Mastering the Long Game with Russell Ho

So grab a coffee , sit back and let's get ready to blast off . I'm your host , françois D'Ituay .

I mean , I think , if I may , russell was saying like , look , I even look like an adult now . So you know , it's incredible how much has happened in the last five or six years and it's really been great to see your journey . Russell , so happy to be talking to you this morning .

So maybe just very , very briefly for those who don't know like I think everybody on this call , if I look at who's saying hi and all of that , we'll know a little bit about you and who you are thanks to LinkedIn and places like that , but just share a little bit about you and sort of where do you work ?

You know in terms of like , where you based in South Africa and just maybe the main focus of your business , and then we can chat about the rest .

I've been in the industry for about now it's going into my 10th year and I still remember that photo that I posted up , or Francho posted , with the flashback .

That was about five or six years ago , in April 2019 , and I still remember I went and saw Francho at Kruger's door , you know , and then he was like oh , I'm actually doing the podcast , you want to be like I'm episode one ? It's like sure .

So , yeah , I think from that , a lot , a lot has grown , you know , and we've come a long way and I currently operate with my whole team and my practicing for Elizabeth , but 50% of our clients are out of peace .

So we fully also embrace the digital landscape , especially prior to COVID and more so in COVID going forward , yeah , and we pretty much have been operating in financial advice and coaching since and trying to really help the client . At the end it's kind of making things I would say de-jogging forward , if I would call it yeah , I really enjoyed it .

But I'm really sort of keen to say what , what , what was it like for you when you just started out ? Because I know I mean , you didn't start off where you right now . You start off in a different business and it was obviously a very different experience because the setup was very different . But what was that early days ?

Were there some specific challenges and things for you in those early days that you can still remember , because sometimes our mind plays tricks on us that doesn't want us to remember how hard things were sometimes . Were they hard ? Let me ask it that way Were they hard ? And if they were , what were some of those challenges for you ?

You know , when you asked me to do this , this podcast , and you got me reflecting on a lot of the questions , I still think I'm young , but apparently I'm kind of like a veteran now going into the veteran space and I would say back then I was a young , up and coming young professional full of hopes and dreams .

You know , straight out of velocity become in post-grad financial planning on my route to getting my CFP and for me I remember I had this perception or idea of how the finance industry would be . Especially what contributed to that was like suits just came out and I used to start . I started wearing a suit every day to work .

I still do wear suits now , obviously for virtual concerts or virtual chats I kind of like go a little bit more casual , but yeah , I started wearing a suit every day to work and I remember my first year , my first three years , and out of that , my first year was actually I started out working for a mutual the big green machine and it was my intern year .

Now , bear in mind , I came out of velocity . I was actually fairly introverted , I didn't have people skills and I had just been watching suits and my hero was like Hall of Respect to all those years . And I was like you know what I'm going to be .

The Hall of Respect to all finance came in there and I had this mentality of like what the finance industry would be like in the series suits and it completely was 180 degrees different .

I think a lot of the challenges and how I started out was like it was difficult times but at the same time I think in my professional opinion , if I had to go back I wouldn't change it for anything .

The reason being is that you got to actually see how different the industry is , or your profession is , compared to what you thought in velocity , and to see it now in the field , and more so some of the challenges or difficulties that I face .

that I know a lot of young up and coming planners are facing still to this day is it's more of like the narrative that society and also like the industry puts you in , because you see both good and bad advice and how things are run and you're like this isn't what I signed up for A good , I would say .

A common thing that I always talk to about peers is that we start out in the first year you on this journey , definitely going to help people and that's what's driving you , and then you expose to this industry where there's a lot of policy selling or more sales everything sells , focus , you know and you start realizing like geez , okay , I'm getting this narrative

for people for seeing me as a policy salesman and that can be very discouraging .

So I think it's a lot of mental challenges from that point of view and also when you start up you especially if you , if you knew to the industry and the Avanade experience you basically are thrown in the deep end and you're like , okay , go find yourself clients , build up a practice .

