggers that were coming from my childhood .

So , yeah , I mean that's why I am so passionate about it . And when I meet families and we have discussions , it's always nice to hear the good things that they've learned from their childhoods and then often it's also challenges that they've learned from their childhoods .

And I combine it in every part of financial planning that I do , because for me , that's the foundation of getting people to stick to their plans , stick to their new habits that they're bringing in and understand where money fits into their lives fantastic .

So thank you very much for that , and I think you know it's really like I just had a thought about something very specific , um , because I've thought about this quite a lot , you know , like my relationship with money , for example , and there's something that just dawned on me now , which I'm not going to share now because otherwise I'm going to maybe having to .

There's a box , so I would have been fine , but but it's really , yeah , it's . It's really powerful to to have these understandings . But I think also , what I take away from from from that is that you have to spend time on this and you've got to think about and you've got to work through this .

It's not that's how life is , it's not what it is , and I think for many of our clients they might feel that you know , as you said , it's normal Like that .

If you never take the time to spend , or spend the time to really learn about this or to figure out why certain things are happening , you know you're going to think that this , that this is normal , one of the things that you do very often , very regularly .

I think the very first time I came to learn of you , um , was pretty much around the time when you visited renee brown , because I think that was when I when I saw that kind of things and then I just saw like you keep on doing these things , where you go and meet with other visionaries and mentors and people who teach things all over the world .

Buying the book and reading the book is not enough for you . You want to go and spend time with them and I'm really curious just to learn how those experiences really shaped your approach to financial planning and also life coaching .

So I'll just take us back a little bit when I was working out how I fitted into the financial planning industry , because I was hired as an administrator and I was a really bad administrator , so I had to find a different way of doing this .

And at that time , john Campbell , my business partner , had picked up a book called the Next Step by Roy Della Berta , who was the head of the FPA . He picked it up when he won financial planner of the year and he was in the States and he brought it back and that was probably when we start talking about this .

That was my beginning moment of actually reading books , phoning authors and then going and seeing them . Because when I read this book and I saw everything Roy Della Berta was speaking about and how you do life planning and how you put the client in the center of everything you do , it was everything I'd been thinking , but I didn't really know .

You know , like how to do it and he'd written it in a book . And , yeah , I did . I contacted him and I said , roy , you know I'm in South Africa . He was in Philadelphia , could I come and see you ? And he was incredible . He let us come into his business .

He showed us everything that he did in his business and basically through him I met Mitch Anthony and then I also spent time with him . But that was my financial planning part and the life planning that

you're talking about . That I then brought back and into the business and yeah , for anybody who will listen to me , I just love to share that work on life planning . And then , as the journey was going on and I was working with clients , obviously I realized that there was a way , more emotional connection to money .

So I didn't do it the mainstream way , it wasn't just always going to financial planning conferences . I then , you know , obviously with the reading , I'd read Brene Brown's books . She's written seven books and at that time I started with this daring greatly .

And then , after I read all her books , I did a lot of her online courses and then I was fortunate enough to apply and go to the States and spend a week with her in Texas and learn all around our vulnerability and our shame and what I've come back and I've applied that to money and I've also applied that just to our everyday relationships and it filters

through not only in our company but it also filters through into our clients' lives . Another great one that I did and it goes with that last question that you were talking about now with our money memory is I read a book called Money Story and again , you know I pick up the book .

I think it was loaded and it was written by I can't even remember the author . She mentioned David Kruger . I then found David Kruger's books . I read David Kruger's book . It resonated for me this was what we needed as financial planners and also again flew to the States and I learned from David Kruger .

You know , unless I attend the online courses , I read their books and then , if they're really worthwhile , I'll make the pilgrimage to go and visit them . And yeah , I mean I've been doing that and we're going to talk about it just now . The my latest two trips I've done . I've been to Mexico to Chip Connolly to learn more around this midlife transition .

