Happy 31st Birthday South Africa

I was 31 in 2011. It was a watershed year for me in terms of assessing what was important. I dived into a “Project Mojo” to get myself back on track. I was living in London and started renting a lock and go studio at Wimbledon Art Studios. When I chose what to study, it had been a very pragmatic acceptance of the idea that, “Not all good ideas are good business ideas”. I loved art and maths, but it was more likely that I could monetize maths/business than art. I kept up at least one painting a year, but that was all I got round to. I had always prioritized later, but decided I need to bring some of that prioritizing into fruition. 

Every Saturday and Sunday, I would head to my studio for a couple of hours. I specifically chose to spend the year focusing on abstract expressionism. Trying to turn my mind off and focus on automatic, glutral painting, that came from somewhere else in me. Color and texture. Layers and energy. What makes you an artist? Renting a studio? Selling a painting? Believing you are one? Making a living from painting. I have always loved art. My mother was an art teacher, and I did take it as a Matric subject. Turning creativity, directly and conspicuously, into a career is something I considered… but always felt like a path with lots of resistance. These two or three hours, twice a weekend, had none of that baggage. It wasn’t for anyone else.

Wimbledon Art Studios has two open studios each year. Most of the artists clean up their studio and turn it into a gallery. There is a huge range and plenty of deals on offer. It was also very humbling for me, as you sit for hours with people poking their head in and making snap judgements of whether it is worth coming in. I did sell a few… but certainly nowhere in the range of convincing myself that this is a better career option than Asset Management. Art remained something “for me”. Not something that I would bend and twist into the mould required for paying the bills.

We all need to pay the bills. Even South Africa has to figure out a way towards economic prosperity if it wants to have these indulgent “finding yourself” years I was able to afford. Sometimes you do what you want to do. Sometimes you do what you have to.

Hero Job

Being well-rewarded for your skills and knowledge doesn’t make you irreplaceable. Typically, commercial projects are not pushing the boundaries of human thought. Money is very pragmatic. Breakthroughs are normally collective. 

We like the idea of heroes, and we provide massive rewards to be those heroes (when the monetary stars align). When planning your own career, you need to have a view of the broader context... beyond a specific "hero job". 

If the job is in a publicly listed company, you can look at the investor relations pages to see the company report (for example, Google’s Alphabet is at https://abc.xyz/investor/). You can see what the company is doing beyond your role. Beyond that, look at the industry structure. What are the competitors doing? The wider you look, the more resilient you are going to be if you start getting an idea of the generic skills and knowledge needed. 

The less you make it about you, and defining “who you are”, the more you can listen and respond to the needs of the broader container. Gradually you can be less attached to the specific grade, role, boss, or performance review cycle that you have or are in, but that can’t last. 

When you talk to people about work anxiety, whether you are in academia, a business owner, an employee, or a consultant... the stress often boils down to people dynamics. How do you get along with the hierarchy you are a part of, and the relationships you have? 

Even though good business ideas are very much about containers and counting, they include a human element that can’t be separated. Vulnerable voices in our heads grappling with a sense of self-worth, and fair treatment.

Forests of Connection

Constant learning allows you to release your identity from a specific problem. To solve problems, and move on. It requires mapping your ignorance. Developing the capacity to change your skills and knowledge as the problems demanding focus change. Developing the capacity to step back and have a broad picture of how your skills and knowledge fit into the wider environment. 

Understanding that they aren’t who you are, but are part of a bigger, complex, organism. Your own learning needs to connect to others, and requires communication, to convey your ideas, to listen, and to take on new knowledge. Letting knowledge that is no longer serving you disappear. Rather than being defined by the specific thing you are learning, building the tools to take information in, process it, and make decisions. 

Not purely in a rational way, also developing the emotional capacity for environments that change. Being a decision maker requires real interaction with the world, practically and pragmatically. 

Active Career Management, means looking beyond your line manager or company for performance reviews. Mapping out your own path. How are you connected to your broader profession? 

You could end up working for the company that is now your competitor. You could become the client of your current company. Your employer could become your client. 

