Host Stacy Havener brings you the storytelling tips, sales strategies, behavioral secrets, and inspirational stories that help YOU turn your words into dollars. Learn from sales and marketing experts. Meet finance and investment leaders, founders and fund managers who have made it, and the ones on the rise. Because there are people behind the portfolios. Their stories matter. So does yours.
Presented by:
Ultimus Fund Solutions // www.ultimusfundsolutions.com
GemCap // www.geminicapital.ie
@stacyhavener // www.billiondollarbackstory.com
[00:00:00] Philippe Gijsels: When I sign books, I write, it all comes and goes in waves. It always does. It's a song by Dean Lewis and I always write, we need less profits and more visits because we are in a fourth turning, which is a very complicated geopolitical situation with a lot of political geopolitical upheaval, wars, conflicts.
[00:00:22] Governments that cannot agree conflicts between parts of the population. So there's a lot of challenges with ideas also. We have to be optimistic at the end of the day because we don't need people who tell us the world is going to end and we're all going to die. Now we need solutions.
[00:00:41] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey Havener.
[00:00:43] I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to and follow on assets for investment boutiques. You could say [00:01:00] against the odds, yeah. Understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios, while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes.
[00:01:11] It's real talk here. Money. Authenticity. Growth. Setbacks. Sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college, mixed with happy hour. Pull up a seat. Grab your notebook and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the billion dollar backstory podcast.
[00:01:39] Philippe, thank you so much for being here today. This is an honor for me because we're going to pretend that we are strolling the beach in Newport, doing a beach walk and talk and not podcast, right? Because that's how we became friends.
[00:01:57] Philippe Gijsels: Absolutely. I follow your your, [00:02:00] from the beach already for, yeah, I don't know how long you do them already, but it seems like ages, so I've never been to Newport, but I have a feeling that I know the beach.
[00:02:09] Stacy Havener: There you go. Beautiful. We're channeling that today. So to start our beach walk I want to know your backstory. I want to know did you always envision that you would be working as a chief investment strategist at one of the largest banks in the world? Was that like your childhood dream?
[00:02:29] Philippe Gijsels: Yeah, and this is maybe a strange story and it's also a little bit of a boring story.
[00:02:34] Plus I've been looking at the stock market since I was 12 years old. I worked also at a bank, so I started looking at stock price tables, commodity prices and so on. When I was very young, I saw them going up and down. And after a while I thought, okay, if I can buy low and I can sell high, I can make money.
[00:02:54] So it became a fascination with so it's just been my childhood dream. And when I do [00:03:00] presentations for clients or I talk to the press, they always say, you're a man who was able to turn his hobby into his profession. And that's absolutely true. So I do what I love to do. But it's a boring story. I've been doing that my entire life.
[00:03:13] I work at the same bank. And when you do that in the United States or in London, they say that you're far out of the furniture and you never get another job ever again. But I've been doing this for 27 years at the same bank in different functions, different analysis of the strategy, all kinds of asset classes.
[00:03:32] But yeah, I've been doing what I like to do.
[00:03:35] Stacy Havener: I love that. And also, this is all very rare, right? To know what you really want to do from a very young age. And to make that happen and to be at the same firm, as you said, I guess the one, one side of it could be that you're part of the furniture, but the other side of it could be that you found a home and I think there are a lot of people that [00:04:00] never find that they never find that dream career or they never find that dream company.
[00:04:05] And so there's a lot of magic in it too.
[00:04:08] Philippe Gijsels: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. Because I started out on my very first stock that I bought, you're not going to know it because it is a European stock. It was an Italian computer company before a typewriting company and it went absolutely belly up. So I thought if I can buy stuff.
[00:04:25] As low as possible and that was way before the internet, so you had to look at newspapers at
[00:04:32] Stacy Havener: 52
[00:04:34] Philippe Gijsels: week low, and you would keep all these newspapers, so you would have stocks of newspapers, and then you thought, okay, this is the lowest That it ever was, so you bought it, but of course it went belly up.
[00:04:45] That was the first lesson. Then the second lesson was, okay, I should not buy the stocks that are low, but I should buy the stocks that are cheap. So I buy stuff at low PEs, but then you only buy cyclicals, of course. That was not a good idea either. [00:05:00] So I went to all these phases, and of course, if you know that experience is some sort of an accumulation of all the mistakes that you have made, then I can say that I have a lot of experience during the time.
[00:05:14] Stacy Havener: I love that. And the journeys, like you said, they're not perfect. There's always some mess in there and some lessons, but they, those are the things that really make us better. Can you, what's strategist do? Can I just ask that? I know it's a job at a lot of very big asset management companies and big banks, but what is that?
[00:05:33] What is that job?
[00:05:34] Philippe Gijsels: I would say a little bit, I'm a strategist slash stand up comedian. So part of my job is doing podcasts, doing presentations, talk to the press. I do that two or three hundred times a year. For clients, for companies, so that, that's one part of the job and I absolutely love it. So I've written the book as well.
[00:05:52] The New World Economics is also part of it. I like communicating. I like talking. I like writing, but that's one [00:06:00] part. And then of course, there is the analysis part and then there is a strategy part. And that is a top and top down and a bottom up story. So the strategy is top down. You have a view of the world and you try to say, okay, I'm positive on equities.
[00:06:14] I think inflation is going to go up. I think interest rates are going to go up. So we have a view on the world and you try to build that view of a world in, in, in a portfolio. And then another part of my job is that the strategy part, I'm also responsible for the specialist teams that are 17 people, and they do the bottom up analysis, they look at funds, so I do, in your day to day business do a lot, so we select fund managers, we select funds, so we, the top down says, We have to buy Japanese equities, and then the bottom up will decide which fund are you going to buy?
[00:06:48] Are you going to buy ETFs? Are you going to buy an actively managed fund? And then there are six, seven people who talk to fund managers a lot. A couple of people talking to hedge funds as [00:07:00] well. There are a couple of people talking to private equity and then some equity analysts. And we try to bring it all together.
