What Exactly Does A Financial Advisor Do? | Lisa Dudson | Ep 101

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

So good morning and welcome to another edition of Better Business Better Life. Today I am joined by Lisa Dudson, who is a financial advisor with acumen which is actually her own business. Welcome to the show, Lisa.

Lisa Dudson  00:08

Welcome.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:09

Hey, nice when I actually met many, many years ago at a one day training for directors course, and yet we kind of got on with each other a little bit. And we sort of vaguely kept in contact reconnected probably about 10-12 years ago, and have been sort of very close friends as well as business acquaintances of that time as well.

Lisa Dudson  00:26

So, yes, we do. We have some interesting business checks and personal checks while on our walk, walk.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:30

Walk and talks, and talks everything for us.

Lisa Dudson  00:32

Absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:33

So we’re really happy to have Lisa here today, because Lisa has got this wealth of knowledge that she’s really happy to share with you, both from building a business perspective, but also from how you actually better manage your money. So tell us a little bit about your journey, because a financial advisor, that’s what you are now, but that’s not where you started, was it?

Lisa Dudson  00:48

 No. And I guess, I guess the journey did start when probably when I was 16. And I, my father, he gave me a book about the music machine market for my 16th birthday. And so I thought the sound l ike quite a good idea. And I’ve always been a bit of a saver because I came from a very blue collar family. And so if you wanted anything, you had to work hard. So I had three jobs when I was in high school to give you to put that in perspective. So anyway, so bought some shares, and it was in 1986. And for those of you old enough to remember 1987, we had a huge big stock market crash. And so my claim to fame was buying Briley shares at $7.05. And selling them for I think, was 36 or 37 cents, but hey, we learn from our mistakes or, and I stood greater than most to get the mental to standard. And every Saturday, I’d get out I’d write the prices and I grabbed them and who the hell was like what they actually achieved? I don’t know. But what it did is it put it in my headspace. So I think what I had a I had a big drive to be financially independent. Because when I grew up, you know, I was from a sort of a family and my sort of friends I went to school with was it was very much about woman went to work for the government in an office, you’ve got married, you know, had 2.4 Kids the white picket fence, and then you know, lived a happy life. And for me that just was like, you know, couldn’t cope with that. So therefore in order to to do okay, then I needed to be financially secure. So that set me off on a bit of a journey of, you know, how do I look after myself financially? So I’ve got freedom of choice, and I think I bought my first rental property in back 22, I think. And so my first career I did a degree in Business remarketing. Wetland lived in London overseas for seven years, was working in IT and sales and marketing came back to New Zealand and that, and interestingly, just a chance meeting, a friend of mine said, What are you doing tonight? Come around to a friend’s mother’s house for dinner went round there. He worked for a&p looked after all New Zealand’s financial advisors. And they had a seminar the next night trying to recruit women into the industry, because back then only 3% of the industry were female. Gosh, okay, you know, seems like a lifetime ago. But anyway, and so I just kind of thought about I thought, Well, that just seems blindingly obvious decision for me. So I literally made a decision overnight to change careers, and went and did all my qualifications and worked for a large national company for a year. And then not long after that, a year into that I set up my own business. And I’ve been self employed ever since. So that was a 1999.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:03

And you have more than one business you’re involved in, don’t you?

Lisa Dudson  03:05

Yeah, I do. So I kind of I started working on on my own. And then about a year into that I because I was suspicious on the investment advice space, I found a business partner who was specialized in business insurance. And so he came into the business and we built acumen up. And then we sold that. And 2008. And it was it was interesting at the end of 2007, actually, just before the GFC. And you know, and we built quite a bit good sized business, we had 11 staff, which was seen by theme small internationally, but in New Zealand and financially reasonable size. Yeah. But we just kind of get over it. And so we you know, we decided to sell it. And we and what was actually I think this is one of the things I think feel quite proud of is that we sold it for one of the highest multipliers for sales of that type of business at that time. Because it was, you know, we’d started it with systems and processes, and it was, you know, extremely well run. So we sold that business. And then I scaled acumen back down to just me. Yep. And that’s how I’ve kept it ever since. But alongside that. I also am a director and shareholder of a company called setien. And we’ve got about 27 on our team. And so we’ve got three divisions, one where we do funds under advice for clients, then what investment advice, and then the second division, we do UK pension transfers. And so Lockton work by SEPA schemes. And the third one, which is where the exciting part of our businesses and that’s national capital, and that gives keep free KiwiSaver advice and sort of a hybrid Robo advice model. And that’s a very, very exciting part of our business because KiwiSaver and New Zealand is huge. And no one hardly anyone’s giving any advice,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:41

you know, generally tend to kind of go into whatever our banks tell us to go into

