For what matters: It’s our company’s guiding principle, our mantra, our shared purpose boiled down into three short words. It’s the commitment we make to our team and our clients: We are here to help you achieve the things that matter to you.
Our role isn’t to guide our clients towards a preconceived definition of success. Rather, our role is to truly understand what their definition of success is—and use our expertise to help them achieve it.
What becomes very clear is that financial goals are almost always interwoven with business goals, family goals, life goals.
“Clients will almost never come in with a dollars and cents goal,” says Wealth Partner, Kylie Wright.
“Rarely will a person open with ‘my goal is to have 3 million in super’. Instead, they’ll say things like: ‘I want to retire in 5 years’, or ‘I want to pass my business onto my children’, or ‘I want to look after my grandchildren’s education’. Hearing these things, we begin to piece together the picture of what success looks like through their eyes,” she says.
As any of our advisors will tell you, after a while, listening out for these pearls of insight becomes second-nature—your ears will prick up and your gut will tell you to listen up when these glimpses of people’s true motivations present themselves.
Kelvin Pimm of the Business Insights team knows this well. He works with many clients who, like all of us, are motivated by more than clocking the biggest possible numbers. One client in particular, let’s call him John, comes to mind as an example of what it can mean to help people pursue the goals that matter to them.
John is a fourth generation citrus grower who runs the family’s farming operation. As any grower will tell you, farming is an incredibly volatile industry. And for John, the past few years have been riddled with challenges.
“Take 2023 for example: The farm had absolute record yields, so they were coming into the harvest feeling really excited for what laid ahead—the fruit looked great, and there was a lot of it,” says Kelvin.
“But this was true for plenty of other farms across the country too—so with an oversupply of great fruit, the farm just wasn’t getting the prices they hoped for,” he says.
Kelvin says that the varying factors at play resulted in the bank suggesting that it might be time to sell off and begin enjoying the metaphorical fruit from decades of labour.
“His bank told him that essentially he would be better off selling out of the farming game. He could put all that money into a bank account and spend the rest of his days relaxing on a beach, if he wanted to,” he says.
Kelvin agrees that there is some truth in this. Considering the turbulent recent history, the returns from such a large sum in the bank may well be healthier than what’s coming from the current operations.
“But this advice misses an important point: John doesn’t want to do that,” says Kelvin.
“He doesn’t want to sit around and do nothing. He is so passionate about what he does—so passionate about making sure that Australia continues to grow our own food and has food self-sufficiency,” he says.
Kelvin captures John’s aspirations in artful simplicity: “He wants to grow mandarins for the country to enjoy—that is what he cares about more than anything”.
“So it’s our team’s responsibility to really focus on driving the changes that will generate healthy returns, so John can keep the farm running and keep doing the work he’s so passionate about,” says Kelvin.
And that’s exactly what Kelvin and the team are doing. By identifying and understanding areas of overspending, helping John truly ‘know the numbers’, and investing in strengthening the farm’s financial literacy, Kelvin has begun to see the rewards of his team’s investment.
“Even just comparing the January–April period of this year against last year’s—it’s night and day. They are really putting a big effort into reducing unnecessary costs, which is so important to keep the farm sustainable and help John achieve the ambitions he has for himself,” says Kelvin.
At the heart of it, John’s story is about staying true to what matters most to him. In this example, John has set the direction—and it’s our role to use our financial expertise and insight to navigate him towards his north star.
This is what ‘for what matters’ really means. It’s about being there for our clients, not just to offer advice but to understand what truly drives them—and then, help them get there.