Kurt Ohlsen is not your standard professional planner. While he loves what he does, and has been happily doing it for 10 years, there is a side to him that craves the bush and is happiest on the back of a horse.
Growing up, he attended James Ruse Agricultural High School, where he was exposed to agricultural concepts. He grew up in Sydney, and while his parents’ friends had a property he would visit occasionally, no one in his immediate family hails from the land.
“I must have red dirt in my veins or something,” Ohlsen says. “I think I have always liked the bush and farming because I liked the way it has practical real-life applications.”
It was little surprise, then, that he chose to study agricultural economics at university, although he didn’t pursue a job on the land straight away.
“I was interested in becoming a financial planner, but when I graduated, I didn’t think that I should be advising people what to do with their money at the age of 23,” he says.
Ohlsen secured a place in the CBA graduate program and advanced to the corporate planning division. After two years, he realised he needed to move on.
“There was a misalignment of values,” he says. “In a smaller business, you can take a longer-term view, but with a bigger organisation, sometimes it’s more about delivering a set of numbers for the next shareholder meeting.
“The right things are often said, but sometimes they’re never done.”
It was about this time, too, that a friend of his returned from working on a remote cattle station.
Ohlsen’s interest had been piqued.
“I walked in and I quit my job,” he says. “Then I headed up to a station in The Kimberly, in Western Australia, where I worked as a ringer on a 1 million-acre [404685 hectare] cattle station. It would take you two days to drive around the station and even then you wouldn’t see it all.”
The experience was humbling, but in many ways it was also the making of Ohlsen.
“It was very old school and you worked really hard,” he says. “You could come off working a 14-hour day and if a fire broke out, then you would spend the next six hours fighting it.
“And no one complained.”
He would wake up in the morning and wouldn’t be sure which boots to put on because he didn’t know what jobs he would be doing that day – which was liberating, but also hard.
“I am probably only remembering the good bits, but I did learn about resilience and adapting to situations, although that was a challenge to embrace,” he says. “You had to be adaptable because the environment doesn’t give you much choice. You have to react very quickly.”
After two years, he knew he needed to head back to the city. The work takes its toll on the body and Ohlsen was no exception.
“I also knew I wanted more intellectual stimulation,” he notes.
Planning has proven to be an excellent, if unlikely, substitute for his bush passion.
“I get to wake up and do what I love every day and get paid for it,” he says.
And from time to time, he heads out to the bush.
Sometimes it’s for business – Ohlsen believes many remote parts of Australia are underserviced by planners – often it’s just to reconnect with the dirt in his veins.
“I might go and help on a friend’s property and mark some sheep,” he says. “It’s like an itch I have to scratch.”
| Kurt Ohlsen
Name of firm: Profile Financial Services Name of licensee: Profile Financial Services Time in the industry (previous jobs?): 10 years; prior to that worked for two years on a million-acre cattle station up in The Kimberly Academic qualifications: bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics, advanced diploma of financial planning. Accreditations: Tax Practitioners Board Tax (financial) adviser Professional association memberships: Financial Planning Association, Self-Managed Superannuation Fund Association Other memberships: Most Trusted Adviser Network |
