Vivian Goh: 00:02 The coaching space really emerged because the market is demanding it. Because a service wouldn’t exist without the market demanding it.
Fraser Jack: 00:16 Hello and welcome to the Goals-based Advice podcast. We have conversations with pioneers of the new world of financial advice. I’m your host Fraser Jack, I want to thank you so much for tuning in today. Big shout out to all the feedback and reviews that we’ve received so far. Really appreciate it. Thank you.
In this episode I chat with Vivian Goh from Simple Wealth Coaching. It was transitioning from being a financial planner, to a wealth coach. Viv shares her journey and why she felt the need to let her authorized representative status go in favor of dedicating herself to a new craft. We chat about the differences between coaching and advice and how the two can coexist. This episode really unfolds what the new profession may look like, from a consumer point of view. And if you’re enjoying this podcast, please help me spread the word and share it with your friends and colleagues.
I’d also to thank our supporting partner Advice Intelligence. for powering this podcast. Let’s hit play on my chat with Vivian now.
Welcome to the show, Vivian.
Vivian Goh: 01:18 Hi, Fraser. Thanks for having me.
Fraser Jack: 01:20 Oh, it’s a pleasure, and so great to have you actually. Tell me, do you want to give us a very quick overview, just a quick overview of just what you’re doing at the moment.
Vivian Goh: 01:31 Just for the audience, I am a wealth coach at the moment, so I started my own business called Simple Wealth Coaching, and that’s evolved from years and years of being in the finance industry and then becoming a financial advisor. And now I’ve moved into wealth coaching, which is in simple terms, it’s like money orientated life coach.
Fraser Jack: 01:57 Very good. I love the name too by the way, Simple Wealth Coaching. It tells your clients that you don’t need too crazy complicated. Straight up.
Vivian Goh: 02:07 Yeah, that’s the whole point. I think for a lot of people, when you think about money or budgeting or anything finances, all very complicated, and the whole point of the business is to actually make it as simple as possible so that most people can actually start wherever they are at.
Fraser Jack: 02:26 Okay, great. Now do you want to take us back to the beginning of your journey. Where did that start for you?
Vivian Goh: 02:36 Beginning, I guess I can start from even before going into university. I think I’ve been brought up by a family that has always emphasized on the importance of money, and how I’ve seen my parents kind of struggled through periods of time when there’s not much income coming in, or they’re struggling with expenses. So, I can kind of see how that’s important to have a good foundation.
I went into university, studied accounting and banking and finance. And when I graduated, still find that I don’t actually know much about money. And I look around and look at my friends. People were scoring distinctions, high distinctions and everything, but when it comes to personal finance, how do you actually manage money? It took me a long time to figure that out, through myself and also working with different clients and understanding that everyone has different personalities and different stories, different beliefs. They like to spend things differently or they might prefer a different job that’s earning different level of income. So there’s a lot of things that one is thought in uni or in school.
So, basically Simple Wealth Coaching is a burst of that really, the journey that I’ve gone through and what I find that’s the most basic important things for anyone to really get ahead financially.
Fraser Jack: 04:11 It’s interesting isn’t it, that the technical aspect of it can be learnt fairly, I don’t want to say easily, but it can be learned in a way that’s all makes sense and perfectly reasonable. And then behaviors and habits and all these other things get in the way, and what people actually do isn’t necessarily what they should be doing. So then you decided to become a financial advisor. How did that happen?
Vivian Goh: 04:41 Once I graduated, then I started working in real estate, kind of figure out I don’t really enjoy the crowd that I was in, in the real estate industry. It’s so much more about just the sale. Not so much about the client. And then moved into superannuation. I worked in Hostplus actually. Probably most people in this podcast would have heard of Hostplus, because of Barefoot Investor. I worked there for a while, then I bumped into a financial advisor and kind of explained what he did. I shadowed him for a while. I’m like, “This is great. This is really actually getting into what’s really important, because everyone deals with money every day.” So it really peaked my interest in.
So I studied deployment, financial planning, advanced diploma, and start to learn more about how I can help people to set up foundations and plans for their future. So that’s how I got into financial planning.
Fraser Jack: 05:43 Fantastic. And how long were you an advisor for?
Vivian Goh: 05:46 Close to five years.
