Lucian Russ would have become a doctor in another life.
The only problem is he is maddeningly squeamish about blood and gore.
“I think I was initially attracted to medicine because of how much of a difference you can make to other people’s lives,” he says. “The difference to someone’s health when you’re able to remove a tumour is fantastic, and it makes you think how great that would be to be able to do for someone.”
Russ gave medicine a wide berth, and when he graduated from school in Bristol, he started an accountancy degree because he was good at maths.
“I lasted three months and then quit,” he says. “It was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to do with my life because it wasn’t people-based.”
Instead, he took a year off from study to volunteer at homes in the Bristol area that helped institutionalised Britons reintegrate into society.
“These were people who had been institutionalised at a time when you could be put into a home for becoming pregnant at 14,” he explains. “Some of the people had mental illnesses, and a lot of them had never paid their own bills before or [didn’t know] how to order a coffee.
“You can travel a million miles and not see something as interesting as you can find in your own neighbourhood.”
Russ also did a volunteer stint at a psychiatric facility for children, which he found stressful but rewarding.
“Sometimes the kids would just take off if you were outside and you would literally have to chase them,” he says. “That was the hardest thing of all. But I found the experience rewarding because it was dealing with people.”
Russ also returned to university, where he completed a BA in specialised humanities and a post-grad certificate in education.
Afterwards, he got a good a job that paid a small amount of money – “about £8000 a year” – and allowed him to devise educational programs for various students in the UK and abroad.
“I did that for a couple of years, but by the time I got to 27 or 28, I decided I needed a job that paid a decent amount and that’s when I looked into financial planning,” Russ says.
While planning gave Russ a degree of stability and predictability, he still had a couple of big goals he wanted to achieve first.
“There were two things my wife and I wanted to do before we started a family: travel for two years and run a charity,” Russ says.
“And that is what we did. We spent two years moving through Africa and South and Central America, and then we followed that up with two years to run a not-for-profit in Cape Town, teaching work and business skills to unemployed young people in the township.”
Russ and his wife have since moved to Adelaide and started a family, and are not able to heed the call of the wild as much anymore, but Russ is enjoying great success at work.
He was the 2015 AMP Financial Planner of the Year for South Australia/Northern Territory, and is finally satisfying that part of himself that wants to help others.
He is a student of US speaker and trainer Bill Bachrach, who espouses a value-based approach to financial planning.
“With every client, my key question is: What are the values of the client, where do they want to get to and how can we improve what we do?” Russ says.
Ginn and Associates, trading as Ginn and Russ, is an Authorised Representative and credit representative of AMP Financial Planning.
| Name of firm: Ginn and Russ
Name of licensee (if not self-licensed): AMP Financial Planning Academic qualifications: BA in specialised humanities (honours) and postgraduate certificate in education. Postgraduate Certificate SMS Accreditations: CFP, SMSF Specialist Advisor |