Lisa Dudson  04:46

the banks or they or people go for low fees, you know, and interestingly, you know, I’d rather pay bigger fees and get better, better returns because it’s about bottom line, right? You know, it’s not about what you pay. It’s about what you get, at the end of the day. What’s your net return, so Yeah, so it’s definitely a, an area that’s got a lot of growth for us.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:03

Excellent. Well, I’ll come back to that in a moment. I want to go back a little bit there. Because you actually said that the you think the reason you got the highest multiplier ever was because the way the business is set up. So tell us a little bit about how it was set up. And why you

Lisa Dudson  05:15

believe that was? Well, I guess for me, sometimes I think I’m inherently lazy. And a lot of my friends would laugh when I say that, because I’ve been a serious workaholic in my life. And don’t typically sit still what I want a little bit better at these days. But so therefore, when I started the business, it was all about how do you systemize it? How do you make things efficient? So I think we had very, I had very good IT systems, right? From day one, were back then a lot of people still running live legacy systems, a lot of paper stuff, whereas I did everything with it right? From day one, I actually built a bit of a profile. And that was the other thing that was quite interesting, because it kind of happened by accident. And that was when I wrote my first book that spent six months on the bestseller list. Wow. And we say by accident, what happened? Well, because I had a friend of mine, who we were both involved in the property business association, and Auckland, and he was the president and I was the vice president. And my role was a financial advisor. And he had a little magazine then, which was the precursor to the New Zealand property. This doesn’t make sense. And he, both of us get people, you know, come to us and say, Well, how do we invest in property, and I got really bored having to repeat myself, basically. And so I said, Well, why don’t we put this guide together? So you know, because it made sense to me, because then you know, systemize IT people come on, he’s a little plan, here’s who you need to talk to. And then I can kind of crunchy, we think down into sort of an hour or so. And then I took rang him up and said, Look, I think you should do this, because people always ringing you up for free advice, you know, as the editor of the magazine. So we actually put this book together basically, well, where she it’s not quite right, we put it as a guide for to send to people who called us. And then I had an epiphany one day, and I sat down and thought, oh, maybe we can publish it. How do you publish a book? Why don’t I? So I thought I mean, but Penguin, you know, for I’m probably some, I don’t know, milk wasn’t very nice to read or something, you know. And so anyway, I opened up the yellow pages back then. Yeah. And when penguin so I rang up and said, Oh, can I talk to the person who publishes books and told them about our book, and they were actually quite interested in but then they said, No. And I was like, I was really bummed out. And then about a month later, I thought I got home. So I went to the other pages and hidden right and made about a half a dozen calls, and ended up with a contract with both Random House and read to publish our book. And so that’s how the book started. And when that came out, we had a huge amount of publicity. So suddenly, I found myself on all the TV shows, and you know, hundreds of radio shows. And we got we got huge amount of press.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:34

Yep. And I think when I first met you, I remember sort of I’d seen you in the Herald, I heard you on the radio, like everywhere you turned, Lisa was talking about finances.

Lisa Dudson  07:41

Yeah. Well, that’s right. I think of one year and, you know, I was thinking something like 56 appearances and the author mentions in the Herald, and that’s just one newspaper. Yeah, in one year. So I was doing a lot of media and I think it possibly was because I was a young, chatty female. And funnily enough, I just talked to a reporter that I knew back in those days, just recently, and he said, It’s easy, you were lively, you were easy to talk to, you know, I had all the qualifications to back it up. You know, because at that time, most of the industry were kind of old men. You know, the average age was in the mid 50s. They’re a little bit boring, a little bit stage. Yeah. Whereas I just, you know, chat.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:18

Nothing’s changed there, which is great.

Lisa Dudson  08:21

For people these days in the world, we live in plumbing compliant. Bleep.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:27

So that first book, what was a book called,

Lisa Dudson  08:29

Mm, it was a bit of a mouthful, the New Zealand residential guide to a property this much, okay.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:33

And so became a best seller, you became sort of well known throughout the different media.What impact did that have on the business?