Yes , you bought over company now , but each and every financial plan and advisor there is basically building their own practice from scratch and it's literally the odd grind .

So I think what some of the challenges I had to face was that say no to the box that society or the industry puts you in , because , like , as we grow up , you get put into boxes of what you should be . But you have the choice to say am I going to conform to that you know perspective or that box , or am I going to go against the narrative ?

And then , certainly as well , you start kind of seeing how things are done and you start asking yourself how can I do things better ? And also part of the grind I would say in the start is that you learn how to do , how to work smartly , not just work hard .

Because often they say , if you , if you want to really excel and you really want to do well , do the opposite of what everybody else is doing . So there's sort of people that are professing that kind of advice .

But my question to you is you know , do you go against the grain , if you will , just because you want to go against the grain , or should you only do that when you are really convinced of something and it's really something that's important to you and it's sort of you know your own strength and self , I would .

I would almost say , or is it a strategy that everyone should follow ? So everybody's doing this ? I'm going to do this , just maybe your view on that .

Probably when you start out , it won't take you long to realize that you know , you definitely do venture , go against the grain because you realize everyone is doing exactly things how they taught how to do and when I started , this was before like social media and technology blew up that we have today , but it was basically when I started and I just came out of

Oceti I made like 100 plus advisors . We were all working in this open plan office and everyone back then to find clients that were either phoning 100 to 200 co-cores a day or they were out of a you know the yellow pages , or off country , you know , trying to offer free financial analysis .

And I tried that for like a day or two and I was like this can't be the only way . Things have to be different .

And one concept that I've always adopted , since day one and from that experience , is that I realize that not a lot of people are looking at it from that point of view is like if you were the customer or the client or the consumer on the other end , how would you like to be approach , who is someone from ?

From the first point , of course , first point of communication , how would you be willing to trust someone with your finances ? And more so because it's so personalized , open up and also that's basically what gave me the feel of like , okay , I can't do this cold calling .

I have to find another way of meeting clients and building up a report with clients so that they can trust me .

So finance , and personal finances especially , is very personal in the sense we tend to think it's just about the numbers , graphs and figures .

But you don't realize and even more so now , you know later in my career now you don't realize how personalized it is because it's based on human behaviors , background and finances , family habits , family upbringing and a lot of times , if you think about it , most of our consumers or the general public it's .

It's a bit embarrassing to admit when you don't know something about how to manage your money and that's why the first step is always trying to think okay , if I was a consumer , how would someone that I need help with my finances , I learned my trust , how would I like them to approach me and you know how can I open up more to them ?

So that was always being my mindset was like always put yourself in the client with the customer shoes , instead of following . You know what the crowd is doing .

Because , on top of that , the thing about it when you code call imagine how many times that person's had a code call not only from like advisors at your company but at every other institution you know and then you have to think of like , what can I do differently .

So I would say that is what gave me the feel to go against the narrative and also , at the end of the day , like I saw every client from a family perspective or philosophy of like .

I'm not just helping a client , I'm helping someone's mother , father , grandparents , son , daughter , making informed decisions about their lives so that they can live a better life and more and more , only have peace of mind and be the sound board .

I'm not just out there to like sell a product , I'm just more of like you are buying a partnership with me and to be your human sound board so that at least you have peace of mind and clarity of like . Okay , I'm doing the right thing .

And I guess it does depend a lot on your own circumstances and your own situation , et cetera , you know . But I mean there were some hard decisions that you've made . Can you talk us a little bit through what those were and why was it important to have that long-term view and to say , look , if I can postpone , then you know it'll work out .

But I'm keen to sort of just first maybe talk about you know why did you decide to do ? What was the thing that was driving you to make that decision to put off ? You know where people go out . They do a few bills and they've got six great months and they go buy that car .

So what was your take on that and why have you done it the way that you've done it ?

Some have gone to become doctors , try to accountants , some have gone into investment , banking and other professional careers and what was tempting the hard was that you start with your career and what people don't realize is that you know our whole model is generally commission-based or fee-based .