[00:07:06] And one more or less coherent story when possible, sometimes it's very hard to sell between brackets the story to the world. And we of course also managed to book the four years of the bank with that strategy.
[00:07:20] Stacy Havener: You get to do a lot.
[00:07:23] Philippe Gijsels: Yeah. I do not sleep a lot.
[00:07:24] Stacy Havener: But that, but a lot of really fun stuff. Now I want to ask you a question and I don't know if this is like an okay question to ask, but I want to ask it.
[00:07:33] So I'm going to try. Okay. Because I think there's a perception about banks, right? We can agree. There's a perception about banks, very conservative, not willing to take a lot of risks. And here you are building these portfolios within a bank, and I've already heard you say some things like active management and Japanese equities that don't really jive with what my perspective of what a bank would [00:08:00] be building portfolios.
[00:08:01] Can you speak to that? Is that stereotype true for you?
[00:08:05] Philippe Gijsels: To a certain extent, I'm afraid it is. Okay. I'd like to change a bit in the sense that If you look at the world today, and then I know you talk to a lot of very interesting founders and then people who think out of the box and come with their unique stories and so on.
[00:08:23] At this moment, and it will have to change, I'm absolutely convinced, but the world is moving more and more to passage because. Here in Europe, we have to make the decision each and every time how much of the U. S. are we going to buy and buy in the U. S. is very often the S& P 500 because you have the Magnificent Seven.
[00:08:41] They have been going up like crazy. They've been driving up the S& P 500 index. Typical American portfolio only is up 4 or 5 percent today. The European will be even less. Why the image is up to a 20 percent so yeah, everybody goes to indeed [00:09:00] to this SMP. So value investing and trend following and then hedge funds and so on.
[00:09:05] They have lagged because everybody has lagged in videos and so on. And that has pushed more and more people to us, the passive side. And then we have been forced to follow that. Bank in Europe.
[00:09:17] Stacy Havener: Yep.
[00:09:18] Philippe Gijsels: BMP hoop is the biggest bank in the Euro zone. So we can the fourth to be five or 6% behind. That's right.
[00:09:26] That is a massive opportunity because all the money goes to a very narrow hoop of stocks. So this means that there must be massive opportunity and other places. But the point is we want to take that, but we cannot go to say, in Pakistans, we cannot go all in. Yeah, because then we get killed and performance of this group of technology stocks is already going on since the financial crisis, basically.
[00:09:53] It's already 14 years. So each and every year, everybody says, yeah, this year is going to change. And maybe 75 will be [00:10:00] the year when it changes, but we say that already for a long time, but I'm absolutely convinced that we've got an enormous, a big opportunity is building and then, yeah, when it comes, we should take advantage of that.
[00:10:13] And another point is that we are very much 60 40 portfolio.
[00:10:19] Stacy Havener: Okay.
[00:10:19] Philippe Gijsels: It's the for us, more balanced because we have dynamic, we have defensive, but let's say for the middle of the road portfolio, you're 60 percent on the benchmark equities, 40 bonds. That works extremely well in a world where inflation is between zero and two, but as we argue in our book, it will be more between two and four with some spikes to the upside.
[00:10:41] The correlation between bonds and equities will turn positive. Okay, that sounds positive, but that's actually, it's not.
[00:10:49] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[00:10:50] Philippe Gijsels: If you want to be compensated, if the equities go up or equities go down by the fact that the bonds go up and vice versa, if they move in the same direction, [00:11:00] you have a problem.
[00:11:00] So there is ample room the next couple of years for alternatives, for things outside of the box. And eventually the industry will go there, but it will be a slow process,
[00:11:11] Stacy Havener: yeah, and so thank you for sharing that and thank you for taking that question because I think it is interesting and it makes absolute sense when you talk about it just from a very common sense perspective of why the infrastructure and stereotype around banks is what it is.
[00:11:28] But you've also talked about alternatives. So right now you're 60, 40. You said some of your team actually looks at and talks with hedge funds. So is that something changing? Yeah, absolutely. I think 10
[00:11:40] Philippe Gijsels: years or maybe even five years down the road, I think a typical portfolio will have 20 to 30 percent of privaties that can be commodities, that can be CTAs, that can be hedge funds.
[00:11:53] That will, I'm a big believer in the trend following concept as well. Okay. Because that's very often [00:12:00] negatively correlated. Especially in times of trouble, they call it crisis alpha, but it's not necessarily crisis alpha because when it shoots up, you would be in Bitcoin to the upside at the moment if that was one of your underlying asset classes.
[00:12:15] So yeah I think that this will change and there is ample room to do that. But yeah. It's very hard to be the first smoother and then I envy a little bit what you do because you talk to interesting people all the time who have a story to tell, who think out of the box, who maybe have difficulties today because everybody wants to be in the S& P 500.
[00:12:35] Stacy Havener: Yeah. As
[00:12:35] Philippe Gijsels: they keep true to their beliefs, I think the world will turn eventually in that direction.
[00:12:43] Stacy Havener: That is a great thing for our listeners to hear if they're sitting there running a boutique, a specialist firm that's maybe not constructive on some of the Mag 7. Thank you for sharing that. And you mentioned the book and I want to talk, I want to talk a lot about that because I think it's just [00:13:00] naturally your current thoughts and views, but you also do some really interesting things in the book.
[00:13:06] So maybe even before we talk about some of those views, talk to us just about the idea of how to write a book on a topic that maybe some people might think is somewhat. Dry and what you've done to make that story really different and pop because I think there are lessons in this for everybody in our industry to hear how you've put some jazz into the topic of Your views on the economy and what's happening investing.
[00:13:40] Philippe Gijsels: I love the word Jess because that's exactly what it is. And the book brings in a way, and I call out of it. So my partner in crime, I will call him. This is good news. It's also a very good friend of mine. He's the economist at the bank. So I'm the strategist. So there, there is a logical mix. He's more like a classical economist who can go on for [00:14:00] 50 pages on the debt, which is this very complicated.
[00:14:03] And then I tried to tell a story. About monopoly and that helps. I'd like to talk a story about chess. I interviewed that economist. So he brings some. Color to the story, but always with a sort of content in it. And sometimes, I think I heard you say it on the beach or somebody else, but I think it was you, that the people who tell the best stories eventually win.
