In many respects, golf is the ultimate escape for Andrew Hollow.
The fairway is the place he heads to early on the weekends before his family has fully roused, and it’s also where he and his friends will let off steam after a long week at work.
“The beauty of golf is that it forces you to leave the rat race,” says Hollow, who at his peak was playing with a handicap of 4. “You can tell who has had a bad week at work when we all hit the golf course. It becomes a kind of catharsis. But you need to leave that stress behind. If you can’t turn that stress off, it will affect your golf.”
Golf is more than just a release valve for Hollow. It’s clear that his passion for analysing the techniques and tactics that underpin the game informs his work.
He caddies for women golfers and is a regular on the sandbelt courses of Melbourne, giving him plenty of opportunity to engage with the kind of strategic thinking necessary for a career in planning.
“I enjoy analysing the different approaches to the game,” he says. “And when I caddy, there is that responsibility for someone else. It isn’t so different from planning, where you’re not selling products, you’re looking for a simple, smart decision with a long-term focus.
“Some amateurs take to the fairways and try to hit the ball as far as they can, but more experienced players will think strategically and long term, which is how I approach planning.”
Always great with numbers
Hollow became a planner because numbers always came easily to him, and he was inspired to set up his own practice by the example of his self-employed father.
“My dad was a chemist and he ran his own business,” Hollow says. “While the chemistry and biology did not interest me, the numbers did, which was why I moved into planning.
“I was also keen to set up my own business one day because I didn’t want to wake up at 65 and say, ‘You know, I wish I had done that.’ I wanted to be the captain of my own ship, with all of the pros and cons that come with that.”
The move has clearly paid off. Hollow won the Most Trusted Adviser in 2015, and his firm, AHS Financial, won Most Trusted Practice and Most Recommended Practice for Victoria and Tasmania in that same year.
He has built up a loyal base of clients who share his philosophy and approach to financial management, and he can work out pretty quickly whether a new client is in it for the long haul.
“Some clients come to me and they have all this expenditure and I tell them what they will need to do to plan for the future and they’re not prepared to do it and we often don’t see them again,” he says. “That’s OK because we prefer the best clients, the ones who are engaged and appreciate receiving advice and the ones who are willing to make the sensible financial decisions for themselves.”
Hollow is acutely aware of how many Australians are ill-prepared for retirement.
“Honestly, I have a job because so many Australians are financially illiterate,” he says. “People will get their gardening seen to, they will get their plumbing fixed if there is a problem, but when their finances are stuffed, they will wait 20 years to see someone about it.”
This reticence to see a planner is sometimes due to a belief that they can manage their finances on their own, and at other times it’s due to a misplaced pride.
“People are still very funny about [discussing] money,” Hollow notes. “People are more comfortable talking about their sex lives, and posting private information on Instagram, than they are talking about money.”
| Andrew Hollow
Name of firm: AHS financial Name of licensee: Securitor Academic qualifications: Bachelor of business, Diploma of Financial Planning Accreditations: Certified Financial Planner Professional association memberships: FPA Other memberships: Most Trusted Adviser Network |
