How to write stronger free & paid financial newsletters.

Kim Iskian, the editorial director at Porter Co., joins us to talk about creating editorial that readers want to engage with and are willing to pay for. 

FinPub Pro is produced by The Financial Marketing Summit, the #1 networking and marketing conference for financial newsletter publishers, trader educators, and digital financial media.

John Newtson, host and founder of The Financial Marketing Summit can be reached via LinkedIn at John Newtson

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right.
Hey everyone, I'm here todaywith Kim Iskian from Porter Co.
Kim, thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me,john.
So I'm really excited to talkto you, not just because Porter
Co has been on a tear for thelast several years and growing
like crazy, but you are one ofthe kind of top of a handful
there's just a handful, I think,of truly great editorial
directors in the industry andyou are one of them and so I'd

(00:27):
love to kind of just foreveryone who doesn't know you if
you can give everyone yourbackground in the industry first
, so we can get kind of a senseof everything that you've done
in FinPub.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Basically, yeah, well , thank you, john, I appreciate
that.
I think part of it is that Ikind of grew up in finance and
you know that's kind of mybackground before I joined the
FinPub industry and I worked onWall Street for a few years
after studying history ingraduate school.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
And that's like a perfect combination for FinPub
yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
No, no.
I grew up in Spain and Istudied Latin American history,
uh, and I went to wall streetjust around the time the Latin
American stock markets weretaking off and I was the one
person on the desk at a mid-tierinvestment bank who, uh, who
spoke Spanish, which wasoccasionally a?
Uh, a useful skill, usefulskill, um, uh.

(01:32):
And then I wound up, um, well,through a an early career shift,
I went to a central asia andhelped build a stock market just
after, um, the end of thesoviet union, um, in uh,
kyrgyzstan, which kind ofborders the northwestern border
of the northwestern part ofChina, you helped build a stock
market.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, it's not a normal resume item.
No, no, the US government was atthat time, very concerned about
communism rolling back and theysaid well, there are all these
privatizations and all these 15Soviet Socialist Republics.
Why don't we all, and alleverybody, had vouchers?
Vouchers were, in essence,shares of these mostly worthless

(02:12):
post-soviet companies.
And uh, uncle sam said let'sbuild a stock market so people
can trade these.
And I was part of the uh, oneof the people who, uh, who was
given that job, and it was, yeah, it was fantastic, exciting,
and um certainly gave me someinsight on a different angle of
finance.
Um, and then from there, I wentto Moscow, uh and um, I was a

(02:36):
sell side analyst for a fewinvestment banks.
I was head of research, um, Iknew just enough about finance,
spoke enough Russian, um, um,and I did that for a while and
then, a few years later, um rana hedge fund in moscow.
Uh, my timing was uh,extraordinarily awful.
I joined in early 2008, rightbefore everything fell apart,

(02:58):
and it fell apart here in the us, but it fell apart in a much
bigger way in a lot of emergingmarkets, including Russia, and
fast forward a few years.
My dad was a long time not along time an early Alliance
subscriber to StansberryResearch and I'd read some of
his stuff.
And after Russia, well, I hadgotten married and we lived in

(03:23):
Armenia, lived in Sri Lanka,moved around quite a bit, and I
got in touch with Porter andsaid, oh, I think you need an
emerging markets newsletter andthen I wound up getting a job.
I worked another job.
I worked for a political riskconsulting company in DC for a
few years, left the countryagain and then I got back in

(03:44):
touch and Porter said, fantastic.
So I wrote a pub for StansberryResearch that was focused on
investing in internationalmarkets really obscure places.
So I traveled all over theplace, went to Venezuela and
Iran and Hong Kong and a lot ofplaces that were more

(04:05):
fascinating to write about thanthey were really investable
venues.
But, uh, but it was a lot offun, um, and then Stansberry
Research said hey, we'd like touh start something in Asia.
Uh, uh, do you want to go toSingapore and build a?
Uh, build an investmentnewsletter company?

(04:25):
Um, and I said, fantastic.
So I went to Singapore and intypical ready fire aim manner, I
all I knew about the industrywas what I had kind of picked up
from two years of writing, um,global contrarian, which was the
pub that I wrote, and uh, um,global contrarian, which was the

(04:46):
pub that I wrote, and, uh, andso I was uh throwing the deep
end and had to learn a lot bymyself.
Um, with some, some supportfrom stansberry research, uh,
over time, over five years, webuilt something that uh, we
reached a peak of 18 milliondollars.
A lot of it was on the back ofthe crypto boom.
Eventually, stansberry Researchsaid great, let's declare a

(05:07):
victory, we'll absorb yoursubscribers and why don't you
come back?
And then I wound up writing fora different Stansberry Research
pub.
For a while, I also helped outwith editorial at the Agora's UK
subsidiary editorial at the uh,agora's uk subsidiary.

(05:33):
Um, then, uh, a little whilelater, I joined porter in july
of 2022 to help build up uhorder and company.
I was, I think, the fifthemployee and uh been here been
here since nice, nice.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
That's a.
That's a wild set ofexperiences.
Then there was a period of timein I think this was back in the
90s really in FinPub, where alot of the newsletter editors
were just recruited because theywere good writers and, like we
can teach you how to analyzestock, it's easier to teach you
how to analyze stocks than it isto teach them to be a good

(06:03):
writer.
And that trend has definitelychanged quite a bit.
But to have as much financeexperience as you've had coming
into an industry that a lot offinance people don't respect,
right I mean honestly, becausewe're talking to retail

(06:26):
investors how was yourexperience kind of making that
transition to this industry andwere there a lot of like issues
that you had with like the?
I mean, you were writing anewsletter to begin with and so
there's an editorial style, thenthere's a copy Was that an
interesting transition for you?
Style, then there's copy Um,was that an interesting
transition for you?

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, you know, john, uh, I always I kind of backed
into finance.
I didn't study finance incollege or grad school.
Um, uh, I didn't, uh reallylike working on wall street
which is full of blazingassholes.
Uh, and I, for a long time, I'dalways liked writing.

(07:07):
In eighth grade, my Englishteacher said you know what,
you're a good writer.
And somehow that stuck with meand I said I'm a good writer,
I'm going to do this.
And I viewed myself for a longtime as just a well-paid writer
who happened to be writing aboutstocks in Russia.
Um, I did a lot of freelancewriting on the side, because if
you're a sell side analyst andyou're writing for, um, you're
writing for global institutionalinvestors.