[00:14:27] That's right. There is the content, but on the other hand, there's also the way how you present it. Yeah, definitely. And we start the presentation because, like I said, it's sometimes stand up comedy. And Coen starts by saying he's a very serious economist. He says, yeah, I've worked three years on this book, which is true.
[00:14:45] And Philip also worked three months on it, which is also true. And then the story's over, he's okay, but that's my first book. It's Coen's fourth book, but this is the first that's more or less readable. And the first that sells. So then we started off a little [00:15:00] game and then we have a story. So that's the way it is.
[00:15:02] But I love, for example, you said off camera that you've been to London recently. We have an interview with Ricardo and Maltus, Ricardo the trade guy, Maltus the guy from the demographics and Malthusian trap and so on, and the setting of this story is in the old bell. And the old bell is a pub that actually exists, led like 300 meters from St.
[00:15:26] Paul's Cathedral. And in London, they had the big fire in 1666, so London was almost gone, and they had to rebuild it. They had to rebuild St. Paul's. And the masons who built St. Paul's also made that pub. So that pub was already there when these two guys lived. Now, these two guys, Ricardo and Maltus, were friends, were good friends.
[00:15:48] One was a Jew, a trading type of guy, and the other was a dry professor, and you already see where I'm going with this story. And basically, They had never agreed on anything, so they were [00:16:00] also politically, they were both in the parliament, they were on the opposite side of the aisle, they had never agreed on a thing in their lives, but they were friends.
[00:16:08] So the Battle of Waterloo came, and it was one of the big battles in Europe, where Napoleon lost and Europe changed totally. And he lost from Wellington, who was English. And Picardo said, I'm going to bet big time on the fact that Wellington is going to win. So he bought bonds and equities and so on.
[00:16:28] And he also bought some equities and Malthus. But he did not have the stomach to stay on the position, and eventually he sold out. And then of course Wellington won, and the guy made two million pounds, which was an absolute fortune in 1830. But I can imagine, and the pub is in Fleet Street. Fleet Street was the place where all the newspapers were back then.
[00:16:51] So you can imagine, the news traveled very slowly, came into Fleet Street. I'll relate to this one. The one guy makes. Two [00:17:00] million, the other guy has nothing again, and then we sit in the pub, and certain moment in time I say to Walters or to Ricardo in the interview. Luke you have been friends your entire life.
[00:17:12] You've died. You're still friends. How come? Because you never agreed on anything. And then he said, you and Coen never agree either. We're also friends. And that's the kind of thing we have.
[00:17:24] I
[00:17:24] Philippe Gijsels: went to the pub. And I left the book there. There is a book from that pub. And I've written in it. Thank you for letting me having the interview with Malthus and Ricardo.
[00:17:35] Because there is no other place in the world where that would have been possible. And the book is down so you can grow a speech.
[00:17:41] Stacy Havener: That's a fantastic story about the story inside of your book. And so this was intentional for you and your co author to put some jazz, to go back to that word, in the book.
[00:17:59] [00:18:00] Why? I think
[00:18:01] Philippe Gijsels: when you go on for 400 and 30 or 40 pages. And you want to convey your story to the world, because that's eventually what you do. You sell funds, you sell a product, but it's selling an idea, and the idea is that we live in a very complicated world. We talk about wizards, we talk about witches as well, because it's a very positive book, because we're in a fourth turning, which is a very complicated world.
[00:18:27] geopolitical situation with a lot of political geopolitical upheaval, wars, conflicts, governments that cannot agree, conflicts between parts of the population. So there is a lot of challenges, but the idea is also We have to be optimistic at the end of the day, because I always, when I sign books, I write, it all comes and goes in waves, it always does.
[00:18:51] The waves again, and the beach, the song by Dean Lewis, a lyric from that song. And I always write, we need less [00:19:00] profits and more visits. We don't need people who tell us the world is going to end and we're all going to die. Now we need solutions. And that's the message. And it's easier. To tell that story, that, that message, put that message into a story, then just only in charts and figures and graphs.
[00:19:21] And it's there because it's sometimes a very serious economic book, especially the parts by Kuhn. But there are also parts where we tell stories and I see them because I talk to people, I talk face to face, a book, you write a book, you send it to the world. And you hope that everybody likes it, and the response has been very good, so I'm very happy with that, but you don't know, but when you talk to your audience And it can be a dinner party, it can be five people, it can be 10 people, or it can be an audience of 200 or 300 people, that happens also.
[00:19:55] But you feel when you tell something, okay, people are listening, they're not [00:20:00] listening, you feel the mood around the table, you feel the mood in the audience, and then you can adapt. And therefore, I was also able to write it in three months, because it's looking forward to the next 25 years, which also looking backwards.
[00:20:16] A lot of the stories, Giamboni and all these things that are in it are things that I used over the last 20, 30 years. And then I put together and therefore I could do it fairly quickly.
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[00:20:46] In the collective, we'll guide you through the billion dollar blueprint we've used to help boutiques add over $30 billion. In a you'll refine your story, focus on your ideal target market, and practice your pitch. You'll rethink your marketing materials, [00:21:00] rewrite your emails, and refresh your differentiators.
[00:21:03] We'll even help you step up your LinkedIn game and give your profile a makeover. You want to grow your biz, we've got your back. Learn more about The Collective, the curriculum, and the amazing coaches who will help you on your journey. Visit HavenerCapital. com slash Collective. High five! Hope to see you in a coaching session soon.
[00:21:28] So these were stories that you had already been using and telling. And that's part of it too, isn't it? Because really, and the idea of storytelling is not just what are you saying, who are you saying it to and what's their response? Like it really is a two way street. It's not just you pitching to take it to, what a lot of our listeners are used to thinking about.
[00:21:56] It is a conversation, even when you're writing a book, is what I'm hearing [00:22:00] you say.