You know there's no basic salary or normal fixed salary as with most professions . So the biggest challenge that I think from a personal point was like you start your career and within the next few years you don't realize that it's more of a long-term view because you don't realize , like , how challenging it is when you see your friends progress .

Everyone's buying the nice car , the BMW , the Merc , the nice big house . People are going on lavish holidays . And that's where I feel like temptation and also the challenge of delay and instant gratification and putting off more .

For the long-term view is when most people are challenged because especially now , more so with social media you're getting to the bit of like , comparing yourself to others and you think , okay , if I'm not driving a new sports car , right , then I'm not progressing .

And also a big thing is about like the image that comes with , especially for a lot of us young professionals , when you start out in the industry , you obviously want to show that you're doing well and you're successful , and we tend to give into that of like okay , I want to appear successful and like , give into that instant gratification .

But then the long-term view are probably for me , that I saw that made me decide against that . And if some of you saw my posts , I was tempted to buy an Audi when I wasn't like financially able to and not in the right mind to , and then I was like , was that from a long-term point of view ? I was like I don't want to .

For me as a person , yes , I could also do , you know , give better advice and do unethical deals just to get high commission , but then for me it was always like could you sleep , sound and lie , knowing that you've done something in and you've also kind of gone against your ethics of like you told the client enough from meeting like I'm here for your interest ,

but you've recommended a solution that benefits you and my long-term view also with that and it paid me back to 10 for over the years was that I would always put the client at the focal point , in the center of everything , because I would be focusing on building that long-term relationship . Imagine how nice it is and most of our clients are like that .

It's that we started with them when they just live our city and now we're with them where they have families , they have a property and they you know their careers have grown and a client will always hold that geo of like .

They'll appreciate this so much because you realize that they are so used to being treated as a number , only seen for like the net worth and how much they earn . They're not seeing for the actual individuality and them as a person and my needs .

So I think long-term wise , when you're not focused on the money or trying to make as much commission or deals off a client , you don't realize that you're also creating future opportunities and future .

You know future deals and you know future earnings individual with that client but not just that client , you also creating future referrals from that client because that client would talk about you to like their friends and family around the bar . I was like , wow , you know so .

And so I went and saw Francois and for the first time and I actually remember I had these experiences so for the first time it feels weird because you were so transparent and honest and you didn't sell me anything , you were just generally there to help me .

So in my opinion , I think that's the biggest reward I've gotten from delaying Instagramfication of like I'm just going to push the biggest deals now and focus on now and rather benefit instead over the long term .

And I think the other point I just want to add quickly before we jump back to you is that in that environment where you work with so many advisors , you also look at , you also see old advisors that are there before you and a good question to us is like Can I see myself at that point in 10 or 15 years and a lot of those advisors would respect that that

were focused on commission , that were there for a lot more years than I was .

They were so stressed when it came to end of the month because , because their bias or the need wasn't fully addressed to the client and they were focused more on the deal , they had the worry like , oh , what happens if some of the stuff lapses and I have to pay back the commission ?

You know , and I was like I want to build a more sustainable practice where people know that I have the general interest at heart and it's purely focused on the client .

This is just a conscious decision that the long game is more important than the short game . So it wasn't just about chasing numbers and targets and things like that . This is about adding value over the long term and , over the long term , benefiting from that . Doing the right thing for the right reason , with the right intent .

Like that's always the thing , and that's what I get from what you're doing . So , building your practice . You're more in an independent setup at the moment and you're building your practice like you're building your own , like a business , obviously .

So what are the things that you are focusing on ? Cause , one of the things that you did also mentioned that you're very proud of is the fact that you didn't borrow money , you didn't go into debt .

You didn't you know , you don't have an overdrive credit card , things like that in order to have funded the business , to invest , in other words , to take the bank's money for lack of a better person to pick on their money to invest into your business and to grow your business .

So talk a little bit through your how you have gone about building your practice and specifically investing back into your practice , and I mean that's a very wide question , but let's just start off in general . So I'm not really talking about what you invested into yourself . I'm interested to hear what are you investing ?

What have you been investing into the business in order to get to where you are right now ?

