The BEST investment advice - ever!

How do you make a decent return in investments? We all wonder and seek out all kinds of advice. We read everything from Warren Buffet but that doesn’t seem to do the trick. How do you make a decent return on your investment in your career? How do we make a decent return in our projects? How do we know what makes sense or not.

Well, from my always-simplified worldview I think I nailed it. And I’d like to share one of the biggest secrets ever revealed to me when it comes to investment.

Last year I attended a memorial service of a friend of mine, a great artist, Paul De Toit. He was one of the bigger contemporary artists in South Africa. Some 500 people attended the event. Many people from the art world of course.

I have been collecting some art for the past 9-10 years and built a small collection of stuff that I think is really awesome. Some are quite cheap and some is quite expensive. Some photos, some paintings, some prints, some sculptures, international stuff and local as well.

I have also been investing in stocks over the years but always sold them off. In all but 2 cases have I lost money on stocks. Apple was one of the more successful ones.

When it comes to my art collection for some strange coincidence, perhaps 80 % has increased in value. Some, very much so. The Mandela picture we have in the Travelstart boardroom was sold on an auction in Stockholm at 5 times what I bought it for. The artist, Hans Gedda, suddenly had a break through last year after a 50-year career. One of my favourites at home Paul Elmsley, A big buffalo portrait, went through the roof when Paul became globally famous after being commissioned to do the official portrait of Kate Middleton. And on and on.

I haven’t been thinking about it much, thinking it was pure luck. Then I came to speak with a couple that runs the Art South Africa magazine. Themselves collectors and art aficionados. I told them about my personal journey in collecting art, I said its very random, no plan, I just buy what I like to see on my walls at home or at office. I also told them about how lucky I was and compared it to my lousy track record on publicly traded stocks.

Then they told me the most profound truth I have ever heard. They said “it’s very easy the stuff you bought you bought because you love it. You bought it with you heart not your brain.” They told me that over 20 years they have had a 95% success rate in buying art that increases in value.

The heart is the best investment advisor. If we have the courage to believe more in our hearts as a guide for what we do in life and in work, how we prioritize, what jobs we take, what projects we invest in, we will for sure have a much higher success ratio than the average. The more I think about it the truer it becomes – It’s a sin to do what you truly don’t believe in.

Stephan

Picture Paul De Toit working from his Woodstock workshop

Paul himself was a great entrepreneur and inspiration to many of us. One of the greatest persons I have ever known. He was a tour de force and yet a gentle spirit. He was take from us prematurely and we miss him a lot. He would have become one of the greatest in contemporary art. But his memory and art lives on and touches us.