Lisa Dudson  08:40

Well, it meant that I was we had colored a profile and the business so you know it because I think it’s, it’s not so much that people rang you up from the radio station, but when they kind of found you and they’re searching for financial advice, they got, oh, she’s written books. She’s been on the radio, she’s been on TV, she must know what she’s talking about. Yeah. So I think was the it was credibility marketing, because we, you know, I was a young female in a very male dominated industry. And, you know, like I said, we’re in the early days, 3% of the financial services industry, were female, back when I started and, you know, one of the challenges I had was people treating me like their secretary, you know, like and talking to me like a moron. And, you know, and I’ve got some interesting stories, you know, I’ve experiences of a head with guys treating me like that, you know, and so you just have to get a little bit bolshy and and, you know, had been caught a media queen, and you know, which was interesting at times, but jealousy maybe but, but anyway, I think it just it gave it was very, very good for credibility marketing, but it did take a lot of time.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:40

Okay. I’m interested, though, because often what happens when you build a business around your own name, particularly, and you become the star of the media, it’s then difficult to actually build the business because everybody wants to deal with you. But you actually had 11 staff. So how did you go from, you know, Lisa, being the one that’s known and seen, to scaling it to have other people

Lisa Dudson  10:00

Well, I think we scaled it because we had we had a range of different divisions. So we we did, I did the investment advice, John did the insurance with not someone else doing insurance, I had a fantastic PA, who kind of just screened everything we need. I’ve written something in the paper, and someone just rang up wanting to chat about the economy. Yeah, that would all be screened. So I just had very good support people around me and I, I worked some serious hours, like, you know, 7080 90 hour weeks, you know, I didn’t get a lot of free time for a number of years. And I think that’s, you know, possibly what led us to sell into I was probably a bit tired.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:33

Yeah. Okay. What would you do differently? If you had to do it, you could do it all over again.

Lisa Dudson  10:37

It’s interesting, actually. Because, you know, I think it was great, because you learn a lot like, because back then, you know, I was probably in my late 20s, when we started the business, and John joined me. And, you know, we were young, and we’re a little bit naive, and we just, you know, have a lot of capacity to take on a lot of work. So we worked really, really hard. And we kind of sit there was an opportunity said, yeah, really what slippers give that a whirl. And interestingly, you know, when we looked at it years down the track, we probably could have made more money being smarter. But we wouldn’t have had those experiences and those experiences of what’s carried through into other businesses. And, you know, it’s the learnings. And it also carries through to when I’m talking to my clients, all those learnings that I’ve had, whereas if I, you know, so I think it’s just, you know, you know, it was fun, it was hard work, but I think you’ve got to be careful as a business owner, because you can, if you get burned out, you know, your body gets burnt out, you get sick, your brain gets fuzzy, and you make dumb decisions.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:36

I can completely relate to that.

Lisa Dudson  11:38

I think a lot of business people, yeah, because you go into business, because you think I want to have more freedom, you know, I want to potentially work least I want to be my own boss and do what I want to do. And I want to get better rewards. But the reality is, in the first few years, for most business owners, you work a lot more hours, you earn a lot less, you have a lot more stress. And you think what the hell about and I think there was a bit of that with us, but I learned from that. And I think that was the most important thing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:02

And you still made a good decision, because you actually built it up to a reasonable size you sold to somebody who obviously paid for the value that was worth. And so it was a good sort of exit point. Yeah, and

Lisa Dudson  12:10

I think in but when we sold it, we sold the client basis. So that’s the other thing, it’s a little bit different. So and because they didn’t necessarily take me with them, which was interesting, because I really wanted at that point in time, I was thinking I wanted to get out of the industry, because I was but you know, I think we’re tired. And so they just took the client base. And so they the entire picking that up. And because they were so well looked after and well managed with great records, they could just plug them into the business, right. So that that essentially meant that profit went straight on the bottom line, which is why we’ve got a high multiplier.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:44

And that comes back to the systems and processes, the IT systems, right.

Lisa Dudson  12:47

And the way I manage the handover to have, you know, between my business and the other.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:51

So we didn’t cover this off. But I know that you’ve had property yourself for a long, long time. Right? When did you have your first property? At 22? I think it is. Yeah, now you’ve got a portfolio of properties. So once you sold the business, I mean, that would be quite challenging, right? Because you’ve been doing this for x number of years, it’s your whole life, you’re working less hours. What happened?