Fraser Jack: 05:50 And then you decided that you wanted to specialize really in the coaching side more so than the advice side?
Vivian Goh: 05:58 Yeah. That happened because of two reasons. The first one is when I was working as a financial advisor ... So I’m working in a great firm, [inaudible 00:06:12] Wealth previously, that’s focused on goal-based advice. I find it going through the process, a lot of the clients that comes to us probably the more complex strategy. And the ones that are everyday Australian, saved up a little bit of money, they may not actually find the value in paying the price for a full scope financial advise. Or they may find that it’s actually quite overwhelming to have an advisor to go through, “Let’s change your budget, let’s change your super, insurance and everything.”
So, from a price point and also the overwhelming service point of view, I find that a lot of people just kind of say no to financial advice, and they are left with Bedford investor or kind of going on to seminars or just reading stuff online on your own. So hence that’s why I started Simple Wealth Coaching.
The second thing was actually around the coaching side of things. So even though money is an object we can plan and whatnot, but everyone has different thoughts and feelings and emotions and beliefs around it. Sometimes I find a lot of the times that’s even more important than getting a plan in place. It’s to actually understand what’s really going on for the person, when they relate with money. Because most of the time, if you ask people what do they think about money, the emotions that actually come up or the state is mostly negative.
Fraser Jack: 07:55 Yeah, it really is a fascinating field. And of course as you mentioned, great financial planning firm, big shout out to Corey, who is a supporter of this podcast, thank you Corey.
So it’s an interesting one for a lot of firms in the same position, looking at how do you create wealth coaching and financial advice. And financial advice as you mentioned for the consumer is a fairly large process, it’s not easy to provide, it’s certainly not low cost to provide and [crosstalk 00:08:30] paying a fair amount of money to get financial advice. So it’s certainly not easy for financial advisors.
I really liked what you talked about there with regards to really focusing on the emotional side of how people react. What are some of these emotions that you get? You mentioned that some of them were negative, but what are some of the things that you see a lot?
Vivian Goh: 08:52 Yes. Common ones, emotions would be guilt when it comes to especially budgeting, really guilty of setting something and not being able to actually stick with it. Shame as well. That’s actually more common than we actually think. So not really wanting people to know. I think it’s because also money because it’s such a taboo topic, and all of us, actually most of us, even graduating from university, we kind of have to stumble along the way and learn it ourselves and we probably get burned a few times.
The human brain is fascinating. It actually captures those negative emotions and state and sometimes as a belief even, and we’re just not completely aware of it and have it around following us as we make financial decisions moving forward. So part of that is to have a space to feel comfortable in exploring that.
Fraser Jack: 10:05 I was just going to ask you about that actually, because I’d have to say I agree. The guilt and the shame, or the fear of people judging you around some of those past decisions that are made. And I guess we’re all humans. We’ve all made our lousy financial decisions from time to time.
Vivian Goh: 10:23 Yes.
Fraser Jack: 10:23 I think anybody listening to this podcast is certainly that we can all feel empathy with that. But how do you get, because it is a difficult thing to talk about, especially to somebody else and obviously somebody that you may have just met for example. So how do you broach that conversation, that subject with your clients and give them that safe space to have a conversation with you?
Vivian Goh: 10:47 It’s unbiased listening, really being there for them. No judgment whatsoever, and anyone is free to bring up anything that is on your mind. So that is the most important thing. So I don’t start my first conversations with, “Let’s just get your income, or your asset liabilities everything on a piece of paper.” It’s like, “Those are strategies, we can deal with that later. What’s just on your mind? Let’s just have a chat.” And that’s it. Listening and really asking questions that are obvious in dealing with clients, to follow them, and if they say something like beliefs, just be really in listening and ask questions around it.
And I find that all the clients manage to find me or announces, there’s no need for me to tell them whatsoever. We human beings are really smart. When you ask enough questions, and after a few continuous questions, I kind of just repeat the answers to them, they’re like, “That doesn’t make sense. No, that’s not what I want.” “Okay. Then what is it?” It’s just really natural flow. And I think that’s what’s actually missing in the finance industry, is that, we go to school, we learn about this is what finance is, this is what money is, and it’s all quite solution kind of driven without kind of incorporating the human side. So this is what’s different from my end in wealth coaching.
