Yet Another Value Podcast in 2026: A Letter to an Upcoming Guest
Welcome to the Yet Another Value Empire (YAVE) in 2026!1
Every year, I break my “no navel gazing” rule to give some insights into my plans and ideas for my “empire.” This year is no different, and I’m planning a big post with a weird new theory I’m working on and how I envision evolving my empire
However, I’m a bit behind on writing. Why? I just had my second kid, and NYC daycares are closed between Christmas and New Year’s. When you have a newborn and a toddler and daycares are closed, that’s an instant all hands on deck emergency2 that has resulted in a lot of toddler time and very little work over the past ~10 days.
So all of the words and ideas I have floating around in my head about my little empire will need to wait for another day…. however, time waits for no man, and I’m already gearing up to record the first podcasts of the year. Given that time crunch, I wanted to share a letter that I plan on sending to every podcast guest this year. My hope is the letter helps the guest prepare for the best show possible, steers the show in a direction that makes sense for everyone, and lets you (my loyal reader / listener3) know where I’m trying to drive the show (and provide feedback if necessary).
Letter below, and feedback very welcome! And, of course, don’t forget to subscribe to get future posts / podcasts!
(Letter to guest begins below)
Dear Guest,
Thank you so much for agreeing to come on the Yet Another Value Podcast (YAVP).
YAVP is really special to me: I love doing it, and I’ve grown to be quite close with several of the guests who I never would have met or stayed in touch with without the podcast.
YAVP has three core constituencies:
You (the guest)
Me (the host)
The listeners
My hope and expectation is that we can make a podcast that works for all three of those constituencies. I wanted to write a letter detailing how I think we can do that.
Let me start with the first and most important constituent: you, the guest! My guest is the star of each and every show; you’ve chosen to devote a few hours of your time to coming on the podcast (and prepping for it) for nothing. Ultimately, there has to be some type of benefit to coming on the podcast; otherwise, no one would choose to come on.
So what is that benefit? My hope is that we make a podcast that shines the brightest possible light on you and yields long run benefits for you / your business. Some example benefits include (but are not limited to):
If you’re managing money in some form, I want a podcast that you’re proud to send to your clients. I want a podcast that you can send to people and they say “o my god, I am so glad I am invested with this guy. Maybe I should invest more with him.”
If you’re a newsletter writer, I want a podcast that makes you sound so thoughtful that people are dying to sign up for your newsletter and learn from you / read what you write.
If you’re looking to drive some type of change at a company, I want a podcast that drives the case for change home so effectively that whoever is on the other side listens to it and says “when the facts change, I change my mind…. and damn they have a good point. I need to listen to them.”…. or at least one that drives other shareholders to believe they need to listen to you and forcefully make the case to management!
The good news is that the podcast has had plenty of success on these lines so far; there is a reason so many guests come back for multiple episodes (aside from the fact that many of them are my friends!). Several guests who have come on the podcast have had new clients write them checks on the heels of a successful appearance (and some of the checks have been quite sizable), it’s not uncommon for a newsletter writer to get hundreds of free sign ups and dozens of paid subscribers on the heels of a good podcast appearance, and I’ve had multiple guests get job offers on the heels of an appearance. Whichever one of those is the best outcome for you, my hope is that we can make a podcast that best positions you for that outcome!
However, there’s a funny thing about trying to have the podcast shine a bright light on you. If we do the podcast in a complete softball format, it’s going to come across as an infomercial, and you’re actually not going to look that great. In order for you to look good on the podcast, I need to be able to have a real discussion with you. So my promise to you is that I’m going to do my best to make you look good on the podcast, and I won’t ask any “gotcha” questions…. but I will ask questions that I’d expect any serious investor to be able to answer about a position they have. So, for example, I’d never ask you something like, “hey, footnote 12 of the 10-Q five quarters ago included a typo; is this a fraud or is the CFO simply incompetent?” but I would ask you a question like, “hey, popular short seller X had a short thesis on this; how do you get comfortable with the issues they raised?” I think being able to have a thoughtful discussion around the latter question (or serious, hard questions like it) is the best way to show how smart you are and how much research you’ve done on the company / sector4.
