Ep446: Manish Kumar Tyagi – Never Blindly Trust Anybody with Your Money

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. To join our community go to my worst investment ever.com and receive these five free benefits first, you get the risk reduction checklist I've created from the lessons I've learned from all of my guests. Second, you get my weekly email to help you increase your investment return. Third, you get a 25% discount on all a Stotz Academy courses. Fourth, you get access to our Facebook community to get to know guests and fellow listeners. And finally, you get my curated list of the Top 10 podcast episodes fellow risk takers This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz, from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Manish Tyagi. Manish Are you ready to rock? Yeah, of course. Looking forward to it. Thank you. I am super excited to have you on and I want to introduce you to the audience. Manish used to be a commander in the Indian Navy before he decided to become a stand up comic sometime in 2014. And he goes by the name of the naughty commander and Officer and a Gentleman. He has some very funny tales to tell from his life experience. His style is full of unprecedented stories blended with wit and humor. his Facebook page and YouTube channel have over a quarter million followers with multiple videos having over 3 million views he has performed across multiple cities in India and overseas. And as a motivational speaker. He has also spoken that Josh talks 14 TEDx conclaves, and is also a regular with corporate assignments. Manish take a minute in Philly, for the tidbits about your life.

Manish Kumar Tyagi 01:52
Thank you so very much. It's an honor to be on this podcast and speaking to you a little more than what you spoke and otherwise an engineer by education and, you know, qualification. And I was commissioned with the so you know, like a typical young guy who wants to serve the nation. I was commissioned way back in 1989 and served on till 2012, that makes 23 years subsequent to quitting the armed forces, I was very inclined to, you know, become a corporate trainer, I thought I should share my life experiences with people from what I learned in my life and in the armed forces. And that's what started out to be my career in 2012. I was also in business Air India for the channel partners of Cummins, which is a US based from the marine segment, worked with them for three years as a consultant in business at India, corporate training, career transition coach, and subsequently 2014 stand up comedy, the bug hit me and then eventually be able to just one thing after the other. that kept me busy till the pandemic started. Yes, removing a lot of online shows. So yeah, it's okay.

Andrew Stotz 03:06
You know, when the average person looks at a comedian, they see kind of that moment that they deliver a funny line or a funny joke, they don't realize how much work goes into getting to that point. I mean, how do you tell us just a little bit about how you prepare for a show or how you prepare new material, that type of thing. So,

Manish Kumar Tyagi 03:26
so each comedian has his own style. Alright, so for me, a being a corporate trainer, getting on stage holding a mic and interacting with people was not at all, there was no stage where there was no no problem at all. The only thing was creating you know, the material because I'm 54. And in India stand up comedy, unlike the US is a very, very recent and a nascent industry, like I would say like six 710 years and connect with the youth. Because the majorly a you do an industry All right, so to connect with the audience out there who are like half your age, and some of them look up to my dad, like saying the stuff like not happening. So to connect with them. So my style is more observational. When I see people around me and that's when people ask this question as to where do you get your content from? And I'm like, from you. That's where you get it from your observed people. And plus, I focus a lot on the latest news, which is happening. So probably a blend of both. And that's what goes on stage. Yeah, there's

Andrew Stotz 04:25
a lot of things that will make you laugh and cry in the news when you look at it.

Manish Kumar Tyagi 04:31
Absolutely. So it's a question of finding humor from whatever is probably making you cry also, like, you know, like, somebody asked me the other day, he said, What keeps you focused? I said, been, yeah, that's a good way to pain. Yeah, that's a good way to stay focused, you know, like,

Andrew Stotz 04:48
it's very real. I mean, that they, I often think to myself that you know, every time I've made a major, valuable, you know, change in my life, it's been motivated by pain or fear, you know, and I know that, you know, fear is not the way we raise our kids, for instance, you know, constantly putting them in fear. We want them to experience the joy of life. But sometimes that little fire burning under my butt is going out, I gotta go because this isn't working anymore. And next thing you know, you know, you're on to your next thing. So yeah, it's definitely a pain.

Manish Kumar Tyagi 05:24
There is a lot of opportunities, get creative, you know, because you want to get over one phase of your life or probably, you know, get over something and then move into a different. It could be in any form.

Andrew Stotz 05:35
Yeah. And I guess when you think about the therapeutic benefits of comedy, it's like, if you can get people to laugh at their pain. Yes. I mean, I just feel choked up right now, literally, as I say that thinking about, you know, pain, you know, when we feel pain, and when someone can help us relieve that pain as valuable?