I enjoy going to Actuarial Conventions even though most of the presentations are painful, mostly because of the people and seeing their movement around the underlying companies. Even though I may be lost in talks about paths I haven’t followed, only partially recognising some of the symbols from university, I still connect to the names and faces. 

Being attached to that wider community releases some of the pressure of performing within a specific box. Your specific job in a specific company can wind you up. Perspective is helpful.

Forests of Connection 

Stilling the Waves

Planning is not something you finish. It is the regular process of reviewing your story. A form of journaling, where you can go back and see what you thought in the past. It is difficult to plan in isolation, because that limits your sources of information and support. It is important to have someone you can speak openly to. Not as a cry for help. Not because you can't do it, are weak, or are incompetent. Because you are human. 

Invest in friends who will challenge you. Find friends who won’t challenge you, but will listen deeply. To build a sense of autonomy and consent. To build a practice and set of tools for dealing with the pulse of life that feels productive, in whatever way you choose to define productivity. So your choices resonate and build on what matters to you. 

The beauty of being human is that that is such a difficult question. The answer evolves and cannot be reduced to numbers. It certainly can’t be reduced to two numbers where you divide one by the other, compare yourself to others, and spit out a chocolate box answer. 

It is not a conversation about more and less. It is not a conversation about categorising people into good enough and not good enough. It is not weighing. It is not measuring. Planning is just practicing being alive. Consciously taking each step. Stilling the waves of anxiety. Focusing on what matters.

Life is Complicated

Life is way more complicated than any story we choose for sense-making. Stories have narrative arcs that resonate. They set the scene, then something happens, then tension builds, then there is a climax, then there is a result, and consequences, and a conclusion. There are heroes, or moments of redemption, or great insights. Within the constraints of pages, picture frames, or flames of the campfire. 

Half the art of presenting is simplifying the point you are trying to convey into three clear things. So when someone is retelling the story later, they know what they were. They know what the presentation was about. They were surprised by something that was clearly articulated and emotionally engaging, and they could remember it because it found a hook into their world. 

In real life, the narrative is hard to see unless we construct it with hindsight. Our stories layer understanding after the action. Planning becomes a tool to reflect. It is a meditation that can help give you focus. Planning allows you to step out of reality, look at reality, and then adjust the story as reality evolves. Building the capacity for change is a fundamental part of good planning. 

Planning is not about knowing the future. It is not about a specific path. It is very dependent on your decisions and ambitions.

Learning to Sit

In Yoga classes you can see students who are incredibly stiff, partly because they are fit and strong. Forget the forward bend, a lot of athletic people will struggle to simply sit at 90 degrees with their legs out straight. Releasing that tension requires unlearning. Kids are very flexible, and over time because of a lack of holistic movement, adults gradually become stiff in very specific ways. When we specialise our use-it-or-lose-it bodies. To learn, you must support your capacity to deal with change. Creating space for honest feedback cycles and reflection. Understanding yourself well enough to know how you best receive feedback. 

When I wasn’t working (for money), I was part of a Men’s Group (surrogate colleagues?) where we provided support to each other. It was difficult because we saw the world very differently, and discussion could descend into unproductive debate. One way we attempted to overcome this was developing “Cards” or tools, where you could say explicitly what you are asking for. Sometimes you want advice (what would you do?). Sometimes you just want to talk (just listen and ask exploratory questions)… we called that the “Vulnerability Card”. When you expose yourself, but you don’t want to be punched. 

There are other times when you want very direct solicited challenge. The scariest card was “Invisible Man”, when you invite others to talk about you behind-your-back in front of you, while remaining silent (and NOT defending yourself).

Deep Bench

You need support in your planning. It is all well and good to have specific goals, but we go through waves and moods, and we are not consistent. We forget why we made decisions. In specific moments, we want other things. This means we all need to know what kind of support we need. 

When you are going through difficulties, what is the kind of person you need to speak to? I am lucky that I have developed a lot of good friendships. I know that in certain situations, there are specific friends I need. Certain "cards" I need to play. Sometimes support, sometimes challenge, sometimes advice, sometimes silence. I know that to develop those friendships, I need to be available when the kind of support I am capable of is what they need. We have different strengths and weaknesses, and the deeper your bench of friendships is, the more support you will be able to provide to each other. The more space you can hold. 