[00:22:00] Philippe Gijsels: Absolutely correct. You've put it one hundred percent correctly, because nobody knows what's going to happen in the next twenty five years. We can make an educated guess, sometimes we're wrong, sometimes we're right, but Also in the book, and then the parts that I've written in the first two chapters, and then all the parts in blue, so he can see the parts that Koen has written, and the parts that I've written.
[00:22:26] And we tend to agree on the big picture, obviously, because otherwise it would have been difficult to agree. We did it together, but we disagree on stuff, so this is the starting point of a conversation, and Koen says, I see it this way, and I say, yeah, maybe, but it's a discussion amongst two friends sitting somewhere in a bark almost.
[00:22:46] Yeah. We invite everybody to participate. That's what I say when I present a book or we do a presentation, say you don't have to agree with me. This is only a starting point of reflection because nobody knows what's going to happen. [00:23:00]
[00:23:00] Stacy Havener: I love that. And it's fascinating to me. Of course, this is like not what, this is why this is a great beach walk and talk that we're doing, right?
[00:23:08] Because the conversation's just happening very naturally. But what I'm realizing is how many similarities there are. Between writing a book and selling anything, a fund, a service, a product. So now I've got all kinds of questions in my head that I want to ask you. But one of them is when you sat down to write this book, then who was it for?
[00:23:34] Who was it for? Did you actually sit down together and say, okay, who are we writing this for and did that inform what happened next with the book?
[00:23:44] Philippe Gijsels: That's a very difficult question. And I got. Asked that question already before, and I still cannot answer it. Yeah. Because there was a professor who teaches in Canada and I know fairly well, also a hedge fund manager and so on famous guy.
[00:23:59] And we sent him a [00:24:00] book and put to see do you like it and if you like it, you can make some publicity in your friends and so on. And he came back and said, I like it, but who have you written it for? I can still not answer, really answer the question. Interesting. I have the feeling for everybody.
[00:24:17] But if you write something for everybody, or you have a product for everybody, a product for nobody. That's right. Because I heard you say that you could say, I could come up with something, I've written it for my children, maybe. I've written this for the next generation, maybe. I can maybe say what made me the happiest.
[00:24:40] Not the number of books that were sold, not the fact that we were in the Financial Times reading list. That all, it's all fun. Some things, and then we talk about the young wizards and the young, I would say, witches, but witches has a very negative connotation.
[00:24:55] Stacy Havener: I know what you mean. I'm a Harry Potter fan, so it's a positive for me.[00:25:00]
[00:25:00] Witches.
[00:25:00] Philippe Gijsels: I
[00:25:00] Stacy Havener: think about them. Yeah.
[00:25:02] Philippe Gijsels: Lady witches. And there was one of them because we also talk about high potentials. We talk about the new, the young people, the Gen Z, who are going to change the world and so on. I'm a Gen X, but Gen Z, I did a podcast with somebody who works with high potentials and who tries to help high potentials in organizations and also at school because very often they drop out and they never reach their full potential and blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:25:31] The entire story. But we did a podcast exactly about that. And that was for a small audience. We only had maybe 1, 000 listeners or so, so we do podcasts where you have 50, 000 or whatever. But it was a small audience. But there was one young lady in the bank who came to me and said, she said, I'm really happy with what you have done because I did not know what was between brackets along with me.
[00:25:57] And no, I think I feel [00:26:00] better and I felt so good about investing almost of about the future, about economics, but that are the small things that you say, yeah, no, I've maybe changed the life of an individual. And that's fun. So if you put a gun to my head and say, we've written it for, maybe I've written it for people like that.
[00:26:25] Stacy Havener: That is beautiful. And. I am going to stay on this topic, which you're probably going to hate because you're like, I want to move off this. I just told you I don't have a great answer, but here's the thing. So the fourth turning, which you've mentioned, and obviously that's a book as well. And it has a bit of a cult following in the investment management industry.
[00:26:47] Would you agree? It's when someone's read it and it's I don't know what it's weird. It's cool. I've always thought it was very cool. Now that book, it's heavy. It's very intellectual.
[00:26:58] Philippe Gijsels: Dynastic, it's heavy.
[00:26:59] Stacy Havener: [00:27:00] Yeah. It's heavy. It's heady, right? It's very esoteric at times, but it's also like really accessible and really common sense in other ways.
[00:27:09] And so if we think about that is this book, is your book, that same idea that this is really for the investment world and a different, maybe perspective that somewhat akin to a fourth turning type of vibe.
[00:27:27] Philippe Gijsels: Yeah, I think so. And I really love the book and it is, now the book is, The Fourth Turning is here by Neil Howe.
[00:27:35] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And
[00:27:36] Philippe Gijsels: a book that was written 30 or 40 years ago by Howe and Strauss was called The Fourth Turning. And I think, and that's something that I've learned over the many years, it's not only figures and charts, it's always about people. People make investment decisions and also the big social trends, the big social moves.
[00:27:59] And it's [00:28:00] indeed a very heavy book. I always say when I start about it, first, I always say, Look we have written a book about books. If you steal from one person, you can go to jail. If you steal from 100 people like we have done, it's called research and that's okay. And one of the people we stole from, that's Neil Hall, but we always mention him.
[00:28:19] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And you. What he is saying and point is, I always say don't read it at the beach when you're in the holidays. Oh no. It will depress you. Not under the Christmas tree. I always say Halloween is the perfect moment to read it. So that's the little joke I make. And then I start because it's a hard story because you have these four turnings together.
[00:28:39] That's always 80 years almost. In the U. S. there are always 80 years between World War and the Civil War and the Mexican War. It's, of course, an American perspective, but yeah, America has ruled the world for the last 100 years, so in a way, it's logical. Okay why 80 years? Because it's a long life. [00:29:00] And when you have a war, second world war or civil war, it's disaster, people die.
[00:29:06] So people say, we're never ever going to do that again. You start to build the United Nations and stuff. But then after 80 years, most people are, who've lived through the horror, are dead. A very old age and then you start again and unfortunately we're at that moment in time. And that's the bad news. Good news is that after a fourth turning eventually a first turning comes.