Manish Kumar Tyagi 05:55
Absolutely. Yeah, that's the thing that keeps me also going. Because when somebody writes to me, or you know, in a personal mail and says that, look, I was depressed, and I was way down, and I saw your videos, and I binge watched them overnight. And then I realized that, you know, there's so much more to life. I think that's where I think it works for me. That's my integration. That keeps me going. Definitely.

Andrew Stotz 06:17
Yeah, I mean, I do some corporate training. And, you know, I try to talk about what I learned from a master Dr. Deming, and he taught me when I was about 23 years old, and I, he was, you know, the master of quality and just an amazing guy. But he was so tough on senior management, and he was just trying, you know, basically showing them that they didn't, they didn't really know what they were doing in many cases. And, you know, he would just raise up these points of, you know, you know, the competition is outside your company, but what you're doing is you're incentivizing people inside of your company to fight with each other, you know, over a bonus over performance appraisal, you're setting up these teams that are fighting, you know, people don't get along with each other already. And now you're putting fuel to that fire. So when I walk into a room, and I bring that out in the open, most people never even think about it. So there's a relief. They're just talking about that. And when we're trained from the, say, US MBA is like, you know, good, healthy competition. But wait a minute, we're not talking about competition within the company. We're talking about competition against our competitor. And I think one of the things I've learned in Thailand, and I think it's the same in India is that, you know, the way people treat each other is very different than the US style, you know, it's a bit more, less confrontational, and all of that. And I just feel kind of sad when I see whether it's Indian, Asian, Chinese, Thai, I see my friends who are implementing these KPI systems and driving people in thinking that, you know, having a screens on your on your desk at your office is the way that you manage people, but people aren't robots. And so when you bring this out, now, I don't bring it out to humor. I'm bringing it up by just saying, Here's where it is. Here's what's going on. When I bring that out. Basically, people you know, they respond. Okay, and even you respond by blacking

Manish Kumar Tyagi 08:07
out your screen. Sorry, this, give me a minute. Oh, my God, this doesn't happen. You have to edit this out. I'm so sorry. No, you have your back. So there's a there's a generator system, which takes away takes about a minute for the power back in India, you know,

Andrew Stotz 08:27
I know. I know. Okay, so anyways, we've got a good background. So let's, uh, are you ready for the question? Yes. So all right, now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one ever goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to then tell us your story.

Manish Kumar Tyagi 08:47
Okay, so we go back again, once again to 2012 when I was quitting the Navy All right. And that's the time when you get when you quit to get some money, and which is your retirement benefits. And I was also for me, at that point in time, I was going through a very messy divorce. Alright, so. So the first thing which I had to do was, you know, like, in India, what happens is when you've been serving in the government, you get a government accommodation. So I had to secure myself place for myself, and then you know, the litigation and everything else that was going on. At that point in time in India, real estate market was doing exceptionally well. And, you know, you've seen that you must have followed that it was multiplying at a very quick pace. So so as you discussed with some people, and you trust some people, I put my impact my money in some of the real estate, here in terms of accommodation buying a house or an apartment or something stupid as an assured return. Check, always bounces but then that's what happens when you are going through your own turmoil in life. And you tend to trust somebody else. And you know, you hope that this person is not going to cheat you or mislead you rather. So when the time came to pay the money. The real estate had gone down 25%. So all the money which was there had. So anyway, you have to sell property, the shortage and checks have bounced. And so whatever money came out there was another friend of mine who said, Okay, I have this guy who's a great guy who invest in mutual funds. All right, so why don't you put money with him? And like, Okay, so that's the fastest way to recover whatever I have lost in the process of that downturn in the real estate. So, I put money there. And we were doing alright to a substantial amount over there till the pandemic hit. And March 2020, you know, how Indian Sensex started sinking, I was alright till then, till one day, I read in the morning that Franklin Templeton had frozen six of their funds, which are the net funds in India and about 28,000 Indian crore rupees in India and I had a substantial amount there. So, I spoke to my agent and so what the hell is happening? He said, No, no, no, no a month or two when we come back. And what we going to do is we reach or we, you know, reshuffle your entire portfolio asset, if you are going to reshuffle my portfolio, which is taking money out of a particular mutual fund and putting it in another one means you are there's a redemption happening. So I said, What is the long term plan for me and he's like, we put it in something else. And there was another chunk, which was in another debt fund. So the fear was that if that also goes into like Franklin Templeton happened, this there's a lot of money which is getting blocked in the market, you don't know what's happening. So I said, if we are redeeming the mutual funds, I want the money in my bank. So I lost money in that redemption. Franklin Templeton was anyway log, I lost about whatever 10 15% I said, Okay, now I can see my money in my bank. And I put it in a very basic 3% three and a half percent fixed deposit, as I want to see my money not grow. I wanted, I just want to see my money, right? That came from a lot of insecurity from the past and whatever happened. There was some money lying cash. And there were friends who said buy gold next year 20% and I okay, let's buy gold, there was much money, but whatever, you know, some because international travel had stopped. So there was a dollars Lionel as Okay, let's just buy gold. And then somebody said, okay, diversify your portfolio. So gold bonds as Okay, some money in gold bonds. Now, you know, how the Indian market is performing. Now it is at peak, it's like, close to 33,000. And we withdrew the money at whatever I don't know, under doing, I don't even want to think about it. Because I left the money there, it would have doubled. Unfortunately, gold came down 30%. From the time I bought, the month, I bought gold bonds. The next month, they were selling 15% cheaper. And I'm like, look at him just with money. Okay. So there was a point where I put these jokes on my line, and I share them also, I said, I thought about Bitcoin. And next It was 25% down. You know, and I thought about like Adani, even India, they lost 16 I think $16 billion in four days. I said, so people have been writing to me said, Please tell us where you investing? Because we won't go there.