So I've picked up on on aspects that I think are valuable not only to financial planning industry , but also to our clients' lives , and then I will go and learn about it from the different people that are teaching it , because , for me , I'm still one of those people that love the actual face-to-face interaction , and meeting these people has really not only made my

career much more interesting , but it's also given my life this fullness of being able to travel and learn at the same time , which is something for me that's my ultimate .

But I mean , in the work that you've done and sort of the things that you've learned , you know when does it start , know when does when does it start Like , and does it have an end , and when is that end ? Possibly , you know , or how should we be thinking about midlife in that sense , is there really a date ?

I guess is the big question like , okay , at this age , now I'm in midlife and does it ? Is it just for a little short little bit , and then we move on ? Or how do you look at it ?

So where midlife used to be and where midlife is now , where retirement is , where retirement was , is just so completely different because we've pushed out our lifespan now to over 100 years if we go with what we told of a hundred year life . So when is that midlife period ? And for me it's very much .

I'm leaning more and more and more to being younger , because I'm watching people reconsider their life and recalibrate far earlier and I'm seeing it last a lot longer .

So , with the work that I've done with Chip Conley from the Modern Elder Academy , we very much are leaning towards it , even starting in your late 30s and going all the way into your early 70s , because you keep reinventing yourself and you keep changing yourself .

And if we can have this kind of mindset where we stop putting an age to it and I think that's the important part Like if we stop saying , oh , I'm old or oh , can you believe it ? I am 60 . And instead we don't label ourselves so chronologically , because when we do put a label to ourselves , we either go we're young or we're old .

We're telling ourselves those kind of messages and we changing our that frame of how we see our lives and and what kind of potential and what are the things we want to do . Because we , we , slowly , we're going . Oh , let's start slowing down , let's start slowing down . But why ? Why are we ? I mean , things are different now . We're living longer .

The the way things were is not the way things are now .

You know , I guess , how people define it for themselves or what they hear others say about it , because we always , we always say it's a midlife like , it's not a midlife phase , it's not a midlife journey , it's not a midlife whatever's not a midlife journey , it's not a midlife whatever , it is a midlife crisis .

Right , that is how most people talk about midlife , and I'm sort of keen like what are some of the common myths that is out there and that you might come across , and how can we start to challenge those ?

What's happening I mean what we , what I didn't discuss when we were discussing , you know , when I was saying what the timeframe is . It is also our bodies hormonally changing . So our bodies are designed this way .

Where they do change , our hormones change , we feel differently , our priorities are changing and definitely when our priorities change , we start to question ourselves . We start to say is this what I want to be , is this what I'm going to be doing ? And then , with this midlife , we have a whole lot of transitions that all come at once .

It's not just one transition . You know , we might get empty nest , we might change our careers , we might be changing where we live . So we're going through all these different transitions and when we don't do the work , that's when it's this midlife crisis .

But it actually is just a midlife is a recalibration and if we can just reframe it to be in a recalibration where we pause , we reflect on what it is we want and we reflect on the fact that we're now different and there's ways of doing it . So that , for me , is the biggest myth is that we say it's a crisis and we don't put in the hard work .

And you know , we always see the pictures of the sports car , the new wife , you know whatever's put out there in our media . So that's not the one we want . And then , one that I often feel when we talk about this is that we think our best years are behind us . So we've done all this we've brought up our children , we've had our careers and more .

This midlife time is an opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves and to actually see that we can still have our best chapter yet , and and that , for me , is as planners um , we , we can really encourage our clients and we can support them that this can be their best time yet .

I shared on one of your shows before around the happiness curve , and the happiness curve shows that we get happier and happier after the age of 50 . So why do we feel like the best years are behind us ? And with that is our wisdom . We picked up all this incredible wisdom in our lives and now it's time for us to use that wisdom .

It's not like it used to be , where we were doing menial work and our bodies were tired . Our brains are really collecting all these experiences , collecting all the , even the emotional intelligence , and now we can be sharing it . So that's another big one when we think that our best years are behind me .

The other one that I think is important to share is around change . So a big myth is that we think it's too late for us to make changes and that we can't make a career change , we can't make a relationship change . You know what ? It's too late now , and I challenge people that this is actually incorrect .

