Twenty-three years ago, Ray Giese, CFP®, a long-time corporate sales person for companies such as Waste Management, Inc. and AmerisourceBergen Corporation, took the Highlands Ability Battery (HAB) based on the recommendation of a friend. After taking the assessment with pen and paper, he believed in the advantages of understanding your natural abilities.
“The HAB vaulted me to front of the line at work because I could easily articulate to my employer what I brought to the table,” Ray explained. “This substantially increased my value to my employer and led to significant increases in my earning power.”
To illustrate, Ray explained that he has High Idea Productivity and High Classification and he is able to organize ideas into coherent project plans and implement them for quick results.
“These are abilities that every employer highly values. I made sure they knew about it.”
Three years after taking the HAB, Ray had the good fortune to take the HAB again, this time electronically. The Highlands Company needed to ensure HAB accuracy in its new format, and so we recruited several HAB alums to re-take the assessment.
Ray’s (and others) scores were nearly the same, making Ray an even stronger believer in the HAB’s ability to pinpoint strengths. But that’s not the point of this story. The point of this story is how Ray used his HAB results to create a profitable career, and now he plans to use those same insights to help young professionals make similar career and investment choices.
The Financial Adviser Chapter
To prepare for his “encore career,” Ray completed his Masters in Personal Finance from Kansas State University and earned his Certified Financial Planning, CFP® designation so that he could work as a financial adviser for young professionals and career changers. He is retired from corporate sales in the Fall of 2016.
“My goal is to help people better match their career choices with their natural abilities, improve their chances for a promising career by selecting the right colleges and training, while minimizing education-related debt, and increase their savings for the future. What choices they make in pre-college and career planning based on how they understand and leverage their natural abilities can make the difference in securing their long-term financial well-being.”
Ray’s offerings through his new company RG Financial Planning LLC, will include the usual elements of personal financial planning such as personal financial statements and investment planning, but the unique twist starts with the HAB. After clients take the HAB and learn about their natural abilities during a debrief, Ray will show them how that translates into career choices and improvements to their lifetime earnings power.
“When you are young, your biggest asset is your earning power,” he explained. “My job is to help them maximize that so that instead of averaging say $75k a year over next 15 years, it is more like $115k. Once a person has an increased earning power and minimizes debt, their ability to save and invest is greatly enhanced – all leading to increased financial well-being and ultimately a lifetime of financial freedom.”
Building Young Leaders
In addition to helping young adults increase their earning power from a young age, Ray sees an opportunity to build leaders with the HAB and his unique financial program.
“I can’t say how many leadership programs I’ve been through with my employers. To me, Highlands is the most valuable leadership work I’ve done.”
To learn more about Ray and RG Financial Planning LLC visit Fiscal Fitness Clubs.