(07:29):
It's a very cut and dried sortof format.
It's really soul destroyingafter a while.
Um, so I did a lot of writingon the side, um, just to,
because I love to write and tokeep my sanity.
So when I had the opportunity towrite about finance which I
really do enjoy, but write aboutit in a way that wasn't so

(07:51):
rigid and where I could tell thestories, that was for a long
time I thought wait, you'repaying me to do this.
So much fun, that's awesome.
So it wasn't.
You know it wasn't thatdifficult a transition.
It takes a while to work out.
I see it in a lot of people whowind up working in the industry
.
It takes a little while to workthat jargon out of your style

(08:15):
and it also takes a while tolearn how to speak to the level
of the subscriber where they areand not in a way that they're
not going to understand.
Yeah, I remember I talked to ananalyst, for I think it was
Fundy who was working for itwhere they are and not in a way
that they're not going tounderstand.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, I remember I talked to an analyst for I
forget which fund he was workingfor, but they sent out a note
and he's like the way he wastelling me he was trained was
because it was like the mostlike I couldn't understand what
he was saying, not because ofthe finance stuff, but because
of like, how complicated thesentences were.
Right, like it would be like asentence was this long?

(08:46):
And he's like, no, the thepoint of writing it so dense and
complicated is you want them toknow that there's something
there, but you want them to pickup the phone and so the
objective is not to communicatean idea.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
It's right, exactly.
I read sell side investmentresearch or even buy side
investment research, and it'sjust so.
It's.
It's so unpleasant to read andit's, and no one reads it.
That's the thing.
The whole idea is that, um, youknow, kind of like like your
guy said, you want people toknow that you're there and you
want them to call you if theywant something or if they need

(09:22):
some interpretation, butotherwise it's just like.

Speaker 1 (09:24):
It's like a business card for the bank, working for
it's that was the the wholething with mifid in europe when
they came, when they passedthose rules, and it was like all
these people were getting thesesubscriptions to, to all this
research that was being paid forthrough their, you know,
refunded commissions or whatever, as kind of a hey, we're going
to give you this thing.
And then, when it came to likeyou can't do that, you can't use

(09:46):
soft dollars and you have topay for it yourself, everyone
was like I don't really wantthis, I don't really need it
exactly.
Yeah, uh well then um, let mejump.
There's a bunch of things Iwant to ask you about your
background, but let's do itwithin the context of kind of
some of the maybe more formalquestions about when you're

(10:08):
putting together an e-letterLike I think this is a big one
because there's a lot ofdifferent ways to do an e-letter
how do you look, how do youview like constructing a new
e-letter, like what's a goode-letter?
What?

Speaker 2 (10:27):
are the components of kind of the I guess the
overarching approach, versusjust simply the individual
articles.
Well, I think let's step back amoment and say, okay, what is
the objective of the e-letter?
Right?
What are you trying to do?
In my mind, what you're tryingto do is you want your
subscribers your free names aswell as your paid names to
engage with you.
You want them to uh, know thatyou, you want to show that you

(10:49):
have something interesting tosay.
You want them to come backevery day.
You want them to appreciate, uh, and be educated and
entertained by what you'resaying.
Um, so then, out of that, youhave to back out.
Okay, so how do we do that?
Uh, and well, when I was inSingapore and I was a one-man
band for a while, I would writean e-letter every day and I

(11:11):
would pick something that Ifound interesting in the world
of finance that was going on,and I'd put a different spin on
it.
Try to make it as engaging aspossible, and that was how we
built up the list for a while AtPorter Company.
We launched a free e-letterjust a few months ago.
That was Porter's initiative.
So he said, okay, this is whatwe're gonna do now and I think

(11:32):
it's evolving into reallysomething fantastic because it
involves, it has something aboutwhat's going on today, latest
data, all of that kind ofreinforces the bigger picture
macro theme that we're talkingabout all the time.
It has a lot of charts andgraphs.
It has a main piece, whichPorter usually writes, which is

(11:53):
something thoughtful, somethinginsightful about markets,
sometimes about politics, aboutinvesting.
It has some sort of uniqueangle and take and Porter, of
course, is the master at that.
So he does that extremelyeffectively.
And also, let's not forget thatthe point is to sell.

(12:14):
We're not doing this for fun.
So we have sprinkled throughoutsomewhat subtle ad notes and we
say we're talking aboutNVIDIA's results and we say, oh,
and, by the way, if you want toknow more about this, you know
we have a whole report aboutthis and click here and that
goes to a promo.
We don't have spads, we don'thave space ads, at least not now

(12:36):
.
We want to make it feel muchmore kind of user friendly.
Nobody likes having these bigold ads in the middle of the
narrative.
It kind of disrupt-friendly.
Nobody likes having these bigold ads in the middle of the
narrative.
It kind of disrupts everything.
So I guess, to go to yourquestion, john, you want
something that's engaging,entertaining, kind of unique and

(12:58):
unusual and actually does addvalue and where someone wants to
open it and isn't hit over thehead with all the ads.
I think maybe the mostdifficult part is to find
something really interesting tosay, because there's so much
content out there, why issomeone going to open your email
today to hear what you have tosay?

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Right, and on that I'm going to step back for a
second.
You mentioned kind of thingswithin kind of your macro theme.
So is that how you guys areworking, where you have a
handful of large macro kind ofviewpoints and then everything
falls underneath those, or isthere a little more kind of a
catch as you can, kind ofstorylines?

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Um, there are a lot of catches.
You can storylines, um, andthere are promos that go in
different directions, um, andcertainly reports that go in
different directions andcertainly reports that go in
different directions.
But you know, we do have ahandful of big-picture ideas.
One of them is capitalefficiency.
Investing in capital-efficientcompanies is, over the long term
, the best way to grow wealth.

(13:59):
The long term this is notunique to Portland Company, of
course.
The longterm this is not uniqueto Portland company, of course.
The longterm, um, sort of uhchallenges that the U?
S and the dollar U S dollarface and the danger of the debt,
uh, federal debt deficit anddebt that's another theme, um,

(14:22):
uh, and just a handful of otherthings that are kind of
touchstones and they're part ofthe ongoing narrative.
And we go back to and say, hey,we've talked about this before
and you know we might have abiotech investment advisory and
you know that's not reallycapital efficient but it you

(14:44):
know you can bring in a fewother themes that it is linked
to interest rates.
You can bring in some otherthemes and also, you want a
little variety.
People don't only want to talkabout capital efficiency.
Okay, that's, that's fine, butI'm not going to just invest in
these boring capital efficientcompanies.
Give me something a little bitsexier.
I think it's very if people cancome back to you and they have

(15:04):
some sort of notion of whereyou're going.
I think that's reassuring.
Uh, you know the wall streetjournal and you have a decent
sense of the tone, the structure, the approach, what they're
going to be writing about.
If one day you open the wallstreet journal, um, and they
talk about something, uh,completely different, in a
different tone that you'reunfamiliar with and it just