And , yes , we don't like change and we'll stick to doing the same thing over and over and over again . Incorrect , and , yes , we don't like change and we'll stick to doing the same thing over and over and over again , even if it's not what we want because we don't like this change .

But if we can make some of the changes and the tweaks , it's when we can go and have a midlife that we will turn around one day and not have regrets . Francois , you are going to share it at the end , but I did give you that exercise . It's called the suitcase exercise and it's a great exercise that I encourage people to do .

If they're in this midlife period and they potentially are feeling some of the stuff that you and I chatting about and what the suitcase exercise is that I'm sharing with you is if you're going into this next chapter and you're packing for it now what are you going to take with you ? So the way that the exercise works is a column for what you want to keep .

So that's the stuff that's going to go into the suitcase . There's also a column for what you want to edit out , because I think what we've done up to now is we've picked up our baggage . We've picked up a whole lot of stuff maybe that we need to now get rid of and the reason we we're getting rid of it .

So we list everything that we want to edit out of our life , and all the clutter as well , and then the next column that we do is all the new things we want to try . So what are some of the new things that we want to try and bring into our life ?

It might not be because we want to be the best at it , because actually you know what we really want to do it , because actually you know what we really want to do it , because we're going to enjoy doing it and it's going to add value to our lives to do it .

So that's the suitcase exercise , like what am I keeping , what am I editing out and what am I bringing in new ? And in that way it can help make this feel , this change feel , not as daunting , because sometimes it's just because it's daunting .

We go okay , well , I'm not going to make the necessary changes I need to make because it's too hard , I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing . But when we can break it up in bite sized pieces , bring it in in the parallel , then I really do think it's more doable .

So those would be my top three myths that I've seen , just getting us to think differently about this midlife transition .

And , kim , I'm pretty sure , like I'm convinced but I might be completely wrong and it's fine if I am but I'm pretty convinced that there's a lot of people watching now that are going like I'm a financial advisor , my focus is , you know , finding sort of what the client needs and making sure that we implement and sort of trying to hold them to those decisions .

Like I'm not , you mentioned , like you love psychology , you love all of that stuff and you even started off there and that's a big driver for you . But you know , a lot of people might sit here and say , like what that ? Why should I get in ?

Or why should I be the one to help clients through midlife , or into or out of midlife or during midlife or whatever that may

be . Why do you feel it is important for us , as financial advisors and planners , to actually play a role during this transition ? Because this is quite a significant transition for a lot of people and I think the funny thing is that it sometimes comes very unexpectedly , very quickly . It's another assumption .

But also , what we do when we go through transitions is we make our worst financial decisions because we're quite emotional . So we really will . I mean the thought of sometimes you're ending your career because you're not enjoying what you're doing and the midlife hits and I'm just going to give it up .

But if you don't take into account what that is doing financially and you don't put a plan in place that you've got a way of replacing that income , you actually are sabotaging everything you've worked for up to now . So again , I'm never saying that we are psychologists , we're not playing that role , but we need to be facilitating the conversation .

So we just need to feel comfortable with it , so we can facilitate the conversation , because if the client's going through that and we put together , as you say , where we're comfortable , this amazing plan of what you have to do , we present it to our client and they don't stick to it because they're actually on emotional wreck , or they don't stick to it because

we didn't hear them and they just felt like we were giving them a generic that we would give any client , and so for me , that being able to have the conversation is important . Don't have to be an expert on the topic , but you're listening to the person and you're hearing what they're going through .

Sometimes you've got to challenge their thinking , because sometimes the things that they want to do are going to have a detrimental effect with their plan , and we need to show them what those consequences are . Plus , we need to say to them okay , these are the things you need to do in order to do that , so that we can still make your plan work .

So I'm not saying at all that we are replacing psychologists or coaches , but what we are .

We're in this incredible position where our value proposition and our value add to a client can really be seen and felt broadly , when we're comfortable to have the conversations and put the client at the center of the conversation and then relate it to how it affects their money and their financial plan .