Fraser Jack: 12:40 Yeah. There’s obviously many differences and we’ll get to those in a moment around coaching and teaching or advising and coaching really being just asking questions and letting your client come up with the right answers for them, as opposed to telling them what to do. But before we get there, just you want to run through ... You mentioned before I wasn’t quite sure, do you work with singles or couples or do you ... If you’re working with a couple, do you work with them individually first and then, or how do you work in that space?
Vivian Goh: 13:10 So mostly my clients are single or in a relationship, but they’re starting to look into your finances on your own. So it doesn’t mean that you’re a couple, you definitely need both of you to be there. Whoever is ready can start planning and looking into it. And that’s it.
There are couples as well, but not as many.
Fraser Jack: 13:35 Okay. I like that idea of whoever’s ready, because it really does need to be. They need to be ready to start having those conversations, don’t they?
Vivian Goh: 13:42 100%. I always have clients asking me, “I really want my partner to get into this, but you’re not listening.” And it’s like, that’s their choice, and it’s your choice to be here too. So allow them to have their choice, but focus on what you can control, which is yourself and what you want to do with your money. If you want to plan and whatnot.
Fraser Jack: 14:04 I love that same focus on one you can control. Because often in the financial advice process, a lot of the time the consumer can’t control many aspects of the process. Especially how markets behave or how products work. So certainly the focusing on what they can control is really what they earn and what they spend, right?
Vivian Goh: 14:25 Yeah, absolutely.
Fraser Jack: 14:28 We might dive a little bit more into this piece around the differences between coaching and advice, and I know there’s many of them. What’s the main aspects you see?
Vivian Goh: 14:40 The main one is so for coaching I’ve already explained it’s more around life coaching and following the clients. That’s just beginning of the process. The structure actually comes in later in terms of what you need to do with budgeting and whatnot. And the second thing is around product recommendations. So advisers can recommend products. They operate under a Australian financial services license. These are authorized representatives. So I’m not, and I don’t give advice on what product is good for clients, but I can explain financial concepts and what’s available out there, or what they need to do is they want to do research on your superannuation fund, things like that. Giving them guidance around that.
There’s plenty of resources on moneysmart.gov.au already, for anyone to really get a hang of financial concepts easily. So I kind of use that and help them, and also refer them to the right connections, if they’re ready for investment property and whatnot, I would have referred them to someone. I could even refer them to a financial advisor. So there’s overlapping, but we don’t actually replace each other. So I think product recommendation, that’s a big one as well. And in terms of cost, that’s another big one, another reason why I started Simple Wealth Coaching. So on average you would’ve seen the figures, in [inaudible 00:16:20] report before. The FDA did a report as well. If you want to see a financial advisor, marriage fees would be a couple of thousands to start with. Yep, so my fees would be on a much ... It’s going to be much less than that.
Fraser Jack: 16:31 Yeah. So there’s certainly ... Fees is a major difference between the two and the cost to serve as coaching is a little less than financial advice. But I do also see them being very much working together with advisors. If advisors just want to specialize and just do certain pieces of advice, then working with someone who’s looking at the coaching aspects or side of it would be really, really valuable.
Vivian Goh: 17:05 Yeah, absolutely. And that’s the whole point, right? Because I spent the last three years myself in the coaching environment. I hired coaches, I’ve studied about it, used it myself to others. So there’s time invested into developing the skills. So for advisors that are really, really good at what they’re already doing and not wanting to do the coaching side, it’s how we could work together.
Fraser Jack: 17:36 Now take me through a typical coaching process. So firstly, where and how would you find your ideal client?
Vivian Goh: 17:47 So at this stage at the moment, I am actually doing just purely from word of mouth really. So from existing clients, friends. It’s funny because people don’t know that such a service exists. So until I start speaking up about it, then they go, “Oh really? So that sounds more like my type of service. Can I have a conversation?” So it’s currently kind of unfolding naturally, but moving forward in the future is to collaborate with more wealth and money coaches in Australia to run more workshops, because there are a lot of people out there that probably haven’t got financial advice because of all those reasons that I talked about. And this would be a good service for them.
They might find that this is enough, they might go at a particular point that they want to get financial advice and you’re ready for that, then you can move on with the financial advisor.
