Verona Ritossa AFP® made an undertaking two years ago to improve her business by improving her own wellbeing.

Verona Ritossa AFP^®

Position:
Financial planner

Practice:
Search Planning

Licensee:
Charter Financial Planning

Years as a planner:
10 years

Two years ago, Verona Ritossa AFP^® struggled to walk a couple of kilometres along the beach. She freely admits to having been overweight and not as active as she would have liked to have been. If you has asked her then if she’d be tackling some of the world’s most challenging hikes, she would have laughed you off.

Back then, Verona realised that her health and wellness were negatively affecting her – both personally and professionally.

So, she did something about it, by committing to a program of health improvement. It’s been an undertaking that has not only improved her own physical and mental health, but has substantially improved the way she now runs her business and engages with clients – and all in just two years.

It’s been a remarkable transformation for the 44-year-old sole practitioner of Adelaide-based planning practice, Search Planning.

In that time, Verona has tackled the Owen Stanley Range and countless ravines as she walked the Kokoda Trail. And last month, she trekked to Mt Everest Base Camp in Nepal.

But Verona is the first to admit she hasn’t become a hard-core fitness junkie.

“As we get older, it’s easy to put on a few extra kilos and fall into a more sedentary lifestyle. That’s what happened to me. But I could see that my personal and professional life was suffering because of my unhealthy and inactive life choices. I realised that things had to change, and that meant improving my health and wellness, which has greatly benefited my business.

“Today, when I’m focused on my health and wellbeing it provides me with a clear headspace, which enables me to work at my peak,” Verona says.

“I think the term ‘work-life-balance’ means something completely different for each person. But I think it’s very important for practitioners to work out their own ‘work-life-balance’, to ensure they are actually spending time on themselves and not just on their business. If they get that balance right, then they, their clients and their business will be the better for it.”

The wake-up call she needed

Verona’s journey to better health and wellness really began two years ago, when she opted-in to the AIA Vitality Executive Wellness Program – a 12 week behavioural coaching program to help financial planners improve their personal health and wellbeing, as well as the health of their business and their clients’ wellbeing, through a lifestyle and wellbeing value proposition and advice offering.

The program featured a series of workshops, with topics covering personal effectiveness and productivity, business strategy and value, and client engagement solutions.

The program also taught Verona strategic leadership skills that enabled her to enhance the value of her business.

These included:

• how to make smarter choices about growth through better strategic conversations;
• how to recognise and play to strengths; and
• how to create innovation and new perspectives on current business challenges.

Along with being guided through the process of designing her client segmentation model and developing an improved client value proposition, importantly, the program also showed Verona how to integrate a lifestyle and wellbeing framework into her service offering.

Having successfully completed the program, she is now an advocate, saying it helped her change her business and personal life for the better, including better equipping her with the ability to have deeper conversations with the clients of Search Planning.

“At the time of signing up to this program, I was overweight, inactive and I was struggling with my business. But by participating in the program, it really made me realise I had to do something to change the way I approached my business.”

Verona was particularly impressed by the wellbeing component of the program, which prompted a visit to her doctor for a health check. This proved to be one of those epiphany moments and was the wake-up call she needed.

“It was then that I made the decision to change my lifestyle, and improve my health and wellness. That’s when I decided to walk the Kokoda Trail, with that trip being my kick-start to get into shape.”

Two years on, it’s this ‘goals-based’ approach to reaching personal targets that has helped Verona stay mentally and physically fit. Now, Verona hikes three times a week and regularly works out with her personal trainer, as well as hitting the gym.

“I dedicate time every day to fitness. This is ‘my’ time, where I take time out for myself,” she says. “My fitness and wellbeing program provides me with the clear headspace I need to function at my peak within the business. It also gives me the opportunity to relax and de-stress from my busy life.”

It’s all about support

Making a commitment to improved wellness doesn’t have to be onerous. Verona made small changes over time, which has enabled her today to spend between 60 and 80 minutes each weekday working on her fitness regime, while on the weekend she sets aside 2-3 hours – something she wouldn’t have considered previously.

But making the decision to get fit and improve your own wellbeing is the easy part. Actually doing it and then remaining focused on your regime is the hard part – a point not lost on Verona.

While the AIA Vitality Executive Wellness Program has been a good incentive for her to re-energise her personal and professional life, Verona also relies on additional external resources to keep her focused.

“I have a personal trainer who I meet with twice or three times a week. We also work together on my fitness and nutrition. It’s a great relationship for keeping me on track with my goals.”

She emphasises the importance of any practitioner considering implementing their own health and wellness program to firstly, be in the right frame of mind to commit to such an undertaking and secondly, to partner with people who are going to emotionally support you through your journey.

“Whether that’s family members, friends or associated professionals, like a personal trainer. It’s so important to partner with the right people who also have a positive attitude to the goals you are wanting to achieve,” she says.