I think it was a whole week or something and is there a key takeaway that has also now influenced your work that you've done since you've come back ?

And I think what we all often think is that we're interested in them and and and I think what we all often think is that we have to have gone through the thing that the client's going through , because we have to share our experience with the client of exactly what they're going through and and very much it's . It's not that .

It's just that we have the empathy . We have the empathy to be able to hear them and and to listen and to , to , to actually take in what they're telling us , so that we can personalize what we're giving them . And you know , when we talk about that empathy , it's just that we know the emotion they're feeling .

It's not that we have to have experienced the experience that we what they are going through , and I think that often puts so many planners off because they go . You know , I haven't had that experience happen to me , so how can I talk on it ? No , our clients are not asking us to be experts on it .

All our clients are asking us is to be there so that they can feel seen and heard , and then we can design them a financial plan that actually relates to their life and not a generic financial plan that could apply to anybody's life .

She's also got a website and also let me put onto the screen just quickly , if you do want to scan the QR code with your phone right now obviously , provided that you're not watching on your phone , because otherwise that would be a challenge , but if you are watching on a TV or you're watching on , that's the most incredible thing .

Some people watch us on TV , which is great , so we're massively bigger in their living rooms right now , but do scan the QR code . If you can't , I'll also put the link down below under Kim's details , where you can find some downloads .

Um , so you'll be able to find the exercise and things there that kim mentioned a little bit earlier that that suitcase exercise , but all the details . You need to get hold of kim or to maybe have a conversation with kim or somebody in a team . You can absolutely get in touch or follow her , connect with her , all that good stuff , um .

midlife recalibration how do we turn challenges into opportunities and I mean you can download it and it might just spark some conversation that you have with yourself , because we need to do this work for ourselves first , and it might spark some nice conversation that you can have with your clients that that may be going through this transition .

Thank you very much for sharing with us in the limited time that we had , and wish you well and we'll see you back in your next money and well-being , or well-being and money , segment here on the show . Thank you .

That was really amazing and if you want to learn more , please do that . The other thing that I neglected to say actually was that if you go onto the Propulsion platform if you're a member , if you're not , if you join , you'll be able to get access to the full six-week program that we did with Kim . It was absolutely amazing .

She unpacks this in a lot more detail and we look at all different kinds of aspects in that . So it was really an amazing six-week program . So if you want to get access to that , you can . Even if you become a member now , you'll have access to that . So fantastic . So let's just look quickly at some of the comments .

There's loads and loads and loads of comments . I like this because Mr Frank Oglehorty is always swift in finding a quote . He quoted Kim saying I love reading , learning and sharing . Thank you very much for that . So , ryan , you said you've got 11 months left . Hopefully by the end of the conversation you've changed your mind that there's no time from there .

David says he doesn't like to think about getting older . He's just leveling up because he's a gamer , so he loves that . Yonita says I love the recalibration . She registered her fsp at the age of 50 and thought like now or never , it's either that or we do fried chicken at 63 . So so let's go with building an fsp , yonita . I'm with you on that .

One , carol life begins at 40 and we're wiser . Those in their 40s have leverage of both worlds and need to use the power of this insight . That's brilliant . I really love that . Thank you very much , carol . Then , uh , what else have we got ? Let's see . Uh , neil says amazing insights , especially for someone in midlife .

Thanks , kim and franchi , it's a big pleasure . And uh , righty . So then , with that and there's also saying uh , thank you so much , kim . Valuable insights . Some perspectives are so important in our own professional development and for the benefit of our clients . And then , lastly , cindy's . Like I've learned so much from kim . Yeah , absolutely .

I know it's been a a long one , but thank you so much for joining us . Have a fantastic weekend . We'll be back next week , same time , same place . Be best ? Uh well , I don't know . Stay blessed , prosper . I can't even remember my own words today . Anyway , I love you so much . Thank you very much for joining us and we'll see you next week . Bye bye .

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 .