Fraser Jack: 18:54 Yeah, there certainly needs to be some education in the marketplace around the idea of financial coaching. Obviously it’s a fairly new industry as far as typical industries are concerned. So consumers don’t know all about it and how it works, the benefits are there, we should use a fair bit of education to get out there.
Vivian Goh: 19:14 Absolutely. And also one other thing is, you know, for most financial advisors to know that my service exists, that’s really important. So there’s still a lot of education required around that because, so far, most of the advisors that I spoke to, they had no clue what I do. I need to spend time telling them this is what the service is, and they get a little bit confused. “Are you trying to take clients away from me?” But it’s actually quite a different service and these whole point that I actually left financial advice is to cater to those clients. So moving forward there’s definitely a lot of opportunities to get advisors to understand how wealth coaching can actually compliment financial advice industry as a whole.
Fraser Jack: 20:04 And I think it’s such a beneficial piece for the consumer or the client, that advisors really need to make the decision. Do they do it themselves, or get somebody in house to do it? Or do they partner with somebody who can do it and have that working relationship with them.
Vivian Goh: 20:21 Yeah, absolutely.
Fraser Jack: 20:23 You find clients a lot of word of mouth. Then what’s your process from there? Do you have a initial catch up, a first meeting? How does that work?
Vivian Goh: 20:35 My meetings are done 100% online, and we’ll have an initial phone call or 15 minutes and we kind of get a good vibe. We’ll book a first 30 minute session together to have that initial conversation. And then from that 30 minutes conversation, you’ll be able to decide whether they want to go ahead for a full wealth coaching package, which is four sessions that have to be completed within two to three months.
Mainly around helping clients. There’s two types of clients that I help with, have worked with the most. One is really stop them from get out of living paycheck to paycheck, and being able to build that emergency fund and start saving. And then once you’ve kind of nailed that foundation, then is the second one, which is what’s next. How do you work on projections? How do you know how much you need to put aside? And there’s plenty of tools online and different financial concepts or investments that they can look into. Or if not, if they want to go into even working with Robo advice as well. That’s going to be a big part of I think what we want to do. Because I think we’re in this space where we have technology to actually help us.
Now we’re doing this podcast in you’re somewhere else in Australia and I’m in Melbourne. The Robo advice that’s going to really make people start investing much earlier than they thought they could. Take away a lot of the cost and uncertainty. So I think that’s going to be one of the future of financial advice for sure, to have humans.
Fraser Jack: 22:34 I agree. I think that the Robo advice could be a little bit of a stepping stone for people to start, and then when they start getting a little bit more complex and they might reach out and pay for an advisor. Now just on the 30 minute session you mentioned, say a 15 minute phone call catch up, then you have a 30 minute session, you find out a little bit more about them and obviously describe to the client what your services are. You don’t charge for that 30 minute session?
Vivian Goh: 23:02 No.
Fraser Jack: 23:04 So after that session they’ll give you the go ahead, it’s either for them or it’s not for them, I guess, at that point?
Vivian Goh: 23:11 Yeah, that’s right.
Fraser Jack: 23:13 And then you sign up for your foundation, essentially four sessions, which is really your foundation stuff. You’re really just helping people get over that paycheck to paycheck zone, is that correct?
Vivian Goh: 23:25 Yes. They can come to me, either they are looking for that, getting out of paycheck to paycheck or they would go, “”I’ve actually nailed my budget, but I want to see if I can do better, and wished I put the savings that I have.” So that’s two different categories of clients that I usually help with.
Fraser Jack: 23:49 And so that’s the four session package. And location independent, amazing, I love it too, by the way. I’ve been able to help people all around Australia or even globally, I guess for that matter.
Vivian Goh: 24:06 Yeah, absolutely. At the moment I’m focusing in Australia, but I can see that this could be international easily. There are money coaches that do this globally. So definitely possible.
Fraser Jack: 24:23 And so after that four sessions, do you then look at something after that or is that once the four sessions are done, it’s sort of see you later, good luck?
Vivian Goh: 24:36 No, it’s up to the client really on what they actually need. So the whole point is to be able to fully support a client at whatever they need so they can either buy further sessions or they can go on a monthly, 12 monthly programs so that they can stay in touch with someone to be accountable, or an accountable buddy.
