1. [1]
Polson Higgs Wealth
Management senior adviser
and director Rhodes Donald
loves his job. Photo by
Peter McIntosh.
Published on Otago Daily Times Online News (http://www.odt.co.nz)
Eclectic path to perfect job
By Sally Rae
Created 24/08/13
Rhodes Donald has led a colourful life.
When the Dunedin financial adviser describes himself as a jack of
all trades, he is not kidding.
Among his diverse career and interests he has run a Hindu
Ashram, worked as an air traffic controller and a secondary school
teacher, played a violin in the National Youth Orchestra and
gained his commercial pilot's licence.
Now a senior adviser and director of Polson Higgs Wealth
Management Ltd, having joined the company in 2001, his career
took a vastly different path to what was originally intended.
He was brought up in the Wairarapa, where the Donald family
were original settlers of Masterton and his father, Haddon Donald,
served three terms as a National MP.
Now 96, Mr Donald is the oldest living former MP and highest-ranked New Zealand Army
officer from World War 2.
As eldest son, Rhodes was destined to take over the well-known family business,
manufacturing agricultural equipment including wire strainers, wool presses and stock-
weighing equipment. Coincidentally, Oamaru-based Te Pari Products now manufactures the
Donald wool-press range.
From the time he was about 5 to when he was 20, Mr Donald (62) described himself as an
''engineer'', who was famous among family and friends for ''fixing things''.
After leaving school, he headed to Canterbury University - and was a Charles Upham Scholar -
to study mechanical engineering.
But in the last year of his degree, he headed back north, ''hung out'' in the Donald factory for
three months and then headed to Auckland.
While he loved his family, Mr Donald said he ''just wanted to be myself''.
He acknowledged it would have been nice to have finished his engineering degree - ''some of
my clients now are engineers; I'm terribly fascinated by what they do'' - but, at that stage, his
primary focus was to ''start afresh''.
Then began an interesting series of roles and jobs; he helped a friend farming in Northland,
joined a Hindu Ashram - ''spent a couple of years meditating'' - ended up running the Ashram,
met his future wife, became an air traffic controller, became a father to three sons, completed a
commerce degree, worked for a trade union and then went teaching.
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2. Teaching mathematics in a west Auckland secondary school was a lot of fun but, after five or
six years, he found the work too repetitive.
The advent of the David Lange-led Labour government whetted his appetite to get into finance.
He saw it as a ''brave new world''. He wanted to be involved with it so he left teaching.
His first job was with a unit trust development company called The Investment Exchange.
He then shifted from Auckland to Christchurch and got a job in 1987 with FPG Research, now
Morningstar, and became the company's director of research.
At that stage, the principal of the company was Graham Rich, whom Mr Donald described as
being at the forefront of financial planning in New Zealand. Mr Rich trained him as a financial
planner.
FPG Research bought a research company from Brisbane and the research side of the
business ''took off'' and he was involved with shifting that back to Auckland.
But after finding himself ''burnt out'' in the research area, he went back teaching for several
years - this time in the guidance department - something that he enjoyed, as his interest had
always been in people and what made them ''tick''.
He later returned to FPG Research to run its training and development business and started
doing more consultancy work for banks and insurance companies. He did some work for what
is now known as AMP Capital and when a job arose, he joined the company.
But he had always had an urge to be working with his own clients by the time he was 50. He
had ''sheltered'' himself by teaching and working for companies and decided that it was time to
take the plunge.
When he joined Polson Higgs Wealth Management in its infancy, he had no clients - ''just an
ambition'' - and the business was built up.
Most of the clients ended up being in Otago, rather than Christchurch, and he shifted south to
Dunedin about 2005. Now remarried, he and his wife Amanda Shanley, a ceramicist, have a 5-
year-old daughter Frances.
Ms Shanley recently shifted her gallery and studio from Port Chalmers to Macandrew Bay. The
couple built a new home in Vauxhall and the family is enjoying the Otago lifestyle.
When it came to work, Mr Donald reckoned he had ''the best job in Polson Higgs without a
doubt''.
''I'm privileged.''
The business had been built up to five staff, including one in Christchurch, as well as a chief
executive.
Mr Donald was chief executive while the business was being built up but he later happily
handed over the reins, saying he was more interested in working with ''real people'' than
''managing stuff''.
His interest in people proved valuable when it came to getting to know his clients.
His job was about finding what was special about every individual or couple he met and then
identifying their core issue, which was often not the issue they presented.
There was a different depth to each relationship.
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3. ''Some people absolutely rely on us, others treat us as quite ancillary.''
''You're not all things to all people. It's about finding the people for whom you are adding a lot
of value,'' he said.
His job also involved making complicated issues easy to understand and relevant, while also
making sure ''people don't have too many eggs in one basket''.
New Zealand was a ''small, risky, shaky isle'' and that had to be reflected in the company's
portfolios and in people's planning.
One thing he had learned was that without an investment philosophy, ''you're on shaky
ground''.
It was ''terribly important'' to have such a philosophy and to keep stress-testing it.
Polson Higgs' investment philosophy was based on a lot of research and a ''huge amount'' of
data analysis.
One thing he was certain of was he did not want to be investing other people's money based
on his or anyone else's forecasts of the future.
There was ''so much fallacy'' in the world that he worked in, it would keep him ''intrigued for
centuries''.
Those fallacies were ''deeply ingrained in our psyche'' and humans were hard-wired to see
things that did not exist. Often animals made better investors than people, he said.
-sally.rae@odt.co.nz
Business
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