(15:28):
doesn't really fit, you're goingto say what something?
There's some sort ofincongruency here that I don't.
I don't understand.
That's how people.
No one likes surprises likethat, especially our you know
readers of our demographic.
So I think it is important tohave a few overarching themes
and you want to keep the tonekind of similar all the time.
Yeah, Then.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
So I like that.
You have kind of a.
It's almost like you have kindof.
They're not I wouldn't say likethey're full blown guardrails,
that we only talk about thesethings, but you have these
handful of through lines thatyou're always kind of coming
back to and then you're lookingfor just for whatever, whatever,
whatever else is interestingout there, but from an
investment in the storystandpoint, that fits for the

(16:13):
day.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you come up with
something that doesn't reallyfit the narrative and it's not
like you're only going to bewriting about.
You know, if there is some goodnews on employment or on you
know, whatever it is, um, it'snot like you're gonna ignore
that because it doesn't reallyfit your narrative, right.
Right, you got to be be fairand balanced about it, but it is
, you know, like in a, in apromo, you have the golden

(16:34):
thread, uh, sort of the team youcome back to and that's what
kind of keeps people followingyou along, following along with
you.
Um, I think, very broadlyspeaking from an editorial
perspective, it helps to have afew golden threads like that
yeah, no, I think so too.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
That's and that's um.
My question, I guess, is moreabout how far do you take that
um, because you know there's atendency sometimes, okay,
there's a golden thread throughthe editorial.
Does that apply to all theproducts for one editor, to the
whole franchise?
Like you said, you have um abiotech franchise.

(17:12):
That doesn't necessarily fit.
Some of the narratives mightfit some, but not all the all
the threads um, do you want tohave kind of a the dose?
I guess I should ask it thisway Do those threads pull
through every level of productfor, say, porter or a different
editor?

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, I mean not necessarily.
You don't want to makehandcuffs for yourself, right?
There are plenty of ways thatyou can kind of bring in
references to a biotech productwhen you're talking about the
macro environment, and no, andyou know, it's nice to have the
narrative, but you still need tohave enough products to sell

(17:55):
and not everybody like I said,not everybody is going to want
to buy your capital efficientcompany's product.
So yeah, not necessarily.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
And then does the products that don't fit kind of
like the initial narrative.
I'm assuming, then, that eachof those are going to develop
their own kind of golden threadyeah, exactly, and you might say
hey, you know what.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
You might even say in a, in a promo, in in somewhere.
You know, this is really muchmore speculative.
We talk we usually talk aboutcapital efficient companies.
Here we're talking aboutsomething that's, you know, much
more speculative.
We usually talk about capitalefficient companies.
Here we're talking aboutsomething that's much more
speculative, and you frame it inthose sorts of ways so that
people say, okay, I understandthat this is a slight divergence

(18:36):
.
I think what you don't want todo, though, is suddenly
something we would never do issay, well, guess what?
We have this new optionsproduct and we're going to
recommend buying uh, buying uhcalls and puts something.
Um, I don't know.
Those sorts of products, in mymind, are often irresponsible,

(18:57):
and how they're presented, thetrack records are abysmal.
Simply because buying optionsis is, by definition, a loser's
game.
Um and uh, if sort of yourgolden thread is, you know,
think carefully about what youdo with your money, and you go
and say, hey, this is the casino, you know, and there's no,

(19:17):
there's minimal analysis withour, for example, not to bring
up our biotech product again,but we have one of the best
biotech guys who is extremelyplugged in, does incredibly
in-depth research, explains allthe science and you know he
winds up being right and it'sfantastic.
But something that's um,something that I think a lot of

(19:38):
thin pubs overlook or not let mereframe, not overlook, but they
don't really take fully onboard is that if you blow up
your subscriber, he's gone.
You sell him an options productand you know he gets a couple
of options that go to zero.

(19:58):
He's not coming back and youmight have made your.
You know your quarterly target.
You might have made your.
You know your quarterly target.
You might have gotten yourselfa bonus for this year, but for
the long-term health of thebusiness, that's, that's poison.
Um, and something that I alwaystry to do and this is very much
important is you think of the,the customer experience.

(20:19):
What is the customer experiencewhen they read this product,
when they receive this email?
And if you take a holistic viewof that um, you want everything
to be consistent in tone, incharacter, in messaging, and you
know.
If you walk into a Walmart, andyou know you, you have a pretty

(20:41):
good sense of what's coming upin the aisle, what's next, how
people are going to treat you.
If Walmart starts sellingRolexes, you'll be like, wait a
second, this doesn't belong here, it's jarring.
And in the same way, if you sayyou know what.
You got to be careful with yourmoney.
You have a long-termperspective.
This is how you diversify yes,we have these kind of fun little

(21:11):
things, but don't put too muchmoney in those.
And then if you say, guess,what we have is options, product
, um, it's, maybe the roll it'sin the walmart is a bad analogy,
uh, but it's just somethingthat just doesn't fit.
And you say, but wait a second,this, this doesn't work.
And that's how you, I think,over time, how you lose people,
that's probably it's not as badas blowing them up, but it's
over time, it ranks up there.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
That's a perspective because, you know, one of the
things we have seen in theindustry is that the active
trading side of the industry hasgrown quite a bit.
There's people who are, you knowthere's, a lot more active.
I would say, if you told mehere there's a new publisher out
there and they're doing X youknow right now brand new to the
space and I know nothing aboutthem.

(21:42):
Brand new to the space and Iknow nothing about them, I would
guess more likely that theytend to fall in that active
trading with their options orsome other form of very active
trading.
That seems to be where all ofnot all, but the majority of the
new businesses are coming up.
That's separate from kind ofthe people who are doing their
sub-stack newsletter businesses,right, but like the ones who

(22:02):
are doing paid media and growing.
We see a lot more energy ofpeople kind of coming in there
and I think one of the reasonsis it's a lot harder to write
good editorial um than it is tosend out trade alerts, um, right
, yeah, and but that it's alsoan interesting thing that you

(22:23):
know I've been in the businesssince what?
2005, in one form or another.
Every time I've talked toanybody who has interacted with
their customer base and have andI know you're not trying to
gather, you know, just for anyregulators listening, they're
not trying to gather informationabout the AUM of the clients

(22:45):
but for whatever reason, theyget some kind of insight, where
somebody sends something in andtheir testimonials always seem
to have people, whether they usethem or not, but the feedback
people who have six, seven,eight, a hundred thousand, a
million, million, five, in theirportfolio, those groups, those
testimonials, almost always comefrom people who have an
investing product.
Right, they have people whohave money and they're actually

(23:07):
investing.
And then the people whose mostcommon thing is hey, I have
$5,000 in a trading account andI'm going to use half of it.
It's all I have to my name.
I'm going to use half of it tobuy your product and then I'm
going to hopefully become,become, you know, generate a
full-time income off of the $25that's left.