The idea of holding space is that you are not there to provide a solution. You are there to listen. Having someone to hold space is not saying that you are not competent and capable. It simply reinforces the self-awareness that you know who you need to walk with in the situations you are going to face. Building that capacity is important. 

As our story changes, we need mirrors to incorporate new information. We need to realise which behaviours no longer work. Which never worked (on reflection). Which behaviours might work. We need to unlearn, relearn, and change with change.

Know Who You Need

Uncommonly Connected and Compounding

Goals are not picking the best of every possibility in isolation. That is dreaming. You can close your eyes and visit various places instantaneously. You can explore parallel universes where you made different decisions, and outcomes were completely of your choosing. When you open your eyes, you must go from where you are. 

The more realistic goals are tiny. Small nudges from where you are. Shane Parrish suggests, “Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you are smarter than you are.” 

You can build scripts, and behaviours, and habits, and flexible plans. You can be micro-ambitious with tiny goals that add up. Goals that are connected and compounding. 

Behavioural Finance looks at the idea of biases. Embodied shortcuts that help (or hinder) us in our decision-making. We don’t (and can’t) have full information, but must act anyway. Understanding your biases can help you tweak your micro-goals. Understanding your biases can help you see what you do for uncommonly long periods of time, rather than getting obsessed over things that come and go, and cancel out.

Give it Time

Time and Energy

Freedom is not the absence of constraints. It is a sense of autonomy and consent. The ability to make decisions. The feeling that you are seen, and matter. All decisions are made inside containers and with consequences. How much do you value time? How much do you value being paid a lot? Many of the ways to make lots of money will consume your time and energy on problems that are not your priority. It's not about you. 

You can get to a situation where weekends and holidays are where you get access to your community. Where your job becomes your weight-of-time-and-energy community, and your life. Be honest about what the life you are designing will really look like. Speak to as many people as possible who are doing what it is you think you want to do. Map it out. See what the barriers and trade-offs are for you. Have honest conversations about the advantages and disadvantages of the paths you are considering. 

As you go through life, there are people at similar stages to you who make different choices. Then a few years later, their stage will no longer be similar. Yet we will only see the conspicuous. Tangible success is easy to share. We are not completely open and authentic about each other’s struggles. Partly because we only have so much emotional capacity. We are dealing with our own stuff. Opening up is a “call to arms”, and so the barriers we put up make a lot of sense. Trusting and allowing each other to deal with our personal struggles, and shout only if necessary.

Source and Use 

of Energy

Obstacles and Barriers

Formal studies are not solely about skills and knowledge. We live in a world where that is largely available for free. I heard about email and the internet for the first time as a 14-year-old from my Maths teacher who had visited the United States. Information flow was starting to burst. 

She was also the one who told me about Actuarial Science. Even though the world is connecting, money is still made in containers with barriers. The way we build the structure is partly through formal education. I broke some of my barriers (the country we are born in) after school by going overseas for the first time. I went to the United Kingdom for two gap years, working as a teaching assistant on a work-travel visa. 

When I came back, I picked something with barriers. I knew there were people who paid people who passed these exams. Jobs that wanted these qualifications. Limited people with those qualifications. I looked at the shop. I saw what the expensive products were. I looked at the cost to put those on the shelf. I went and did the thing that was most tolerably difficult (challenging barriers) with the highest gap between price and cost. Based on my existing set of scarce skills and knowledge. 

That is not the same for everyone. Which is why it paid well. Scarcity pays. Understanding money is partly about understanding and overcoming your obstacles and barriers.

Map of Internet Connections

Studying the Box

Even if you can stop yourself bending to the social pressure of keeping up with the Joneses and Khumalos, you still need to eat. You cannot not care about money by ignoring it. If you do not learn to control money, it can control you. Even if you live very simply, the money must come from somewhere. We do not yet have concepts like Universal Basic Income, where the foundations are strong enough to allow everyone the security to look up and forward. 

The challenge is, no two paths are the same. Part of financial planning is deep pragmatism. All advice is autobiographical. We can only see from our perspective. Listen to others, but your choices will come from where you are. My “source of wealth” was based on leaning into the cards I was dealt, and accepting how money was made. 

