The YAV "empire" in 2022: plans and goals

I mentioned in my “prepping for 2022” post that I have a “no navel gazing” rule on the blog, meaning I try to keep my posts focused on finance and investing without boring you with my personal life or plans for the blog. However, there are three exceptions to that rule:

1. The people frequently demand more Penny photos, and how could I keep that little bundle of fluff from the world?

2. In every month’s things and ideas post, I have “nerd corner” where I recommend whatever nerdy things I’m into at the moment (for example, last month’s reiterated how good the Cradle series is, as well as recommending Arcane on Netflix and Spiderman).

3. At the start of every year, I like to layout my goals and vision for the year. I mean this specifically for my Yet Another Value “empire” (which includes my twitter account, this blog, the podcast, and the premium service), but I might slip a personal goal or two in there.

Anyway, I’m thrilled by how my whole “empire” is performing, so for 2022 I’m not thinking about any wholesale changes or anything. Instead, I want to refine the empire so that it works better for everyone (you as the reader, me as the emperor, etc.).

My overall theme for 2022 is going to be “do less, but do it better.” I’m just going to shorten that to “focus more.” I think the best way to explain that is to just dive right in and talk about how I’ll apply that to the podcast. Last year, I was trying to do ~one podcast a week. For 2022, I’m going to dial that back just a tad (maybe try to average one podcast every other week). Hopefully being a little more focused means I can spend a little more time researching for the podcasts, ask a few more insightful questions, clear my schedule around the podcasts so they can run a little longer if the conversation is flowing, and just generally produce a slightly higher quality product.

So that’s my plan for the podcast: mainly, just keep doing what I’m doing, but a little better and maybe slightly less frequent. On top of that plan, I have two goals for the podcast.

• First, I’m particularly focused on having more guests who are running activist campaigns on the podcast. I think activists campaigns are tailor made for the podcast; activist investors, broadly speaking, have done a lot of work on a company, are highly convicted in the name, and are looking to get the word out about why the company is undervalued / why change is needed. So I’m going to be working hard to increase the “activist” side of the podcast; if you see a situation that you think would fit, please feel free to recommend it for the podcast (and an intro to the relevant decision makers is super, super helpful)!

• My other goal is to increase listenership / viewership. Why? I think the podcast is really high quality, and increased listenership opens up lots of optionality (more listeners means the podcast carries more weight, which means more reason for guests to come on, which can lead to better guests, which improves the podcast and leads to more listeners, and on and on we go. Flywheel). The easiest way to grow the podcast is by word of mouth, so if there are any podcast episodes you particularly enjoy, I’d appreciate it if you could spread the word!

So that covers my plans and goals for the podcast. I’ll go to my plans for the blog in a second, but let me first go on a quick tangent.

Setting proper goals is hard, particularly for creative work. A lot of creative work (which I think both investing and writing a blog are) have outputs that you can’t really control, or where hitting a simple output target could be gamed easily while destroying the underlying objectives. For example, my goal for Twitter is to hit 50k followers this year. I could probably pretty easily hit that by doing a bunch of “cash for retweet / like / follow” posts, by paying for followers, or by just spending all year creating fake accounts to follow me. But I don’t want to do that; I want to hit 50k followers organically by staying consistent with my “brand” / business (my friend Bram framed it as trying to increase my followers while maintaining a high signal/noise ratio, and I liked that way of framing it.). Similarly, on the podcast, I want to significantly increase the listenership, but I want to do it organically by having a consistently high quality podcast rather than through lower quality means (like having lower quality guests on who have big followings but where the podcast product would be way, way different / lower quality than what I’m going for). So I understand that my “goals” for the year are output goals, not input goals, and that setting “follower” goals is a little off brand versus just trying to have high quality output. But the fact is the increased microphone that comes from more followers / listeners makes everything else I do easier / more valuable, so I think it’s reasonable to have that be an output goal. I’ll try to think of some more tangent “input” goals, but I want to make sure that whatever I come up with keeps the blog / podcast / twitter high quality / consistent with my standards.

Anyway, let’s turn to my plans and goals for the blog.

The blog has two sides: the public side (all of the free posts like the one you’re reading now), and the premium side (an annual subscription that provides deep dive ideas as well as updates on prior ideas). The two are interconnected in a bunch of ways, so it makes sense to talk about the two of them together.

The biggest change on the public side is likely to be my “sponsored deep dives” partnership with Tegus. It’s a trial run right now, but I’m really excited about it and I’m hopeful it will create a lot of value for readers, Tegus, and myself. So, if the program is a success, I’m hopeful that becomes a permanent feature (and that some aspiring bloggers will rip off the same model, and we’ll enter a mini-golden age of public sector / company deep dives).

However, doing those deep dives is a lot of work. Because of that and the other change I’m going to make, I’ll probably be writing publicly slightly less. I anticipate my public post schedule will come out to ~once a week: a monthly deep dive post plus my monthly links piece, as well as a few “weekend thoughts” pieces every month (as well as occasional posts when something just catches my eye like NY Sports betting).

The other change I alluded to above is I’m going to shift more “actionable” ideas from the public side to the premium side. Historically, my aim for the premium side had been for one deep dive idea a month, with a monthly recap that had updates for any previous ideas, and I’d often do actionable / interesting ideas on the public side. I’m going to slightly shift that going forward; most of my individual / actionable stock ideas will be going exclusively to the premium site going forward. An example might show this best: last year, I posted SPWH on the heels of it breaking as a “weekend thought” on the public side, and last week I posted about NTP’s forced selling as an opportunity. Going forward, I’ll probably lean towards posting ideas like those on the premium site instead of publicly, which I believe increases the value of the premium membership (encouraging that discourse is also the reason I haven’t raised prices on the premium side; I might one day, but the value from the discourse is worth more much more than increasing prices).

