Ep621: Michael Bungay Stanier – Find a Trusted Financial Advisor to Manage Your Investments

Andrew Stotz 00:01
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. Ladies and gentlemen arm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And that mission has led me to create the become a better investor community. In the community you get access to tools to help you create, grow and protect your wealth go to my worst investment ever.com right now to claim your spot. Fellow risk takers. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guests, Michael Bungay, Stanier. Michael, are you ready to join them?

Michael Bungay Stanier 00:48
So already, I'm happy to be here. Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Stotz 00:52
I'm happy to have you. And I'm gonna introduce you to the audience. For those that don't recognize you. Michael is the author of seven books, which between them have sold over a million copies. He's best known for the Coaching Habit, the best selling coaching book of the century, and already recognized as a classic. His new book, How To begin helps people be more ambitious for themselves and the world. Michael was a Rhodes Scholar and plays a ukulele badly. He's Australian, and lives in Toronto, Canada. And you can learn more about him at NBS dot works, Michael, take a minute and tell us about the unique value you bring to this wonderful world.

Michael Bungay Stanier 01:33
I would say if I was backed into a corner and had to fess up, it would be that I am good at unwielding stuff. I'm good at taking what is complex and making it simple and accessible and usable. You know, the success of the Coaching Habit book is because really among reading coaching goes from some sort of black box woowoo, HR touchy feely, pastel colored thing to a practical way of actually bringing out the best in yourself and and others. So yeah, that translation role to move from simple through complex to more powerful simplicity.

Andrew Stotz 02:11
And what is it that causes you to do that, like some people are, let's say you're slow learner, and you think I gotta map this out? I got to make it more simple for myself. Before I understand it. Some people are fast learners, but they just see like a different angle to something. What is the origin from your perspective of that?

Michael Bungay Stanier 02:31
That's a very interesting question. I think it's because I realized in school, both high school and then university, that I was kind of playing a game, you know, there was a game around, how do you get marks? And how do you get a certain score? And how do you impress a certain teacher, and there was power in understanding some of the principles behind the noise trying to find the signal to noise perhaps. And also, there is a degree to which I just, I actually liked the moment of discovery when I've been chewing on something and working something and writing and rewriting and rewriting something. And like, get it into a form where I'm like, I think this is as crystalline as this idea can be. I just feel that is. I am not only creating things that are useful in the world, I'm creating things that might be beautiful in the world as well.

Andrew Stotz 03:30
That's fascinating. I mean, it's always interesting to think about how why we do what we do. And I know when we're young, sometimes even the way we do things is seen as like a weakness, or this kid can't do it the other way or that, but it turns out that those kind of squeaky wheels are ending up, coming up with different ways of looking at things. And I think when I read the Coaching Habit a long time ago, it was like, Ah, this is just, you know, it was brute, beautifully written, perfectly laid out. And but most importantly, it was simple. And I have a way of describing this book in just one word. And I think that it could also apply if you were to write a book about satisfying your sexual partner. And the one word is, wait.

Michael Bungay Stanier 04:23
I think that's nice. And I totally get what you mean, both in the power of the book itself, and kind of how it might move over to you know, satisfying your partner is like, you know, the behavior change in the book is a simple but difficult one, which is, can you stay curious a little bit longer can you rush to action and advice giving a little more slowly because if you just take your time, you know, there'll be a time for you to give advice, but if you waited longer and you've understood the problem a little better and you've heard the other person's ideas a little bit when it is Time for you to act, when it's time for you to give advice, then it's going to be better, more onpoint. And more useful. And this true is so many things, which is, you know, let the moment ripen. So that when you play the peak, it is the perfect peak,

Andrew Stotz 05:15
let the moment ripen. It's great. And one of the things that I got in the habit of doing after reading this book is that I started, you know, because I'm in the financial world, a lot of people talk to me about startup companies and stuff like that. And they asked me for that my idea. And I always go back to them. And I, before I start to give any advice, I always just say, let me just clarify, you're asking for my advice. Yeah. And by doing that, it just changes the dynamic quite a bit, you know.