[00:29:31] Over it needs to get worse before it gets better. But then when people say we have enough of this. And we're going to change, and how are we going to see that? And I love books, and you see it behind me, my, that's my wife. I see all the books in the house, and there's only one room, so there are many questions.
[00:29:48] Like this, it's almost like a library. Very awesome. When you go to a bookstore, and then you know these books, and I've read them as well, it's somewhere here. Atomic Habits, a good book. Wow. But [00:30:00] it is about how am I going to get better? How will my future self look upon me in 20 years? And it's always me.
[00:30:10] And that connects, that's who we are. So it's very much about the individual. And if you want the book about the collectives, about the dupe, you can also find it in a bookstore somewhere in a carbon book at the end at 5. You have to really search for it under a table somewhere. To find something about the collective today, but these books are back in the window, the shop.
[00:30:36] We probably have started the first turning, but I'm a little bit afraid that it will get worse before it gets better.
[00:30:43] Stacy Havener: Fascinating. And also, by the way, have you read Steel Like an Artist?
[00:30:49] Philippe Gijsels: I have it one story lower next to my bed.
[00:30:53] Stacy Havener: Because, It is a compliment, isn't it? And you make it your own.
[00:30:58] That's the whole [00:31:00] point, right? Is that you take that idea and as you start thinking it through and writing about it, and especially with a co author, it's now it's both your ideas and then it becomes something new and fresh. That's right.
[00:31:12] Philippe Gijsels: Ideas. And that's the way it is also in the book, by the way, how innovation works, an idea for one's field, physics or mathematics or whatever, and you bring it to economics or you take something from psychology and if you stay in your own line of work, okay, you make progress, but if you can combine it.
[00:31:37] And then that's the way we've moved to a road, I think, where we have a lot of specialists and that's necessary, but sometimes you need a generalist who can take ideas from different fields and bring that together. So that's also one of the idea, how innovation happens. Innovation is. That, that we stole, by the way, from Steven Jolson, one of the best books I've ever read.
[00:31:57] What's that one? A Good Idea is [00:32:00] Come. He's written a number one of 10 years ago. And he says innovation is like round table and round the table that have smart people, can be engineers, can be scientists, can be Nobel prize winners, but can also be, and I don't know whether the word exists in English, bricoleurs, we call it, people who put stuff together without really what they do.
[00:32:21] They're all on the table. The more diversify, the more diverse they are, the better and on the table are the parts, the semiconductors, the pains, the chemicals the research, everything. And you let smart people play.
[00:32:38] Stacy Havener: I love that and I think it speaks to, even at a very sort of granular practical level, when you look at people who are really doing something different, innovative, new in an industry.
[00:32:54] Oftentimes, they have a perspective, or they come from a [00:33:00] perspective that's not where everybody else came from. And so to your point, the idea of borrowing thing, stealing like an artist from other industries and then playing with it and saying, okay if I were to make that fit it where I am in my sea, in my industry or whatever, what would that look like?
[00:33:20] There's so much magic in that exercise, and I don't think enough of us do it, so even if we're a specialist, I think that exercise still can be done. It just requires you to be curious and creative and brave enough to try something that seems somewhat crazy at times.
[00:33:42] Philippe Gijsels: The book starts, by the way, by Darwin, and when we think about Darwin, we think about the old man with the white beaf, that's the picture that we have.
[00:33:52] He's still a young man, and he is in the South Sea, with a ship, the Beagle, he's still a young man, he's [00:34:00] standing in the water until it's the middle of his body, and he's looking at the, and he's there, by the way, and that speaks to what you say. He is not working on, on, on biology, he's doing a study about atolls, how atolls originate in the sea.
[00:34:17] And he's standing on a coral reef, and the question in his head is, how is it possible that this part of the sea is atoll? There is so much life that I do not see anywhere else. And that always, almost brings tears to my eyes because, Yeah. It's what, 30 years after that becomes Origin of Species. But that's, there is, we see him, he describes it so beautifully.
[00:34:43] You see him standing in the sea. You feel, That it's hot, you feel the seawater, you see him standing, and you, and that is one of the most fantastic, genius ideas that ever has been thought of, [00:35:00] and there's a young man Who is sowing the seeds there in the water of what becomes one of the biggest theories that we have ever had.
[00:35:09] So I find that, that's a book that you read on the beach, in a beach bar or all under the, and you sit and you stare at the wall for a couple of minutes or 10 minutes, you've read something and you say, that's really touches me. And you'll try to do, I'm not as good as Steven Johnson is by no means.
[00:35:29] But that's what we have tried to do in the book that, that at some points somebody says, okay, this touches me and this makes me think about whatever stuff, not necessarily about the book, but puts them one step further in whatever they're doing at the moment.
[00:35:49] Stacy Havener: That's my favorite part of the podcast.
[00:35:51] That's my mic drop moment for you in this podcast. That was so special. And I think it's funny. I was chatting with a friend today. [00:36:00] We were saying how, for all of us right now, we feel over calendared and overscheduled and running from meeting to meeting and that the breakthroughs, like the really big special thoughts that we need to have.
[00:36:17] The magic, it can't happen when we're that scheduled, when we're sitting at our desks and we're going from the one o'clock to the two o'clock to the three o'clock. It's the times we're not at our desk, when we're walking on the beach, or as your story standing there, looking down at the sea, when we have the space that our minds can wander and just be free to think, those are when the breakthroughs happen and we don't have enough time for that is how it feels.
[00:36:49] Philippe Gijsels: And what I do, because I'm getting already a little bit older, like I say, I'm gen new gen X and sometimes I forget. So what I do now, I have all these notebooks. [00:37:00] When I have an idea, I write it down. Yeah. You say, okay, I was thinking about something, but I do not remember anymore. So we have, for example, The Catcher in the Rye, G.
[00:37:13] B. Salinger, that was one of my favorite books when I was young. So that's about a guy who tries to save the children from falling over a collision in the rice field and rye. But there is also something, I saw a building, it was in Brussels, so this is the capital of Belgium. There was a Christmas market and there is a big building and there was a slope going down and I was thinking that, that's classical history.