There are lots of reasons for the shift; for example, more premium content obviously encourages more premium subs and increases the value of a premium membership, both of which are nice! But a big part of it is that I’ve found the discourse with premium members has been outstanding. I think it’s a little bit of the “commitment bias”; once someone becomes a premium member, they’re a little bit more committed to the blog and getting the most out of it. And that commitment generally leads to more inbounds of “hey, this idea is interesting; have you looked at it” or “I really liked that idea, but have you considered X, Y, and Z?” So I’d like to encourage more of that type of discourse, and I think the best way to do so is shift more ideas to the premium side.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to mention single stocks publicly (I’ve heard from friends that a popular strategy for people applying for analyst / intern positions on event desks is to recite an idea recently posted on YAVB, and I can’t let the industry’s future titans go to job interviews without a single idea to steal!). But I’m going to be much more selective with what I do put out publicly, and if I’m seeing an interesting situation or something I’m going to be much more open to putting it up on the premium side versus what I’ve historically done (which has generally been only put completely researched, fully formed ideas that I would be open to taking a significant position in immediately (or a smaller position if the risk was really high but the risk/reward was correct)).

So, on the blog side, my plans are:

1. Public blog:

   • Fewer single stock discussions

   • Making the sponsored deep dive segment awesome

   • Continue the weekly thoughts segment on interesting goings on in the market (hopefully with better quality as a little more time freed up from other posts that I’m not doing anymore)

2. Premium side

   • Continue posting monthly updates of prior ideas

   • Continue posting fully formed / deep dive / actionable ideas on there when I find them, but maybe not every month (full deep dives that lead to an actionable idea are rare, and I just can’t find them every month)

   • Start posting more actionable but maybe not perfect ideas on the premium side, both to increase the value of a membership and to continue to encourage great discourse / feedback

What about goals for the blog? Unfortunately, most of the goals are again “output goals” relate to more followers / subs. I want the blog to produce really high quality work, and I know the stuff I talk about (mainly micro / value focused / company specific) is not for everyone. I could probably generate a bigger audience talking nonstop about meme stocks, short squeezes, and macro. So I don’t want to give up my “brand standards”, but increased distribution is really important for everything I do. More followers means partnerships (like the Tegus one) are more valuable for my partners, and that I can get extra eyeballs on a situation when it really needs some (i.e. more followers means a bigger microphone if I need to get eyeballs on an activist situation).

My goal for 2022 is to more than double our free email subscribers (while maintaining a high signal / noise ratio). I don’t do any marketing, so here’s one area you can help me out: if you like this blog or any particular post, it’s always helpful if you share the blog / post with other people who might be interested in the blog! Again, I know value investing and deep dives aren’t for everyone, but the hope is that for the people who it is for they really enjoy everything this blog produces. If you know anyone you think would like it, please share!

That wraps up most of my plans for this year…. except for my plans for my twitter account and personal life. My plan for my twitter account is simple: hit 50k subs, and give the people what they want and post an extra couple of Penny photos. Again, bigger microphone = better flywheel for everything else, as well as giving Penny the extra eyeballs she so clearly deserves.

On the personal side, I’ve got a few goals

• Spend more quality time with my wife, Penny, and reaching out to / reconnecting with friends. I have too many days where I look up and it’s 8:30 at night and I haven’t really connected with anyone in my life, I’m going to try to be more mindful about putting phones / screens away.

• Basically cut alcohol out of my life. I won’t be a complete teetotaler (I’ll have drinks at special events), but as I get older I’ve found the downsides of alcohol (feeling hungover for days on end, needless added calories, etc.) far outweigh the upsides.

  • Related, drastically cut down on my sugar intake. I don’t have a problem with alcohol at all; I just want to do less of it. I do have a problem with sugar; I’m a complete cookie monster with a massive sweet tooth. So I’m try to way, way cut back on that.

• Spend less time reading “stories of the day” that won’t matter in a few months (like news) and more time reading books.

  • I used to be really good at that, but during COVID I got a little glued to the CNN front page. Time to end that!

• On the fitness side, I’ve got a few goals:

  • My main goal? I’m currently doing a body fat / composition challenge that a local gym has. I’d like to get my body fat below 10% again (I’ve noticed my face looks a little larger in the podcast videos, and I’m not a fan of that!) and keep it there.

    • How am I going to hit that goal? I’m pretty religious about hitting the gym, so the real area I need to improve is on the diet side. I’m currently just doing a solid diet (watching my calories while also way decreasing take out consumption, no processed or fried foods, no sugers, etc.); I might just switch to a Whole 30 if I’m not seeing enough results from that method.

  • My secondary goal is to break a 3:30 minute fran and row a 2k in under 7 mins.

    • I actually had the exact same goals back in 2019; I hit the rowing goal but missed the fran goal (my recent best remains stubbornly in the 4:15 area).

    • I just love using fran as a bench mark / goal since it’s such a good blend of explosive cardio and power; if you’re improving your Fran time, you’re absolutely improving your fitness.

  • My third goal is I’m planning on running a half marathon towards the end of the year, and I’d like to break 1:45 (I know that’s not a crazy good time, but I broke my ankle and largely hung up my running shoes ~10 years ago, so I think it’s a reasonable goal).

Anyway, those are my plans and goals for 2022. I’m really looking forward to growing and learning this year, and I hope this blog / the podcast / my twitter can play a small role in helping you grow and learn as well. Cheers!