Fraser Jack: 24:58 Nice. And it’s just one-on-one conversations with you, because it’s direct coaching with you. Do you do any groups or classes like that or even in the online courses?
Vivian Goh: 25:08 Yeah, that’s potentially in the future. At this stage it’s going to be one-on-one. But who knows, that might actually happen quicker than I expect. We’ll see. That’s definitely on the cards, yeah.
Fraser Jack: 25:25 And as the business itself does evolve, do you want to talk us about ... Like at the moment it’s just you, what are your plans for growing the business or scaling?
Vivian Goh: 25:34 So, a step at a time. That’s what I would say. Really focus on getting, not really getting, focusing on doing well and really finding the results or the outcomes that the clientele that I’m serving, and you’re more of live face. So really helping them to find out ways that they can use money to live a more fulfilled and sufficient lives. Because sometimes I think a lot of my clients are, they don’t even want, “Let’s go for the next big thing.” It’s just like, “I just want to know that I’ll be fine. I just want to know I don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck. If I can save and I’m actually putting money away enough to continue to do more of the stuff that I want, not having to worry.”
So my main focus is really on that at the moment, and to focus on bringing any tools or upskilling my own coaching skills to help people to get there as quick as possible and the rest will kind of spread. Having that said, my partner Johnny, he’s a big supporter of what I’m doing as well. He’s a coach himself and he works in finance. So potentially in the future he might jump in and help out [crosstalk 00:27:11] this. Not that he’s not already doing it on the back end.
Fraser Jack: 27:14 Yeah. I really love the idea of just focusing on quality to start with rather than quantity and making sure that you’re getting great results and you can tick those off. Are you spending any time with your clients helping them set goals?
Vivian Goh: 27:28 Yeah, definitely goals. But it’s not the first place that we go start with, and that’s really important. So the first part is having a conversation around your money story, relationship beliefs. It’s amazing how things can even shift without even getting into the dollar figures. It’s just the thought and emotion around money. And then from there, looking into their values and then moving onto goals. So before even we get to goals, there’s two other stages before we get to goals.
Fraser Jack: 28:08 I absolutely agree, that mindset and then values. I think that most of the goals stem out of values and we always find that if you do jump straight to goals and you just ask about goals, it’s really hard for people to come up with their goals until they’ve cleared their mind of the other stuff.
Vivian Goh: 28:24 And plus, the most important thing is if you start with goals a lot of times, the goals that are shared by clients, they usually quite empty. What I mean by that is, you get goals that are, “My friend or my parents said that this should be the goal. I should buy a house. I read The Barefoot Investor and I think that this is it.” But if we’re going to start with just exploring your personal, your own life story, your beliefs, and then from there uncover what we going to uncover, then move on to values, them as a person. Just values is what’s motivating a person. That’s it, It’s values. We are all driven by what we value.
Because no one’s going to listen to this podcast if they didn’t value what I have to say today, what we have to share today. So value is everything. Then only move on to goals. Without that, goals will not work. Eventually the person will find out.
Fraser Jack: 29:25 They’ve kind of just say that you are providing exceptional value to the listeners by the way, just to let you know. But I love what you said about empty goals. Goals that are around other people, and being able to connect that goal back to their personal value, their personal why and understand that it’s interesting process to go through. Because sometimes I find you have to ask the client to be selfish in that space, and just think about why did they specifically want that thing. How do you go about that?
Vivian Goh: 30:02 Can you explain a little bit further? What do you mean by being selfish around [crosstalk 00:30:06]?
Fraser Jack: 30:05 Yes. When people come up with an empty goal, they want to buy a house because their parents want them to type thing.
Vivian Goh: 30:11 Yeah, sure.
Fraser Jack: 30:14 And just really making sure that it’s brought back to them, and how it is.
Vivian Goh: 30:18 Yeah.
Fraser Jack: 30:19 What sort of questioning and conversations, and how do you bring that back to them? If somebody presents to you an empty goal?