(23:28):
Um, those are very super activetrading clients.
It's much more biz, oppy, andthere is space in the middle,
right, but it is interesting tosee that you have a very
different customer, um, in a lotof these cases, and there's a
lot of people who are thinkingof like they're going to become
a professional trader somehow.
Whether that can actuallyhappen or not is an argument for

(23:51):
another day.
But it is very interesting tome that the one that you see a
lot of new businesses coming inselling much more active trading
, a lot of options businesses.
Two, that the client is verydifferent, it's much more
biz-oppy.
And I can't think of and I'msure someone will tell me I'm

(24:14):
wrong, I cannot think of aoption-centric publishing
business that has grown beyondkind of the 30 to 40 million
maybe when things are boomingsize.
Nobody's ever gotten muchbigger than that, not that
everybody wants to, but it's areally interesting dynamic in

(24:34):
the market.
And you know, I think theeditorial piece in the
investment analysis piece takesso much more time that there's
fewer entrance in the market onthat side.
Maybe I don't know.
Um, do you find it's muchharder to find people who can do
good analysis and write well?

Speaker 2 (24:57):
I think I mean just well, just to go back to your
point, john, I think that thereis, you know, there are a lot of
not to you know crap on optionsin general.
There are plenty ofconservative, very
well-structured ways that youcan sell options and generate
income, and, I'm guessing, a lotof the kind of services you're
talking about sell optionsrather than buy.

(25:18):
I think there's a hugedistinction between those, and I
think that, well and to to yourquestion, it is difficult to
find.
You know, you have people whoare good at finance and you have
people who are good writers.
Uh, rarely do the two intersect, um, so then it's always well,

(25:39):
do you find the good writer andtrain him or her up in finance?
I don't know.
Do you find a good financeperson and just pair them up
with a good managing editor, sothat you know the gobbledygook
that he would be writing istranslated into english?
That's, I think, the path thatmost people wind up taking, um.
I think, though, the biggerproblem is finding those gurus

(26:03):
who.
I don't like the word guru, um,it just sounds to me bogus uh I
I think of, like you know, ayogi sitting on mountaintop or
something like I hear that word,but your real person with some
real financial and investmentbackground and context and real
financial and investmentbackground and context and

(26:23):
success.
If, a lot of, if they'reapproached by, I think, a lot of
companies in our industry, theywould look at some of the
product and they will look atthe marketing and they say I
don't want any part of that.
That's, that's schlocky, that'scome hither, that's, you know,
one of the, the enduringchallenge to our industry is

(26:48):
sort of slickness, excessiveslickness of the marketing.
When you reference this,sometimes people don't want to
join the industry because ofthat.
Uh, so then, who you wind upattracting as your quote unquote
guru?
I mean, maybe you get somebodylike that, or maybe you say you
know what?
We don't have the marketers incharge of everything and instead

(27:11):
we have people are reallyfocused on content and you know,
mr or Mrs, big time guru, we'renot gonna, you know, boil you
down to buy these three stocksto make 10,000% by tomorrow, but
we're going to let you be yourown voice and we'll nudge you,
we'll encourage you, but we'regoing to let you write what

(27:33):
you're going to write and we'regoing to hook you up with a
marketer who is going to try tomarket you in a way that is
consistent with how you want toexpress yourself.
Um, that may or may not work,uh, but I think that sometimes,
when it does, then you have, uh,you have, a product that

(27:53):
virtually sells itself becauseyou have a bonafide financial
investment.
Uh, investment expert, um,expert, who's not degraded by
the marketing of the products.
It sounds rude.
I think that's true.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
I think a lot of editors who would say that
degraded is the right word forwhat they've had to say in copy
at times.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Um, yeah, on the wrong end of that, I had in
singapore we had a fantastic uhuh editor who said you know what
?
I don't want to go to the boatclub and have my friends say,
hey, I just received this emailfrom you in your name, and what
are you doing with these people?
And, and you know, we couldeither scale back our marketing

(28:43):
dramatically or they left andthey left.
And I think there is, you know,a lot of.
Everybody has to write liftnotes that attract attention.
You have to write promos thatattract attention.
But what kind of promises doyou make?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
I think a lot of it and I think that goes to the the
.
The issue with, like activetrading and I'm not bashing
active trading, I think there'sa lot, there are some great
trading publishers out there, um, but the the way that people
are talking about themhabitually has been basically,

(29:19):
it's fast gains, right.
It's about and this is wherethe FTC had a lot of issues
right, it was very gain centric,it was very income centric.
It's like you know, hey, thiswent up, this amount, this stock
went up, you know, like theclass X pattern kind of stock
promos where I'm going to show35 parts charts of stocks that

(29:40):
went up 3000% at some pointbecause something triggered it
and that's how I'm going to sellit, versus a much more dense
storyline about the investmentopportunities that's there, or
it's something that, like youknow, one of the things that has
been interesting to me aboutPorter Co has been that over the
last several years, when themarket I mean it was a bad few

(30:03):
years in the industry for a lotof folks but whenever there was
a promo that was doing well, itinvariably was coming out of you
guys, um, and I thought that'sreally interesting because you,
you know, I know porter porteris, he's a unicorn.
I mean, let's be real, he's aunicorn.
Um, I mean, let's be real, he'sa unicorn, um, great editor, um

(30:25):
, great copywriter.
Uh, he has gravitas when hespeaks and you know what I mean.
Like he just comes off reallywell, uh, but he's also you guys
are also hitting themes verylike topically, that seemed to
resonate really strong promo,able to sell much more
investment, focused, thoughtfulkind of product at scale, which

(30:50):
not a lot of people can do, andso there is some kind of magic
over there that I think is not,is easily replicatable,
unfortunately, and kind ofgetting at what that is is hard.
How do you see that?
Because, um, yeah, you've,you've been, you've been in the
center of it there.
So how does your prop, yourcopy process then work, like you

(31:14):
said that you have thecopywriter working with an
editor and trying to find it.
But what are you guys doing?
How does this?
How does this look internally?

Speaker 2 (31:23):
I think the well yeah porter is is is so unusual that
he's fantastic at the differentdimensions of the business
instead of being really one ofthem, uh, or even two of them.
I think that, um, one of thethings that that uh porter says
is that the best copy iseditorial.
The best editorial is copy, uh,and in a lot of order and co's

(31:47):
um promos, there are big chunksof editorial that find their way
into the copy and they're youknow, they are, they're edited,
they're modified, um, but if youteach somebody, they want to
keep listening to you.
And I think that all too often,a lot of promos, a lot of

(32:17):
marketing in the industry is somuch centered on the gains
Instead of let me tell you thiscool story and you'll learn
something along the way.
And we send out lift notes thatare, you know, in Word, they're
four, five, six pages long, andthey tell the story.
They say let me explain this toyou, and at the end, oh, if you
want to learn more here.
And a lot of those lift notesare pulled almost directly from
our editorial Because it's youknow, people are learning stuff.