Michael Bungay Stanier 05:45
And, you know, a tactic in the book, but it's useful for people to hear is that when somebody comes to you and says, Can you give me your advice? A, it's a very good response to go, wait, just checking, you actually want my advice? Because sometimes we make up that the other person wants their advice, and they don't. But I always, when somebody asked me for advice, I go, Look, I've got some ideas. And I've got some advice. I've got some thoughts, and I'm going to share them with you. But I'm curious to know what I did you already have what you already know. Because if I can figure out what they already know, then I'm not going to give them this, I'm not going to be redundant in what I tell them. I'm going to have a more nuanced understanding of what the landscape is so that when I do offer a piece of advice, it's new, and it's different. And it's potentially helpful

Andrew Stotz 06:28
to great point, because many times I've given advice in the past, and I start looking at the person's face, and they're going like, I already know that. Yeah, just just the simple thing of kind of understanding what do you Where are you at? Maybe a way I always tell people is like, if I was to arrive in London, and I called up my friend and said, Hey, I want to come see you. Can you tell me how to get to your place? And they say, yeah, yeah, where are you? And I said, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Well, well, can you? You know, can you tell me something about where you are? Well, I don't really know. Well, how the hell is anybody going to help you get to where you want to go? If they don't? You don't know. And they don't know where you are? Yeah,

Michael Bungay Stanier 07:07
exactly. It's like, where are you? And what did you already have? Or how do you prefer to travel? And how much time do you have? And how much money do you have? And when you've tried to travel in London before? What's really worked for you and what hasn't worked for you? Oh, okay, well, you're right next to a taxi rank, you write 300 pounds in your wallet. And you love traveling in taxis. So here's my tip, go to the taxi driver, give them this address, and you should be fine. No, but it depends.

Andrew Stotz 07:34
And I do love riding in taxis in London. I tell you. Yeah, black cab is fantastic. Yeah, I just want to do one last thing before we get into the big question of the podcast. And that is to answer the question, Why did I ask you to come on this podcast and I want to explain that I have the community become a better investor community. And we focus a lot on investing. But you know, I thought to myself, Well, I had, I had started a book club, but I kind of realized that it's hard to focus my energy on you know that, along with all the other stuff I do. So I, what I did is I went on Amazon and Goodreads. And then I as being an analyst, I scraped all this data, I analyzed to try to come up with what are the best books of all time, in the different areas of business and investing. I wanted to come up with a list of maybe 30 books or something like that, so that we could say, this is a curriculum, and that's what I call it, I call it the curriculum. And then what I do is I have summaries I've written on each one of these books. And then I've created PowerPoints where I intermingle my own stories of when this book came along in my life and that type of thing. And your book, the Coaching Habit is one of the books within that management section. So first of all, I want to congratulate you on that, but mainly, I just Just curious, like, where has that book led you, you know, when you think about where it started versus where you are now, how did that set you on a journey and maybe just describe where you are now and a little bit of that so that the audience knows what you're up to.

Michael Bungay Stanier 09:03
So, let me start where I am now and then we can kind of figure out how the hell I got here. I mean, bemused as anybody. So I founded a training company called Box of Crayons. It's about 20 years old now. And works with multinationals around the world to help managers and leaders and people in that organization. Be curious, stay curious a little bit longer and use curiosity to unlock unleash your better engagement, better impact, better innovation, all of that stuff that is useful in critical within organizational life. About three years ago, I stepped away from being CEO of that so another person on the team is the CEO and he leads the company but its growth and it success in the six or seven years since the Coaching Habit have come out have been driven by the success of the Coaching Habit because it has been this viral success it's sold. They're sold actually close to a million and a half. have copies. So it's really become the coaching book, particularly for normal people who don't want to be a coach, although lots of coaches read it, but they do want to use the power of coaching to unlock the best in other people. So, you know, when I started the box of crayons, 20 years ago, my business plan was best described as look for somebody with a pulse in a wallet and see if I can sell them something because I got fired from my job. It was, I was like, Okay, well, my own for the first time, I've got a grab bag of skills from market research, to innovation to facilitation, to change management. But I've got no strong point of view, no strong point of difference. And part of what the Coaching Habit did was, allow me to commit fully to saying this is what Box of Crayons does. It's a company built on the foundation of how do we champion curiosity within organizations? And how do we make curiosity a practical everyday tool for people?

Andrew Stotz 11:10
And what's the best way for the audience to follow what you're doing? You know, you've got your website, your podcast, different stuff, what would be the place that you would recommend? They go?

Michael Bungay Stanier 11:19
Yeah, look, if you're a, if you're a corporate buyer with a huge budget, and you're like, how do I bring training into my organizations, I'm guessing there's not many of you listening, but just in case, box of crayons.com is the website to find out about that corporate offering. But, you know, my new business is about helping individuals unlock their greatness and unlock the greatness of those around them. And that website is MB s dot works. And that's the hub. And there's a bunch of free courses and free downloads and free resources that you can get, you know, if you were tempted by androids description of the Coaching Habit, and go to the Coaching Habit link there, and get access to videos and downloads and all sorts of things about the book.