Speaking of my questions, I have three that I will almost certainly ask that I want you to prepare for:
What do you know that the market doesn’t? Why is this an alpha opportunity?
What can you tell me about the company that I wouldn’t learn in ~an hour of researching them?
Every business and idea has risks; what risk here are you more worried about than the market is? What risk is the market more concerned with than you are?
I’m not guaranteeing I will ask all of those questions on the podcast, but I think those are interesting questions that drive to the heart of edge / differentiation, so at a minimum thinking and prepping for them will help with our conversation!
Speaking of prepping for the pod, I of course hope you’re already a fan of the podcast and have already listened to every episode five times, but on the off chance you haven’t I’d encourage you to listen to an episode or three to get a feel for the rhythms of an episode. My interviews with my friends Artem Fokin and Evan Skorpen got very good reviews last year and are more on the “timeless” side since we were talking more about investing theory, so you could start with those….. however, those are slightly different than most YAVP episodes as they are more “theory” and most episodes are single stock focused, so I’d encourage you to listen to a recent single stock focused pod for the ebbs and flows of what a single stock episode sounds like / how our episode will probably feel.
Now that I’ve injected myself into the topic, let’s go ahead and turn to the second constituent: me!
I generally spend about half a day every day researching a new stock / company. The day before our podcast, I’m simply going to shoot whatever stock / topic we’re discussing to the top of the list and research that instead of what I’d normally look at (By the way- the more you can streamline my research, the better I can learn the company and the better questions I can get. So if there are any materials (write ups, presentations, even investor days or sell side research) that you think would help me get up to speed on the company, please send them my way at least 24-48 hours in advance of the podcast).
In order for the podcast to work for me, that means the half a day of research has to be worth it to me. Does that mean that I need to walk away from the podcast thinking “I need to YOLO into this stock right now.” No, absolutely not. But it means the idea needs to be interesting, and your thesis needs to be actionable.
A negative example might illustrate this requirement best. I’ve had a few people try to come on the podcast to pitch “past winners.” Every time I asked them a question, they’d say, “well, yes, today that’s a risk…. but when I bought it 50% lower you were getting paid for that risk!” Or I’ve had a few people come on the podcast and answer questions with, “I don’t know, I haven’t thought about that risk. This is a small position for me.”
I actually like the answer “I don’t know” to something that someone genuinely does not know the answer to. But I’m having you on to have a deep, informed discussion about a topic / company. I want to feel like I spent half a day learning about a company, and then had a literal expert on the company answer all of the questions and risks I was thinking about as I was researching the company. Answering I don’t know to one or two questions shows intellectually honesty; answering “I don’t know” to a bunch of questions is probably a research short coming that I’d argue isn’t painting you in the best light and certainly is not working for me. And if the answer to a lot of the questions is “that’s a risk but I have a low cost basis,” then (again) I don’t think it’s painting you in the best light and I don’t think the podcast will work for listeners; it just sounds like you’re trying to spike the football, not talking about something that’s a good risk adjusted idea going forward.
Which brings us to the third constituent: listeners!
Listeners are the hardest group to discuss, because there are so many different potential listeners. Is the listener we’re talking about a YAVP super fan who listens to every episode? Is it someone who likes YAVP but only listens to episodes with stocks that they’re interested in? Is it a first time listener who is listening simply because they’re interested in the specific stock or topic we’re discussing? Or is it a first time listener who is listening because they like you, the guest, and don’t care about stocks at all?
And we haven’t even discussed the different levels of sophistication of the listeners! Is the listener we’re talking about a professional investor solely interested in ideas and research? A college student looking to learn and improve as an investor? An industry participant trying to understand what investors are thinking about their company / sector?
We’d probably mold and shape the episode in a different way depending on what category we’re talking about!