Living the now

So, with her improved health and ongoing wellness program firmly in place, how does Verona actually ‘live what she says’, by ensuring the wellbeing advice she gives her clients also applies to her?

“It’s in what I try and do every day,” she says. “I take time out for myself every day and I explain to my clients about the importance of their own health and wellbeing. Financial planning isn’t just about the money and the end result. It’s also about ‘living the now’.

“Work shouldn’t always come first. It’s important for clients to take time out for themselves and their family, and try and achieve a balance that works best for them. When I talk to my clients, I’m not actually telling them something that I’m not doing myself – and that’s incredibly important.”

Verona is confident that her personal approach to health and wellness is enabling her to build stronger relationships and improve conversations with her clients, helping her redefine her business.

“I’ve always spoken to my clients about life being a balance,” she says. “I spend a lot more time with my clients talking about balance, not just between work and life, but also between their short-term and long-term goals. We talk about what’s going to make them happy now, which means separating their short-term goals from their long-term aspirations.”

For Verona, it’s important that her client conversations are not just about long-term financial planning for retirement. She believes it’s just as important to talk to clients about their short-term goals and the aspirations that provide them with quality of life along the way.

“Retirement planning shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all goal of the financial planning process,” she says. “Rather, financial planning is a journey we embark upon with our clients, helping them with their aspirations along the way.

“And while goals are important for clients, some short-term goals are just not achievable or financially responsible to take, in which case, I’m the first to let clients know. But if a goal is achievable, like an overseas family holiday, then it’s about building these goals into their plan. Short-term living is just as important as long-term saving.”

It’s this approach to goal-setting, which Verona has fine-tuned herself over the past two years, which she attributes to changing the way she now converses with clients.

“Goal-setting has been a real eye-opener for me, both personally and for how I view my own business. For me, it’s not just about big business growth. Instead, it’s also about enjoying life along the way. That means recognising what’s important to you and being true to that.”

She adds: “As financial planners, we tell our clients they need to set goals, otherwise they won’t reach them. So, having goals – like improved health and wellness – is just as important in a practitioner’s personal life, as they are for their clients. You need to practise what you preach.”

A life-changing experience

Verona is clearly delighted by the results of implementing her health and wellness regime – both personally and professionally.

“Two years ago I would have struggled to walk a couple of kilometres along the beach. Now, I’ve walked the Kokoda Trail and I’ve just returned from having walked to Mt Everest Base Camp in Nepal,” she says.

“So, for me, it’s been amazing. It’s changed the way I approach and deal with problems. It’s also changed my priorities, so the adage, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’, really resonates with me. I’m more focused on what’s important for me – at home and within my business.”

Verona agrees that her journey over the last two years has been a “total life changer”. By stepping back and focusing on her own physical and emotional wellbeing, Verona is now able to more clearly separate what’s truly important to her and what’s not.

“I’ve stopped comparing myself against what everybody else thinks my personal life and business should look like. And that’s been a wonderful step to take. So now, I’ve been able to build my business the way I want it to be and I’m living my life the way I want to,” she says. “You can say, ‘I’m living the now’.”

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Executive Wellness

The AIA Vitality Executive Wellness Program is a 12 week behavioural coaching program to help financial advisers improve their personal health and wellbeing, as well as the health of their business and their clients’ wellbeing, through a lifestyle and wellbeing value proposition and advice offer.

The program runs twice a year and encourages financial planners to utilise health and wellness as inspiration to grow personally and professionally.

The program is broken into three stages, each running over a four week period.

They include:

Stage 1

• Discuss what client’s really desire within their lives and identifies what defines a ‘life well lived’;
• Looks at where the financial planner is today with stress, business management and health. Planners are confronted with their own honesty and realisation that potentially things need to change for them;
• Teaches planners to work to their own personal energy levels and working preferences to gain greater performance within their day;
• Encourages planners to teach others around them the same learning to drive business efficiency;
• Starts the planner’s personal exposure to health and wellness programs that they are now having to discuss with clients on a daily basis; and
• Starts the planner on their personal journey to a ‘life well lived’.

Stage 2

• Reviews the planner’s learnings over the last four weeks;
• Discusses the planner’s challenges and successes;
• Teaches planners to create a high level strategy within their business that aligns their business to deliver change; and
• Ensures that any changes planners are wanting to make are logical to the business and to their personal comfort. This delivers engagement and a better opportunity of success.

Stage 3

• Reviews the planner’s learnings over the last four weeks;
• Discusses the planner’s challenges and successes;
• Teaches a planner to map and monitor their strategy to ensure that it’s working and that any issues can be adjusted; and
• Successful alumni come back to share their learnings, the challenges and their conversations with clients around health and wellness.

Ongoing work

• An AIA Vitality Coach continues to work with these participating planning businesses.
• Playbooks are available on the Business Growth Hub to support planners.
• Weekly emails from the Vitality Coach are sent to program participants to either share with their clients, team or for their personal development.