Andrew Stotz 12:01
Fantastic. And I'll have links to all that in the show notes. And but now, it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment, thinking it will be take a minute and tell us about the circumstances leading up to it. And then tell us your story.

Michael Bungay Stanier 12:18
Yeah, I grew up in a family where there wasn't investment, or really, you know, my I grew up in Canberra, in Australia, and my parents were worked on the government public servants, as we call them in Australia. And the idea was you work and you build a pension. The longer you work, the bigger your pension is, you pay off your mortgage, and you pay for life. And that's it. So investing was a foreign world for me. And after I had been in Australia, didn't done university there, traveled to Oxford to study met, my wife fell in love, got married, lived in London for a time working and not earning very much money in London, and then joining a company that took me to Boston. Now in 1999, year 2000, there abouts. I was finally earning a salary where I had money to invest. And I was also working with people who are like, I've got a stock tip for you. Now, even at those early days, I realized that if I was hearing the stock tip, it was probably the worst stock to invest in because I would be in the final decile of people hearing that stock tip. So it was a really great guidance to go wherever, whenever you do don't follow that particular stock tip because it has absolutely nothing to do. But we my wife and I had money. And we had like 5000 bucks. And we're like, we're going to invest it. Because it's like, I think the stock market was booming. And my friends were investing money and making money. I was like, Yeah, that sounds exciting. So I said to my wife, I said, Look, I want you to be our chief investment officer of our family. I want you to take this money, and I want you to figure out how best to invest it Where were you going to put it? So you went away. And she did great work. And she came back and she had a plan which I went that sounds a great plan. Let's do that. And I think it was like E trade or equivalent had just got going. So you could do this on a broker. You could do it online and say set up an account. And what we did is we bought one share from about 20 Different companies that we liked, that we're like we're just testing it out. We were one share trading companies. So first of all turns out this is not a particularly well this is not a smart way to invest, but over time, none of the shares increased massively. And then when we left the Stage and we're like, we have to kind of close down this portfolio. Every single selling every single share meant that we had to pay a fee on every single share. So we had lost money already on the portfolio, and then we lost about half the remaining value of the portfolio, just in the fees and trying to sell off and close down the portfolio. So I would say that would be my great naive experience that, oh, I think I'm becoming an investor.

Andrew Stotz 15:33
Interesting. So how would you summarize the lessons that you learn?

Michael Bungay Stanier 15:38
Well, the fundamental lesson has been this, I can't be bothered to figure out how to be a smart investor. Like, it's just not just not interesting enough to me. And now that I have a degree of liquidity, I have hired an expert to do this for me. So I the key, the key implication, or the way this has unfolded is I have after a number of false starts. And they're a deeply trusted financial advisor, who manages my investments for me, and I meet with her twice a year. And I mostly go carry on Rona, you're doing a great job, you're thoughtful, your perspective around that. He's one of your, you know, the language of the Sandra better than me, but she is not a, she's an I pay an annual fee to her. Regardless of the work, she adds like a percentage of the fee earlier rather than paying for every trade. So I'm like, I don't want to, I don't want to, I want to pay for the results rather than for random activity. And that's the key. That's the key. I mean, there's other obvious lessons, if you're investor, which is like don't buy one share of a company, and a lot of company, understand how the fees you pay will influence what your investment portfolio. But those are kind of the more tactical lessons from it, the biggest lesson for me was, if you're not going to be really good at this, perhaps find somebody else who's really good at it and go and find something else for you to be really good at.

Andrew Stotz 17:20
There's so many different things that come to my mind when I listened to that. The first thing is, maybe I'll share a few things that I take away from it. You know, first thing is, I always tell people, and you'll hear it at the end of the podcast, create, grow and protect your wealth. And I like to separate creating and growing wealth, because creating wealth, as you know, growing wealth is that 5000 That your wife put in the market, creating wealth is you saying and honey, next month, I'm gonna bring in another 5000. Right. And that's very different. And many people go into the stock market thinking they're going to create wealth when they should be focusing on growing their wealth. And so that's the first thing that I always like to separate. And if we get better and better at creating our wealth, even if we make mistakes with growing our wealth, we can replenish that money. So that's the first thing that I would highlight on this case down. Second thing is, you know, it's interesting to kind of think of the context 1999 was, you know, the time of the big.com bubble. So everybody was getting in the market and everybody lost. Right? So if it brings you any comfort

Michael Bungay Stanier 18:31
company, yeah, wasn't good company was like, yes,

Andrew Stotz 18:35
you lost with a lot of friends.