(32:43):
No, I'm not a copy, I'm not a acopywriter, I'm not a marketer
and I'm sure there's a lot morethat.
I know there's a lot more thatgoes into it.
I've tried to write somemarketing copy and and, uh, uh,
the copywriter completely slicesand dices it.
Um, and there is the.
You know you need the lead.
Uh, right, that's it's notgonna.
And there is the.
You know you need the lead.
Uh, right, that's it's notgonna.

(33:03):
You always need that.
I think one of the things thatstands where research did very
well and that Portland companydoes very well also and I know a
lot of other other uh companiesin in the industry do is have a
lead.
Um, for your pubs, uh, whereyou have the full story, you
have the full lead and you tellthe story and that's how you

(33:25):
draw people in and that's one ofthe things that sell side
investment banking researchdoesn't do right, they just hit
you with all the data right now.
It's boring, right.
And you know, to a lot ofpeople, finance and investing is
not inherently interestingpeople who aren't, you know,
just like, if I'm a plumber, Ifind I hopefully find plumbing

(33:45):
inherently interesting, but I'mnot.
So if you want me to listen tosomething about plumbing, you
better dress it up you better.
You know, take that broccoli orcheese all over it, and I think
that what we do in thisindustry is we're appealing to
plumbers and doctors and lawyers, obviously, and all sorts of
people who find what we do isinherently not particularly
interesting.
So we have to dress it up and,you know, a powerful lead or an

(34:08):
interesting lead really bringspeople in.
And um, it's such a cliche totalk about the importance of the
story, um, but you know, that'show Bill Bonner, I think, has
created Agora by telling thestory.
It's something that sometimeswe forget in the industry and we
look for the shorter way, thequicker buck, rather than, okay,

(34:32):
let's really take a step back.
And how can we really engagewith our customer?
Well, you engage with someone,you keep someone by telling them
something, helping them learnsomething, rather than that they
don't already know.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, I love that point.
I think of um, a fantasticcopywriter, um paris
lampropoulos, who was, you know,one of the near nigh unbeatable
copywriters in the direct mailkind of world, and he's still um
.
I remember he was saying onetime about how in a direct mail
piece you have sidebars whichyou can't.
We don't really do anymore, butI have all these old magalogs

(35:06):
right, I still have a bunch offiles of them and you would see
that in the first several pagesevery single sidebar was purely
educational right, and sothey're really interesting.
And it wasn't until you got,like I don't know, maybe halfway
in that they started to becomea little bit more promotional
until they're finally, like youknow, full blown promotional.
Um, but that was always a, apattern that he uses You're

(35:29):
always making the, the marketingpiece itself, um, valuable
right by having an educationpiece in there.
Oh, exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Yeah, that's to me that's so central and I think
that's sort of the quote unquotesecret sauce that's on display
for a lot of promos that reallywork well.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Yeah, and I think, I think I think you can see this
problem and I think somenewsletters too, because it's
like oh well, you know, I haveto have an e-letter.
So the important thing to me isto get an e-letter out versus
this has to be an engagingletter out versus this has to be
an engaging, interesting piecefrom the customer's perspective

(36:08):
that they're going to beinterested in.
And so you see this, a lot ofpeople are like they're like I'm
doing a newsletter, I'm justgoing to, you know, throw some
links in, just a bunch of otherstuff, and here it is.
It's not that interesting, it'snot that not that much effort,
not that much effort is put intoit.
I feel like, versus somethingthat's very story driven.
And when you talk about stories,you know we all, I mean there's

(36:33):
a lot of different types ofstories, like what do you find?
I mean, where are you going tofind stories?
Um, are you using?
I mean, is every email or everylift or every but every article
?
Like Brian Hunt said in hisperfect newsletter editor
article years ago, like aperfect newsletter editor opens

(36:55):
every article with a story, apersonal story.
Do you find that?
That's the kind of stuff thatyou guys are doing?

Speaker 2 (37:05):
We do less personal stories.
We actually have one of ourmanaging editors is an absolute
master at finding these stories,and what we usually wind up
doing is you're talking aboutstock ABC, right, and it's in

(37:26):
this particular sector, it hasthis background, it has this
context, and if you can findsome sort of story that's a step
removed, that you say, well,this is the whole story, and
maybe it's historical, maybeit's about the founding of the
company, maybe it's some sort ofthe technology that's involved
with the company, maybe it's, um, you know the country where

(37:50):
this particular company was, uh,was founded, but there's
something that's a step removedand, uh, it does take research,
because you have to firstunderstand the company,
understand some of the differentstrands of the narrative of the
company, of how it came to be.
Then you say, okay, where else,what is something interesting
about this?
And it's not easy.

(38:12):
And Liz, who's fantastic atwhat she does, she spends a lot
of time finding these andsometimes it'll be some sort of
story that's kind of two stepsremoved.
So say but wait a second.
So we're talking about, youknow, mushrooms in China and the
thing that we're selling or notthat we're selling.

(38:33):
But the topic of the.
The actual investment idea isyou know, chicken wings.
How is that?
That's too far, but, um, if youcan bring a little bit closer
um and uh, instead you talkabout how, uh, the chicken wing
industry was somehow cornered bythis one guy, which was

(38:54):
actually this is a real lifeexample.
We recently wrote about it uh,something like this.
And then it's like wait asecond, that's really
interesting.
So you're drawn in and it's notthis big jump, um, from the
lead to the you know the companyyou're talking about to the
investment idea.
Um, so I guess the short answerto question is you first have to

(39:16):
understand enough about thecompany and then you just have
to spend some time thinkingabout it and exploring different
avenues and some work, somedon't and then you have to tell
the narrative.
You have to spend some timethinking about it and exploring
different avenues and some work,some don't and then you have to
tell the narrative.
You have to tell the story.
You know this is the story ofthis.
And where do you start on thatstory?
Do you start, like you know,when the guy was born?
No, that's going back too far.
You start with what's relevantand you start with some sort of

(39:36):
the first five lines orsomething that draws you in it.
But it does take time.
Takes time, um, and takestalent.
It takes a lot of skill and umthe personal, you know I
personal narrative.
You can do that, but only solong, right.
How many stories can you tellabout yourself and your
background before someone says,oh boy, this again, you know

(39:58):
this guy.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
And then the danger is that most people's stories
are, let's be honest, kind ofboring um, yeah well, I was
thinking about when you were,when you were um writing your
first um emerging markets letter.
You were on the ground in allthese different places, and so I
would imagine that that kind oflends itself much more yeah,
that is different.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
What I would often do is say, well, I'm in bangladesh
and I'd start with some storyabout that, and I think you can
do that.
But if you're writing about Idon't know a chicken wing
company, you know, you say, well, I went to the local mall and I
was okay.
You know how compelling is that.
Um, then you know, if you'rewriting about, um, you know a

(40:39):
lot of the companies that wethat all of us you a lot of the
companies that we that all of usyou know a lot of companies in
the world.
They're not necessarily youknow what's your personal angle
to that Um.
Uh, I think that can be, thatcan work sometimes.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
But not all the time.
So it's not just a story, it'sgotta be a good story too.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Good story too.
And then and then, I guess,just going back to the trading
services, you know people don'tbuy trading services for the
stories.
They buy them quick idea, rightnow, right, and if you try to
put a lead on top of that, youknow, just close it down.
Well, that's, you know.
Walking into walmart and seeingthe rolex display, you can say

(41:20):
what the hell is this?