Lisa Dudson  13:11

Well, I did a bit of soul searching as you do. You know, I think I do I want to take up this activity or that activity. And, and I can’t afford me and I think really appealed to me. And I still did a couple of a little bit of one on one consultations, because that’s what I specialize in, people pay me an hourly rate, and I sit down with them and go, this is what we’re what you should be doing. And so I still doing a little bit of that. And I’m still writing I was actually I used to write a lot for Yahoo. And for the woman’s weekly insight. I think I was probably running half a dozen articles a month. So you know, I was kind of doing a bit of part time work. But I just took a couple of years off to actually really think about what I wanted to do. Took our three month trip around the world to sort of Central America, which was great. Yep. And I think what was interesting, I learned back then it was like, I really love the industry. I think I just got tired. Yeah, right. So I love the industry, I really get a huge buzz from actually helping people move ahead financially, and helping them have better choices in their life. So that was a sort of a given for me. But I didn’t want to go back into having responsibility for staff and officers. I wanted to be able to work from home. So I guess I sat down and said, Okay, well, I want to work in the industry. I still want to do certain things. I want to work from home. These are the parameters or the boundaries that I decided I needed in my life. And then I went okay, how do I rebuild acumen with I didn’t sell the brand, how do I rebuild that business? Taking into account those parameters? And that’s essentially what I’ve done and talk today.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:40

Okay. And so now with that, and I know that you work, as you said, with people on a one on one basis, and you’re not that different to a lot of advisors who might specialize in a particular area. You really are quite holistic in terms of your approach and tell us a little about how that actually works with the client.

Lisa Dudson  14:55

Yeah, because most financial advisors are quite product orientated so they either their mortgage advisors their insurance advisors have an investment advisors and this product around that I don’t deal with any product as such. Yeah. So I sit down with people fill out a questionnaire, I kind of go, Well, where are you now? Where do you want to be? You know, what have we got to work with? What resources? So most financial advisors will look at what money if we’ve got to work with whereas I look at what money if you’ve got what lump sum? What kind of income, if you will spear income have you got? Or how do we get more spear income, I look at what your skills and your personality as I look at how active or passive you want to be, I kind of try to dig inside your psyche, but more to go, right here are the resources. This is where you want to be how do we get you from A to B, these are the various options. And then I kind of watch closely with people because I found it really interesting. You know, when I say certain things people’s like, like fall very flat, or they loosely they do the opposite. And they suddenly get very engaged and very excited. And so I try to ferret around and go, what makes sense for this individual. So I think that’s why I’m different. I’ve got that holistic experience, because I’m being paid on an hourly rate basis. I’m not selling product, but I’m just really trying to get a result for people. And so I kind of call myself a financial sounding board.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:04

Yep. And I think that’s actually really key because I think that it’ll be like business, right? If you’re not doing what you love, then you won’t get the results you actually want. So the same as an investment. I mean, different investment strategies can produce similar returns, but you really have to be bought into what it is you’re

Lisa Dudson  16:19

Oh, yeah. Because I mean, one of the things that people have to do is be more mindful about how they spend their money. Not, it’s really not rocket science, right? You spend less than you earn, and you try it, the bigger gap you can get and the longer you invested, the better off you’re going to be not rocket science once you get that into one whole sentence, right? Yeah. But you know, but it’s easier said than done. And you know, it’s the same thing. I will say to my clients, if you want to lose weight, you know, you can live on chicken breasts, and bloody steamed broccoli and protein powder. And you’re stuck right down to bodybuilding stage and a couple of months, right, yeah. But the reality is of trying to put that into practice unless you’re really, really motivated. It’s tough, right? So that’s why it’s so it wasn’t a negotiation process with my clients going well, what can we work with what’s going to be practical, and it’s better to you didn’t make a small step, the monitors to actually try and take on board a whole bunch of stuff and then fall on your face.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:08

Yeah. And it’s kind of like a one business commitment, right? You can say you want to lose weight, but you actually to be committed to it. And in order to be committed to it, it has to be something that actually works for you.

Lisa Dudson  17:16

Oh, yeah, look, I’ve had a client recently that I’ve just helped buy a property because I have a service where I work with people to buy a property investment for them. So we kind of tidy all the finances up, get them into a bit of a plan, and I go and find them an actual property. And I’ve been working with this person for about 15 years and oh my god money diabolical with money, and we’ve had the worst. Absolute frickin shocker. Anyway, we finally got to the point last year where she’d actually paid off all your debts and a lot of dates, and, and we got into property. And that was a huge buzz for as much for her and her husband as it was for me. Yeah, you know, after all of those years, you know, so that’s, that’s nice. And a lot of my clients I have worked with for a very long period of time, because it can if you’ve, if you’ve got a good solid, financial platform, life is easy. A lot of stress is created around money.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:06

Yeah. And specifically for business owners. And we’ve obviously we got businesses listening in here. A lot of people pump everything into their business, and I’ve been there done that got the t shirt, which is a bit of a dangerous strategy, isn’t it? Because what happens if that business doesn’t quite work out the way you planned it?