Vivian Goh: 30:28 Yeah, sure. It’s usually really easy to spot because an empty goal is there’s not much energy in it. It’s like, “I think I want to invest.” It’s just la La la, but if the first two steps are actually done well, if I’ve listened to the client really well, and we’ve established and understand okay there’s some unuseful beliefs here, do you want to keep them, okay not really. Okay. What would you like to do with it? They come up with the answers, and then we move on to values. What do you really value?
So by that point they are actually quite clear. They would have had a lot of aha moments to go, “You know the goal that I told you about that I want to buy a house before? I don’t think it’s there anymore.” They would move on to something else. “Actually, what I really, really want is,” and they would say what that is. And I’ll ask more questions to kind of guide them to kind of get a more specific and timeframe, orientated goal that are important to them.
Fraser Jack: 31:38 And it would sound something what I really, really want is ...
Vivian Goh: 31:45 Exactly. That’s exactly right.
Fraser Jack: 31:48 Good. And then once you’ve got that down, how do you go about then helping them set those goals?
Vivian Goh: 31:56 So using what resources they have and found out what’s the gap, so what they need. And I just have to ask the questions. They would just tell me, “Okay I don’t even know if I’m budgeting right.” “Okay. Let’s just start with that then.” So you see the conversation is so much more driven by what’s really needed, the biggest problem that’s on your mind that they can’t figure out, and I’ll kind of provide the guidance along the way.
Fraser Jack: 32:24 Brilliant. And then you can also refer them if they did want to buy a house after all-
Vivian Goh: 32:28 Yeah.
Fraser Jack: 32:30 [crosstalk 00:32:30] other people [crosstalk 00:32:31] off for the other foundations around estate planning and risk and those sorts of financial advice or super?
Vivian Goh: 32:40 Yeah. That’s right. And if their client is a person that’s like, I actually don’t need someone to recommend product and they want to go research on their own, it’s like, okay, do you know how to compare and research, know what’s best for you? No. Do you know where to start? Okay, there’s just a few places that you should go. So it’s really just keep handing them tools as they move on.
Fraser Jack: 33:08 There’s a lot of places people can go for self-help if they want to go down that road. And often people might try that first and then either get whenever they needed to sorted, or they might just turn around and go, no, I want to get someone to do it for me.
Vivian Goh: 33:20 That’s right.
Fraser Jack: 33:21 There’s a lot of change going on in the advice space at the moment, and there’s a lot of growth happening in the coaching space. How do you see these two working side by side in the near future?
Vivian Goh: 33:39 The coaching space really emerged because the market is demanding it. Because a service wouldn’t exist without the market demanding it. So we’ve kind of moved to a point where yes, financial advice can do all of this stuff. And at the same time there’s also a group of people that probably find there’s distrust in financial advice industry in itself. They need time to heal that trust, that distrust. So, wealth coaching can be a good space for that.
Fraser Jack: 34:21 So if we fast forward a few years and we’re thinking about how this might look with a full industry of wealth coaching for example, and that being a known thing for consumers, as maybe a pre-step towards financial advice. How do you see it looking over the mid term?
Vivian Goh: 34:41 So with wealth coaching, when you say mid term, for it to be established as an industry itself, I would say ... Because in America it’s big already. But here it’s like, what? Wealth coaching? So for here, I think probably in the next five, 10 years at least to have industry in wealth coaching. And in terms of advisors coming into wealth coaching as well, we’re already seeing that trend on one of them.
Fraser Jack: 35:25 I think there’s probably going to be a few more people. Maybe not listening to this or even listening to this, that are in that space now. But they need to make a decision whether they stay as a authorized rep or actually venture into something coaching and do that pre piece where you’re actually working with people’s emotions and their ideas and their beliefs, their limiting beliefs and any past baggage. And then hand them to a financial advisor in that space. I think there might be a lot of people thinking about doing exactly what you’ve just done.
Vivian Goh: 36:02 Yeah. And the thing about it is not even that it could potentially prepare clients to go into financial advice, but what if your clients that already are in the business, in financial advice and how do they figure out why is this couple both earning six figure incomes, and still going backwards in credit card debt? We’ve seen it before. It’s real. Even though we don’t see them on newspapers, just that everyone is hiding it underneath the carpet. They’re not saying it, but when you ask financial advisors, yes, things like this do exist. They’re quite common. So maybe those clients actually then need to sit down with a wealth coach to [crosstalk 00:36:48] actually ...