I spent eight years doing formal studies. One degree and three sets of professional exams. Not out the box thinking at all. I studied the box. Studying risk, investments, and planning. Studying how barriers are built. How decisions are made. How people are empowered. How capital is built. What options are available and how they are seized. I am still studying. 

The heart of planning is being able to learn as the situation changes. To come from where you are. To control your response. To build the privilege to choose what you care about.

Willing to Learn

You can build your capacity. Often the people who start businesses and appear to take risks are not special in any way other than they have got capital and connections to do it. 

They have the space and support to invest in their conspicuous merit. They are strong because they have resources deeper than hand-to-mouth earning ability. They have a safety net. They know that if things go wrong, there are people they can go to. Rich kids with their parents to back them up. 

If you cannot afford to take a risk because you have dependents, you are in a different situation. The comparison is not a fair one. You cannot wave a magic wand to create capacity. It is only possible to start where you are, with a little stretching. 

Flexibility is your ability to adapt and adjust to accommodate different situations. Flexibility includes your openness, curiosity, willingness to learn, hunger to look constructively rather than comparatively at the stories of others, and the bravery to change the way you see things. 

Even though financial planning starts with how you see the world, that is not set in stone. You are alive. You change. Are you willing to learn? 

Bruce Lee suggests, “Take what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.”

Bruce Lee Learning

That Map

The starting point of Financial Planning is earlier and separate from the specific way you make (and invest, and spend) money. You plot a course within a map. First, you need that map. 

You must reflect on what you value, what your values are, and how you want to create meaning. On the realities you face, the obstacles, the choices, the resources, and your support. 

Risk tolerance is not simply how brave you are. Those who simplify the decision-making to a trade-off between risk and return are, simply, wrong. Knowing two made-up numbers does not give you the answer. You do not get rewarded more for taking more risk. You get rewarded for adding value within specific constraints, not for being reckless. 

Some people who seem risky are not risky at all. They take calculated risks when they have a level of mastery where for another person, doing the same activity, would be perilous. They have done the work. They understand what they are doing. 

We typically just look (because that is all we can see) at the conspicuous. We do not (and cannot) have the full picture. When evaluating other people and what they are doing, it will (by definition) be impossible to see from their perspective. That is why the best financial plans are about working on understanding yourself, your context, and your behaviours.

Atlantis Projection

Getting the Cheese

The early bird gets the worm. The second mouse gets the cheese. My brothers are both Doctors. Perhaps that is why I am not. I saw the years and years of study and community service they did (and do), and decided that Actuarial Science was an easier mountain to climb. You have to pick your hard.

One observation was that while my days could be trying, no one died. Medics in your life put the hour download of a tough day at the office in perspective. They also specialised more and more. Knowing a hell of a lot about a small area of complexity. One is now a Professor of Vascular Surgery. The other is a Paediatric Cardiologist.

Maybe extending the analogy too far, someone who studied finance can still have their own career and finances in a mess. Understanding a small corner of the financial universe doesn’t make you a career coach or financial planner. Circles of competence. Asking for help doesn’t mean you aren’t competent.

Protagion - Active Career Management is hosting a weeklong virtual conference (#ProWeek) with some free sessions, and some sessions exclusive to those subscribers you have asked for regular support for their career choices.

Active Career Management

Money laundering is when criminals try place their dodgy dealings in the financial system so they can spend it. A big part of the fight against this form of crime revolves around tracking the “source of wealth”. You don’t pitch up one day with two bags of cash to buy a Ferrari without questions being asked. Anyone living obviously beyond their means (spending more than they earn) is going to be suspicious. Unless they have a good explanation, and evidence. Rich generous parents or something other than the traditional “get a job” or “start a job”. Building capital requires a source. Bradley Shearer founded Protagion - Active Career Management in an analogous way to Fundamental Stock Pickers. The source of wealth is often very traditional. A job. A job comes with choices. Investing in continuous education. Identifying roles you want. Building the skills for them. Converting your skills into capital to support that. Protagion is hosting a virtual conference (#ProWeek) to explore some of the ideas. I will be participating in both an open panel on “financial independence and diversifying income”, and a smaller group discussion for subscribers focusing on my ideas around Financial Yoga.

