Ep. 0 – Introducing PROpulsion – The Financial Professional’s catalyst to exponential growth
In Episode 0 (zero), Francois du Toit introduces PROpulsion.
He discusses why he started the podcast, who the podcast is for, our mission, the format, guests we will interview and a few other bits and pieces.
Transcript:
00:00 We’ve been thinking about starting a podcast for the last two years, but there were always like, you know, most people think about starting things and there’s just other priorities. Well, that was until December, 2018 when we finally made the decision that 2019 is the year we finally do this.
00:19 This is propulsion, the financial professionals, catalysts to exponential growth. Are you driven and ambitious financial professionals. But you’re finding it hard to break through to the next level. But are you struggling to build and run your practice successfully? Join Francois du Toit a leading consultant and trainer as he interviews not only the experts but also people you have never heard of before, but who have done amazing things about how they run the practices, the challenges they face, how they overcome those challenges, the failures which tick has improved their business, how their revenue models, work and other practical aspects. We go deep so you can learn as much as possible. And here’s your host, Francois du Toit.
01:01 Thank you very much for listening to episode zero. My name is Francois du Toit and I will be hosting the propulsion podcast. Now the podcast is aimed at all driven and ambitious financial professionals and when we talk about financial professionals, we talk about the likes of financial planners and advisors, accountants, auditors, tax practitioners, but also managers and consultants that work in the financial services space. Now if you are one of these or you are intrigued and curious to find out what propulsion will offer our valid listeners, then please continue to listen to the rest of this introductory episode. The most important question, however is why, why are we doing this? The answer is very simple, but it’s very, very personal. I started in financial services in 1998 and since then I’ve worked with hundreds of financial professionals. I eventually left corporate and I started my own business back in 2015 focusing on training, consulting and technology for financial professionals.
02:10 Now, I guess like many of you, I quickly learned through experience that there is a massive difference, a massive difference between performing the job or doing the job and running and building the business. Now, I was lucky that several people helped me on my journey without me asking, they put up their hands and I think they saw that I needed help and they helped me. They helped me get through challenges in my business and also some of the toughest times of my life. And I want to pay it forward. Through the work we do we found that many financial professionals struggle with the same challenges as I did and they also struggle with the same challenges as each other. So it also became clear in the work that we do that no single person has all the answers. There’s not only one way of doing something or achieving success, we all know that.
03:06 We also know that every person defines success differently. And it usually boils down to the kind of life that one would want to lead and that really determines once I’ve achieved that, then that would be success for me and whatever that looks like. So the areas that we found in our business that many financial professionals need help with include things like practice management, which is all about starting running and growing a business continuously. They also struggle with branding both from a business perspective as well as a personal perspective. They struggled with marketing and sales because a lot of financial professionals, you know, if I’m professional I can’t be seen selling, I can’t be seen marketing. But that is a fundamental part of business. So a lot of people struggle with that. Then also technical knowledge and skills cause you don’t know what you don’t know and what you don’t know can really hurt you, your client and your business.
04:01 Then the technology that’s available that can make our lives easier, that can make us more efficient, and even make us more professional. And then lastly, just staying informed in an ever changing environment is very, very tough for people. If they need to be doing all of these wonderful things and stay on top of all the changes, that is quite a challenge. Now helping financial planners one at a time like we’ve been doing it does make a difference, but we’re not having the impact that that we want and that is the reason we are really launching propulsion to help financial professionals like you rise above the rest. So before I will tell you about the format of the podcast, the guests and what to expect, I first want to share our mission with you. So the propulsion mission is this. First of all, we want to connect.
04:53 We want to connect you to leaders, doers and pioneers whose stories and experiences will be the catalyst for the exponential growth of your practice and also of your life. Then we want to share, we want to share with others that are just like you in the trenches every day doing what you are doing and who understands what the challenges are. We want to inspire you to keep driving and pushing forward because that is what the word propulsion actually means. It means to be driving and pushing forward. So we want to inspire you to keep driving and pushing forward through adversity, challenges, and unknown territory. Then we want to fire up your passion for what you do every day. We want to encourage you to do ongoing learning, experimentation and innovation. And then lastly, we want to enable you. We want to enable you to rise above the rest to truly rise above the rest.
05:54 So if our mission resonates with you, then please join us by subscribing to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or any other platform that you may be using. And also by joining our exclusive insider list on our website at propulsion.co.za. So let’s talk about the format, the purpose and aim is to give you as much value and how to content as possible. Because you know a lot of people write books and they tell us what to do. A lot of people make videos and they tell us what to do. A lot of people are writing blogs and they tell us what to do. They really tell us step by step how to do it. And that is what propulsion is going to focus on, is to share with you, show you, tell you how to do it step by step or at least share stories of how others have done it step by step.