[00:37:39] Maybe it's not something that's taught at your schools, but you have the Tart Payrock. So in the Roman times, the traders were thrown from the Tart Payrock. And I thought, on one hand you have a GB Salinger. Oh, it's tried to prevent people falling off the cliff and then he couldn't make another story and I'll do thesis of [00:38:00] somebody who throws people from the dock.
[00:38:02] And I'm thinking about, yeah, a short story about, I like this. But I've written it down because otherwise, and I've told it to you, so I will remember.
[00:38:11] Stacy Havener: There you go. We've got it. Here it is. This is the draft. This is the outline. But it's true that I think we need to give ourselves space. And I love the idea that you shared with us about what you want readers to experience by reading the book.
[00:38:26] And so maybe as a transition point, and this is like such a bad question, I don't want to ask you it, but I don't know how else to ask you this. It's like something around. Like the one takeaway, like if you wanted people to take something away from this book or have an experience from reading this book, like what is it that you'd want this book to do for them?
[00:38:48] What's the gift that this book is giving them?
[00:38:50] Philippe Gijsels: Like I said, I think with the young lady who. Yeah. For her own and made her feel better at the end of the day and as a colleague. Yeah. She's [00:39:00] one of the smartest people I know, but at a certain moment in time, you think something is wrong with me.
[00:39:05] And if you can help with that, it helps. And like I said, it's an optimistic book, but it's a book full of risks. And because when you manage money for people. You have to look at the risks, and you're constantly looking at the unknown unknowns, because you have the no knowns in the story, you have the known unknowns, you know that you do not know something, but there are the unknowns that are risky, because there are the black swans that basically fall on your head from every direction, so you're always worrying about that.
[00:39:35] And it is maybe a long book about a lot of risks. But it is, in the fourth turning I think it's hugely important to know that there is a first turning coming afterwards. And that also you have the beautiful expression in English. You have sometimes expressions of things that we not, cannot even translate in our own language, but that the [00:40:00] darkest hours is very often before the dawn, and it will get dark, it will be very dark in a certain moment in time, but then maybe need a darkness for everybody to realize that things have to change.
[00:40:14] And that is probably, that's maybe not for a banker to say because I'm a more than 50 year old guy I'm white and I'm a banker so that a lot of people will not necessarily like, but still that's something that we have to do. So that's maybe the takeaway and for the rest, it was something I love doing because I'm already working on the second book and I'm working on something about trading, but it's also going to be trading.
[00:40:40] In the sense of buying equities, selling equities, commodities, technical analysis, sort of classical stuff, but also trading. And then that's, once again, something that you've talked about very often about trading time with your family against time, if you have to make money, but you want to be [00:41:00] with your children as well.
[00:41:01] So all the time stuff. And then there is a story, once again, that is in my head, there is a desert and you can go to the desert and you can take something out of the sand that you need or you think that you need, but you have to leave something that you do not want to give up. And that's the idea of trading.
[00:41:24] Like I said it's not economics, it's not only about figures and charts and tables and indicators. It is about people. And a big mistake a lot of economists made over the last 50 years, I think, that we wanted to make economics into an exact science. We wanted to be it like math or physics. And it's like psychology or sociology or history.
[00:41:49] And I love books. I love reading stuff. And in everything that I read, I find something. That helps me hopefully becoming a better [00:42:00] strategist, because you need these things. You cannot talk about this time if you do not know your market history. You have to know what has happened before. You only have a chance to say something about the future.
[00:42:13] Stacy Havener: It's another great moment. I just love it. I also know that when I start asking you these other questions, I'm like, this first question about the book is going to just not be an easy one for you, but that's okay. We're not, I'm not quite ready to go there yet because it's about what's the book that inspires you, but I don't even know how you're going to answer that.
[00:42:31] We're going to get there when we get there. Cause I wanted to ask, the first turning and how each of the turning is characterized by a character type, tell people what the first turning is characterized by. It's the generation of, yeah. A
[00:42:47] Philippe Gijsels: period after a war, a time of healing, a time of realizing that you have lost a lot and to build again, but it's also like in history, it's a renaissance.
[00:42:59] This is a [00:43:00] new time. It's very often a new generation that comes to power, so this should be Gen Z. Typically, the leaders are older people. Typically, the leaders are not necessarily the people of that age. Somebody older that, that leads them, but they have the power. And it's always these generational shifts between Individualism and more collective.
[00:43:26] So it will be more connected in a way. Yeah. I see that already with my kids, there, there is no conflict. My, my son is 21 and my daughter is 19. There is no generational conflict. They play the same music as we do. It's not like we were with our parents. Everything that our parents did was bad, while I hear Elton John and Queen, whenever shower, I hear my music.
[00:43:52] Oh, so there is no conflict, but they're different, they're not perfect, and they travel all the time. They [00:44:00] do not care about saving too much, they do not care about cars, about houses, they care about experiences, there is a party going on, or there's a trip and they're not participating, Farmer.
[00:44:13] Yeah, that is going to be the next, but with this time of healing, I think
[00:44:21] Stacy Havener: it's artists too. Isn't the first turning about the artists? It's
[00:44:25] Philippe Gijsels: about the artists as well. Yeah. That's something else I've written about in the book. I love art and then. That's something I eventually want to do, I've now written a book I would like to paint.
[00:44:37] So I see paintings in my head, I know what I want to make, but I do not have the technique to do it. So one day when I find some time I have to do it, but after so very often I love going to museums, I love all kinds, especially pop art. The Warhols and the Lichtensteins and so on, but very often you see that in real [00:45:00] estate.
[00:45:00] Stacy Havener: Oh, yeah?
[00:45:01] Philippe Gijsels: Not so long ago, and then you first, you had the afters in Manhattan, and then to Brooklyn. Yes, of course. Jerks, see? And now they're in Yeah. This is a thing that exists typically when afters take over your neighborhood. You see some, Oh yeah, absolutely. And if you invest there, you always say the book somewhere, I think I've written it, or maybe because not everything is in the book, because sometimes you have to cut to to kill your babies.