Lisa Dudson  18:20

Yeah. Well, that’s right. And if you look at the stats, you know, most cases, it doesn’t work out the way you plan it to be right, because a lot of business owners and Ivana is getting to the point where you get the check, or it’s not really a check these days, but you know, with enough zeros on it to kind of plan and have a comfortable retirement. Yeah, well, it doesn’t often work out. And so I tend, I tend to believe very strongly in multiple streams of income. So I go, Well, let’s get yourself into KiwiSaver. Even that’s the minimum of $1,000, you know, 1040 to a year to get the government contribution, let’s save a couple $100 a month, let’s get your mortgage paid off a bit faster, you know, just a whole range of little things that, you know that over time, it may not seem a lot at the moment, but over time, it does mean a lot. But the argument with a lot of business owners is they go oh, well, I can get a better return on my money. Putting that into my business. And I go maybe, but not most people. Yep. So I go, let’s just be safe, and have some other strategies as a backup.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:16

So what’s the biggest mistake that you see business people kind of making with their investments?

Lisa Dudson  19:23

Well, probably not doing many, or the main investment is the business. I think that’s that’s the main thing. And I guess, you know, just because you earn a dollar doesn’t necessarily mean that you get to spend dollar on a business, right? Because I think a lot of business owners don’t pay enough attention to their profit and loss. You know, you’re in dollar Gotta pay tax, you got to pay you got all your expenses, and just that some in that merging often with smaller businesses between the business income and their personal income. It’s all just mashed together. Yeah. So I think it’s really important and whether you’re talking about your business finances, or your personal finances to actually have that weakness. Because if you’ve got a weakness, you make different choices. You know, a lot of people just want to bury their head in the sand hoping for the big payday one day. Yeah. And I think that can be a bit of a mistake.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:10

Fair enough. Tell us a little about Saturn, because how did you get involved with Saturn and what is your role there?

Lisa Dudson  20:15

Well, interesting Saturn in its previous version was was actually the company that bought a Cumans client back then I stayed on as a director. And then a couple years down the track, we bought back and John, who’s my previous business partner and acumen intercession, and he’s now the managing director. And so we just mainly more him, turn that business around, and we’ve grown it to the point where we are today. So now I’m the second largest shareholder in that business. And so, you know, we’re about half a billion dollars of funds under management. And, you know, it’s about 27, and our team, and we’ve got a couple of  Kiwi saver clients, and we just bought that business about just on two years ago now. So I think that’s got a huge amount of potential. So I work in that business, you know, I guess, is the director shareholder role about a day a week, which is great, because then I don’t have the personal responsibility of staff, because it’s a challenge and a half these days, I get to be involved in all the business stuff, which I love. And then I’ve got to work with my clients as well. So it’s a nice combination for

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:19

And that’s what we call up the year, it’s like you’re actually doing the stuff that makes your heart sing your wife or your reason for existing, you actually doing that. And while still having time to do the other things that are important to you.

Lisa Dudson  21:29

Well, that’s right. And it’s, sometimes it’s hard, because I find that it’s not easy finding the supplement word balance, right, you know, because I actually really enjoy business. So it really does make my heart sing, and it gets me really energized. But I also have to be careful not to get too burnt out. And some of the things that I’ve done for a number of years, as I actually put all my gym appointments into my diary, for the year, they like reoccurring appointments. And so I only work Monday to Thursday, I started 10. Yet, even though I do a bit of work beforehand, from a client’s perspective, yeah, it’s 10. It’s 10 to five, Monday to Thursday and Friday, I do what I want to do. And work comes in and out of all of those times around that as well. But I just try to contain it. And I think the other thing that I’ve learned too, is this mapping really, really clear about what’s important to you. Because you can get really distracted. And one of the things I mentioned before is that when you start getting a bit of a profile, and you get known in your industry, people are always coming to you because they want to be part of your success. And they want to have all these opportunities for you to look at. And please me, and you can kind of get all go all over the place. So what I did is I created that sort of filtering system, to say, This is who I am as a person. So I’ve done a lot of personality profiles. This is what’s important to me. And then I try to put sort of any opportunities through that filtering process to see whether it’s worth me, investing time into it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:52

And I actually recommend that with our business owners as well. Even in medium sized businesses, you actually want to work with people you love. And if you’re not working with people you love, then it’s not a great place to be. And so it’s there’s nothing wrong with saying no to clients that do not meet your ideal client criteria.