Michael Bungay Stanier 18:38
It brings me not the least bit of comfort. Exactly, exactly.

Andrew Stotz 18:42
And the point is, though, that when markets are at their peak is when the word of market spreads, you know, so massively. So that's the second second thing. So I think put things into context is part of what I'm saying is trying to understand the context of where things are in the markets, which is hard to do. Which brings me to the next question, is that, like, do you have interest in investing? Do you have time? Do you have knowledge? Those are the three questions I asked those questions in one of the books I wrote called How to start building your wealth investing in the stock market. And, you know, if you have interest in you have time and you have knowledge, then pick stocks, go for it. But if you don't have, you know, if you don't if you have interests, and you have time, but you don't have knowledge, okay, you got to study first. And but if you don't have interest, then keep it much more simple, you know, and that there's two ways of doing that. One is to say, Okay, I'm just going to buy a fund that owns every stock in the world. Yeah. And then I'm just going to invest in that for the person that says I want to do it myself. I don't want to go to an advisor. That's a very simple way of doing it and getting access to the long term growth of the stock market. But another idea is to go to a professional and you remind me of the story of my mom and dad which basically they went to a professional and that professional carry them through, you know, on not not a huge amount of money, that professional carry them through 22 years of retirement. And then when my mom when my father passed away, and I brought my mom to live with me here in Bangkok, she had enough money to be able to say to Mom, you don't have to worry about money for the rest of your life. And that is really a function of an ethical and responsible advisor. So I think that's the last takeaway that I would say is that if you don't know much about this stuff, try to find someone meet with a bunch of different people find someone you trust that explains things in ways that you know, that you understand, and then sign up with them and start to work with them. Because just like any other professional, they can bring a lot of value, anything you would add to those takeaways?

Michael Bungay Stanier 20:43
Well, it's making me think of an additional lesson I would have taken from that which I've, I'm trying to pay forward, which is, it's useful to understand the story you have around money, and how it works and how wait you grow up, influences that. So I was back in Australia recently, my where I grew up. And I took my visit, I have five nieces and nephews or kind of 15 to 20, roughly in a group. And then I had this singular idea of how money works, you get, you get a steady job. So we went out to dinner, and we just had a conversation about what are the different ways that you can make money, you know, you can work for yourself, you can get a job with somebody else, you can build a company and scale beyond yourself, you can invest. And we talked about the pros and cons, the prizes and punishments of each one of those because each one has its upsides, and each one has its downside. And then as the kind of the, as a way of trying to accelerate their learning about how money makes money, I've offered each one of my nieces and nephews 1000 or $1,000 loan, or 18 months, and is they allowed to do anything they want with this $1,000 to experiment on how to make money. So they can buy an index fund and class track, you know, grow slowly, they can buy bitcoin, if there is any more places left to buy bitcoin. But if they want to kind of take a big risk, they can use it to fund and buy capital for a business, they can do a startup of a business, if they want to play around with that. There's a prize that after 18 months, the person who's the most money gets up, there's a $300 prize up for grabs. So there's a bit of kind of heat to it. And there's a guarantee of $500. So if they lose it all, they will still walk away with 500 bucks because at the end of 18 mums, the loan turns into a gift song as they write me three reports at the 612 and 18 month mark around what they've learned from playing around with investment. So there's a lesson that I grew up with a sense, I grew up in a kind of a middle class family. But the broad sense around money was scarcity, which is like don't do anything stupid to lose money. It's precious in to spend it on the essentials. And one of the things I'm hoping to reteach to cages, like, it's how you can think of money as a tool, here's how you can think of money as something that you can risk with the possibility of the upside around that. And you know, I didn't really start understanding that until my 30s I'm hoping the kids understand that just a little more quickly.

Andrew Stotz 23:36
Well, I think telling that story already gets people thinking about how to talk about money. I mean, even like in my family, we didn't really talk about that, that was mom and dad stuff and you know it, it's that type of thing. So I think just the conversation and then coming up with this type of method is fantastic when when I had five I have five nieces and when they each turn 18 I flew from Bangkok to to the US with $3,000 in my pocket and I gave him us the 3000 I said but the only thing you can do with this is put it in a Vanguard account and invest as I explained, and then I helped them and then I wrote the book How to start building your wealth with the idea being that this would be the guide so but anyway that we started the conversation with young people is fantastic. So I want to ask you, I want to go back now in time to the period when you and your wife were talking about this 5000 That you now had and I want you to think about a young person today who's in that situation they've generated some they've created some wealth and they want to invest it so based upon what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn what one piece of advice would you give our listeners to help them avoid suffering the same fate?