So one thing that we've been investing a lot into our business is more into our tech and our tools A big thing that I'm sure is a lot of you has planned this as well as experiencing and also to those who ever are running their own businesses in their careers is that you find as you get older , you value your time more and you want to find ways to

leverage your time more . They always say , like in the beginning , when you just started out , it's easy to say yes to everything because you're not so busy or there's not so much high demand for you , but then the more challenges that as you progress in your career and your business and your profession over time .

The most productive hack they always talk about is not trying to find ways to constantly optimize things , but , like the most basic productive act is learning to say no to things that aren't feeding your goal or feeding to where you want to progress or where you want to take a practice .

So I think just also answer that like over time and even before COVID not that we were expecting something like that to happen in all the years . It also comes from that you are your own business owner and we don't get like our own fixary Every year and every month .

Since day one , I've always , wherever I could , invest or reinvest most of my paychecks back into investment accounts and into interest-bearing accounts for the business , and it was more so like , okay , if something happens , you know , kind of , in a sense , giving yourself basic financial planning . We need to do what we preach or love what we preach is that .

I always backed up into , like my mentality of like , okay , over the long term , I want to build this practice and I want to scale it and I want to have a team of people and I never want to have to ask for a loan or be under pressure from them . So my first notion was like firstly , okay , russell , you run a commission or fee-based practice .

There's no salary . What happens if you have months where you know you don't bring any business , or your production is low or the amount of cases that are brought in are minimal and you don't make enough you know commission or fees to carry you through and cover your living expenses ? Then what ?

Or what happens if there's a period when you want to , you can see there's an opportunity to hire more people , like what I've done recently or there's a period where you want to invest in your tip .

That's gonna speed up stuff , speed up the processes of your practice , but now you don't have the capital available and now you might need to borrow money from the blank , and for me , that was always my concern . I was like in the beginning of my career . I was like those days are going to come because your practice is not gonna stay the same .

You're gonna obviously keep pushing and trying to grow it and you're going to want to leverage your time more so that you are spending your time on things that are driving and growing the business not just working in the business and you want to have the capital available so that you won't have the additional pressure of like that .

So that's what I started doing . I started investing each paycheck 75% and if I could into investment accounts . It also taught me part of the lane in the graphic of like as a human just put in an investment account , don't look at it , just consistently , do it over time and let it compound and do its work .

And that's where I would say now now I've gotten to a point where I'm able to scale . I was able to hire people last year as well . We've been investing in tech and especially came in handy during COVID , where we were in fully digital with a lot of our clients .

So I invested a lot in tech to automate things we also invested a lot into , like a marketing .

You know our brand and , in addition to that , like I think as a person or as a business owner , in the day the biggest benefit is having peace of mind and no financial side of like I've got six months of my expenses covered , so it gives me time I can focus on other aspects of the business .

I don't have to push book lines so hard and also , at the same time , over all the years , when you have and you do those measures in place , it takes stress over you as , depending on whatever title , financial advisor environment you work in of like I don't have to drive or chase business for the point of just making money . I can work at my own pace .

I'm not forced to sell , so it gives you that freedom as well .

For me , you know there's I don't know what it is , but it's definitely something that you know . When you really set your mind to it , you can make it happen .

The question is whether you are patient enough for it to get there , because it's gonna take long , it's gonna be slow , it's a slow burn and then it goes like slowly , slowly and then suddenly it'll just happen . It almost feels like like where you're now , like happened overnight , but there's been quite a long time where it felt like very little was happening .

So that's important . Russell , I just wanna quickly ask you know we've got a couple of minutes the from a personal development point of view , you've done a lot .

The one thing that always stood out like when I met you , the one thing that I like you were talking to a lot of people and you were asking and asking there , and I know you were having coffees with Kuibis , and you and I had conversations . You're very involved in the things that that Derek and them are doing as well .

So I mean , we see you everywhere and you're always like a sponge and you connect with people overseas via LinkedIn , like you do all these weird and wonderful things . I wanna know from you maybe what are the top two or three things very , very shortly . You know that has made the biggest impact on your career and your practice .