Lisa Dudson   23:08

Well that’s right. A lot of people have troubles trying to trying to say no, and I don’t know, for some of my clients, what I’ve done is I’ve told them, you know, that’s a little colored sticky ground sticky. Things like you the yellow dots. Yeah, so I’ve got people to put the word no winner. Yes. And then put it on the computer screen and on the steering wheel on the fridge and fridge might be quite good if you tend to be in there with the chocolate biscuits, but and to learn to say no. And to understand that, you know, it’s safe to say no. Because I think saying no was probably more important in many ways and saying yes, but I think you have to get clear about, you know, who you are as a person. Like, I know what I’m good at. And I know what I suck at. You know, and some of that’s been trial and error and some of that through a lot of the personality profiling that I’ve done over the years. And because I know that and I know what gives me energy. You know, and you’d like to say, I don’t like working with ducks. You know, like I have said to some clients the past, you’re not for me, I’m not for you. I’m trying to turn around that way. Because I think oh my god, this is gonna be frickin hard work. ,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:07

Yeah, yeah. And I think I mean, Gino who invented EOS, he sort of talks about the fact that actually, the more you sign over, the better it is for you. But also we tend to want to out to over explain or explain why we said no. I said actually, the best way you can actually do is just No, no, no, thank you. Yeah, yeah. Don’t bother getting into any other bits around it. No, thank you. That’s not for me. That’s right.

Lisa Dudson  24:25

Do you get into this dialogue and get into that whole sales thing with regard? Well, what about this? I totally agree. It’s really, really, it’s healthy. And that’s the thing as an entrepreneur, is you got to keep coming back to how do you be healthy? How do you be healthy mentally, be physically physically healthy, and both of those things are as important as one another. So you know, we have to take care for ourselves. And one of the thing I think that also I learned is that if I keep giving to other people I can’t give to the people I really care about because there’s nothing left in the tank.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:57

Yeah. And I think I don’t know, I’ve certainly been guilty of this when I was younger, you know, you want to you want to help so many people that you literally go out there and try and help everybody. But as you said, you actually run out of any kind of fuel in the tank to give to the people that are important to the so it’s better to actually conserve that energy and use it in a really wise way.

Lisa Dudson  25:16

Well, that’s right. And you I mean, you’re an incredibly generous person, you know, and it’s, it’s hard because, you know, you feel for people and I remember the early days of my career, I’d go home and have sleepless nights and be like, Oh, my God, you know, you’re gonna get so stressed and worried about, you know, everyone else’s financial position, or whatever are meant for them. And then I just had to learn that this is gonna put me into an early grave, you know, I just have to learn to, you know, I’m incredibly present with my clients, but I try to let it go. When I when I go home.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:42

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I do like the idea. And I’ve taught this before putting things into your calendar, the things are really important. So we have rocks in business, they’re the important bits of the work, you need to do every 90 days to ensure you’re going forward on your on your vision. But then I think in your personal life, putting those rocks in and saying it’s non negotiable, I do the same, I’ve got my three team appointments every single week, and they’re there, which means I know not to do anything else. And that time, I make time to do the other things I want to do to I actually do get to go on a date night or get to go and do some things on the weekend.

Lisa Dudson  26:10

Smart like we you and I, we we catch up and go for a walk and we have a chat about business, we have a chat about what’s happening in our lives. And so you know, that’s kind of multi, you know,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:19

Multi tasking, making you special. Yeah,

Lisa Dudson  26:22

That’s very important. Sometimes, you know, when you stare at your computer screen, using our pocket, this is all hard work, you know, pick yourself up and go for a walk, you know, I often save my phone calls for when I’m walking, you know, because again, it fills in some time, but it also makes me I feel that I can actually do something constructive while I’m out walking as well. So it gives me you know, a bit of a break and some fresh air. And hopefully it systems, some of the people that I’m talking to, for them to get out and get some fresh air as well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:48

I love war control some really important. Now I know that you have, we’ve already talked about some of these, you’ve got three kind of top tips, if you like that you really want to look at so let’s have a bit of a discussion around those.