Andrew Stotz 13:19
You want to get out of that?

Manish Kumar Tyagi 13:20
Yeah, we would just, you know, wait for 15 days till it goes down. And then we're gonna use us because you think and it goes down. It's been like this. So now currently, the situation is the money is there, whatever is in the bank, it's not going it should have. It could have multiplied over the years to be a lot of people made money. I know. And they come and say, Well, I you know, tripled my net worth. And I'm like, please, we already you know, going into major depression with the money thing. I don't even want to look at that. So I think that's what happened. And if I would have stayed invested at that point, and last year, and in Franklin, who when I spoke to this guy also I said he said no, Franklin Templeton, we were feeling that there were some problems. I said, Why didn't you pipe it up to me while into you taking money from me? You known me for a couple of years, you should have just said. So Franklin Templeton, there is some problem, let's pull out the money, we split it out and left the rest of it there or whatever, you know, we don't really aim that into something and I would have done that. So I just lost complete trust on the guy that point time, and everybody else from state also. So this is where we stand. And I think this is probably apart from other mistakes. Like, you know, I won't say marriage as a mistake, but it's okay. Apart from the other mistakes which you make in life. This was probably one phase where I could have you know, got back whatever I had lost over the years. But yeah.

Andrew Stotz 14:42
And how would you summarize the lessons that you learned from this?

Manish Kumar Tyagi 14:46
Couple of things. One is that don't blindly trust anybody with your money. You need to follow up you need to keep reading up about wherever your money is in terms of investments online, whether even if it's something like so you know how it is. They say debt funds are the same First funds, and then suddenly this guy told me no debt has two components. One is the liquid and the dude, if I'm gonna get 6%, I would have put that money in the bank itself. So I didn't read up, it was my fault. I take it that way. So wherever you put your money, I think it's important to nurture it and keep reading about that particular fund house where you put the money or the stocks or whatever it is, on a very regular basis, and seeing trying to figure out if there are some a second, don't put all your eggs in the same basket. Yep, as in, don't go to one agent, or one consultant, maybe there's no harm. You know, there are many consultants out there. Even if somebody's got like, like, Mike, I had 20 years of experience, but look at where I am. And I'm sure there are enough people who made money through him. But I'm the guy who, at that point in time, like in lost trust, and I said, I just want my money in my bank. So maybe you could have two consultants, and take a second opinion did for gold for somebody, and let's say, but get a second opinion. So that's, I think, two major takeaways, which I feel I could have, you know.