Speaker 1 (41:22):
fair.
Fair, that's a reallyinteresting approach.
Or to think about um, so whatare the kind of come out from a
more of a charlie munger angle,where what was what was his
thing, one of one of his manymodels was how to do something
wrong.
You know, if you understand howto do something right?

(41:44):
Like, how would you write ane-letter if you were going to
guarantee that it was bad?
Like, what are the kind ofcommon mistakes that you would
see?
Like, um, you know how wouldyou do that?
Like, if you were going to sayI'm gonna write the worst
e-letter in the world.
That is going to be completelyuseless.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Like what.
Like what's that look like?
Uh, you would, um, repeat theconventional wisdom in a way
that's boring and unengaging.
Um, you would be more focusedon selling stuff than
illuminating ideas.
Um, um, yeah, I think you knowif you don't really have any

(42:33):
sort of insight, but you try toshare it.
Well, I don't care what youit's you know.
Ask me about something I I knownothing about.
If I start writing an e-letterabout cars, well, how am I going
to say I don't know anythingabout cars?
Oh, if I share that, you'regoing to say, well, I'm not
learning anything here.
Why am I reading this guy?

(42:53):
Same thing for investing.
You get someone who doesn'tknow anything about it and they
try to pretend that they knowsomething about it.
It's last long.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Yeah, how do you feel about the sorry?

Speaker 2 (43:05):
go ahead and describe I know I was going to go into.
Uh, it's funny.
Before our conversation I had acharlie munger quote in mind
about incentives.
Um, and this is more from theand he said show me the
incentives and I'll show you theoutcome.
And I think that in ourindustry this is e-letters, but

(43:29):
more broadly, you know, you givepeople who work for you the
incentive of getting as manysubscribers on as soon as
possible.
They're going to you know,they're going to write that
crappy lead because I got theguy in.
Now I just have to monetizethem and then I'm done.

(43:50):
Um, I think if you put thatincentive, you flip it over on
its head and say you know what?
You're not going to get paidfor bringing the name in, you're
going to get paid on therenewal revenue.
And it's like oh, wait, asecond, what do you mean?
I got to make this guy, thisnew subscriber, stick around.
Well, how do I do that?
Well, you have compellinginsight.
You have great leads.
You have a way to make themstick around and make them want

(44:15):
to renew.
Right, it's almost obvious, butit's something that I think so
often in our industry, peopleare incentivized by the wrong,
wrong things.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
It might be right for them in the short term, but for
the business or long term, it'svery detrimental.
Yeah, I've definitely had manyconversations now with folks
about compensation structuresand the damages that different
types of compensation has causeddifferent businesses.
It's definitely an issue.
It's a really good point thatand I know porter's been huge on
this lately, I think the lastfew years especially um, kind of

(44:51):
, yeah, you want to compensatepeople based on the business
actually doing well, not on some, like you said, the.
If you're compensated on justthe front end sale, then it's
very, very motivating toover-promise and under-deliver.
Bring the name in Yep, exactly,yeah, yeah, so that's a, that's

(45:13):
a.
I feel like that's a bigconversation that I don't know
that we'll ever have, because toor in order to have the full
compensation conversation, we'llhave to talk about a lot of
different, very specific thingsabout a lot of very specific
businesses.
I don't know that anyone reallywants to do that?

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, no, and I think internally it's very difficult
to make that sort of changebecause it requires a change in
mentality and it also entailsprobably a decline in income for
a lot of people in the shortterm.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Right, yeah, no one likes that.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, no one likes that.
Yeah, I don't like that, that'shard sell.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Yeah, yeah, but um, I forgot where I was going to go
with that because there was theon the where, where we're at
we're talking about stories.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Um, I tried a lot of your thought there, charlie
munger, yeah, I like that invertthing.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
That that's what I was gonna ask you was the.
You know a lot of things thatI've seen.
Now the e-letters are kind ofthere, and this is again maybe
more trading focus, but theire-letters are kind of becoming
more and more just it's marketcommentary, like okay, here's,
here's what's going on today,which is what you get on.

(46:23):
The news is what you get.
In most places there's athere's a lot of places now to
just go get market commentaryand it can be engaging for
people who are engaged with you.
But that's not the same ashaving here's the story of
what's going on.
And so I know you talk abouttopical things, like you said.
You talk about, you know, maybethe unemployment numbers are
out or whatever, or how do youlook?

(46:44):
How do you approach thisintersection of um, more
researched, more thought throughangles on stories and just kind
of like the constant flow ofeconomic news that's out there?
Um, are you guys you're notreally reporting the news so
much as contextualizing it, orhow do you think about it?

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Yeah, I think that's.
That's.
That's really it.
You contextualize it.
You know opinions are like ass.
Yeah, I think that's really it.
You contextualize it.
Opinions are like assholesright, everybody has one.
And do our readers really carewhat we are thinking about?
The market yesterday?
The kind of dirty secret isthat nobody on earth knows why
the market did XYZ yesterday.

(47:25):
Everybody can point at certainideas, everybody has a theory,
but you know there's so many.
Why are you going to, are yougoing to open up my e-letter
Because I have this particularlycompelling insights on what the
market did yesterday?
Well, maybe, but you know,they're not that many people who
can draw in readers just on theof what they think about what

(47:48):
the market did yesterday.
What is difficult, what's thecliche about there being so much
information but no real insight, something to that effect.
If you can contextualize it andsay, okay, this is this piece of
data and this kind of fits intowhat we were saying earlier,
the golden thread of what we'vebeen talking about.
And if one of the goldenthreads is, you know, us markets

(48:12):
are massively overvalued, yousay, well, look at the
percentage of global market capthat is US markets.
It's been going up and up andup in Japan and the EU have been
going down and down and down.
Huh, that's interesting.
Oh, look at all this.
You know the inflows of intoETFs that invest in us stocks
over the past X years versuseverywhere else.