Lisa Dudson  26:59

Yeah, I guess the first one is to get really clear about what you got out and what your boundaries are. So therefore, you it makes it easier for you to say no, to take on, you know, so you can take on the right opportunities. And I think being clear about your boundaries is really, really important. You know, what are the things that are important to us? Like, for me, I was saying, you know, I want to mainly work from home, I want to work the small client base, you know, with acumen, I only want to keep it for me, I don’t want to take on any staff. You know, I’ve got a few outsources that do a few, you know, specific things. So I’m just unclear about that now, and it just makes things a lot easier. The second thing was, you know, developing that filtering system. So when an opportunity comes to you, how does it work? You know, I spoke to someone the other day about, they were looking at something and I’m like, Wait, that’s a, there’s a huge amount of lead time to take that opportunity on board. There’s a lot of cost and time and money. Does that fit your business model? Yeah. Like it may be great to pull something like that off. But how hard is it to pull it off? How does it fit back in to you know, how your how you want to grow your business? Because it’s very easy to get distracted? When you’re in business, right? Particularly when things aren’t going quite so well. You go oh, well, I’ll just try this. And I’ll try that. And I’ll try something else. So just keep coming back to what are the things that are important to you. And then and then from a creating a good wealth base, so you’ve got more freedom of choice is to start saving sooner rather than later. Like, you know, just little things like if you just paid off $100 Or a couple $100 a month off your mortgage extra, you put a couple $100 into maybe like a shear scheme. So you know that it built over time. And that’s liquid too. So if you got into a tough time with your business, actually, you can actually get it you know, make sure you’re in KiwiSaver you know, when you can afford to get into a property, leverage yourself into a property investment. Just keep pottering away at these things over time. And you’ll know you know, notice that you know, 5-10 15-20 years down the track, you’d be amazed at what you can build alongside your business, just in case your business doesn’t go according to plan.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:59

And I think it’s one of the important things about working with financial advisors. You know, sometimes when we actually go through and we look what we’re really spending money on, there are some little things that don’t make a huge difference to your life. If you actually got rid of them. They can make a massive difference with that cumulative effect over time.

Lisa Dudson   29:11

Oh, yeah. But these days, because everyone wants a license fee. Yeah. You know, a friend of mine said her she was a bit of a tough financial time. And she said, I have gone through everything. And then about a year later, she said to me, Oh, wait through all my subscriptions. And I said $2,000 a year. You know, it’s there’s lots of little things that add up and it’s about, you know, I mean, we’re going one day and I take that gardening and went bought some gardening magazines, and I walked up to the counter and that’s $40 and I remember having heart failure thing for lots of gardening magazines, because I could have bought them I could have got them from the library or looked at it on the internet, you know, so it’s just because I like to travel so I like to save all my money for you know, I spent a hell of a lot of money on travel. So in food, I like to entertain the crowd a lot as well. So yeah, so you just got to think about what’s valuable for you know, you only get to spend your dollars once so you want to make sure that it’s you spend those hard earned dollars really, really You know, really, really well. And so you get the most value out of those out of that money. Because one of my favorite sayings is, what’s the difference between the way a millionaire spends the money and the average person spends the money? The Millionaire, millionaire spends one minute longer thinking about the buying decision? Do I really want it? Do I really need it? Can I get better value somewhere else. And I think when I look back on it, that’s the strategy that I’ve had, since I was young, because you know, when you’re starting out, you don’t have a lot of money. And travel was important to me. So I’ve always been quite careful with my money, because that’s where my money always goes. Because the travel is more valuable than having a whole bunch of stuff.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:34

And so really, it is just about at the time point of purchase, if you like, just asking yourself, quite honestly, do I really need it? Is it really going to help me and where I’m going? And is it something that has better value for me than this? That’s right, because we spend a lot of money and wash it like and I just say, being a being a bright, shiny object girl. And we have a tech gadget as well. My software and app subscriptions. Yeah. So you just start looking at things that you use on the phone, and you think, you know, either our money paying 2999, I’m only paying $50 a year for it. But nevertheless, you know, you only have to have 10 apps at $50 a year. That’s $500. And if you’re not using, it’s not adding real value to you.

Lisa Dudson  31:09

Here’s an example for you. So my partner, he had a guy working for him, and he was gotten off to a bit of financial pickle at 21. Anyway, it’s a bit of a mess. Yeah. And it was which spawned about the same thing a bit better. And so he was I knew that he was a smoker. And I knew he was trying to give up. And so I worked out that he smoked three packs of cigarettes a week. So that time was about 60 bucks. So worked out that if he put $60 a week into a balanced investment fund until the time he got to the age of 65, he had about $650,000. Wow. Yeah. So that’s a really good example of it’s only 20 bucks. It’s only $10.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:41

Yeah, and I think software and apps is one of the ones that quite often there’s a real low hanging fruit there in terms of are you actually really using that as default. If it saves you time, it saves you money. But in reality, a lot of these things are just like shiny objects,

Lisa Dudson  31:53

Shiny objects out there. And there’s a lot of money being spent on marketing to help us connect and buy those bright, shiny objects.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:03

So hey, look, we could probably talk all day, we often do. But we’re coming to the end of this show. So just tell us a little bit about you know, your your business and the type of clients you’d love to work with. And I also know that you have doctors sitting there right in front of us. And new book coming out as well.