Andrew Stotz 16:09
Yeah. So let me Maybe I'll summarize some of the things I take away from this story. I think the first one is that I was just talking, I'll tell you a story today, I was just talking with one of my clients, and they have a, they have funds that they offer. And their competitors use a very complex measure of risk. It's called value at risk, var. And basically, as my as being an advisor to the institution about how they present their and how they do their investing. They said, Look, we have to present value at risk. And I said, Why? Because our competitors presented. I said, but nobody understands value at risk. And they're like, yeah, we know that. But they presented so we have to do it. And I said, No, you don't have to do it. I said a more simple measure is maximum drawdown, where we just say, look over the last 20 years, this strategy, you could expect the worst case happen was 50%. down. And they say, but we don't want to show 50% down or else they're gonna think we're crazy. I'm sorry, not that's what the market went down. Yeah. And I said, you're doing them a service by clearly communicate, forget all the fancy jargon a value at risk. And just focus on something, you know, and if you can convince someone that, hey, this is the truth, in the 2008 crisis, the market fell by 50%, your portfolio would have fallen by 50%. And Nancy, once someone is understands that, then they also can decide, okay, now the key to success in the long term in the stock market is to just just wait through it. Imagine if you were out at sea, and you couldn't see, you know anything about what happened. And then five years later, you come back what what's happening? Well, okay, if you went into really bad investment in the stock market, or a particular fund, or company or whatever, it can go bust. But generally, you know, you're going to be better off. So that's the first thing is to understand when you go into the stock market, particularly the equity market, you know, there's a lot of volatility. And the worst thing you can do, there's a, there's a report that I've followed for a while, and it basically tries to measure, it looks at the average. Another way of handling this is, say, on an index fund that owns You know, every stock in the market, so I'm not going to try to pick anything, I'm just going to own the market. Yeah, the fees are much lower on that. But this research that I was that comes out almost every year from this particular company in the US, they basically calculate, it's one thing to say, hey, this fund in the last 10 years went up on average 10%. But you can actually calculate the amount of assets that go in and out of that fun, because that's what people are buying and selling. And from that you can actually calculate kind of the in cost and the exit cost, on average that people and what they calculate is that the bad timing of the average person destroyed about 70% of the return, you would have thought you would have gotten 10. But because you're going to go in and out of the wrong times, you're only going to get 3%. And if you tell someone that, you know, they don't believe that, but that's true. Yeah. So that's the second thing is that our emotions are really against us when it comes to the stock market. Absolutely. And then the third thing I mean, I have, I'll tell you another story is that I have my sister passed away in 1998. And she left three beautiful daughters that were very young at the time. When they got older, I thought how can I contribute as an uncle? Well, I'm an expert in finance, so why don't I help them get started investing. I got on the plane when the first one graduated high school from Thailand to go to her high school graduation and I brought $3,000 in my pocket and Uncle Andrew basically slapped down $3,000 in cash on the table and said, this is your graduation gift. But you can't spend it, we're going to open up an account in America an investment account, and I'm going to have you invested in this strategy, very simple strategy on one fun, that phone and that fun owns every stock in the world about 9000 stocks, and just keep buying it until you're 50 or 60. And you're going to be a multimillionaire. And I taught all of my nieces, I have five nieces, all of them. Basically, I did the same when they turned 18. And then I wrote a book, and then I wrote a course about it. And that's what I try to teach is, you know, it doesn't you don't even need an advisor, when you have such a fun that owns everything. I don't know about India, I haven't had many students in my course from India, madam for many other countries around the world. But when students come in the course I help them to try to say which is it this one in India is at that one. But the point is, is that there are now instruments where an amateur who knows nothing, and really doesn't want to learn to spend all their time doing the market, there are tournaments. So those are the things that I take away from your, your, your story, anything that you would add to that?

Manish Kumar Tyagi 21:12
Yeah, I mean, you pretty much summed it up. So yeah, and you need a very, you need an uncle like yourself,

Andrew Stotz 21:18
NATO. So uncle fryer, based upon what you learn from this story, and what you continue to learn, you know, I want you to go back to the moment in time that you kind of started all this, this story, you know, and what, think about the man or woman out there that's really at that point in time right now? What action would you recommend that they take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Manish Kumar Tyagi 21:41
Yeah, so one force, like I said, was, would be read up a little bit about it, just don't be blind, blind investor, read a little about it, speak to couple of people. And, you know, keep checking on your investments from time to time and see how the market is doing.

Andrew Stotz 22:01
Yep. And last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months,

Manish Kumar Tyagi 22:07
I think I am looking, I'm just trying to get a peace of mind, you know, everything pieces together. And I would like to consolidate at this point in time, because irrespective of where the market is going in India, it is going to come down at some point in time because it's, you know, the economy's not doing as well as the Sensex is doing. Maybe it's because of the FDA and I may be wrong there. But this is what I take away from what I read. So at some point, it's gonna come down, just sit on your funds at this point in time, consolidate and wait for the opportunity where you could go back and re enter the market with you know, and then plan it long term so that you know, next five years you have a little, just leave it there, bro, you have another?

Andrew Stotz 22:48
Okay. All right, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. My number one goal for the next 12 months is to help you my listeners, reduce risk and increase your return in your life. To achieve this, I've created our community at my worst investment ever.com and I look forward to seeing you there. As we conclude, Manish I want to thank you again for coming on the show. And on behalf of a Stotz Academy. I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience? At this point in time, stay safe. Stay low. That's my message. That is a good message. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well. Fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside. Thank you.