So we (unfortunately) can’t target for a specific listener group; here’s my proposal instead: my goal is to make the podcast one that you and I would listen to with our “professional” caps on. Here’s the bar that I set myself: sometimes for lunch I’ll go on a run. My goal is to make a podcast that I could listen to on my run, get back to my desk, and think that I had learned something / have a decent feel for the business and the stock set up from here. I think if we can hit that bar, we’ll have released a good podcast the works for most of the people that we are trying to reach.
I hope this email has given you a nice idea of what the podcast is, how we can make a successful podcast together, and even served as a little bit of encouragement to come on the podcast. I’m going to wrap this up with a few odds and ends / answers to frequently asked questions, but I’m always free to discuss the episode in advance if you have any questions (or want to schedule a repeat appearance!).
Frequently asked questions
How can I make the podcast work best for me? Simple: have a well researched idea and be responsive to my questions / ready to take the podcast in any direction! In addition, sending me anything I can use to prep ahead of time will help me be a more knowledgeable host / ask better questions. After the show is published, sending the episode around to your core clientele (investors, subscribers, etc.) will help add a little virality to it / make sure people see it.
Is the podcast really going to be an hour? I don’t think I can talk for an hour about a single stock! Most YAVP episodes run for about an hour. Ours does not have to; if we fully cover the stock in thirty minutes, we’ll wrap it up there. If the conversation is flowing (and I don’t have a hard stop), we can go for two hours. However, the most frequent worry I hear from guests going into the conversation is “I don’t know if I can talk about this for an hour” and the most frequent thing I hear from guests after the podcast is “dang time flew by; I thought we’d only been going for twenty minutes! I had so much more I wanted to say!” Bottom line: I wouldn’t worry too much about time.
I’m kind of an introvert; is the podcast for me? I won’t lie; if you’ve got a background as an improv comic and are super outgoing, the podcast is probably going to be a little more fun! But this is an investing podcast, not a comedy podcast. People are listening to learn something about a specific stock. Many of the most well received episodes have been with someone who is clearly very introverted / very dry. If you’ve done enough work on a company, I promise we’re going to be able to show that work off in a positive light / a way that makes you look good regardless of how introverted / extroverted you are or if you moonlight as an improv!
I want to start the podcast off by talking about my background / pitching my firm; can I? I want the podcast to shine the brightest light on you; however you think framing that story works for you is fine. However, the podcast is generally devoted to single stock ideas, and I think doing a great job with the pitch and showing off your fundamental research is the best way to shine. Honestly, leaning on background / credentials is just a crutch that I think distracts from the idea. But whatever works for you!
Can you share a question list with me before the episode? Should we do a call to discuss ahead of time? I am absolutely happy to do either, but I think the podcast works best as a free flowing conversation, and if we hash out too many answers ahead of time we’re going to eliminate some of that natural feel.
I didn’t like one of my answers; can I rerecord the episode or that specific answer? Yes and no. Every podcast is professionally edited, and I’m never going to publish anything that would make someone look bad (again: we’re trying to shine the best possible light on you)…. but edits need to be for serious mistakes, not for small errors. I’ve had past guests say “hey, I said that the company earned $2.14/share two years ago, and it was actually $2.11/share. Can we rerecord?” The answer is absolutely not! No one will notice or care about small off-the-cuff errors like that, but we can and will correct something if there’s a huge error or something.
Again, appreciate you coming on the podcast, and I’m here to answer any other questions I didn’t address. I think we’re going to have a ton of fun on the episode, and I’m looking forward to recording soon,
Andrew
For those unfamiliar, I (somewhat facetiously) consider Yet Another Value Blog (YAVB) and its associated products (mainly the podcast (YAVP) and the blog’s premium side, but also my personal twitter and YAVE twitter account) my mini-empire (which I’ve coined Yet Another Value Empire, or YAVE)
I have been joking with people I’m thinking about running for office on a “the schools will be open 365 days a year” platform, except I’m kind of not joking.
Given YAVE is an empire, you are technically my loyal subject!
Note: I write this section and honestly this whole letter assuming that we are talking about a specific stock on the podcast, given that’s ~90% of the podcasts I tape. If we have a different topic in mind, same rule / thought process applies, but obviously I’ll adjust based on what we’re discussing