[00:45:29] That's always difficult. Yeah. I think it's still there somewhere. Follow the artists if you want to go where they are, because 10 years later it's The property goes to the roof.
[00:45:41] Stacy Havener: So great. What a wonderful conversation and so many lessons, I think, for all of us that I was not expecting about what it's like to write a book and how to communicate your ideas in such a way that it is a [00:46:00] conversation, not just a one way monologue, right?
[00:46:02] It's a dialogue, even though it's a book that someone's holding in their hands. One of the things I really take away from this is the idea that this book is designed to get people thinking and having that conversation with you and through the power of story, which is amazing. And of course, I'm a huge fan.
[00:46:22] Thank you for all of this, and I'd like to end with some questions that are patterned after Proust's questionnaire but maybe a lighter version, but just to help us get to know you a little bit more. So the first question is the one that I feel bad asking you, because you're surrounded by books and you're an author and you're an avid reader, but it was designed to be an, the easy question, which is what book inspires you?
[00:46:48] Philippe Gijsels: It's always difficult to take one, so I take maybe the liberty to take three. Sure. Okay. You can take three. You're allowed. That the book had to be a combination between [00:47:00] Michael Covell is the guy from the podcast from trend following, and he's written the book, Old Trends Following the Trend.
[00:47:05] Oh, okay. Philosophy and Life. Once again, on the beach, there's a wave, you saw it was on, you take the wave, you We don't know whether it's going to be killer wave, a fantastic wave, or it can be a small wave that breaks immediately. You never know if you take the wave. That's the wave. I love that. So that's the investment part of it.
[00:47:26] I said I wanted to be the book 50 percent Covel and the other 50 percent is a little bit what behind me. And if you have not read the book yet, The Starless Sea by Irene Morgenstern. It's a fantasy book. She's also written. Night Circus, she's only written two books, they're absolutely fabulous, but you have to be into fantasy, and that's about the storytelling, that's about the library it's a strange, when I tell it you will say you're absolutely crazy, but it's underground libraries, there are streams of honey instead of water, [00:48:00] there are cats, so it's if you like Harry Potter, you will love that, but that's the storytelling part, so you have the economic part.
[00:48:09] And you have the storytelling part, and then of course one of the books that I absolutely adore and that helped me a lot in my journey and that gave me some rest. And that book is going to go without a glimmer of a doubt to seven habits of highly effective people. And there is sharpen the saw and so on, but the best one is, and that has helped, really helped me.
[00:48:28] Is, begin with the end in mind, because we're running around, it's come back in my training book as well. We're running around and when we're with our kids, we're unhappy that we're not working, you're working, so we're unhappy that we're not with the kids and you're always running and never happy. And what's begin with the end in mind, it's like a thought experiment, you're dead, you're in your coffin, you have the people that you love standing around your coffin and what do you want them to say?
[00:48:55] First of all. I have my kids saying that I was, tried [00:49:00] to be a good father, would like my wife to say I tried to be a good husband. And I would like to say my friends that they say, okay, he was there for us when we needed him. Then I would like to my colleagues and my team say he's a good manager. Then I would maybe say he's a good writer and so on.
[00:49:17] But that's already fifth of the sixth point. And that helps you because if you talk about goals and about strategies, what do you want them to say first? That's your first goal. And then sometimes I, okay, I can ride a bit less. I maybe not read everything I wanted to read about a certain sector because I had to be there with my kids.
[00:49:43] And then that gave me peace. So that's also a book that I would absolutely recommend everybody to read. Fantastic recommendations. I have not done this, but I have friends in my business coaching group who have done this, which is to write [00:50:00] your obituary. I can't bring myself to it. I have some kind of weird karma thing happen every time I go to, but it's exactly what you said.
[00:50:08] Stacy Havener: It's that same thinking. But yeah, no, I can't go there. Yeah,
[00:50:13] Philippe Gijsels: I can't
[00:50:14] Stacy Havener: get there. I'm with you. So we did books. Now we're going to switch to place. What place inspires you?
[00:50:24] Philippe Gijsels: What's your happy place? A big surprise. Yeah. The beach. Yeah, the beach. And there's a library. Some sort of strange library on the thing.
[00:50:35] Stacy Havener: Wait, did you read the book, The Midnight Library? Yeah. That's another good one, right?
[00:50:39] Philippe Gijsels: Yeah, and there is another one because there is another book by the writer.
[00:50:44] Stacy Havener: Oh, Matt Haig?
[00:50:46] Philippe Gijsels: But, The Midnight Library is from Pacifica. Yeah, it's about a lot what we have been talking about, yeah. Yes, isn't it? From virtual world where stuff changes.
[00:50:57] I'm, I know we go very [00:51:00] deep and then very metaphysical, but I'm absolutely convinced that the dimensions that we see and we live in, that's not everything. There is way more. That we don't see and then you get into strange things and that you do not expect from a banker,
[00:51:15] Stacy Havener: yeah, but you know what?
[00:51:16] That's, this is great. And that's the second time you've said it, so now I feel I have to say something back to you, which is to say, that it's, I think, one of the reasons it will work is because you're a banker. Because it's so unexpected, right? Because you're not saying what everyone is expecting you to say.
[00:51:34] This was not the conversation I was expecting to have with you. And that's a good thing.
[00:51:39] Philippe Gijsels: Never seen a banker read books.
[00:51:41] Stacy Havener: I think bankers read books, but they're, bleh. I think everybody thinks they're born books. Right?
[00:51:46] Philippe Gijsels: People you talk to. Maybe you're surprised by the fact that I'm closer to the people you usually talk to.
[00:51:52] Stacy Havener: I think so. And I'm pleasantly surprised and I love it. So I'm, I am here for all of this. Okay. So the next question is, [00:52:00] let's pretend that you're going to be in a big stadium doing a talk about your book and maybe you've already done that, but we're going to make it an even bigger stadium. What is the song they play to amp you up, to hype up you and the crowd?
[00:52:16] What is your walkout anthem?
[00:52:18] Philippe Gijsels: We did that actually, but it was only a room of three to four hundred people when we presented the book.