You know , of all of those things that you've done , maybe what are the top three things that you say , well , I should have done more of those , maybe because this is at the biggest impact , or maybe it was just the ones of thing that just had a massive impact .

So if I think about it now , probably a big thing for me has always been and I would say , like we treat our practices way we always say internally , like we in R&D or research and development I guess the four more term that we keep using in our industry is like we consistently doing CPD or continuous professional development , and a lot of us think it's

only just for us individually , but you should also do it for your practice as well Is that find a good set of people and I'm not being paid for this , but like the LAP group with Dirk , lots of financial planning . If you really care about your clients , it's really nice .

It's a safe space and I remember Dirk sent me a DM like in my second year , a LinkedIn DM in my second year when I was a mutual . It's like I'm starting this group , you know , with Simon and one or two other guys . You know you wanna come through , you wanna join us .

I know it's your LinkedIn , so that has grown for normally well and it's become a safe space .

So find your people or your tribe , because this journey can be like very lonely and sometimes you just need someone to like hear you please , whether it's good or bad or your experiences and ask them for , like their input so that you know you're not alone , and also some guidance and advice or so on , like how to handle those situations .

So , yeah , treat everything like R&D , research and development . You learn and your feedback from people and also bear that in mind , like you can take input from everyone . But you decide , like what you decide to use and don't be afraid to trial and test it with clients and your practice .

I think that's another big thing that people don't do enough is like you listen to so many podcasts , you read so many books , read so much course material , do so many courses .

At the end of the day , a big differentiator of whether that material is useful or valuable to you and like your business and your career is like , okay , let me try it out , is it practical ? Is it going to help my business ?

Like linking it to the tick thing of like we spend so much money on tick , but then my question always is like , okay , like how does this enhance the ability of what I'm doing now and also save time , but more so , add more value to the client , give them more clarity and peace of mind ?

So you have to think of like practically , how does the knowledge of the people that I'm mixed with add value to me , but also use it ? And then , secondly , I would say just lots of you also is that don't be afraid to ask questions as well and test your theories . And , more so , don't embrace the suck , don't be afraid to make mistakes .

I use the nature of jump . There's no bad experience or no bad move . Every day you are doing rips and you put rips into the jump or into your practice , and people only compare that something . They see super successful people like Kuwibus I'm still producing like Kuwibus Doug and all that you don't realize .

Professionals like that have been putting in reps for the last 10 years and they've learned from their mistakes every day of like okay , this has worked , I can do this better , and that's how you actually , you know , find success and reach your passion .

I'm going to talk about the comments just now when we when we end here . So do stick around , because there's some some phenomenal just comments there .

And , russell , thank you very much , keep on doing the good work , and we love to see people excel and grow and be successful and also to see how they move through the different phases in their career , you know , and then , as new things come along their way , how they react to it and sort of how they learn from it and get better , and you know , it's just

amazing . So , keep doing the work . We really love watching you and , yeah , fantastic . Thank you very much for being on the show .

Leona is saying yeah , treat your practice like you would treat a client or yourself , which is directly linked to what I think Russell was saying . Derin says this profession is better because of people like Russell Fantastic . Dirk is saying a great example of self-belief and tenacity . I think that tenacity and just sticking to your guns well done .

Russie says Neil Phillips very sage advice , russell , you are wise beyond your years . And we've got Karina also on here saying Russell , how is such an inspiration to young people starting in the industry ? This is a great interview for my daughter considering getting into this industry fantastic and on that note , that's it . Thank you very much for being here .

A lot of people were very skeptical that people were going to show up today and I was very confident that we will have a lot of people and we had . So thank you very much for taking the time . If you've taken a long holiday or not , thank you for spending your time this morning with us . We really appreciate it .

Remember to go check out the tech event the links are down below in the description and with that , have a fantastic weekend . Stay safe , be pleased to cross pad for the tenure of the race and the path of your lives .

All right , folks , that's the wrap for this episode of Propulsion . I hope you got as much out of this as I did . Remember to tune in every Friday at 8am 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 .

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