 

Job Rotation

My first job change was internal. This meant different dynamics to normal job hunts of deciding if someone is “good enough”. There was a rotation committee, and an understanding that people are on learning curves. You are balancing an individual’s career path with the needs of the company. There is still the challenge of limited roles and seats being open or not. You cannot simply pick a job you want and develop the skills required. Timing is a thing. A seat came open for the Marketing Actuary role in Joburg. I had not finished learning what there was to learn in Product Development. My old boss and new boss had overlapping interests though. Marketing Actuaries work with Product Development to listen to what is needed, and iterate towards solutions. There are always trade-offs as people come and go. It helps when there is the common ground of a bigger container.

Into the Jungle

I spent two years between school and university on a work-travel visa in the UK. I did not know what work I wanted to do, and my older brothers were both at university studying medicine. They talked me out of following their path. I waited tables till I had the money for a plane ticket, then got a job as an assistant teacher at a prep school. That gave me time to plot. I initially considered teaching and architecture, but the teachers I knew complained about how little they got paid, and the architects said they did not do creative work. What drove my final choice was an acceptance that STEM skills get paid more. My maths teacher had mentioned Actuaries, but most people (including some who choose to study Actuarial Science) do not even know what they are. The kicker was there were bursaries available. Not a sexy career choice, but on the menu. The hardest part is finding out what reliably needs doing, then putting in the effort of building those skills. Look at job adverts. Look at career paths on LinkedIn. Speak to people one step ahead of you on a path open to you. Then, good luck. It is a jungle out there and we do not all have the same tools and choices.

Financial Calm

Financial calm does not require you to be loaded. It comes from a level of confidence that you can cope in three dimensions. 

1) With decisions that take you left or right. 

2) With the unexpected bumps of ups and downs. 

3) With the endurance to keep on keeping on. 

Financial calm can come with belief in your plan. Not a crystal ball that sees the future. Instead planned capacity for futures. When you know you are living within your means, then deep soaking calm builds your strength, flexibility, and control. In a way that radiates through how you move. 

Stress releasing from your muscles and joints. Living within your means allows you to expand the length and smoothness of your inhalation and exhalation. Identifying and building the skills and knowledge needed for a source of income. Overcoming the barriers and securing your container. 

Calm is not the size of the ins and outs. 

Calm is the space between the ins and outs.

Up-Down, Left-Right, Forward-Back

Social Capital

One part of the job search process I do not enjoy is CV writing. As someone who includes “Price is not Value. Salary is not Worth. You are not your Job” as one of his mantras, a CV feels very much like a boastful autobiography. Public Speaking is the best example of where everything works more smoothly when the focus is the content, not the person. When you speak passionately about something you care about, to people who care about it too. Magic. When it is a school oral in front of a class of bored 14-year-old ingrate inmates, no wonder people are scarred for life when they have to present. LinkedIn and Facebook partly solve this, with my tendency to think aloud and befriend strangers. Ideally, as you grow in your career, you are not starting from scratch. You are part of a community. Ex-colleagues, “competitors”, suppliers, clients, classmates and others in my (privileged) network turn it into a team effort. Like the compound interest of investing. Always worth remembering in whatever role you are currently playing.

Tough Crowd

Greener Pastures

I am on the job hunt after a gap from the corporate world. I stepped off the ladder in August 2014 with the intention of letting my engine be the breadwinner, while I focused on things that did not make money. My motivations for returning are complicated. I am also returning to South Africa. Again, a complicated decision. There are always trade-offs, and the grass is seldom greener on the other side. Or if it is, it is because of the fantastic manure you cannot see at a distance. I am not naïve about the challenges of a corporate environment. You can also sell the entrepreneurial world too hard. A lot of people who have rejected the world of money, and the world of work, to pursue their passion… struggle. We hear stories of the successes, but unfortunately not all good ideas are good business ideas. Often advice is what the giver would do in that situation, but forgets that it would not be the giver in the situation. What we know is the world is random, complicated, and ambiguous. The best you can do is put yourself in a position to be able to change your mind.

The Cotswold Way