October 15, 2019

A leap of faith, belief and trust

Amit Bivalkar

Director, Sapient Wealth Advisors

A leap of faith, belief and trust

I often get asked about my decision of collaborating with other advisors, and what prompted me to do so. This (and any other such business move outside of your comfort zone) is not merely a transactional decision. It is one of the principles and how I see my business running here on. It involves the intersection of the belief systems of more than one party which can bring about a lot of change and uncertainty. However, when you know deep down that this change is what you stand for and are willing to work through the issues that come with it, is when you know you’re taking the right call. Moves like these are not propelled only by passion and impulse. They are guided by faith, belief and trust. What is the difference, you ask? Well understanding this is as important in guiding your journey in the business as it is basic.

Laymen can seldom differentiate between Faith, Belief and Trust. But actually, there is a difference which is:

1. Faith is in God
2. Belief is in yourself and
3. Trust is in someone else

We all know that Nokia refused Android & Yahoo had refused Google, The lesson what we learnt from it is,

1. a) Embrace change.
2. b) If you refuse to change with time you all will perish.

Nokia believed in themselves and did not trust others hence did not change and finally perished.

“Belief & trust look very similar but in reality, are two different things”, to comprehend this let’s look at the story given below.

Shark and Fishes

A Marine biologist once placed a shark into a large holding tank & he put some tiny fishes into the tank. As everyone could guess the shark instantaneously came around and attacked all the fishes and had a feast. The biologist then put a strong glass divider in the tank and he repeated the whole experiment again, only this time he put fishes on one side of divider and shark on the other side of the divider. As expected, the shark again attacked the fishes, only this time there was a glass divider between them and the shark slammed on the glass ceiling and went back, it still didn’t give up and kept on trying and eventually gave up after multiple attempts.

The biologist continued the experiment and each time the shark made fewer attempts to break the glass divider and eventually gave up the idea of attacking. The biologist then removed the glass divider and to his surprise the shark didn’t attack the fishes, as the shark subconsciously believed that there is glass divider in between. And the tiny fishes swam wherever they wanted without any harm.

“Belief is the death of intelligence”

 A Man with a balancing Stick:

A man started to walk on a rope tied between two tall towers at several hundred feet above the ground. He was slowly walking with a balancing stick in his hands and carrying his son on his shoulders. Everyone in the audience were tensed and were holding their breath, while watching him. The man slowly crossed the second tower and watching him cross the tower everyone in the audience were overwhelmed and overjoyed and everyone started greeting him by shaking his hands and taking selfies with him. Overwhelmed by everyone’s response, the man asked, “Can I walk back to the first tower again, and what do you think about it? Everyone in the audience said “Yes, we are ready to bet on you” and the man replied with confidence, “Does anyone wants to sit on my shoulder? I will take you to the first tower.”

There was a pin drop silence in the audience and everyone started looking at him with a stoic look when the man asked this question. What we can comprehend from this is, to believe in someone is one thing and to trust someone is a different ballgame all together. With trust, there is additional commitment i.e. we need to totally surrender ourselves when we trust someone and this is something that is missing from the investor’s end towards equities. As an investor, we believe that equities do well over the long term but we are not willing to trust the market for that.

To conclude let’s build an analogy with two stories:

1). Mr. Sanders founded KFC at the age of 65

2). Mr. Jack Ma, who couldn’t get a job at KFC went on to build Alibaba.

Lessons learnt are:

1. a) Age is just a number
2. b) Only ones who keep trying succeed.

“After all, excuses don’t build Empires”.

Long Term investing is not 9.15 to 3.30 but instead 9,15, or 30 years !!!