Michael Bungay Stanier 24:53
Well, I guess first I would ask them, what relation What do they want to do with Money. What does success with money look like? All them? Because it was interesting in talking to my nieces and nephews is that there was there was a range of different responses. One was actually not very interested in money at all. The other one of them was like, it is littered entrepreneurial flame, he is so excited. And he's thinking of ways of making money and scaling up and all sorts of things. So I think it's a start to go, What's your relationship with money? And how do you see it? How do you use it? Because it's only when you understand that you can then go, so what do you think he might do with this? Because for some, it might be like, I'm gonna go and spend this and have an experience, because that's mine. That's wealth for me, is having stories to tell that, you know, I'll be able to tell those for the rest of my life, other people like I am, I want to be super wealthy. So I'm going to start figuring out how to buy and sell and scale this money. I was like, You know what, I'm up for the slow growth. So I'm going to put an index fund and power of compound interest. And you know, by the time I'm 60, my five grand will now be worth. You're the financial advisor, and you'll be able to tell me about it for like, a trillion dollar lot or something? Yeah, a lot. Yeah. Like, just sit there and watch it grow. So I think that's where I would start, not with advice, but with some conversations about what do you think you might want?

Andrew Stotz 26:28
Actually, what you also kind of did with them was have a conversation with a group of people. Because when you do that, then you start to realize, oh, wait a minute, not everybody thinks about money the way I do, actually. Yeah.

Michael Bungay Stanier 26:40
That's very interesting for me, too. So what's,

Andrew Stotz 26:43
what's a resource of yours that you'd recommend to the listener? Where do you think that they should go to start and get what are they going to get from that?

Michael Bungay Stanier 26:51
Well, I mean, it's a little selfish. But I would say, the work that I am best at is particularly having a think about, what's a big worthy goal for you, what do you want in your life? And how do you define something that will crack you open and unlock your own greatness. And if you're interested in trying to figure out what's the next big thing for you, and how you might claim ambition for yourself in the world, then the place to go to is NBS dot works, which is my website. There's just a lot of free resource there. I love being a teacher is one of the joys I have in life. And so if you're looking to get some of that NBS dot works might be a website for you to check out.

Andrew Stotz 27:31
Fantastic. And I'll have a link again to in that to that in the show notes. Last question. What's your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Michael Bungay Stanier 27:41
You know, because my last book had a beginner's about what about goal setting, and about big goal setting rather than small goal setting? So you know, I should have an answer to this. And I do. I think when you're setting goals, sometimes it's about what are you building? What are you starting? What are you creating? What do you kind of initiating some, I call those, what I call the three P model. So a project, sometimes your goal is people the relationships you have, so you may be looking to change and evolve the relationship you have with people wanting people in your life. And the third one is patterns. How do you overcome or change them or your own patterns, your own ways of showing up in the world? And that's the kind of the deepest most self reflective one of these. And that's what I'm working on at the moment is how do I become a writer? Now I'm already an author, I've got I've written six or seven or eight books. But an author is a measurement of, of Do you have a book out in the world or not? A writer has a moral philosophy about how do you build a life around being a writer? How do you structure it in a way, and I'm not there yet, you know, I'm a kind of businessman who create books on the side. And I'm looking to move into claiming writer more thoroughly as an identity. So that's proving harder than I thought. And so I think that's probably my big goal for the next 12 months.

Andrew Stotz 29:07
That's, that's fascinating that you, you know, separate writer from author in it. I have a friend of mine that's is a writer, and we went to a retreat together for seven days to get to know each other, we brought our best books, and we decided we would just talk about some of the stuff and every morning I'd knock on his door and you know, bring over some coffee, and we'd sit down. And every morning he was always on his bed with an open notebook writing. And I looked at that, and after I saw that a couple of days, I said, Oh, you're a writer. I'm an author,

Michael Bungay Stanier 29:41
actually. Exactly. Kind of like how do I make that shift? You articulated it beautifully. Exactly. Well,

Andrew Stotz 29:49
listeners, there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. If you haven't yet joined the become a better investor community and gotten access to my review of this book. Go to My worst investment ever.com right now to claim your spot. As we conclude, Michael, I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of a starts 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?

Michael Bungay Stanier 30:20
I probably just say hey, if you take one thing away from this conversation from Andrew me it might be learn to stay curious a little bit longer.

Andrew Stotz 30:31
Fantastic. And that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.