[00:52:26] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[00:52:26] Philippe Gijsels: Almost a year ago, 12th of December last year in Belgium, and my wife was there, and the kids were there, and their friends were there, so all the young wizards as well.
[00:52:35] And I was nervous, because I'm never nervous when I go on stage, but My kids and my wife were never there. So I was a bit nervous. We had, when we came onto the stage, we had the eye of the tiger. She's the one of the rock. The artist. That was a book. And then when you went off, we had to saw the song. That's the last couple of sentences of the book.
[00:52:57] And that's. Piano Man by Billy [00:53:00] Joel. Since we are three. Off, sing me a song, you are the piano man. And they came to see me to forget for about life for a while and so on. And that's also the song because we have the epilogue at the end of the book. Kunin and me, we're writing, going to a presentation, and we're in a self driving car, because in 25 years time, you're self driving cars, and you're in traffic, and there is a traffic jam, and the car says, okay, do you want to fly?
[00:53:26] Because the car can also fly. And that cost more, your insurance premium goes up immediately, but you say fly, so we're flying to Antwerp, which is the biggest, second biggest city in Belgium. And we see all the traffic downstairs and on the road, and we're in the air, and we realize, okay, the people are coming to our show.
[00:53:48] Because there is a traffic jam, because the hominids
[00:53:51] Stacy Havener: are still there,
[00:53:53] Philippe Gijsels: away from Tony Robbins, who in his book wrote, he was flying with an helicopter and he saw there is a [00:54:00] traffic jam, and he coming to my show. And then the idea is, in 20 years time, we will be doing everything, we can do everything virtually.
[00:54:10] We can have avatars, we can have meetings together with avatars, so we could do, we should not see each other anymore physically, virtually. But there is still that human need to do that. And the books around the campfire with the hunters who hunted the mammoth and they were telling the stories and the book also ends with the same story where they can do everything in the virtual world, but there is still the need to be together around the campfire and to tell the stories.
[00:54:40] And then there's the song that ends with Piano Man, and we started the evening with Eye of the Tiger, and we ended with Piano Man, which is a That is so
[00:54:50] Stacy Havener: good. Gosh, that's good. Fantastic. Okay, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
[00:54:58] Philippe Gijsels: Writer I would like to be. [00:55:00] So I'm a little bit Wait, what do you Sure,
[00:55:01] Stacy Havener: that doesn't count.
[00:55:02] Or fiction, maybe. Ah, okay.
[00:55:06] Philippe Gijsels: I would like to paint. I would like to paint. I see the images in my head, but I have not the technique to do it, but I found some time.
[00:55:15] Stacy Havener: Okay. You're allowed. I was gonna say, you're already a writer. You can't say that one. But fiction, we can give you that. And painting. All right, now, flip side, what profession would you not like to do?
[00:55:27] It's
[00:55:27] Philippe Gijsels: all so easy. I'm the I'm the Worst driver in Western Europe, at least, maybe worldwide. Wait, the worst one? But I hate drivers. Crap. I'm not, so I would not drive a taxi or a bus, but that is absolutely a disaster.
[00:55:43] Stacy Havener: And we should be grateful for that. My wife also
[00:55:46] Philippe Gijsels: drives, my daughter drives.
[00:55:47] I almost never drive, so when I can avoid it, I don't drive. So I'm yeah, that would be something I would really not like to do.
[00:55:56] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh, that's a fantastic answer. [00:56:00] Last one, and we're a ways away from this, by the way, I know, what do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry?
[00:56:11] Philippe Gijsels: Like I said, I want my wife and my kids, I already said what I wanted to say. Yeah. I would like to say, I think I would like to say my client, that I was, Always, not that I was always right, because nobody is always right, but that I at least when I, between brackets, sold them something or told them a story or advised them to do something that I at least always believed it myself.
[00:56:39] That's an important one. I think because I 20 years ago and when my kids were born, they would still send me. A bear or a boon or something like that and then you know, okay, you cannot do good for everybody, but I think that's very important and that's your expectation and that's, you take [00:57:00] years to build and it can be gone in a second or that's something that's always a risk when you run in the public eye, that's a risk, you should be so much aware that's always a risk.
[00:57:12] Stacy Havener: And I think it's a really interesting take on authenticity, isn't it? Because you think about authenticity and like, how do you show up and are you sharing, both sides or are you editing only to the good things that are you willing to share the messy parts and the failures and the losses, et cetera.
[00:57:31] But it's very interesting that you brought it to how you interact with clients and that. They would say that you believed what you were telling them or advising them or selling them, as you said. I think that's a really interesting part. Dli, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate this conversation on so many levels.
[00:57:53] It has been an honor.
[00:57:54] Philippe Gijsels: It's not that attitude, but I think this is one of the nicest interviews I've ever done, and [00:58:00] that's probably also the most personal one I've ever done. But anyway. Like I said, I I had a feeling that I knew, know you already a long time. And you always, I think what you do is you're also always very.
[00:58:13] Open and personal. And that's why people keep, because you have these little clips on the internet. There are thousands of them. You have something about you. That's authentic,
[00:58:22] Stacy Havener: yeah. Thank you. And I think that the feeling's mutual. When we dialed into the green room, it was like, hi, and here we are.
[00:58:29] And so let's talk and there, and I really appreciate you saying that. I really appreciate you taking the time. And if people want to follow along on your journey. Obviously they can get the book, where else can they, they follow along?
[00:58:43] Philippe Gijsels: Mostly on LinkedIn and I post charts about investment ideas, but I also post a lot of books.
[00:58:50] The books that I read I post very often and post quotes and things that that I like or so it's not only about economics or. It's not get [00:59:00] rich quickly, only there are some sometimes ideas, but it's a bit of everything. LinkedIn is a good place.
[00:59:05] Stacy Havener: Perfect. And as you said, it's all about people.
[00:59:07] And I think that's a great message today. Thank you so much for being here.
[00:59:11] Philippe Gijsels: Thank you for the opportunity. It was great.
[00:59:13] Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy.
[00:59:28] Investment values may fluctuate, and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havener or Havener Capital Partners.