Fraser Jack: 36:48 This is a really interesting point. So I guess if a financial advisor looks at their current client base, there’s probably a lot of people in there that would be screaming out for this sort of service.
Vivian Goh: 36:59 Absolutely. 100%. There are things that should traditional advice or just the goal-based and then strategy-based, and let me coach your behavior, which is just the outside action. It’s not enough. It’s something else inside that the clients need to feel comfortable and ready to explore it and wealth coaching is that space.
Fraser Jack: 37:31 Yeah. I love it. It’s almost a therapy. I love it. So tell me what tips do you give to consumers that you’re talking to about maybe thinking about getting coaching. What tips do you give to them? If you saw them in a social occasion?
Vivian Goh: 37:45 Try doing on your own first. Try everything on your own. If it really doesn’t work, then find out what service is right for you. So not 100% of clients that contact me would say definitely yes. Maybe in the future we quite clear when the wealth coaching or money coaching industry is really established, and people kind of know exactly I’m definitely going to go to wealth coaching. I’m definitely going to a financial advisor. But at this stage is to do it yourself and then if it’s not working, it’s okay, you can seek help. Just find out what’s the right service for you.
Fraser Jack: 38:25 Excellent. What tips would you give to an advisor at the moment listening to this and wondering about getting into coaching or even joining a coach?
Vivian Goh: 38:37 Joining a coach? What are you waiting for? Start already. If you even have that thought in your head, that means there’s something inside you that is speaking to you., “Hey, perhaps this service is resonating to who I am, more so than financial advice.” It might be a realization, if in that thought is in your head, then it’s just to start. Speak to people that are already in the industry and start coaching. Learn more about what coaching is. There are institutions out there that there focus is on money coaching, or you can do a live coaching and apply your skills that you already have with finance on it, just combine them together, which is what I did. So ... Yeah-
Fraser Jack: 39:34 Yeah, it goes [crosstalk 00:39:34] yeah. I like that idea of listen to the voices in your head. Sounds great. If the thought’s in there, it already exists, then listen to them.
Vivian Goh: 39:46 Exactly.
Fraser Jack: 39:48 A final question that I ask everybody is, what tips or advice would you give yourself if you could go back in time, and give yourself some tips on your journey?
Vivian Goh: 40:02 To think it’s nothing because most of the biggest challenges and struggles in my life has been my biggest learnings. So for me to go back and be God and say, “Don’t do this. Or do this, this step that will bring you to the next stage.” That would have just kind of probably have the reverse effect I think.
Fraser Jack: 40:37 Great answer. I resonate with the idea that most of your struggles are learnings. And if you don’t learn from them then they were a struggle, but if you learn from them, then you’ve actually taken the positive out of it.
Vivian Goh: 40:52 There’s the way that reality of like, if you’re challenging and you still don’t listen and do something about it, it would just shake your world even harder until we listen. So that’s how it works. Anyone that’s listening really, if you’re struggling or having any challenges, is actually a great opportunity. Because you may have actually find your boundaries of your comfort zone, and there’s time for something to kind of switch and then it expands.
Fraser Jack: 41:28 Brilliant. Thank you. Words of wisdom. Now if somebody wants to continue the conversation with you, how can they get a hold of you?
Vivian Goh: 41:36 They can come to my website, that’s simplewealthcoaching.com.au. Or, you can send me an email at vivian@simplewealthcoaching.com.au. Vivian, it’s V-I-V-I-A-N.
Fraser Jack: 41:52 Very good. Thank you. Simple Wealth Coaching, check it out. So thank you so much for coming on the show today and having a chat and a catch up with me, and sharing your amazing journey.
Vivian Goh: 42:02 No, thanks Fraser, you’ve been great.
Fraser Jack: 42:04 Thanks Viv.
Vivian Goh: 42:05 Thanks.
Fraser Jack: 42:06 If you haven’t already, I’d love you to subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice. And to continue the conversation, head over to our social media channels. We’ll catch you next time.
Disclaimer: This document is a transcription obtained through a third party. There is no claim to accuracy on the content provided in this document, and divergence from the audio file are to be expected. As a transcription, this is not a legal document in itself, and should not be considered binding to advice intelligence, but merely a convenience for reference.