(48:33):
Wow, look at that.
Diversions.
And, uh, you know, you have allthese individual data points
and it is this narrative.
It's ongoing.
Um, and you might say, well,and yesterday markets just did
this, but that's not really yourfocus.
You're not talking about whymarkets moved yesterday.
You're talking about specificdata focus.
You're not talking about whymarkets moved yesterday.
You're talking about specificdata points you're putting into

(48:55):
this.
Markets are mosaic, right, atany given moment, we just see
some little pieces of it.
But if, as a reader, you canhelp me understand this little
corner of that mosaic, or youcan put in just enough pieces
all around it, so I say, oh yeah, I see that picture.
And then, of course, I'm goingto go read somewhere else.
I'm going to go read the wallstreet journal or the FT or
another fin pub.
Okay, those are a few more.

(49:16):
But the day that somebody comesto you and tries to fill in
that whole mosaic and thinksthat they know all those
different pieces.
And boy, you got to listen tome.
Nobody can do that, um, but ifyou can just make that little
piece of it kind of come to lifefor me, so I understand it.
And if that's the little chunkof the mosaic that I associate

(49:36):
with you, well, that's your realestate.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
That's pretty powerful yeah, and I, I like, I
like that.
I think that the the idea ofbringing clarity to, you know,
kind of the mass confusion ofmarkets, um, is a really
powerful thing that isoverlooked because it's not just
the reporting of hey, thishappened, it's like.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
This is what it means .

Speaker 1 (50:00):
Um, and if that can then lead to some kind of
investment decision, even, wow,that's amazing.
Um, but the how then?
But how then would you say soyou're not making picks
necessarily in your e-letters,right, because that's saved for
the paid product?
Is that the primary differencebetween your paid and your free?

(50:22):
Is that there are going to beactual picks in here and so
we're going to go into thestories of the picks more, or is
there a different editorialapproach as well?

Speaker 2 (50:32):
That's a big difference.
We sometimes talk about some ofthe picks in the e-letter Um,
we recently started to.
You know when, when a pick hitsa hundred percent, we talk
about it in the free e-letter.
Um, we sometimes talk about thethings that have turned out.
Well, you know, if you, yeah,the stock goes up by 80 and you

(50:53):
tell your free readers aboutthat, well, no one's going to be
upset.
You're paying subscribersaren't going to say wait a
second because, hey, you got in80 ago.
What are you concerned about?
Right, that?
You know it creates a littlebit of FOMO.
It also helps, um, that'll helpsell.
Oh, you know that.
They obviously, or they appearto know what they're doing if

(51:13):
the stock went up this much.
But, um, uh, in general thereare always exceptions, but in
general, yeah, the the reallyin-depth stories and the stock
recommendations are for paidsubscribers and we're happy to

(51:34):
tell everybody about thesuccesses in the portfolio and
we also.
I think what's also important isthat we explain where we went
wrong, and we've had a lot of.
We do a fair amount of, wherenecessary, falling on our sword
to explain why this particularstock didn't work out.
I think all too often in theindustry.

(51:57):
It's very easy to say, oh, thatdidn't work, sell, sorry,
you're down 60%.
You know tough shit Better nexttime.
We told you you should have.
You know you should have raisedcash and this was a risky pick.
But I think there is a lot ofutility to explain.
Well, this was our reasoning,this is where we were wrong and
you own up to it, and thatbuilds trust with a subscriber

(52:21):
and it also shows that you knowwe try to learn from our
mistakes.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
I don't know how I got onto that after your
question no, no, no, that's,that's that's great Cause the
owning mistakes and and kind ofbuilding a real relationship.
It's building a realrelationship right it's, rather
than just a hey, you know,beating our chest.
We're amazing kind of marketingapproach where it's like we
only talk about our winners andit's like your customers know

(52:49):
that they didn't make money onthat stuff they're very aware,
and so to not address it andleave those kind of elephants in
the room, uh, is definitely amistake.
um, it seems to me that and thisis this is maybe just a strong
opinion of mine that maybe istrue, maybe it's not is that a

(53:12):
lot of what we're doingbasically in the industry, and
especially on the other side, isis you're you're building
investment theses and you'reselling an investment thesis in
an interesting way, and thatcould be a micro thesis on a
company, it could be a macro one, but like it is kind of having
this you an essential investmentthesis on what's going to
happen in the market on a largescale, and then you're going to

(53:34):
break that down on kind of asmall scale.
Do you think that way?
And the reason I ask is I thinkthere's a.
How do I put this without beinga jerk to people?
How do I put this?

Speaker 2 (53:50):
without being a jerk to people.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
Well, cause I'm, when I was a copywriter I was I was
absolutely a victim of thismyself.
And it's this idea that, likethe copy, the copies over here
and the editorials over here,the copywriter drives, like you
know, we're saying in a lot ofplaces, the copywriter drives
the ideas, rather than theeditor driving the ideas.
A lot of copywriters, when Italk to them about their editor,

(54:18):
like if you ask them, well,what's kind of his market,
what's his thesis, what is he?
You know they have no idea whathis basic view is, but they can
tell you about all thesedifferent promos and it's like,
well, there's this separationbetween what the guy's
recommending on not just anindividual level, but like
broadly his perspective, in whatthe promos are saying.
Um, and so all that to say thatI feel like there's this like

(54:39):
missed opportunity that is verycore to what finpub is um, of
understanding that, hey, whatyou're, what you're really doing
in your marketing, in youreditorial, is you're building,
you're building an investmentargument, investment thesis for,
and so you should understandwhat that is before you even
build the argument.
And so I'm not sure what thequestion is on that, other than

(55:01):
me ranting, other than to say doyou feel like?
I mean, whether it'scopywriters or new editorial
folks this idea that you have toactually have an investment
thesis and be able to articulateit in a way that's interesting
is kind of core to what we do.
Or is it just in some cases andnot others?
Um, you thought about it, ohyeah, no, that's absolutely

(55:24):
essential.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
I mean, you need your narrative, you need to be able
to explain okay, this is whatthis pub is about, um, and it
has to be consistent.
You have to have that goldenthread.
And from a copy perspective,you know, I've never worked at a
place where I've heard aboutthis, but I've heard enough.
So I suspect it's notapocryphal that the copywriter

(55:45):
says, hey, you know what?
This is my promo, these are thestocks.
Mr editor, write about thesestocks, recommend these stocks.
Um, which is wrong on so manylevels.
Um, I've heard this happens, noidea when, where, how, but what
in my mind, what I tried todevelop in in business in
singapore, and certainly it'sjust, it's like in the DNA of

(56:08):
some companies.
The copywriters just immersethemselves in the actual content
and if the editor is doing hisjob, then those themes will
become apparent and it's just aquestion of digging around a
little bit more to find the sortof underlying theme for a promo

(56:30):
.
Um, but yeah, you need, youneed the, the kind of big
picture idea, uh, that has todrive everything else, and then
you need the editor to reallyhave a clear vision of that um,
and that's.
You know, not everybody doesthat.
Not everybody can do that.
It's not necessarily on the onehand, it's it's, you know, not
everybody does that, noteverybody can do that.