06:47 But to achieve this, we have to go deep. In other words, when we are going deep, it means that our episodes will be longer than some of the other podcasts that you may be used to. In many cases, our episodes will be in excess of an hour and we don’t believe that that is a problem because we deeply believe that the value far outweighs the time needed to work through any given episode. Now, not every single episode will be an excess of an hour. It all depends on the guest and the conversation and the topic that we’re talking about, but you might find that some of them are actually like an hour, hour and a half even. Episodes are released weekly. So it does mean that you’ve got a whole week to work through any episode that you are busy with and you can do this on your way to work on your way back home while you’re at the gym or any other time you might have a few minutes to invest into listening to the podcast.
07:43 Another nice feature of podcast apps is that the episode, will continue where you left off. So if you listen to an episode on your way to work, you hit stop or pause and this afternoon when you get back in your car, you hit play. It will continue where you left off. And then another nice thing is that the APP will in fact remove an episode from your phone as soon as you’ve completed listening to it. Meaning that the podcasts also doesn’t have to take up a lot of space on your phone. It’s also nice that you can in fact download a podcast using Wifi at home and then it’s on your phone and you can listen to it at any time when it’s convenient to you. We will not be editing the episodes as far as possible because we want you to have the full context and experience of the conversation.
08:29 And we’re not only interviewing the well known experts, you know, but we’re also going to be talking to others who are just like you in the trenches everyday. And they’ve built amazing practices and businesses. They’ve overcome challenges. They’re not afraid to try new ideas. The big thing that with it’s an expert that you know that are well known expert or whether it is somebody just like you might be that we haven’t heard of before. They’ve got amazing stories to share and amazing things that they have accomplished. The interviews are either done at the guests premises or at our premises or via the telephone or online. So this means that, you know, the audio quality might differ slightly from one episode to the next, but we always strive for the highest quality audio possible. So that is a priority for us. But do know that when you hear an airplane go by, we couldn’t control that.
09:25 If you may be hear, staff slightly in the background talking, you know, we apologize for that but focus on the content, the voices of the person being interviewed and the person doing the interview will always be of the base quality and you will not have a problem to listen. We also, we already confirmed, several guests including the likes of Kobus Kleyn. Kobus Kleyn is the director of Kainos group, Andre Steenkamp who is the director of AllGen Financial Services Group. Lizette Gerber. Lizette is the head of operations at financial solutions for professionals and then Wessel Oosthuizen, he’s the managing director at Verso wealth down in Cape Town and I’m also very excited to have Mduduzi Luthuli, the director of Luthuli capital here in Joburg also on the list. And in fact three of these we’ve already interviewed and those episodes are ready to be released. Now each interview we focus on the guest’s journey but we also talk about things like systems and processes, challenges and how they overcome them.
10:29 We will talk about how they make their money. We will talk about the failures and how they got back up again. We will talk about how and where they find clients. That is a big thing for a lot of especially newer professionals, their personal stories and values and what drives them. So I think those are sort of the core but we are not going through a list of questions where we ask the same questions to all our guests. Every single interview is in fact unique and we see where it goes in terms of what the person is sharing with us etc. So every, every episode will be unique. We will also interview in specific guest or special guests, you know about things like technology. So we will be talking to people from the likes of Iris or Atwork or elite wealth, etc.
11:17 But also any other technology companies where they have technology on offer that will definitely make a difference in a financial professional practice or business. We’ve also been talking to other experts in terms of technical aspects like income tax, estate planning, investment planning, and other related topics that will be of great value to you as well. Another important fact I want to mention is that I’m very, very proud. Yeah. Very, very proud. The young ladies voices that you will come to know in our intro and outro for the podcasts are none other than those of my two daughters. Still very young but I wanted them to share this journey with us, for us to learn together and take this podcast to the top of the charts and also very importantly for me, this is the main thing that it was about for me, is to empower them with new experience and skills and abilities.
12:10 So then lastly, I want to mention Marnus Broodryk. As I said right in the beginning of the episode, it’s been two years that we’ve been thinking about a podcast. You know, what would we do? Who would the audience be, what value do we want to deliver to them? Why? Most importantly, are we actually doing a podcast and when Marnus launched his podcasts, making SMEs matter, everything clicked for me and I said, but that is the same thing that I want to do for financial professionals. Marnus is very much focused on small business or SMEs, small and medium sized enterprises. So you can check out that podcast as well. You know what? Marnus doesn’t know me, but he really inspired me to finally take that next step and take my dream and really action taking action and making sure that something happens. So that is where this sort of podcast is finally coming to fruition and I’m very grateful for the work that he does as well. And on that note, I would like to say that this is propulsion, the financial professionals catalyst to exponential growth. Please remember to subscribe. So you are notified first when we release a new episode. Thanks for listening, from me Francois du Toit, have a blessed week and prosper.