Lisa Dudson  32:16

I just got about two days ago. So this is these are cameras. And yeah, there’s a camera. Yeah. Okay. So those with money good with money. So this is, I wrote this a couple of months ago, and this is coming out in April. Yep. So I think this is not an idea that 10th book, I think so I’m quite excited. It’s just a really good basic, you know, how do you be smart with your money? I’ve got some case studies all the way through.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:34

So I think that’s a really important part that she’s sharing with you how other people have actually yeah,

Lisa Dudson  32:37

It’s kind of cool. Because I went out to my database, my my newsletter and said, look, hey, I’m writing this book. And if anyone’s got a story to share, and I got all these responses, so it’s awesome. So these are all real life, what’s happened and some of the people have written sort of over 20 years of how they progress. And so it’s seriously cool. So the type of people that I like to work with a lot of my clients are professional people, or business owners, and they are typically 40 to probably 55, who go, Hey, retirement is kind of getting closer. We don’t have much in the way of investment strategy, we need to be more attentive about our finances. So I kind of that the sort of people that I work with and say, let’s just get a bit of a plan of attack together. And some of those I go and help buy investment properties for as well. Yeah. So yeah, so I just have a small client base that I work quite closely with.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:21

Now, I know I asked you this question. We had dinner the other day, but I will not ask it on the podcast as well. So property is taking a bit of a dive at the moment, if you believe everything you read in the media. And I asked the question of you like, did you know is this a worrying? Will it go back once what what your views on that?

Lisa Dudson  33:35

Well, you know, I talked to a lot of people about this. And look, you just have looked back through graphs for the last 100 years, and they go up and all investments go up and they go down. And at the moment, everything’s down, and we’re coming into a bit of a challenging time. And, and I would seriously recommend that you don’t believe everything you read in the media. But I think we’ve got we’ve got a tough six months ahead of us sort of all investments basis. But, you know, there’s some great deals out there out there. And the property is market right now. Right. So, you know, and that’s when even for a lot of businesses, you know, there’s there’s new businesses being that will be launched this year that are incredibly successful, because they’ve seen opportunities. So I always think that it comes back to you’ve got to come back to who who you are what are you trying to achieve? What makes sense for you, you consider what’s going on in the markets right now. But you can’t change it. You know, if it means, you know, getting into a property now, but it might not grow in value for another year or two. So be at least you made a decision. Because otherwise what I found is lots of people have been years and years and years going that’s never the right time. Yep. So you know, I guess the moral of that story is get some advice

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:37

And get a plan in place. It’s much like your business. I mean, all of my clients I’ve been working with even though we’ve gotten to go through this or downturn, they’re still overachieving, achieving their targets because they’ve got a plan. They know what they need to do and they stick to that plan. Don’t get distracted by the media by the talk of recession just get actually we know we have a good business we know we have the right kind of customers we’re working with, we know the value we deliver we charge the price it’ll be a price. And we’re gonna hit our targets as well.

Lisa Dudson  35:02

And it sets the value for working for people like you and I right, because we help people focus on what are the things that are actually important. And get rid of all the noise that’s around the outside? You know, because summer classes going, Oh, my friends are saying you got rocks in your head? And I’m like, well, when is the right time? Yeah, you know, and we think look, after COVID, for instance, everyone was an absolute panic about COVID. Yep. And then next thing, you know, the house prices went up 50% In the next year, you know what I mean? Like,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:26

Yeah, and and to be fair, I mean, I know that the media wants to wait recession. And I appreciate we will definitely go through a period of non growth if you like, but people are still spending money, and there is still money out there. Without a doubt. So there might be some people going through a tough time, I believe those who are going through a tough time, probably didn’t have the right plan in the first place. Those who’ve got a plan or following it will actually come out the other side way better.

Lisa Dudson  35:47

Well, and I think that’s what I tried to do. And I know you do the same thing as is how do we kind of cover all those things? You know, how do we get you in a place where you’ve got good financial foundations? How can we get you educated? So you understand why you do what you do with your money? You know, because if you get that in place, the cumulative effect down the track is can be quite extraordinary. Yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:04

Okay, so if somebody wants to come and work with you, Lisa, how would they get ahold of you?

Lisa Dudson  36:08

They probably besides go to my website, which is acumen.co.nz. Nice and simple. And otherwise, my contact details are on there. So just email me Give me a bell. And yeah, I’d love to talk to you put you through the filter first. Complete deck. Yeah. Most people are.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:27

Excellent. And that book, again, is Good with Money. And we’ll put a link on the website as well. So thank you so much for your time. It’s good to speak to you actually in a more formal environment than we used to do. But yeah, thank you for coming in. We look forward to catch up with you soon. 

Lisa Dudson 

Thanks, Debra.