(56:50):
It's not necessarily on the onehand, it's, it's simple, but
it's not easy, right, um?
And then you need thecopywriter, who is more than
just a wordsmith but canactually understand the
financial concepts, because, tome, the whole point of copy is
to educate and entertain.
Maybe not in that order, uh,but if you don't understand the

(57:13):
concept yourself, how are yougoing to explain it to somebody
else?
And yeah, and that's how youhave silos.
You know, you have thecopywriter who does his magic
with words that may or may notactually, um, succeed in
educating and entertaining in away that is consistent with the
overarching themes that theeditor wants to promote.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Right, and so it seems, then, that the the other
part of this then, not to alwaysbash, it's not that just hyper,
but then the editor, the editor, has to have actual ideas.
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely haveactual ideas.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
I'm, yeah, definitely have actual ideas.
I'm not, I'm not, I'm notroasting copywriters at all,
right.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
No, yeah, but it's like that's the two wings of the
bird, right, you have to have,like, really, you know, you have
to have ideas that can beturned into things that that can
be marketable.
And the to me, a great greatnewsletters, right, when you
read them, like they're, they'relike Bill Bonner's a great
example, right, like you're justinterested in what he has to

(58:15):
say and then he'll say thingsthat are really interesting.
Right, there's a different,there's two different things.
There's like I'll say somethingin an interesting way and I'll
say something that's interesting, and they're not always the
same, right, like you can saysomething that's really
interesting in a boring way andyou can say something that's
really boring in an interestingway in a great newsletter, like
ideally is, more often than not,doing both of those things.

(58:37):
Like this is a reallyinteresting thing that they're
saying and they're going to sayin a really interesting way um,
uh, and that's art.
It's not, unfortunately, it'snot something that you can just
kind of check a list and say,hey, okay, I did this, I told
the story, I did this, you know,um, there's an art to that, um,
but I think you have to be inlove with the market to a

(58:57):
certain degree, like you saidyeah, you have to really right
exactly.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
If I don't like, if I'm not interested in cars, you
know whatever I write about isgonna be flat and someone who
actually knows about cars isgonna say why, why am I going to
read this guy?
If you have someone who doesn'treally know about markets,
doesn't really understandinvesting writing about, whether
you're an editor or acopywriter, it's going to come
through.
That's going to shine throughpretty quickly.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
So what would your advice be to somebody who's like
look, I write a new letter, Iwrite product.
I want to improve, you know,the quality of what I'm doing.
I want to kind of take myselfup and it's hard to say, I know,
without seeing somebody'sactual writing.
But like on a general level,like, okay, I'm writing a
newsletter.
I kind of, you know, I try andput some stories in there.

(59:44):
I try and do stuff like whatare some pieces of advice that
you would have for somebody to?

Speaker 2 (59:52):
be better at it.
Well, I think I would startwith the actual.
Let's start at the foundation,the actual structure of the
argument.
How do you explain aninvestment idea to somebody?
Kind of goes back to yourthesis on a micro level, right,

(01:00:13):
is it?
Are you covering all the bases?
Is it interesting?
Do I want to read it?
Um, often it's.
You know I've I've hackedthrough some stuff and it's like
what are you really saying hereand why can I not understand it
?
And if I can understand it, youknow pretty good bet that our
subscribers will.
So you start there.
And if you you know, if youcan't, if you can't put the

(01:00:36):
bricks on right, there's no wayyou're going to be able to build
a house that that is livable.
Um, and I, uh, that's that'sthe challenge that a lot of
people who are actually good atinvesting, who understand
investing and finance, they havea difficult time expressing it
clearly.
That's where a managing editorcomes in.

(01:00:56):
I think after that thing you sayokay, what is the stepping back
?
What is this publication?
What is its core idea?
What is sort of the investment,the broader investment thesis
Is it?
Is it, you know, capital,efficient companies that have
excellent management and highroi and you know a lot of the

(01:01:17):
other kind of warren buffettparameters, is it?
Um, you know markets outsidethe us are on the verge of going
through a, you know, amulti-year mean reversion and
catching up with US markets.
So these are the sorts ofcountries and markets and
economic characteristics we'relooking for in foreign markets.

(01:01:44):
People don't understand how tosell options effectively and
there are these huge sort ofasymmetric opportunities in
options markets where you cansell options and as long as you
understand how to do it, you cando it very nimbly, and this is
our sort of system for findingit.
What is the overarching idea?
And if you can't explain that,if it's just some sort of big
mishmash, that's a whole lotmore difficult to sell and

(01:02:07):
subscribers or readers are goingto say, but okay, this, this is
just all over the map.
What is the underlying theme?
Um, and it's the same thing.
Uh, you know, if people havesort of underlying themes and
ideas, right, they have valuesthat drive them, they have
behaviors, they have a way ofbeing and it's more or less

(01:02:29):
consistent across relationships,across time, um, and if one day
, you know, a friend of yoursshows up and it's completely off
the wall.
He's behaving, just, you know,in a way that's completely
uncharacteristic.
You say, but wait a second,what's?
There's something wrong.
And you know, maybe it's astretch, but publications have
that sort of same thing.

(01:02:49):
Again, back to rolex's at thewalmart, right, and you need to
have some sort of theme, somesort of way of of talking, some
sort of overarching ideas thatguide you.
Um, and I think that if, to goback to your question, if you
don't have that, then you're introuble.
Um, and then so you need to beable to express investment

(01:03:10):
thesis.
Clearly, you need some sort ofoverarching idea or thesis, some
sort of unifying idea thatbrings all the strands together.
Um, uh, then, juststylistically, um, can you write
in a way that's entertainingand engaging, doesn't talk down
to the subscriber, doesn'tassume a whole lot of prior

(01:03:33):
knowledge about whateverindustry or about investing,
investment concepts?
Those are more of the buildingblocks, but that's sort of the
next stage of building blocks.
And then, yeah, is iteducational, entertaining?
Do you have a lead in there?
Does the lead kind of makesense, does it flow, and is it

(01:03:56):
coherent with the overallstructure of that particular
piece?
That's a lot of insight builtin there.
That's great, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Well, I appreciate it .
I think we're a little over ourtime, so I appreciate you doing
this, kim.
This is, this is awesome, andI'm looking forward to having
you with us at FMS this year.
You're going to be up there onthe stage with us, and so I
appreciate that.
I was looking forward to seeingyou in person.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Thanks, john.
Thanks, that's a lot of fun.
I really, I really like talkingabout this sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Thanks, thanks.
I appreciate it All.